Tag: Player Resources

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Class Discussions Player Resources

Greatest Hits 2011: Band of Brothers: Adventuring Parties of the Same Race

While the Dungeon’s Master team enjoys some well-deserved vacation time, we’re breaking out the greatest hits and shining a spotlight on a few of our favourite articles from 2011. We’ve searched for hidden gems that our newer readers might have missed and our long-time readers will enjoy reading again. Enjoy a second look at these greatest hits from Dungeon’s Master.

Excluding monsters, there are 36 playable races in 4e D&D (so far). Each race brings something unique to the character creation equation. Although a character of any race can become any class, there are obviously some that are more suited than others based on racial bonuses. But even with the choices narrowed down, it’s still unusual to have any two PCs in a party be the same race or even the same class. That’s just the way D&D works. And I for one have absolutely no issues with it.

The challenge with this kind of multiculturalism is coming up with a plausible reason that explains how and why these characters ever came together in the first place. It’s easy to accept the foundations of the fantasy setting in the context of the game, but beyond the high level elements, players still expect a certain level of realism and want things to make sense even in a wondrous setting. Yet time after time we just accept (albeit begrudgingly) that this band of misfits we call a party found common purpose and have become fast friends.

One of the best ways to overcome the “why are we in the same adventuring party?” problem is to find some commonality. Making everyone play the same race is probably the easiest way to accomplish this. As much as I hate to restrict anyone’s options during character creation, a party of the same race does present some immediate benefits, the first and most obvious of which is finding motive to be together.

When the party is made up entirely of just one race there are plenty of ways to create a shared background between some of all of the characters. It also gives the players a chance to look at the racial powers and feats and see if there are ways to try something that they might not be able to if there weren’t other members of the same race in their party.

When Lair Assault offered Glory for a party of the same race that completed the adventure I expected to see a lot of same-race parties. Of the 15+ games I watched or played in, I never saw a single party where the PCs were all the same race. I saw a few parties with four Dwarves or four Genasi, but never the full five. I guess that no matter how appealing you make it, unless the DM puts his foot down, people will exercise their freedom of choice and make the character they want, race be damned. Oh well, their loss.

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Editorial

Greatest Hits 2011: Should PCs Charge Other PCs for Services?

While the Dungeon’s Master team enjoys some well-deserved vacation time, we’re breaking out the greatest hits and shining a spotlight on a few of our favourite articles from 2011. We’ve searched for hidden gems that our newer readers might have missed and our long-time readers will enjoy reading again. Enjoy a second look at these greatest hits from Dungeon’s Master.

Although charging for services can have devastating consequences for your game – especially if the demand for payment is completely unexpected – I do think there are ways to make it work. An alternative way to tackle this issue it not to charge PCs for services out of the blue, but to make special arrangements where payment will guarantee services or garnish special treatment.

For example, in a lot of the D&D encounters sessions I ran this year there was only one leader for a party of six or more. With only two Healing Words to go around per encounter the competition for who got healed was pretty fierce. When multiple characters were injured the leader knew he needed to heal someone on his turn but wasn’t usually very picky about who it was. If two character were in equal peril (both bloodied or both unconscious) then it became a coin toss or roll of the dice. But what if one of those PCs made an arrangement with the leader ahead of time? He’s not asking for special treatment, just preferential treatment.

In circumstances where this PCs need is equal to that of another PC, the leader will earn extra compensation if he chooses to heal this PC first. The leader isn’t charging but is willing to accept payment for the service in order to help him decide who to help first. Once the other players learn that the leaders service are for sale they can offer him more lavish rewards or a greater cut of the loot. In this case they are less likely to resent the leader since he’s not charging all-of-a-sudden for healing, nor is he withholding it when needed most. He’s merely letting the PCs determine the way to break the ties. It wasn’t his idea to charge, he’s just taking advantage of the situation his allies created.

It could work.

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Class Discussions Player Resources

Changing Classes

If your Wizard wants to dabble in swordplay he can always choose to multi-class in Fighter (assuming you meet the prerequisites). Or, if this is something you decided during the character creation process then you can make a hybrid character that combines aspects of both classes equally. But what happens if, after many levels as a Wizard, you decide that you don’t just want to be a dabbler who multi-classes. What if he wants to give up the arcane arts entirely and become a Fighter? What does he do then?

If you’re following the rules as written then you don’t really have any acceptable options. However, a creative player may be able to convince an adventurous DM to explore other possibilities, especially if they make sense in the context of the game.

Changing classes after character creation isn’t something that the 4e mechanics allow for. However, previous editions of D&D did. It’s not something that happens often so I’m not surprised that no 4e mechanic exists to accommodate this kind of thing. But sometimes there will be a really good in-game story rationale for why a PC must abandon his old class entirely and pursue another. In these cases we need to get creative.

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Player Resources

The Golden Level of Heroic Adventure

As a player and DM through four editions now, I have observed the effect commonly referred to as “the sweet spot.” This is the point at which the game functions as intended, is fun for players and DMs alike, the PCs can handle most fights, and the monsters can be threatening without being overpowering. While the sweet spot in 2e was a strange one due to the difference in classes’ experience charts and earning, and 3e and its iterations had multiple sweet spots, 4e to date has had the longest, most sustainable sweet spot that I have experienced. It starts around level 3, and lasts until about level 23.

However, within this sweet spot, there stand four levels which I feel are the best time to be an adventurer in D&D. While three of them stand firmly in the paragon tier, being levels 12, 16 and 20, one stands in the heroic tier of play. Level 6 is the goal to shoot for in lower heroic, and it is where the PCs truly begin to feel their power. It’s when character choices in build, theme, and class truly begin to differentiate themselves. It is when heroic characters can get their first taste of the paragon tier challenges ahead, and the best time to start defining a campaign’s themes. It is the golden level of heroic adventure.

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DM Resources Player Resources

Nationality and Character Backgrounds

Most players select a background for their PC during the character creation process. In many cases it’s done for purely mechanical benefits. Being from this location may give you a resistance to fire, while this one may give you a bonus to your initiative. In all cases it also gives you access to a new skill or a bonus to one specific skill. When it comes to power gaming, no one overlooks a background benefits.

The background options that I see taken most often are the geographic backgrounds from the Forgotten Realms. Usually the player doesn’t really care that his PC is from Waterdeep, Akanul or Cormyr, they just want to additional benefit that being from those places provides. And that’s fine. It’s not the ideal reason to choose a background but it’s well within the rules. Any character can have any background.

This season during D&D Encounters: Beyond the Crystal Cave the adventure strongly encourages the DM to insist that the PCs choose one of the three backgrounds provided. This helps give the players a good in-game reason as to why such a rag-tag and mismatched adventuring party would work together. Being from one of the three areas directly impacted by the happenings in the adventure gives PCs a strong motive for accepting the mission.

While at first a few of the players in my group resented being told they had to choose one of only three options (none of which they felt provided particularly appealing benefits) after only two sessions these same players really started working their background into the way the characters behaved. Without any prompting from me, the players instilled within their characters a sense of national pride.

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Month in Review

Month in Review: November 2011

November was another great moth at Dungeon’s Master. There was an unintentionally heavy focus on player resources and D&D public play this month, not that there’s anything wrong with the way that worked out. There were still articles for the DM including three articles featuring new adventure hooks.

Our readers really like getting to know the Dungeons’ Master team a little bit better in November when they got to see inside Ameron’s Game room and heard Ameron, Wimwick, Bauxtehude, Suddry and Skallawag take on Lair Assault: Forge of the Dawn Titan. And our newest ongoing series where we ask you to Make the Call and weigh in on the rules was a lot more popular and positive than we expected so watch for another installment in the near future.

We’d like to thank all of our readers for visiting Dungeon’s Master in November. We encourage everyone to leave us comments and let us know what you think about our material, good or bad. If you have ideas for future articles or are interested in writing a guest post for us, please email us or comment at the bottom of this article.

In case you missed any of the great articles we ran in November, this is your chance to get caught up. If your one of those loyal readers who visits every day it might be worth checking out some of the articles again to see what other people said in the comments.

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Class Discussions

Building a Better Avenger

In my local gaming circle, which operates out of a college gaming club, the autumn always brings with it a plethora of new games. With a very active player base, and a wide variety of different parties, I have the advantage of seeing several different parties and classes in action. It allows me to see trends, and not just those that are commented upon increasingly by the editorials released by Wizards of the Coast. While what I have seen at this gaming circle confirms most of what they have said, a recent observation has given an interesting conversation. Other than Clerics and Paladins, divine classes do not get played.

After interviewing most of my gaming circle as to why, I have been able to come up with the same reasons for Avengers, Invokers, and Runepriests. First, there is a lack of distinctive flavor for Runepriests and Invokers to separate them from Clerics and Wizards. Second, the powers and feats are generally lackluster. And third, especially in the case of the Avenger, they simply do not measure up to the other classes for their role in the party. The subject of the Avenger in specific has been discussed before on this blog, and how it fails to be a good striker class. As such, a few friends and I were inspired to take the Avenger back to the drawing board, and re-think the class to solve the issues of a lack of traction, a lack of support, and a lack of being a striker.

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D&D Encounters Player Resources

D&D Encounters: Beyond the Crystal Cave – Pre-Generated Characters

For the past four seasons of D&D Encounters, Wizards of the Coast has provided us with the same six pre-generated characters. There’s nothing wrong with theses pre-gens but they’re getting a little bit too familar. Not only that, but they don’t feature any of the new optioins from Heroes of the Feywild.

Realizing that a lot of people are looking for new pre-gens, our friend Kiel Chenier took it upon himself create a slew of new characters for use with D&D Encounters: Beyond the Crystal Cave. He’s created nine new characters to choose from. The four pre-gens that highlight new classes and races from the Heroes of the Feywild are presented below. The rest of the new pre-gens are available on Kiel’s website Dungeons & Donuts.

During this season of D&D Encoutners all the PCs must choose a background establishing them from either Crystalbrook, Sildaine Forest or the city of Sybar. Each of the new pre-gens is from one of these locations. You’ll likely recognize the heroes from Sybar – three members of the famous adventuring company Acquisitions Incorporated.

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DM Resources Player Resources

You Make the Call – Questions About Rules (Part 1)

Every now and then a situation arises during game play that we’re not sure how to adjudicate. This kind of thing happens much less frequently now that we’re familiar with the 4e rules, but it does still happen. In our experience it’s better for the DM to make a quick ruling and keep the game moving foreword, and most time this is how we handle these unusual situations at my game table. However, we pride ourselves on knowing the rules inside out so when we have something unexpected come up and we don’t know the answer we see it as a challenge and after the game’s over we start digging.

When trying to find the right answer we of course begin by searching in the PHB, DMG, Rules Compendium or online compendium. If we can find a definitive ruling we go to the internet and the various forums. But this doesn’t always provide us with a satisfactory answer either. So we’ve decided to try a new series where we present the situation, explain our ruling and ask for your feedback. This might end up being a very informative series that clears up a lot of confusion for players and DMs alike or it may become a series where we get flamed by the online community for not knowing something obvious. We’re hoping that the good outweighs the bad so we’ve moving forward with it.

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Player Resources

Characters with Secret Identities

Normally D&D characters are glory hounds. They’re always looking to make a name for themselves. When they accomplish something noteworthy they usually go to great lengths to ensure that everyone knows it. The proudly wear their magical armor and make no attempt to hide the magical weapon hanging at their hip or strung over their back. For most characters, level advancement is synonymous with fame. The greater your reputation the more likely you are to take on better paying assignments with more danger and even greater chances for glory.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with this approach. After all this is what almost all adventurers do, but there is something to be said for keeping a low profile. Certainly most adventuring parties have learned this over time and have likely even had an adventure or two where they needed to conceal their true identity. But what if this was the way your party operated all the time. Think about it. There are considerable advantages to anonymity. Think of what you can do if there is no chance that anyone can tie the deeds to your PCs?

I’m not suggesting that your character don a mask and go on a killing spree; quite the opposite in fact. I’m thinking of all the potential good that can be accomplished by keeping your identity secret, not to mention the fantastic role-playing opportunities that arise from having a dual identity.

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