How to be a Better Gamemaster Part 4: Intelligent Villains

Most of the time, the villain of a major story isn't just some big brutish warrior who smashes everything he sees.  More often, the villain is a methodical planner who operates behind the scenes to put the big brutish warrior who smashes everything he sees right where the villain needs him to be.

As a gamemaster, you have to be able to portray a wide array of NPCs.  What do you do when you want to portray a villain with a really high intelligence, perhaps one who is smarter than you?  It's very difficult, sometimes, to portray characters who have abilities that differ greatly from our own.  Intelligence is one of the hardest attributes to convey in a game.  What exactly does an 18 intelligence mean?  In the d20 system, 10 is considered the human average.  There is always a chart in the core rules that tell you how much you can carry based on your strength, so you can easily figure out how strong your character is, but there's no handy chart that tells you how smart you are.

A high intelligence usually grants extra skill points, and in D&D, grants a wizard extra spells.  However, there's no real guideline to tell us how a high intelligence should be represented.  What we do know is that 18 is considered the peak of natural human ability for any attribute.  So, does that mean a character with 18 intelligence is a genius?  A super genius?  The next Einstein or Tesla?

As a gamemaster, you'll need to figure out just how smart you want your villain to be.  Luckily, playing a genius is easier than playing the same character as a player.  Why?  Because you can cheat!  This is one of those times where bending the rules is perfectly acceptable, because it enables you to better play an intelligent character.  Let's look at a couple of examples.

You prepare the spells for an exceptionally intelligent wizard villain you plan to confront your players at the end of a long adventure.  When the fight begins, you realize the players have obtained abilities that make them immune to one of the wizard's spells, or they have developed tactics you didn't plan for, and his spells are no longer the best way to deal with this situation.  What do you do?  Well, an intelligent villain would have gathered information about his enemies.  He would have found out everything he could about the party he was about to fight.  In other words, change some of his spells in the middle of the game.  You might not have planned for what the party was going to do, but there's no reason why your villain couldn't have predicted it.  He would have planned for it, so changing his spells so that he can better deal with the party is a great way for him to anticipate and plan around them.  I did this with a previous campaign, introducing the villain about a third of the way through the story, and having him show up to taunt the players occasionally as they continued their adventure.  They never knew when he'd show up again, and I even told them that any spell or tactic they used in battle could potentially be seen by him and he'd be able to plan around it.

For our second example, suppose your players get the upper hand on your villain before you wanted them to, or maybe you did want them to, who knows?  Instead of killing the villain, they decided to capture him.  What do you do now?  Perhaps the villain planned to be captured.  As the GM, you can easily alter a few things and have the villain put an escape plan into motion.  Perhaps the villain already has already paid off a guard, or already knows about the loose brick in the prison wall, or that the proper leverage can lift half-barrel hinge doors off their hinges.

Be careful when using tricks like this.  Make sure that only appropriately intelligent opponents get to change their plans in the middle of the action.  Villains that aren't in the upper ranges of intelligence should have to deal with whatever plans they make and whatever happens if those plans fail.

Designing Dungeons: Themes and Realism

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A dungeon's theme is largely an aesthetic choice.  A theme is the overall look and feel of the dungeon.  Crawling through the sewers, going through a labyrinth under the palace, and a set of catacombs under a mausoleum should all feel like very different dungeons to the players.


Choosing a theme

Sometimes the theme is an obvious choice.  Is the dungeon in a graveyard?  Your theme is probably undead.  However, oftentimes you will have to make a conscious choice about your dungeon's theme.  The labyrinth under town is a very generic environment.  What's its theme?  That's up to you to decide.

When coming up with a theme, you'll need to consider such things as how close is the dungeon to civilization, what sort of natural life is near the dungeon, and is there any specific type of monster you want to use in this dungeon.

If the dungeon is close to town, then either there aren't very many dangerous creatures in the dungeon, or there are and the town is a lot more eager to have it cleared out, due to the threat it poses.  A dungeon close to town is easier for low-level characters to deal with because there is less travel time between the town and the dungeon, so the party can more easily retreat and rest if they suffer too much damage.  A dungeon farther from town allows for more opportunities for encounters while traveling.  If the party faces threats just getting to the dungeon, then they will be more cautious and less willing to run back to town when things get tough.

Natural wildlife near the dungeon provides an obvious source of food for potential predators that have taken up residence in the dungeon.  However, if the party notices a lack of wildlife around the dungeon, it could be a sign of the presence of the undead, or a very dangerous creature residing in the dungeon.

While some of these ideas may not be obvious to your players, maintaining consistency this way will help make your world and your dungeons feel more realistic.


Designing With a Theme

Once you have decided on a theme for your dungeon, you'll want to design the dungeon with that theme in mind.  The majority of the encounters in your dungeon should fit your theme.  If your theme is undead, at least 90% of the opponents in the dungeon should be a type of undead.  Living creatures aren't very likely to share a dungeon with the undead, so an encounter with a living creature in such a dungeon would be very out of place unless you come up with some interesting reason for it.

The encounters in your dungeon aren't the only thing you should consider.  The environment itself should fit the dungeon's theme.  A dungeon populated mostly by spiders should have cobwebs lining the halls.  If the dungeon is a cave and doesn't contain intelligent opponents, then the floor, walls, and ceiling should all look naturally formed and rough.  If your dungeon was once inhabited by intelligent creatures and is now inhabited by monstrous creatures, leave a few signs of the former inhabitants lying around.


Designing Realistic Dungeons

If you want your world and your dungeons to feel like a realistic environment, you should consider why the dungeon exists in the first place.  Nobody builds an elaborate series of trapped rooms and corridors, and places guards and monsters inside without a reason for it.

1. Living creatures have needs.
If your dungeon is populated by a lot of living creatures, they will need a source of water, a source of food, a place to sleep, and a place to leave their droppings.  In some situations, a magically sustained dungeon can be an exception, but most creatures won't move into an environment where they would be denied their basic needs.  For a realistic dungeon with living creatures, you will first need a source of water.  Unless your dungeon contains a magically purified water source, then the water has to be moving.  Still water eventually turns stagnate and won't be fit to drink.  If there is only one water source in your dungeon, then it could become the most dangerous location in the dungeon as every creature in the dungeon visits it several times a day.  Secondly, you will need a source of food.  This is an easy one.  Smaller creatures become the food source for larger creatures.  All you need is a source of vegetation for the smaller creatures.  Fungi, small plants, or bugs can be the bottom of the food chain in your dungeon.  As for a place to sleep, most creatures don't require much, but many types of creatures do at least make some sort of nest or bedding to sleep on.  One thing to remember is that most creatures of at least a cat's intelligence won't leave their droppings in the same place where they sleep.

2. Why is this dungeon here?
If your dungeon is located in a civilized area, perhaps it once served as a prison.  If that's the case, there should be cells, bars, doors, a few traps, and some remains of the prisoners.  Depending on how old it is, and what creatures reside there now, not all of these elements need to be intact.
If your dungeon is located in the mountains, perhaps it used to be a mine.  If that's the case, it should appear to have been dug with picks, there should be support beams every 20-30 feet, likely rails for mine carts, and there could be some remains, such as an old, damaged lantern, a broken pick, perhaps the bones of an unfortunate miner under a collapse.
Alternatively, if your dungeon is in the mountains, it could be a naturally formed cave.  If that's the case, there should be stalactites, stalagmites, possibly dripping water, a small pool, or maybe a stream.

3. Considering Traps
If you want to place traps in your dungeon, you should consider a few things.  First, who built the trap?  This is largely decided for you when you consider why the dungeon exists to begin with.  Second, what is the trap's purpose?  Traps can serve five purposes: keep someone out, keep someone in, kill, hold, or alert.  A trap designed to keep someone out should block off passages while the trigger is on the outside of the trap.  A trap designed to keep someone in, triggers after the trap is passed, then blocks off the exit.  A trap designed to kill will employ something lethal.  A trap designed to hold will attempt to keep the triggering character in one place.  A trap designed to alert will make noise or create some sort of signal to bring the guards.  Traps can serve more than one purpose.  A trap designed to hold an intruder does little good on its own, but add an alarm to the trap, and it not only secures an intruder, but summons the guards so they can decide how to deal with the intruder.
From a realistic standpoint, alert traps should be the most commonly built.  Think about ways in which we protect our homes, or how businesses protect themselves.  Alarms cover doors and windows and send a signal when they are opened without authorization.  This sort of trap does nothing to the intruder on its own, allowing someone to decide how to respond.  If the owner of the trap sets it off by accident, there's no risk to themselves.
Hold and alert traps should be the next common trap.  This is slightly more secure than the alert trap, because it tries to hold the intruder until someone arrives to deal with them.
Traps designed to keep people out would be the next common trap.  These sorts of traps should have some sort of bypass after they are triggered, in case they are accidentally triggered by their owner.  No intelligent creature would set up a trap that would lock him out of his own lair if he had an accident.
Traps designed to keep people in aren't very common.  This sort of trap could be used in a treasure vault, so long as the vault doesn't contain an item that would make the trap pointless.  This sort of trap should be combined with an alert as well, so that it acts as a hold and alert trap.  However, this sort of trap could also be placed at the entrance to a tomb, in which case alerting someone isn't necessary.
Kill traps should be rare, and only placed in areas where the trap's owner wouldn't worry about triggering it accidentally.  Nobody would ever put a trap that's capable of killing themselves in a place where they will regularly go.


This covers most of what you'll need to consider for designing with a theme and designing realistic dungeons.  My next few posts in this series will start getting into more details of dungeon design.

Designing Dungeons: Goals

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Before you sit down to design your dungeon, you should first figure out what it is you want to accomplish with this dungeon, or perhaps, what do you want your players to accomplish.  This is the goal of your dungeon.  Your dungeon can have multiple goals.  Perhaps one of your goals is for your party to achieve their next level.  Perhaps you want them to discover an important clue or information that will advance the plot.  Perhaps this dungeon will involve a climactic battle with the villain.


Level Goals

Do you want your party to level up at the end of this dungeon?  If so, you'll need to plan encounters and experience accordingly.  Following the guides in the core books, it takes 13 to 14 encounters to achieve a new level.  This assumes the party is encountering challenges appropriate to their level.  For example, a party of level 1 characters facing a level 1 challenge is awarded 300 experience to divide among the party.  If there  are 4 players, this is 75 each.  75 times 13 is 975, and 75 times 14 is 1050.  It takes 1000 experience to reach level 2, so 14 level 1 encounters will be enough for a party of level 1 characters to reach level 2.  However, it is quite boring to face the same type of encounter every time.  You'll want to vary the difficulty of your encounters.  According to the DMG, it is recommended that about half of the encounters be equal to the party's level.  About a tenth of the encounters should be lower than the party's level, and only a few should be higher.

Challenge ratings are a measure of the overall difficulty of the challenge.  A challenge that's the same level as the party will consume about one fifth of the party's resources if handled correctly.  You can safely assume the party can go through 3 or 4 encounters equal to their level before they have to rest.  Because of the random nature of criticals, never assume that the party will survive the maximum amount of challenge they should survive.  Theoretically, a party of level 1 characters can go through four level 1 encounters before they need to rest.  However, two orcs are considered a level 1 encounter, and the default stats for an orc assume they are wielding falchions, which deal 2d4+4 damage with an 18-20 critical chance.  This means each orc deals an average of 9 damage per hit.  Most level 1 characters can't survive more than one hit like that.  If that orc happens to score a critical hit, that's an average of 18 damage, enough to drop a level 1 character (a level 1 barbarian with an 18 consitution and the toughness feat has only 19 HP).  The lower the party's level, the more likely they'll need to rest between encounters.  Take that into account as you design your dungeons.

While designing dungeons, you should have an idea of how much experience the party has and try to plan your encounters based on how much experience you want them to gain.


Plot Goals

Is the dungeon itself the entire adventure, or is it just a piece of a bigger plot?  If the goal of the adventure is a simple fetch quest, perhaps the objective is in the dungeon.  Perhaps the fetch quest becomes more complicated when the party discovers the objective isn't in the dungeon.  For a more complex plot, you can leave a clue to the actual location of their target within the dungeon.

Dungeons can easily serve as a means to advance the plot, because a party goes into a dungeon with clear goals in mind.  They expect to have achieved that goal by the time they've cleared the dungeon.  If you don't want the dungeon to be the end of the current adventure, then instead of putting the party's target in the dungeon, put some sort of clue in the dungeon instead that leads them to another location.

When designing the dungeon around the plot, you need to keep in mind such things as what information you want the party to gain from the dungeon, and how you want to deliver that information.  If the adventure's target isn't in the dungeon, you need to make sure the party doesn't miss the clues, and a diligent party won't.  Most players who go into a dungeon looking for something specific, who don't find it, will examine everything they can to figure out what they missed, however some players, particularly new players, won't, and will instead look to you for a hint about their next step.  While it is important that you make sure they find the clues, it is also important that you don't make it too obvious.  You want them to feel like they found the clue, instead of you handing it to them on a platter.  I'll try to go into more details about delivering subtle clues in a later post.


Encountering the Villain

An encounter with the adventure's villain, or perhaps a recurring villain, is always a great moment in any D&D game.  As a DM, your objective in such an encounter is to make it memorable.  First of all, if a recurring villain is about to show up, you may want to drop a few hints leading up to the encounter that the villain is about to show up, especially if the villain doesn't realize the party is nearby.  If the villain is aware of the party and plans to ambush them, then you'll want to keep that a secret.  Any good villain will cover his tracks.  However, not every villain can prepare for everything, and you may want to reward a clever player who does something you didn't expect by dropping a hint of the villain's presence.

Turning an ordinary encounter into a memorable one is actually fairly simple.  The easiest way to do this is to change the environment.  A fight with a wizard and his two bodyguards could be just another encounter.  That same encounter taking place in a room with a large pit in the middle, and the villains making use of bull rush and spells that threaten to knock the players over the edge makes it into a much more memorable encounter.  However, adding such an element increases the difficulty, so you should take that into account.  I'll go into more details on this in a later post concerning creative encounters.

Want to make your villain memorable without increasing the difficulty of the fight?  There are ways to do this, too.  If the villain threatens something important to one or more of the players, you can be sure they'll remember it.  I had a dragon once take a barbarian's weapon while the barbarian was frozen in fear.  The player wrote the dragon's name on his character sheet along with "took my axe" so he'd never forget why he was angry with this dragon.  One of my player characters got married within the game, so for the final encounter with a succubus attempting to become a demon lord, I had his wife chained to a wall, and the succubus had polymorphed his wife to make her look like the elf queen the succubus had been impersonating, and the succubus had herself chained to the wall and altered her appearance to look like the character's wife.  Both appeared to be unconscious.  The succubus had a nondetection effect on her, so the party couldn't detect evil to determine which was which.  There was literally no way of knowing who was who, and the succubus appears to "wake up" and warn the players that elf queen was really evil and was only appearing to be chained up and helpless and that they should kill her now before she attacked.


This covers the basics of defining the goals of your dungeon.  I'll go into greater detail on some of these points in later posts.  Hopefully, this will get you started when thinking about what your dungeons are trying to accomplish.

Designing Dungeons: Overview

This post is the beginning of a new series specifically for D&D 3.5 DMs.  During this series, I will discuss the basics of dungeons, designing around a theme, making your dungeons realistic and interesting, and designing dungeon encounters.


First, why design dungeons at all?

The first, and most obvious answer is that the first part of the game's name is "Dungeons."  It's traditional.  From a mechanical standpoint, a dungeon serves as a clearly defined path of progression from one encounter to the next.  Each room of a dungeon acts as an encounter, usually with doors separating one encounter from the next.  In this way, players have the security of knowing that whatever is in the room is the challenge that must be overcome, plus the uncertainty of what lies beyond the next door.


So, what is a dungeon?

Pretty much anything can serve as a dungeon.  The classic dungeon is a cave system or series of rooms carved out of stone that form an underground complex.  A sewer system can also serve as a dungeon, and makes for a great low-level adventure.  However, the king's castle can also be a dungeon.  A city in the midst of a rebellious uprising can also be a dungeon.  While these last two don't fit the aesthetics of a classic dungeon, they can serve the mechanical role of a dungeon and can be designed the same way.


I'm going to keep this post short, as this is just the basic overview.  In later posts we'll delve into the details and discuss the theme and goals of the dungeon.

Part 1: Goals
Part 2: Themes and Realism

How to be a Better Gamemaster Part 3: Breaking the Rules

Rules are an important part of any game.  They tell the players what to expect.  However, within a roleplaying game, sometimes the rules have to take a back seat to the story.  In today's post, I'll talk about why rules should and shouldn't be broken.


One of my friends started teaching someone about D&D.  The potential new player asked to see an example of a character, so he pulls out his paladin, Archeldian.  As he's explaining some of the character's abilities, the new guy asks about an ability that was basically home-brewed.  My friend explains that the ability wasn't part of the core rules, but was made up for the game.  The new guy asked why, and my friend explained that it was for the story.  The new guy said it was stupid to ignore rules just for story, and my friend suggested that D&D wasn't the right game for him.


Roleplaying games are about playing roles.  You play an rpg to play a character in a story.  That is essentially all it is.  When you start worrying about rules to the point that the story isn't your main focus anymore, then you're missing the point.  So, why do we have rules?  Well, rules are important.  They promote a sense of balance.  As kids, we roleplayed without rules.  Without rules, rpgs devolve into "bang! you're dead!" followed by "no I'm not!"  The basic rules of an rpg should always be followed.  The real trick to becoming a better gamemaster is learning when to ignore the rules.


When you've been building up a villain over several months of game play, and he's done his final monologue, should you allow that first lucky critical hit take him out in the first round of combat?  No, absolutely not!  Well, unless you want your villain to go out like a punk.  That sort of kill is very anti-climatic.  Your players will remember the villain much better if you have him shrug off the hit like a boss, and let him draw out the fight until the players are on their last leg, then if one of them gets that lucky critical, by all means let him die.


Sometimes your villain needs to be able to bend rules.  Sometimes they should break them.  For example, in the Harry Potter series, Voldemort was able to bind his soul to numerous important objects, making him unkillable until all of these objects were destroyed.  In the D&D core rules, there is no such spell that accomplishes this feat.  Does this mean you can't have a D&D villain use Voldemort's tactic to achieve immortality?  Of course not!  As a GM, you are well within your rights to say that your villain has learned ancient powers that aren't readily available to players.  If you want to really go above and beyond, allow the players to acquire an "ancient power" once in a while, as a reward for a long plot arc, to give them a little something that isn't in the rules.  Just be careful when you do things like that.  Make sure you are very familiar with your game system and are sure you won't unbalance the game.


Rules should be broken when it's good for the story, but when should rules never be broken?  When it is unfair to a player.  If breaking a rule means that part of your party becomes more or less useful than the rest of the party, then don't do it.  That doesn't mean you can't break the rules to hurt the entire party.  If your story calls for them to be beaten to within an inch of their lives, only to escape at the last minute, then that's fine.  If your party wizard has a spell that could ruin your big finale, should you rule he can't use that spell?  No, that's not fair to that player.  Instead, you should find a way that you can get around that spell, or make it so that the player still gets some use out of the spell, but just can't use it in the way they originally wanted.  For example, if the spell would take out your villain in one shot, give the villain plot armor that makes him immune to that sort of effect, but have the spell still take out the villain's henchmen.  This way the player still gets some benefit out of the spell, and you still get you climatic battle.


A final note on plot armor:  Plot armor is a generic catch-all term used to say that a character is immune to something simply because the plot requires him to be.  Plot armor is easiest to use when you have a GM's screen to hide your rolls.  The players don't need to know that you actually rolled a 9 when the villain needed an 18 to save against that spell.  Just make your roll and tell them he passed.  Don't do this too often, though.  You have to let them get a few hits in.  Plot armor is best used when you want your villain to escape, and best discarded when you're ready for the villain's defeat.

Playing Your Best (D&D) Lesson 2-2: Specialist Wizards

Playing a wizard in D&D can be a lot of fun due to the vast amount of flexibility you can access.  Each game day your spell selection can be changed to fit your party's need, and your ability to make scrolls and convert scrolls to new spells in your spellbook can give you a huge repertoire.  However, a wizard isn't going to cast as many spells per day as a sorcerer, but a specialist can cast extra spells at the expense of giving up access to two schools of magic.  Today's guide will focus on some tips for choosing the specialization and prohibited schools that suit your needs.  This guide focuses only on the Player's Handbook.


Abjurer
Abjuration is the school of defense.  There are a lot of AC and damage prevention spells in this school.  At low levels, you get the protection spell, which is a very effective defensive buff not only at low levels, but it remains effective up to the mid levels.  The resist energy spell is also a great spell to have when facing opponents that deal elemental damage.  In the mid levels, you get access to dispel magic, which is useful for negating enemy buffs and ongoing area effects, as well as magic circle which allows you to grant the effects of the protection spell to a number of allies at once.  You can cast magic circle on the party tank or melee striker, and everyone within 10ft of your melee fighter gets a defense buff, allowing two or three allies to gang up on one enemy and all be protected by a single spell.  In addition, the protection and magic circle spells grant additional benefits other than just an AC bonus.  They prevent mind control effects, and can potentially stop summoned creatures from even touching the protected character.  A little later in the mid levels, you gain access to one of my favorite defensive buffs: stoneskin.  While stoneskin does carry a component cost of 250g per casting, it's an affordable cost once the party is high enough level to cast the spell.

Abjuration can be a very effective defensive buffer.  If you're going to be an abjurer, I'd recommend giving up illusion,  because it's spells are almost entirely defensive, and you've already got a lot of defense in abjuration.  Picking a second prohibited school is difficult.  I'd recommend either evocation or necromancy. Evocation contains both offensive and defensive spells.  You can afford to give up the defense, and if you lose a little offense along the way, well... wizards shouldn't be blasters (see lesson 2-1).  Necromancy is primarily a debuff school, and if you're already buffing defense, you don't really need to debuff the enemy too (though it would be very effective), but as a wizard, your goal should be to accomplish as much as you can by casting as few spells as possible.


Conjurer
I'm currently playing a conjurer, because conjuration is the school of utility.  Need an extra fighter, something to carry a lot of stuff, or a mount?  Summon something.  Want to make your rogue happy?  Put that summon in a flanking position.  Conjuration has a lot of battlefield control options.  You can cast a number of spells that can grant concealment or hinder movement in a large area, forcing opponents to take the path you want them to take, or fight on your terms.  Conjuration also has access to the teleport spells, giving you exceptional movement ability.

When I played a conjurer I gave up abjuration and enchantment.  Abjuration because it's pretty much pure defense, and playing my wizard as a controller, I wasn't worried as much about defensive buffs.  I decided my second choice would be enchantment or illusion, and I just like illusion more than enchantment, but either should be alright for a conjurer, though I recommend never giving up both.  Necromancy seems like a good choice, but necromancy is primarily debuff, and since I had given up the defense of abjuration, I didn't also want to give up debuff.


Diviner
Divination is a tough specialization.  Most of the divination spells revolve around getting information.  You can see invisible things, but the vast majority of the remaining spells are just various spells of seeing the future or seeing things in other locations.  While these spells are useful, I wouldn't specialize in it.  I will, however, mention that specializing in divination requires only one prohibited school.  So, you can specialize in divination in order to get the extra spells while giving up only one school, but your extra spells are divinations, so not very useful.

If you're going to be a diviner, it really doesn't matter what you give up.  Unlike other schools, where you try to give up a school that has a lot of redundant spells with your specialty, there really aren't any redundant spells in divination.  However, as a diviner, I would recommend that you do not give up conjuration or transmutation.  Both of these schools offer a lot of utility spells, and transmutation has the largest list of spells at low levels.  Giving up one of these while specializing in divination would cripple your wizard.


Enchanter
Enchantment is primarily debuff, but there are a few good buffs in enchantment as well.  At low levels, you'll use sleep and deep slumber to knock an enemy out of the fight, and heroism can provide a huge boost to an ally.  You'll also find the hold person and hold monster spells in enchantment, which can paralyze opponents, possibly for multiple turns.  However, the hold spells do have one major drawback: they allow the target a new save each turn to end the effect.  Despite this drawback, the hold spells do paralyze the opponent, which leaves them helpless, and reduces their effective strength and dexterity to 0.  Effectively, this means the creature's AC drops by 5 or more (loses dexterity bonus, new dexterity penalty is -5).  Being helpless means that someone can take a full-round action to perform a coup de grace, but as a GM, I would rule that an evil action, so you'd best check with your GM.

If you're going to be an enchanter, you can give up illusion, due to some redundant effects.  As for your second prohibited school, I would suggest abjuration because in most situations, while abjuration has some good defensive spells, you could live without them, especially if your spells are already debuffing or paralyzing opponents.


Evoker
Evocation is usually seen as blast spells, but there's more to evocation than just blasts, particularly at higher levels.  The various "hand" spells, wall of force, contingency, and forcecage are all very useful spells.  If you want a blast spell for backup, you'll have quite a variety to choose from, though I don't recommend wizards try to blast as a primary focus.

As for prohibited schools, at later levels the hand spells, wall spells, and forcecage can be used to trap opponents and block off parts of the battlefield, so you could possibly live without conjuration and be okay.  I would probably choose enchantment or illusion as a second prohibited school, because in most situations if you have one of the two, you can do without the other.  If you decide you want to keep conjuration, then you would most likely want to give up abjuration in its place.


Illusionist
Illusion can be a fun school, particularly if you're creative.  All of the "image" spells are dependent on exactly what you want them to look like.  Clever use of your images (and a flexible GM) can allow you to do all sorts of fun things with your spells.

If you're going to specialize in illusion, you can safely give up enchantment.  As for your second prohibited school, conjuration might be the right choice.  The illusion school grants access to shadow conjuration at later levels, allowing you to duplicate many of the spells you just gave up.  It also grants access to shadow evocation, but I don't recommend giving up evocation in this instance.  The shadow spells create effects that are only partially real.  This means that a shadow evocation only deals a percentage of the damage it normally would, so your blast (which is already an ineffective use of spells) becomes even wimpier, and your walls have only 20% of their normal hit points, your hand spells allow a will save to disbelieve, honestly shadow evocation isn't worth it.  By the same token, one might say that shadow conjuration isn't worth it.  While this is true, keep in mind that illusions only allow saves if interacted with, usually that means some sort of contact.  Until such time, creatures do not get a will save to realize it's an illusion, so that shadow conjured wall acts as a perfectly normal wall, blocking sight until someone touches it, then that person is allow a save to figure out if it's real or not.  There are more conjurations that can be duplicated by a shadow spell that don't automatically interact with opponents than there are evocations.


Necromancer
Necromancy is the king of debuff.  Starting at 1st level, you already have a spell that can sap 1d6+1 strength from an opponent, with a ranged touch.  No save to avoid.  Only spell resistance, which you shouldn't have to worry about until later levels.  So, right off the bat, you've got a spell that's easy to use, since most creatures have terrible touch AC, and it's guaranteed to sap 2 points of strength, which would cause a -1 penalty to melee attacks and damage, with the possibility of sapping up to 7 points.  This spell even scales up with level to a maximum of 1d6+5, for a minimum of 6 points of strength and a maximum of 11, which is insanely good for a 1st level spell.  The downside is that this spell doesn't cause strength damage, just a penalty, and penalties tend to not stack if they're the same type of penalty, but the spell doesn't name a type, so it's up to GM interpretation.  Some other good debuffs include blindness, and the fatigue and exhaustion spells.  Being fatigued causes a -2 penalty to strength and dexterity, being exhausted causes a -6 penalty.  If you manage to nail a creature with either of these, then stack a ray of enfeeblement on top of that, you could potentially cause a penalty of anywhere from -8 to -17 to strength, which can cripple most enemies, or at least turn a hulking brute into a mediocre annoyance.

If you're going to be a necromancer, I would suggest giving up enchantment.  The necromancy school has paralysis effects, and crippling effects like I described above, enchantment becomes redundant at this point.  As a necromancer, I would probably choose abjuration for my second prohibited school, but not so much for redundancy, but mostly because abjuration is my go-to for spells I could live without.


Transmuter
Transmutation is the king of the buff.  You have so many spells here that can make a normal fighter into a big fighter, grant any of the "animal" buffs, and most importantly, the king of all transmutations, polymorph.  Got a rogue in your party?  Turn him into a seven-headed hydra, now he gets seven attacks per round!  If he's flanking with anyone, that's seven sneak attacks.  Heavily armored enemy coming at you?  Turn someone into a rust monster!  Polymorph is pretty much the ultimate in utility, on par with summons.  Summons have a limited list of creatures you can summon, all lower level than yourself.  Polymorph, however, lets you pull from almost the entire monster manual, and you get creatures that are equal in level to either yourself or the subject you are changing (whichever is lower).  The only downside is that summons give you an extra creature, while transmutation changes one ally into something else.

Give up abjuration.  You don't need it as a transmuter.  As for your other school, either enchantment or illusion.  However, if you want to be the best buffer ever, give up conjuration and illusion.  Turn your rogue into a seven-headed hydra, cast stoneskin and heroism on him.  Laugh at your enemies.


Which specialty is the best?  Honestly, it depends on what job you want to do.  If your goal is battlefield control, conjuration is your best bet, and illusion is a good second.  If your goal is buff, transmutation, followed by abjuration.  If you prefer to debuff, necromancy, followed by enchantment.

Now, this doesn't mean all controllers should be conjurers or illusionists, nor should all buffers be transmuters or abjurers.  With the right spell choices, any wizard can fill any role.  These schools just offer the most effective choices based on the PHB alone.

Playing Your Character

Today, I'm going to offer some tips to help you improve your roleplaying skills.


1. Create a character that sounds fun.

When making your character, you should examine the options available to you, and see what most appeals to you.  If you've been playing for a while, it may be time to try something new.  I almost always play magical characters, but a friend recently announced he wants to try running a 4th edition D&D game, so I made a barbarian.  Honestly, I just wanted to try out the class, because 4th edition did something different with barbarians, and it looked interesting.  Another friend of mine called me last night to ask my opinion on a character concept he wanted to try: a half-orc paladin.  For a little perspective, paladins in 3.5 benefit from a high charisma, and half-orcs take a penalty to charisma.  Why would he choose a race so obviously ill-suited for his class?  He presented me the concept of a half-orc who joined the church as a paladin to try to atone for the atrocities of his people.


2. Establish at least a minor connection between your character and the rest of the party.

In the current 3.5 game I'm playing, my wizard, and the party rogue, decided that we were partners, traveling together, and we hired the rest of the party.  We constantly reference a contract in game that we asked each character to sign.  The rest of the players went along with it, because it worked for our party's origins, and the entire party didn't start the game at the same time, so when a new character joined, the other characters were already "employed" so when I offered them a contract, they agreed, perpetuating the concept of employment.

During the character creation process, it can be helpful to talk to the other players and find out what they're playing.  You could pick out one or two of them and ask them if they'd like a shared background, giving part of the party a preexisting camaraderie.  You could offer your services to the party as a mercenary, establishing yourself as someone who just goes where the money is.

Alternatively, you could be the outsider trying to prove yourself to the party.  That's how my 4th edition characters started.  The party already had three characters who had completed one adventure together, then I joined them with my warlord.  Almost immediately I proved my worth to them as a team leader, earning their respect.


3. Establish at least a minor connection between your character and the world.

The previous point is about your relationship with the other players.  This point is about your relationship with your gamemaster.  You'll have to work with the GM to figure out how your player fits into the world.  Sometimes this is as simple as "I'm playing a fighter, I want to be a former soldier in the king's army."  Sometimes this is as complicated as "I'm playing a fighter, I want to be orphaned and not know who my parents were."  This complicated origin is that of our 4th edition fighter.  He was raised by a paladin of Kord, a leader in the church, and has now discovered that he's the heir to the throne of the Nerathi Empire.

Sometimes you'll go into character creation with a clear story in mind for your character.  Sometimes you may want to see what your GM can come up with.  Either way, it's always a good idea to discuss things with your GM before the game begins.  You'll want to know where the game will begin within the campaign world, if there have been any major events just before the beginning, and if your GM is changing anything important from the default setting, or if the GM is using an alternate setting.


4. Give your character a name.

This one should be obvious, but I don't mean name your fighter Bob, the Strong and Fair, because then you're just the Big Stupid Fighter.  Put a little thought into your name and pick something appropriate to the setting.  I've had a player who was terrible at picking names.  He would reuse names from other media, use celebrity names, or just not name his characters at all.  However, he did get creative at one point when he had a pair of brothers, one a barbarian and the other a rogue.  He had no name listed on either character sheet.  The idea was that these two were in a bit of trouble, so he would give a different name every so often.  He told me he did know what their real names were, and he divulged them later so I could use them when writing that campaign as a narrative.

There is a plethora of random name generators floating around the internet.  They can produce names for various races and periods.  Here are some of my recommendations to get you started.

www.nine.frenchboys.net
www.seventhsanctum.com
D&D Name Generator
Star Wars Name Generator
http://www.namegenerator.biz/


5. Define your character's beliefs.

This one is more important in a polytheistic fantasy world.  Even if you aren't playing a cleric, paladin, or similar character, it can still be useful for you to decide which religion or religions your character practices, if any are more important to your character than others, and how devoted are you.  In most fantasy worlds, unlike reality, the gods are not silent.  Their divine servants constantly display their power.  The gods themselves may send messages to their followers.  It would be inconceivable for a character in such a world to be an atheist or agnostic.  However, there is interesting roleplaying potential for a character who believes such displays of divine power were performed through arcane magic and trickery, allowing for that one-in-a-million atheist.


6. Ask yourself "why?"

While playing your character, you will be presented with many choices: Quests or missions your GM has prepared for you to undertake, people to save, villains to kill, etc.  If you want a better roleplaying experience, before you agree to undertake such a venture, ask yourself "why would this character want to?"  If you have followed steps 1-5 above, you should have a decent idea of your character's background and beliefs.


7. Respond in character.

By now, you should have figured out your character's motivations, and their relationships between some of the other characters in the game.  During conversations, think about these things and how such a character should speak.  A character with higher mental abilities should speak more eloquently than one with lower mental abilities.  Try to avoid using modern vernacular in character dialogue.  A character in medieval Europe wouldn't say "cool" or "dude."  Likewise, neither would a character in the far future.  Languages change over time.  If you aren't sure what sort of slang your character would use, avoid it altogether.


Hopefully these tips will help you.  Nobody is expecting you to be a professional actor at the game table, or write an introductory chapter to Lord of the Rings when coming up with your character's history.  If you find one or more of these tips too difficult for you, that's ok.  Nobody masters anything on their first attempt.  Just like a character grows in levels, so too does a roleplayer grow from BSF towards Aragorn.

How 4th Edition Didn't Kill Roleplaying

When D&D 4th edition was released, many veteran 3.5 players responded on message boards with "you can't roleplay in 4th."


In our last 4th edition game, our level 12 party was ready to storm the Trollhaunt.  When we arrived, we spotted a lookout behind an arrow slit.  Two of our characters unleashed ranged attacks on the poor guy.  As the smoke cleared, he saw my warlord and the fighter just strolling towards him.  We win initiative, and with one attack each, kill the poor troglodyte.

At this point, our druid shifts into a snake, slithers through the slits, then shifts into a troglodyte.  Our hexblade teleports through the slits.  The druid runs into the dungeon and warns three trolls that they're under attack.  The trolls open the door to investigate and see our fighter making an intimidate check.  He hits all three of their wills, provoking them to give chase.  At which point, he turns the corner, and I teleport us both through the arrow slits as the druid closes and bars the door.  Three trolls bypassed.

We later reach a prison area, and knowing that Skalmad, the troll leader, has hired mercenaries, our fighter and (trogolodyte-form) druid enter the prison and before the trolls can say anything, the fighter busts out another intimidate and starts barking orders like a sergeant.  He has the trolls confused, thinking he's their new commander, and he promptly takes three lovely female prisoners from the cells back to the party.  We escort them out of the dungeon and our druid calls pegacorns to carry them back to town.  We then march back through the prison like we own the place.  Two more trolls bypassed.

In the next area, we find a troll taskmaster, several grimlocks working anvils, and a fire belcher.  Our hexblade decides he wants to tame the fire belcher and gets the druid to help him.  Together, they kill about half the grimlocks and spend the rest of the fight taming the fire belcher.  The fighter and I take out the troll and a few of the grimlocks, then our fighter runs right past the last grimlock and leaps onto the fire belcher's back.  The last grimlock stands there in confusion as I walk past him and casually lop his head off.  We tamed the fire belcher, and it accompanied us into the next encounter.


Who says you can't roleplay in 4th?  Roleplaying isn't about what rules system you play with.  Roleplaying is about how you portray your character.  In a simplified system like 4th, where we don't have an entire page dedicated to grapple rules, roleplaying isn't discouraged.  In fact, I would say that roleplaying is more important than ever.

Introducing New Players

During my time as a gamemaster, I have had to teach new players on more than one occasion, and I'm about to do it again.  I always like to introduce D&D to new players, however, on this occasion, I'll be working with a group that will consist of four new players.  I've never attempted to work with four newbies at once before, and it's made me alter my way of thinking.

In the past, when running an introductory game, I suggested the new player play a fighter, because fighters are very straightforward, simple to make, and simple to play.  I would run a typical dungeon crawl with a few combat encounters, a trap or two, low light conditions, and hidden things to search for.  I had thought that since combat is one of the most complex things in D&D, I needed to expose the new player to combat so they could learn the rules.  Even with the skill checks and dungeon crawl, the entire adventure was designed to expose the player to the rules.

However, I have recently realized that this isn't the best way to introduce a new player.  D&D has come a long way since its beginnings.  There is so much more to the game than dungeons.  This time around, I have decided to write an adventure that has almost no combat, focusing instead on trying to immerse the new players in the story instead of throwing rules at them.  I figured, this is the real test of whether they'd want to play or not, since, after all, D&D is a roleplaying game, it's about characters in a story, the rules can come later.

While working with one of the new players to create their character, I first asked him what experience he had with fantasy gaming on PC and console, then asked him what was his favorite type of character to play in those games.  He responded with wizard.  I warned him that playing a wizard in D&D was one of the most complicated classes to play, but he wanted to try it anyway.  It was then that I realized that this wasn't going to be about just teaching people the rules.  This player wasn't concerned with how difficult it would be to play a complex class in his first game ever.  He was going to enjoy the experience by playing his favorite type of character, rather than play something simple.  Really, that's what D&D is about, the experience, not the rules.

A Look at D&D 4th Edition

For a while after 4th edition was published, I kept hearing about how stupid it was compared to 3.5.  When a friend of mine joined the D&D Next playtest, he decided that we should try 4th edition so we could compare Next to the most recently published system.  We ended up playing 4th for about six months, and we're still playing.  After six months of game play, I can say... it's stupid.

In today's post, I'll be discussing some of the good things Wizards did with 4th edition, and the stupidity a veteran 3.5 player will feel when transitioning to 4th.

First of all, 4th edition is newbie friendly.  It uses much simpler rules than 3.5.  For example, you don't have a half of page of rules describing how to grapple an opponent.  In this respect, new players can pick up 4th edition and pretty much know what they're doing in a relatively short time.

Secondly, 4th edition balanced the player classes.  No longer is the wizard a low-level weakling who has to be careful not to even get bitten by a dire rat.  However, the wizard is also no longer a walking arsenal of arcane might that can end fights with a single spell at higher levels.  Every class has a certain role to fill, but some classes can fill more than one roll.  Each class has a variety of abilities to pick from as the character gains new levels, instead of just receiving a set ability at each level like they do in 3.5.

Third, fortitude, reflex, and will are no longer rolled by the player, but are instead set defenses like AC.  This was, to me, the most obvious step forward.  Now, any action made against the player or enemy puts the roll in the attacker's hand.  No longer do you have to figure out how your character can ward off a death spell by rolling a natural 20 on his fortitude save, only to succumb to the common cold with that natural 1 the next day.  Your character has a set fortitude, a set reflex, and a set will, and it's up to the attack to try to be strong enough to overcome you.

Fourth, in 3.5 a DM designing an encounter would have to reference a chart telling him how many monsters and traps of a certain challenge rating could be added together to achieve a certain encounter level, and if you wanted mixed CRs, with some higher and some lower in the same encounter, well, the chart in the Dungeon Master's Guide only covers multiple enemies of the same level and has a single entry for two enemies of different levels, so I hope you didn't want more than two monsters in the encounter.  In 4th, a DM need only consult one chart telling him how many points a specific encounter level is worth, then consult a second chart telling him how many points a monster or trap of a specific level is worth, then spend the points for the encounter level he wants on the monsters he wants.  For example, if you're building an encounter for four players of level 4, the 4th edition DMG says to spend 700 points.  Now, you'd just consult the chart on the previous page which tells you how many points a monster of a given level is worth, so you could include two level 3 monsters worth 150 each, and two level 5 monsters worth 200 each.  Good luck telling me what encounter level two level 3s and two level 5s would be in 3.5.


Alright, now let's turn around and talk about the bad, beginning by taking three of my points above and telling you where they messed up from a veteran's perspective.

First, the game encourages munchkin play.  In fact, it's impossible not to.  If you try to build a balanced character, you will end up sub-par.  Your fortitude, reflex, and will defenses each use the higher of a pair of attributes, instead of just constitution, dexterity, and wisdom.  This means there is no real decision on the player's part to try to balance their offense and defense.  In 3.5 you may ask yourself: do I want a higher strength so I can hit harder, higher constitution for a better save and hit points, or try to make them even?  In 4th, you can just say screw that and max out your strength because if it's higher than your constitution, then it applies to your fortitude.  Each class lists one to three attributes that the class cares about.  You should put your highest attributes into those and say screw the rest, because all of your class abilities will use one of the listed attributes, either to attack, deal damage, heal, or provide a buff.

Second, the classes are balanced.  I said this when talking about the good points of 4th, but it's also a negative, in a way.  Speaking as someone who used to love playing wizards and sorcerers in 3.5, when I saw the 4th edition version of the classes, I asked myself "why would I ever play this?" and played a warlord instead.  I later made a wizard and tried it out, but I didn't feel like a wizard.  My wizard in 3.5 has a limited number of spells, but when I use them, things get real.  In 4th, my wizard can use his powers a lot more often, but at the same time, he has to.  If he doesn't, things get real, and not in our favor.  The wizard no longer felt like a wielder of incredible arcane power, instead he felt like just another character with a set of powers, just like everybody else.  In 3.5, I can use my spells to help the party fight better, get them out of a tight spot, or hold back a group of enemies so we can focus on a few at a time.  In 4th, I can control enemies to an extent, making it easier for the party to deal with them, but you know what?  So can our fighter.  Our fighter has an ability that can draw enemies in close to him, and punish them for not attacking him.  So, why do we need a controller anymore?  We don't, the fighter can force enemies to focus on him so our weaker party members can exploit that.

Third, your defenses only determine how hard it is for a certain effect to begin to affect you, once it has, you need only roll a 10 or higher to save against it (a certain few effects may impose a penalty, but I haven't encountered one yet).  So, while a character of 18 constitution will be harder to poison than one with a 10, once both are poisoned, both have a 55% chance of overcoming it.  (The same applies to mental effects too!)  The save system doesn't take your attributes into account at all.  While the system is okay, it just feels flawed.


Now that I've listed a counter-point to my first three original points, I'll briefly discuss what else is wrong with 4th edition from a veteran's viewpoint.

1. You can only heal a limited number of times per day.  Each class has a certain number of healing surges, which are based on your constitution.  The fighter has more surges than the wizard, for example.  While this is okay, it applies to almost every form of healing.  Want to take a second wind?  Spend a surge.  Want the cleric or warlord to heal you?  Spend a surge.  Want to drink a potion?  Spend a surge.  There are only a handful of abilities that the "healing" classes can get that allow healing without spending a surge.  Also, why should your limited number of surges affect how often magic can heal you?  It makes magic less magical.  The magic is no longer healing you at this point, but is instead just triggering your body to tap into its reserves, which is alright, if that's what you're going for, but healing is the only thing that works this way.  For example, a buff spell actually makes a character stronger, it doesn't require the character have extra reserves of strength for it to work.

2. You can trip anything.  For the most part, if a power has a certain effect, it works.  There are many powers that can knock a target prone, and the only rule I've found since I started playing 4th is that a flying creature isn't always rendered prone.  It depends on how high they're flying, or something, I forgot the exact rule, but needless to say, you can't knock a beholder prone.  Spiders, on the other hand, sure!  Eight legs?  No problem, it's prone.  How about a dragon?  Yeah, it's only three times your size, go ahead, you can knock it down.

3. Fights take forever.  My 4th edition party is up to level 12 now.  We started to notice a few levels ago, that if we aren't fighting minions, our enemies have a lot of HP.  On average, one encounter takes us about 2-3 hours to complete.  Dang.  We're lucky if we can get through more than two encounters in one night.

4. Buffing is pointless.  In 3.5, passing out the right buff spells before a fight usually meant that you didn't need to heal as much after.  In 4th, the buffs don't provide big enough boosts to make them worth it.  Pretty much every character in my 4th party has around a +18 to +20 attack bonus, and an AC of 26-29.  We get hit pretty much every round, and only rarely do we miss.  The buff powers we have available to us can provide a +2 to our defenses, and up to a +5 to our attacks.  Half the time we don't even bother mentioning our attack buffs, because they hardly matter.  Do you know how much it helps to improve an AC 26 to 28 when the enemies are hitting our AC 29 fighter pretty much every turn?  Not at all.  In 4th, you're going to take damage.  It's just a fact.  4th isn't about buffing to prevent damage, it's a matter of how much can you heal, and can you take down the enemy before you run out of heals?

5. You have limited-use powers instead of static abilities.  In 3.5, as you gained levels, you gained new class abilities and those abilities were always active, always available.  Once you got it, you added it to your sheet, learned what it did, and it just was there.  In 4th, you gain new powers that you have to decide when to use.  This means every turn, you have a list of up to 12 different options or so to pick from.  Have you ever been playing 3.5 and in the middle of combat had to wait for the caster to go through their list of spells, pick out one to use, then wait for them to read over what it does, only to decide it's not the most effective option, then go through their list again to repeat the process?  Imagine every player doing that now.

6. Your powers get replaced.  In 4th edition, you are allowed to build up a list of 3 encounter powers and 3 daily powers, in addition to your paragon powers.  When you gain a new encounter or daily after that, you have to choose an existing power to give up in order to gain it.  I recently looked through upcoming options for my warlord to see what new powers would become available.  I was very disappointed to find out that my level 1 and level 3 encounter powers were a better fit for our group's tactics than the upcoming level 13 powers.  However, the higher level powers do more damage.  So, now I'm forced to decide between keeping a tactically useful power that deals little damage, or swapping for a power that's not nearly as useful just because it hits harder.  Finally, I get a meaningful decision, but instead of a decision between balancing attributes or focusing on offense vs defense, my decision is whether or not I fall behind the damage curve of my team in order to keep the usefulness of my old powers.


I could continue to go on with this list, because at least once per game during our first three months of play, I found something that made me say "4th is stupid!", but I've probably forgotten half of those moments, and this list is already getting long, so let me just summarize this by saying that 4th edition is a fun, simplified system that tried to make everyone feel relevant, but when everyone's special, nobody is.  It's great for newbies, but probably horrid for veterans.  However, if you try not to compare it to 3.5, but just think of it as a different game, it can be enjoyable.

Playing Your Best (D&D) Lesson 4: Initiative

Among my playgroup, improved initiative is a popular choice for a 1st or 3rd level feat, but why?

The most obvious reason for taking improved initiative is for a better chance of going first in combat.  However, this is really pointless for most characters.  Let's look at an example:

A party of four characters (fighter, rogue, cleric, and wizard) vs four opponents appropriate to their level.

Scenario 1, the fighter goes first: You've rolled initiative, and the fighter gets to go first.  Good, right?  Well, it depends.  If the enemies are in a hallway and the fighter can block the path to the rest of the party, then yes, otherwise, what is the fighter going to do?  Charge the nearest opponent?  If the fighter rushes into melee with an opponent, he attacks, maybe he drops an opponent, but most likely not if you're level 3 or higher.  This leaves the fighter in a position to get ganged on by four opponents.  It also means that if the rogue wants to get into melee in order to sneak attack, the rogue now has to go to the enemy.  If the cleric or wizard wants to buff the fighter, they also need to expose themselves to the enemy.  If the wizard wants to use an area spell, the fighter is now in the way.
Good: You've drawn aggro away from the team
Bad: You've put yourself in a position that makes it harder for the team to support you

Scenario 2, the cleric or wizard goes first: So, what happens when a caster goes first?  Lots, actually.  If the enemy is in a hallway, the wizard could use a wall spell to block off the enemies, enabling the party to fight them one at a time, or engage them with ranged attacks while they're trapped behind a spell.  If the enemies aren't in a hallway, the wizard or cleric can pass out helpful buffs to the team before the enemy gets to act, thereby making it harder for the enemy to hurt the team.
Good: The team is still together to support each other, plus a buff before enemy attacks can often reduce the number of hits the enemy scores on the party or reduce the damage dealt
Bad: Nobody has drawn aggro away from the casters, but if the enemy rushes the casters, they're now up close to the fighter and rogue, still a win

Scenario 3, the rogue goes first: Sneak attack.  If the rogue goes before the enemy, the enemy is flat-footed, so the rogue's attack is a sneak attack without needing to set up flanking positions.
Good: Automatic sneak attack
Bad: Not much, because the rogue can use a ranged sneak attack and doesn't have to expose himself to the enemy

In the above scenarios, the party is in a better position if the cleric, rogue, or wizard acts before the enemy, but when the fighter acts before the enemy, it doesn't really matter except when the fighter can block the enemy's access to the party, and honestly, the right spell from the wizard could accomplish that.

But, when the fighter goes first, he deals damage before the enemy!  So?  In D&D 3.5, dealing damage that doesn't drop an enemy to 0 HP doesn't make them any less effective in combat.  Plus, after the first round, the initiative order isn't very important anymore, because you're just alternating turns at that point.

Now, the best scenario is that the entire party acts before the enemy, however, the GM isn't required to tell the players what the enemy's initiative is.  So, in scenario 1 above, should the fighter delay, not knowing if the rest of the party acts before the enemy or not?  I would say the best option is to take a readied action.  The fighter should either position himself in front of the party, or near the weakest character (probably the wizard, maybe rogue, depending on positions) and declare a readied action to attack the first opponent to get within reach.  The benefit of this is that he stays close to the party for support, he doesn't risk getting caught in the casters' area spells if they end up acting before the enemy, plus melee-based enemies have to either attack him and get hit by a readied attack, or try to get past him and take the readied attack plus an attack of opportunity.

Should a fighter take improved initiative?  Eh, probably not.  A fighter should spend more time worrying about his combat feats.  That's not to say he should never take improved initiative, but there are plenty of other feats that are more important for a fighter.

Should the cleric or wizard take improved initiative?  Definitely.  Casting the right spell before the enemy even acts can make a huge difference in the upcoming fight.

Should the rogue take improved initiative?  Probably.  Getting in a sneak attack just because the target hasn't acted yet is nice, but other than that, the rogue doesn't benefit any more from improved initiative than the fighter.

What about the classes I haven't mentioned?  Well, if your primary role is to cast spells, and you have either area effects, buffs, debuffs, or a way to alter the battlefield, then you'll want improved initiative.  If your primary role is to swing a big stick at the enemy, you could care less in the long run.

How to be a Better Gamemaster Part 2

In this post I'll continue my tips on improving your gamemastering skills.


3. Calling an Audible

No matter how much prep work you do, no matter what you plan, sometimes your players are going to do something to screw it up.  When that happens, you've got to start changing the plan.  Here are a couple of examples.

In a game I played in, the player characters came upon a murder scene.  The victim was a non-player character we had never met or even heard of before.  We were then sent a message saying to meet someone for information on the murder.  From our point of view, we had no reason to want to investigate.  We had no connection to the victim, so investigating the murder wasn't our top priority, so when we voiced that to our GM, he decided that if we weren't going to follow the plot, he'd drop in some "encouragement" in the form of a lot of really tough enemies.

In a game I just recently GMed, I needed the player characters to follow an investigation and eventually find the villain.  The PCs were having a bit of trouble figuring out how to find the clues they needed.  One of the players suggested that having a supernatural background, he might know someone who also dabbled in the supernatural.  So, to put the PCs back on track, I decided to make the villain his contact, and soon the PCs started sniffing around the only guy in town who knew about the supernatural when they discovered the crime they were investigating was done with magic.

In the first example, the players feel like they're being punished for not following the plot. However, you can use the technique of using "encouragement" to get the players on track, but you have to do it carefully.  First, the players have to have at least some clue about where you want them to go.  Second, you have to make it feel like your "encouragement" isn't a punishment, but is a logical follow-up.  If, for example, your "encouragement" is also investigating the same thing the PCs are, or if they were the cause and are tying up loose ends, then it feels more like it's part of the plot and not just a random encounter to force the PCs back on track.  In the second example, the players were going nowhere, but one came up with a logical idea and was rewarded for it.  Both examples got the PCs on track.  The first, however, was a negative experience for the players, the second was positive.

When your players aren't going where you want, and you need them to find something important, often, the easiest thing to do is to move whatever you need them to find to wherever they're going.


4. Making things up/Making things Interesting

When you play with a group who has been playing the game long enough, eventually they memorize the monsters.  When you play with veteran players, sometimes making up some new threats can freshen up a stale game.  In one of my recent games, I took a red dragon, mixed in some black dragon stats, and gave it two extra heads.  Suddenly, the PCs were too afraid to even try to fight this monster.  They no longer knew what to expect, and it led to a great chase scene and a spectacular death.

If you're feeling ambitious, you could try creating your own campaign world.  Creating your own world takes time and effort.  I would know.  I've created dozens of them.  The great thing, though, is that you don't have to do all the work right away.  You can start small, creating the area your game will begin in and then spread out as the campaign progresses.  In a later post, I'll cover things such as writing your own adventures, campaigns, and even creating your own world.


5. Acting

Every good GM wants their players to get involved with their characters and the story.  In my post on being a better player, I talked about the Actor.  The Actor plays a role, which is what rpgs are about.  The Actor doesn't just throw together a set of numbers and call it a character.  The Actor creates a character, then comes up with a set of numbers that fits the character.  If you want your players to play their characters, then you have to play yours as well, and when you consider that GMs have control of every NPC, that's a lot of roles to play. Fortunately, most NPCs are only going to interact with the players for a few minutes, then will probably never come up again.  You really only need to worry about NPCs that are important to the plot. For these NPCs, give them a little personality, even if it's just as simple as a peculiar way of speaking, or an unusual mannerism.  Players are more likely to remember the nervous, stuttering contact they met in the bar moreso than just another NPC they met in the bar, even if the NPC gave them important information.


This concludes my basic tips on improving yourself as a gamemaster.  In future posts, I will expand upon some of these.  My next post will will return to the "Playing You Best" lessons.

How to be a Better Gamemaster

In my last post, I talked about what a gamemaster is, and what it takes to be a gamemaster.  In my next few posts, I'll talk about how to be a better gamemaster.


1. Know the Rules

If you've never played a single game in a system you want to run as a gamemaster, then read the system's rule book.  Read the entire thing, front to back.  When you're done, read the section on creating characters again, then read the section on combat again (most game systems involve some sort of combat). Some game systems have some complicated rules for situations that don't happen in every game.  You don't need to have these memorized for your first game.  For example, if you're about to play D&D 3.5, or just about any game system based on that version of the d20 rules, you probably won't have to know the grapple, sunder, and disarm rules off the top of your head.  You should, however, know how to begin a combat encounter, a general idea of what a character can do on their turn, when movement provokes attacks of opportunity, and the critical hit rules.  The rest of the combat rules you can look up as needed.

Now, that's what you need to be a gamemaster.  What about being a better gamemaster?  Well, nothing kills the pace of the game like having to stop and look up an obscure rule.  Whenever I want to use an opponent that specializes in something obscure, say I want him to try to destroy the players' weapons, for example, I read the rules on sundering before I decide if I want to include the opponent at all, to be sure this tactic isn't going to be so overly complicated that it slows down the game too much.  Once I'm confident that I want to use that tactic, I create the opponent and write it into my notes.  During the week leading up to game day, I review the rules that opponent will be using.  On game day, about an hour before the players arrive, I read the rules again.  Usually, by this point, I have the rule memorized and no longer have to look it up at the table, thus avoiding putting the game on pause while I look through a rule book.  The biggest advantage of this is that you don't try to memorize an entire rule book in one sitting, and slowly memorize one new rule each time you want to throw something new at your players.  This keeps your encounters from becoming stale with every opponent just trying to attack for damage.


2. Preparation

Depending on your preferences, and whether you are writing your own adventures or running published modules, your prep time could be as little as an hour or two per game or as much as ten or more per game.  Because the amount of preparation needed changes depending on your play style and whether you're running custom adventures or not, I'll give you some notes for a couple of scenarios.

Running published modules requires the least amount of preparation, and is recommended if you work long hours, or are new to gamemastering, or if you're just not confident in your writing skills.  The beauty of a module is that you have a written adventure, usually spanning multiple game days, and usually have some maps included.  You pretty much have nothing do before the game.  However, if you want to be a better gamemaster, you should read through the entire adventure at least once before you begin the first game.  This way, you at least have an idea of how events in one part of the adventure lead to other parts.  Before each game, you should read the portion of the adventure you plan to run that day, and if there are any obvious choices or detours the players might be able to make that would take the game in a different direction and read that as well.  There are modules that offer players more than one goal that could be completed in any order they choose, so you should be ready for whichever choice your players want to take.  If you want to make it easy on yourself, you could gather your players together ahead of time and introduce the adventure to them, present the choices, and have them decide on a course of action before your game session.  This way, you can familiarize yourself with the player's choice and when the game begins, you won't have to take up time with a group discussion on which course of action to take, because they've already chosen.  When running a module, one thing you should always do is review the stats for the enemies the players will face during the upcoming game session.  If any enemies use an ability you aren't familiar with, you should spend a few minutes in the rule book getting to know this new ability.  Total prep time per session when using a module should be around an hour.  You could get by with less if you're pressed for time, but I highly advise against it.  I would recommend up to two hours if you can spare it.

Writing your own adventures can be fun before you even get to the game table.  Trying to anticipate how the players will react to your devious plans and diabolical villains, and visualizing them falling victim to your heinous traps are all fun moments you can get caught up in while writing.  Well, don't.  Unless you've been playing with this group for years, you can never be sure how your players will react.  That's okay, though.  You can't possibly take the time to try to come up with every eventuality while writing your adventures.  So don't.  I will likely write a post sometime in the near future focusing just on writing good adventures for your games, but for now, let's just focus on some general guidelines.  I started gamemastering by writing my own adventurers.  I've never run a module, and didn't even read one for my first few years of gamemastering.  When I finally did, I saw that modules went into much more detail than my own adventures.  When writing your own adventures, you know how much detail you need.  If you need only a few pages, then write a few pages.  If you need every meticulous detail written down, go for it.  I ran a game for Halloween a few months ago, with only one night to prepare.  I wrote only a page and a half of notes.  The game lasted for ten hours, and my players claimed it was one of the best games they ever played and had them scared stiff.  Sometimes all you need is some ideas floating around in your head and a few notes to help you keep track of them.  It's hard for me to nail down just how much prep time you need with custom games.  It's really up to you.  Obviously, it's going to take some more work than just reading a module.  I'd suggest around two to four hours per game.  You could get by with less, and you could certainly use more, but try not to get bogged down in details.  If it isn't important to the plot, you can always make it up at the table.