Blog Comments

Originally Posted by Matt James

Cool. Nice summary. The critty-DM sounds like no fun.

Yeah there is no doubt in my mind she was cheating to "make it harder" but she was actually sucking all the fun out of it.

Cool. Nice summary. The critty-DM sounds like no fun.

I do this quite frequently. Yesterday I had three Dragonborn that the group encountered along with a bunch of human sentries. I decided that the best thing to do because up to this point my group was defeating everything quickly and realizing a lot of the opponents they were fighting all had similar abilities and were getting very cocky.

I held off one of the Dragonborn in reserve for round three. I made him a solo and gave him an ability that when he got bloodied his ability to push people increased by +1 and he gained the additional ability to follow up and shift into those vacated spaces. The addition of 2 AP made this a fun encounter.

They were saying "we got this no problem" double iron doors open and out steps the BBEG for the day. They really enjoyed the encounter after it was complete, they were scared though cause I was smiling and that sometimes bodes ill for them.

Now you have me pining for the old monster builder. It was so much more effective. Perhaps I am now an old curmudgeon and just don't want to learn any fancy new monster builders.

I play with at least 2 of these people (both by accident) and this helps to keep it fresh and keep them surprised. That and creating monsters from scratch.

[FR][FR][/FR][/FR]

Originally Posted by Julius Smith

Changing up the mosters with unique powers is a great idea. nothing is more aggrivating than sitting across the table from a part time dm who knows every power and weakness of the monsters our "inexperienced" lvl 2 players are fighting. changing up the monsters weakness or strength even a little keeps his dm knowledge from ruining the learning experience its supposed to be for our characters. Not every player memorizes the monster manual and we shouldnt.

I think I might have played with this part time DM player in the past. The what comes next is the best part of rpg's and should never be minimized. Changing powers is a good move. For simplicity you can change the monster with another one of appropriate level. I use goblins as human roguish acrobats for example. It throws off bad players that give all the secrets away.

From the Gamemaster point of view, 4E is so much cleaner and easier from encountering building to actually running the encounters and experience point rewards. I look for inspiration where I find it and save lots of old materials and buy old materials with that in mind. No monster caster levels or silly abilities that are never coming up is smart design.

Changing up the mosters with unique powers is a great idea. nothing is more aggrivating than sitting across the table from a part time dm who knows every power and weakness of the monsters our "inexperienced" lvl 2 players are fighting. changing up the monsters weakness or strength even a little keeps his dm knowledge from ruining the learning experience its supposed to be for our characters. Not every player memorizes the monster manual and we shouldnt.

Thanks while not all original I thought I would consolidate so others could find inspiration or use them for their games.

I dig this.

haha, I love it!

Yeah, don't want to spoil the surprise...

Well currently my poor party is trying to figure out why The Hand, big local gang, has increased its presence in the area. They also want to know what took down a level 22 Solo Dragon. Beyond that it is simple save the city before it takes over the world...(which as they said multiple times, they don't know how to do)
Thanks Vic I try to make it fun. My recaps don't do the game session justice. I wish I could post my plot thread but not till it is done.

This always sounds like such a fun campaign.

Very true.

I remember in 3.5E that often an idea for a BBEG would come from a particular prestige class. Creating the BBEG then became an exercise in building the NPC legally, properly accounting for all of the pre-requisites for a particular prestige class.

Funnily enough, I still use 3.5E prestige classes (and spells) for inspiration. However, now I'm not looking for how to build the BBEG legally but how to make it interesting. It's a better way to think!

I have to admit that it is something I like about monster design in fourth edition as well. Looking at what is currently published, as well as some modest work I've done myself, it does feel like the designs are all meant to try and capture the essence of the various creatures, without having to resort to adding a grab-bag of barely-used abilities or a slack handful of caster levels to make them feel rounded.

I had the same time out error I got before you went down it must just be on my end. I will try it on other browsers to see if it is me.

What error did you receive? I just edited it an pasted in your blog post (I kept your link as well).

I typed it all out and tried to post it and like old days I got an error so I posted the link and it went so you get the link.