Even MORE Quick Fixes to Old Crappy Monsters

I prefer practical, specific DMing advice to philosophical advice. This is because I feel strongly that experience is the best teacher for a DM as far as pacing, storytelling, handling and involving players, adventure design, etc. However, with 4e D&D there is a wealth of very specific advice that you can pass along to others, especially new DMs. I saw a DM (new to 4e but not RPGs) ask for advice the other day, and my mind went immediately to the monsters.

One of my favorite posts dealt with updating pre-MM3/Dark Sun monsters. Its like nails on chalkboard when I hear someone saying that the old monster books are worthless. Sure, the Monster Vault is the peak of 4e monster design, but part of that is that you get tokens and an adventure. Its not very helpful to just tell someone to go and buy another book or box set. Updating the old monsters does not need to be akin to filing your taxes. You can add adjustments completely on the fly, without ever putting pen to paper, and revive all of your old books.

The main problems with old monsters come down to low damage, low accuracy, and (for Elites and Solos) susceptibility to debilitating conditions. Part of this can be handled by limiting the power creep at your table. I advise using some form of inherent bonuses a la DMG 2 or Dark Sun as a start. Even then, the monsters will still need help. If you do nothing else, follow my instructions on increasing damage.

Lets update and edit the old post's tips with some new notes added. Keep in mind that these tips do not apply to Minions; post-errata Minions should do 4+1/2 their level damage (minimum 1) and you should adjust them separately. Anyhoo:

1. DAMAGE: Add full level damage to Solo and Brute damage expressions. Add 1/2 level to the rest. For example, a 7th level pre-MM3 Brute would add 7 points to all of its damage rolls. A 22nd level Skirmisher would add 11. If a monster has a power that requires an attack roll but does no damage, add its level in damage to the power. So if say a 13th level monster has an Area 1 attack that slows on a hit (and does nothing else), that power now does 13 damage as well.

2. ATTACK BONUSES: Adjust monster attack bonuses up to at least Level +5 vs AC and Level +3 vs NADs. If any attack bonuses are already higher than this, such as an Artillery's RBA, leave them be. Brutes will be the main ones you will need to look out for.

3. MULTIPLE ATTACKS: If they do not have one already, give the monsters a "double attack", a single Standard Action that allows them to make two RBAs and/or MBAs.

4. RECHARGING: Lower any recharge numbers by 1. Encounter powers become "recharge 6".

5. CONDITIONS: Solos and Elites are always immune to the stunned and dominated conditions. To be honest, I would just remove stuns from your game altogether.

6. LAST DITCH EFFORTS: If they still look too weak or don't feel tough enough, let them Free Action attack when they are bloodied and/or when they die.

If you commit these simple tips to memory, you can pick up any old copy of Dungeon, any dated adventure, any old Game Day relic, or any early splat book and instantly breathe life into it. Its actually fun to pick one up, dust it off, and practice in your mind. Its very empowering because you can do it in-game, just eyeballing it. It becomes very natural and automatic if you try it a few times, to where you can look at any stat block and immediately adjust it without much thought.

Anyways, as I said above, I like advice that is practical, easy to use, and very specific. Try this in your 4e games and I think you will find that your old books are still awesome, and you didn't even have to write in the margins.

Trimming the Fat, Part 5: The Stunned Condition

Hi everybody. If you didn't know, my "Trimming the Fat" series is all about stuff that I omit from 4e in my personal games. I've mentioned sunrods, skill challenges, backgrounds, and revenants in the past. Today I found myself motivated to write about the ultimate suckage condition: stunned.

I haven't run a lot of 4e lately to be honest, I have been going back to the well of 1e and 2e AD&D. That said, I have still been filling holes in my 4e collection via Amazon and Ebay. Books that I completely ignored before, I find myself wanting now for completion's sake. The chromatic and metallic dragon books are among these.

Its another conversation entirely as to why I shunned these books before, but a lot of it is because they are filled with weak solo monsters that every DM worth their salt already houseruled prior to their improvement in post-MM3 publications. Still, I think they have worth. Some of the delves, items, rituals, and the like are interesting, and much of Richard Baker and Bob Schwalb's lore succeeds. But I digress.

What really triggered today's entry was the common dragon power "Frightful Presence". In most cases this is basically a stun. The flavor isn't bad: the dragon scares you so bad a little trickle of urine empties in your boot. In practice though, its horrible for gameplay. How I wish I had seen that sooner.

When you start off with a new game or version of a game, its natural to trust the designers, at least at first. That is, I typically make an effort to at least play a game by the rules before deciding something sucks, or taking it into my own direction. I realize I was wrong about that now. I should have known that the stunned condition sucked at first glance, but at least now I am learning.

The stunned condition has long been the bane of 4e DMs. Solos being stunned is the subject of many a blog post from many a blogger. Even elites being stunned has always been a bridge too far in my book. That's why on my blog and zine you see rules about elites and solos always being immune to the effect. So what if the fluff can be sloppy? It simply breaks the game for the most powerful creatures to have to sit out the fight.

And here is where I must apologize. I recalled an epic tier game I once ran, still learning the system, in which I allowed a demon to stun one of the party. The poor bastard had to wait like 20 minutes to even do anything. I could feel his seething as he took his next turn. It was my bad.

Here's the deal. In classic editions, spells like Hold Person, Sleep, and the like are familiar and expected. Magic behaves differently. In 4e, magic is usually balanced against the other classes. Some love this, some hate this. I personally look at 4e as one of many different flavors of D&D ice cream. I don't make fun of others and berate them for liking rum raisin. But I digress again.

Being stunned in 4e sucks for everyone. Its also a condition that inherently slows down combat, adding to another of 4e's woes. "Why then", I asked myself, "did I ever allow stuns in the first place?"

That's the solution. Stuns don't exist. Not any more. Not for PCs, not for monsters.

You could just announce well before your game or campaign starts they don't exist, or if you want to delve deeper, come up with an alternate condition to substitute. After all, some paragon paths or epic destinies could incorporate the stunned condition as a partial element, or a player could love most elements of a single power only to have it completely nerfed by taking the condition out. I personally think dazed + immobilized is a solid substitute, but I am certainly open to ideas. One thing I am sure of, the standard 4e stun will never appear in my 4e games again. It just sucks too bad.

Heartfelt apologies to all I have stunned out there.

Tucker's Giant Rats

So the other day I read someone, somewhere, categorizing the giant rat as a “throw-away” monster. In fact, they went so far as to imply that an adventure that uses giant rats is boring and/or uncreative. I personally love giant rats, but like many monsters, its really the way that you use them that is important.

This sort of thing was covered before in the famous Dragon mag essay “Tucker’s Kobolds”. Kobolds are weak on paper. A few kobolds in an empty room with a couple of slings is not a memorable or challenging encounter. However, put a few dozen crafty, cunning kobolds together with some traps and you can cause some real havoc. Creative use of monsters is the thing.

I like the game world to be reactive. I like player actions to have consequences. Try this the next time you have a group of players exploring a dungeon, leaving a trail of gore and viscera in their wake, with no attempt to conceal or hide the carnage. After a few hours, I figure the stench is going to start to attract rats. Lots of them. If the party spends another few hours venturing further into the dungeon, or better yet, attempts to spend the night in some barricaded room, I make it a point to infest the bloodiest encounter sites with hungry rats. Tons of them. Dozens and dozens of them. Dozens and dozens of diseased rats.

Later, if the party has to flee the dungeon, or if they are haughtily and confidently heading out for the night, assuming they won’t encounter anything on the way back, they come upon the rats. Only now, the rats aren’t weak 1 HD throw-away monsters. Now the rats are in a feeding frenzy, swarming, blocking the passage. Rife with plague. Horrifying and feral. Exploding from a dead Orc’s chest cavity. Pouring from the mouth of a dead Hobgoblin. They double back, but another dozen is rambling down the hallway. They try the side door, and more spill out. Hungry. Mangy. Tucker’s Giant Rats.

On a sad note, Aaron Allston has passed away. I will always be amazed at the sheer output this guy had. Some people are seemingly born to write. Allston never seemed to run out of creative ideas. RIP.

Lamentations of the 4e Flame Princess

Howdy all. I want to talk today about blending two seemingly incongruous RPG products, namely 4e D&D and the OSR game Lamentation of the Flame Princess (LotFP).

So I have spoken at length about my general disdain for most published 4e adventures. They tend to be grindy railroads with back-to-back-to-back encounters, with exploration and roleplay taking a backseat to combat. I am not saying everyone plays it that way; I certainly don't. Its just that like it or not, the first few gaming experiences you have with a system can color your expectations, and for many, the first taste of 4e was a grind, a la Keep on the Shadowfell or the hideous, wretched Dungeon Delve.

"But Froth," someone said to me recently. "4e's tactical combat is its greatest strength!" Look, I love lemon meringue pie, but I don't want to eat three lemon meringue pies in one sitting. That makes it suck. That makes me puke. Such is the way of 4e combat. The pace of an adventure is important. I've mentioned before that 4e has a good skill system that is well-suited to exploration. I've talked about thoughts on stocking dungeons in 4e, looking at entire megadungeon levels as single encounters, adding morale into 4e, and a host of other ways to tweak the pace of 4e adventures to make them more fun to run and play.

Ok, so let's switch gears for a minute. Many of you out there, certainly those OSR folks that sometimes check out my blog, have heard of Lamentations of the Flame Princess. While it is but one of many old school systems out there, what sets it apart and gives it its own niche, in my humble opinion, are its idiosyncratic adventures and stunningly beautiful artwork.

Now, while there is considerable variation among LotFP adventures, don't get me wrong, enough of them behave in sort of the same way that I feel it is possible to generalize a bit about some of them. THERE ARE SPOILERS BELOW. If you think there is a chance you will play any of these, trust me, you don't want to ruin them by reading any info about them.


Some, not all, of the LotFP adventures primarily focus on exploration. The set-up. In many adventures you don't find wandering monster tables. There isn't a monster in every room with a little coinage. Rather, if you do encounter/unwittingly release/stumble upon a creature, its usually a very, very bad thing. For example, The Tower of the Stargazer is a fun adventure where you basically are exploring this seemingly abandoned wizard's tower. There are all sorts of tricks and traps. In one room, you encounter the wizard himself, bound in a magic circle. He will beg and promise the world for you to let him loose, and if you do, well let's just say you will wish you hadn't. In Tales of the Scarecrow, an out-of-the-way farmhouse is actually little more than the bait of a massive underground monster. In Death Frost Doom, the PCs can unwittingly start a zombie apocalypse if they get too greedy. These are the kind of creative set-ups that lead to encounters in LotFP adventures; contrast that with the typical 4e dungeon, and you will start to see where I am going with this.

As 4e does massive, set-piece encounters better than just about any system out there, you might find that it is even more well-suited to run these adventures than classic editions. If that sounds like blasphemy, so be it. Take the adventure The God That Crawls. The "god" is really an accursed mutated former priest; he is now something like an amorphous blob. An encounter with this creature is one thing in theatre of the mind style, but it takes on a whole new cinematic and dare-I-say tactical feel when it takes place on a battlemap with minis and terrain. Its not better; its just different. And you might find you like it.

Somehow, the pace of these adventures works with 4e. Amazingly, you can run many of the LotFP adventures for 4e in one session, whereas with many other OSR-type adventures, you would be falling asleep by the third room/encounter.

LotFP adventures are notoriously deadly. To his credit, the author of many of these adventures, James Raggi IV, has written many them for low levels, so there isn't as much weeping and gnashing of the teeth as there might be if your 15th level Druid bit it. 4e PCs are also much more resilient than their classic edition counterparts, so they might even have a fighting chance to escape what first appears to be certain death. That said, death is part of the game, and the adventures are easy to convert to any level. In fact, that is another major plus in using these adventures with 4e: conversion is a breeze. All I have had to do was build 4e monsters based on one or two creatures. Everything else I just wing with a sheet of DCs.

So which adventures convert best to 4e?

-Death Frost Doom
-Tales of the Scarecrow
-Tower of the Stargazer
-The Monolith From Beyond Space and Time
-The Three Brides (Three great mini-adventures; underrated.) 
-Better Than Any Man (This is a large adventure, almost a mini-campaign.)
-The Grinding Gear
 

Where can I buy them? 

I recommend checking out their page at RPGNOW. You will have to create an account and verify your age in order for all of the products to be viewable, as many of the adventures have mature content. Note that the core rules are free, and the adventure Better Than Any Man is pay what you want. That said, all of the prices are reasonable, and there are frequent sales on that site if you watch for them.

So that's all I have for you today! After running some of these adventures myself for 4e parties, I can say that based on my experience, it makes for a fun time. 4e's strengths get highlighted, while its weaknesses are almost completely avoided based on the creative pace and style of the adventures.

The Art of the 4e Sandbox

Hello all. I thought I would post some thoughts and ideas about running sandbox campaigns with 4e D&D. This is not a comprehensive guide by any stretch, although I do hope it gets some of your wheels turning.

Classic editions of the game have an embarrassment of riches to aid sandbox play. Armed with my Greyhawk box, the 1e DMG, and some old Judges Guild stuff, I am basically impervious to my players' wildest choices, able to react and flow with virtually anything that can be imagined. It is possible to reach this state of samadhi with 4e, but there are a few tips that might help you get there a little more quickly.

First off, if you don't want to run a sandbox style game, I am not judging you. If you have the next 10 levels planned out, more power to you. It isn't for everyone. I personally love it, as it helps me hone my improvisational skills, gives players the feeling that they are in control, and makes for completely unexpected awesomeness. But is it a contradiction in some ways? Can 4e, with its carefully planned and balanced set-piece encounters thrive in an inherently unpredictable environment? Yes, yes it can.

So the first thing to ponder is the environment, the world, the sandbox. Despite some poor adventures, 4e did manage to release some great products over its run, and the best of these are actually suited to sandbox play. Vor Rukoth, Hammerfast, Gloomwrought...these are all very strong products that are not adventures; instead they lay out large areas, delineating the factions that inhabit them, providing seeds for DMs to make their own adventures. They also include unique monster stats and some flavorful items. So how do you take these products and make a sandbox out of them? There are three basic steps that I would suggest. Think up some different mini-adventures or encounters that can take place at various locations. Don't overdo it, as many may never be used. Utilize the provided hooks and histories (or make up your own) to make the area live and breathe. Finally, design some random encounter tables that fit the area.

In my Gloomwrought game, I used the text to influence my encounter tables. You have a religious district, so I had some encounter tables that reflected this; different groups of monks and clerics might be encountered. In the seedy district, they might encounter more Humanoids and bandits. Skim the lists of monsters in the back of the various monster books and put together some ideas. It doesn't matter what level the monsters are, what matters is the flavor. Do they back up the "feel" of the area? Your PCs need not FIGHT everything they encounter; in a lot of ways, random tables just help reinforce their surroundings. Experiment with widely varying group sizes of creatures encountered. No party is scared of two or three bandits, 30 however, and you might give them pause. You might find this article helpful in the process of setting up varying totals of wandering monsters in 4e.

I also looked at different areas throughout Gloomwrought and prepared loose little "mini adventures" in different locales. The cemetery is rumored to be haunted. Nobles need bodyguards for sketchy areas. Lizardfolk have infested a sewer. Populate your map with little hooks, and let players be drawn where they may. 

Finally, I slowly disseminated lore. The more the PCs explored, the more they became privy to the various power struggles and histories of the city. While they might have never even acted on any of the information, it served the purpose of bringing the area to life. That feeling that things are happening outside of the PCs; the city is alive.

If you want something less scripted and sculpted, try the Chaos Scar. Get yourself a list of the Chaos Scar adventures from the most recent Dungeon index, make up a few landmarks and random tables, and let the players go where they may. For the especially adventurous, simply offer your players a hex map of the Nentir Vale and just let them roam. Use published modules and products like Threats to the Nentir Vale to populate random tables and come up with adventure hooks. Again, the Dungeon index is your friend. Of course, you can always make up your own world; many DMs do. My overall advice for approaching it would still be the same.

Fly in the face of 4e conventions. Find ways to emphasize the passage of time. Don't hand-wave travel. In sandbox play, the travel often IS the adventure. Challenge yourself with random weather tables, scarce food or water, odd geological formulations, and bizarre encounters. If you need to make up a monster on the fly, consider these tips for quick 4e monster creation. 

To experienced DMs, a lot of this probably sounds old hat, while to others, you may have never thought of running a 4e game this way. I personally think running 4e in a sandbox style can be one of the most rewarding experiences you can have with the game system; unfortunately, you just don't have as much of the work done for you like you did in previous editions. By utilizing suitable 4e products and settings, populating some areas with adventure hooks and mini-scenarios, and designing flavorful random encounter tables, you can quickly set the stage for hours and hours of sandbox play.

I know a lot of you 4ers out there have done some of this before, so leave a post and let me know how sandbox play has worked for your 4e game!

Let's Clear Up A Few 4e Myths, Part 2

Howdy. So a while back I had a fairly popular post (here) regarding various myths about 4e. Now don't get me wrong, as readers of my blog know, I am fine with criticism of 4e and/or any other game system. Criticism helps improve things. What I am not a fan of is hyperbolic nonsense. Today I want to tackle a couple more myths that have been aggravating me.

"Every class is the same, AEDU, etc etc etc, blah blah blah"

To anyone that has spent a lot of time playing 4e, I don't really need to explain why this is not the case. Play a Shaman, play a Fighter, play a Psion...you don't walk away feeling like the same thing just occurred. Why then, is this such an oft-repeated complaint? The so-called "AEDU" structure. Now forget for a moment that Essentials exists, thereby obliterating the argument in and of itself. You will only hear back that, "Well Essentials didn't exist at the beginning." Fair enough. So what is it that propels this argument forward? Why is it so common?

Let's consider for a second classic editions. If you take a look at 1e AD&D, you find that different classes obtain different class features at different levels. A Druid can identify plant types at the 3rd level. At 8th level, Rangers gain some limited Druidic spell ability. At 4th level, the Paladin can call his war horse. These abilities do not resemble one another, and the level at which they occur could be argued as largely arbitrary. I mean, I trust Gygax completely, but if Druids took until the 4th level to identify plants, the book doesn't explode.

Now consider the 4e structure. All it is doing is proving choice points at the same levels. The choices are not the same. Are the utility powers of a 4th level Cleric the same as those of a 4th level Swordmage? Not hardly. The only thing that they have in common...the only thing that is "samey"...is that they choose an ability at the same level. Likewise, if a Fighter gains a maneuver at level 7 that allows her to swing his sword in a circle, attacking everything adjacent to her, is this the same thing as a Witch choosing a spell? No. Not at all. The only thing in common is that they are both choosing abilities at the same levels.

I imagine that Heinsoo and company thought that this would be a popular "improvement" on the game. It does make it easier to anticipate and remember when new class features and abilities become available. When I play Pathfinder, if I try a new class I am continually looking back to the class description to figure out what I get and when. I admit I am somewhat of a newb, but there sometimes seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. Yet it is the very attempt to organize this sort of thing that gets so much derision! I will never claim to understand it, but the simple fact is that 4e classes do not play the same. They tried to experiment with a more...predictable, I guess is the word...progression of "choice points", and though the choices in no way resemble each other, they got slammed in the process. Oh well.

This leads me to the mother of all 4e myths, the biggest lie of all:

"You can't play 4e without a grid."

You know, sometimes you hear something said so many times, the mind almost wants to start believing it. That might be a quote or something from the novel 1984, I can't recall. What I do know is that the biggest myth about 4e, in my humble opinion, is that it is unplayable without a grid.

I am tempted to say that most folks that espouse this argument have never tried to play it without a grid. The reason this is tempting is because it is probably true. However, having spent some time on the *shudder* WOTC forums, and having seen what constitutes an "argument" on some gaming sites, I realize that I will almost immediately be hit with a, "Oh yeah? My table tried it! And it was a complete disaster!" Fine.

There is no doubt that 4e implicitly and explicitly encourages you to use a battlemap and minis. No argument there. But that isn't to say that you cannot play with only pen, paper, and dice. After all, in the 1st edition DMG, Gygax encourages the use of minis, and from what I understand, he hardly ever used them (although apparently Arneson almost always did). My point here is simply that encouraging is not the same thing as requiring.

Now forget about 4e for a minute. Try if you can to picture yourself back in the old days, a complete virgin to D&D. Do you remember what it was like looking at spell explanations? The varying ranges (in inches), the varying sizes of the areas of effect? How about trying to mentally picture the various types of dragon breaths?

I posit to you the following: there is no power in 4e that is any more or less complicated to adjudicate in gridless play than there is in any other edition of D&D. If you can handle a Stinking Cloud in your mind's eye, you can handle a close blast 3. Sorry; its just a fact.

So where on earth does this argument come from, besides the fact that grid rules are in the book? Well, I can only speculate, but I think part of it might be that instead of only the spellcasters having explicit abilities that deal with areas of effect, pushing, sliding, etc, it is also the martial types. Part of it is the published adventures, especially the early ones. There is also for some reason a strong desire in some players for perfect adjudication of distances...but any DM that has ever run classic editions in a mapless style knows that it is ok to handwave some things, or to otherwise approximate. "Are you 25 or 30 feet from the Goblin? Eh, you are close enough to move up to it and attack." Did the world end? No, no it didn't.

Now, I am not going to sit here and tell you that mapless play is ideal for a lot of encounters. Hell, there are myriad classic edition encounters that I would never DREAM of attempting without some sort of visual aid (see the entry to the Temple of Tharizdun). What I am saying is that the alleged inability of 4e to be played without a map has been so grossly exaggerated that many DMs accept it as reality without having ever even tried to run an encounter without a grid.

Its really the subject of another blog post to provide tips and tricks, benefits and drawbacks, etc of gridless play, but I will say this: try a random encounter. Nothing special...say the party is on the way from point A to point B, there is a clearing in the woods and a few Orcs attack. They flee after the first or second death. I think you will see that this huge worry about distances and everything is really not so bad in play. It changes from a player counting the squares to an enemy to a DM saying, "You are about 20 feet away". It changes from a player counting how many Orcs can get caught in a blast to the DM saying, "Eh, you can get three of them."

None of this is going to shock or surprise many experienced DMs, as a lot of you out there already switch between maps and mapless play when it fits your game anyways. Hell, I am almost ashamed to have to explain this. For some reason, this myth was allowed to gain traction; all I can do is try my best to discount it. If you have DMed any classic editions without maps and minis, you have doubtless already experienced the worst that 4e can throw at you.

So that is what I have for you today. Sometime down the line I might go into more detail about how mixing gridless 4e encounters into your campaign can be a benefit. Just remember that the best way to learn anything, as a DM, is to run games. Try things. Experiment. Don't take someone else's word for it. Don't assume things. Let your own experience be your guide.

An Adverse Reaction to Immediate Actions

Yeah...sorry about that. There's a clever title there somewhere but I missed it badly.

Well, first of all, happy new year to you. My resolution is to be more prolific this year, so it is fitting that I am putting up a post today.

Complaints about immediate actions affecting combat speed are not new to 4e gamers. I realize that some people will have different experiences than my own. All I can tell you is I have run games for hundreds of folks and I have played under dozens of DMs of all levels of experience with 4e, and OVERALL, immediate actions have posed a problem.

Now let me say that I see the value in having some actions act as interrupts and reactions. After all, like many seemingly "modern" 4e conventions, these mechanics actually have their origins in the classic editions. Familiar spells such as Feather Fall operate something like immediate actions. So they have precedence. They can also add a cool cinematic element to some situations. That said, you only really have to sit through one 4e combat encounter that is filled with endless immediate actions to recognize they are a problem.

Complicating matters, many 4e classes partially rely on immediate actions for their very identities in combat. In particular, Defenders rely on mark punishments to enforce their role; these are often immediate actions. And lets not lose sight of the fact that these abilities are FUN for the player playing the Defender. Some of my favorite moments in 4e combat involve my Fighter/Monk dancing through combat, marking everything she attacks, hit or miss, then daring them to ignore her mark. I have to believe that there can be a place for these kind of mechanics without completely slowing everything to a snail's pace.

So it isn't as easy as just flat-out banning immediate actions. They are cool, and they are woven into the game. I propose the following houserules to limit them. Like any houserule, I would talk to your players about it prior to PC creation.

1. THE BASIC RULE: Allow immediate actions from utility powers, class features, and/or theme powers only. This allows for Defenders to still defend, for iconic and otherwise flavorful powers to still act as immediate actions, and prevents you from having to get too fiddly with banning specific themes. This is a simple way to get rid of the endless crap like Disruptive Strike and other "must-have" powers that make for slow, herky-jerky combat.

2. THE ALTERNATE RULE: As above, but players can also choose immediate action dailies. This allows a few more into the game, only they are far less annoying to deal with or sit through as they only happen once a day.

I think these are fair. I mean, I myself have built catch-22 Binder hybrids that are basically bred from annoying immediate actions; in other words, I have been guilty of adding to the problem, and can be honest with myself that it isn't good for the game. What happens is you end up with a lot of well-built PCs at the table, and even though its great for PC survival, you have a lot of off-actions going off that basically signify bathroom breaks.

The above options will make a difference in your game, especially at high levels. They also actually enhance the classes that remain able to to use them, as they make it more rare/special for these kind of actions to take place.

Thoughts? Anybody else houseruling immediate actions?

Running 4e with Smaller Parties

Just a short post today about the joys of small party play with 4th edition. When I run classic editions, I prefer a fairly sizable party. Running with 6 to 8 players is my sweet spot. Combat is easy to adjudicate, as I tend to use side-based initiative, with the party declaring actions prior to rolling initiative. This reduces a party's ability to react and adjust to every little thing that happens in combat. Classic editions are also more deadly, so larger parties help with inevitable attrition. With 4e, things are quite different. PCs are more resilient and combat is more complicated. 4e PCs also have a wide variety of handy-dandy skills that add to their resiliency and self-reliance. This all combines to allow for quality 4e games with as few as 3 players.

When I first started running 4e, I had a party of 5. A couple of players dropped out after the first few weeks and from there I ran a 3 player campaign for about a year. It was excellent. Combat was fast and I could really focus on stories specific to the PCs. 

In my estimation, the ideal three player party in 4e is a Leader, Striker, and "something else". The "something else" can be any role; in my game it was a Defender. The key is the first two classes. None are required by any stretch; you could run a three-Witch party and have great success. Still, I think ideally you have the Leader for healing, the Striker to give that extra oomph in combat, and one other role to compliment the two. 

There are other benefits from running with small parties in 4e, besides the obvious one (i.e. much quicker combat). A lot of people have a hard time putting a large group together. It is a lot easier to find 3 players than 5 or 6. 4e is very easy to balance around different numbers of players; you just adjust XP and there you go. Finally, it allows you to focus more on each individual PC's goals, personality, and backstory; you might find that this improves the roleplay at your table.

If I ran another 4e campaign, I would be looking at going with 3 players, 4 players max. The game doesn't suffer from fewer players, it actually improves.

Do you have any experience running 4e games with smaller parties?

Curse of the Crab Spider!

The Crab Spider is a cruel monster. Appearing in Moldvay's Basic D&D rule set, this spider is both stealthy (surprises on a 4 in 6) and poisonous. It has a twist though: the poison does not kill instantly; rather, it is lethal after 1d4 turns. I assume that this delay is to somewhat "soften" the creature and allow for at least the possibility of magic items or spells offsetting the poison. I imagine that many DMs might say something like, "You can feel the poison coursing through your bloodstream, and you know that if you aren't treated soon that you will die." However, as I was pondering this creature, I found myself inspired to look at it another way. The delayed effect of the poison doesn't have to play out in such a straightforward manner. The DM could in fact just continue the game without saying anything, then about 20 or 30 minutes down the line, after the encounter is pretty much forgotten, get a grave look on his face and say something like, "Uh, Doug. You are noticing that your leg is swollen AS ALL HELL where that spider bit you. You are also feeling a little confused...dizzy...you stumble...save vs poison." It is much more terrifying for the PC to be unprepared, thinking that everything is ok, and then have the bite come back to haunt them. That got me thinking...

Delayed effects. That is what I want to talk about today. Delayed effects are a great way to add twists to your game and to horrify your players. There are all kinds of ways you can use them. Here are a few ideas I came up with.

Poison: Well, the aforementioned Crab Spider gives us a good example of delayed poison use. Lets think of another. What if the party are guests at some banquet? Everything goes swimmingly and it is a lovely evening. A few hours later, back at the inn, they all start projectile vomiting, developing visibly dark, swollen lymph nodes. They were poisoned at dinner and didn't realize it. What do they do now?

Diseases: In my experience, both as a player and DM, diseases make for great, memorable roleplay opportunities. Maybe they get into a fight in a tropical clime, and their open wounds allow for some kind of parasitical infection that doesn't manifest itself for a week. Maybe they pick up something passing through a town, developing a fever weeks later. Confuse them as to where they contracted the disease. Diseases also need not be lethal. They could just make for fun scenarios. Maybe they catch a severe cold and every time they interact with NPCs, you cue them to sneeze. With no handkerchief.

Curses: You could have some old woman in a marketplace curse the party, a la Drag Me to Hell. Weeks later, strange things start happening. Only through the help of a sage do they even recall the curse. Savor the look on their face when it dawns on them.

Bodily Transformation: A scratch from an undead creature could set off a metamorphosis, like something from The Fly. Again, let weeks of game time go by, then maybe an affected PC starts losing his or her hair, or has a fingernail come off really easily. Trying to figure out the cause of the symptoms becomes an adventure in itself.

Hauntings: I like this idea a lot. The PCs kill someone or something, perhaps accidentally. Days later they maybe dream about it, then start seeing it while they are awake. Others cannot see it. This would be fun with like spooky, freaky little Goblin children or something.


These are just a few random ideas, but I hope they get your wheels turning. Delayed effects such as these can really add another dimension of horror to a game, serve as adventure seeds, and/or simply encourage some fun, often hilarious roleplay. I am curious to hear if any of you out there have used similar delayed effects in your games. If so, leave a post!

Trimming the Fat Part 4: Killing Off Revenants Once and for All

Just a short post today because not much needs to be said on the topic. My "Trimming the Fat" series basically deals with bits of 4e that I find so offensive and contrary to my tastes that they cannot be house-ruled away. They must be completely excised from the game and buried under rocks. Previously we threw sunrods, skill challenges, and backgrounds on the trash heap (although I did end up using a background variant in my zine). Anyway, today we say goodbye to the Revenant as a playable race.

The reasoning is simple: 4e already requires that DMs inch up the difficulty. The last thing it needs is an unkillable munchkin race. Sure, the flavor is fine, but I have yet to see one played for any other reason than to be a get-out-of-death-free card. At higher levels, with tips and tricks like those found here, they become unkillable. Unkillable builds are not welcome in my D&D, regardless of edition. There is no reason to over-think it; just ban them and be done with it. If someone wants to use some sort of Revenant-ish storyline for their PC, they can work with the DM to do so in a way that isn't disruptive to the game.

In Search of Strongholds, Part 6: Get to the Good Stuff

Welcome to the penultimate installment of my blog series on developing a stronghold system for 4e. It has taken a lot longer to get this all written down than it took to put it together in my head, but that is the way things go sometimes. Check out the previous installments if you need to catch up: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Today's post largely shies away from mechanics and instead focuses on the philosophy and reasoning behind my design decisions.

Here at Frothsof 4e, I try to keep my DM advice practical and specific. I personally do not enjoy reading DM advice posts. You can learn more by DMing one session of a game then you will ever learn by reading someone's blog, or even worse, a DM "self-help book". Specific advice on game elements is fine, but I believe everyone should make their own path as far as pacing, adventure styles, preparation, and all of the the rest goes. When it comes down to it, there is really only ONE bit of advice that I consider crucial enough to stress to a new DM, and that is to get to the "good stuff".

This is a lesson I think many of us have learned. We have a great idea, be it for an adventure, a foe, a location, or whatever, but instead of immediately getting to the good stuff, we take a roundabout way of getting there. We then run the risk of never actually arriving. Gaming groups break down, things happen. If you do not get to the good stuff, you sometimes never get there at all. If you have a great idea, use it as fast as you can. Get to the good stuff.

I have applied this mantra to my stronghold rules. I asked myself, "What is the "good stuff" when it comes to stronghold systems?" This also begs the question, "What is the bad stuff?" Well, everyone is different, but for me the "bad stuff" regarding strongholds and domains would be too much focus on the minutiae. Too much accounting. Too much resource tracking sucks the fun out of it for me, and makes it feel like school work. On the flip side, there is a lot of "good stuff" about stronghold systems that appeals to me greatly. I love the idea of carving your own place in the world, clearing hexes old-school style, designing what your stronghold will look like, roleplaying the construction and hiring of retainers and armies, attracting townsfolk to the area, and of course, eventually making a profit.

The question now becomes, "How do you get to the good stuff with only a modicum of soul-killing accounting?" Well, we start where every stronghold system starts: finding a suitable location to build. This should always be a joint exercise with the DM, and should always fit into your campaign world. My own completed, edited rules ("Baronies and Barbicans") will appear in issue #2 of 4e Forever, and as such, they will reflect the 4e Forever world. So the seemingly simple act of selecting a locale will vary widely depending on the campaign.

The DM should draw a map on hex paper. Use large hexes. It doesn't have to be very detailed, but it can be if you want. As for scale, I suggest using 1 to 3 mile hexes. The DM should note any special geographical features. Select a hex to be the building site. The PC(s) must then clear the area of monsters in a 3 to 6 mile radius around the site. This can take as long as you like and can constitute one or many adventures in and of itself. You can use random tables or design detailed adventures. The party can do all the work themselves or hire soldiers and mercenaries. Whatever the case, building should not start until the area is cleared.

So far this should sound pretty standard. Here is where it gets a little different. Traditionally, here is where you will start having to itemize everything. Every individual salary of everyone hired from potboys to engineers. Every single door, bastion, and tower. Formulae for construction time based on the number of workers. Wall footage. Armies. It starts to get tedious fast and the fun quickly gets sucked out.

That is why I came up with an idea for simplifying the building and staffing process. Now, I have talked before about how I could care less if my numbers are "historically" accurate. Its a fantasy game. I want them to make sense, but I do not care if they accurately portray medieval life or economies. If you disagree with this style, this system will likely drive you bonkers.

Anyway, you will still want to roleplay the hiring, building, and so forth, but I have "bundled" the necessary expenses for building and maintaining the property into two "packages". A DM could extrapolate further based on these packages if he or she wanted to make it more complex. The idea is that you spend a set amount of money. I have used round numbers for ease of use. The numbers are based on the stronghold construction taking a year (in the game world) to complete. All of the materials and labor costs are rolled in together. This includes a Sage whose magic presumably helps with the speed of construction, as well as the cost of fielding a smallish "army", whose size varies based on the amount spent.

I present two options, one priced at 50k and one for 100k. That is the total cost for the first year (i.e. construction, salaries, army, etc), payable all at once or by the game "month". After the first year, there is a set amount you pay in perpetuity for upkeep of the property, patrols of the previously cleared area, and maintaining your armed forces. After the stronghold is built, settlers automatically move into the area and begin paying taxes. After a couple of years you break even, and from there you start to make a modest profit. The hard numbers for this will appear in the next installment of the series.

Here is an idea that I am really proud of. I have always loved looking at the little drawings of castle components in OD&D and the Judges Guild's Ready Ref Sheets. Designing the look of your keep or manor is definitely part of the "good stuff" in my book. What sucks is trying to tally it all up piece by piece. I mean, how many doors do I need? 60? 43? How long does this wall need to be...and if I make it such and such length, what about the moat? Argggh. Fun=gone. Well, my idea is that instead of itemizing and accounting for each little piece of the stronghold, the cost of construction instead provides you a certain area of space. You can then use whatever architecture you want so long as it fits in the area. This area should be depicted on graph paper, and involves a combination of length, width, and height. So you don't have to worry about counting doors or towers or any of that. You are just restricted by the size of the stronghold, not by the "look". Make sense? Like I said this isn't "accurate", but it works. It is a way to embrace the fun parts of traditional stronghold systems, while doing away with the nitpicking.

So to review, the idea is pretty simple: less accounting, more roleplaying and stronghold designing. The system maintains the traditional "feel" of various domain systems, while alleviating a lot of the math and inventory tracking. The costs for building and maintaining the property and employees are all built in. You have a lot of freedom to give your construction the look that you desire without having to be needlessly anal about it. What is also cool is that it also will tie into the Scalemail mass combat system for 4e Forever (see issue #1).

So that is it for now. I will provide some numbers and breakdowns next time and summarize the blog series. You will have to wait until issue #2 for everything to be edited into a final presentation. My wife is going to be drawing the stronghold components, and I will be aiming for it to feel as close to the OD&D and Judges Guild's drawings as possible!

I would love to hear some feedback. Let me know what you think about these ideas!

A Megadungeon? For 4e? (Part 2!)

Wow, time flies. Hard to believe it has been over a year since I did this original post on megadungeons in 4e. Now that my zine 4e Forever has come out with the first level of a megadungeon "serial" adventure, I feel like I learned more about using these behemoth settings with the 4e game, so I thought I would post a part 2.


I noted how 4e combat speed can effect the pace of a megadungeon. You cannot populate every room with a 4e set-piece encounter and ever expect to finish such a thing, let alone enjoy it. But here is the dirty little secret: 4e's skill system works GREAT for exploration. Sure, you sometimes have that annoying player that rolls perception every 5 seconds, or the guy that detects magic on everything including a dead squirrel (adventure idea?), but overall its pretty no-frills and gets out of the way of the actual game. Exploration is one of the great joys of dungeons in general, and megadungeons in particular. A megadungeon gradually reveals itself. Each room is a thread of the tapestry. The story is in the exploration, how different areas of the place relate to each other, and the relationship of the creatures inhabiting the place. Even something completely "funhouse" like Tegel Manor has a sort of hidden rationale that only becomes apparent when you can finally step back from it and look at it all at once. Kind of like those 3D posters where you blur your eyes?


I am convinced that pacing is the key of running a 4e megadungeon. If you check out the first level of the pyramid in "Tales of the Lost City" from my zine, you will notice that out of 49 rooms, there are only 9 or so encounters, some of which might not even happen. I am not saying there is some pat and easy formula, but you want your design to really lean towards exploration. Having run I6 Ravenloft for 4e, Tegel Manor, and playtesting "Lost City", I really feel comfortable in saying that.


In the Temple of Elemental Evil (perhaps not a megadungeon, but a damn big one), there are a lot of good lessons regarding how different factions might work together or against one another. On the first dungeon level, you have a large group of gnolls. All of the gnolls rooms are connected, and if you encounter one group, odds are that the others will be alerted in kind of a domino effect, until all have joined the fight. 4e is GREAT at handling these kind of gradually-building encounters. 4e PCs have a lot of resources, and if you introduce creatures from nearby areas gradually during an encounter, you can really give it a "real" feel, as well as challenge your players. In "Lost City", a lot of the rooms of the pyramid are locked; the broken and open doors are towards the entrances of the pyramid, so rooms there are the most heavily populated. This is deliberate design; different creatures can hear a commotion if it happens.



I am reminded today on Gygax's birthday of what I consider the greatest set-piece encounter in the history of D&D: entering (or attempting to enter) The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun. Gygax gives detailed instructions for adding reinforcements to the initial group of monsters encountered. They cover 25 ROUNDS and must include at least 100 creatures. The feel of a constantly growing combat encounter can give even jaded players a rush of adrenaline. If you are considering a 4e megadungeon, consider laying out some of the encounters in such as a way that they can 'blend'. I hesitate saying this adds 'realism', as realism isn't the point of a fantasy megadungeons; it does add a kind of logic to it though, a natural feel if you will, and the great thing about that is that it fits the 4e system like a glove.

By primarily emphasizing exploration, and by carefully considering encounter placement, you can create 4e megadungeons that work to the game system's strengths.

Googling for Floorplans

Hey. I bought this old book about world architecture for inspiration. It has all of these awesome floor plans of actual temples and pyramids and stuff, and is really killer. I also have a lot of travel guides; this morning my daughter had pulled some out and I looked in one of them and was reminded that they usually have a lot of floor plans in them as well.

Anyway, it got me thinking about just searching online for floor plans. Its amazing the kind of stuff you can find. I searched "travel guide floor plans Venice" and found this completely random gem; if you are running Call of Cthulhu this would do nicely as a visual aid of a hotel.

Searching for "old cathedral floor plans" likewise yielded awesome results.

Searching for "Egyptian temple floor plans" yielded too many awesome results to post.



The thing that I really like about this (besides how easy it is) is that I find I get inspired quite easily just by looking at different floor plans. I already feel the inkling of an idea forming for a Cthulhu adventure using that hotel...something really, really 70s. The Egyptian granary above would make a killer jail for D&D. The image could be a player handout, a blueprint; maybe the PCs have to spring a falsely-imprisoned dignitary out of one of the central cells in order to stop an assassination. 

Try it! It is almost like a Rorschach test or something; your mind will make a story out of the floor plan.

***I am still looking for submissions for 4e Forever #2!!! If you want to contribute artwork, cartography, or an article, PLEASE feel free to contact me at frothsof@gmail.com



Dungeons and Cthulhu

Though Dungeons and Dragons will always be my first love, a close second is Chaosium's classic horror RPG, Call of Cthulhu. Although these games are distinct and have many differences, there are still some ideas from CoC that you can port right over to your D&D game. Lets take a look at some ideas.

CoC-ESQUE CLUES IN SANDBOX PLAY

One of my favorite adventures of all time is Masks of Nyarlathotep. I cannot say too much about it because I will be running it soon for my home group. The reason I bring it up is that it is in a "sandbox" style; players can follow clues literally to all corners of the world, and it doesn't matter in which order they pursue them. Some are related, some aren't. Each chapter presents a little table of the clues in that chapter, and where they lead. That is the part I want to focus on.

Some DMs aren't ready to run a true "do what thou wilt" sandbox, or they simply don't want to do that in the first place. A DM sometimes makes a "pseudo-sandbox", where they have prepared several scenarios or adventures, and the players basically choose which one they pursue. It feels like a sandbox to the players, but it is actually under DM control. Other times, the DM has a specific adventure or scenario he/she wants the players to play, and all roads point there.

Whichever your style, consider using a "clue drop" to give your players options. In Masks of Nyarlathotep, investigators might discover 4 or 5 seemingly unrelated clues at once. They then have the freedom which to follow now and which to follow later. There are innumerable ways to do this. Maybe they find several disparate leads in the pockets of an assassinated lord. Maybe they return to collect a fee for a deed, and the benefactor's house is burned to the ground, with just a few smoldering clues. Clues could lead them to the ends of your "earth", to remote libraries, shady traders in dangerous port cities, or to dangerous ritual magic. Think of a few locales and scenarios that you think will be fun for both you and your players, and then drop a few clues leading there. Those apparently unrelated clues could eventually fit together into a complex plot line.


INSANITY

Ah, insanity. Perhaps the most ground-breaking mechanic of CoC. For the uninitiated, Cthulhu investigators slowly (and sometimes rapidly) go insane. It is really just a matter of time, as the more crazy stuff they discover, the more sanity they lose. Fun stuff. The Ravenloft campaign setting of 2e "stole" this a little bit, and added its own twist to it. I am suggesting using a totally simplified version.

Basically, if a PC encounters something truly weird, alien, and horrifying, you might check their sanity. In D&D terms, seeing creatures from the Far Realm or the Abyss might qualify for sanity checks. Have a PC roll a saving throw. On a failure, the PC might suffer some slight effect...at first. They might automatically miss their next attack roll, be stunned temporarily or immobilized, be forced to run a few feet in terror, etc. PCs will only have to make a check once per creature or group of creatures. If they fail numerous sanity rolls over a short period of time (multiple encounters), they might have a more permanent insanity or disorder. You can get funny or stark with this depending in the tone of your campaign. They could maybe develop something as silly as a fear of dwarves, or something as depraved as fecalphilia.

ATTRACTING THE ATTENTION OF LAW ENFORCEMENT

In CoC, the investigators might be armed to the teeth, but treating 1920's New England like the wild west is going to quickly draw the attention of local police. Consider making certain towns and cities in your milieu to be very anti-weapon/violence. Maybe PCs cannot even wear armor. This immediately adds an interesting pressure to the PCs; maybe they have no problem tracking down a villain, but with the risk of attracting 100 soldiers or constables, they have to get creative with how to take the villain down. Not every town appreciates having the hell blown out of it by adventurers.

DARK RITUALS

In CoC, using spells and magic gradually drains an investigator's sanity. It also costs "magic points", which are derived from an investigator's "power" or force of will. To keep this simple in D&D without requiring a lot of mechanics, consider dropping a few powerful ritual scrolls in a treasure parcel. While the power might be tantalizing, what the players do not realize is that the power comes with a price. Casting the spell might prompt a sanity save, and failure could cause temporary insanity, possession or whatever else you can think of.

UNKILLABLE FOES

One of the first things you learn playing CoC is that you stand no chance in hell of taking on a Great Old One with your little pea-shooters. It is best to run as fast as you can, but if you have already seen the entity, it may already be too late. I have talked before about players' sense of invulnerability, primarily in later editions of D&D. Fleeing an encounter is a completely foreign concept for many D&D adventuring groups. On rare occasions, consider presenting the PCs with a truly unkillable foe. This helps them keep perspective about their place in your multiverse.








OTHER IDEAS

Other ideas you can port into your D&D game from CoC include conspiratorial adventures, encouraging research (libraries, government records), and perhaps even designing your own Cthulhu-related themes (Professor, Antiquarian, Private Investigator).

CONCLUSION AND UPDATES

I hope you got a few ideas from this article. Those of you still waiting on the conclusion of my stronghold rules, I have made progress but I am still not done perfecting the costs and construction formulas. I am, sad to say, not the fastest writer in the world. It will be done eventually. For those that have followed me in anticipation of my 4e fanzine, I swear I am getting close. I am waiting on some material from others, maps, illustrations and the like, and as they are being provided free, as favors, I am just letting everyone take their time. It has blossomed to over 150 pages, and it will be worth the wait in my estimation.

At any rate, I hope everyone has a good weekend. If you have any ideas on how to bring some CoC goodness into D&D, please leave a post!

Let's Clear Up A Few 4e Myths

Howdy. I had a few disparate blog ideas running thru the head, and I realized they all could be used to dispel a few 4e myths, so I have combined them together. First off, don't get me wrong, 4e isn't perfect and I don't claim it to be. Readers of this blog know that I constantly tinker with 4e to make it something I like more. That's sort of the essence of D&D after all: making the game your own. But I am undoubtedly a huge fan of 4e. Anyway, here are some common 4e myths and my response:





"It is difficult to convert old modules to 4e"

I don't now who started this one, but it simply isn't true. I've mentioned before that I drop Skill Challenges from my games. One of the reasons for this is that, on its own, the 4e skill system is very smooth, intuitive, and covers pretty much anything that comes up (and if something else comes up, you can roll with Ability Checks). Anyway, in my experience the 4e skill system works like a charm in updated adventures. I updated Ravenloft (I6) for 4e. There are all kinds of roleplay moments, exploration, etc where skills came up. I just rolled with it if the players wanted to use one, or called for a check if it was really needed. So there is really no conversion necessary for an old modules' out-of-combat material. It can be handled on the fly quite easily.

The monster conversion is where the real challenges would appear to begin. Now, I am not going to say converting monsters from 1e to 4e is as easy as 1e to B/X or 2e, because it isn't. But 4e does have a strength that those games lack: 4e monsters have specific formulas to work from. This can help DMs determine difficulty fairly accurately, but more importantly, it is very easy to make 4e monsters.

Confronted with the need to convert a monster in an old module, the first step I would encourage is to see if there is a 4e version within your party's level range. If so, check the source and see if it is post MM3. If it isn't, try these tips to upgrade old crappy monsters on the fly. If the monster isn't in your party's range, it is fairly straightforward to adjust. The design remains the same, you just plug in different numbers. Make sure you are using the DMG errata though.

If you can't find the monster in a 4e source, or if you don't like what 4e did the monster, build your own. This doesn't have to be laborious. Use this guide to make quick 4e monsters. Try to distill the essence of the original monster and keep it simple.



The last step is to make sure the adventure doesn't run like a sloggy mess. There are several ways to do this. You could drop the wandering monsters from an adventure and just run the prepared encounters, or you could drop a lot of planned encounters and instead just use the wandering monster tables. Or you could drop a little of both. This isn't just in response to 4e combat length (more on that below); the fact is, some old modules feel like a grind to begin with. You should also use Morale and Reaction Tables. If you are using an old module that has Morale scores, just port them over. Otherwise you can check my 4e Morale rules. Ok, so that leads us to the next myth.

"Combat was fast in old editions, never approaching 4e length"

This is simply not true. It is true that classic edition combat COULD be quicker, but it wasn't always. I know this because I DM and play old editions. At even moderate levels, old edition spellcasters could have a ton of choices, and adjudicating their effects was often not a cut and dried proposition. A typical PC's percentage chance to hit was often lower, so there are more misses. There were also huge throngs of monsters in old adventures, like all the time. I am reminded of one of my faves, Descent Into the Depth of the Earth, which was a combo module of D1-D2. There are like 20 Drow here, 40 Kuo-Toa there, 30 Troglodytes here. Heck, even in the Village of Hommlet, you will have 16 or more enemy combatants!

Now I KNOW combat can drag in 4e. I have tried to provide some tips and ideas to help with that. Simplifying monsters, using groups of the same monsters, using Morale, lowering hit points-all of this helps. But it is simply disingenuous to act like old combat couldn't take a while, especially when casters had some actual spells to cast. This has also been true of my experience with 5e so far. We had a two hour combat last week and we just hit level 2. Combat often takes an hour or more at level 1. I am not saying it isn't fun, or that this is too long, I am just saying that combat length can drag in multiple editions; it isn't only a 4e phenomenon.

"It is harder to houserule 4e than other editions"

I am tempted just to say "read my blog" as a response to this one, because there are dozens of houserule examples on here, but just to expound on it a bit, 4e is no different from any other edition of D&D. You can houserule it and make it your own with ease. The difference between 4e and classic editions is that the mechanics in 4e are "on display". The math is predictable and easy to grasp. This is already sort of covered above with monsters. This makes houseruling and homebrewing very easy. Since you have clear expectations for damage, defenses, DCs, etc at all levels, it becomes very easy to slide the scale towards "easy" or "hard". See Fourthcore. I have tweaked monster design, traps, disease, combat, and on and on, and I have only scratched the surface of the possibilities. 4e does not deviate from D&D's proud history of homebrewing and houseruling, it embraces it as much as any other edition.

That's all I have for you today. As always, I welcome comments! Take it easy!

Wednesday Grab Bag: Monster Tips and Random Thoughts

Howdy all. I have been busy busy busy lately, but thought I would post a few of my recent ponderings. Rather than stretch these out into separate blog posts, I figured I would just mix it all together in a bucket.

Simpler Monsters = More Flavorful Monsters

I have posted a bunch of monster tips over time, but thought I would emphasize something that I have mentioned before but never really focused like a laser on. In 4e, it is very easy to overdo monsters. I think part of this is bc it is so easy to design 4e monsters. I remember the first game of 4e I ran. I was starting a new campaign, and I came up with this location-based adventure set at these mines. Anyway, the first bad guy that the players ran into was "Scalpel Jim", along with his entourage. Jim used-you guessed it-a scalpel as his weapon. I had built him out with four or five different scalpel powers, some encounters, some rechargeable, I spent some time on it, and ended up with what I thought would be a very memorable villain. Anyhoo, prior to the encounter, Scalpel Jim made a two-fingered gesture at the party's female Monk. The Monk promptly won initiative and walked over and critted Jim with "Open the Gates of Battle", killing him before he ever even acted.

I learned a valuable lesson that day. Two actually. Don't cross bad ass Monk chicks, and do not over-design 4e monsters. Ask yourself what the essence of a monster is, and design accordingly. The more powers and doo-hickeys you add to a monster, the more diluted the flavor. You want monsters to be memorable. You want their flavor to come through in obvious, unmistakable fashion when PCs encounter them. Ask yourself what the monster does, then have it do that and nothing else. You might not have time to do much, so make it count.

Learning from Lareth the Beautiful

As you might be aware, I am running the Temple of Elemental Evil using the 81' B/X rules. It is going swimmingly. One thing that I must admit I like quite a bit about old editions that is missing from the 4e game is that the PCs encounter spellcasters that use the same spell lists and character creation rules as PCs. Now don't get me wrong; in most cases I much prefer to just build every NPC off of a monster template. 4e character creation is just a little too complicated for building NPCs from actual character classes, especially since they are usually going to get killed pretty quickly. You will spend more time building it than it will ever see on the battlemat. But what if you want that classic edition feel, where evil spellcasters, such as the ToEE's Lareth the Beautiful, have a juicy list of spells? I also love having classic edition spellcaster adversaries cast some spells in advance, like Guards and Wards, or Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound, etc. This way the "table is set" prior to an encounter. How can we get this feel in 4e without wasting a ton of time working through a grueling character creation process?

Turns out it is pretty simple. Give the bad guys rituals! And let them cast rituals ahead of time. As a player, I have hardly ever seen this done in 4e. You might have to stop a bad guy from completing a ritual, but it is rare indeed to see a list of rituals on a monster stat block. So, the next time you have your 4e PCs encounter a "spellcaster" (Cleric, Mage, or otherwise), give the caster a list of rituals. See if it would be advantageous for them to have cast one or more of the rituals already. This will add a nice layer of unpredictability to the proceedings. It can also serve to make an encounter much more difficult, emphasize flavor, or simply just allow you to use a ritual in your game for once. A party can trigger an alarm from a warding ritual, encounter odd summoned creatures, be teleported away, heck who knows. You can also make up new rituals, or use an old spell as the basis for a new ritual. Like Lareth the Beautiful's "Continual Darkness" spell. Anyways, I hope that this doesn't read too "rambly" and makes sense. Use the 4e Ritual Index from the mags, and see if you can't get something resembling that old-school caster flavor going for some bad guys in your game.

4e is Ideal for One-Page Dungeons

I spoke before about making tweaks to 4e to help it work better with megadungeons. Yet, no matter what you do, 4e will still never be the best system for megadungeons (in my opinion). However, the more I think about it, 4e is perfect for one-page adventures.

Not familiar with the one-page dungeon phenomenon? Man, you are going to love me then. They have a yearly contest where people submit their one-page creations. The winners over the years can all be downloaded for free from this website. There is some really awesome stuff to be discovered there. At another site, someone has put up some templates that can be used for one-page dungeon creation. Just look at the column on the right for the free downloads.

Anyway, I find that you only need one or two encounters for a good one-night 4e adventure. Thus, you do not need a lot of space. I never much cared for long, drawn-out, over-described encounter scenarios for 4e. I don't need everything spelled out. With a one-page template, you can describe a locale, give it some flavor, then go. Instead of trying to fit a stat block on there, just reference the book a creature is found in, or keep stats on a separate page. I think you will agree that 4e is really suited to this format. It is no wonder that the Dungeon Delve book was (and still is) so popular. Although the outdated monsters need to be boosted, and I would probably drop the first or second encounter from many of the book's mini-adventures, it does show you that just a little 4e adventure design goes a long way (partly because 4e combat lasts a little longer than other editions). Anyway, I found it inspiring, and I will be calling for some one-page 4e dungeons/adventures once I start taking submissions for 4e Forever.


So that is it. Just some ideas that have been bouncing around. Sorry for the rambly feel! As always, I would love to hear comments/thoughts. See you next time!

Non-Mechanical Conditions

I was motivated to write this post whilst reminiscing about my campaign that recently ended. I was recalling how much I enjoyed running Tegel Manor updated for 4e. I have posted before about the good times to be had with funhouse-style alternate rewards, but I felt the need to emphasize how great non-mechanical conditions can be.

 What do I mean by "non-mechanical"? Well, instead of players having to track any specifics, or worry about mechanical details, the player is affected by a condition that really only demands role play. For example, an enchanted painting made a player in my game feel incredibly brave for like an hour and a half. I swear to you that some of the funniest moments in my entire gaming history came from this.

There are endless possibilities for this sort of thing: a player could become itchy, thirsty, starving, frightened, romantic, violent, paranoid, dim-witted, narcissistic, or simply think they are a chicken. And on and on. Any extreme/exaggerated characteristic will work wonderfully. Don't make assumptions about how your group might react to something like this; a little silliness has an odd way of engaging players!

The End of the Campaign: Lessons Learned and New Beginnings

Well, I just wrapped up my Saturday campaign last week. I am so thankful that I got to play it to the end. I started with a vague storyline in mind, and over a year and a half of weekly play the campaign built to a fantastic finale in Gloomwraught, complete with a large scale battle, gargoyle mounts, grell galore, and a psychotic deva. I learned a lot of lessons, and many of the ideas on my blog were partly developed through running the campaign. As many of you out there have no doubt experienced, finishing up a long term game kind of leaves you a little sad, but also excited about what comes next.


Anyway, here are the main lessons I learned, or re-learned:

-Never railroad if you can help it. I rolled with every spontaneous idea that my players had, and what they wanted to do was inevitably better than what I had planned.

-Provide closure for each character; this felt a lot like the end of Animal House, where it says what each character did in the future. Tie this to their backstories; the players really loved this.

-Pick your battles. Not every encounter needs to be a big set-piece blowout. This is true for all editions.

-Use inherent bonuses if you are running 4e.

-Get to the good stuff. You never know how long a campaign will last, so don't save your "good stuff". Bust it out asap.

I plan on enjoying a few Saturdays off from running games, but I will not be able to withstand the call for very long. I am having a hard time deciding what to run though. I already do the B/X thing on Fridays; one of those games will switch to Call of Cthulhu shortly, when they finish the adventure. I am leaning towards a 1e game, perhaps starting with Gygax's Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, just since I never got to play or run that back in the day, and I think it is arguably the best 1e adventure. But then I feel pulled this way and that; an OD&D game that is just a straight-up random and organic hex crawl, the 1e or 4e Baba Yaga's Dancing Hut adventures, a B1 one-shot since it has come up so many times recently, a Ravenloft campaign (gotta put all those box sets to use someday!), a Hollow World campaign, Night Below, Dragon Mtn, one of the billion homebrew world ideas I have bouncing around, arggghhh! There are truly so many options, all of them good. Still, when you think about all of the work and effort you will be putting into running something, it makes the choice very important.

So how about you? If you were starting a new campaign today, what system would you use? Would you use a published setting? Published adventures?

Trimming the Fat, Part 3: Backgrounds

This sporadically appearing series features bits of 4e that I have scrapped from my games and fanzine. Previously, we covered sunrods and skill challenges. Today, we look at backgrounds.






It isn't the idea of backgrounds that's bad, it's the execution. Some backgrounds are clearly more powerful than others. I feel that all backgrounds should confer basically the same level of mechanical benefit or there will be less incentive, even for casual players, to choose a background based on its flavor. And to be honest, the flavor that's there isn't always so great in the first place. The current list of backgrounds is also so outrageously bloated that it will give you a headache just looking at it.

I propose the following rules for backgrounds: The player comes up with his/her character's backstory. The player can then choose between receiving a +2 bonus to a skill that has something to do with their backstory, or adding a skill to their class list that has something to do with their backstory.

Doesn't this make a lot more sense? This is nice and clean, and encourages players to give a little extra thought to their characters. It also balances out the power level of background benefits.

That's what you will see in the mag! Anybody want to share some houserules on backgrounds? Leave a post!