Battlegrounds: Alchemist’s Lab
Interesting locations are important in fourth edition D&D. The rules are such that movement in combat is emphasized — and movement in a large empty room or a flat open field can get repetitive pretty quickly. It beats standing still and swinging away, but it’s the terrain that shapes a fight and helps make it memorable.
My goal with the battlegrounds series is to present set pieces that can be adapted to serve as battle settings in any campaign whose gamemaster feels it’s appropriate to include such a location.
As I’m envisioning it currently, a given location does not present a full-blown encounter. The GM will need to map the area to his satisfaction and stock it with monsters or NPCs. My purpose here is to consider things that could be done with the setting itself in order to make a fight in the location more interesting.
My question to readers who’d care to comment: Is this more useful, or less useful, than a designated pregenerated encounter? I could easily do it the other way…
Categories: Battlegrounds | Comments (9)
Heroic Effort
One of the worst things that can happen to a game is a string of bad die rolls. Through no fault of the players’, plots can be derailed, plans can go disastrously wrong, and characters can die. One traditional means of handling this scenario is for the gamemaster to fudge — surreptitiously decide that an attack by the monster missed when the dice show a hit, or that the damage inflicted was minimal instead of a critical, or that the bad guy failed its saving throw instead of making it.
While fudging is effective, it must be used sparingly. Players need to feel that there’s some actual danger to their characters, or they become less invested in keeping those characters alive. Players who realize the GM has cheated in their favor generally lose interest in the game, in one way or another — why play, if they know they’re going to win?
On the other hand, it’s entirely reasonable to not want to fail just because a crucial die roll was missed.
Heroic Effort is a mechanic to help address that situation, while still retaining a chance of failure. It’s appropriate to cinematic games, but not intended for realistic ones. The idea behind it is that, in the clutch, the character is able to tap into an inner reserve and put forth a better performance than he otherwise might.
Categories: Original Game Content | Comments (4)
4e from Two Months In
It’s been about two and a half months since my initial reviews of the fourth edition’s Player’s Handbook (link is to the first of the series), Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual, and about two months since I started playing in a 4e game. Seems like a good time to follow up on my previous impressions.
When I first read the PHB, I was fairly impressed by its layout choices and content. The more I use it, however, the more irritating I’m finding that layout. For the most part, things are contained reasonably well within their individual chapters, and perhaps I missed some of the problems in my initial posts because I went chapter-by-chapter.
The problems arise when I need to find a specific piece of information, such as the range of a power. Sure, I know it’s in the chapter on classes… but there’s nothing for it except to page through the listing of that class’s powers. There’s no index or table of contents that points to powers by name. The powers are broken down by level, but I might not know the level off the top of my head.
Categories: Philosophy and Rants | Comments (6)
My Elves are… Odd
In an earlier post, I discussed the fact that my dwarves are based roughly on Greek and Roman culture. Among the comments, I mentioned that my elves were a little more nonstandard. Which leads, naturally, to this post.
If nothing else, this is spurring me to update my setting to fourth edition.
I like to draw from real-world societies when defining my nonhuman cultures; it tends to make it easier for the players to grasp them. The elves of Galadria are one of the stranger groups, though. They’re based partly on Native American plains cultures, with flavor drawn from medieval northern Europe and Russia as well.
Categories: My Campaigns, Philosophy and Rants | Comments (8)
Dramatic Timing: The Action Cache
Sometimes you might be in a situation where you want to place time pressure on your party. Perhaps the evil high priest is beginning his ritual, and the party needs to reach him before he completes it. Perhaps the assassin is sneaking toward the king’s bedroom right now. Perhaps the orcish horde is on the march toward the mountain pass, and they have to be contained there before they can spread across the land.
The action point mechanic in fourth edition helps a party of adventurers push on through several encounters, making this sort of time-limited situation more feasable than it might otherwise be. If you want to really keep the pressure on, though, action points alone might not be enough. If the high priest is chanting and sacrificing right now, then it’s not dramatically appropriate for the players to take a five-minute short rest. Without that rest, though, they can’t recover encounter powers or spend healing surges. Even if you give them an action point for every encounter, it won’t be enough if there are a number of encounters between the party and their goal.
One solution is to implement an action cache. Set a cache of markers down in the middle of the table. Poker chips, Go stones, or glass “life stones” work well for this. Use a fair number of markers — at least ten is a good amount. The more markers you place, the less urgent the time pressure will be, generally speaking.
Categories: Advice, Original Game Content | Comments (1)
