We Need The XP!

A problem I see in most groups is the missing player. There is almost always a player or two who can’t make the session, in our group we covered this by having another player cover their character for the session and in olden D and Ye D days this worked fine but in 4e this was a hassle. Each class, even the lowly fighter has its own flavor now and special rules that impact its play. Some of my players were really struggling to get their heads around another PC and it was not really fun for them. The second problem is ages old, the player who wasn’t there’s PC was somehow always the one in the most danger. This wasn’t intentional, out come the monsters and then there they are down on the ground taking death saves. I can try to cheat this as DM, but I have enough to juggle as it is. By the end of the last game we turned no show’s PCs into semi-NPCs, they got one at will they could use and in the case of a leader they could still use the class basic heals. This solved the first problem but left us with the second.

read more »

One of the hits on fourth edition D&D is that there are no non-combat skills that allow players to roleplay. There are backgrounds available, but most people choose them for skill bonuses rather than for real background improvement. The shorthand skills method I will be using for my next game is that each player can declare two areas they are skilled in outside of the main skill system. This could be things like cooking, sailing, clock repair, mining, stone work etc. Whenever the PC needs to take a skill check in an area related to one of these skills they count the check as one level of difficulty easier than it would normally be. So if you picked sailing, and needed an athletics roll to climb the rigging and fix a loose rope, normally this would be difficult, but for you it would be moderate. If it was already an easy check you pass it for free. This doesn’t mean that things that are close count, mining isn’t dungeoneering, it is mining items from the ground, climbing a tower isn’t the same as climbing rigging etc., but if you are in something directly related it counts. This is better than the +2 bonus you get from the current backgrounds, but isn’t over powering.

read more »

One problem with skill challenges is that roleplaying can hurt the party. A talkative player with no diplomacy is a real problem in a way that a unskilled player in combat really isn’t. In combat the unskilled player does less damage than other characters which slows the combat down, but that is their only real drawback, in a skill challenge a failed ‘attack’ hurts the party, sometimes very badly. This got me to thinking about a variant, the skill challenge as a social combat. read more »

I have been in some awful skill challenges. They added nothing to the game and actively hurt the story we were playing. Is this because skill challenges suck? No. In every case I have played in a bad skill challenge the DM has actively undermined the challenge. They didn’t get the concept, or were so combat focused that they just didn’t like it. So how can skill challenges be improved so even those DMs like them? I have a couple of ideas, but first lets look at how they go wrong.

read more »

Greek Helmet by Templer1307

I like minions in 4th edition D&D but sometimes they just don’t feel right to me. A good example is when someone hits a minion and rolls a one for damage. The player knows that is a wimpy hit and somehow even a mook should shrug it off. I have used a couple of variations to beef them up a bit without overdoing it. read more »

Greek Helmet by Templer1307

The Dragon has a playtest article up today from Martial Power 2 (Subscription to DDI Required) which attempts yet again to get the fighter a little more oomph. Martial Power did give the fighters more choices last fall, but pure fighters are still very rare in the games I run and I think I understand why. Fighters lack color and interest, despite their being massively improved from the ye olden days D&D I used to play. Paladins have a better mark with Divine Challenge, Barbarians do tons more damage and unlike Wizards who start out strong at first level many fighter builds don’t blossom at all until at least mid-way through heroic levels. The Dragon article attempts to give them some more choices, but it relies on feats, which means that once again it will be mid-Heroic before a fighter can really stand out. How can we give a fighter some flavor without really over powering him? Here are some ideas. read more »