The conclusion that I came to was simply this: sometimes, you have to let your players say no to you. Sometimes, you even have to actively encourage it. There’s an instinct, I think, that tells you to do what is tactically sound with your monsters. If the fighter has marked you, you should attack him because otherwise he’s going to open up a world of hurt on you, right? And to an extent, this is true. In the case of an ability like a defender’s mark, its purpose is to draw the monsters’ attention away from the defender’s allies. However, if the only thing that marking monsters accomplishes is getting those monsters to attack the defender, then you’re cheating that defender out of something very cool: the ability to say “no” to that monster. Sometimes, you have to defy the mark so that the fighter gets his free attack, or the paladin gets to lay down some damage, or the swordmage gets to teleport in and whack the beastie. Doing those kinds of things is a lot of fun for players, and it’s kind of a bummer when it doesn’t happen in an encounter.

This doesn’t apply just to marks. Opportunity attacks are a great way for players to get a chance to say “no”, and sometimes (especially with solos, elites, and brutes, all of whom have plenty of hit points to go around), you just want to provoke those opportunity attacks so that the players can have some fun.

You can carry this mentality into encounter design, too. Brutes a great for this: they’re easy to hit, but have lots of hit points, so you can feel free to use them to soak up a lot of damage, but there’s a low chance that your players will miss all the time. Brutes are awesome for provoking opportunity attacks and defying marks, particularly because many brutes are, thematically, not that bright.

Minions, too, work well. In my games, I tend to use minions for two purposes. The first is to create minions that are dangerous to kill–exploding minions, if you will–in order to challenge the players tactically. More frequently, though, they’re there simply to make the players feel like badasses. Sometimes minions should just be there to be wiped out in the first round of combat. I know, for example, that the dragonborn fighter in my game likes getting good mileage out of his dragon breath; heck, he’s spent two or three feats on making it better, and he’s only level 8! For this reason, I’ll sometimes group two or three minions together near him, so he can lay waste to them with some dragon fire. Similarly, sometimes you want to group a bunch of monsters so that the wizard can lay down a well-placed fireball.

Now, this is not to say that your fights should be pushovers, or that you should always arrange things so that the players are always using all of their powers to their best effect. Challenge is fun, and you should challenge your players. However, every once in a while, you’re going to want to throw them a bone and let them feel like they’ve got things well in hand. They are the heroes, after all; let them feel like it from time to time.

Why did he shine? It was a combination of a couple of different things. First, the encounter took place in a canyon of sorts, surrounded on most sides by twenty-foot-tall bluffs covered in thorny brambles. The enemies could fly from bluff to bluff, and attacked from atop them. Because only a few of the pre-generated PCs have ranged attacks, we had to get a little creative in order to take the fight to the bad guys.

The second reason was the DM. I played with a DM I had never played with, a guy named Andrew (I think; DM, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry if I’ve gotten your name wrong), and Andrew is my kind of DM. The DMGs talk about saying “yes” to your players, and Andrew really takes that advice to heart: if something has the potential to be awesome, he’ll let you try it. And in most cases, it was, indeed, awesome.

We were ambushed by some goblins (I think they were goblins; they were dressed in bone armor that disguised their features, and they may have been some Dark Sun equivalent to goblins, if goblins don’t exist in Dark Sun. I’ll just call them goblins.) and their pet drake. The goblins had flying contraptions strapped to their backs that allowed them to glide from bluff to bluff and the drake could, of course, fly. The combat started with the drake flying overhead, dropping a rope on our supplies, and landing on a nearby bluff. One of the goblins had the other end of the rope, and it was clear that they were going to try to steal our stuff.

The party quickly set out trying to attack the goblins, but I took a slightly different tactic: I picked up the rope and gave it a good, hard yank. The DM liked this idea, gave me an Athletics check (which I succeeded, what with my +9 to Athletics and all), and the goblin was pulled off the bluff and to his death (he was a minion). I then proceeded to use my move action to climb the bluff with the drake at the top, taking an opportunity attack and some damage from the brambles. The drake, however, flew away, back to one of the goblins, so I couldn’t attack it.

However, the goblin passed the drake another rope, so it was clear that they were going to make another attempt on our supplies. As such, I decided to prepare a trap for the drake. I backed up, to give myself a running start, and readied an action. My plan was to wait until the drake was over our supplies, about ten feet from the edge of the bluff, then charge forward, jump, and grab onto the drake. Andrew thought that was awesome, so he let me give it a try. And you know what? I succeeded. I grabbed the startled drake in mid-air, then twisted us as we fell so that I landed on top of the drake, minimizing my damage and maximizing its.

On its turn, the drake tried (and failed) to escape my grab. On my turn, I stood up, got a good hold on the drake, and then spun it around and slammed it into the bramble-covered wall of the nearby bluff. An ally then quickly finished it off.

Later, I spotted an archer on top of a bluff. I climbed a nearby bluff (failing my Athletics roll slightly, my first failed roll so far), and it cost me more movement than I had anticipated. No big deal. I traded my standard for a move to get into position, then spent my action point to charge, jump, and perform a flying tackle on the goblin archer. Andrew liked it and, once again, I pulled it off, knocking him prone, grabbing him, and landing on top of him. On his turn, he tried (and failed) to escape. On my turn, I picked him up, hurled him off the cliff, into the brambles on the side of an adjacent bluff, and that, combined with the falling damage he took when he hit the ground, killed him. Awesome.

At this point there were only two goblins left, both of them curse-chanters of some sort. They were both on the largest bluff, and there was a ten-foot gap between me and them. No problem. I leaped over the gap and, finally, drew my weapon and charged. And missed. Go figure, I finally make a normal weapon attack and I miss. The goblin tried to escape, though, provoking opportunity attacks while flying from both me and the party’s thri-kreen battlemind. We both hit, and because Yuka has Combat Agility, my hit knocked the goblin prone, causing him to fall out of the air and onto the ground below. The fall didn’t kill him, but our ardent did shortly afterward.

The DM, and the party, responded really well to all of my improvised actions. It helps that I only made two bad rolls the entire encounter; trying crazy things and pulling them off definitely encourages you to try crazy things in the future. And you know what? It encourages others to try crazy things, too. At one point, the ardent tried to make a lasso out of the rope and yank one of the goblins off the ledge. She didn’t quite make it, but at least she tried. At another point, the other fighter (also Yuka; we had seven at our table last night), knocked a guy off the cliff with Combat Agility, then used his shift to drop down on top of the enemy. The DM liked it, and ruled that all of Yuka number two’s falling damage would be transferred to the goblin that broke his fall.

It was a great session, and it really highlighted the fact that the system is capable of handling a wide variety of off-the-wall actions, not just what’s contained in your power cards. It also highlighted that, when the DM is inclined to say “yes” to awesome improvised actions, the game becomes more awesome for everybody.

At the end of the night, another player told me that one of his goals as a DM is to become better at handling improvised actions like that. I let him in on a dirty little secret: sometimes, you just let things happen and don’t worry about the rules. If one of my players wants to do something really, really cool, I’ll say, “give it a try, here’s the skill you need to roll.” The secret? Sometimes I don’t care what the result is. With these kinds of actions, sometimes I don’t bother setting a DC beforehand. I wait, I see what the PC rolled, and if it seems high enough, I go with it. Sometimes “high enough” doesn’t need to be all that high, if the action is cool enough. Because really, there’s nothing that takes the wind out of your sails more than trying something really cool and botching the roll. That kind of failure discourages future improvisation, and I’d rather there be more improvisation at the table than less. So, sometimes I hand-wave it.

Knowledge checks are any check made to determine something that the character may already know. Do I know what a beholder is? Do I recognize the runes on the floor? Am I aware of the history of this place? These kinds of checks require minimal effort during combat, because the character either already knows the answer, or doesn’t. As such, they’re free actions.

Information gathering checks are basically one step up from knowledge checks, and don’t actually always involve a check. Insight and Perception are the common ones here, but cases can be made for skills like Religion, Arcana, or History, too. Can I try to decipher the magic circle, to determine its purpose? Arcana check. Can I try to suss out my opponent, and see if I can spot a weakness? Insight, or possibly an appropriate knowledge skill, like Nature for a natural beast. These are almost always minor actions, costing the player very little, and possibly giving the player critical information or an edge over the opponent. I like to encourage the use of these kinds of checks, as they spice up combat, drive the story forward, and so forth.

Action checks are checks that you make to actually do something. The type of action varies, from minor to standard, depending on what the player is trying to do. Swing on a chandelier? Acrobatics check, move action. Want to try to say a litany to weaken the demon? Religion check, standard action. My rule of thumb is this: if it’s alternate movement, it’s a move action. If it’s an attack on another creature, it’s standard, unless the effect you’re going for is fairly small (such as a -1 or -2 penalty). If it creates a terrain effect, such as difficult terrain or damaging terrain, it could be any type of action, depending on its scope and power. Difficult terrain over one square would be a minor action, while a blast 3 of difficult terrain would probably be a move action and a blast 5 would be a standard action.

A special note on unusual attacks: I try to reward these whenever they occur, and encourage their use. If someone is going to forgo using one of his powers to try something he’s not sure of, I’m damn sure going to make sure that, if he pulls it off, he’s glad he did. By way of example, in a previous session, my players were fighting off some snaketongue cultists on the roof of the lightning rail, and two of them were archers riding atop wyverns. At one point, the fighter (who has a thing for collecting the teeth of his enemies), wanted to try and rip one of the wyverns’ teeth out while it was still alive, since last one that had died had fallen behind the train (thus making its teeth inaccessible). He was unsure, though, and had almost decided to use one of his at-wills instead, because it was the safe and certain thing to do. I told him: “Do it. I’ll make it worth your while.”

So he did. I handled it as a standard action, Strength attack against the wyvern’s Fortitude. I allowed the hit to deal his normal amount of damage (1d10+Str), and told him that the wyvern was dazed until the end of his next turn from the pain, and that it would be marked by him for the rest of the encounter, and that no mark would be able to supersede his mark. Because he gambled on an uncertain attack, I made sure that a successful attack with an improvised (but very cool and thematically appropriate) technique was better than the at-will he would have used instead, probably more on par with an encounter power. And you know what? It was a great moment.

Also, a note on terrain powers. It’s great to include terrain powers in your encounter, but if your players don’t know they’re there, they’re not going to use them. Initially, you’re probably going to have to hit them over the head with your terrain powers, to some extent. What I do is I print up cards for the terrain powers that I’m including, and I include them in the monsters’ stat blocks where it makes sense. That way, the players see the monsters using them, so they start looking for terrain powers to use against the monsters. Once they discover them, I give them the cards so they know exactly what the power will do. I find that players are more likely to use the environment when it’s more of a known quantity.

I’ve heard about people encouraging the use of terrain powers by making them all minor actions, even the attacks. That works for some people, and that’s great; it just doesn’t sit well with me, for some reason. Instead, I make sure that the terrain powers that are standard actions are potent enough that they’re worth using, and I make sure the players know that. What I’ve found, and what you may find if you do the same thing, is that players start coming up with their own terrain powers and alternate actions. And really, that’s the goal.

I also want to talk about monsters of high levels living in the world by saying simply this: levels are an abstraction. Nobody in the world knows what level a beholder should be; they just know that it’s an incredibly powerful creature that only the bravest and most capable adventurers would dare go up against. If your players want to go off and fight that beholder in the cave over there–-you know, the one you warned them about and tried to tell them, subtly, not to fight–-and you have the opportunity to design the encounter, then ask yourself this question: do I want a TPK here, just to teach my players a lesson? If they answer is yes, then fine. It’s not what I would do, personally, but to each their own. If you don’t want to derail your game to teach your players a lesson, then make the encounter winnable. It doesn’t need to be easy, and it should be scary. Maybe the players will have to discover some trick of the environment before they really have a fighting chance, but at least give them that fighting chance.

Failing that, give them an out. Allow them to fight the thing, allow them to see that they’re out-gunned, and show them how they can escape with their hides. Maybe there’s some cost associated with this escape: they have to sacrifice a beloved NPC or mount or pet or piece of gear.

My point is: use too-powerful monsters in the world if you want, to add verisimilitude. Tell the players about them, and tell them they’re not quite powerful enough to fight them yet. But do so at your own risk. Levels are a game construct, and mean nothing within the narrative. Without breaking immersion, how do you tell your players that they’re simply not high enough level yet? How do they know? They may decide, after a series of decisive wins, that they’re feeling powerful enough to take that dragon or beholder on. You’ve warned them, but they want to anyway. The thing to remember is that this is just as much their game as it is yours, and if they’re telling you what’s interesting and fun for them, it’s your responsibility as a DM to pick up their cues and make it fun for everyone, even if they wind up taking a thumping. Because really, a TPK isn’t much fun for anyone.

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The question seems to be: do you include encounters in your game that are designed to be more powerful than the PCs can handle.

The answer is: it’s funny you should mention that.

To any of my players reading this post: stop it. Unless you want some spoilers.

In an upcoming session, I have some encounters planned that are, in fact, designed to be too difficult for the players to take head-on. That is, even if the PCs succeed in what they’re supposed to be succeeding at, the bad guys aren’t going to get beaten, and it’ll probably feel a bit like a loss. Specific story spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned, guys.

My players have an airship. Soon, they’re going to be flying that airship into a land that is rough, unforgiving, and very much a frontier territory. There’s lots of nasty monsters in this area, and they’re going to get a first-hand look at this. First, the airship is going to get attacked by a mated pair of young blue dragons, intent on taking the airship and all valuables from the PCs. My PCs are level 8, and while these dragons are only level 6, there’s two of them, and they’re both solos. It’s a hard encounter, made harder by the fact that the dragons are going to be trying to throw people off the ship and, eventually, damage the ship out of spite when they decide that the PCs are more trouble than they’re worth. I’m pretty sure that the PCs won’t kill even one of these dragons, and at best they’re going to fend them off before the airship is completely torn to pieces.

Once they crash land, they’ll get a little bit of a breather before an enraged dire bullette attacks the group. As I’ve said, these are level 8 PCs, and this bullette is level 15, way above their pay grade. It’s got an AC around 35, which is pretty high for players of that level. This is not a fight they’re supposed to win. Instead, they’re supposed to draw the bullette’s attention away from the wreck and their less powerful allies so that their allies can escape, get to town, get medical attention, and get supplies to come back and fix the ship. Once they have the bullette’s attention, they’re going to have to lead it away from the ship and lose it.

So, yes, I guess I do have fights that cannot be won through combat alone. But that doesn’t mean I’m setting my players up for failure. I have a secret, you see: these fights, while they have real monsters with real statistics making real attacks and with real hit points and defenses, aren’t really fights. Both of these ‘combats’ are structured as skill challenges, and neither has the goal of the enemy’s defeat. In the fight against the dragons, the goal is simply to drive them away and survive their attacks. With the bullette, they have to get its attention, then lose its attention.

This is an idea I’ve started experimenting with: fights that aren’t really fights. I think that this is probably a really good way to handle fights that are too difficult for the PCs. It gives the PCs something to do besides whiffing against defenses that are too high and taking massive amounts of damage. It gives the PCs a definite goal. Best of all, even though the PCs may not feel like they’re ‘winning’ the fights, they’ll likely still feel a sense of accomplishment at the end, even if they just barely got away by the skin of their teeth.

So, how do you handle fights like this? Do you even include them?

Other posts in this blog carnival:
never fear! sandbox vs. safety rails.
Phelanar’s Den
The Daily Encounter
Dkarr
Adam Dray
Sarah Darkmagic

Overall, I feel that FATE is a much better fit for the setting than d20 ever was. While writing the chapter on alien species, it was much easier to capture the flavor of each species using aspects and stunts than it ever was using d20 mechanics, and it’s simpler to boot. Check out the entry for the Ryjyllians from the 1st Edition rules of the game:

Racial Traits
Ability Scores: +2 Strength, -2 Wisdom. Ryjyllians are physically powerful, but they tend to be hotheaded and rash, acting before they think things through.
Special Characteristics:

• Rage: Ryjyllians are able to enter a combat rage. They gain great strength and durability, but lose control of themselves and are less able to defend against attacks. A Ryjyllian in a rage temporarily gains +4 to Strength, +4 to Constitution, and a +2 morale bonus on Will saves, but suffers a -2 penalty to Armor Class. The increase in Constitution raises the Ryjyllian’s hit points by 2 points per level, but these hit points go away at the end of the rage when the Ryjyllian’s Constitution drops back to normal. (These hit points are not lost the way temporary hit points are.) While raging, the Ryjyllian cannot use skills or abilities that require concentration, such as moving silently. He can use any feat he might have except for Expertise, item creation feats, and Skill Focus (if it’s tied to a skill that requires patience or concentration). A fit of rage lasts for a number of rounds equal to 3+ the character’s (newly improved) Constitution modifier. The Ryjyllian may prematurely end the rage voluntarily. At the end of the rage, the Ryjyllian is fatigued (-2 to Strength, -2 to Dexterity, can’t charge or run) for the duration of that encounter. The Ryjyllian can only fly into a rage once per encounter and only a certain number of times per day (his level divided by four). Entering a rage takes no time itself, but the Ryjyllian can only do it during his action, not in response to somebody else’s action. A Ryjyllian can’t, for example, fly into a rage when struck by a blaster in order to get the extra hit points from the increased Constitution, although the extra hit points would be a benefit if he had gone into a rage earlier in the round, before the blaster hit.
• Low-light Vision: Ryjyllians can see twice as far as an Arsubaran in starlight, moonlight, dim light, and similar conditions of poor illumination. They retain the ability to distinguish color and detail under these conditions.
• Claws: All Ryjyllians have retractable claws at the tips of their fingers and toes. In combat, these can be used as weapons, and Ryjyllians are automatically considered to be proficient in their use. The claws deliver 1d4/x2/slashing damage.
• +2 racial bonus to all Climb, Jump, and Move Silently checks. Ryjyllians are cat-like and able to perform athletic feats with little difficulty.
• The Ryjyllian Code of Conduct: Ryjyllians adhere to a strict warrior’s code. They refuse to flee combat, although if ordered to withdraw, the code requires them to observe the command. They must never show fear in the face of danger, but instead challenge it boldly. If challenged to a fight, a Ryjyllian may never refuse. Ryjyllians never use what they consider dirty tricks or deception to win in combat; the fight must be fair to be honorable. The code also requires a Ryjyllian to follow the orders of a superior without question or hesitation, although if ordered to do something that violates the code, the Ryjyllian is likely to commit suicide after he has carried out the order. If a Ryjyllian is ever humiliated in combat, or violates the code by accident, suicide is generally the response. They must make a Will save vs. 20 to break the code.
  Size: Medium. As medium-sized creatures, Ryjyllians have no special bonuses or penalties due to size.
  Speed: Base speed for Ryjyllians is 30 feet.
• Languages: Ryjyllians all begin with the ability to speak both Galactic and Ryjyllac.
• Favored Class: Fighter. A multiclass Ryjyllian’s fighter class does not count when determining whether she suffers an XP penalty for multiclassing. Fighting is the Ryjyllian raison d’etre, and they naturally fall into this profession.

That’s a lot of mechanics to remember. It tells you something about the Ryjyllians as a people, but a lot of that real estate above is devoted to matters of physiology, and relatively little is devoted to things that provide character hooks. Now, compare this to the stats for Ryjyllians in 2nd Edition Bulldogs!. (DISCLAIMER: The following mechanics are not final, and are subject to change.)

Typical Ryjyllian Aspects:
The Ryjyllian Code of Honor
Warrior from a Warrior Race
Loyal to My Clan
Last to Retreat
Cat-Like Reflexes
Short Temper

Typical Ryjyllian Stunts:
Ryjyllian Combat Focus
Some Ryjyllians train in special combat techniques that allow them to enter into a sort of battle trance that inures them to pain and makes them more deadly combatants. Once per session, the Ryjyllian can spend a fate point to enter into this state. While in this state, the Ryjyllian automatically generates one extra shift on any attack roll made to deal stress. In addition, the Ryjyllian gains an additional physical stress box, which can be filled as normal. However, if the extra stress box is filled, when this state ends the Ryjyllian takes an immediate consequence that is one step more severe than it would otherwise be. The Ryjyllian can exit this state at any time; otherwise it lasts until the end of the scene.

There’s a lot less real estate devoted to mechanically explaining what a Ryjyllian is, and almost all of that real estate provides character hooks. Each aspect gives you an idea of what kind of species they are, and even the stunt provides more info than the Rage ability did in 1st Edition.

Furthermore, all of the above is optional when you’re playing a Ryjyllian. In 1st Edition, everything listed was mandatory for your character. This meant that, if you wanted to play a Ryjyllian, you had to deal with all of that complexity, and your Ryjyllian would look a lot like all the other Ryjyllians out there; there was little room for variance outside of class choice. In 2nd Edition, we provide recommended aspects and stunts, but you’re perfectly free to ignore them and come up with your own stuff. We provide a baseline that you can use to start from, but your Ryjyllian is, first and foremost, an individual, and you can build that individual however you want to.

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 problem is, some conditions in 4E can be really annoying to players when they’re overused. The dazed condition is one of them, the blind condition is another. Slowing and immobilizing can make your extremely mobile characters have to vary their tactics, but they can also be really irritating to players whose tactics rely on mobility if they’re being shut down for an entire fight. Stunning and dominating are probably the ones you want to use the most sparingly, though a monster that dominates can be a lot of fun if you allow the PC to continue to play the dominated character.

As a related aside, I’ve been playing a lot of Final Fantasy Tactics A2 on my DS lately. It’s a lot of fun and, like 4E, utilizes a myriad of conditions that do various things. Some of these conditions are extremely fun and satisfying when you get to use them on monsters. Immobilization works like it does in D&D; disabling prevents a monster from taking actions other than movement. I rely on these two conditions quite a lot in my fights, and it makes the game more fun. But here’s the thing: there are a lot of conditions, both in FFT and in D&D, that are lots of fun for players to use, but can make the game really un-fun when they’re used on the players with similar frequency.

The above article makes me a little wary. In theory, I like fight that allow the monsters to gain combat advantage frequently, especially when that grants them extra damage, too. It makes the fight more dangerous for the PCs, which makes the fight more exciting and memorable. If you can drop a PC in a fight, that’s a fight that’ll be remembered in the future. However, I know from experience that relying on the dazed condition too much makes for a long, drawn-out fight that isn’t all that exciting, or that feels unfair to the PCs. There’s a fine line between difficult and cheap, and it can be difficult to walk in D&D.

What are your thoughts? What experiences have you had with conditions such as dazed, stunned, dominated, and so forth? Do you have tips for how to utilize them effectively?

At any rate, after the game I got into a lively conversation with the DM about the huge number of races available in D&D. He was of the opinion that, with all these fantastical races available (he pointed to the tiefling and the dragonborn in particular, but I think there are others to which the label applies), it somehow dilutes the fantasy of the whole experience, making everything else a little less fantastical by comparison. After all, he said, if you can walk down the streets of Waterdeep and see a dragon-man walking with a drow, then why is it exciting when you meet dragon-men or drow out in a dungeon somewhere? They’re just regular people, after all.

I can definitely see where he’s coming from, and I think it’s a perfectly valid point of view. He likes his fantasy a little more traditional, even going so far as to say, “If it wasn’t in the Fellowship, you can’t play it in my game” (though he bends the rules a little for races that are at least passingly similar to Fellowship races, like gnomes and half-elves). I respect his stance and, were I to play in one of his games, I’d respect it with the character I chose to play.

I do not, however, agree with his opinion. I take more of a shotgun approach with race selection. I tell my players that every race is available, and I see what sticks. I find that, once everyone’s made a selection, I’m left with a number of characters for which rich backstory can be crafted, and for whom race can become an important story consideration.

I should mention at this point that, in the game I’m DMing, there’s not one human in the group. Elf, half-elf, dragonborn, tiefling, and warforged; that’s my party. And I like it that way; I’ll tell you why.

For the elf and the half-elf, race is not really that much of a factor, their races being fairly common. The dragonborn is big and intimating, and I like to imagine that a large part of that is because he’s a guy who looks a lot like a dragon and, in my setting, those guys aren’t that common in most civilized areas. So he turns some heads.

Tieflings are a little more common, having been in control of the Demesne’s territory a hundred years or so before it was founded, and they are not well-loved (though not hated, either). My tiefling player plays a proud, ambitious scion of an ancient noble house, and he’s determined to see his family and, by extension, the entire tiefling race returned to their place of power in the world.

The warforged thought he was, until recently, the only one of his kind in existence. He was created by an old hermit to act as a son and legacy in the world, and when the hermit died, he went out to find his place in the world. When he ran into another warforged who called him “brother”, that caused him to take notice. When he fought a mind flayer with warforged thralls, he noticed even more.

I think the thing that I like the most about all these available races is the same thing that I like about any instance in which player choice is expanded. The more choice a player has when making his character, the better he’s able to express the idea in his head in mechanical and story terms. If that means I have to find a place for a race that I hadn’t thought of before, I’m more than willing to do that; after all, it’s not my world. It’s ours.

Healing effects are great when the PCs have them. They help keep the PCs in the fight, and increase the chances that the PCs will see more of the game, whether you’re talking about a video game or an RPG. But when monsters have access to healing effects, watch out. There’s a very good reason why there aren’t that many monsters in D&D who have access to things like regeneration, or powers that heal themselves and other monsters.

See, in this fight, one of the bad guys was a bishop. Apparently, as a bishop, this guy can cast Cura (a fairly potent healing spell) with alarming regularity. This means that, every couple of rounds, he completely undoes any progress I’ve made toward finishing the fight. When this makes the fight harder in a fun way, that’s fine. The problem is, the only thing it’s succeeding in doing is frustrating me.

If you’re DMing a game of D&D, or any other game that has a similar structure, bear this in mind. It’s okay to give the occasional monster regeneration. It’s even okay to give the occasional monster the ability to heal his allies. These things should be limited, though. If a monster has regeneration, you should make sure that the PCs have some way to counter it. If a monster can heal its allies, you should make sure that it can only do so once or twice in the encounter. If you’re healing your monsters willy-nilly, you’re increasing the length of the fight while simultaneously making it more frustrating and, as a result, less fun.

Waves: Many of the fights in ME2 take place in waves. You run into a room and fight five or six guys, firing from behind cover and trying to get the tactical upper hand. Just when it looks like you’ve got them mopped up, five or six more guys come in, these ones a little bit tougher. When they’re almost taken care of, something big and tough will sometimes come in, like a combat mech or a heavily armored and shielded commander of some sort.

In a D&D game, introducing enemies in waves can be a great way to have a really huge fight with a lot of peaks and valleys in the tension without making it overwhelmingly difficult for your players to get through it. When you introduce waves, it can also add verisimilitude to the game, making it seem like reinforcements from nearby rooms in the dungeon are bursting in, reacting to the noise of the fight. Setting up an encounter this way also allows for players to feel really clever if they manage to take out a group without alerting the others.

By way of example, you could have the encounter start fairly simply; a room full of minions with a few non-minion enemies, maybe brutes or skirmishers. The fight starts, the party wipes out most of the minions, and one of the non-minions sounds an alarm of some sort. A round or two later, a leader enemy, maybe an elite, bursts through the door with some other tough hombres–brutes or soldiers–and maybe a controller or an artillery or two. If you really want to add drama and tension, once those guys are on the ropes, introduce a solo. Let’s say you’ve got a room full of demon-worshiping gnolls. These guys are easy enough, and eat up few of the party’s resources. The next wave, though, has some gnoll soldiers a couple of archers, as well as a demonic scourge. Try to reserve the demonic scourge’s death for later in the fight, when a lot of the others are dead. Make it clear that the demonic scourge is possessed, and killing him might release a demon. When he does drop, a solo demon bursts out of his body and attacks; if the party tries to incapacitate him instead, the demonic scourge kills himself to release the beast.

I’ll clarify my position by saying that every encounter should have a specific purpose, but I don’t think that that purpose must be attached to the current plot. After all, if every encounter has something to do with what’s currently on the to-do list, you run the risk of making it seem like the entire world revolves around the PCs (which it does, but it shouldn’t seem like it). Sometimes it’s good to pepper your adventures with seemingly random encounters in order to add verisimilitude to your game world; sometimes, in a dangerous fantasy world, the owlbear is just hungry.

But, as I said, every encounter should have a purpose. The lion’s share should be tied to the current plot, and should be furthering it in some way. A few, though–probably no more that two or three in an adventure with 15 encounters–should not. They can be there to add color to the world, to introduce an enemy faction that you plan to use later, or they could be a form of the spaghetti method: throw a few different encounters at the PCs and see which one “sticks”; that is, which one do they latch on to the most? That’s a plot hook for future use.

I’ll clarify one further point: when I use the term ‘encounter’, I don’t mean ‘fight’. In D&D, there’s a tendency, I think, to treat every encounter as a fight, but it’s often more satisfying to vary things somewhat. Social encounters are encounters, too, as are periods of investigation or even research, and even long-distance travel through dangerous terrain, like a desert or mountain range, can be handled as an encounter in 4E. Also, if all 15 of those encounters are fights, it’s going to take you a long time to get through your adventure. Social encounters, travel encounters, and other non-combat encounters tend to be quicker to run, and can be used to build tension and world color just as effectively–if not, in some cases, more so–than combat encounters.

The social encounters were a breeze to create, and were a lot of fun, too. The skill challenge system allows for a lot of customization, such that these two encounters, both of which are basically negotiations, have different uses for the same, and different, skills. There are a couple of things that I really like about the tools given to craft non-combat encounters. First and foremost, I love the fact that I get to reward the PCs for their choice of skills, and encourage them to pick up more skills. If you read the Player’s Handbook, it’s not immediately apparent that skills have become more important in 4th Edition. Sure, the rogue has a lot of powers that key off of skills, and some of the other classes have utility powers that improve skill use, but it almost seems like an afterthought. Until you read the Dungeon Master’s Guide, and it all clicks into place. Between skill challenges and terrain effects, there are lots of ways for a DM who is so inclined to reward skill use in 4th Edition. When crafting these encounters, I made sure to include at least one skill that each PC had, so that everyone could feel useful, but I also included some other skills that nobody has, to nudge the PCs into picking up the Skill Training feat a couple of times in the future. I love that I have a tool to do that with.

The other thing that I like about the skill challenge system is that it gives me a way to take something like a negotiation and create an actual mechanical encounter out of it, with plenty of role-playing as well as plenty of die-rolling, and an XP reward at the end. Suddenly, non-combat encounters have become just as important as combat encounters.

The combat encounter that I created took a little bit more time, but it was still pretty easy, and it really served to highlight for me the things that I like about 4th Edition encounter and monster design.

Monster design in 4th Edition is great. Monsters are tactically and thematically interesting, with mechanics that both inform and are informed by the flavor of the monster. I also really like the idea behind minions, as well as the other end of the spectrum: elites and solos. I put a bunch of minions in this encounter, a couple of standard monsters, and an elite. The fight, itself, will be big, but I don’t think it will be difficult for me to manage.

Another thing that I like about monsters in 4th Edition is that they’re really easy to customize. Only one of the monsters that I used in the fight is straight out of the monster manual. The others have all be tweaked in some way. For the elite, I took a different elite, changed out some powers and characteristics, and reduced its level to be more in line with a 1st-level party. There are four different monster types in the fight, three of which have been customized, and it took me maybe 20 to 30 minutes to do the customization work for all three. Not too bad, really, when you compare it to 3rd Edition.

Something that I really like about encounter design in general is that terrain is a lot more important than it used to be. There are some really fantastic rules for creating terrain in the DM’s guide, and the DCs and Damage by Level chart on page 42 is absolutely invaluable for scattering all kinds of improvised attacks around the encounter for the PCs to make use of.

All in all, I’m very happy with encounter design in 4th Edition. There’s some work involved, but it feels like you get a lot of bang for your buck. And, truth to be told, I find the work to be a lot of fun in and of itself.

One way you can go–and the way I plan on going–is via an organization of some kind that the PCs are working for. The organization that I’ll be using is a somewhat loosely-governed group of elite troubleshooters and professional adventurers known as the Queen’s Wardens, or just the Wardens to most people. Their mission is basically to keep the Demesne–that’s the territory that the PCs will start off in–safe and prosperous. In order to do this, they need a wide variety of character types, from diplomats to treasure hunters to lawmen to assassins. They’re also willing to overlook quite a lot if you pull your weight and get the job done. Thus, the players can still make pretty much any kind of character they want, and still be members (because I promise you, they’ll be pulling their weight).

Starting all of the PCs off as Wardens grants a couple of nice benefits to me as the DM. One, I can easily provide them with a reason for adventuring together without telling them that they already know each other. Simply put, they’re a newly-formed company of fairly green–but very promising–recruits. Two, it gives me an easy way to introduce quests. Ideally, I’d like many of the quests to be player-driven, in that they indicate through behavior at the table the kinds of things they’re interested in investigating, and I plan for that for the next session. However, when they’re at a loss for what to do, or for when there really aren’t any loose ends to tie up, it’s nice to be able to have the chain of command hand them something to do. Three, if (Pelor forbid) one of the PCs die and they don’t feel like raising him (or if that option simply isn’t available), or if one of the players gets tired of his character or feels its time to retire him, it gives me an easy way to introduce a new character, and to give that character a reason to join the party.

I really like the idea of using the Wardens in this way, and I hope my players are receptive to it (a few of them read this blog, so I’m at least giving them fair warning (I’m looking at you, Chris, Dean, and sometimes Tad)). I think they will be when I explain that Wardens have a measure of authority and respect above and beyond what a freelance adventurer would be likely to receive, and that they are compensated for their troubles with a monthly stipend, mission bonuses, and good sale prices on valuable magic items that the party may have acquired in their travels. That’s always nice, right?

1. Some powers require training in skills. The rogue’s Tumble power requires that you be trained in Acrobatics.
2. The rogue has been described as being able to do more with skills than other classes.
3. Mike Mearls is working on 4E mechanics. He worked on Iron Heroes, too, which allowed you to do a whole lot with skills (albeit in a way that required you to constantly reference the book lest you forget something).

Add a healthy dose of extrapolation and speculation, and my theory is born. I suspect that many classes, the rogue more so than the others no doubt, will have powers that allow you to attack, defend, and perform utility actions with your skills. It makes a lot of sense to me, and would make a characters choice of skills incredibly important. It would also give you an incentive to drop a feat on Skill Training, because that extra skill might open up a whole bunch of cool new powers for you. I would imagine that skill-based powers would be mostly the purview of the martial classes, but the other classes might benefit from these things, as well. At any rate, to continue the speculation, here are three skill-based powers that I’ve speculated right into existence. Enjoy.

Feint
Rogue Utility 1
With a quick thrust and a bit of misdirection, you cause your opponent to drop his guard momentarily.
At-Will * Martial, Weapon
Standard Action
Melee weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Bluff vs. Reflex
Hit: The target grants you Combat Advantage until the end of your next turn.

Taunt
Fighter Utility 1
With a mocking threat and a derisive laugh, you goad an enemy into an ill-advised advance.
Encounter * Martial
Minor Action
Close burst 5
Target: One creature within the burst
Attack: Intimidate vs. Will
Hit: Pull the target up to 5 squares. The target is marked until the end of your next turn.

Assassin’s Rush
Rogue Attack 1
You flourish your blade and dive headlong toward your foe, nimbly bypassing his defenses to deliver a killing blow.
Daily * Martial, Weapon
Standard Action
Melee weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Acrobatics vs. Reflex
Hit: Your opponent grants you Combat Advantage until the end of your next turn, and you may shift up to 2 squares. Make a secondary attack against the same target.
Secondary Attack: Dexterity vs. Reflex
Hit: 3[W] + Dexterity modifier damage.
Miss: Your opponent grants you Combat Advantage until the end of your next turn, and you may shift 1 square. No secondary attack.

[Edit: Martial, not Martail]

My overall impression, after an admittedly brief look, was a resounding “meh”. I didn’t see anything particularly revolutionary or interesting in the rules. They’ve tried to maximize compatibility with existing products wherever they could, which means that they’re pretty limited in what they can change. They want to fix things like player durability at low levels and slow combat at high levels, but many of the problems the seek to fix are problems inherent to the core of the system, not just subsystems that can be re-written. How can you fix slow play at higher levels without eliminating iterative attacks or doing something about spell bloat for magic users? How can you make lower-level PCs more durable without changing the way experience points are calculated and levels are gained? And if you change that, you’ll have to change things like magic item creation and spells with XP components, because the value of the experience point has suddenly changed.

Pathfinder seems to me more like a band-aid solution than a true repair; too many of the system’s flaws are in the middle of tangled webs of rules subsystems to be fixed while still maximizing compatibility with the basic rules system. You either fix the system, or you make a compatible product, but you have to choose one of the two.

Now, I’ll admit that maybe I’m wrong about this. Maybe future iterations of Pathfinder will provide more solutions to 3.5′s issues, and maybe they’ll be a little bit bolder with their mechanics. My main issue, though, is that I don’t understand who their target audience is. Those who, like me, are kind of tired of the current version of D&D and want something fresh and new that doesn’t get weighed down by its own body of rules will immediately switch to 4th Edition. We’re probably not going to buy Pathfinder. Those who don’t want 4th Edition, who think that the current rule set is fine, may be willing to try Pathfinder, but will they be willing to pay full retail price for an incremental upgrade? In most cases, probably not. The problem is that, while Paizo seeks to solve 3.5′s ills, Pathfinder doesn’t really do anything that new or exciting. It’s the same old 3.5, just a little bit different. Is it better? Hard to tell.

But really, don’t take my word for it. Follow the link at the top of this post, download the alpha (it’s totally free), and read it yourself. If nothing else, the artwork in the book is stellar.

1. Re-purposing monsters is easy. I mean, really easy. On the one hand, monsters are pretty distinct from each other, and each have unique “schticks” that differentiate them. On the other hand, it’s easy to alter those schticks a little bit, change their flavor, and leave most of the mechanics the same in order to create a monster that feels different to the PCs but takes very little work to create. Many of the creatures that my PCs fought were re-purposed in this way, largely because they were fighting a lot of ratmen, and ratmen do not appear in any of the leaked 4E monster documents. A goblin picador became a ratman lasher, complete with barbed whip. An orc raider became a ratman mutant, using claws instead of a battle-axe but attacking twice as quickly (though they never actually got to this encounter). The hobgoblin warcaster became a human mage, a cult leader of considerable oomph. I even got to use the shadar-kai chainfighter, transmogrifying it into a ratman chain-fighter and replacing one of its abilities with a chain grapple attack (which it never actually got a chance to use). I even dabbled in creating new creatures; I created a non-combatant NPC, whom the PCs were escorting. She had a weak attack with a dagger that did only 1 point of damage and she had only 10 hit points and very low defenses (she was based loosely on minion rules). She did, however, have a recharging ability that allowed her to heal allies and grant them saving throws.

2. Encounter design seems easier. Granted, I don’t know the experience point value of all of the creatures I used (and some may have been more or less powerful after modification, which may have affected their XP value), and I don’t know how much XP a level X encounter should be worth. So, I eyeballed it. I put together encounters that I thought my PCs could handle, and some of the tougher encounters I made easier by making my bad guys flee when a certain condition was met. Overall, it seemed pretty easy to create encounters by just eyeballing them, and I really think it’s going to wind up being more art than science.

Now, that’s creating an adventure. I created an adventure with six encounters total, and many of them were designed to be quite challenging. I had two players, each controlling two of the six PCs. Mike played as the cleric and the ranger, while Cary played as the paladin and the warlock. One defender, two strikers, and a leader; no controller. At first I thought this might be a problem, but my players were savvy and picked up on some of the finer points of 4E combat quickly (even Cary, who had never played 3E), and the lack of a controller didn’t seem to disrupt the balance of the game. Here are some observations on the four encounters that we got through yesterday; I’ll go encounter by encounter.

Encounter 1: Ambush!
The PCs had been hired by a local lord to escort a healer, Illyria Jeren, to the town of Amber, where a plague was killing off the townsfolk. On their way to Amber, the party was ambushed by bandits hiding in the trees on either side of the road. The PCs were not surprised, however; the ranger spotted two of them and alerted everyone else–in elven–to their presence (thank you Passive Perception). This allowed everyone to make a Perception check to scan the area, and the cleric wound up spotting three more bandits. All told, there were two bandits with maces, two archers, and a bandit leader with a hand crossbow and a rapier (based on the defiant rake). Two level 1s, two level 2s, and a level 5.

The ranger managed to get the highest initiative roll, and promptly fired an arrow at the closest archer. The paladin wasn’t so lucky; a bandit charged him and got in a good hit with his mace, both dealing damage and causing the poor paladin to be dazed for one round. The other melee bandit charged the warlock, but ended up missing. The cleric moved to protect Illyria while the warlock cursed his foe and fired an eldritch blast, dealing significant damage. The two bandit archers took shots at the paladin and the ranger, while the bandit leader came out of the trees and advanced, firing his hand crossbow at the paladin. The battle continued in a similar manner; the closest archer was eventually bloodied, at which point he turned tail and ran. Next down was one of the bandits, also bloodied, and also fleeing. In the third round of combat, an unseen ally began firing arrows at the bandit leader from hiding; nobody managed to spot him during the combat. One of the bandits was killed, while the rest fled, but not before the leader took some significant damage: a critical hit from the ranger that almost took him from full hit points to bloodied in a single shot (1 more hit point would have done it), and a well-placed witchfire from the warlock.

Afterward, the unseen ally revealed himself and introduced himself as Erik, a local hunter. A few Diplomacy and Insight checks revealed information about the bandits, and their ties to the plague and the ratmen that had begun appearing in the area.

Observations: The paladin makes a really good defender. His marking ability is pretty potent in that it deals 8 points of damage when the enemy attacks someone else, so it provides a pretty good incentive for people to focus on the paladin. Combine that with the fact that the paladin had a really high AC and plenty of hit points, and it makes him a really good defender. The ranger and the warlock both did significant damage during the fight, and were probably most directly responsible for defeating most of the enemies. The cleric, unfortunately, wasn’t rolling very well and continually missed his targets. He did get in a Healing Word, which helped the injured ranger out.

From the bandits’ side, there was some unintentional teamwork built into the group. The mace-wielding bandits had the ability to daze opponents with their charge attacks, granting all of their allies Combat Advantage against the dazed character. Every single bandit present dealt extra damage, either 1d6 or 2d6, when they had Combat Advantage. A nasty combination that never actually wound up working, because only the paladin was dazed, and only once, and only for one round, and was never hit by anyone else during that time.

Encounter 2: Abduction
The PCs made their way to Amber and were let in despite the quarantine through a combination of Erik’s vouching for them and a letter produced by Illyria proclaiming what they were there to do. They stayed at a local inn, the Traveler’s Rest, for the night, allowing them to recover fully from the bandit attack. However, during the night, they suffered another surprise attack. This time, there were four melee bandits, one bandit mage, and two ratman lashers. So, four level 1s, two level 2s, and a level 3.

The ranger, being an eladrin, had only had to enter trance for four hours in order to rest fully, so he was awake and unsurprised. Everyone else had to take time to wake up. Had I know the specific values granted by armor and shields, I would have ruled that nobody was wearing their armor; lacking those things, and for the sake of simplicity, I allowed everyone to use their armor instead. The ranger was attacked by a lasher while everyone else was assaulted in their beds by bandits. The second lasher went after Illyria, binding her with his whip and pulling her toward the stairs down. The ranger bloodied the lasher he was facing, but as soon as he saw Illyria being taken away, he used his Fey Step ability to teleport out of the room he was trapped in by the lasher. Unfortunately, the lasher escaped with Illyria while a bandit pushed the unfortunate ranger back into a corner from which he could not escape without suffering an opportunity attack.

Meanwhile, the cleric rushed out into the hallway, ignoring the bandit that had engaged him, only to be knocked prone by a spell cast by the bandit mage. The paladin did a good job keeping one of the bandits focused on him, while the warlock used Eyebite and a curse to damage her bandit and vanish from his sight. That bandit, confused, went after the paladin (suffering an opportunity attack from the warlock in the process), unknowingly increasing the paladin’s AC in the process because of his Lost in the Crowd feat.

Once the lasher escaped with Illyria, the mage made a tactical retreat, his objective accomplished, and ordered the bandits and remaining lasher to stay behind and deal with the PCs. Through some clever positioning and good teamwork, the PCs were able to make quick work of the bad guys, and pursued the kidnappers. They found out from a witness that the kidnappers had fled to the west, and had been allowed to pass by the guard manning the gate. The PCs interrogated the guard (at arrow-point), and found out that he had been bribed, and that the villains were likely heading for an abandoned temple half an hour outside of town.

Observations: Teamwork and clever positioning can grant the PCs a healthy advantage. A defender in tight quarters is a dangerous thing. Eyebite is an extremely useful power to have when you’re cornered. The ranger’s Split the Tree daily power is extremely effective when it hits. The ability to teleport is very, very useful, but not unbalancing at low levels. Cornering a ranger is pretty darned effective.

Encounter 3: The Old Temple
The PCs followed tracks in the fresh mud to the old temple, and kicked the door in. Inside the found a bandit, the bandit mage they had faced in the inn, and a ratman with a vicious-looking spiked chain. One level 1, one level 3, and a level 6.

The ranger moved to attack the mage while the paladin quickly marked the chainfighter. This turned out to be an extremely effective tactic, because the chainfighter used an ability shortly afterward that allowed him to shift six squares and attack three different targets. One of these was the paladin, but the other two attacks, against the warlock and the cleric, both missed and caused the chainfighter a total of 16 points of damage. Combine that with a well-placed curse by the warlock, as well as a very effective witchfire, and the chainfighter only lasted until the second round. Once the chainfighter was down, the bandit and the mage soon followed. This fight could have been very difficult, but some good teamwork and clever tactics made it probably the easiest fight so far.

Once the fight was over, the PCs interrogated the dying mage and learned that Illyria was being held below the temple, beyond the crypt. They also learned that the cult was known as the Children of Pestilence, and that Amber’s plague was their way of offering up the town as a ritual sacrifice to their god, Ualath the Diseased One. They also learned about the cult’s leader, the Vermin King. After the interrogation, they searched the area and found some useful magic items that they took with them, as well as some healing potions. They also used a magic circle on the floor to regenerate their wounds, rather than using up their precious healing surges.

Observations: The paladin’s Divine Challenge is extremely effective when used against an enemy that can make multiple attacks against different people.

Encounter 4: The Crypt
The PCs then descended some spiral stairs into a darkened crypt. They had a sunrod that they used for light, but the skeletons waiting within had an advantage with their darkvision. There were three skeletons and a boneshard skeleton. Three level 3s and a level 5.

The cleric used his Turn Undead power and missed, but even the miss allowed him to do half damage, and since that damage was radiant, the skeleton that he affected with it took additional damage. The skeletons weren’t all that dangerous to the PCs, just hard to hit with their high defenses. At one point the warlock provoked an opportunity attack from a skeleton, and its Speed of the Dead ability allowed it to do some extra damage.

During the second round of combat, though, the boneshard skeleton came out and did a massive amount of damage to the ranger, dropping him to -1. A little while later, a skeleton attacked the warlock and dropped her to 0. Both of these situations were quickly remedied by the cleric’s Healing Word, but the crypt was extremely confined and the skeletons definitely had some advantages on their side.

The PCs wound up winning the day, but the boneshard skeleton’s boneshard burst hit them twice in the process, once when it was bloodied and once when it finally died. Because it did necrotic damage, the PCs took full damage while the skeletons were unscathed.

Observations: The paladin and the cleric were the stars in this fight, mainly because they both had abilities that did radiant damage, which the undead creatures were vulnerable to. This seemed to be a difficult fight, not simply because the creatures themselves were challenging, but because the close quarters made it very difficult to move around, and skeletons get some nice bonuses when they make opportunity attacks.

General observations: Overall, I think it went really well. PCs are clearly capable of taking on foes several levels higher than their own level, which opens up a wide array of enemy possibilities to the DM. This also means that fights can be big, and you shouldn’t be afraid to outnumber the PCs. It also means that you can have several relatively weak enemies and a single “boss” enemy in a fight three or for levels above the PCs’ level. Terrain is both more important in 4E and easier to adjudicate than it used to be. Simple conditions like Combat Advantage, Cover, and Difficult Terrain make it easy to deal with most types of terrain, and those conditions make good yardsticks for coming up with other things, as well. It’s not difficult to run an encounter with multiple different types of creatures. From the PCs side, Healing Surges are a great addition to the game. They make healing simplified and reliable, and they allow the PCs to recover from a difficult fight in a few minutes so that they can easily go into another difficult fight relatively fresh. Overall, this, and the previous proto-4E session that I ran, have both served to make me even more excited about the actual release.

This first diary will focus on what is effectively my mission statement for the mechanics that will provide the foundation for Wild Blue. I have a number of goals in mind, and I’m going to outline them here.

1. The mechanics will be easy to learn and use. A lesson I learned with Saga was not to overcomplicate things. In one particular playtest, one of my testers was a novice gamer; he had never played a role-playing game before, and had limited experience with board games, too. Throughout the entire four-hour playtest, I had to repeatedly explain what he should do, how many dice he should roll, and why. I don’t in any way consider this to be a failing on the part of the tester; far from it, it was clearly a failing on the part of myself and the system I designed. Despite my broad-strokes approach in Saga, I had made the basic mechanics a little too complicated, and while experienced role-players and board gamers seemed able to grasp them with relative ease, a novice gamer had considerable difficulty. This is a problem I aim to avoid in Wild Blue.

2. The mechanics will allow for narrative control for the players. This is a big one. Saga had leanings in this direction, but didn’t go quite far enough. In Wild Blue, successfully resolving an action means that you get to narrate its resolution. This means that you get to decide how you succeed, and describe it. On the flip side, it also means that you can choose to fail, and if you do so, there will be some form of compensation, and not just the fact that you can choose how you fail; I mean mechanical compensation, an incentive of some sort.

3. The mechanics will allow for a wide array of character options. Saga, I think, succeeded fairly well in this regard. The skills were broad enough that you could create specialties that described your character fairly well, and traits allowed you to do this even more so. But I want to go a little bit further with this idea. There will be certain aspects of your character that are chosen from pre-defined lists, that do pre-defined things. However, the most important aspects of your character will be wholly player-created, and will be descriptive of your character. I also want drives to be a more central, more important aspect of your character.

4. The setting will inform the mechanics. Saga was deliberately generic. While I want Wild Blue’s system to have some aspect of wide applicability (I’d still like the system to be open-source), I want to have mechanics that reinforce, and are reinforced by, the setting. I don’t want to create a generic system and try to shoe-horn my setting into it, I want to create a system and a setting that are intertwined and designed with each other in mind. If the system can be used for other settings regardless, that’s just a bonus.

5. The mechanics will make it easy to be the GM. I tried to do this with Saga, and to some extent I think I succeeded, but I didn’t define things well enough for the GM. During my playtests, it was easy for me to adapt on the fly to what the players did, and to improvise challenges for them quickly and seamlessly. However, I always felt that I was fudging things to some extent. There weren’t any well-defined difficulty scales, so it was never clear how hard a given challenge should be. I want to change that in Wild Blue, and define things better so that there’s less guess-work involved in being the GM.