I’ve been playing with the newest update of the Monster Builder, which incorporates the new rules and format from Monster Manual 3. I like the update a lot. At any rate, here’s an old friend for all you Eberron fans out there.

I just got done playing a game of Magic: The Gathering with my wife. It was awesome. See, we got all of the theme decks for Rise of the Eldrazi, and we’ve been playing around with them some. The thing that I like a lot about the Eldrazi decks is that they do a good job of bridging the gap between theme decks and deck building.

We’ve tried our hand at deck building in the past, and the results were never particularly gratifying; we’ve always had a lot more fun playing with pre-built theme decks. The nice thing about the Eldrazi decks is that they come with a 41-card, pre-built theme deck, as well as a booster pack. We bought all five theme decks, and spread the booster pack cards amongst them all, effectively getting five decks that are mostly pre-built and designed with a lot of synergy in mind, but with some level of customization.

At any rate, our most recent game lasted more than an hour. My deck was red/green, while hers was blue/white. We spent most of the game at a stalemate, having creatures in play that effectively countered each other and discouraged attacking from either side. Occasionally one of us would get the upper hand for a little bit and make a push for the win, but such an advantage only lasted for a round or two at most before the other player got the right cards to counter the push.

We also spent most of the game at the same life point totals: she had 7, and I had 30. I had drawn some nice healing cards that had topped me up beyond 20, and she had suffered from some early attacks on my part before her defenses had really been shored up. Despite this seeming advantage on my part, she wound up winning the game in brilliant style. My heaviest hitters had been affected by Narcolepsy, a blue card that causes them to remain tapped indefinitely. I had some good blockers, but nothing that could really deal significant damage. Add to that the fact that she had some serious blockers–including one creature that was, I think, 5/12 by the end of the game–and I just couldn’t get through to deal those last 7 points of damage.

Then, she lured me into a trap. She moved a Narcolepsy card from one of my powerful, durable fliers to a powerful but fragile creature that I was less likely to attack with. That creature had a card called Splinter Twin on it, though, meaning that I could create a short-lived duplicate of that card every round and attack with it, even if it was always tapped. Puzzled, I decided to capitalize on what I perceived as a tactical error on her part (or her simply wanting the game to be over), and I attacked with my 7/1 Fire Boar and my 5/5 Conquering Manticore. She had 6 hit points at this point. She blocked the Fire Boar by letting one of her 2/2 creatures die, but let the Manticore through, bringing her down to 1 life point. I thought I had the game well in hand at that point; after all, I still had 30 life points.

Then, she played her ace in the hole, a card she had been sand-bagging since the beginning of the game: Near-Death Experience. It’s a card that’s very situationally useful, and hard to use effectively. Quite simply, it’s a sorcery that dictates that, if you have exactly 1 life point, you win. Which she did.

All in all, it was probably the best game of Magic I’ve ever played. So often in Magic, the strategy of the game is hampered by one player having too much or too little mana, restricting their ability to play effectively. That wasn’t really the case in this game. There was a lot of push and pull, give and take, and even though our life point totals were pretty far apart, there was a clear sense that it was anyone’s game most of the time; we were just waiting for someone to get a trump card. I assumed that it would be me: my deck was heavy on Eldrazi–large, high-cost, extremely powerful creatures that force you to discard permanents willy-nilly when they attack you–and I figured I’d eventually draw one and that would be that. I was not counting on Near-Death Experience (a card that came from a booster pack, by the way), and my wife used that to her advantage brilliantly. If only all games of Magic could be this epic.

Mike’s D&D Blog has an interesting post on a terrain effect from past editions that’s fallen by the wayside in the current edition: anti-magic zones. I think that, with anti-magic zones, you’d want to be very careful not to make them too big. A 2×2 area on the battlefield would be fine, and you might be able to get away with a little more, but probably not much larger.

One of the things you have to remember is that, if all you’re stuck with is basic attacks, your turn is likely to be a little on the boring side. In addition, if you happen to be one of the many classes that do not rely overmuch on Strength (for melee basic attacks) or Dexterity (for ranged basic attacks), your basic attacks are not going to be very effective. Overusing an effect like this could make an encounter both longer and less fun if not employed carefully.

As an alternative, I’d put rather use a Wild Magic Zone, and I might even key it to a particular power source. This way, rather than simply nerfing a character in the zone, you give them a choice: go with the basic attack that reliable but not that effective, or gamble a bit with a power that might be a lot more effective than normal, a lot less effective, or possibly even harmful to the party. A zone that, for example, randomly either increases or decreases the size of bursts and blasts, or causes attacks to occasionally target random creatures within the zone rather than their intended target, might be considerably more fun than a zone that simply shuts down your options.

I actually used something similar to this effect in my most recent session. The first encounter took place in a room in which there was a conduit to the Far Realm, which was bending time and space in strange ways. It had two effects. First, any burst or blast in the area had a 25% chance of increasing its size by 1d4 squares, as well as a 25% chance of decreasing its size by 1d4 squares. Second, any ranged attack had a 50% chance of targeting a random creature in the room. In this particular case, the roll results favored the PCs more than the monsters, but it added the element of unpredictability that I wanted.

Hello, all. Just wanted to drop a line and let everyone know that I am, in fact, still alive. Also, I’d like to let you know what to expect in terms of near-future posts. In no particular order:

• A session report. Last Sunday was game day, and it was a good one. I’ll be posting a session report soon.
• My thoughts on Monster Manual 3, which I just got.
• Post mortems on how things like my Grit and Last-Ditch Effort rules worked, as well as some other things I tried out.
• Other stuff, quite possibly.

That’s all for now, folks. More to come.

There’s discussion going on about certain conditions in D&D. I gather that a lot of this discussion happened on Twitter, and it’s being continued in the blogosphere. The premise of this discussion seems to be that two conditions in particular–dominated and stunned–are responsible for too much down time at the table. I have to say I agree. A few sessions ago my players ran afoul of some Far Realm monstrosities, including a mated pair of carrion crawlers (I know; who wants to think of carrion crawlers mating?). Carrion crawlers have a particularly nasty at-will power. It does very little damage (1d4+5, for a level 7 creature), but but it imposes a three step condition that starts with ongoing damage and slowed and ends with being stunned. Worse still, PCs take a -5 penalty to the saving throw, meaning they could wind up stunned for a very long time. This was actually the case for my fighter, who was hit by this attack in the first round and stunned three rounds in. He never recovered (at least, not during the encounter), so he basically sat the whole fight out. Not much fun, right?

However, I don’t like the idea of changing the way the stunned condition (or the dominated condition) works. I think these conditions work well in the PCs’ hands, and I don’t like the idea of applying conditions differently to PCs than I do to monsters. I feel it would undermine the PCs’ victories somewhat, to know that they were not really playing on a level playing field. Instead, I thought I’d give the PCs a power that is similar to what I often give my solo monsters.

Grit
You summon your inner reserves of sheer determination to shake off a debilitating condition, lessening its effect on you.
At-Will
Immediate Interrupt * Personal
Trigger: You are affected by the stunned or dominated condition.
Effect: You take damage equal to your healing surge value. This damage cannot be reduced in any way. In addition, if you are stunned, you are instead dazed for the same duration. If you are dominated, you are dazed for the same duration and must attack an ally of your choice on your next turn; you are marked by that ally for the duration of the daze.

I’ll be one of the first to admit that Dungeon Tiles are a great product. They’re sturdy, versatile, and attractive, and they’re even cheap at only $12 a pack. However, as great as they are, sometimes you need specialized tiles for something not covered (yet) by the tile sets that WotC has released. Luckily, you can make your own.

How? Well, it’s really not that hard. Here’s what you need:

• An image of the tiles you need to create (to the correct scale)
• A color printer
• Card stock (buy this stuff at any office store, like Staples. It’s the DM’s best friend, really)
• A glue stick
• Foam board (you can buy this at most craft stores, like Jo Ann or AC Moore. It runs about $3.00 for a pretty large piece)
• A cutting tool, like an Exacto knife
• Some sand paper

First, set up your image so that it’s to the correct scale (1-inch grid squares for 4e, for example), and print it out in color (or black and white, if you prefer) on card stock. The reason I recommend card stock is that it’s simply much sturdier than regular printing paper. The glue won’t warp it and it’s less likely to tear or fold in the process.

Once you’ve got your printed image, cut it out and coat the back with your glue stick. Adhere it to the foam board and let it set for a bit. Then, use your Exacto knife to cut along the edges. Make sure the knife is sharp, and make sure you’re cutting on a surface that isn’t going to get damaged by the knife (or a surface you don’t care about). Be careful cutting along the edges, but don’t worry too much if the edges are a little rough. That’s where the sandpaper comes in. Once your tile is cut out, you’ll use the sandpaper to smooth the edges a bit so that it’s more attractive and easier to fit next to your other tiles.

What you’re left with at the end is a sturdy, lightweight, attractive tile that’s about twice as thick as a standard dungeon tile. Custom tiles are great for oddball features in a dungeon, or for very specialized dungeons that have a lot of features that aren’t covered in the tile sets. You’ll also probably want to make sure that any tiles you create are tiles that you’re going to be re-using, just to make your labor worthwhile. Otherwise, it’s probably easier to print your tiles out on card stock and be done with it.

To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, I’ll show you a tile I made last night. This is a tile that I’m going to use to represent the airship that the PCs have recently taken possession of. It’ll probably be re-used quite frequently throughout the campaign, so I’m happy that I put it together.

And here’s an image of the tile alongside an official WotC tile, for comparison. Sorry for the bluriness and image quality; these were taken with my Android phone.

Sarah Darkmagic, presumably of the New Hampshire Darkmagics, has an interesting self-review of a very cool encounter she’s creating for a delve. In this article, she’s trying to figure out how the PCs would wrest control of a bunch of hostile flying sawblades controlled by a gnomish psion of some sort. Her thoughts are that it would require a check using Arcana, Religion, or Psionics. The trouble is, there is no Psionics skill. She effectively hand-waves this by simply saying that anyone who is a member of a psionic class has this skill. At first, I had the knee-jerk reaction of, “Hey, you can’t do that! That’s not in The Rules!” But then I actually sat back and thought about it for a second. Here’s what I came up with.

Aptitudes
It’s fairly well known that the D&D skill list, while it covers most things you’d want to do in most encounters, doesn’t cover everything. There are a number of mundane skills not covered, as well as a number of very nitch or situational skills that are absent. This is fine most of the time; most of the time you will not need these skills, so it doesn’t make sense for your players to have to spend their precious skill training on skills that are unlikely to be used more than once or twice.

But what happens when you do need those skills? What happens when the PCs are trying to land a rapidly descending airship after the pilot has been thrown overboard? What happens when the PCs run out of arrows in the wilderness, and they must make their own? There is no Pilot skill, nor is there a Fletcher skill, so what do you do? You could just hand-wave these things, or you could try to shoe-horn a somewhat related skill into that role. Perhaps Athletics is used to turn the wheel of the ship, or Nature is used to find the right kind of wood and form it into the shaft of an arrow. But neither of these solutions is completely satisfying.

That’s where aptitudes come in. Aptitudes function much like skills: you are either trained or untrained in an aptitude (gaining the +5 bonus or not), you get a bonus from a relevant ability score, and you get a bonus equal to half your level. They are used the same way, as well: when an aptitude check is called for, you roll a d20, add your aptitude bonus, and compare the result to a DC. Aptitudes can be used in combat encounters, and they can be used in skill challenges.

There are a few differences, however, between aptitudes and skills. First, there is not a limited number of aptitudes. Aptitudes are very specific, and may apply only to a single encounter during an entire campaign. There is not a set list of aptitudes as there is with skills; the DM (or players) create an aptitude when the situation warrants it. Most importantly, you do not spend skill training slots to train in aptitudes. Instead, you are considered to be trained in an aptitude when it makes sense for you to be so.

Let’s look at our two examples above, the crashing airship and the arrows in the wilderness. The players ask you, “What skill should I roll to try to pilot this ship?” You think for a moment and say, “Roll a Pilot check.” They look back at you, confused. That’s not on their character sheets. How do they know whether or not they’re trained? Take a look at your players. The artificer is well versed in creating all manner of magical things, and may have knowledge of airships and how to use them. He doesn’t have anything on his character sheet or in his backstory that contradicts this, so you ask him if he’d like to be trained in Pilot. He says, vehemently, “Yes”, and you ask him to explain why he’s trained. Maybe the two of you do a little flashback sequence to explain it. Now he can contribute to the skill challenge to land the ship in a meaningful way, and you’ve created a little bit of background for him together. The wizard, on the other hand, established in his backstory that she grew up as a hand on an airship, and even apprenticed to the captain for a time. It would make perfect sense for her to be trained in Pilot, so you simply tell her that she is. You tell them that Pilot is Wisdom-based, and ask them to calculate their bonuses.

While tromping through the woods, the party needs to make more arrows. It would make sense for a Nature or Perception check to allow players to find the base materials: good, supple but strong wood, stone or metal for the arrowheads, feathers for the fletching. But to assemble the arrows, neither skill makes perfect sense. Instead, you call for a Fletcher skill. The ranger in the party is an archer, so it would make quite a bit of sense for her to be trained in Fletcher. The fighter, on the other hand, knows a lot about weapons, carries a bow as a backup weapon, and spends a good deal of time whittling during short rests. You ask him if it would make sense for his character to know how to make arrows, and he says, “Sure. My character is a master with wood-carving.” He’s trained, too. You tell them that Fletcher is Dexterity-based, and let them make rolls.

The beauty of this system is that it allows you to call for non-standard, very specific skill checks, does not require your players to spend mechanical effort on being trained in these very specific skills, and it can even generate some background or flavor on the fly.

I know, I know: we’re supposed to say “yes” in D&D. At least, the DMs are. But what about the players? The rules give the players a lot of ways to say “no” to the DM (or, at least, his or her monsters) through various powers and class features. The swordmage’s aegis of shielding, the fighter’s combat challenge and combat superiority, the halfling’s second chance, and a whole slew of powers that deny monsters the ability to do things that you want them to do. Mike Shea tweeted about this recently, and it got me thinking.

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.

Guild Wars 2 has some interesting ideas on death. Inspired by these ideas, I came up with the following system.

Last-Ditch Efforts
Whenever a player character is reduced to 0 hit points or fewer, he or she has a choice. The player can choose to have his or her character fall unconscious and start making saving throws, as usual. If the player wants higher risk for potentially higher reward, however, that player can choose to make a last-ditch effort.

When you make a last-ditch effort, you remain conscious and standing until the end of your next turn, even if your hit point total is currently negative. However, you are dazed. On your turn, you can take one standard, move, or minor action. This action can include using an encounter or daily power; if you choose to use an encounter or daily power during a last-ditch effort, that power is not considered expended. Note that you can only use a single power during a last-ditch effort, even if you have powers that are free actions to use. You can, however, activate extra damage from class features such as Hunter’s Quarry or Sneak Attack, if they apply.

There is, however, a serious consequence associated with pushing yourself so hard when you’re at your most vulnerable. At the end of your turn during a last-ditch effort, you automatically fail a death save and fall unconscious. In addition, you take a -1 penalty to death saves for the rest of the encounter. This penalty is cumulative if you make multiple last-ditch efforts in the same encounter.

This rule interacts with two races in ways that should be called out specifically.

Revenants have a trait called unnatural vitality, which allows them to choose to remain conscious until they would make their first death save. A revenant may still do this; at the point that the revenant would normally fall unconscious, he or she may choose to make a last-ditch effort (effectively remaining conscious for two rounds after dropping below 0).

Warforged have a trait called warforged resilience, which allows them to take the better result of either a die roll or 10, effectively allowing them to never fail a death save. If a warforged character chooses to make a last-ditch effort, he or she incurs the automatic failed save as normal. Further, the -1 penalty applies to the warforged character’s lowest possible result of 10, meaning that the warforged may roll (at a -1 penalty) or take a 9. Once a warforged character has made a last-ditch effort, he or she can no longer rely on pure warforged vitality to keep him or her from dying.

There are a couple if encounters I’m planning on running in my next session (which occurs a little more than a week from now). One involves a tough monster with special weaknesses, which I’ve already talked about in the past. Interestingly enough, there’s also an encounter with an environmental kill effect. I’ll probably talk more about both after the session, and give some specific examples of how I implemented these mechanics and how they worked out. Neither, however, is what I want to talk about right now.

There’s an encounter in the upcoming session that is, technically, a fight but is also, technically, a series of skill challenges. What I’ve done is I’ve built an encounter using actual monsters and terrain and everything, but I’ve used the framework of skill challenges to create a fight that takes place over a series of phases. The skill challenges are a pacing mechanic for the fight, and the fight creates tension within the skill challenges.

Now, if you think this sounds like a cool idea (and I’d totally agree with you if you did), I feel I should point out some things about using this technique.

First, you probably don’t want to use this in every fight. Most fights have a way of pacing themselves just fine, as they involve a number of monsters and a variety of different terrain effects, and a dynamic that changes as the PCs slowly (or quickly, as the case may be) gain the upper hand. I think that a mechanic like this works best in an encounter with fewer creatures and less automatic change throughout, such as a solo encounter or–as is the case with my encounter–an encounter with a pair of elites.

Second, it’s probably best to use multiple, low-complexity skill challenges rather than one big one. You could conceivably build a complexity five skill challenge that simulates multiple distinct phases, granting access to different skills or new ways to use the same skills as the challenge progresses. I think, though, that using a bunch of complexity one, two, and even three skill challenges gives much clearer delineations between encounter phases, besides which it’s just plain easier to do.

Now, one key difference between using a single skill challenge and using more than one is that failure is more gradual. In a complexity five skill challenge, you’re still going to fail when you hit that third failure. If you’ve got five complexity one skill challenges, you need fifteen total failures to totally botch the job. This does not, however, mean that your encounter is a pushover. What it does mean is that you can award partial credit easily. What it also means is that you can do what I did: give earlier challenges consequences that carry over into later challenges. If the PCs fail the first skill challenge, all is not lost; the next one, will, however, be a little bit harder. Similarly, if they succeed on that first one, you can give them a little edge in the next one.

But it doesn’t stop there. Because you’re running these skill challenges alongside a combat, succeeding in that first skill challenge might carry benefits in the fight (as would failure, with drawbacks). The combat, too, could carry over into the skill challenges. Granting the PCs successes when they bloody a monster, or even when they just hit it, in some cases, is an idea I’ve toyed with. Similarly, if a PC gets bloodied or dropped to zero, that could cause the party to incur a failure in the current challenge.

Now, I want to be completely upfront about this: this is likely going to be a very complex encounter for me to run. In my case, I’ve got five distinct phases to the combat, each represented by a skill challenge (the complexities of which vary). In addition, I’ve got to fairly robust elites to worry about, not to mention some other fiddly rules that I won’t get into (no major spoilers here; sorry). If I can pull it off, though, I think it’ll be a cool and memorable encounter. I’ll let you know how it goes.