For those of you who want to play an executioner build assassin in the current season of D&D Encounters, but also want a fancy card with a picture and everything, I’ve got you covered! Just download the image and print it, you’re good to go. I plan on printing this out and sticking it in my Red Box with the other Encounters pregens, and I’ll probably play Aria in Encounters at some point.

[Edit: apologies; the original version didn't have any feats! That has been rectified.]

I just can’t help meddling with game mechanics, and Castle Ravenloft is just so modular that it presents a lot of opportunities to meddle. You’ve likely already seen my Rust Monster for the game, if you’re a regular reader. Well, here’s a whole adventure, starring said Rust Monster.

First, a caveat or two. This is not a final version of this adventure. I’ve playtested it once, and what I’m posting here is a direct result of that playtest. You may notice that the Rust Monster contained in this adventure is pretty different from the one linked above; that’s deliberate. The original version just didn’t work in play; its AC and hit points were a little too high, and it just didn’t engage heroes often enough. Worse, it never really brought its most feared power (the ability to eat your gear) to bear. I’ve changed that (hopefully). The adventure has also been modified slightly from its original form. Originally I had item drops keyed to named tiles, but they were happening too often. I did a quick count of tiles and found that there were just as many named as unnamed tiles, making the chance of an item drop 50%. Too high. I instead keyed item drops to tiles with white triangles; there are fewer of these than those with black triangles, so the drop rate goes down to around 40%, which is a little more acceptable.

I also increased the goal requirements to escaping with all six lost relics rather than just four, for a couple of reasons. First, getting four took me about twenty minutes, which is way too short a time. Some of this was luck and some of it was because of the aforementioned drop rate, but I don’t want the game to be won that quickly (and I did win). Second, because of all the item drops, this is an item-rich adventure. You’re probably going to have quite a few on you, including the lost relics, so if that Rust Monster eats something, you should have plenty of stuff to throw at it that isn’t a lost relic. Again, playtesting may change this. I’ll have to see. The beauty of this game is that I can playtest it all by my lonesome.

Anyway, here’s the adventure, Lost Relics.

A recent blog post got me to thinking about the state of D&D miniatures as a product. Evidently, the line isn’t doing to well; WotC is making about as much money as they can off of randomized boosters and limited print-run figures and sets, but it’s not enough to keep the line afloat. Not enough of the RPGers are buying the minis for their home games, and since the miniatures wargame, itself, is no longer officially supported, quite a few potential customers have gone away, and while there may be a few left playing the community-supported version of the game, it’s still simply not enough.

I think that WotC is keenly aware of two things. One, it’s no longer really viable to pursue the current miniatures model. They may launch one or two more lines of random booster sets, and they may release the odd limited edition fig or set of figs, but I don’t think we’re going to see the minis line continue in the same way that it has up to this point. Two, I think they also realize that this is a very bad thing for D&D. There may have been a dwindling support of the minis line, but there’s still a very strong perception (and a well-founded one) that D&D is a minis-heavy game, and not being able to get the minis you want for your game is going to hurt the game as a whole, particularly when it comes to new players.

What’s interesting, though, is that WotC seems to be coming up with some very cool solutions to this problem. First of all, they’re releasing minis-based D&D boardgames like Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon. These are stand-alone games that serve a couple of different purposes. For non D&D-players, they’re still perfectly playable and enjoyable, and they may serve as an entry point to the game and the hobby as a whole. To people who already play D&D, they serve as a way to get your D&D fix in less than an hour with a small group or even alone. There’s another benefit for both groups, though: each of these games gives you more than forty minis and more than forty tiles that you can easily use in your D&D game.

This is of particular benefit to those who may just be starting out with D&D. Not only do the games introduce you to some of the mechanics, but they effectively give you a starter kit of minis and tiles for the RPG. It’s true that the minis are unpainted and that the tiles, because they are interlocking tiles and have boardgame-specific elements on them, are not completely compatible with standard Dungeon Tiles, but it’s still a cost effective way to get a bunch of stuff that you can use in your game. I think that this is very deliberate on WotC’s part; it’s a way to keep the minis line alive, while providing added benefit for existing D&D players and a big benefit to those who are not interested in role-playing but like crawling through dungeons.

Another thing that they seem to be doing in future releases is including cardstock counters for monsters included in the product. 2011 seems to be the year of the box set, and I think that this is one of the reasons for that. The upcoming Monster Vault and Dungeon Master’s Kit both come with counters, and future monster box sets will likely do the same. In addition, I can easily see WotC selling sets of counters in a way similar to how they sell sets of Dungeon Tiles: grouped by theme, set on the shelves with the books to maximize shelf space, and set at a low price point. Minis booster packs were never on the high end of the price range, but I always had a little bit of trouble paying $12-$25 for five minis, particularly if I didn’t know if I’d get anything I was going to be able to use anytime soon. A pack of counters, on the other hand, could provide you with large groups of commonly used monsters as well as a few big, special ones. Further, you’d likely know the kinds of things you’d be getting if they were grouped by theme, and the price point would likely be similar to Dungeon Tiles. Not only that, but storage solutions would be easier.

At any rate, I’m interested to see what WotC does with this kind of thing in the future. I’ve already pre-ordered Castle Ravenloft (as an aside, I’m a very sad panda after finding out that the game was delayed from the 17th of August to the 31st), and after reading the rules that WotC kindly posted, I’ll likely enjoy it and buy Wrath of Ashardalon, too. Heck, if nothing else, I’ve just gotten eighty tiles and eighty minis, many of which are mutliples of commonly used creatures. And if WotC goes full-bore with the counters idea, it’ll save me quite a lot of prep time, since I spend a lot of my prep time making custom counters for the monsters in my home game.

I’m using very few house rules in my current game (I don’t consider custom monsters to be house rules), and I thought I’d share them. I’ve talked about a few of them already, but I’ll give you some updates.

Renown Points
I’ve already explained my rationale for using Renown Points, and I like the way it worked in the last session. I monkeyed with some of the values and achievements so that rarer achievements are worth more, and so that they work a little more as intended. Here’s my new score card.

Ally Cards
I shamelessly stole this idea from someone else. I’m modifying it a little to suit my tastes. Here’s how they work in my game.

Actions
Allies do not have their own actions; each ally is attached to one of the players and is under his/her control. Whenever a PC takes a move action, that player’s attached ally can also do so. The PC can spend a minor action to activate one of the ally’s encounter or daily abilities. Allies do not make opportunity attacks or take any other actions on their own. Some allies have passive abilities; these do not require an action to take effect. When an ally uses an encounter or daily ability, no roll is required; however, an ally cannot deal damage automatically. Instead, any ally power that deals damage must do so as a result of a PC’s roll, effectively granting bonus damage to a PC’s attack.

Damage and Healing
Allies do not have hit points; instead, they have hit boxes. When an ally takes damage from any source, mark off a hit box. Like minions, allies do not take damage from a miss, but can take automatic damage from an aura or other effect. When all hit boxes are marked off, the ally is unconscious. If an unconscious ally takes damage, that ally dies. Allies do not make death saving throws while they are unconscious; they are automatically stable.

Whenever an ally benefits from a healing ability that allows that ally to spend a healing surge or heal as if a healing surge had been spent, that ally erases one marked off hit box. Allies do not, however, have healing surges. During a short rest, an ally can erase all marked off hit boxes.

Resistances and vulnerabilities do not apply to allies.

Sample Ally Cards

Healbots
One of my players plays a warlord, and is the only leader in the party. The paladin and warlock can both do some healing, but not much, and both have access to healing on a daily basis rather than an encounter basis. The warlord is often unavailable, and until recently I simply had another player run his character. That, however, slowed things down and was, in general, complicated and not as effective as it could be. I also tried creating a monster version of the warlord, Sredni, so that he’d be easier to run. This, too, left a bad taste in my mouth.

Then, I came across this post, which I’m going to shamelessly steal from (again). I’m modifying the healbot rules a little to give Sredni a little bit more autonomy, and so that the players still benefit from his passive abilities (warlords have awesome passive abilities). I’m also going to continue to have a player run him, but now there will be significantly less for that player to have to keep track of. I give you Sredni Vashtar, healbot:

A couple of my players have given me feedback on my post on using Renown Points in your home game. They seem to like the idea, but they think it was maybe a little too complex and required a bit too much book-keeping in some cases. After looking at it again and giving it the old hairy eyeball, I tend to agree with them.

I’ve tweaked a few of the Renown achievements, and lifted a lot of the per encounter/per session restrictions. None of the once-per-session achievements still carry that restriction, but some of the point values have been changed a little. As far as the ones that were once per encounter, I’ve lifted that restriction sort of. What I’ve done is I’ve created a score card for keeping track of your Renown Points.

For the stuff that is free of restrictions, basically the DM tells you that you earned that achievement, and you immediately add those Renown Points to your total. For the encounter-based ones, I included four spaces for check marks for each of those. Any time you hit that achievement, put a check mark in one of the spaces; when all your spaces for that achievement are full, you can’t earn any more check marks. At the end of the encounter, each check mark that you’ve earned turns into a Renown Point, and you erase all of those check marks so you can earn them again in the next encounter.

Because you can earn these achievements multiple times in an encounter, I’ve tweaked a couple of them. Now, instead of hitting for 15+ damage (which my strikers do pretty often), you have to hit for 20+ damage. It’ll happen a little less often, but it’ll still happen. Also, the achievement for taking 50 damage in one encounter seemed like too much book-keeping, like it would get forgotten a lot. Now, instead, you have to take damage equal to your bloodied value in a single round to earn a check.

You’ll also notice that the costs of the rewards have increased a little; specifically, each one is 5 points more expensive. This is to compensate for the fact that players will likely be earning more Renown Points than they would have before. Anyway, take a look at it, and feedback, as always, is welcome.

When planning encounters for an adventure, I like to throw in at least a few that are unconnected to the main story, to build verisimilitude and give a sense that not everything in the world revolves around the PCs. I don’t use random encounters; that is, I don’t create these encounters on the fly using a table of any kind. They’re very much planned encounters, with the appearance of randomness. Still, I like the term for this series of posts, so I’ll use it.

At any rate, this encounter is designed to be used when the PCs have camped for the night in a cave, taking shelter from a bad snowstorm. Orcs who are used to the weather and who know the area take advantage of the weather and the late hour to spring an ambush on the unsuspecting PCs.

Without further ado, I give you Orc Ambush.

The DMG 2 introduced the concept of terrain powers. These are pretty much what they sound like: they’re effectively environmental effects structured as powers, to make them easier and clearer to use. I like the system quite a bit, and actually utilized some props to encourage their use in my last session. To encourage the players to use these powers, I printed out power cards for them. This allowed them to see just what a terrain power could do before they used it, and allowed them to weigh cost versus reward. I tended to err on the potent side for terrain powers (since they can be used by either side), but I also tended to make them limited in their ability to be used; that is, most were single-use, while others had a limited-use mechanic.

Overall, it worked fairly well; the players used the terrain powers, and they used them to very good effect. There was one thing missing, though: my monsters never really used the terrain powers, because I forgot to. While the players had a handy visual reminder of what they could do with the terrain, I had neglected to give myself one; as the DM, I had a lot of powers to keep track of, and without something to remind me that they were there, I tended to focus on what my monsters could do by themselves. There is, I realized, a very simple solution to this problem: put the terrain powers right in the monster stat blocks.

Thanks to the Monster Builder, it’s easy enough to modify monster stat blocks and to copy terrain powers from one monster to another. Having terrain powers in the monster stat blocks acts as a handy reminder of what tactics are available to your monsters, as well as a good reference for how powerful those powers are in relation to their own. You can also use this technique to remind yourself of specific tactical tendencies of monsters. If you’re running a combat with a lot of different terrain powers, it’s easy enough to only put the powers in a given stat block that that monster is likely to use. Is there a mounted ballista that does less damage than your artillery monster’s own weapon? It doesn’t need that power. The skirmisher or brute might, though, until the PCs close the distance. Zombies aren’t likely to utilize the environment a lot, but orcs and goblins probably will, and you can bet your bottom dollar that kobolds will.

Here is a very simple example, an encounter from my last session that I modified after the fact. I encourage you to experiment with this technique, and I also encourage you to share your results and modifications here on this blog.

The Newbie DM has a really nice post up about an analog initiative tracker that I like. It’s good for heroic tier games, but would require some modification for paragon and epic.

This has prompted me to share what I do for initiative tracking. I’ve actually gone through three different methods, and I’ll share them all here.

Method one was extremely old-school. I would print out this initiative tracker and hand-write characters and monsters in their initiative slots as initiative was rolled. It was time-consuming, especially when someone moved around in the initiative order via a delay or readied action. To save time, I’d often pre-roll monster initiative and write them in before the game, but that delay/ready problem was still a factor. It does allow you to track conditions and hit points, but things got overlooked a lot, and I ran into problems when two or three combatants had the same initiative count.

This prompted me to move to method 2. In method 2, I used a magnetic whiteboard and a number of magnetic index card-style tiles (all of them dry-erasable) to track initiative. Each PC, monster (or group of monsters), and trap/hazard would have its own card, and the cards would be arranged in initiative order as it was rolled. Hit points and conditions could be written directly on the cards, and they could be moved as initiative counts changed. There were a couple of problems with this method. First, because it was a dry-erasable product, text often got smudged and erased. Second, without an easel, there really was no easy way to prop it up so the whole group could see it, and it kept falling down. Third, I had to dragoon one of my players into being responsible for it, because it was too distracting for me while I was trying to run the combat. Below, you can see what it looked like in play.

So, because of the above issues, I only used this method for a few games before adopting a new one. I cannot, for the life of me, remember where I heard about this method, as it took a while for me to adopt it, so unfortunately I can’t give credit where it’s due. Suffice it to say, I like it quite a lot. It does take some prep before-hand, but now that the bulk of it is done, future games should be easier to prep for than the first time I used this method (I’ve only used it once, so far). So, what is it? First, I created this file, and another file like it with the monsters I was using. Then I printed everything out on card stock (a DM’s best friend, by the way), cut it all out, and folded everything along the center line. I used a bead box to organize my condition cards. During the game, as initiative is rolled, I drape these cards over my DM screen with the pictures facing the PCs and the info facing me. If someone changes their order in the initiative, I can just pick up a card and drop it in the right place. If someone applies a condition to someone else, I drape on of the condition cards over that combatant’s initiative card until the condition no longer applies. It works great, gives the players a nice visual representation of all of the combatants, and gives me a lot of useful information. It’s also easy to use in play, and doesn’t take up a lot of space or time at the table. Again, you can see it in action below.

So how do you track initiative?

As, I’m sure, many of you who have run, or are currently running, Keep on the Shadowfell, I modified the adventure as written. I added in a bunch of stuff at the beginning in order to get the PCs to Winterhaven, and I made numerous minor modifications to various encounters throughout the adventure. Mostly it was a monster here and a monster there being replaced with something that I found more interesting, either mechanically or thematically (or both), but nothing too drastic. Even the replacement of a deathjump spider with a more powerful monster, a cave troll, is something I consider a relatively minor modification; it altered the feel of the battle a little bit, but didn’t have implications that were all that far-reaching.

The single greatest modification that I made to the published adventure was in the final battle of the adventure, against Kalarel. In the published adventure, Kalarel is accompanied by some skeletons and a wight, and there’s a trap in the form of the Thing in the Portal, which grabs and draws nearer adventurers who draw too near in the first place. When I first read the adventure, I thought it was a cool encounter, but that was before I had experienced more of the breadth of what 4th Edition had to offer. I do think that, for those who are still undecided about the new edition, taking D&D for a test drive with the adventure as written is perfectly viable, and probably lots of fun. But I wanted to do something different.

So, I completely rejiggered the final encounter. For starters, I created the corpse mound that I talked about before. Then I added a couple of hazards; one represented the darkness emanating from the portal, the other the subtle and seductive call of said darkness. Then I reduced Kalarel’s level a bit and modified some of his abilities so that the encounter’s level was a little more in-line with my party’s level.

It’s a level 7 encounter, all said, but with a lot of potential to be very, very difficult. There are some nasty threats in there, and all of them had at least a couple of levels on the party. So I staggered things a little bit. Initially, Kalarel is involved in completing the ritual, so the party only has to contend with the corpse mound. After a couple of rounds, Kalarel completes the ritual, joining the fray. The following round, the two hazards activate, and every round thereafter the darkness expands, filling more of the room.

Now, I had a way for the PCs to reverse the effects of the ritual built into the encounter, but I’m a firm believer that a big failure should not be a show-stopper, but should rather make things more interesting. Thus, I created a skill challenge that would trigger if the darkness expanded too much. This had the effect of also putting a time limit on the encounter, which prevented it from turning into too much of a slog.

At any rate, here is my writeup of the encounter. The experience per party member assumes a party of 5 characters, and there’s no treasure included in that writeup (I had that in a separate document for some reason). The encounter does use the standard battle map that the original encounter used; Kalarel starts in front of the altar, while the corpse mound appears as a mere pile of corpses in the pool of blood in the center of the room. The darkness, as you’d expect, emanates from the portal once Kalarel has completed the ritual. Enjoy.

By pure chance, I stumbled upon Masterplan. I have to say, this tool is absolutely fantastic. Need to create a flowchart of your adventure? It’ll do that. Want to make an encounter? Got it. How bout a trap or a skill challenge? That’s covered, too. There are some things that I wish it did that it doesn’t; it’s difficult, for example, to print just one encounter out in a printer-friendly format. Importing monsters from the Rules Compendium is possible, but not intuitive, and you have to do it one monster at a time. Some things, like DCs for skill challenges, are auto-calculated, while other things, like damage and attack bonuses for traps, are not.

All that aside, though, this is a great tool that is under active development, and the creator is receptive to feedback. I hope that the Adventure Tools that Wizards is making will be something like this, because I’m imagining something with the functionality of Masterplan, but tied to the Rules Compendium and to the Monster Builder, and it makes me very happy.