As the DM you’ve got a lot of responsibility. You’re accountable for everything that’s not the Player Characters. It’s a tough job. But today we’re making it a little bit easier by giving you a Condition Tracker.
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Tag: Dungeon’s Master
After almost a year we are putting our current campaign on hold, and rather than start something brand new we’ve decided to return to a campaign that we put on hold just before the release of 4e. In many ways going back to a retired campaign can be even more difficult than starting from scratch. As I prepare to put on my DM hat and dust off my old notes I’ve been thinking about all the things I need to do to make this transition run smoothly.
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D&D Lego
Just because I’ve seen Star Wars 100 times, does that mean I’m cheating when I play Star Wars Lego? The game follows the plot of each Star Wars movie with incredible accuracy. So does knowing where the game is going give me an unfair advantage? Does my familiarity with the heroes and villains ruin my experience? Not one bit. In fact I bought the games and have enjoyed playing them for EXACTLY that reason.
After playing Star Wars Lego every night for the past week I realized that this familiarity really appeals to me. It doesn’t matter that I know the story backwards and forwards. It doesn’t matter that I know which villain I’m going to face around the next corner. My love for this story and its characters is what brought me to this game and what’s kept me glued to the flat-screen for 50 hours of game play (so far). Upon making this realization my mind immediately started thinking about how to apply this epiphany to D&D.
There comes a time in every campaign when a player is ready to retire his character. Whether because of boredom, the release of a new Player’s Handbook or character death sooner or later every character retires.
There are many different ways to retire a PC. The method that works best for you is determined by the campaign you’re playing in and the conversation you have with your DM. In a 3.5e campaign I played, my character was a Fighter who specialized with the Spiked Chain. He was designed to disarm and trip his opponents. As the campaign unfolded I learned that 90% of our opponents had multiple legs and attacked with natural weapons. All my feat selections and expertise was wasted. I retired the character and brought a new one to life that fit the campaign much better.
Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why you might retire your PC.
One of the biggest criticisms I’ve heard about 4e D&D is that the combat takes too long. Sometimes it’s necessary to stop combat, assume the PCs will emerge victorious and keep things moving. When DMs find themselves in a situation where dragging out a combat encounter is just an exercise in rolling dice then it’s time to call the fight. We’ve already shared some of our methods for speeding up your game and as PCs move into the Paragon and Epic tiers of play DMs will find this latest tip more and more useful.
When a Warforged dies it isn’t always dead. This was especially true during the last war. Just because a Warforged was damaged and fell to the ground during combat didn’t necessarily mean that he was gone forever. It took time for living, breathing commanders to get used to the concept that some of their soldiers were constructs. When retreat was necessary and bodies were left behind on the battlefield, inactive Warforged were often abandoned along with the soon-to-be-rotting corpses. But in some cases the fallen Warforged could still be repaired, if only someone with the appropriate skills made the attempt.
Dungeons & Dragons 4e has been out for over a year now and I finally pulled my Dungeon’s Master Guide off the shelf and put it to use. As our regular DM was out of town, I stepped up to the plate and ran a Dungeon Delve.
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How to Get Your Eberron Fix
Everyone wants more Eberron. Today marks the official release of the Eberron Campaign Guide. If you haven’t yet checked out Eberron in 4e then today is a great time to start. We’ve got reviews of the two core books as well as materials to get a new DM ready for an Eberron campaign. Here are five suggested ways to get your Eberron fix.
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Staff Picks
We’ve added a new feature to Dungeon’s Master, the Staff Pick. These are older posts from our archives that Ameron and I wanted to highlight. Look for our Staff Picks in the left navigation below our five most popular posts. We’ll update our Staff Picks regularly with articles we think new readers might find interesting and that long-time readers may benefit from discovering again.
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ENnie Award Nominations
On Monday the 2009 ENnie Award nominees were announced. Even though our fledgling site didn’t earn a nomination this year, the team at Dungeon’s Master wants to congratulate the five finalists in the Best Website category.