D&D Encounters: Dark Sun begins on June 9. Wizards of the Coast has provided six pre-generated characters – all of them highlighting unique aspects to the upcoming Dark Sun setting for 4e D&D. Today we’ve provided copies of all six characters for your review. They’ll be available from Wizards next week, but we’re giving you a first look.
Now available: The pre-generated characters for D&D Encounters Season 3: Keep on the Borderlands.
One of your most important, yet overlooked resources as a PC, are your healing surges. Healing surges in 4e D&D are the difference between life and death. Effective use of those healing surges can mean the life or death of you and your companions.
Healing surges are a new mechanic to D&D that were introduced with 4e. No longer do you heal a certain amount of hit points by resting or from relying on the Cleric to have enough healing spells or the right combination of healing potions. Now every PC is equipped with the ability to heal themselves during and after battle.
As I sat down to play the penultimate session of D&D Encounters season one, I wasn’t sure what to expect. After 10 weeks, what could this adventure possibly have in store for us that we hadn’t already seen before? The answer – nothing.
Although I had a lot of fun playing this week’s game, it didn’t “wow” me. I don’t know if this was because I’m getting bored with the adventure, tired of my character or just burned out in general. But despite a relatively straight forward encounter I realized that the amount of effort you put in to D&D is directly related to the amount of enjoyment you get out if it. And in week 11 we certainly made the effort.
D&D Encounters is a 12-part adventure from Wizards of the Coast and it’s played out one encounter each week over 12 weeks.
Lately I’ve been watching a lot of 80s teen comedies. Revenge of the Nerds, Real Genius, Summer School and of course the greats by John Hughes – Weird Science, the Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (to name just a few of my personal favourites). While watching these again recently, I started thinking about how the formula for a teen comedy could be used to create an interesting D&D campaign. The easiest way to accomplish this is to have kids in their mid to late teens get into all kinds of fun and frivolity when they are left unsupervised.
In the world of D&D most adventures begin their career in their late teens or early twenties. Other fantasy races are older, but their social, physical and mental maturity is roughly in the same place as a human reaching the age of majority. But what if we looked at heroes who were even younger? A bit less refined and a lot more naive. Level 1 adventurers already look at the world through rose-coloured glasses, but if they were a few years younger how much more would this outlook change?
Choosing a paragon path is one of the most decisive ways that two characters of the same class and race can differentiate themselves from each other. It also lets you better define your character as an individual. Your paragon path lets you better specialize within your class. But some paragon paths offer a much narrower focus of specialization than others. And in recently choosing one of these paragon paths, I realized that they can lead to more problems than players and DMs may realize.
In grade 5 my teacher asked the class if we could only have one song playing as our theme song, what would it be?
For the life of me I don’t recall what song I selected. However, John Arcadian’s post at Gnome Stew got me thinking about this again. John highlights the tool Pandora. Now, because I live in Canada I don’t have access to this nice tool. I do however have access to my ipod and all the CDs I still haven’t copied over to a digital format.
John’s article brought me back to that question my grade 5 teacher asked, only this time it was what songs would compose my D&D soundtrack?
We’ve got more information about D&D Encounters Season 2: Dark Sun. But before we get into that, let’s see how things went for our heroes in the week 10 session of D&D Encounters.
D&D Encounters is a 12-part adventure from Wizards of the Coast and it’s played out one encounter each week over 12 weeks.
If not for two PCs who made miraculous death saves we were looking at another TPK. Even with those great rolls at exactly the right time, the two other members of the party were killed this week. I’m quickly learning that the final chapter (encounters 9-12) of the adventure, Halaster’s Lost Apprentice, is a lot more difficult that the first two chapters. And I have some thoughts on just why that’s the case.
What do you do when you discover an ancient red dragon living in your neighbourhood? You get adventurers to kill it, of course. But what happens if the adventurers don’t kill the dragon? It will be angry that you tried to kill it and it will likely destroy your village. If only there was a way to keep sending adventurers against the dragon while avoiding the dragon’s wrath after each failed attempt. The inhabitants of Burrow’s Scar have come up with just such a plan. Unfortunately for your PCs, they are likely to be the next heroes tricked into face the dragon.
Dagger or long sword? Club or mace? Hand axe or executioner’s axe? Hand crossbow or great bow?
Which one should you select? What prompts you to select the weapon your PC wields in battle? Are you concerned with aesthetics? Or does the desire to roll as big a die as possible trump all other factors?
I must confess I’m often at a loss over what weapon to select. In the real world a dagger to my heart will kill me just as quickly as a long sword to the heart. Idea’s of d4s and d8s don’t really come into play. Granted a dagger cut to my arm is just that, a cut. A long sword on the other hand might take my arm off.
My personal spin as a DM is to think of each individual gaming session as a television episode and have the overall arc of my campaign play like a television season. Television shows such as Xena: Warrior Princess, Hercules and Legend of the Seeker have a genre similar to that of Dungeons & Dragons and can provide some insight and ideas into your own campaign.
Here are some basic elements to keep your campaigns fresh so you don’t get “canceled” by your gaming group.
The Dungeon’s Master team welcomes Skallawag into the fold. Skallawag, Wimwick and Ameron have played D&D together for over 20 years. Since Dungeon’s Master launched, Skallawag has provided many insightful comments. It took some coaxing, but we finally convinced him to write an article. We hope that this is his first of many articles and that you find his perspective on D&D as helpful and insightful as we do.