The Wrath of Melora tackles the Claw, Hollywood style and takes on the Titan Clanks while his buddies are being pummelled relentlessly.
Gears of Ruin: The Ruiner’s Gambit’, Session 1, Part 2
As stated in Part 1, the first combat encounter was designed to be among the hardest hitting encounter my players had yet faced in D&D 4e while still being designed with an XP budget that somewhere between level 15 and 16 (the PCs are still 14th). The goal was to totally challenge the PCs while having monsters close in levels to the PC (from 12-16) without having the players clamour for an extended rest right after.
Gears of Ruin: The Ruiner’s Gambit, Session 1, Part 1
Last Friday’s adventure was great. It was mostly a 3 hour+ set-piece fight but I wanted to duke it out with the players in a no-holds barred slugfest. I cranked damage dealing to the absolute maximum I could without breaking the rules (a design goal of mine). I also did my best to screw with their game plan and use plenty of dirty tricks to give them their greatest challenge in months.
Friday Chat: Are You Trying Too Hard?
Friday Chats are end-of-week posts intended to foster discussion on various RPG topics that bounce around in my noggin’. This week, with my post on prepping for my game,cramming it with all the awesome Magitek I can think of and applying lessons from last week’s posts, I caught myself asking, yet again, “Dude, aren’t you […]
Gearing up: The Setting, Pre-Prep and the Adventure Plan
As many of you know, I’m starting a D&D clockwork campaign called Gears of Ruin set on a dying, water and magic-poor world. One where the gods nearly lost the war against the Primordials and more or less abandoned this ravaged, but resource-rich husk to its own fate.
Chatty’s Tales of the Arabian Nights
Instead of providing another review of the game, I thought I would tell you the story of my ‘character’ to showcase how rich the game is. Note that while I may flourish the prose of my tale a bit (that’s what being a storyteller is all about), what I will present actually happened during the game.
Keeping up with the PCs: Part 3, The DM’s Toolbox and Other Dirty Tricks
Welcome back to this series about helping D&D 4e DM’s keep up with players who manage to become more performing than the game’s default assumption. In part 1, I described the “Secret Synergy Bonus” that made players a lot better at dealing with combat encounters that should otherwise be more challenging. Then in part 2, […]
Keeping up with the PCs: Part 2, What Not to Do and Quick Fixes
In part 1, I discussed a common occurrence in D&D 4e where parties becomes much stronger than they should be through what I called the ‘Secret Synergy Bonus.’ This occurs when players figure how to play their PCs as a focused team based on good communication and smart use of power combos to increase combat efficiency […]
Keeping up with the PCs: Part 1, The Secret Synergy Bonus
Many D&D 4e DMs have experienced, over the last 18 months, a shift in their gaming group’s performance. PCs have become capable of taking absolutely everything thrown at them with more ease than the game rules assume. Encounters at the PCs’ levels barely make a dent in the their resources anymore: “Dude, I lost like, just one Healing Surge”. Higher level encounters are also often dealt with with relative ease.
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish!
(No I’m not retiring from RPG blogging, no worries) As I stand here by the seaside of Florida, I reflect on the upcoming blog merge with Critical Hits, planned to happen sometime during Sunday Jan 24th. Not so much because I’m having second thoughts about merging with Critical Hits and play the role of Prima […]
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