Tag: Dungeons and Dragons

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Editorial

D&D Encounters: March of the Phantom Brigade (Week 13)

This is it, the grand finale. Would the heroes find the Arrow of Time? And if they did would they use it to slay the Dragon, Actherimos? The fate of Hammerfast, Salazar Vladistone and the PCs themselves would all be decided by the night’s end.

The week there were seven PCs in the party – Belgos, Jarren 1, Jarren 2, Valenae, a Dragonborn Fighter, a Dwarven Runepriest and a Human Wizard. After completing the rooms in the upper level of the Monastery over the previous few encounters, I allowed the party to take an extended rest before proceeding. They simply did not have the necessary resources to proceed otherwise. Everyone began this week’s adventure refreshed and at 100%. Full hit point, full healing surges, all daily powers and one action point a piece.

They proceeded down the staircase and into the caverns below. The cavern seemed to be in the midst of an earth quake, rocks and dust falling from the ceiling. However, the Time Trap they encounter on the upper level seemed to still be active on the lower levels as well. At least it was until the party began proceeding through it.

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Player Resources

Exploiting Racial and Class Powers: Elven Accuracy

Nothing sucks more than missing with an attack roll. The more powerful the attack and the more dangerous the opponent, the more missing stings. In most cases you miss, and the game continues – unless you’re an Elf. Elven Accuracy lets you reroll one attack every encounter. Not bad, especially if you hit with the second roll. But why settle for just a do over when you can turn that miss into something truly awesome.

The way to get the most out of Elven Accuracy is to make sure that when you’re rerolling a missed attack you significantly increase your likelihood of hitting and scoring a crit. The fact that you have a reroll up your sleeve increases your chances of critting by giving you a second kick at the can, but why not continue stacking the deck in your favour. After all that’s what this series of articles is all about.

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Player Resources Technology

Move Over Character Builder

Can you recall the first Dungeons & Dragons character you ever created? Mine, like many others, was a Fighter from the Red Box set. I remember running him through the adventure contained in the box. I was hooked. The process was so creative, so imaginative.

Through the evolution of editions character creation has changed. We’ve gone from one book to many. During 3.5e I remember having multiple books open in front of me as I created my character sheet in excel. With the release of 4e we were given the gift of the character builder. I was in heaven, this is how character creation should be in our day and age. Everything I needed was available at my fingertips.

However, as 4e has continued to evolve and grow I realize that character builder is not the ultimate tool for designing your character. That role now falls to the Compendium. You are still building the character in the character builder, but all the research is occurring ahead of time with the Compendium.

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Month in Review

Month in Review: April 2011

We began April with an obligatory April Fools article, but after a humourous look at magic items we were all business through the rest of the month. We took a long hard look at building monsters in our four-part series, began a new ongoing series exploring ways to truly optimize racial powers, continued our ongoing weekly coverage of D&D Encounters: March of the Phantom Brigade and provided an early peek at season 5, D&D Encounters: Dark Legacy of Evard. April was packed with a lot of great 4e D&D articles so if you missed anything this is your chance to get caught up.

Our goal here at Dungeon’s Master is always to provide you with the best 4e D&D articles and resources possible. Let us know how we’re doing and if you think we’re on the right track. We always welcome your feedback, good or bad. Thank you to everyone who visited and commented during April.

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D&D Encounters Player Resources

D&D Encounters: Dark Legacy of Evard – Preview

With the thrilling conclusion to March of the Phantom Brigade only days away, we’re looking ahead to the next season of D&D Encounters. The next adventure, Dark Legacy of Evard sets the bar even higher as D&D Encounters continues into its fifth season.

The Adventure

This article is spoiler free, even though I am sharing some exciting tidbits. I want to begin by thanking Wizards of the Coast for listening to feedback. Every season they’ve improved the quality of the adventure, often based on feedback from the field. This adventure is no exception.

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D&D Encounters

D&D Encounters: Dark Legacy of Evard – Using Leveled Up PCs

Should players have to begin at level 1 again? I know that Wizards of the Coast wants all character to start on equal footing with 0 XP, but is this absolutely necessary? After all, some of the players have come out every Wednesday for over a year now. This is going to be the fourth time that they’ve worked a character up to level 2 or level 3 and once again they’ve being asked (forced) to start all over again.

What makes it even more insulting this time is that there are no new pre-generated characters. So if you’ve been using the PCs Wizards provided not only do you have to go back down to level 1 but you have to begin anew using a character you’ve already seen advance at your game table.

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D&D Encounters Player Resources

D&D Encounters: Dark Legacy of Evard – Pre-Generated Characters

D&D Encounters: Dark Legacy of Evard (season 5) begins on Wednesday, May 11. Although the pre-generated characters provided are the same ones from last season, we’ve created a few of our own.

This is the first time since D&D Encounters began that Wizards of the Coast has not provided six new pre-generated characters. For season 5 we’ll be seeing a lot of familiar faces in the party, namely the six heroes that were introduced when March of the Phantom Brigade began 13 weeks ago. Belgos, Brandis, Fargrim, Jarren, Keira and Valenae all return for another season of D&D Encounters. Just to be clear, these aren’t leveled up versions of the pre-gens, these are the exact same level 1 versions.

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Editorial

D&D Encounters: March of the Phantom Brigade (Week 12)

March of the Phantom Brigade, encounters 11 and 12 could be played in any order. Of course, my table did encounter 12 first. So last week we only covered the events that took place during the encounter 11 parts, skipping over encounter 12 until this week. A bit confusing I’ll grant you, but it worked really well. Be sure to check out the D&D Encounters: March of the Phantom Brigade (Week 11) field report if you haven’t already. That should help clear up any confusion.

Last week at our FLGS we ran a double session covering encounters 11 and 12. The heroes had the opportunity to explore the two rooms that made up the main floor of the Dwarven Monastery before heading down to the caverns below. The adventure clearly indicated that the PCs could explore the rooms in whichever order they wanted to. In order to avoid any spoilers for groups that chose to run encounter 12 first, we simply ran both encounter back-to-back.

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Player Resources

Exploiting Racial and Class Abilities: Dwarven Resilience

The ability to heal your character without assistance from the party cleric was one of the biggest changes in 4e Dungeons & Dragons. It gave every character the opportunity to recover from a devastating attack by themselves. In the category of healing themselves, none are better than the Dwarf. Now, I’ve already stated the Dwarves Are The Best Raceand today I want to examine their defining racial feature: Dwarven Resilience.

Second Wind is a great ability allowing an player to use a standard action to heal. However, let’s be honest, no one likes to use their standard action for anything but rolling dice on an attack power. As a player I feel slightly cheated when I use my second wind. I recognize that it’s a tactical decision, but I would rather be using my standard action for attacking and rolling dice!

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DM Resources

Building Better Monsters Part 4: Monster Themes and Implementing Your Designs

If you’ve read this far you’ve got the goods to design a monster, so now it’s time to think of your creation as part of the bigger picture, as a denizen of a universe. You’ll need to consider how your monster relates to the world around it as well as other monsters so that you can determine how to role-play them and how they will act in combat.

There are loose themes that the most monsters will fit in if your campaign fits into any of the better-known genres. The themes for monsters are based on creature type, location and its association with other creatures.

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