A few nights ago, a bunch of us got together to make characters for D&D Encounters. I like my character a lot, but it’s not what I want to talk about here. Instead, I’d like to talk about someone else’s character. My friend Bill has a son, Zack. Zack is young, and as such as few preconceptions about D&D and what is and isn’t possible within the game. This, in my estimation, is something to be commended and which should be preserved as much as possible, because as often as not it leads to really awesome ideas.

Zack’s idea was simple: he wanted to make the ultimate defender. As such, he posed the question: if you’re going to defend your allies as effectively as possible, why not give up your weapon for a shield? That’s right, he wanted to wield two shields. While not something explicitly allowed in D&D (and thus in Encounters), it is an awesome idea for a character, and as his dad is going to be DMing the game he plays in, I have a feeling it’ll be hand-waved into the game.

To make sure that happens, I’d like to help by providing some mechanical rules for using two shields.

Using Two Shields
Normally, wielding two shields is not a viable strategy. It’s awkward and unwieldy, and the shields wind up getting in each others’ way more often than not. This actually winds up making you easier to kill, and you wind up with an ineffective weapon, to boot. That said, there are those who train in this unusual style, and a true master of the Tetsudo style is a force to be reckoned with.

Tetsudo Style [Fighter]
Benefit: You can wield two shields at the same time, and you gain the full shield bonus to AC from both. Wielding two shields makes it difficult to perform feats of agility, though, so you suffer the full armor penalty for both shields, as well. In addition, you can use either shield as a weapon in the hammer category. As a weapon, a light shield has a +2 proficiency bonus and deals 1d6 damage, while a heavy shield has a +2 proficiency bonus and deals 1d8 damage.

Buffeting Force [Fighter]
Prerequisites: Tetsudo Style
Benefit: Whenever you make a successful attack with a shield against an opponent granting combat advantage to you, you may choose to push the target 1 square and knock it prone. If you do, the target takes half damage from the attack.

Unbreakable Shell [Fighter]
Prerequisites: Tetsudo Style
Benefit: When you are wielding two shields and take a full defense action or take your second wind, you gain resist 5 to all damage until the start of your next turn.

Frequent commenter mbeacom gives us is first guest post today. Those of you who’ve followed recent comments might know where this post is going, but I encourage you to read it anyway. Mbeacom does a great job explaining his own little house rule, and backs it up with a lot of, well, awesome stuff!

Marcelo Dior wrote a wonderful column last month on speeding up combat in 4E. It took the bold position of questioning whether or not speeding up 4th edition combat is really as vital as internet message boards would have you believe. It really got me thinking, and based on Marcelo’s well reasoned treatment of the subject, I’d wager it did the same for a lot you.

So I asked myself, “Do I need to speed up combat?”. A year ago, you’d have heard me give a resounding, “YES!”. I was still youthful in my experience as a DM in 4E, having spent most of my time running far simpler versions of the game decades ago. I was a strong proponent of gridless combat and theater of the mind. I avowed collaborative storytelling and eschewed what I understood at the time to be a heavily mechanical design shift underpinning all of 4E’s combat. To put it simply, I thought combat took too long. And, embarrassingly, I endeavored to recreate the combat of previous editions in my 4E game.

A year and several gaming groups later, I’ve come to different conclusions. My understanding of the workings of 4E and its “underpinnings” has changed markedly over that timeframe (much thanks to Brian Engard and this great site in helping with this). I’ve seen all sorts of gamers chew on the rules and spit out wildly different results. I’ve learned that not only is beauty in the eye of the beholder but so too is “speedy combat” in the eye of the gaming group. While one group might grind to a halt at the 45 minute mark, another would burst into the second hour full of energy. I started to put things together and came to some conclusions. These conclusions have lead me to make changes to my own games. In this article, I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to share one of them with you.

The most successful initiative I’ve tried over the multiple gaming groups I’ve run 4E for has been what I call, “The AWESOME card”. It was derived as a response to something I noticed happening at every table I ran for and played at in the 4E era. Players would flip through their character sheet scouring over their juicy powers and feats. The funny thing is, they would do this in an almost unspoken effort to find something that wasn’t there. I could see the looks on their faces almost as if to say, “Hmmm, this looks good, but not quite right”, or “Oooh, I like that one but I better save it for later”. To this, I wanted to shout out, “NO! your character sheet doesn’t have the answer!” “Just do something AWESOME!” That’s when it hit me. What SHOULD they do? Did the awesomeness potential of the character begin and end during the process of choosing powers? I certainly hoped that wasn’t the case. So I decided if they couldn’t find that “perfect” power on their character sheet, I’d help them make one up on the fly. And when they did so, I’d reward the effort with a power card of my own, something that says, “You did something creative and entertaining and we all enjoyed it!” I’d give them and “AWESOME! Card”.

Lead By Example

My first step towards insinuating this new “mechanic” into my game was to demonstrate what was possible. As a DM, I started really describing the actions of the enemies. I’d tumble around opportunity attacks and one enemy might leap on the shoulders of another as they both got combat advantage positioning before falling prone in a heap on the floor. My players were initially stumped as as I bent the rules to the breaking point and played up the strengths and weaknesses of the enemies they faced. But it didn’t take long for the craftiest of my players to return the favor. He asked if he could “try” something and my eyes lit up. I was prepared to say yes to my own execution at that point. His idea was great. It was well within the “exception” based rule system of 4E and when he was finished, everyone was impressed. Immediately, they were looking over at his character sheet for something they had missed. We had all visualized an action that was significantly more interesting than “State power, role dice, announce damage”. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes, that’s exactly what needs to be done, but in general, flavoring things up can be a lot more fun.

After he completed his epic turn, I looked to the next person in initiative order and said, “Well, what are YOU going to do?” And to this day, we’ve never looked back. Recently, one of my players informed me, he doesn’t even look at his list of powers anymore, except to try to find some mechanics that make sense for what he wants to do.
I said to him, “GREAT!”

Reinforce The Awesomeness of The Players

Ok, so you’ve shown your players what “awesome” looks like and they’ve even tried it themselves. Isn’t that enough? Sadly, I wish it were so. Unfortunately, with 4E combat being very tactical with powers that make life so easy by telling you essentially what 6 actions are available to a character, it’s easy to fall back into old less-exciting habits. That’s where the AWESOME! Cards come in. Each time one of my players does something really creative, clever, or simply entertaining to the group, I hand him or her an “Awesome” card. It’s essentially just a reformatted homebrew power card that says some funny things and gives a reward. A few examples of the rewards are that perhaps you get to reroll a missed attack, regain a healing surge, recharge an encounter power, or even roll a special giant D30 that I keep around for fun.

These concrete mechanical rewards make the creativity feel that much more awesome. Players feel a sense of achievement more frequently through the course of the combat. This breaks up the work and reward cycle that comes from working hard to achieve a goal. If they work for 1 hour to achieve a goal (defeating the enemy, surviving, escaping), things can get stale because this one singular goal takes a long time to achieve and no single action stands out as making the achievement possible. Then when they finally achieve it, it can feel almost anticlimactic. However, if there are smaller intermediate goals that can be achieved, it removes the sense of slowdown one can get as combat draws toward the hour mark. The bite sized bits of greatness keep things surging forward and keep everyone entertained as each player tries to find some fun thing to do rather than decide which power would be the most effective at that time. The players worry about their characters and what they would actually do, rather calculating the most DPR possible. Now, if you LOVE calculating DPR or dropping mind numbing Novas, that’s great, there’s no “right” way to play D&D. But I’m of the mind that 5 people calculating DPR is generally not going to be as entertaining to watch over an extended period. (although Novas can be pretty amazing) Now, if you want to calculate DPR as well as do amazingly creative things, then I’m all for it. That’s what I would describe as “winning” D&D.

Other benefits

The last thing I’ve noticed since I’ve started using AWESOME! cards with all my groups is that the players’ interaction with the game world seems to be more under their control. What does that mean exactly? To be honest, it’s hard to explain. These awesome cards work much like an Action Point, in that you choose to use it when you feel it would be most beneficial or interesting. This gives the players more agency; more depth in how they can control the game they get to play. And, in the case of the re-roll awesome card, it keeps the dice rolling. Nothing I’ve seen has greater impact than getting that high die roll when you’re really in a crunch. Nothing is more devastating than when you get just the opposite. With a re-roll card in your pocket, you can more frequently experience the best of both worlds. You can fail spectacularly and still have a shot at saving your hide. You have more chances for those elusive crits. In the end, it just gives you that much more reason to do something fun, entertaining, and NOT predetermined by a character generator.

So this brings us back to the initial question posed by Marcelo. DO we need to speed up 4E combat? I think the answer is a resounding . . . not necessarily. Combat really only needs to be sped up if it’s too slow. It’s only too slow if it lasts longer than your players interest and it will mostly likely only last longer than your players interest if something isn’t happening during combat to pique that interest. Well, I’m here to assert that finding ways (one is via in-game rewards) to incent players to entertain themselves and each other through their characters actions. A side benefit of this is that it takes a lot of load off the Dungeon Master as entertainer. It also helps make the game more fun for him or her, as well as everyone at the table. And, isn’t that it’s all about?

When Essentials was being marketed to us, it was marketed as a faster, easier version of D&D (for the most part). To some extent this is true; making an Essentials character is easier than in standard D&D, due primarily to the limited set of options compared to the vast array of abilities available in standard D&D. Some classes, also, are easier to run because they are simpler versions of the standard D&D versions.

That said, some people I game with thought it would be a different beast, not so similar to the D&D they already knew. Once those people started playing Gamma World with me, they told me that they thought it would be nice if Essentials had been more like Gamma World: fast, mostly random character generation, simplified rules, quick(ish) combats. It got me thinking: what if someone were to create a version of D&D based on Gamma World, using its rules where possible and adding things from D&D when necessary. This “D&D Lite” would be a quick-starting, simple, lean version of D&D, ideal for pickup games and one-shots.

Core Assumptions
Mechanically, there are some things I’m going to assume about D&D Lite. In general, the rules will follow those of Gamma World. There is a simplified set of conditions and keywords, there are no feats, character generation can be mostly random, if that is preferred, though selection of race and class are not out of the question.

Magic items will play somewhat less of a role in D&D Lite. I envision them being more similar to Omega Tech cards, acting as limited-use encounter powers more than magic items proper. As in Gamma World, one’s level will be added to just about everything, to compensate for the lack of magic item bonuses.

Alpha mutations are a key component of Gamma World, but such a mechanic does not fit into D&D Lite. Instead, class- or race-based encounter powers will be introduced as players level up.

There will be a very limited set of races and classes; these will take the place of origins in Gamma World. I’m thinking eight of each, so that a d8 can be rolled for random generation, with the player choosing whether race or class is primary. For races, I’m thinking: human, elf, dwarf, halfling, half-elf, tiefling, dragonborn, and eladrin. For classes: fighter, rogue, cleric, wizard, paladin, warlock, druid, and bard. Each origin will have one novice power, one utility power, one expert power, and a handful of journeyman powers. Journeyman powers will allow for some variation between characters of the same race or class, and will take the place of Alpha mutations. There will likely be three journeyman powers per origin, and any time a player gets access to a new journeyman power, that player will get to choose one of the remaining powers from either origin.

As in Gamma World, the level cap is at 10; however, I’m thinking that players will use the D&D experience point chart rather than the quicker Gamma World chart.

Next Up: A race origin and a class origin!

First, I’ll tell you: I really like the way guns are handled in Gamma World. They’re better than standard ranged weapons (light guns are more accurate, heavy guns do more damage), but they require ammo. If you use your gun more than once in an encounter, you’ll be out of ammo at the end of the encounter, while if you use it only once, you’ll still have ammo. Simple, requires little book-keeping, and fairly cinematic. That said, there are a couple of things missing.

Automatic Weapons
Guns are, by default, single-target weapons. That can be described as firing a burst at a single target, but in the game there’s no way to model spraying at an entire area. Luckily, there’s a pretty simple fix.

If you have a gun that would logically be able to spray an area (a submachine gun or assault rifle, for example), you can make an attack that targets a burst 1 within the gun’s range, with a -2 penalty to attack. It targets all creatures within the burst, and if you do it, you’ll be out of ammo at the end of the encounter (so you might as well go for broke). This is, however, an encounter power; it uses up most of your ammo.

Grenades and Grenade Launchers
A couple of the monsters in the game have grenades or grenade launchers on them. The creatures, themselves, contain rules for them using these weapons in the form of powers. They do not, however, detail what happens when a player takes a grenade launcher off of a fallen enemy.

Per the rules, it would probably just be a heavy gun of some sort; that, however, is somewhat unsatisfying. Instead, I’d be inclined to make a grenade launcher statistically equivalent to a heavy two-handed gun, except that it targets a burst 2 within 10 squares (attacking all creatures within the burst). In addition, grenade launchers do not run off of generic ammo the way other guns do. You should track the number of grenades you have, and each use of a grenade launcher uses one of them up (it’s also a minor action to load a grenade into the launcher; it can only hold one at a time).

You might even use rules for different types of grenades. Concussion grenades might have a knockdown effect and some forced movement, while incendiary grenades deal ongoing 5 fire damage (save ends).

For thrown grenades I’d use similar rules, except that I’d cut the range of the thrown weapon down to 5 squares, and I’d make it a one-handed weapon (though I’d keep the accuracy and damage the same).

I had this idea earlier, when a friend of mine said he wanted to play a gunslinger in Gamma World. I told him anyone could use guns, but he said “No, I want to be a GUNSLINGER.” Presumably, the kind that hunts the Dark Tower and carries big, sandalwood revolvers. As I was figuring out how to give him what he wanted, I came up with the idea of motifs.

A motif is what you use when you have a very specific character concept in mind. It eliminates some of the randomness of character generation, effectively choosing a specific origin, and then replacing some of its abilities and reflavoring some of its powers. You do, however, get to play the character you have in your head (though you’ll still have to roll for your second origin, as normal).

Gunslinger
Your cold, hard eyes promise death to those who get in your way.
This motif is a replacement for the Speedster origin. It uses all of the Speedster’s game rules, except as followed.

Line of Eld (replaces Just a Blur): Gain a +1 bonus to Will and a +4 bonus to Interaction checks made to threaten or intimidate.
Always Prepared (replaces Blinding Speed): At the end of any encounter in which you would be out of ammo, roll a d20. On a roll of 10+, you are not out of ammo.
Novice Power: Run and Gun: As Quick Attack, except that it must be made with a gun.
Utility Power: Roll for Cover: As Whizzer, except that you shift half your speed, and if you have cover or superior cover at the end of the shift, the bonus to defenses increases by +1 until the start of your next turn.
Expert Power: Hail of Lead: As Swift Pummel, except that it must be used with a gun, each attack can target a different creature, and the to-hit bonus is Dexterity + your level + weapon accuracy.

If you really want to model Roland Deschain, pair this origin and motif with Engineered Human.

It’s no secret that 4th Edition D&D has a lot of powers available for PCs. Many of these powers do extraordinary things, such as creating fire, transforming people from one thing to another, or teleporting a person instantaneously. In any game, it pays to think about how the existence of certain powers or types of powers might affect the world at large; how might laws change, for example, if people are capable of hurling fireballs and summoning lightning bolts?

This particular post is going to focus on teleportation. In D&D, most teleportation powers are the purview of either PCs (who do not represent the norm in a D&D world), or powerful monsters (again, not the norm). This makes teleportation, at large, relatively rare. However, there is one form of teleportation that is much more common: namely, every eladrin in the world is capable of fey stepping multiple times per day.

What happens, then, when an eladrin must be incarcerated? Since he could just teleport out of the cell and escape (or even out of his manacles before he’s put in the cell), some sort of safeguard must be in place. In the world of Eberron, there is a working class of minor mages known as magewrights. These magewrights light magical lanterns, create minor magical goods, and so forth. Perhaps this concept makes sense in any D&D world that includes a sizeable number of eladrin, if only so that jails, banks, jewelry stores, and so forth can be warded against teleportation on a regular basis. Another possiblity is that, perhaps, there are magically treated manacles that prevent the wearer from teleporting.

Terrain Effect: Teleportation Ward
A teleportation ward is usually used to protect a room filled with valuable or dangerous goods, the room of an important individual, or a jail cell. At heroic tier, it is a 5×5 area; at paragon, it is a 10×10 area; and at epic, it is a 15×15 area. Any power with the teleportation keyword used within the area still creates any non-teleportation effects, but any teleportation effects fail to work. A teleportation ward can be suppressed with an Arcana check (hard DC, standard action); if this is done, it is suppressed until the end of the character’s next turn.

Magic Item: Anchor Manacles
Level 1 Wondrous Item (360 gp)
Anchor manacles are used to prevent prisoners from teleporting, and are frequently used when incarcerating eladrin and other fey creatures. Any creature wearing a set of anchor manacles cannot teleport. A creature can escape from a pair of anchor manacles with an Athletics or Thievery check (hard DC, standard action).

I really like the idea of skill challenges; I like that they add some structure to what otherwise might be hard to quantify with mechanics. I like that they provide a framework that allows the DM to know how to adjudicate things outside of combat, and how to reward non-combat encounters. However, I’ve run skill challenges–and seen skill challenges run–and I’m often underwhelmed by the results. I feel that the Rules Compendium provides a lot of good advice on how to run and create skill challenges; the example of play does a great job of illustrating how they can be run well.

I think that one of the main reasons why a lot of DMs are confused as to how to run a skill challenge is because of the way they’ve been structured in print up to this point. A skill challenge is generally structured to start with the goal of the skill challenge, then a list of primary and secondary skills that can be used, then the consequences for success and failure. While this structure is functional from a mechanical standpoint, I think it’s misleading. It implies that skill challenges should be run in a far more mechanical way, with far more black and white actions, than I feel that they really should be. I’m of the opinion that skill challenges should be run in a very organic, roleplay-driven way, with the players driving the action and the skills that are used, and the DM reacting and narrating appropriately. Rather than talk more about it, I’m going to provide an example of how to write a skill challenge to encourage this style of play.

Murder Investigation

(Complexity 2; 6 successes before 3 failures)
Setup: The PCs have arrived at a local inn to talk to a contact of theirs. However, upon arrival they have discovered that the contact has been murdered!
Goal: Investigate the murder scene and see where it leads.
Possible Actions
Analyzing the Scene (Suggested skills: Perception, Insight, Heal)
The players can look for clues, examine the body, and make inferences based on what they find. They can discover the following information by analyzing the scene, using moderate to hard DCs.

• The lock on the victim’s door has been picked by someone extremely skilled.
• The victim was killed using a curved, sacrificial knife.
• A few smears of trailed blood indicate that the murderer left through the window.

Questioning Witnesses (Suggested skills: Diplomacy, Intimidate, Bluff, Insight)
The inkeeper, Tam, can provide some information.

• Three patrons, other than the victim, were in the bar last night: a young elven woman, an older human man named Brek, and a male gnome (easy DC).
• One of the patrons–the elven woman, left the bar, but Tam never saw her leave (moderate to hard DC).

In addition, a passerby is able to provide some additional information.

• A slender figure was seen hurrying away from the bar, toward the docks, late last night (moderate to hard DC).

Success: Each successful skill check should provide one piece of the information above. If the PCs succeed in the skill challenge, they also learn that the elven woman (whom they should realize by now is probably the murderer) was seen boarding a ship called the Sea Bird late last night. The Sea Bird left early this morning, headed for a nearby town upriver. If the PCs hurry, they can make it to that town in time to find the elven woman. In addition, they get a general description of the woman.
Failure: Each failed skill check provides one of the following pieces of false information.

• The window was broken from the outside.
• The victim was killed early in the evening, before the elven woman left.
• The gnome is a known ruffian and scoundrel.

In addition, the PCs find out the above information about the Sea Bird if they continue to investigate the elven woman, but by the time they discover this information, it’s likely that they won’t make it to the next town in time to catch her.

There are a number of things in D&D that I hand-wave because they’re too fiddly for their own good, and because they don’t add much to the fun of the game except in very specific circumstances. There are ways to handle these elements, though, that stay somewhat truer to their intent than ignoring them, but still allow for enough abstraction at the table that you aren’t bogged down accounting for every arrow, pound, or ration.

Encumbrance
Encumbrance was really the first thing to go when I started playing D&D. Adding up the total weight that you’re carrying every time you make a change to your inventory just isn’t that much fun, and I’m not convinced that it adds all that much to the game. Occasionally weight will become important, such as when the party is schlepping a giant, solid-gold statue, or when they’re crossing a rickety rope bridge, or when the party’s rogue is trying to haul the clumsy fighter up over the lip of a cliff that he just failed to climb over; in those cases, I do a sort of quick-and-dirty weight assessment, looking mainly at the big things that a player has in his inventory and guesstimating weight based on that.

If you want space limitations to be an issue, there’s a quick fix that you can use. Note that the kernel of this idea is borrowed from Mouse Guard, which in turn probably borrowed the idea from games like Diablo. The idea is that you have a certain number of lines for inventory on your character sheet, you can write one item on each line, and once you’re out of lines you can’t carry any more.

There are ways to modify this system and make it a little bit more robust for D&D. For example, I’d probably expand it to say that magic items in your item slots (head, neck, rings, etc.) don’t take up space in your inventory area. I might also limit you to a certain number of “big” items (like suits of armor) equal to your Strength bonus (again, not including worn items). I might also allow for a “stacking” mechanic, whereby small items of the same or similar types (like potions or ammunition) can occupy the same line in your inventory, provided you don’t go over a certain cap. Finally, I’d allow for items like a bag of holding or a handy haversack to add additional lines to your inventory, making those items considerably more useful.

Ammunition
Ammunition is another rule that I mostly ignore. There’s an archer ranger in my group, and we don’t worry too much about how many arrows he has; arrows are so cheap that I have no problem assuming that he’s replenishing his supply in town whenever he’s there, or making his own for that matter, and tracking individual arrows doesn’t make the game any more fun for anyone. When it comes to the fighter’s throwing hammers, I’m a little more inclined to keep track, but that’s a slightly different case.

If you’re keen on the idea of the ranger running out of arrows at a dramatic moment, but you don’t want to force him to track his ammo, there’s a way you can do that fairly easily. This is a combination of the ammo rules from Gamma World (which I haven’t yet read) and the weapon breakage rules from Dark Sun (which I also haven’t yet read).

The idea is that, if you use a ranged weapon (not a thrown weapon, which I’d be more inclined to track normally), such as a bow, crossbow, or sling, you have an item called “arrows”, “bolts”, or “bullets”, depending on what you’re using. You either have this item or you don’t, and as long as you have it you can use your ranged weapon as much as you want to. Whenever you roll a natural 1, though, you have a choice: keep the result, or re-roll it and run out of ammo. This has the benefit of allowing the ranger to run out of arrows, but putting the decision largely in that player’s hands.

Because arrows, bolts, and bullets are so cheap, and because it’s reasonable to assume that someone who relies heavily on such a weapon would know how to fashion his or her own ammunition, I’d probably allow a player to replenish his ammunition during a short rest, provided he had reasonable access to materials (including expended but salvageable ammunition strewn about the battlefield, and ammunition taken from enemies’ corpses).

Rations and Overland Travel
I generally don’t worry about whether or not the PCs have enough food and supplies to get them from point A to point B. Similarly, I also usually just improvise a time frame for travel; often the destination is the point, and the journey is just flavor text between story points. However, sometimes it’s useful to track these things. I’m going to be starting a segment of my campaign soon that allows for a more “open world” approach to the game, and the PCs are going to be somewhat stranded in an environment that is somewhat hostile. It increases the drama to threaten them with things like starvation and exposure, but I don’t necessarily want them to track how much water they have, how much food they have, and whether or not they have firewood or flint and steel.

Instead, I’m using a mechanic that borrows from both Dark Sun and from Gabriel’s campaign notes over at Penny Arcade. I’ve taken the overland map of the area that this part of the campaign takes place in, and overlayed a hex map on top of it. I’ve decided that, in a given day, the party has three movement points, each of which will take them through one hex on the map. Challenging or rough terrain, such as mountains, requires an additional hex of travel to enter, while a road allows them to move one additional hex for free.

In order to replenish their movement points, the party has to take an extended rest; when they take an extended rest, they use up one day of survival gear per person. Now, survival gear can be replenished in a couple of ways. First, they can buy it in town; typically a day of survival gear will cost about 5 gold pieces, though this price may go up in smaller towns or towns that are hostile to the PCs. They can also hunt for survival gear. Doing so requires a Nature check (or a similar skill, if justification can be made) with a DC depending on the surrounding area. Success gets one day of survival gear per person participating in the foraging (multiple people can participate using the Aid Another rules), plus one additional day (total, not per person) for every 5 points by which the check exceeded the DC. Hunting has a cost, though; it costs time, represented by the fact that hunting and foraging reduces the party’s movement points for that day by one. If the party fails the check, they can try again, at the cost of another movement point.

Skills are, at least in my experience, an often under-utilized aspect of D&D. The system, itself, does a good job of being flexible, yet defining the capabilities of your character in a fairly concrete way; however, people often don’t think to use their skills in the middle of an encounter. There’s a bit of a disconnect, really; I think that many people fall into the mindset that powers are the things you use in a fight, while skills are the things you use at other times. Really, this doesn’t have to be true.

Many skills, if not all of them, have a number of potential uses in combat. The trouble is that, while books like the Rules Compendium do a good job of defining what you can do with skills, they don’t necessarily give you an incentive to do so. The game really does a great job of giving the DM tools with which to adjudicate improvised actions (which is really what skills are for in combat), but it doesn’t give the players enough reason to do so. The benefits of improvising some cool or off-the-wall action are left largely up to the DM; mostly, I think that’s fine. I do feel, though, that some sort of baseline should be established, so that players can have an idea of what they’ll get if they succeed in pulling something cool off with their skills.

That’s where stunts come in. Simply put, a stunt is some improvised action that typically requires a successful skill check to pull off. The nature of a given stunt is left up to the player to come up with; the player decides what his or her character is using, and may even decide what skill is being used. The DM decides what the specific benefit of the stunt is, if it’s pulled off (though the player can and should have input into the specifics). What this system is designed to do is to provide that baseline, to allow players to get a good idea of what they’ll get if they do something cool and improvised with their skills.

Stunts
When a player wants to pull off a stunt, that player tells the DM what he or she wants to do. The player and the DM then work together to decide what skill should be used, what type of action the stunt is, and what the benefit of the stunt is. Generally, the base benefit is going to be determined by the action type (minor, move, or standard), and is modified by the risk factor of the stunt (low risk or high risk), as well as the stunt’s X factor (how cool the stunt is).

Minor Action Stunts: These are typically stunts that are performed as part of another action, and that require a little bit of extra effort. A minor action stunt can also be a quick action that is used to assist another action. Using Insight to predict an opponent’s attack, using Perception to find a gap in the dragon’s scales, or using a Dungeoneering check to determine which part of the wall is the weakest are all examples of a minor action stunt. Benefit: A minor action stunt typically carries with it a small bonus to the action it is associated with. A +1 to attack or +2 to damage is appropriate, as is a +1 to one or more defenses, +2 to a skill check, or +1 to speed. These bonuses should increase by tier, usually by +1 or +2 per tier (depending on the base bonus).

Move Action Stunts: Using a move action to perform a stunt typically implies that you’re moving in some non-standard way. Using Acrobatics or Athletics to run along a wall, Endurance to crash through a door, or Insight or Perception to run across a weak or unstable surface (or even water!) are all good examples. Benefit: A move action stunt can be used to increase the user’s speed by +2 or +3, ignore difficult or hindering terrain, or gain a movement type that you don’t actually have for a brief time (such as a fly speed or burrow speed). This last benefit usually comes at a cost of a lowered speed or some other restriction; for example, swinging on a chandelier might give you a fly speed, but might cut your speed in half and require that you use your fly speed in a specific area.

Standard Action Stunts: Standard action stunts are usually used to make special attacks. They can be used in place of or in conjunction with an attack power, though using a standard action stunt in conjunction with an existing power is typically much harder. Using Perception to take deadly aim, using Thievery to throw sand in an enemy’s eyes, or using Athletics to perform a flying tackle off of a cliff are all good examples. Benefit: Typically, a standard action stunt is used to cause a condition of some sort–such as blinded, stunned, or ongoing damage–either instead of damage or in addition to damage. Forced movement is also an option. Typically a standard action stunt isn’t used to add extra damage to an attack (that can be covered with a minor action), though it can be used to turn a single-target attack into a multi-target attack.

Risk Factors: A stunt is either high risk or low risk. A low risk minor action stunt typically provides the benefit listed above, while the high risk version can provide up to double that benefit. Low risk move action stunts typically increase speed or limit the effect of difficult terrain or obstacles, while high risk stunts provide additional movement types or can even be used to ignore hindering terrain like acid or lava. Low risk standard action stunts typically have an effect in place of damage or an attack power’s effect, while a high risk stunt allows one to add an effect to an existing attack.

In general, low risk stunts have little penalty for failure; failing to perform the stunt simply negates the benefit of the stunt. This can have the effect of making your intended movement or attack impossible or impractical, though. High risk stunts often carry significant consequences for failure, such as damage, conditions, and so forth. Note that high risk stunts often have higher DCs than low risk stunts, though this is not necessary; it’s entirely possible to have a low risk but very difficult stunt, or a high risk but fairly easy stunt (though these latter stunts should be rare).

X Factor: This is reserved for stunts that are particularly cool or fun. If a stunt makes everyone at the table say, “Wow!”, then it should get an X Factor bonus. When you provide such a bonus, it can either be in the form of reduced difficulty for the stunt, itself (reducing a hard DC to a moderate DC, for example), thus making it more likely to succeed, or leaving the DC as is and increasing the benefit o the stunt (doubling the damage bonus provided, for example).

Let me get this out of the way: I love minions. They’re one of my favorite 4e mechanics, for a variety of reasons. I like that I can attack the party with a horde of enemies and not overwhelm them. I like that I can easily model weak enemies that are easy to kill, and put them alongside tougher enemies. I also like that I have a way to build an encounter that allows the players to feel like badasses, as they hew through enemy after enemy, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake.

There are, however, other ways to use minions. Minions, when properly designed, can be used to create en element of the encounter that can be a significant consideration, or even a significant threat. The trick is to find a mechanic or an idea that will force your players to alter their tactics in response, and then build your minions around that mechanic or idea, allowing them to exploit or even drive it. I’m a firm believer that it’s easier to tell someone how to do something by showing them, so I’m going to insert a few minions of my own as examples, and I’ll talk about each one and what its purpose on the battlefield is.

Exploding Goblins

A standard goblin stripped of any weapons and strapped to a cask of gunpowder, the exploding goblin is a creature that is a nuisance when it’s alive, but deadly when you kill it. The creature becomes particularly deadly when you’re surrounded by them, as one goblin killed could result in a cascading explosion that does massive amounts of damage. Under normal circumstances, bursts and blasts are great for taking out large numbers of minions, and minions die within the first two rounds of combat. With these minions, the question becomes: do we try to take a bunch of them out at once, and risk being damaged by the ensuing explosion, or leave them around to hamper us and crowd around us? In the latter case, there’s the risk that the enemy will exploit their exploding nature, killing one or two of them once they’ve crowded around the group.

Phase Beasts

The phase beast is a large, dog-like creature native to the Feywild. The idea behind the phase beast is to create a minion that doesn’t deal any direct damage (though it can move people into environmental hazards), but causes all sorts of headaches for the PCs while it’s around. Being teleported and dazed can be a real nuisance, meaning that these creatures, even though they don’t pose much of a direct threat, are likely to be targets early. The problem is, once a phase beast is killed, it tears a hole in space that lasts for the entire encounter. This modifies the battlefield, creating a 3×3 area that is difficult to get through. Artillery, controllers, and other squishy, ranged monsters can hide behind these rifts, and because the DM gets to choose the destination of the teleport effect, they can even use them for rapid transportation across the battlefield.

Use effects like this sparingly; an encounter with six phase beasts could quickly create a battlefield that is extremely difficult to navigate (if not impossible), turning the encounter into a frustrating grind. Creatures like this can spice up a fight, causing players to make interesting decisions during the fight, but two or three is generally plenty. Alternatively, you could use a large number of them, but tone down their Spacial Rift power to affect a single square, or to end after a single turn. As an aside, using minions like this can make wizards happy that they took powers like Dispel Magic.

Prophecy Motes

Tiny motes of white light that are actual fragments of a living prophecy, a prophecy mote’s only goal is to impart knowledge of the prophecy to other creatures. I used these creatures in an encounter a while back, and they require the encounter to be built around them in order to avoid a total party kill. The thing to remember about these creatures is that, no matter how many you kill, more are always coming. Because of this, the party will eventually get overwhelmed by them unless you give them a way to stop the prophecy motes from spawning, as well as to get rid of the ones that are already there. In the encounter I ran, the party had to, one by one, examine a prophecy mark on the ground and learn their role in the prophecy; only then would the motes leave them alone.

Using mechanics like this can turn a combat encounter into a puzzle. Unlike many puzzles, however, this one is structured in rounds like a combat, and has an escalating consequence for not solving the puzzle. Creatures like the prophecy mote are not suitable for most encounters, but work well when they are the focus of some sort of puzzle.

Eladrin Guards

There are very few minions that mark, and with good reason: minions tend to crumple pretty easily, and tend not to hit very hard. However, minions that mark can be used to create interesting decisions for players, particularly if those minions punish severely for defying the mark. The best way to use a minion like the eladrin guard is to have him target strikers; to help him achieve this end, the eladrin guard is a bit more mobile than most soldiers, able to teleport past the defenders to get at the strikers in the back ranks, as well as pursue those strikers across the battlefield. This gives the striker an interesting choice: do I use my considerable damage to hurt a regular monster, thus incurring a penalty and an attack, or do I waste my damage on a minion? Unlike other soldiers, these minions work well in larger groups, so that they can spread their marks around and force other interesting decisions: namely, whose marks are most important to eliminate?