Tag: Dungeons and Dragons

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Class Discussions

Exploiting Racial and Class Powers: Bloodhunt

Hellfire and damnation. Illegitimate spawn of infernal powers, the coupling of wicked desires. These are the calling cards of the Tiefling, perhaps the least understood and least trusted of all races. To call them friend is to place oneself under suspicion.

The Tiefling draws upon this mistrust, and gains power from their upbringing. The very fires of hell run through their blood and when given the opportunity the Tiefling lets any and all who stand in their path know that no mere mortal stands before them.

Fear and fury are the two primary weapons of any Tiefling. By exploiting these aspects of their makeup a Tiefling transforms from a common enemy to one who simply cannot be ignored on the battlefield.

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DM Resources

Divine Organizations (Part One)

Divine characters provide some of the best built in role playing motivations. Much of this can be attributed to the various divine organizations that the character might be associated with. At the very least this is the local church where the character was trained or came to understand their faith.

Faiths are more than just a collection of churches. Behind the public facade the church is highly organized. There are various splinter groups or sects that exist within the faith. These groups often provide great role playing motivation, whether they are being portrayed as the heroes or the villains in your story.

Presented here are two divine organizations that you can drop easily into your game. They are campaign neutral and no mention of a particular deity is contained in the entries, allowing you as the DM to simply use them as you wish.

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DM Resources

Curses as Skill Challenges

One of the differences between 4e D&D and other editions is the elimination of penalties. Everything is expressed as a positive. Rather than suffer a -2 penalty to your AC when you’re prone your opponents receives a +2 bonus to attacks made against you because you’re granting combat advantage. Sure it’s the same thing, but there’s a lot to be said for keeping things positive. With all modifiers expressed as positives, it’s up to the attacker to keep track of them and add them when appropriate. This makes things a lot easier for everyone since you know that none of your defenses will ever get lower. Your AC of 15 remains an AC of 15, even if you’re prone.

By eliminating penalties and negatives from D&D, curses – especially cursed items – have disappeared from the game. We no longer have cursed items in the traditional sense because they’ve always imposed negative penalties. Where a normal magical +1 sword provides a positive modifier, a cursed weapon (or a -1 sword) imposes a -1 penalty in much the same way. But since 4e D&D doesn’t have negative modifiers this kind of item doesn’t really work in the way that it did in previous editions.

Just because the mechanics don’t easily support permanent penalties, curses and cursed items shouldn’t be eliminated from D&D. There are still a lot of good ways to introduce curses and use them in you game. However, instead of imposing a mechanical penalty like -1 to attacks made by the poor PC unfortunate enough to grasp the cursed weapon, think bigger and apply the “penalty” in a more abstract way.

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Top 10

Top Fantasy Movies From the 80s

Unless you have been living under a rock you know that Conan is back! That’s right later this summer everyone’s favourite barbarian will once again be on the silver screen, in 3D no less. The news and trailers of this release got me thinking back to the original release of Conan back in the 80’s. From there it wasn’t hard to begin thinking about all the other great and not so great fantasy movies from that era.

The movies on the list aren’t ranked and there is no rating. They are all worth seeing for one reason or another. Some have begun cult favourites in their own right and continue to endure as popular movies to this day. In each case I’ve provided my memories or brief thoughts about each film. I’ve also included a plot hook inspired by each movie. In some cases these plot hooks aren’t spectacular, but the movies listed below do represent the most basic of fantasy films.

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D&D Encounters

D&D Encounters: Dark Legacy of Evard (Week 1)

This week marks the beginning of D&D Encounters season 5, Dark Legacy of Evard. After two weeks of discussion and speculation, the new season is finally here. Some DMs are starting at level 1, as the program intends, while others have decided to let players keep using characters developed during previous season of D&D Encounters. This season will no doubt be full of excitement, so let’s embark on the 13-week adventure together with our field report on week 1.

We expected a good turn out for the first night of the D&D Encounters: Dark Legacy of Evard but we had no idea just how good our turn out would be. By the time we were ready to begin we had two tables with seven players at each table. A few minutes later we had two more players show up bringing each table up to eight players. About half way through the encounter four more players showed up. Regrettably we had to turn them away. In part because the tables were already so full and in part because we were well into the combat by then. It looks like we’ll have to enlist another DM for next week. Hopefully our FLGS can get another copy of the adventure by then.

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D&D Encounters Player Resources

D&D Encounters: Dark Legacy of Evard – Pre-Generated Characters (level 3)

D&D Encounters: Dark Legacy of Evard (season 5) is underway. If you’re looking for pre-generated characters, we’ve got them for you. There are the repeats from last season that Wizards of the Coast provided and then there are the four brand new pre-generated characters that we created using the new Players Option: Heroes of Shadow.

Since many DMs have opted to let their players continue using the same characters from last season of D&D Encounters, we decided to provide level 3 versions of our pre-gens.

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Player Resources

Exploiting Racial and Class Powers: Cloud of Darkness

Many D&D players have a love/hate relationship with the Drow’s Cloud of Darkness racial ability. On the one hand, it’s a convenient way to guarantee combat advantage, and in rare circumstances, can cover a retreat or provide a moment of respite for the party. On the other hand, it blocks line of sight and can generally get in the way. What’s a Drow to do? One of the great things about Cloud of Darkness is its great feat support. With a few feats and magic items, your Cloud of Darkness can go from inconvenient combat advantage to a force in its own right.

Today Dungeon’s Master welcomes guest writer Benoit. Benoit has been a DM and player for over 10 years. He’s editor-in-chief of the blog Roving Band of Misfits, where a variety of 4e D&D and Gamma World topics are covered. He also co-hosts the podcast Level Up, where 4e character building and magic item discussions feature prominently. If you enjoyed this article, you should definitely check out Level Up for more of the same.

Since the Drow racial stat bumps naturally encourage players to create Dexterity-based strikers, I’m going to start by focusing on two specific builds: one for Rogues and one for Rangers. Then, we’ll look at some feats and magic items that are useful for any class. Finally, I’ll touch on the Drow paragon paths to see what they can do to let you further exploit your Cloud of Darkness.

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Class Discussions

Divine Connections

Dwarf InvokerThe divine power source more than any other carries with it great connections between its various classes. This is due to the link that the various deities provide between the classes. Due to this link, a campaign that features only divine characters is easier to manage than a campaign that features only one other power source. Divine campaigns can be a lot of fun to participate in and they provide plenty of opportunities for interesting role-playing.

While divine classes share a common element in their deity, they all approach how to serve that deity in a different manner. In many cases there is a striking contrast in acceptable behaviour from one class to another. This post will briefly discuss the various classes that comprise the divine power source and how they relate to their other divine peers.

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DM Resources

More Monster Variety – Put Undead to Rest

When the heroes finish clearing away the rubble they find the entrance to a long forgotten dungeon. As they enter, the stale musty smell clearly indicates that nothing has come in or out of this labyrinth for a very long time.

“Divine characters up front, everyone else get your radiant powers and glow stones ready. It won’t be long before we encounter our fist undead opponents.”

More often then not, when an adventure involves exploitation into a sealed environment, like a dungeon or tomb, the PCs expect to fight undead. And you know what; in almost every example of this scenario they’re right.

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D&D Encounters Editorial

D&D Encounters: March of the Phantom Brigade – Report Card

Another season of D&D Encounter comes to an end and once again I feel it’s my responsibility to sum up the whole experience and provide some honest feedback.

The Characters

Of all the Pre-generated characters that Wizards of the Coast has provided since D&D Encounters began, these were by far the best. All six characters were fairly well-rounded and easy to play. None of the players felt that any one pre-gen was worse than the rest (Barcan, you know what we’re talking about).

This season more than any of the previous season we had a lot more players make their own characters. Although the character were all supposed to be created using D&D Essentials products, I wasn’t that restrictive. If you made a character in character builder I allowed him regardless of class or race.

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