So I attended the D&D Canned Food Drive at Days of Knights in Newark, DE, and it was a blast. We played a super-abridged version of the Lovecraftian Last Breath of Ashenport adventure released on D&D Insider with five players. My friend Mike played a dragonborn fighter with an executioner’s axe, while I played the changeling psion. There was also a dragonborn paladin, a pacifist healer cleric (can’t remember the cleric’s race), and an elven two-blade ranger. We played through some role-playing and investigation at first, and I got to make use of some abilities (namely, a +19 Bluff and the ability to communicate telepathically) to good effect. Then we fought some fish-men out in the rain.

I must say, I like the psion’s powers a lot. The power point mechanic works pretty well, and with three at-wills that can each be augmented into three different versions, plus some dailies and utilities, I only felt like I had run out of interesting things to do once, during the second encounter. The second encounter was pretty sloggy, against a tough solo that seemed to have never-ending hit points and high defenses; we were whiffing quite a lot.

The first encounter, though, was very satisfying. I got a chance to inflict someone with lots of psychic vulnerability, then whack them with psychic damage and a big attack penalty. I also got to command someone to jump off of his rooftop perch and attack his ally, which is always fun. Unfortunately, I only got to use that particular at-will twice in the game, since it requires some setup and isn’t much use against solos with no minions.

All said, it was a really fun way to spend the day, and I got to donate some canned food to charity, too. Not bad.

So, tomorrow I’m going to Newark, Delaware to play D&D for charity, and I’m super excited! Here’s how it works: you go to Days of Knights with some canned food during one of the available time slots. For every can you bring, you get to re-roll one die roll during the game. For every five cans you bring, you get an extra standard action to use during the game. It’s a great idea, and I can’t wait.

During the last D&D session, I used a few custom monsters that I put together with WotC’s Monster Builder. They worked out so well that I thought I’d post them here for your perusal and potential use.

Shadow Ghoul
This is really just a modification to the base ghoul in the Monster Manual; I wanted a lurker rather than a soldier, so I gave it a couple of extra abilities: death from above and fade to shadow. To complete the concept, I gave it the shadow origin, and you can play it up even more by describing how the shadows seem to cling to it, and how a cold numbness creeps into the PCs’ veins when it strikes. At any rate, this beastie works really well for harassing defenders and getting to back-rank strikers. The fact that it can leap 8 squares and knock someone prone and grab them means that it effectively monopolizes one PC’s attention for a round or two (assuming it hits), and once they shake it off, it can teleport away and do it again. Make sure you use it in a place with lots of shadows and darkness to make best use of its abilities.

Corpse Mound
This guy is a pretty effective soldier. The final battle in Keep on the Shadowfell, for my group, consisted of Kalarel, the main bad guy, and this thing, as well as some traps that manifested later on. The corpse mound (and the ravenous corpses it spawned) did an admirable job of keeping the heat off of Kalarel so that he could focus on completing his dark ritual. Basically, you’ll want to keep it close to as many PCs as possible so that it can get free attacks from its aura, and use corpse missile and corpse burst whenever you get the chance. As with the shadow ghoul above, we see that the combination of being knocked prone and grabbed is extremely effective at getting a PC’s undivided attention.

Well, we wrapped up Keep on the Shadowfell last night. It went really well, I thought. It was a fun night, all of the PCs survived, and the villain escaped, which is basically a win-win for a DM.

You can see pictures from last night’s game, if you want to. Toward the end, you’ll see two things that I picked up recently. One is a very nice storage solution for my Dungeon Tiles and minis: a 9-drawer rolling storage unit that I picked up from JoAnn Fabrics. Also, at a back-to-school sale at Target, I picked up a magnetic whiteboard and some magnetic index cards for it, all of it dry-erasable. The nice thing about these items is that they’re perfect for tracking initiative and conditions. One card per combatant or group of combatants, and plenty of space to write things like ‘weakened’ or ‘dazed’. I just need to find a good way to prop it up for all to see; it was a little unstable last night.

I also ran a skill challenge last night that I’ve been looking forward to for a while. The skill challenge represented the PCs trying to navigate their way through the darkness after the ritual came to fruition. The PCs failed the skill challenge during the first round of checks, but everyone was into the mystique of what was going on, so I extended it a little, calling for a few more checks and such, and adding in more description and requiring more description for how they were to escape. It went really well, I thought.

So, at some point in the indeterminate future, I’ll be running a 4E D&D game for three guys who have never played a table-top role-playing game before. This was supposed to happen a few days ago, but scheduling issues got in the way, so now I need to try and re-schedule for some time in the near future. But that’s not the point of this post.

I feel a fair amount of pressure regarding this. Think about it: if the game goes really well, three new people might join the hobby of role-playing. If it doesn’t, they’ll probably never look at an RPG again. It’s kind of a big responsibility. The good news is, I feel like 4E has taken a lot of the pressure off with some of the things they’ve made available lately.

1. Dungeon Delve. I love this book. I plan on running them through the first-level delve, with some modification, using three 2nd-level pregens. It’s a simple enough thing to modify the delve for a smaller, but somewhat more powerful, group of PCs. A kobold gone here, a kobold gone there, and you’re pretty good. I did want to give them a memorable and iconic D&D experience at the end, though, so I made some modifications with . . .

2. The Monster Builder. What a fantastic tool. I wanted the PCs to fight a real, honest-to-goodness dragon, not just a wyrmling. So I took a few of the kobolds out of the fight, and replaced the white wyrmling with a young green dragon, reduced to level 2. I chose a green dragon because I have a mini for it, and because I really like the 4E green dragon that drips poison from every orifice. Reducing its level was extremely easy with the Monster Builder; a few clicks, and I’ve got a nice printed-out stat block for the game.

3. The Character Builder. I used this tool, which I also love, to create interesting characters for them to play. I got some input from them about what they wanted to play, and wound up making a gnome warlord, a goliath barbarian, and a genasi swordmage. I chose powers with the delve in mind, so that every power would be useful. I chose feats with simplicity in mind, trying to choose only feats that added passive benefits or (in the case of the gnome) multiclass feats that just added new powers altogether (the gnome is multiclassed into fey pact warlock), so they wouldn’t have to worry about what feats did.

Within 30 minutes, I had three characters printed out, complete with power cards, a few post-it notes in the delve to let me know what to take out of each fight, and a printed out boss monster of the appropriate level for them to fight. It was the easiest prep I’d ever done. Now I just need to get the guys together so we can use it.

I just ran my name through the Internet Anagram Server, and guess what one of the first few results was? Yep. Bargain Nerd. So there you go.

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

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

Hello, all. Apropos of the quickly approaching D&D Day, I thought I’d post a session report from the last D&D Day. The party is almost done with Keep on the Shadowfell; this next session should finish it off. I have, however modified the end of the adventure pretty heavily.

Other things. Dungeon Delve, it turns out, is a fantastic resource, not just for the obvious reason of having 30 pre-made delves at your fingertips. If you pay attention, you can glean a lot about what makes a good encounter, not just in terms of what monsters to use together, but also how to use traps and terrain to make things interesting. Even less obvious but, I think, more interesting, the book shows you how to use your Dungeon Tiles in creative ways, using features on specific tiles to represent interesting and important terrain.

Also, as you may have discerned from previous session reports, an NPC has joined the group: Splug the fey goblin. I’m using homebrewed follower rules to represent him in the battles (I’m aware that the Dungeon Master’s Guide II includes official rules for this, and I’m eager to see how close I am to the mark). For those who are interested, here is a PDF of Splug’s statistics as well as the rules for using followers.

You may have noticed that the stats for Splug were made using Wizards’ own beta version of the Monster Builder. I absolutely love this tool. For a beta, it’s extremely functional and remarkably free of show-stopping bugs (not to say that there aren’t any, just to say that I haven’t run into anything too inconvenient). There’s clearly some work left to be done on it, but there’s a lot of potential there. More than that, there’s a lot of functionality and ease of use already built into it, which is a great boon to me, and to other DMs that like to make stuff up for their campaigns. Now I just need something like this for traps.

For a little while now, I’ve been thinking about different ways to use skill challenges in D&D, different ways to tweak the system to make it do what I want it to do. I think that the system within the DM’s Guide is fine, and does the job, but I think it gets really interesting when you start monkeying around with it. One idea that I’ve toyed with is the idea of the players accruing ‘points’ or ‘tokens’ of some sort during a skill challenge that have effects during, after, or both during and after the challenge. I think the best way to illustrate what I’m talking about is to give you an example, and since a friend of mine wants to see a drinking contest done in skill challenge format for his campaign, I’m going to go ahead and whip that up. I’ll annotate the skill challenge, too, to show you what I’m thinking.

Drinking Contest (Complexity 1 [4 successes before 3 failures], Level equal to the character/party level)
Note: the idea here is that this skill challenge represents a drinking contest with a single individual. For multiple individuals, add additional skill challenges or increase the complextiy.

Primary Skills: Bluff, Diplomacy, Insight
Other Skills: Endurance, Thievery, History, others
Note: you might be wondering why the primary skills are all social skills. The idea behind this skill challenge is that the contest is a way for the participants to prove that they’re men. Drinking is the medium, but the challenge is won or lost through boasting, bullying, and insulting until the other man sits there sputtering in frustration.

Bluff (1 success, maximum 2, DC varies*): You boast of your achievements, inflating them to make yourself seem super-heroic.

Diplomacy (1 success, maximum 2, DC varies*): You relate your actual accomplishments, use clever words to make the other guy seem foolish, or otherwise use your skill with language and social situations to come out on top.

Intimidate (1 success, maximum 2, DC varies*): You bully, cajole, or insult the other guy, trying to incite his ire or make him lose his wits.

*The DCs of these checks will vary by individual. For example, one opponent might be easy to insult or bully, but very good at seeing through false bravado. Another, on the other hand, might respect eloquence rather than coarse language.

History (0 successes, maximum 1, moderate DC): You recall some fact about your opponent’s exploits, and you use it to your advantage.
You gain a +2 bonus on the next Bluff, Diplomacy, or Insight check you make during this skill challenge.

Endurance (0 successes, no maximum, DC somewhere between easy and moderate): You take a long pull from your flagon and slam it down, showing everyone just how manly you are.
Succeeding on this check grants you a +5 bonus on your next Bluff, Diplomacy, or Intimidate check during this skill challenge. However, whether you succeed or fail, you gain 6 drunkenness tokens. For every 5 points by which you exceeded the DC of this check, you may reduce the number of drunkenness tokens you gain by 1. For every 2 points by which you failed the DC of this check, increase the number of drunkenness tokens by 1. See drunkenness tokens, below.

Special: You may make a single Bluff, Diplomacy, or Intimidate check during this skill challenge without making an Endurance check to take a drink. After the first such check, each additional check incurs a cumulative -2 penalty to all Bluff, Diplomacy, and Intimidate made in this skill challenge, as real men have no respect for weaklings who nurse their drinks. This penalty is reduced by 2 for each Endurance check you make to take a drink, whether you succeed or fail (to a minimum of 0).

Thievery (0 successes, maximum 1, hard DC): through slight of hand or clever distractions, you fool your opponent into thinking that you’ve just downed your entire flagon.
You gain the +5 bonus as if you had succeeded on an Endurance check, but you do not gain any drunkenness tokens. If you fail, you take a -2 penalty to all Bluff, Diplomacy, and Intimidate checks for the rest of the skill challenge (and possibly any other drinking contest skill challenges running concurrently), because everyone now knows you for the coward and trickster that you are.

Note: depending on the nature of the drinking contest and the nature of the opponent, other secondary skills may be appropriate.

Success: You are clearly the victor, and you gain renown in some way (to be decided by the DM). In addition, the confidence boost you gain allows you to shake off some of your stupor; reduce your total number of drunkenness points by half (round up).

Failure: Everyone knows that you are clearly the loser here; you lose renown in some way (to be decided by the DM). In addition, you drown your failure in more drink; increase your total number of drunkenness points by half (round up).

Drunkenness Points
Depending on how much you’ve been drinking, you’ll suffer different effects. Consult the table below to determine just how drunk you really are. All drunkenness points are removed after an extended rest.

Hangover
You take a -1 penalty to Perception and Insight checks. In addition, in areas of bright light, or in the presence of loud noise (such as a thunder power being used within 5 squares, or a dragon roaring), you become dazed until the end of your next turn. This effect persists until you reach one milestone.

Over on the At-Will blog there’s a post about D&D being a tactical game first and foremost. I think that this is generally true for the most part, and I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing, but that’s not really what I’m posting about today.

There’s a section at the end of the post entitled ‘Role-Playing Made Difficult’ that talks about the idea that all of the crunchy tactical rules in D&D make it more difficult to role-play because the rules focus on tactical advantage rather than flavor or character development. Specifically, an example is given that posits the notion that, given a choice between Skill Focus: Intimidate (+3 to Intimidate) and a feat that grants you a +1 to Intimidate but makes your eyes glow when you’re angry, most people would choose the former.

I agree. And they should. The main reason being that the second feat is almost wholly unnecessary. Why do I need a feat to say that my eyes glow? Why can’t I just say that my eyes glow? Any halfway-decent DM would allow a cool special effect that has no impact on the mechanics of the game. And if your DM insists that you need to take a feat to make your eyes glow, take Skill Focus: Intimidate, and say that you get the +3 Intimidate bonus because your eyes glow when you’re mad. Done.

Wizards has actually been very good in 4th Edition about making a distinction between mechanics and things like flavor or special effects. Many of the feats in D&D have no particular flavor to them, allowing you to skin them any way you want to. The powers, rituals, and other things all have flavor text associated with them, but it’s pretty easy to divorce that from the rules and re-skin any discrete mechanical element to your liking. I think that this fact makes role-playing easier, not harder.

To illustrate my point a little bit, I’m going to do something very taboo in the gaming world: I’m going to tell you about my character. A friend of mine is in the process of starting up a campaign, and I’ve already gone ahead and created my character for that campaign. The short version is that he’s a genasi storm mage sorcerer. The long version is that he’s the child of two human parents. When he was an infant he was held up to the sky to be blessed by the primal spirits, in accordance with the traditions of his tribe. He was struck by lightning, but instead of killing him, it changed him on a fundamental level. He became the physical embodiment of the storm (represented by the fact that he’s a windsoul genasi, mechanically speaking, a storm mage sorcerer, and also has the Mark of Storm feat).

You’ll notice a couple of things about that if you’re looking hard enough. One, there’s a clear concept. That concept came before I chose the mechanics for it, and I made sure that all of the mechanics supported my concept. I also re-skinned the genasi race a little bit, making my character a human who was transformed into something unique. The second thing is that I didn’t go for optimization. The sorcerer focuses on Charisma and, in the case of the storm mage, Dexterity. The genasi gets a bonus to Strength and Intelligence, two ability scores which are almost entirely useless to me. They also happen to be some of my lowest ability scores. Why did I choose the genasi, then? Because it fit the concept for him to be an elemental creature, and also for him to be able to fly every now and again (the windsoul racial power). If I had been going for optimization, I would have made him a halfling and gotten a boost to both of the ability scores that I wanted high. But that wouldn’t have fitted the concept.

Enough about that. I feel like I’ve gotten a bit off-track anyway. My point is, there’s room for both those who optimize and those who role-play, and I think that the game supports both methods of play equally well. I think that the mechanics are so easy to separate from the flavor and role-playing that it makes it incredibly easy to come up with a really cool character with lots of role-playing potential, even if you’re optimizing. And I think that offering feats that grant a diminished mechanical benefit for a cool role-playing effect is a silly idea, because role-playing effects can and should be free. And I feel like the game supports me in that assertion.