Tag: Dungeons and Dragons

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Player Resources

Six Items Every Adventurer Should Have

As an adventurer you discover all kinds of interesting items. Some of the items are mundane and others magical. The most obvious items are your weapon and armour. As you advance, your helm, glove, boots and cloak are all replaced by magical items that you have discovered. Eventually a point of saturation is reached and the only way to increase your power level is by gaining the next version of your current item. Advancing your magic weapon from +1 to +2 and so forth.

As your character advances in level wealth continues to accumulate and there is the ability to find or purchase additional magic items. Many of these items are consumables, but are still worth obtaining. I am a fan of items that require healing surges to power them. Especially for those defenders who have more healing surges than they could ever likely spend during the normal course of adventuring.

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Editorial

D&D Encounters: March of the Phantom Brigade (Week 2)

Last week’s eventful river crossing gave the party a chance to work together for the first time. Overall they worked well as a team. No one died (except the stirges) and the only wounds the party received were inconsequential scrapes and bruises. The party’s success was noted by Malgram, the Ranger in charge of leading Brother Splintershield and the settlers to the ruins of Castle Inverness.

A few hours after the river crossing, Malgram and an as yet unknown female Elf approached the PCs. Malgram introduces the PCs to Faldyra. She is an historian who plans to chronicle the efforts of the settlers as they rebuild on the castle’s ruins. She’s also got a green thumb and wishes to collect various plants, herbs, and roots in the surrounding area.

Malgram asks the PCs if they will accompany Faldyra into the nearby forest and keep an eye on her while she gathers the various plants she seeks. He was impressed by the party’s combat abilities and is sure that they could handle any potential dangers that lurk in the woods (not that he believes there is anything to worry about).

Faldyra, already heading off on her own, waves to the party as she get farther away from the caravan. It’s pretty clear that she’s going whether she’s got chaperones of not. The party quickly catches up to her and agrees to watch out for her well-being.

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Editorial Player Resources

Giving Hollywood Stars D&D Levels

Have you ever wondered how NPCs interpret your character’s level? Do they look at you any differently when you’re level 3 then when you’re level 8? What about when you reach paragon tier?

Just because your PC has earned enough XP to advance a couple of levels doesn’t necessarily mean that the world will look at you any differently. But as you continue to gain additional levels you should eventually start to distinguish yourself from other adventurers.

Your level represents a wide variety of things about your character. It’s tied directly to the amount of XP you’ve earned, or in other words the deeds you’ve accomplished. It also reflects the amount of wealth and material goods you’ve accumulated. And don’t forget that as you earn levels you’ll acquire power and influences in social and political circles.

Based on these criteria, I’ve taken a stab at drawing parallels between D&D character level and the career successes of famous Hollywood movie stars. I’ve put together a list of some of today’s most famous and popular stars and tried to rank them according to their corresponding D&D level.

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Adventure Hooks DM Resources

Adventure Hook: The Mercenary Company

Did your adventuring company meet in a tavern? Perhaps they were recruited by a wise old wizard who needed help clearing out a pesky band of goblins? Of course there is always the village in need of rescue and the PCs just happen to be the only able bodied individuals around. Finally, the PCs might be the heirs of old adventurers destined for greater things.

Regardless of the initial start to your campaign your players will require a long term reason for why they continue to adventure together. Often adventuring parties are composed of personalities that have no real reason to remain together. That is where a Mercenary Company can provide the required glue to keep your adventurers together. Wizards of the Coast recently featured two different mercenary companies, Queen Filfaeril’s Blades and The Last Legion (DDI subscription required). Mercenary Companies allow you to keep the party involved with a long term campaign goal, while still providing other secondary adventures.

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DM Resources Skill Challenges

Solving the Skill Challenge Problem – Ensuring Everyone Contributes

Has this ever happened to you? The DM sets the scene and you realize that the party is about to face a skill challenge. As the fifth or sixth player to act you only get to make one meaningful skill check before the party achieves overall success. It was a good encounter because during some of the low complexity skill challenge you don’t even get to act before the party achieves their goal.

What makes this situation an even bigger problem is that most players try to use their best skill even though in many cases it makes more sense (from a story perspective) for them not to. They know that they’re only going to get one or two shots at making a meaningful contribution to the skill challenge, and they don’t want to be the guy who flubs the check and wracks up a failure.

The Dungeon’s Master team has come up with a way to ensure that every player gets to contribute during a skill challenge and that every player feel comfortable using the skills that make the most sense to complete the objective and not just the one or two skills that they happen to be strongest in. Here’s what we’ve come up with.

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DM Resources

How To Use Traps To Make Combat More Intense

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Paladin – What was that?

Rogue – Sounds like you stepped on a pressure plate.

Paladin – I thought you were keeping an eye out for traps?

Rogue – So I missed one.

Paladin – Is that supposed to make me feel more comfortable about the situation?

Rogue – Honestly, how did you get this far in life? Hold still, let me look… I said hold still, stop with the squirming.

<clank … clank … clank>

Paladin / Rogue – What was that?

Cleric – I have a bad feeling about this.

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Editorial

D&D Encounters: March of the Phantom Brigade (Week 1)

This week we began D&D Encounters season 4, March of the Phantom Brigade. At my FLGS we saw a swelling in our overall number as we had enough players to run two full tables of six this week. The last time we had enough players to run two tables was during chapter one of D&D Encounters Dar Sun. I think the idea of a 20-week commitment for season three scared a lot of players away. In any case we began this week with a full house.

My table had four brand new players, none of whom had ever played 4e D&D before. We ended up using five of the six pre-generated characters. The party consisted of Belgos the Drow Ranger, Brandis the Human Cavalier, Fargrim the Dwarf Slayer, Jarren the Human Wizard, Valenae the Eladrin Cleric and a Battlemind. As it turned out this was a perfect balance.

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Editorial

M.I.A. – The Tarrasque

Orcus. Demogorgon. Lolth. All three are extremely powerful foes. They graces the covers of Monster Manual 1, 2 and 3 respectively. These are the elite, showcase monsters of 4e D&D. They are among the toughest that 4e D&D has to offer. Few other creatures are as powerful or dangerous as these three. Defeating any one of them demonstrates that your party truly is the best ever.

And don’t forget about dragons. They too deserve inclusion on any list of the most powerful creatures in D&D. A level 30+ dragon is certainly a suitable foe for the climax of any epic tier adventure.

And then there is the Tarrasque. As I was browsing through the Monster Manual (as I’m wanton to do from time to time) I stumbled across the entry for the Tarrasque completely by accident. As soon as I saw it, I read over its stat block and I realized that Tarrasque has been overshadowed in 4e D&D by the monsters I described above. The creature once agreeably the most powerful monster in any Monster Manual is suddenly a forgotten footnote.

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DM Resources

5 Tips To Increase Role-Playing At Your Game Table

Role-playing has featured prominently in several 4e blogs over the past few weeks. The topics and approaches to the subject have varied widely, from how to speed up combat to allow for more time to role-play to introducing new mechanics to encourage role-playing. Our own post on the 4th action is one of the later articles. The subject of role-playing in 4e has been of great debate since its release with many debating how much role-playing the edition allows.

Some have argued that skill challenges are the mechanic in 4e that facilitates role-playing. While skill challenges can certainly accomplish this task, to state that they are the only way to role-play in 4e is rather naive. I strongly believe that if your gaming group wants to role-play it will. I also believe that some players are more willing to embrace role-playing than others.

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DM Resources

The Groundhog Day Effect in 4e D&D

In the 1993 director Harold Ramis brought us the Bill Murray comedy classic Groundhog Day. For those unfamiliar with this movie, Bill Murray’s character awakens every morning to discover that he’s reliving the same day, February 2, over and over again. After watching the movie again last week I started thinking about how to use the Groundhog Day effect in an upcoming D&D adventure.

I saw this playing out in two possible ways.

  1. The PCs would find themselves in a situation similar to that of Murray’s character in the movie where they actually had to relive the previous day over again.
  2. The PCs had to face the same encounters a second time after defeating them once before.

Both scenarios allow the players to learn from their previous mistakes. How often have you used a daily power in the first encounter and then realized that it would have been more effective against the creatures in the second? How often have you held onto a daily power and then regretted not using it? The same thing goes for actions points.

The Groundhog Day effect, in essence, gives the PCs a do over. Once they realize that they’re facing the same encounter again they can choose to alter their original course of action.

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