Someone once asked me why D&D bothers to include skills at all. After all, the GM generally tells the players anything they really need to know (rather than seeing all his hard work in preparing the game crash and burn); and even if he doesn’t, players can always take a twenty.

After further discussion, this person conceded that Spellcraft can be important, and so can pick lock, and possibly track. But most of the skills, he maintained, were fluff.

I disagree. Openly, completely, and vehemently. But with an important qualification: A character’s skills only matter if the GM makes them important.

That takes effort, and forethought, and preperation; and occasionally, the ability to think on your feet.

The subject of this blog is skills, how they are used, and how to write scenarios that make them something for players to expend considerable thought on. The techniques that are described are used in all my campaigns, regardless of game system, so they are universally applicable, but I will be using D&D as my example throughout.

Skill Definitions

The first ingredient needed before skills really matter in a game is for the GM to have a very clear understanding of what it is that each skill describes. At first glance, this is quite self-evident; but think about it a little bit and all sorts of nasty complications rear their ugly heads, gibbering and hooting and doing their best to confuse you.

Action Skills

Some skills are used to test the success or failure of an action, and nothing more. Skills like Climbing and Swimming are examples; so is Diplomacy. But hold on a minute – which skill should be used to estimate how long it will take to climb something? Okay, so climbing is not just an action skill! Is the Swimming skill the same if you want to race a 200m sprint as if you want to swim the English Channel? So what do these skills actually mean?

Clearly, to resolve these questions, we have to look at the game mechanics. Essentially, these come down to 4 factors: How often, how hard, consequences, and complications.

• How Hard: The harder it is to succeed, the more quickly a character will fail. The easier it is, the longer a character can go without failing.
• How Often: The more frequently a character has to make a skill check, the more likely it is that a small chance of failure will manifest. The less frequently a character has to make a skill check, the less likely it is that even a poorly-skilled character will fail on any given occasion (ie, the more likely it is that they can fumble their way to an unlikely success).
• Consequences: If a single failure spells the end of the attempt – what I call sudden-death situations – both these numbers are critical; ‘How Often’ can treated as providing context to ‘How Hard’. If circumstances are more forgiving, ‘How Hard’ is less important than ‘How Often’ – something that most DMs overlook.
• Complications: These are saving throws that are needed, or damage that is taken, or anything else that accompanies the skill rolls or that occurs in case of failure of a skill roll that is not automatically fatal to the attempt to perform whatever action is being attempted.

Combining these permits refinement of our interpretation of the skills in question:

• Any sort of sprint is all about going as fast as possible for the given distance. A character gets a base movement for free; what’s needed is some game mechanism for going faster – at the cost of temporary damage. “DC 5+5 per extra inch of movement, and the character suffers 1d6 for the first extra inch of movement, 2d6 for the second, 3d6 for the third, and so on, lasting until the character rests for as many minutes as he has swum” would be a suitable house rule.
• An endurance swim, on the other hand, is about going as slow as necessary in order to cover the distance – the goal is to stay afloat at any price. Applying the normal rules for swimming but permitting the character to lose forward speed for the rest of the swim instead of damage from drowning does a reasonable job of simulating the required task.

I didn’t have either of those house rules at hand (I havn’t needed them, thus far) – I pretty much created them on the spot for this blog post, in exactly the same way as I would if I needed them in play.

Expertise Skills

Some skills have, as their primary purpose, knowing how to do something. This might be anything from poetry composition to appraising gems. Surely, there’s nothing as likely to trip us up here? Or is there? A successful skill roll might produce an expertly-crafted painting – with absolutely no genuine creativity behind it; technically flawless, artistically devoid of merit.

Every expertise skill has some artistic or creative element – from discerning that a gem’s value will be enhanced when recut in a certain style to producing a masterpiece with baked beans and oil paints. Once again, we have no rules mechanism to guide us, and there is no characteristic that comes close to expressing or measuring creativity.

Here, the first question isn’t ‘can a house rule be created to reflect the activity’, but is one even necessary? This question had a self-evident answer when it came to action skills, because characters are sure to attempt to perform those actions sooner or later.

Interestingly, in this circumstance, the answer can be either ‘yes’ or ‘no’, depending on how the GM defines the meaning of what the skill actually measures. It might seem like nit-picking, but a small difference in definition can have a tremendous impact in this case. Most GMs assume that Standard valuation techniques only assess the technical workmanship of a piece of craftsmanship and that the artistic creativity involved remains unidentifiable, simply because the rules only really talk about the workmanship aspects. Even the definition of a “masterwork item” refers only to the quality of the workmanship.

It ain’t necessarily so, folks. If we assume that the value of a craftsman’s work is the product of the execution and the inspiration, then standard appraisal values give us all the guidance we need. A work valued at 500gp might be a flawlessly-executed piece of limited creativity, or a sloppily-executed work of brilliant creativity or historical importance or rarity. That means that we only have to assess the overall value, and any random mechanism can be used to determine the ratio of technique to creativity, within reasonable limits. Or better yet, a value for a character’s creativity can be determined by the referee or the player (as appropriate), documented in the character’s personal description, and the overall value of an item used to determine the technical success of the work.

Similarly, when appraising a gemstone, the appraisal value reflects the value if the gem is used in the way that maximises its value – any lesser usage reduces the value.

Knowledge Skills

Some skills are simply about knowing things. Here, the issue is one of demarkation between one skill and another. Does “Knowledge: Religion” contain knowledge of rituals and church hierarchy and politics, or does it contain knowledge of theology – or both? Does “Knowledge: Abberations” give the character knowledge of Abberations sufficient to identify a footprint as probably not belonging to an Abberation?

Knowledge rolls are usually sudden-death rolls – a character either knows something, or he doesn’t – at least according the assumptions of most GMs, that is! Once again, this is a flawed assumption.

I interpret knowledge checks differently: If a character succeeds in a Knowledge Check, they have succeeded in recalling any pertinant information they have on the subject. If they fail, the GM can either determine that they have no such knowledge, or that they have simply failed to recall it – and can try again after an interval of time determined by the GM. Even taking a twenty – if the characters have the leisure to do so – only gives this level of ‘success’.

How does a GM assess what relevant information a character might have?

There’s a heirarchy of information that I always keep in mind, of varying reliability:

• Common Knowledge: heavily contaminated by superstition, rumour, misinformation, and dogma.
• Race-specific Knowledge: Dwarves tend to know about mining, humans about farming, elves about forests, and so on. Every race has its own areas of knowledge – to such an extent that in my Shards Of Divinity campaign I have created specific racial skills and skill packages (and gave characters extra starting skill points to spend on them). Although each race has its blind spots and contaminated knowledges, a fair amount of this information will be reliable – and usually couched in terminology that reflects/reinforces that race’s perspectives and prejudices.
• Profession-specific Knowledge: Fighters know about weapons, Mages about magic, Clerics about theology, and so on. Like races, this information is sometimes biased, inaccurate, or contaminated in some respect, but much of it is reasonably reliable.
• In-Game Experience: Discoveries made during play are usually accurate but may also be misleading. However, players often make the mistake of assuming that hearsay from NPCs falls into this category, while the GM (who knows the truth) often makes the mistake of having other NPCs ‘know better’.
• Character Background: If the character’s background mentions an encounter with Rakshasa, the character can be assumed to have picked up some knowledge of Rakshasa. If the character’s family come from a farming community, the character will have some knowledge of agriculture. And so on. This is usually extremely reliable knowledge, because everything that’s suspect has been relocated into other categories.
• Hearsay, Surmise, Speculation, Rumour, and Deceptions: These are about as reliable as you can get – not! The more general the information, the more likely it is to be at least partially correct. The more specific it is, the less it can be relied on. For hundreds of years, because the Bible stated that Eve was created from one of Adam’s ribs, anatomy texts showed women with more ribs than men. Eventually, someone counted.
• Character Education: This amounts to someone passing on information from one of the other categories as truthful. That makes it equal parts hearsay and racial knowledge &/or profession-specific knowledge.

When a player asks what his character knows about something, I have him make a knowledge roll. If he succeeds, he remembers something – which may or may not be accurate, but will almost always be plausible. If he fails, I feed him disinformation, with a hint that it’s unreliable, or he comes up with a total blank on the subject.

I NEVER reveal what the DC was. I NEVER tell them exactly what the most appropriate knowledge skill is, because that gives hints as well; instead, I let them check on a couple of different Knowledge skills (whatever they think appropriate, but I make sure that the most appropriate one is included) and ignore those that aren’t relevant.

If the character rolls a twenty (as opposed to taking twenty), whatever I tell them explicitly is completely accurate, no matter how limited it is; I’ll also throw in some extra information, but tell the players that they have rather less confidance in that info. If it’s relevant, I may let them read a section from the Monster Manual (or whatever) – without commenting on whether or not that specific entry is relevant, and on whether or not I’ve changed the creature to make it wholly or partially inaccurate. If a player brings a specific referance book to the table, I’ll use it in exactly the same way.

One of my players once asked what his character could determine from the architecture of an archway. Using a book I’d borrowed from the library for the purpose (having anticipated the need), I proceeded to give the character a half-hour lecture on lintel structures (actually, it was only about 5 minutes, but it FELT like half-an-hour!) – then told the player that the lintel on the archway obeyed none of those rules. Result: the character was completely convinced that every scrap of knowledge he posessed said that something funny was going on. The entire question was irrellevant to the question of what really WAS going on with the archway, however!

As a result of these practices, my game has become known as one where the players can trust me to put their character’s knowledge skills – and their ignorance – to good use.

Sensory Skills

The final category of skills are those which describe a character’s awareness of the world around them – Spot, Listen, Search, and so on. You might hope that finally, here is a class of skill in which there is virtually no complication; since these skills are used (in general) in exactly the way they are designed to be used, the official rules should more or less spell out exactly how they should work, right?

If only life was so simple. If a character knows there is something hidden in a specific location, should you permit extra search rolls until the character either finds it or gives up? How much can be discerned with a cursory glance, and what needs a careful and deliberate observation – and which one is the default? How about purloined letter syndrome? How about extra senses, such as Elves and Dwarves have?

Here’s how I handle these skill questions:

• The last one is easy to solve. Elves and other races with some type of extra sense frequently take a skill (analagous to Spot) to define their ability with this additional sense in my campaigns.
• When I write my scenarios, I generally write my location descriptions in short, declarative sentances. I preceed each with a number in brackets, which describes the base DC for spotting something, and carefully sequence them in order of ascending difficulty; then I can use the total generated by each character to tell them exactly what they see. I’m careful not to include any form of analysis in these descriptions; they are all straight observation.
• I consider a cursory glance to be a straight INT check, not a Spot roll, which requires the character to be deliberately looking at whatever is there to be seen for at least a round.
• And “purloined letter” syndrome describes repeated failures of a Search or Spot roll. Each time someone repeats a search, I add 5 to the DC for the next check, and have it take twice as long. The character can double the time to reduce the penalty by 5, or can halve the time and have it go up by another 5.

Writing Scenarios That Make Skills Important

Okay, so now that you’ve got a handle on walking the skills system around the block a time or two until it says “Uncle” and does the things that you want it to as GM, it’s time to look at just how to write scenarios that make skills something that matter.

Don’t give away the meaning

Actually, I’ve already described this technique in the previous section. When you’re describing a scene, start by asking yourself how much of it the characters will see with a cursory glance; that’s your DC5 result. Isolate the most significant element of the scene from the character’s perspective (“The big hairy thing trying to bean you with a club”); describe one or two more specific elements – physical description, clothing /armour, armament, identifying features – and put each into a single short sentence. Add 3 to the DC for each. Then describe details of the scene in general, starting with the next most important, and working down. Keep upping the DC by 3, but start from about 10 less than the highest value assigned to “the most important thing”. Then go into details of each other object that’s there, starting from about 5 less than the highest “general” item, and incrementing each line’s DC by 3.

This sounds like it’s a lot more work, and for the first two or three times you do it, that might actually be the case; but your descriptions will quickly become fuller and more detailed, and you will soon get into the habit. After a while, it actually saves time, because you get used to considering each item in detail. Once you do, you can start cutting and pasting old descriptions and giving each a minor tweak, saving yourself a LOT of time.

…But Don’t make your players play “20 questions” either

At the same time, there are going to be things that are blatantly obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together. You should always make sure that “the big yellow truck,” and anything equally obvious, is included in the minimum information you give to the players. Make them work for the nuances, but spell out the obvious – even if you have to be vague about what the obvious actually is.

A little knowledge attaches significance

The GM should never explain anything without a skill roll. Tell the players what their characters see and hear; remind them of noteworthy things they may have seen in the past; then let the players ask their own questions, and find the significance of the answers themselves – in response to the results of relevant skill rolls.

I normally give players up to two skills rolls for free; thereafter, each represents a 1 round loss of action in battle, a 2-3 second delay in speaking in a conversation, or a 1-minute delay in other circumstances. This forces players who want to extract the last drop of significance to pay the appropriate penalty in roleplaying, so that they don’t go on fishing expeditions (except when they can afford the luxury of doing so), while acknowledging and rewarding players who know the system, and hence don’t waste the GM’s time on frivolities.

Many of my players have learned that making a roll on the obvious skill tends to lead to the obvious answers; if they can make some educated guesses based on what they know of the campaign, they can quickly focus their attention on some telling details that let them infer the obvious stuff for themselves. It takes them fewer skill rolls to get to the important stuff, making it easier for them to play the roles of intelligent characters. Some of them are better at this than others – and to anyone who has yet to master the art, it can sometimes seem like the experts are plucking the truth out of thin air!

The next stage in their development as players is for them to start deploying their conversationalists strategically – instead of the character who is most qualified to speak on a subject taking the lead in a conversation, they can leave the opening gambits to other characters while they spend more of their time honing in on the important clues to what’s going on, something they are more qualified to do for the same reason that they are the best people to speak on a subject: because they have the highest skill levels in that particular subject. To date, no-one in any of my campaigns has really figured out how to do this, though on a couple of occasions they’ve managed to do it more-or-less accidentally.

You can often see characters in TV shows – especially high-level political figures – doing the same thing. Some underling starts the conversation, often making greetings and formal small talk, while the real experts and powerbrokers watch and learn. I’ve also seen the same thing happen in panel-based job interviews, where the person with the biggest influance over a yes/no decision is often the last person to speak.

As a result of these practices, not only do skills matter more in the campaigns, but the players are using them more often not only in terms of game mechanics, but to improve their roleplaying. This is a rare example of a game mechanism operating to bring the players closer to their characters and to the game world.

Prepare Historical skill rolls

All this places additional responsibilities on the GM. First, he’s got to really understand what’s going on in his game, so that he’s ready with the answers. This is most easily achieved in a published game setting that is well cross-referanced and has an excellent index – pity there aren’t many of those kicking around! Next best, and almost as good, is a campaign setting that the GM has created himself from scratch, simply because he’s more likely to know what’s in it. A published background with normal production standards is the next best option, and it’s a fairly remote one. The GM needs to have read and digested it several times – and not just from beginning to end; pick a random passage and see how quickly you can find a related passage, so that you learn where to find what you need at any given moment. This is so much work that I find it a LOT faster to create my own ideas!

Secondly, the GM needs to be alert for opportunities to sneak historical skill rolls into his narrative. This comes in two types of circumstance:

• Treasures: Whenever there’s an opportunity for a craftsmanship vs creativity distinction, there is an opportunity for the PCs to assess that distinction. Failure to do so might even compromise the value of some of the treasure that they find – gemstones poorly set or used in a setting that minimises the artistic componant of the maximum valuation, gems that are poorly cut, armour that is beautifully decorated but poorly constructed and vice-versa, etc etc etc.
• NPC Knowledge & Dialogue: NPCs should be subjected to the same rules as the PCs when it comes to analyzing a situation or answering a question – nothing without a skill roll (or at least, the faking of a skill roll by the GM. But that’s a whole different blog topic.)

Be prepared for your players to make mistakes

It might seem to be completely obvious, but when you are designing the week’s scenario, make sure that there is scope for the players to miss the crucial information, to misinterpret, to go off on wild goose chases, and generally to make mistakes. The world will seem all the more real to them when they realise that they can make mistakes and have to live or die by their decisions.

This requires you, as GM, to at least have a vague idea of what they will find in any mistaken direction that they might head. You need to know what clues they might find to suggest that their judgement might be in error (if any), and what the consequences will be of their being in the wrong place when the right time comes.

And there should definitely be consequences. The villains should advance their plans, and it might even become too late for the PCs to derail those plans. At the very least, it should become a far more difficult task to achieve. However, the GM should always build in some form of ‘last resort’ way for the PCs to save the day, no matter how impossible the odds might seem!

Reward Players For Doing The Right Thing

…especially if it means that their characters are penalised in some fashion. Reward original thinking, reward using the game system the way it should be used, and reward them for using the game mechanics to advance their roleplaying. A little positive reinforcement can work wonders.

But bear in mind that if a battle becomes harder as a result of a player mistake, it will be worth more XP, and possibly more treasure – so such rewards are sometimes built-in already.

Punishments should be indirect (usually)

If players don’t do those things that the DM wants to encourage with a reward, they should not be punished directly. Instead, the enemies should gain advantages that do NOT reward the PCs, either now or in the future. Only behaviour that the GM wants to explicitly Discourage should result in direct punishment. The GM should also be wary of collatoral damage to other players who may be innocent of any wrongdoing!

Don’t get angry, get even!

Some Additional Notes:

Additional Uses for existing skills

In Knights Of The Dinner Table issues 119 and 120, there was an article entitled Making The Most Of Your Skills by Jim Davenport, which went through just about every skill in the official D&D 3.5 rules and listed additional uses for them. Some I agreed with, and some I didn’t, but by and large it’s a magnificent resource.

For my Shards Of Divinity campaign, I took the list created by Jim, edited it to reflect my own opinions, and more than doubled the number of additional uses on offer. I’d publish it here in a blog, but don’t want to steal Jim’s work, and don’t really have the time to go through the more than 1000 additional uses for existing skills and work out which are mine and which aren’t. Maybe some other time.

In the meantime, go searching for the original articles. The author continues to write for KODT and is involved in the Serenity RPG; you can read his blog here (opens in a new window). His general d20 articles can be found in the “Creative Gamemaster’s Workshop” category.

Don’t be afraid to add more skills

At first glance, the spread of skills in D&D seems more than adequate. It doesn’t take too much experience with the system, however, before you start thinking of adding more. Some areas aren’t covered; some areas are general and/or generic, and you want to include racially-unique variations; and some house rules work best when expressed as skills.

The next step, as I’ve mentioned for my Shards Of Divinity campaign, is to create “skill packages” that are specific to each race, and express things that the race knows or does that are unique. Then you can do the same thing for each profession, ie Character Class.

I’m a great beleaver in forcing character constructions to be different and diverse. The more choices you force the players to make in terms of what they are good at, the better your game is, and the more individual your players become.

The key to this approach is ensuring that characters who invest in areas that the players don’t, gain an advantage from doing so under the appropriate circumstances.

Let your players run with the ball

If you institute just some of these changes, it might take your players a little while to get used to them, but once they do, they will quickly see an opportunity to take an advantage for themselves – especially if the NPCs are showing the way. It won’t take long before they are running with the ball, suggesting additional skills themselves. My players have reached the point where they will add skills and ask about them later, simply redistributing the skill points expended if their idea is denied. On at least 8 seperate occasions, I’ve found their ideas to be excellent and given complete approval; only once did I find that an idea was redundant (once though, I did change the base characteristic).

Not only does this make your game more unique and more diverse, not only does it make the campaign more plausible and the roleplaying more realistic, not only does it improve your understanding of the game and the campaign, and drive you to be a better GM, but it permits your players to invest themselves in the campaign, and gives them an immediate sense of ownership that is otherwise very difficult to engender.

That’s a lot of reward for a very small downside.

And that’s why I disagree so completely, and so vehemently, with the opinion that I echoed at the start of this blog.

In Part 1 of this blog post, I described nine general supplements which have been useful to me multiple times in multiple campaigns. In this second part, I add another eleven must-have supplements.

I should explain that this top twenty are not presented in any sort of ranking – they were originally listed (along with the honourable mentions that will follow) in the order they came to hand, and once the list was cut down to 20 names, simply grouped by subject matter into the four categories I’m using.

As before, I’ll do my best to explain why each item is on my list, and what it contributes to my campaign to earn its place in this exalted company. Where possible, I’ve given a cover image, linked to the Amazon page for that particular supplement.

I should also add that just because a given company’s product isn’t on this list should not give anyone offence; beyond the 48 supplements I’m listing in this 5-part/3-post article, there are at least a dozen more that didn’t get considered simply because I haven’t had time to read them yet, and over twenty beyond that which are on my shopping list but that I have not been able to purchase yet. This is a dynamic, ever-changing list.

I’d like nothing more than to be forced to expand it (though it gets very heavy to transport all the supplements to my games as it is!), and sincerely hope that everything on that unread list, and the new purchases that I intend to make as soon as I can afford to, are so ubiquitously useful that they mandate their inclusion.

And don’t get me started about the (literally) hundreds of supplements and articles that I’ve downloaded over the years from the net, but havn’t had time to read, but which will eventually force themselves onto any comprehensive list of this sort, probably as a whole new brace of categories…

Part 2: Three Planar Supplements

An awful lot of campaign genres involve travel to or from other dimensions. D&D/Fantasy, Superhero, Pulp/Cthulhu/Victorian Horror, Science Fiction… Since I run games that fit all four of these broad categories, supplements about “Planes of Existance” tend to be of immediate interest. The wonder is that only 3 supplements in this category made the cut…

Manual Of The Planes

(WOTC)
This has been the foundation of more scenarios in my campaigns than any other single supplement. I’ve brought extra-planar disruptions to the prime material plane, opened unexpected windows into other planes, and created mini-planes and demi-planes; I’ve inverted and twisted cosmologies; I’ve had refugees and escapees from, and escapes into, the outer planes. And nothing beats a “Gate” spell at the bottom of a 10′ pit trap! What makes this supplement so useful are the descriptions of the individual planes; while you can use the cosmology provided (and there are lots of ways to interpret it), you can also string the planes together in any way that makes sense to you (or even, in a chaotic universe, in an irrational order!) I’ve used this for referance in more than just D&D, it’s that useful.

Portals & Planes

(Fantasy Flight Games)
Whenever I start reading a new supplement, especially one that I’ve been loaned by a friend, I skim through it and make notes about which pages I want to read in detail and take notes on. I list these pages on the cardboard bookmarks that I use. Here’s the tally, for this supplement, of the pages that were instantly inspiring, of immediate interest, or of particular relevance to one of my campaigns: pages 16, 17, 18; 23, 24, 25, 26; 27, 28, 29, 30; 31, 32, 33, 34; 36; 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42; 43, 44, 45, 46, 47; 48, 49, 50, 51, and 52 – at which point I gave up listing them, since I wasn’t yet 1/3 of the way through the book! The supplement is divided into four parts: Planar Adventuring, Gates To Other Worlds, Worlds Beyond, and Threats & Civilizations; or, to put it another way, character prep and advice, getting there, what the place is like when you do, and what you might run across. This is such a logical sequence that it makes the supplement easy to read and easy to integrate into whatever campaign you’re running. This was pretty much the first supplement to go into this top 20 list, and it would take a nuclear weapon to shift it.

Book Of The Planes

(Mongoose Publishing)
Running a close second to the Manual Of The Planes in terms of usefulness is this absolutely brilliant work. It only has a couple of specific locations described, but it gives a systematic approach to the specifications of individual planes and subplanes that is logical, straightforward, comprehensive, and universal. Another supplement that I pull out from time to time regardless of what rules system I’m playing in.

Part 3: Four Arcane Supplements

Magic is such an integral part of the fantasy genre – and an essential add-on to so many other game genres, including pulp and superhero – that supplements detailing specialisations within the subject are rarely a complete waste of time, even if they don’t suit any of my immediate campaigns. Even so, there are a few that are head-and-shoulders above the rest that I’ve read (I have several more waiting, most of which will be listed in my honourable mentions).

Libris Mortis

(WOTC)
It’s rare for a game supplement to hold my attention long enough for a cover-to-cover reading. Normally, I just don’t have that sort of time or attention span to dedicate to the task. Libris Mortis is not one of the supplements I would have expected to be so engrossing that it demanded that I Make the time. Undeath and Necromancy are another of those near-universal subjects that almost any genre can take to the party every now and then, and this supplement, even though aimed purely at D&D, is full of information that can be applied more generally.

Drow Magic

(Mongoose Publishing)
One of the key objectives that I have for the Drow in any of my D&D games is to distinguish them from Elves. I don’t just mean with attitude and ritual and dwelling and so on, I mean the way it feels to PCs when they interact with the race. Unfortunately, tying them to the same rules system as everyone else, and in particular to the same magic system, tends to evaporate any alien flavour very quickly. This supplement was the starting point of the solution in my Fumanor campaigns. I’ve also used it for ideas for alien cultures in my superhero campaign, and for a death cult in that same campaign, and even for Nazi black magic in my Pulp Campaign. I just wish there was more of it! Warning: some of the content may be unsuitable for children. I don’t think there’s a problem, but the publishers have seen fit to splash a warning on the cover.

The Amazon link (click on the cover image) is to the “Brdgm Edition” which has a different cover and no mature content warning. I’m not sure what the differences in content are, if any.

Elemental Lore

(Fantasy Flight Games)
This book is all about Elementals. My PCs were the first to notice that any time I pulled something from its pages for an encounter or situation, the result always gave them a hard time without doing it through sheer brute force. In part, that was because I was augmenting situations with environmental factors and other supplements, but the fact remains that opening this always brings a metaphoric intake of breath from my players. I’ve also used this as a starting point for enemies in my superhero campaign, and in my space opera / superhero campaign, and intend to pull it out in the Pulp campaign sometime in the near future. Anything that is that universal deserves a place on this list.

But this supplement has been far more than just a source of encounters. It’s content has gotten me thinking about just what and why elementals are, and about the types of elementals that there can be, beyond the obvious ones that derive from the elemental planes. Death Elementals, Life Elementals, Sound Elementals, Lava Elementals, Honor Elementals… I havn’t hit anyone with a Time Elemental yet, but it will happen eventually!

All of that inspiration has, in turn, fed back into my concepts of the Elemental Planes themselves and the cosmology in general, and on the nature of magic itself, and those ideas were absolutely fundamental to the various D&D campaigns that I run. That’s why this is in the Arcane Supplements section.

Relics & Rituals

(Swords & Sorcery Studios)
The same could be said for this supplement, except that I have taken ideas from it already. In particular, uniting the ritual magic ideas from this volume with that of the Drow supplement from Mongoose (above) worked wonders for making the Drow feel as alien as they should. These pages have also influanced the Elves in my D&D campaigns, the Dwarves in my Shards Of Divinity campaign, Cthulhu/Alien-Horror cults in Pulp, Supervillain organisations in my Superhero campaign, and I’ve barely scratched the surface of what this volume has to offer. Including it was a no-brainer.

Part 4: Four Setting & Environment Supplements

Only an extremely localised campaign can’t benefit from a supplement detailing a particular unique environment. Of course, you can fake it if you don’t have such a supplement; but your credibility always surges ahead in leaps and bounds when your flavour text is reinforced with specific referance and environmentally-tailored rules. There are more supplements available in this department than just about any other, in some respects, simply because they are relatively easy to write. Unfortunately, they are very hard to write WELL. It’s easy to write a description of a campaign setting, but much harder to make it original and unique; and much much harder to imbue the text with that uniqueness, to convey it to the reading audiance; and much much much harder to examine the causes and implications and fundamental distinctions that are the real foundation of the game setting being described. It’s one thing to be fantastic, that only requires imagination; it’s quite another to be plausibly fantastic, that requires factual knowledge and an ability to link the fruits of your imagination to a logical foundation.

That’s where these five setting and environmental supplements come in. They not only give you the solid foundations apon which to build your own structures, they give you the logical implications and ramifications to support those structures.

Sandstorm

(WOTC)
Desert locations are some of the most varied and iconic fantasy locations, second only to forests, thanks largely to the love affair the western world has had in modern times with the colourful and oftentimes mythic culture of ancient egypt. It’s no coincidence that one of the earliest and most famous computer art images ever rendered by PC as demonstrations of their colour capabilities was the exquisitely beautiful death mask of Tutenkhamen! From the archeological expeditions of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and the sensationalist stories of plagues and tomb robbers to the horror movies based around mummies and mummification to the more modern fascination with pyramid power and the even more recent association with high technology through TV series such as Stargate SG1 and the Doctor Who episodes “The Pyramid Of Mars” and it’s mysterious villain, “Sutekh” – scratch the surface of just about any genre and you will find a desert location, an Egyptian connection, or both.

That environment, possibly THE most ubiquitous generic locale in all gaming, is what this supplement is all about. It contains essential information and – if using the d20 system – game mechanics that have a place in just about any campaign. It was a close contest between this supplement and its companion volumes, Stormwrack and Frostburn for a place in this list, but the ubiquity of deserts vs ocean and icy settings won out. I just wish there were more of these – one on mountains, and one on swamps, and one on tropical settings…

Dungeons

(AEG)
Boy, talk about your ubiquitous locales. The concept of a treasure-laden dungeon is so much at the heart of D&D that it’s in the name – and by way of comparison, how often do Dragons turn up? Small wonder that there are a couple of volumes on the subject that have made this list. Amazingly, even though they are by different publishers, there is astonishingly little overlap in content between this volume from AEG and the FFG supplement Dungeoncraft listed below it. This supplement has a section on giving your dungeon an internal logic and a sense of style, a section on types of ‘dungeon’ which includes Fortresses, Madmen’s Lairs, Mines, Natural Caverns, Sewers, Temples, Tombs, and Subterranean Communities. Then there’s a section on modifying the rules with new skills, feats, mundane items, spells, and prestige classes specifically relating for dungeon delving. These cover the sort of things that any sort of society that routinely clears dungeons would evolve. Finally, there’s a section on new monsters, new magic items, new traps, and some sample dungeons. So it’s heavy on the conceptual and creative side of things, and it has an excellent section on the social and professional developments that would result.

But the utility of these supplements goes way beyond the obvious. Supervillain lairs owe something in concept to the essential idea of a D&D-style dungeon – many of the same concepts can be applied to both. Some dungeons can easily be recast as silver mines in a Pulp-style game. Even space stations can be designed using dungeon-style concepts and methodologies.

To be honest, I couldn’t tell you where this volume ends and the FFG supplement begins – I think of them so totally as one combined work. Throw in the advice in the DMG and DMG II, and in the WOTC product Dungeonscape and you have a masterclass on the subject. Which made it very hard to select just a couple of them from the list, but I went with the two that I refer to most often and got the best ideas from.

Dungeoncraft

(Fantasy Flight Games)
I guess you could say that Dungeons (above) is more generalised, while Dungeoncraft picks four or five specific subtopics within the subject of Dungeon creation and focusses on them. The first deals with characters, dealing with how different classes can contribute to dungeon expeditions. It also offers some prestige classes, some new feats, and so on, but there is (as I said above) surprisingly little overlap between these areas of the two supplements. The second is all about magic – new spells and magic items, to be more specific. These could all have been written using the philosophical framework developed in the AEG supplement, they dovetail with that supplement so well. It was at this point in looking at the supplements that I went looking at the credits and noticed one name common to the writing of both: Mike Mearls. He’s the sole author listed as writing this supplement and one of 11 authors credited with Dungeons. The third section goes into dungeon hazards – how to design them, administer them, and run them. It doesn’t just describe one system for handling most of them, it offers alternatives for the GM to consider. Finally, there are sections on dungeon and encounter design and operation. Again, these are not so much redundant to the AEG supplement as complimentary.

Cityscape

(WOTC)
One of the hardest things to do is to create a fully fleshed out city, with history and depth and society and customs and people and commerce and architecture. That’s one reason why so much of my four part article earlier this year on Distilled Cultural Essence focussed on these subjects. (You can read it here:
Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV. Links open in a new window).

This supplement helps with all of that, as well as with the creation and execution of urban scenarios. I don’t find it indispensible all the time, because a lot of scenarios have no urban componant, but whenever I’m in anything even marginally resembling an urban environment, this is the first product that I reach for.

This List will conclude with part 5.

Means, Motive, and Opportunity.

The M-M-O triad are the foundation of mystery stories and crime fiction in general, and have been for centuries. To be fair, most stories rely on the fallability and limitations of the triad as a means of solving those mysteries, especially on the first and third of the trio. Motives, after all, can always be inferred.

I was reading issue #455 of Roleplaying Tips, in particular “Let It Ride” by RJK, and “Mess With Your Players’ Heads” by John Lewis from Roleplaying Pro, when the confluance of the two articles made me realise something: The Means-Motive-Opportunity trio can be used as a template, a blueprint, a guide to the best method of engaging your players.

Since this was an entirely new perspective on the subject (something that is always valuable), I coudn’t wait to share the insight with our readers. (Besides, I didn’t want anyone else to beat me to it!)

Means

To satisfy this leg of the M-M-O tripod, you have to give the characters the tools to shape their own destiny as they see fit. That doesn’t necessarily mean the biggest, baddest magic weapon; more important are Information and Resources. The latter might mean gold, it might mean experience and expertise, it might mean magic, it might mean political influance, it might mean professional contacts. It most probably means some combination of all of them. These should not be handed to the characters on a plate, they have to be earned; but there should always be some means by which the characters can take what they have and ‘work’ them to achieve the next rung up the ladder.

Up the ladder to what end? To give your players the Means by which to fully engage in the campaign, you also have to give your players the tools to shape that campaign. That means that the players should set the agenda in terms of ultimate goals, chosen from the menu placed before them by the campaign setting that the GM has created for them.

At the start of every day’s play, the GM should ask himself what will take place in the course of play that day to enhance the players’ and characters’ tool-chests. What does he expect them to achieve to advance their cause? And, at the end of the day’s play, he should reflect on the same questions in retrospect; what did they actually do to further “the story of the campaign”? What is the shape of the chapter just written, and how does it inform the shape of the next chapter to come?

Motive

In order to be successful, the campaign also has to give both players and characters a Motive to engage fully in it. Unlike the crime-busting context, this can be the hardest to achieve. To provide Motivation for your characters, they can’t be mere cookie-cutter collections of statistics, they have to be Simulated People, internally consistant and with developed personalities and ambitions. To the characters, the Campaign should represent a Journey; equal parts self-discovery, personal growth, achievement, adventure, awe, and wonder.

Equally, the world has to be as plausible as the GM can make it, not just to the characters, but to the players; they need to be Stimulated People. He has to bring the world to life – its tastes, sights, sounds, and smells. It, too, needs an internally-consistant logic. Even if neither players nor characters know what it is, they can still detect its presence – and feel its absence. It’s fortuitous that a solid conceptual foundation saves the GM work, or it would be almost impossible to achieve; but, by making choices quicker and easier, as well as more consistant and logical, the GM can more easily focus on the essentials when the time comes to make decisions. On-the-fly responses within play can be made more quickly, because the logic of circumstances defines what the right answers should be.

In addition, the GM needs to give the players the motivation they need to engage in the campaign. That means rewarding their efforts appropriately, arousing and then satisfying their curiosity, giving them the sense that they are making progress – a checklist can be useful for that – and giving the players the sort of adventures that they want to have. A lot of advice to GMs focusses, one way or another, on properly providing motivation to players.

At the start of each campaign, the GM should establish what each character’s objectives are, should map out a rough plan of how that will be achieved in-game, and should use that information to plan the major scenarios. If a player doesn’t yet know what he wants his character to achieve, the GM should periodically check in with that player, gently prodding him until the player can come up with an objective. These don’t have to be the primary plotline of the campaign, but they should, at the very least, be prominant side-quests and sub-plots. As much as possible, the GM should integrate them into the main plotline, ideally as stepping-stones to completing that final plot. And, at the start of each session, the GM should ensure that there is some progress for at least one of the characters toward his objectives. Someone in the party should always be able to look back on the day’s play and say to themselves that they are a step closer to achieving their goals.

Sometimes, these goals are relatively trivial, or to be achieved fairly early in the campaign; as soon as that happens, the player needs to define a new goal for his character. For example, in my Shards Of Divinity campaign, one of the players has, as his primary objective, joining the Assassin’s Guild. Well, that will happen as soon as the group reaches the city, in a scenario that I’m already planning; he already qualifies in terms of game mechanics to take the Assassin prestige class and is taking Shadow Levels until the time comes. What will he want to do once he’s succeeded? The player has stated that he deliberately chose a relatively easily-achieved goal purely to give him time to get to know the game world, an entirely sensible approach, so we’ll see what he comes up when the characters start playing on the bigger stage. For the record, the other PCs objectives in the campaign are, for the cleric: to assist his deity in achieving her goals of committing suicide while ensuring that his own power is not affected; and, for the mage, to become undisputed lord and master of all existance (NB: It is an Evil Campaign).

Particular notice should be paid to aparrantly-contradictory character goals; no matter how much it shakes the conceptual foundations of the campaign, the GM has to reconcile these. For example, the cleric’s initial goal in Shards Of Divinity was (at first) simply to do his Goddess’ will, and support her in her work; that is clearly contradictory to the goal of the mage. Only by completely redefining the nature and attitude of the Gods, and in fact the very nature of Divinity itself, can the two be reconciled. So that’s what I did; character Goals can and should be a source of inspiration to the GM.

It will usually be the case that each goal will be broken down into a succession of lesser ambitions. But, trivial or sweeping, the PCs should all achieve their objectives in the course of the campaign (or die trying), and should be perpetually aware of making progress in that quest.

Opportunity

Opportunity bridges the gap between Means and Motivation. The latter concerns what the characters want to achieve; the former gives them the tools to achieve those things; and Opportunity is the chance to use the tools they have acquired to fulfill their goals. They might succeed; they might fail, but they need to be presented with a fair chance by the GM.

That, most emphatically, does not mean that it should be easy. The GM should, in truth, throw obstacles at each of the characters left, right, and centre.

Judging these obstacles is a fine art, dificult to master, and absolutely essential to success as a GM. As a general rule, they should never be so completely impossible that the player loses heart, but that general rule has a lot of exceptions, which the GM can use to pace and maintain some control over the overall campaign. The more difficult and distant the GM wants to place the objective that they relate to, the more insurmountable the obstacles should be; and the campaign then becomes all about finding the path to victory over, under, or through those obstacle, a route that is only discovered when the overall plotline of the campaign is ready for that next step.

The very best GMs find a way to hide the path to the achievement of the ‘next goal’ of the party within the achievement of the current goal, so that there is an overall sense of group achievement, with each party member contributing.

Means, Motive, and Opportunity: give all three to your players, and to their characters, and they will find you guilty – of running an unforgettable campaign!

In the comments to a recent blogpost (“The More Things Change: An essay on the future of RPGs”) that I wrote, Johnn suggested that he’d like to see a list of my top twenty D&D supplements. It wasn’t easy, but I finally narrowed the choice down to a mere 20 choices – with an additional 27 honourable mentions, that almost made the list! And another dozen or so that I at least thought about including but havn’t read yet. And another twenty more that I have on my shopping list but havn’t been able to afford yet. I deliberately excluded the three core rulebooks.

Having decided on the contents of the list, I then started to think about what I should say about them. The more I considered it, the less reasonable it seemed to just give a list with no annotation. I thought I should explain why each item was on the list, and why I found these particular supplements so valuable. I don’t know whether or not others would agree with my choices, nor do I know whether or not I would make the same choices after buying a few more items on that wishlist, or reading some of the stack awaiting my attention. But as of right now, these are the indispensible volumes (excluding the core rules); hopefully, other GMs will discover something they either didn’t know about, or will find a reason to actually buy something they’ve been wondering about.

It didn’t take long for the results to exceed any reasonable single post, so I’ve broken it up into 3 parts, representing 4 broad categories of supplements (plus those honourable mentions). Where possible, I’ve given a cover image, linked to the Amazon page for that particular supplement.

Part 1: 8 General Supplements

These supplements are not useful for any one subject or topic, and as such they are often useful in campaigns other than D&D. They may be about Rules, or be useful tools or referances. But they’ve all earned their place on my bookshelves, and at least 4 of them get taken to every D&D game that I run.

Evil

(AEG)
For anyone who contemplates a campaign with evil PCs, this supplement is essential reading. It’s only slightly less useful and important for anyone who merely wants to have NPCs to throw at their players. Hey, what do you know – that’s just about everyone. Even if you aren’t using 3.x; Even if your campaign isn’t fantasy, it’s Sci-Fi or Wild West or whatever; Even if you’re playing a choose-your-own-adventure!, this is still reccomended reading.

…And A 10-foot pole

(I.C.E.)
This supplement is incredibly hard to find these days. Originally published in 1999, this supplement is one of only two products that made the top-20 without actually being intended to be a 3.x supplement (it was designed for Rolemaster). It lists prices for commonly available goods in various time periods from modern times back to Imperial Rome, and all points in between. You will need to work out a conversion rate for the relevant era to the currency in use within your game; it’s then ready to use. And indispensible.

Finding a copy can be tricky, because the title is made up of common terms; do a search on Amazon and all you will find is a heap of stuff about people of Polish descent. No offence to them, but that’s not what we’re looking for. The best technique is to search for the authors, M Bernhardt and John Curtis.

In a future blog, I’ll look at converting the prices from the Rolemaster coinage system to the D&D standard (and at coinage for RPGs in general).

Monster’s Handbook

(Fantasy Flight Games)
I’ve mentioned this supplement before, for example in discussing
The Flói Af Loft & The Ryk Bolti. It details how to adjust the CR of any creature to match any changes you make to it. Usually, these are upgrades, but the system works equally well when “de-tuning” creatures to make them more suitable for PCs, or for the creation of new monsters based on existing ones. And that’s just the first chapter or two! The rest gives detailed advice by creature type, in effect permitting the GM to do the sort of min-maxing for his encounters that players do for their PCs. Every time I use it, I wonder how I managed without it.

Rules Compendium

(WOTC)
I write house rules as necessary and as inspired. Genre-specific. Game-System Specific. Campaign-Specific. Even – when it’s appropriate – scenario-specific. (I won’tgo into details on this subject now, as I expect to write a number of blogs on it in the future, the subject is that big). Before you can effectively change the rules, you have to understand the existing ones – in depth, and in detail. That’s where the Rules Compendium comes in; it not only does it explain some of the most-misunderstood rules in 3.x, it incorporates all the errata on those subjects that had been released at the time of writing, and it also gives explanatory glimpses behind the curtain to explain why certain rules are what they are.

Strongholds & Dynasties

(Mongoose Publishing)
I don’t use this book anywhere near it’s full potential. Yet. Or, to put it another way, I’m still discovering ways in which it can enhance my campaigns. Superficially, its a system for the design and construction of strongholds, castles, and so on. But it also gives details of how characters (and NPCs) might use magic to shortcut construction, and that information comes in handy so many times and in so many ways that it’s just not funny. In my Rings Of Time campaign (now shut down due to a shortage of time), at one point an erupting volcano threatened the Kingdom of one the PCs – this was a problem vastly beyond their capacity to affect directly through magic, so they came up with the idea of a series of trenches to control the lava flow and redirect it into a swamp containing nothing and no-one of value (so far as they knew at the time, but that’s another story). How many Dig spells were necessary? Was it more effective to use Wish spells, despite the costs? How about Miracles? Combinations of the above? How much could be done by the citizens? S&D gave the numbers needed to prevent hand-waving the encounter with the lava and turned it into one of the most memorable sessions of that campaign, as the PCs struggled to get the ditch dug in time!

Experts v3.5

(Skirmisher Publishing)
I bought this about six months ago, but had so many other game supplements to read and assimilate that I’m only getting to it now. And I only have another 40 or so to go after it. Unless I buy more in the meantime – which I probably will. And that’s ignoring the hundreds of downloaded ebooks that I have – some free, some paid for – that are also awaiting attention. It takes a pretty special game supplement to make a top-20 “best” list before I’ve even started using it, but Experts 3.5 is THAT good.

The supplement is all about NPC experts, but it tackles its subject matter in a more comprehensive manner than any other game supplement I’ve ever read. The system it offers defines what it calls metaclasses, which profile generic types of expert, then constructs 33 specific types of expert within these profiles, in such a way that they are far quicker to generate on the fly – and in far greater detail – than most GMs are capable of. The supplement is 90 pages long – and then adds another 86 pages of appendices on the top! Their system WORKS, and that’s the bottom line.

DMGII

(WOTC)
This takes the most difficult (and potentially rewarding) creation tasks of the GM and provides additional referances and resources to make the process easier. Highest on the list is the creation of cities and other urban landscapes, and for the information on that subject alone, this supplement would make my top 20. Throw in the material on archetypical locations and magic items and NPCs and general advice on campaigns and this was an easy choice for the top 20!

Through Dungeons Deep by Robert Plamondon

(Norton Creek Press)
This is the book that taught me how to be a Good player and GM. It’s my recollection that I bought it based on a review in an early issue of Dragon Magazine. Before I encountered this, I had no notion of executing a contextual background, of how a collection of statistics could be interpreted into a personality, or of the fidelity of plausibility within a game. I had constructed a multilevel dungeon that had no rhyme or reason (which I still have, filed away) and the beginnings of some good ideas for cultural uniqueness in different species – the sort of thing that Johnn wrote about in Races Should Make A Difference (opens in a new window) but had not really figured out how to manifest those ideas in any concrete way.

Later, I was able to reverse-engineer the processes described to find ways of expressing a personality as a set of statistics, which became the foundation of a process of character generation that I use to this day.

While I long ago moved beyond the scope of the book in many ways, it is fondly remembered to this day (I can only remember it, as I lent my copy to someone else who never returned it). Recently republished, a replacement copy is high on my wish list at Amazon.

Deities & Demigods (AD&D first edition)

(TSR)
I first got into D&D back when it was AD&D, and shortly before this game supplement first appeared. As a result, I bought a copy of the first edition – the one with the Cthulhu and Melnibonean mythoses – and it has played a vital role in every campaign I’ve run since. I’ve used it in AD&D, in 2nd Edition AD&D, in my Champions campaign, in five different 3.x campaigns, and in my eight-year TORG campaign. Pretty much every time, I’ve had to translate the statistics block into a different game system and campaign context.

I cannot begin to tell you how dissappointed I was by the 3.x supplement of the same name; instead of a dozen or so pantheons, it had just three (plus the “official” one and one or two more made-up ones). And, most critically of all, it had NO integration with the Epic Levels Handbook. None, Nada, Zip. And the Deities in it started to look pretty pathetic when the PCs hit 50th level in my Rings Of Time campaign. A lot of the time, I find the 3.x version to be suffocating and more hinderance than help, given that the first thing I had to do was add 10 levels to all the demigods and minor deities, 20 levels to all the intermediate-level deities, and 45 levels to all the greater deities, for that campaign. It turned out to be more work starting from the “official” seeds than it was to work from a clean sheet of paper.

Sure, I’ve learned a lot since then about various mythologies and narratives and myths and legends, and have a great many other ‘real-world’ referance books that I draw on, but time after time, the most succinct summary and starting point, the touchstone that brings everything else into focus, turns out to be that first edition AD&D supplement.

There are still copies available through Amazon (just click on the cover image). From the price, these are probably later editions without the Cthulhu and Melnibonean Mythologies. Search Amazon and you will sometimes locate a first edition – there were several there when I sourced the link, for example – costing US$100+. Be warned that some people will list the price as though it was the rare version when it’s not, usually (to give them the benefit of the doubt) because they don’t know why those copies are so collectable and just assume that’s the market price; always check for an explicit statement that this is the complete version. The second printing had the Melnibonean but no Cthulhu mythos, both are absent from the 3rd printing on.

This List will continue with parts 2, 3, and 4 in a week or two.

How much, if at all, should the final villain of a long running campaign pull his punches?

My campaign boss [villain] is a high level wizard with access to epic spells, and my party just made 20th level. They are on the way to fight him. Should I open up with his most powerful abilities, or should I hold off until he is in danger of dying?

Mike’s Answer

I’m actually facing a similar question in my Superheros campaign in the near future, so it’s a question that is quite pertinant. The final scenario of a campaign, especially a long-running one, has to have an epic quality to it, it has to have the players on the edge of their seats; they have to KNOW afterwards that they were in a tough fight, but at the same time they need to succeed even if it calls for the ultimate sacrifice.

If this was a novel or a movie, the best answer would be to pick off the characters one by one, each carrying the rest past another of the hurdles. But this is not a novel or a movie, and you need to find a way to make the events satisfying to all the players right up to the end.

My answer is both ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. Bear with me, and I’ll try to explain…

The Dilemmna

To be really satisfying, the final scenario needs to consist of a number of highs and lows, each deeper and higher than the last (respectively) until the final scene of the big finish. There needs to be a rythm that builds to a crescendo. At the same time, this needs to be achieved without wimping the bad guy out (so far as the players can tell); there is nothing worse (in any medium) than a villain who is superintelligent until it’s important; everyone feels deflated and let down if the GM “lets” the party win.

Of course, this is true of every scenario, but at any other time, it’s not so critical if the bad guy doesn’t lose at the end. The whole point of an earlier scenario might be to reveal to the players just how serious a situation is, for example, setting the stage for a scenario to follow at a later time. But this is the final scenario, there is no tomorrow; it’s Win Or Die for both sides.

The need to have the villain represent the ultimate challenge argues in favour of him going all out, but to be ultimately satisfying for the players, they need to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, which argues against his using his full repertoire. So there is no easy answer.

The Roles Of Personality and Perception

Part of the question asks whether or not the villain should hold back until his own existence is threatened. There are two considerations at a character level to take into account here, and these in turn offer some initial signposts by which we can navigate our way through those incompatible perspectives raised in the previous paragraph.

The first of these is the Villain’s Personality. If he has established a rep for dealing with problems with overwhelming force, then he will go all out from the beginning – within limits. On the other hand, if he has a more intelligent and self-controlled approach, he will start relatively small and build up in intensity as necessary. The aspect of the villain’s personality that controls this decision is how he reacts to obstacles and threats.

The second consideration is the Villain’s perception of the PCs. Are they viewed as an obstacle, an annoyance, a threat? Does the villain think they’ve just been lucky so far? To what does he attribute their past success? – that’s something he will seek to negate or counter. Does he even know who the PCs are, or have they managed to dismantle his plots without him learning their identities? How much does he know about them?

No matter what the exact answers are to these considerations, there is one solution set that fills every requirement that has been listed so far, and I’ll get to it in a moment. First, though, we need to consider the scope and scale of the question at a purely game-system level.

The problem with epic spells

Epic spells have no limits. No matter how powerful the spell is, all it does is increase the DC of casting the spell, and a 20 always succeeds. The Villain can make attempt after attempt until he succeeds in casting that DC 342 spell which calls down 1000d6 lightning bolts on each party member, and it’s game over.

They are also very difficult for the GM to come up with on the fly, requiring a fair amount of design effort. I combat these problems with a couple of unwritten rules of “Fair Play”.

The solution

The solution to these issues is threefold:

• It takes time to be confident in success.
• Therefore, prepared effects will be more powerful than those the Villain can reliably cast on the spot.
• Using generic spells and a liberal dose of descriptive flair glosses over a multitude of sins.

The first two I interpret as meaning that (assuming the villain has almost unlimited prep time), his most powerful spells will be utilised ahead of time, and will therefore be indirect in nature of effect. In direct confrontation, he would use a couple of fairly generic epic spells which I would “flavour” appropriately (while leaving the game effects unchanged). That means that so far as the PCs are concerned, he has a multitude of abilities at his disposal, but so far as the GM is concerned, only a couple of epic spells need to be prepared:

• The first is a spell that he will use only if he surprises his opponents. It should be debilitating but not fatal, designed to permit him to get the job done with lesser spells. It should have a DC of his spellcraft+10, meaning that he will have a 50/50 chance of success.
• The second is a spell that increases his mobility on the battlefield. A limited-range teleport gets him away from difficult foes and situations, for example, and permits him to refocus. Ideally, it should also give a temporary boost to his defences.
• The third is his usual attack spell. It should have a DC equal to his spellcraft-9, so that the enemy (who presumably are not to be sneered at if they have gotten this far) have to have done a fair amount of damage to remove his ability to cast the spell through penalties.
• The last is a last-ditch attack spell. Determine the number of points of damage that the villain can absorb in a single attack without being instantly killed by Massive Damage and subtract that from his Spellcraft to get the DC.

I like to get some idea of an epic spellcaster’s capabilities by “extending” the standard spell table as though there were 10th level spell slots, 11th level spell slots, and so on, and then looking at existing spells loaded up with metamagics to match. A Maximised, Empowered Meteor Swarm with Silent Spell and Still Spell is, in theory, a 15th level spell that can be cast at will. There’s no such thing, it is obviously an epic spell, but at the same time, the design work is quite manageable for the GM. Something like this would not be permitted for anything less than a 29th level mage in one of my campaigns – because that’s the level at which the standard spell table, if theoretically extended, would acquire his first 15th-level spell.

Everything else should be handled by standard spells. It can help to convey the flavour a lot if you work from an unusual spell list, perhaps from a different supplement to any that the PCs have access to in the campaign. If the Villain is the only character with access to the spells from Magic Of Faerun, for example, his spells are that little bit more distinctive.

Managing the solution: Part I

So, having defined in game mechanics exactly what we mean be “going all out”, we’re ready to start putting the pieces into place. Part I is Villain prep – this involves everything that he can set up ahead of time, such as enchanting his stronghold, etc. Anything and everything is fair game here, but the fact that these things have to be prepared in advance gives them an inherent limitation of a different sort – there are ways to beat them, at the cost of time and surprise.

Fiendish traps are good. Magic Mirrors which seperate multiclass characters into two or more lesser single-class individuals and invert the alignment of the lesser of the two can be nasty and lots of fun. Perhaps a V-shaped corridor where “Down” is always angled toward the middle, with magical reservoirs of Lava that are only triggered when the PCs are a certain distance down the corridor? Or a room that superheats water to the point of steam explosions but affects nothing else directly? Small offerings of loot can act as bait, but even better is the promise of advancing through the Lair. A maze that randomly reinvents itself every 10′ travelled can be fun – especially if the means of locking it in place is to trigger a trap to which the Villain is immune for some reason! (Use invisible Walls Of Force for the maze, including the floor, to prevent the PCs from leaving a trail).

The purposes here are to avoid wasting his time and effort dealing with lesser challenges personally, to give the Villain time to prepare, and to weaken the party. Particular attention will be paid to eliminating, undermining, subverting, limiting, or restricting (a) anything that has been used to thwart or threaten the villain in the past; and (b) anything that he attributes the PCs success to. Another fun choice is to prevent characters from healing while within his walls, or (if he uses lots of undead) giving a -20 to turning attempts while in his lair, or whatever. No PC should be singled out, each should be handicapped in some respect.

Physical security should be high on the list. Preventing teleportation within the walls unless you are holding a bay leaf or a loaf of gold-pressed lye bread, or something equally improbable, is an obvious protection. A moat, tricky locks, etc. Think of this as the ultimate Dungeon Crawl. Reinforcing the walls so that they can stand up to the sort of punishment they might be exposed to is another useful technique. I’ve also had success from time to time with walls so flimsy that a child could break through them – that are filled with acid, or something else that’s nasty. The villain wants to channel the activities of any invaders away from sensitive areas until they are weakened and demoralised.

For the party, these are a succession of small triumphs and minor (and temporary) setbacks, with a cumulative growing impression of the power of their opposition and an awareness of their own advantages being stripped away, planting a seed of doubt.

Managing the solution: Part II

Eventually, the PCs should succeed in breaking through these outer, “static” defences and begin confronting opposition in the service of the Villain. Again, the purpose is to weaken, demoralise, and destroy the invaders without bothering the Villain. These should start mildly serious and get progressively nastier. Force the party to use up their reserves, their potions and scrolls and spell slots. At the same time, opposition with one key attribute or ability that mimics those of the villain can be useful for gathering vital intelligence for the Villain by revealing how the party cope with that sort of menace.

If the villain has done any sort of decent job of preparing his defences, he should be initially overconfident in their ability to deal with the intruders; but, having come so far, the party will have proven themselves too dangerous to be permitted to escape. Most of the traps and challenges that steer the party will propel them inwards, and only act to prevent escape. These are remote confrontations for the villain, battles conducted at a distance.

In this stage, the party has more successes than failures, setting them up for a fall.

Managing the solution: Part III

By the time the party wins through that lot, they should be both exhausted and euphoric, ready for the final battle. So now is the time to ratchet up the tension and bring them to their darkest hour. For the first time, the Villain is directly involved in events, and should act with his Full Force, but a force that is subverted by arrogance. He should surprise the PCs in some way – it might be with a twist on his nature (they attack, only for their blows to bounce off, doing nothing but tearing the false skin that he was wearing to reveal…), or it might be that the Villain has captured members of a PC’s family (or at least appears to have done so), or he might just seem completely unstoppable (but strangely, he doesn’t kill the party, just KOs and captures them or whatever). You want the party to believe that all hope is lost. Perhaps the Villain isn’t the real mastermind after all, just the front man for something even worse.

Whatever the PCs had planned, it should not work (unless it’s positively brilliant) – the Villain has anticipated their plans and prepared himself accordingly.

Managing the solution: The Final Battle

All this sets the stage for a hopeless battle – but it’s the Villain who is actually doomed to suffer defeat, unknown to the PCs and the players. This is due to the GM conducting the Villain’s behaviour and circumstances according to six principles:

• Reliability vs Desperation
• Single targets plus Blockers
• A set of prepared vulnerabilities
• Give each party member a role to play
• Have a backup plan
• Take the villain to the verge of victory – until….

Let’s look at each of these in turn.

Reliability vs Desperation
This dictates how the Villain will operate, offensively, in terms of the spells that were defined earlier. He will start with his reliable spells, and slowly become more desperate as he gets closer to defeat.

Single Target plus Blockers
The Villain should target one PC at a time. Henchmen and other servants should be employed purely to keep other would-be combatants off his back.

A set of prepared vulnerabilities
The GM should have devised some method by which each PC can defeat the villain in the right circumstances, if they do the right thing at the time. Clues as to what these circumstances are, and what the right thing to do is, should have been fed to the players without their being aware of them. For example, a Fighter can defeat the villain by doing enough damage to him after a regenerative crystal is smashed, and so on. Any abilities that the Villain has blocked earlier are clues of the most potent sort – he obviously feels vulnerable to them. And remember, the party only has to put together the clues to one of the solutions. Perhaps there’s a way for a player to forcibly extract all the evil as negative levels from the Villain, leaving their enemy a withered and dessicated husk – but transforming the sacrificial victim into a low-level undead (low-level because his levels cancel out most of the negative levels).

Give Each party member a role to play
There should be one or more ways in which another party member can bring about the circumstances, but doing so leaves him open to attack, so he will need a third party member to protect him; and so on.

Have a backup plan
This is actually two-fold: the Villain will have a backup plan (usually some means of escape) that he will pull out of his hat when he is facing defeat; remember, his objective is not to beat the party, it’s to accomplish whatever they’ve stopped him from doing this time around. The second meaning is for the DM to have a replacement for each of the elements of victory to be achieved. For example, if the “multiclass splitting mirror” was employed, perhaps the Villain has those “raw levels of expertise” trapped in a jar; if victory can only be achieved by a cleric doing “X”, and the party cleric goes down, by releasing those levels, the player can reallocate them to give himself levels in Cleric (instead of whatever they used to be).

Take the villain to the verge of victory – until….
This is what everything has been building towards. As GM, do whatever you have to do to get the party to this point once they have started implementing a plan to target one of the prepared vulnerabilities. From the lowest of lows, they have slowly built up their hopes of victory through uncovering a prepared vulnerability; now it’s time to bring them back down to earth. Perhaps there is another condition that has to be met, and the (successful) attack won’t take effect until that condition is met. Now is the time for the Villain to pull out all the stops, and for the GM to fudge die rolls as necessary to bring things to the point where the Villain is about to achieve total victory. The first character to suggest a credible possibility as to what that “additional condition” is should provoke, first, a visible fear reaction on the part of the Villain (telling everyone else that the solution is at hand) and then the instant incineration of the party member making the suggestion. By now, both sides should be weakened, but the party now know how victory can be achieved… so let them achieve it, but only with one final supreme effort.

Conclusion

I guarantee that if you properly employ this technique, the epic conclusion to your campaign will be remembered – and talked about – for years to come. There are a number of examples in movies for you to consider to prove the point: The Mummy, who doesn’t become vulnerable until the Golden Book is recovered and the spell read to make him vulnerable; Aliens, where it’s only when the airlock is blown that the Alien is defeated; The Italian Job, where it’s only after the Gold heist has succeeded that the cast can have their real revenge (by proxy); and even The Firm, where Tom Cruise has to get proof of a wrongdoing outside of that of the mob before he can get his life back under control.

The technique has been used, and reused, time and time again, because it works. Compare these examples with Starship Troopers, in which achieving the conditions needed for victory (capturing the brain bug) becomes the focus of the final conflict, but the ultimate coup-de-grace is not shown; no matter how enjoyable the movie has been until this point, you still feel somewhat let down at the end. A Few Good Men, Sneakers, Lord Of The Rings, The Fugutive, Independance Day, Bruce Almighty, The Incredibles, X-Men, Twister, Armageddon, Fantastic Four, My Cousin Vinnie, Pirates Of The Caribbean, and even Bill And Ted’s Excellant Adventure – this technique is at the heart of their big finishes.

As I said earlier, my answer to your actual question is both ‘Yes’ and “No’, so I hope this makes sense of such a cryptic reply!

Johnn’s answer:

Mike, that’s an epic answer! I don’t have much to add as you’ve covered some awesome territory.

The questioner didn’t mention if the campaign had to end with this encounter. Most likley it does. You’d think an encounter with the villain where the GM is wondering about when to pull out the big guns indicates a final battle. However, my approach to villain battles might be of interest to the questioner.

With villains, I always assume they’ll win and plan accordingly. Do I want to let a total party kill happen? Most of the time the answer is no if the PCs have advanced so far in level. So, what result would allow the PCs to lose and yet still survive? In nearly all cases, this results in a continuance of the campaign.

A few times in my games where this has happened the group has decided to craft PCs at first level who are on a mission of vengeance against the villain. A couple of other times, the PCs survived and had to battle their way back to another confrontation with the bad guy, which started this process again.

Thinking this way – no punches pulled and the villain goes all out to defeat the PCs – helps with planning because you don’t have to scheme how to lose. As Mike mentioned, the appearance of losing on purpose will upset players and leave a campaign on a sour note. In addition, if you game with the same players over the long term, they’ll respect the fact you don’t pull punches and climactic encounters always have the risk of loss, and thus massive tension. Often, the PCs win anyway, despite my best efforts, so things work out and the campaign does end.

A Roleplaying Tips reader sent in a tip recently that said the PCs should never encounter the villain until the final battle. Most of my villains have layers of defenses, as Mike has suggested. My villains also use trickery to keep one step ahead of the PCs.

However, the question mentioned the PCs are on the way to the villain and it sounds like the GM is readying for a final battle royale. Villains in my campaign often don’t hole up in one place, but sometimes they do and so are at the mercy of being trapped like this. The advantage, though, is the ability to set up numerous defenses, such as traps and minions.

My answer to the question is, if it’s possible, to hit the PCs with everything the villain has and assume the villain will win. I’d have one or more plands ready to keep the PCs or campaign alive so they can strive for a rematch. However, if the campaign must end with this battle, then Mike’s advice is perfect. In fact, it’s going to be a template for my next do-or-die villain battle. :)

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Peileppe by Victoria Black

This isn’t the blog post that I intended to make this week; unfortunately, I’ve been struck down by the ‘flu and had no time to get anything finished except for something that I’ve been able to recycle from my house rules for the various D&D campaigns that I run. That’s also why I’m posting a little late.

This is not a complete record of the original feats I’ve created, but they do have a couple of interesting ideas for people to try out, and I havn’t found any of them too excessive. The feats that I’ve chosen to share with our readers today fall into three categories: Reducing Metamagics, Enchantment & General Metamagics, and Magic-related General feats.

Reducing Metamagics

I’ll start each section with a little overall commentary about the contents of each category.

Reducing Metamagics reduce the standard levels of effect or increase the casting requirements of a spell incorporating the metamagic feat, in return for lower casting slot and usually some other benefit, for example Disempowered spells are harder to counter and to save against; they may have less effect but are more certain to have that effect.

I came up with Reducing Metamagics in response to frequent comments from my players that 2nd level Wizard spells in particular are not as generally useful as would be expected from extrapolations of first and third level spells, something with which I was forced to agree. A sense of symmetry suggested that most metamagics should have an “opposite number”, permitting a spell to occupy a lower spell slots with smaller versions of more powerful magics (once the mage knew how to cast the full-powered spells).

By combining Reducing Metamagics with other Metamagics, you can create innumerable variations on existing spells. This enables different groups of spellcasters to cast spells with slightly different flavour than the default. It can also cleanse any smugness from your PCs attitudes – they can no longer be certain that they’re out of range of all that nastyness!

Here are four Reducing Metamagics:

Abrupt Spell

[Reducing Metamagic]
Prerequisite: Extend Spell
Benefit: An abrupt spell has its duration halved. Spells with a concentration, instantanious, or permanent duration are not affected by this feat. Abrupt Spells go off more quickly, effectively adding 20 to the caster’s initiative for the purposes of determining spell activation and effectively adding 10 to the roll required for a successful reflex save against the spell.
Spell Level Adjustment: -1

Disempower Spell

[Reducing Metamagic]
Prerequisites: Empower Spell
Benefit: All variable numeric effects are reduced to ½ normal – do 50% damage, affect half as many targets as normal, and so on. However, the target numbers for saving throws, opposed rolls (including any made when the target attempts to counterspell with Dispel Magic), and Spellcraft checks are increased +50%.
Special: A spell cannot have both Empower Spell and Disempower Spell applied at the same time.
Spell Level Adjustment: -2

Minimise Spell

[Reducing Metamagic]
Prerequisites: Maximise Spell
Benefit: All variable, numeric effects of a spell crafted with this metamagic feat are fixed at 1/3 maximum, save one (user selected in advance) which is double maximum. For example, a minimised fireball does 2 points of fire damage per caster level, but may have double range or double area of effect. Any such doubling takes place before other metamagic feats (eg Enlarge Spell) are applied.
Spell Level Adjustment: -2

Slow Spell

[Reducing Metamagic]
Prerequisites: Quicken Spell
Benefit: Spells with casting time are doubled in casting time by this metamagic feat. Attempts to identify the spell being cast receive a DC 10 higher than normal, as do any rolls required for countering the spell. This difficulty adjustment takes place before any other metamagic feat effects are applied.
Spell Level Adjustment: -2

Enchantment Metamagic Feats

This category contains a number of spell enhancement metamagics aimed at making Enchantments more subtle and more useful, especially in the hands of NPCs. Fantasy literature and Fairy Tales are full of tales of these things, but the standard spells in D&D don’t really fit well with what legends suggest can be done with Enchantments. These five metamagics were designed to make Fey more dangerous to mortal races in my Shards Of Divinity campaign.

Blank Memory

[Metamagic]
Special: May be restricted to Fey at the GMs discretion.
Special: Can only be applied to Enchantment spells.
Benefit: The victim of an Enchantment spell which incorporates this Metamagic cannot remember anything that happened during their time under the spell. The amnesia can be dispelled by a Heal spell or by a Remove Curse. This Metamagic cannot be used with Ensnaring Enchantment.
Spell Level Adjustment: +1

Ensnaring Enchantment

[Metamagic]
Special: May be restricted to Fey at the GMs discretion.
Special: Can only be applied to enchantment and mind-altering spells.
Benefit: This metamagic conceals from the victim the origins of his state of mind and gives him the certainty that his actions were of his own choosing. The minimum naatural duraton of this belief determines the modifier to the spell’s level as shown below. Once this period expires, the victim may commence making WILL saves against a DC of 20+ modified spell level to realise that their thoughts have been manipulated. The interval between such checks is also a function of the increase in effective level and is also shown below.

During the minimum duration period, any suitable spell of unmodified level greater than the Ensnaring Enchantment (GM’s call) can lift the misconception provided that the target of that spell is otherwise completely healthy (ie, the lifting of the delusion is the only effect of the spell). The required level of spell reduces by 1 for every 5 failed checks to realise the truth ‘naturally’.

In order to successfully cast a spell with this metamagic, the caster must succeed on a Spellcraft check against the DC shown on the table below. If this check fails, the spell is cast as normal with none of the additional effects of this Metamagic. This spellcraft check is in addition to any checks that may be required in order to cast the spell normally. The target still gets any saving throws etc that are normally required for the base spell to take effect. A -5 modifier applies to the spellcraft DC and a +5 modifier to the Will Save DC if the effect of the enchantment is something that the subject would consider doing anyway (GM’s call).

Note that this metamagic does not extend the effects of a spell, only the subject’s ignorance of the cause of his actions. At the moment of death, the character realises the truth regardless of the remaining duration before the next check, so killing and then resurrecting someone is a sure way of overcoming this Metamagic. More importantly, any spells that permit communication with the dead will permit the target to reveal the truth – if he or she wants to.

EG: A first-level spell with an ensnaring metamagic modifier of +6 is effectively a 7th level spell and uses a 7th-level spell’s slot. To successfully cast this spell against an individual of WILL 18, the spellcaster must make a spellcraft check against a DC of 18+7=25. If the subject would consider doing, of his own volition, what the spell requires him to do, this DC is reduced to 20. If this check succeeds, and the Spell is successful, the target is subject to the effects of the spell, and will beleave any resulting actions to be his own decisions, for at least 50 years and 1 day from the moment of casting. During this time, this delusion can be lifted by casting any spell the DM considers appropriate for doing so, of at least 8th level, on an otherwise healthy individual. At the end of the day after the 50-year timespan, the target gets a Will Save to realise that he was subject to an Enchantment. The DC of this save is 20+7=27. If the subject would have considered doing, of his own volition, the acts the spell forced him to perform, this DC rises to 32. If the subject fails the check, he may check again in another 15 years. During this interval, any 7th-level spell the GM considers appropriate, cast on an otherwise-healthy individual, can lift the effects of the Metamagic. At the end of that 15 years, the subject gets a second Will Save. If he again fails, he must wait another 15 years (if he lives that long) for another chance to learn the truth; in the meantime, a suitable 6th level spell is sufficient to lift the delusion. 80 years and a day after the spell was first cast, the target gets a third attempt, and so on.
Spell Level Adjustment: varies, refer table above

Confusing Enchantment

[Metamagic]
Special: May be restricted to Fey at the GMs discretion.
Benefit: Target experiences a penalty to INT and WIS checks for a period of time equal to the duration of the spell +1 time unit of spell duration, following the end of that duration. This penalty is -1 per 2 modified spell levels. The metamagic has no direct effect on WILL saves but the temporary loss of Wisdom may impact saving throws. The effects of this metamagic may be countered by a Remove Curse spell, by a Greater Restoration, or by a Wish spell. A lesser Restoration spell may also be effective if the base spell level of the Enchantment is less than or equal to 4th level.
Spell Level Adjustment: +2
EG: a 2nd level spell with a normal duration of 10 turns would cause -2 penalty for a period of 20+1= 21 turns. A 6th level spell with a normal duration of 1 week would cause -4 penalty for a period of 2+1=3 weeks.

Trojan Spell

[Metamagic]
Special: May be restricted to Fey at the GMs discretion.
Benefit: Increases the DC of the saving throw the subject of an enchantment spell must make against Enchantment Spells of the same type other than the caster’s by +3, and reduces the DC of the saving throw against enchantment spells made by the caster by -6, for the duration of the spell plus an additional period. Following the expiration of the spell duration plus this period, the -6 is reduced to -5, which again persists for the additional period. At the end of this time, the modifiers reduce to +2 and -4 respectively, then +2 and -3, then -2 and +1, and finally -1 and +0. When the additional period again expires, the subject is no longer subject to the effects of the Trojan Spell metamagic.

Spell Level Adjustment: +4

Subtle Spell

[Metamagic]
Special: Can only be applied to spells that have a duration greater than instantaneous, and cannot be applied to spells which inflict damage directly, confer negative levels, or otherwise directly harm the target.
Benefit: Spells using this metamagic feat, once cast, cannot be detected by a spell (or ability of equivalent level) unless it is of a greater level than the spell’s modified level. If the spell is detected, it reads as the weakest reading possible by the analyzing spell (eg any “Cure Wounds” spell would always read as “Cure Light Wounds”).
Spell Level Adjustment: +2

General Metamagics

These are eleven general-purpose Metamagics that seemed reasonably good ideas to me.

Chained Spell

[Metamagic]
Prerequisite: Linked Spell
Benefit: This metamagic further enhances the ability to link spells to permit one spell to be linked to another linked spell, forming a “Chain” of spells. Spellcraft checks may be required as described for Linked Spells. If the spellcraft check to establish the first link in the chain fails, no further attempts can be made for 1 hour per modified level of the linked spell (cumulative). Only once the initial link is forged can the attempt be made to chain a third link in the series. If a spellcraft check is required to do so and this check fails, no further attempt is permitted for 1 day per modified level of the chained spell (cumulative). If a fourth spell is linked into the chain, the base interval before reattempting a failure is 1 week per modified level of the chained spell. A fifth spell uses a period of 1 month, a sixth, 1 year.
Spell Level Adjustment: As per Linked Spell.
EG: A second-level spell is being linked to a 1st level spell which has metamagic feats applied that raise the effective spell level to 2nd level. The second-level spell is subject to a metamagic spell level modifier of +3, making it a fifth level spell. A third level spell which is to be chained to the second spell has a metamagic modifier of +5+1=+6, making it a 9th level spell. If all three spells are not cast simultaniously, the second spell requires a Spellcraft Check of DC 20+2+5=27 to establish the link, while the third requires a Spellcraft Check of DC 20+2+5+9 = 36. If the first spellcraft check fails, no further attempt to complete the first link can be made for 8 hours. If it fails a second time, it cannot be retried for a further period of 16 hours. Note that this gives a total of 24 hours plus casting time of the spells concerned, so even if this 2nd attempt succeeds, the first and second checks for attempting to forge the 3rd link of the chain is automatically deemed a failure. Two days later, an attempt to chain the third spell can be made.

Deeper Focus

[Metamagic]
Prerequisites: Spell Focus; Inner Focus or Inner Material
Benefit: Reduce by half the xp cost of spells cast using inner focus and inner material.
Spell Level Adjustment: +1 level (in addition to the increase for the Inner Focus or Inner Material feat).

Desecrating Spell

[Metamagic]
NB: based on “Consecrate Spell”, Complete Divine
Prerequisite: Non-lawful alignment, Precluded by “Consecrated Spell”.
Benefit: Spell gains the Chaos descriptor. If the spell does damage, half is considered infernal and is not subject to reduction by resistance or immunity by lawful characters and creatures. Cannot be applied to spells which already have the Chaos descriptor. Note that the casting of a spell crafted with this metamagic involves the invocation of Infernal power which may attract the attention of the Chaos Powers, and may subject the character to punishments if the spell is used for Lawful purposes.
Spell Level Adjustment: +1

Distracting Spell

[Metamagic]
Prerequisites: Silent Spell
Benefit: This metamagic can be applied only to spells with a verbal componant. The caster’s voice is amplified and modified by the magic of the spell such that no enemy combatant can be sure of who the spell is targetting; all enemies within earshot suffer a -d6 circumstantial modifier to Attack rolls, skill rolls, etc, in consequence, as they are distracted from what they are supposed to be doing. All concentration checks made once the mage begins casting the spell and until the spell is countered, aborted, or activated, are at +5 to the DC target that would normally be required, except for any made by the caster of the spell.
Spell Level Adjustment: +1

Enlightened Focus

[Metamagic]
Prerequisites: Deeper Focus
Benefit: Reduce by half the xp cost of spells cast using Deeper Focus;
Spell Level Adjustment: +1 spell slot (in addition to spell slot increases for Inner Focus or Inner Material and Deeper Focus feats).

Eschew Material Componant

[Metamagic]
Prerequisites: any 2 other metamagic feats.
Benefit: Can cast spell ignoring material componant requirements of less than 1gp value.
Spell Level Adjustment: +2

Group Spell

[Metamagic]
Benefit: Doubles the number of targets for spells that specify a maximum number of targets only. Each additional application increases the multiple of the normal number of targets by x1, ie two applications gives triple the normal number of targets for +1+2=+3 spell levels, and three applications gives four times the normal number of targets for +1+2+4=+7 spell levels.
Spell Level Adjustment: +1 (first application), +2 (second application), +4 (third application).

Inner Focus

[Metamagic]
Prerequisites: Any 2 metamagic feats, Will bonus +2 or better.
Benefit: Cast spells substituting xp for focus requirements at the rate of 25 xp per gp value of required focus.
Spell Level Adjustment: +1

Inner Material

[Metamagic]
Prerequisites: Eschew Material Componant, Inner Focus
Benefit: Cast spells substituting xp for material componants at the rate of 10 xp per gp value of componant.
Spell Level Adjustment: +1

Linked Spell

[Metamagic]
Benefit: This metamagic permits one spell to be ‘tied’ to another. A spell so linked activates only when the base spell activates, can only be dispelled after the base spell is dispelled, and so on. The spell to be linked cannot itself be linked to a third spell. BOTH spells must be successfully cast in order for the link to be established. The link is not discernable using “Detect Magic” but can be seen through scrying. If the base spell is not cast simultaniously with the linked spell, a Spellcraft check of 20+total modified spell levels of all spells involved must be made to successfully establish the link. At least 1 hour per modified level of linked spell must pass before a further attempt may be made if this check fails (cumulative). Linking attempts must be made at EXACTLY the time required or the spellcraft check is automatically deemed a failure.
Spell Level Adjustment: The spell being linked has a modifier equal to the modified level of the base spell, +1.
EG: A third level spell is to be linked to a 4th level spell. The third level spell has an effective level of 3+4+1=8. If the two spells are not cast simultaniously, the caster must also succeed at a Spellcraft Check of DC 20+4+8 = 32. If the roll fails, the mage must wait 8 hours before he can make another attempt. If this also fails, he must wait 16 hours before he can make a third attempt.

Spell In Motion

[Metamagic]
Prerequisites: Still Spell
Special: This metamagic can be applied only to spells with a somatic componant.
Benefit: Instead of making gestures to cast the spell, the caster can use larger physical movements. For the purposes of such movements, the caster can move up to double their normal movement while casting the spell. This movement must be around or within a point centered on either the caster’s initial position or on the target’s current position; they must end the movement at the same range from the target as they started. During such movement, they do not attract targets of opportunity, though they may appear to do so; any such attacks actually attempted against them recieve an automatic -10 attack modifier, as the character is not quite where they appear to be. Should any such attack succeed, the spell is prevented from activating and the character’s movement automatically stops at their current position. However, any attacks which fail are not “failed extra attacks”, they come off the attacks available to the attacker in his next round; and if a character uses all his attacks on “attacks of opportunity”, he is himself subject to an attack of opportunity from any other opponant with whom he is engaged. Even If he does not use all his attacks on “attacks of opportunity”, he is drawn sufficiently out of position that he suffers a -5 penalty to his remaining attack rolls for the rest of the round. If the spellcasting character’s movement ends within 5′ of an enemy combatant who has not failed an “attack of opportunity” against the caster, that attacker may make a genuine attack of opportunity without penalty against the mage immediatly AFTER the caster’s spell has taken effect. The round after casting a Spell In Motion, the caster may take only free actions and may not count his DEX Bonus towards his AC.
Comments: This is an effective metamagic in group combat situations; the mage dances through the field of battle, inviting multiple enemies to waste combat actions against them instead of targetting other members of the team. However, the mage is left exceptionally exposed for the subsequent combat round, so he needs the protection of others.
Spell Level Adjustment: +1

General Magic-related Feats

Finally, here are seven general magic-related feats to play with.

Greater Spell Focus

[General]
Prerequisite: School of magic must already be subject to the Spell Focus feat.
Benefit: Additional +1 to the DC for all spells from the school of magic to which this feat is applied. This bonus stacks with benefits from the Spell Focus feat. Can be taken multiple times, applying to a different school fo magic each time.

Greater Augment Summoning

[General]
Prerequisites: Augment Summoning, ability to cast 5th level spells
Benefit: Each creature summoned gains a +4 bonus to STR or CON for the duration of the spell that summoned it.

Focussed Mind

[General]
Benefit: The character receives -2 DC to resist the effects of Mind-Affecting spells, making them more resistant to outside control.

Dominating Insight

[General]
Benefit: Mind-affecting spells that the character casts receive a +2 DC to attempts to resist them because the character is better able to target sensitive or susceptable aspects of the target’s personality.

Sharply Focussed Mind

[General]
Prerequisite: Focussed Mind
Exclusion: Characters who take Greater Dominating Insight may not choose this feat.
Benefit: As per Focussed Mind; modifiers stack with those deriving from that feat.

Greater Dominating Insight

[General]
Prerequisite: Dominating Insight
Exclusion: Characters who take Sharply Focussed Mind may not choose this feat.
Benefit: As per Dominating Insight; modifiers stack with those deriving from that feat.

Final Spell

[General]
Prerequisite: Caster Level 9+ in any spell-casting character class (includes Cleric & Druid).
Benefit: Can draw on physical resources of the caster’s body to cast last-ditch spells in excess of the number that can normally be cast, at a cost of 1 CON lost per level of spell, +1. A spellcraft check at a DC of 10+ 4 per level of spell must be made for the spell to succeed (the CON is consumed even if the spell fails). CON lost using this feat cannot be healed or restored with Restoration spells, it must heal naturally at a rate of 1 per game month. Spells cast using this feat must be ones that the caster has available to memorise/cast, and that their current caster level would permit them to cast.

Summary

Alea Tools sent me a sample pack of their magnetic markers for review. I have played with them for several sessions now and I give them a thumbs up.

Details – Alea Markers in Use

Alea markers have a great feel to them. Smooth surfaces all around and a nice weight. The plastic seems durable, though I haven’t given it the dog chew toy test. :)

In-game they are great to use for status markers, condition trackers, and foe identification. That last one I tried in my most recent session with great success. I use D&D minis and most of them seem to be dark in colour, so it’s hard to pick out what mini anyone is talking about.

“I just hit the bugbear for 10 damage.”

“Which one?”

“The brown one.”

“They’re all brown!”

So, last game I used one Alea marker colour per foe. For example, red skeleton, white skeleton, green skeleton; red zombie, white zombie, green zombie. This worked excellent for tracking each mini separately for movement, damage, conditions, and so on.

The markers are magnetic. They stack well and stick together nicely. We’ve had a few issues when trying to place the markers beside each other though. Sometimes they repel each other.

Awhile ago I picked up a dry-erase magnetic whiteboard from Costco. You can see it pictured below. The markers stick very well to this. In addition, as you can see in the second picture, the markers work through battlemaps placed on the magnetic board as well.

One idea I haven’t tried is to get a strip of magnetic plastic from a craft store, cut it up into small chunks, and glue the chunks to the bottom of minis. In theory, this should help adhere minis to Alea markers for even more knock-over and bumping resistance. (There’s always that player every game who bumps the table big-time, right?) In addition, such magnetized minis would work well with the magnetic whiteboard too, methinks.

If you have tried this with the magnetic strip, leave a comment below to let me know how it went.

As far as pure utility, the Alea markers are great. We also use bottle caps, bingo chips, and poker chips for the same purposes and they work just as well too. Alea markers have a nice form factor and have magnetic super powers going for them, so I’ll leave it to you to decide their utility for your games.

Thanks to Craig at Alea Tools for the chance to review these gamemaster aids.

I have received a number of questions about my Fumanor campaign, especially following the posting of the Microplane Of Earth adventure location and encounter (parts one, two, and three).

Several people have expressed interest in the campaign story to date. So here are some elements of the current campaign that might be interesting, possibly a source of inspiration, to other GMs out there.

Background

The party recently discovered that many of the dungeons of Fumanor were byproducts of an Illithid Wizard who wanted to learn how to construct new prime material planes so that he could better understand the mechanics of how the real universe worked. To this end, he created new pocket realities, usuallly using caverns to contain the experiments.

He partnered up with another Illithid was an experimental biologist who would populate the created environments with new and strange beasties. The pocket realities had a habit of going ‘boom’ after a while, but often not before some of these strange creatures were released into the surrounding environment; the strong survived, the rest died off.

Millennia ago, the physicist-Illithid started working on his greatest creation: a new, full-sized prime material plane. This involved the creation of a number of microplanes which would be coalesced into the new realm of existance. Within each, the biologist of the pair created stable, unique, and original ecologies with every creature an original species. This was the first time that he had succeeded in creating stable, self-sustaining ecologies, and the unique nature of the environments made them achievements of which to be especially proud.

When the time came to complete the experiment, these would be destroyed, and when that moment approached, the biologist refused to go through with it. The two fought and dealt each other mortal blows from which they would not recover.

Cinegatrum (the biologist) fled, taking with him the partial spells that would unite the realms, contained within magical keys, which he scattered in each of the microrealms, but not before these spells were partially activated. (Illithid magic ALWAYS needs to be contained within something physical in this campaign).

Over the years since, the dimensional barriers that seperate these micro-realms from the prime material plane have begun to erode and decay, just as had happened with every other microplane the pair had created. Nature abhors inequality in this sort of thing, so the barriers that surround the prime material plane itself had begun to fail due to the disruption, to the point where any sufficiently-violent realease of energies (10 dice of fireball or better, or equiavalent) risked tearing open a portal, which the Chaos Powers could use to enter despite the best efforts of the Gods. (Ziorbe, the Drow Rogue and brains of the party, has figured out that there is more to this story but hasn’t yet had time to get his thoughts in order. That will became important later.)

One result of this effect has been that in the “One Faith” campaign, the Inquisitor PC has had his hands full dealing with one Chaos Power after another, and has actually witnessed one coming through such a portal, without understanding why it was taking place – only the immediate ‘how’.

The Campaign Context: In-Game events

Meanwhile, back in the “Seeds of Empire” campaign, the PCs had discovered and started exploring the Microplanes in hopes of discoving weapons, magic, knowledge, and/or allies that they could use in their fight against the Golden Empire, the vast Empire built apon the faith Beneck Wu, which the PCs are still learning about. They DO know that the empire is built on undead, that the populace live lives of abject luxury, doing no more than they want to do; they have figured out that in this society, the more civic service one performs voluntarily while living, the higher the rank the undead receives apon his death and ‘ressurection’.

The Golden Empire is poised to invade Fumanor, it was their scouting missions (which overran a number of small orcish tribes) that first brought the Empire to the 3 Kingdom’s attention. That invasion is now only 3-7 weeks away (the Golden Empire doesn’t rush these things, they don’t have to) by the PCs best estimate. (You can read more about the origins of the Golden Empire in this post.).

They had turned a Mummy Priest of the Church Guards, named Chrin, to their cause. This turncoat was leading them to a renegade Priest who might be the nexis about which a schism within the Beneck Wu faith could be formed, bringing about a religious civil war within the Empire – the PCs best bet for putting a stop to the Golden Empire’s activities, at least for the time being. But Chrin had turned out to be a mole in their ranks; he had not been turned from his faith, he simply removed the party from where they could disrupt the church’s activities. What’s more, a particularly subtle Chaos Power who had been masquarading as one of the Gods acknowledged by Beneck Wu had been boosting Chrin’s powers for some time, unbeknownst to the rest of the party.

When Chrin’s true loyalties were revealed, the bottom fell out of the party’s plans and they have to reconsider their entire game plan, having used months of critical game time with not a lot to show for it! (Talk about your deadline pressures…). But first, they had some housekeeping to deal with.

It’s important to realise that the Gods were learning about all this at the same time that the party were; the quasi-stable planes created by the Illithid, Tenga Mort, were previously unknown to them. Nor are they interested in taking sides in the conflict between the 3 Kingdoms and the Golden Empire for reasons that the PCs have yet to understand. They sent a representative, one of their new armies of footsoldiers (the first Celestials) simply to investigate why they kept losing touch with one of their priests – the party had quickly discovered that they were cut off from Divine assistance within the microplanes.

The Celestials are the Divine response to the Godswar in which so many of their number had been killed off; the remainder having united into a single pantheon (that’s what the first Fumanor campaign was all about) and each deity had been given vast portfolios to manage. To do it right, they determined that they needed assistants, or they would be left to fight from a purely defensive position, their entire effort focussed on damage control.

When the Gods found out about the microplanes and the plan to join them into a new prime material plane, they quickly hatched a bold plan – by Consecrating the new creation in their name, they would create a bastion and fallback position that had never been weakened/infiltrated by the Chaos Powers. This would be a stronghold against their enemies. They did not realise that the Chaos Powers had discovered it not long after them, and had subverted Chrin.

Recent Scenarios

The PCs beseeched the Gods to protect the lives of those living within the microplanes during the coalition process – which was always part of the God’s plan. But they needed at least some worshippers within one of the Microplanes to give them the foothold through which to exert their powers. So one of the NPCs returned back to the Dwarvlings (with whom the party had allied during their exploration of the Microplane of Earth) to convert them, while the rest made their preperations. The Gods also demanded a quid-pro-quo: the party would have to enter the new plane and consecrate it in their name.

It was at the critical moment of completing the spell that Chrin made his move against the party, while the Chaos Power who had been manipulating the Mummy awakened the Ghost of Tenga Mort, who posessed the party Cleric. The rest of the party were distracted, dealing with Chrin, and didn’t realise what had occurred until Tajik (the Cleric) erected a Wall Of Stone through which the ghost (and his Chaos Power ‘sponsor’) could pass, and the rest of the party could not.

When the Wall was eventually torn down, and the party healed up, they entered the new Material Plane, to discover that because of the compression of energies within, which were still unwinding into new space-time within the plane, a time-dilation effect meant that the ghost had a decades-long head start on them. Slowly, this effect wore off as the new universe expanded. The party completed the promised consecration, and went in search of the Dwarvlings, unsure as to what they would find.

It transpired that Verde – the NPC (ex-PC) who had gone to convert the Dwarvlings – had been waiting for them for over 120 years…

What’s more, the passageway between the worlds was unstable; the PCs could not linger. They had some fun interacting with the new society, which is now the most mechanically-advanced race known to exist, had more fun with an amorous Dwarvling Princess (now Queen Mother) who had been persuing a romantic liason with the Elven Warrior, Eubani, since their first encounter, but who was willing to settle for a carnal relationship. They had more fun when Eubani was accused of her murder, and even more ‘fun’ when it transpired that the Ghost of Tenga Mort had corrupted some of the Dwarvlings to the worship of the Chaos Powers. This was now a genuine prime material plane with all the problems of the old one; it would not be the bastion that the Gods had wanted, instead it was a whole new battleground for the Gods and Chaos powers to fight in.

The party cleared Eubani and departed, only to discover that the Golden Empire had been attracted back to the region by the incalculably huge release of arcane power used to create the new realm. The portal closed behind them. The PC’s next move was to find a way to get past the 10,000 undead soldiers and accompanying officers that were encamped on their doorstep and searching for the source of the arcane release.

Our last session of play

Which brings me to our last session. The PCs attempted to use invisibility and flight potions provided by Verde to fly over the top of the army and get away. They had not reckoned on Beholder Liches leading flights of winged skeletons and zombies! One used an antimagic field to shut down the effects of the potions, then the other two took it in turns to zap the party with Chain Lightning. One NPC (Ziorbe) was killed, the other NPCs were (mostly) down to 30 HP or so, and things looked pretty grim. Julia (an ex-PC Paladin variant) used one of her more exotic anti-undead abilities which amplified the effects of a Cleric’s turning ability. This ability uses the Cleric as a temporary vessel of the Gods (whether the cleric likes it or not), and it killed off the skeletons and zombies in a single blast of divine might, weakening the Beholders to the point where they were easy prey for the rest of the party. So massive was this release of Divine Wrath that the rest of the army failed their morale checks (which, for undead, is saying something) and fled. The PCs took the opportunity to vamoose in the opposite direction. That’s where the campaign is up to.

The party now have to regroup, reconsider their entire strategy in the face of the deceptions of Chrin, and put their new plans into action. Instead of 3-6 months time for planning and action (which they had when they started), they now have only 3-6 weeks, and another month or so after that which will be bought with the lives of the Kingdom’s residents, so time is definitly breathing down their necks at this point.

They know that they will definitly need Ziorbe’s talents and insights to see them through, but they also have to work out how they can ressurect him, and deal with whatever the Gods will require as a quid-pro-quo.

From the GM standpoint, so far, I’ve set up the campaign situation, I’ve distracted the PCs long enough to raise the tension to breaking point, and now the fun really starts!

The campaign only runs for 6 months of the year or so, before it makes way for the other (concurrant) Fumanor Campaign, “One Faith”. I’ll do a writeup of that sometime for those who are interested. So that’s where the campaign stands, at least until December.

This month’s RPG Bloggers carnival is themed on D&D. The guest article below by Mike E. has some great ideas for modifying your D&D experience by borrowing what he likes from one edition and adding it to another.

I’d like to think I’m a fairly good DM. I know I have my strengths, and I have my weaknesses. I’m always looking to improve my DMing skills. I’m also always looking for ways to improve the game I love the most: Dungeons and Dragons.

Following are things I’ve either done, or am trying, that work for me. I figured I’d jot them down for other people to see. Maybe people will like them. Maybe they won’t. I like sharing ideas, because with feedback comes new and better ideas. Hopefully someone out there will like at least one thing I’ve done and try it in their campaign.

Oh, and I don’t claim that any of this is new or novel, ’cause I’m sure it’s all been done before.

Thanks for reading.

Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition rules

I purchased the core 4e books and the PHB 2 because I wanted to judge for myself on 4e instead of just listening to other people’s opinions. I read through all the books till my eyes bled and found that many of the mechanics I really like, but the classes and the lack of customization I really don’t. I also don’t like that many of the powers are just variations on a theme. So, reading through, I looked at what made 4e more fun and easy, and decided what I wanted to keep.

• Character initiative going up every even level. This makes sense to me. Adventurers of level 12 still going at their original +2 (because they don’t have a great Dex or improved initiative) seems non-epic to me.
• I’ve kept healing surges to lighten the load on the healers, but they only get 2 + CON Mod (min of +1) healing surges per day.
• Bloodied. I’ve kept bloodied, but when bloodied characters take -2 to all rolls, showing they are becoming fatigued.
• One thing that annoyed me with D&D 3.x is status effects. They are difficult to track. In 4e, status effects go on during the whole encounter, but at the end of your turn, you get a save. I’m keeping that, but using 3.5 saving throws.
• Powers. At level 1 the players can choose two powers: encounter, daily, or utility. Both can be used once per day. As they level up they can swap out powers for something else. Also, if they really like a low level power, we buff it up to match their level.
• I’m using 4e races, racial abilities, and racial powers and seeing how that works in 3.x.
• Quick Draw feat gives an additional +2 to Initiative. I like this.
• How do you update monsters from 3.x to reflect the initiative boost? Look at their challenge rating or level advancement, and + that to create their new bonus to initiative. If they have a rapid strike or quick draw feat, give ’em +2 initiative.

Monster Mods

One of the things that always got to me about many role-playing games is the length of combat. Something many GMs and players have struggled with. To me, combat should be fast, furious, and deadly without the really striving for TPK.

I decided to create a style of ‘minion’ or ‘mook,’ for lack of a better term. They don’t have 1 hit point, but can definitely be killed in 1 to 2 hits. To make them more of a threat, I give them a higher initiative, higher attack, and up their damage and saves. So, if the creature has an axe that normally does 1d8 damage, I up it to 2d8 or 3d8.

The next style of enemy has slightly higher HP and doesn’t do as much damage, but has some tricks up their sleeves that make them just as nasty, but again, they can go down in 2-4 hits.

Then it goes to mini-boss and boss type creatures. These can be anything; a goblin king to a shambling mound to a chaos beast to a lich. I look at what the Monster Manual says their abilities, stats, etc., are and use those as a base, and increase or lower damage stats and etc. Usually I do this on the fly and have become good at providing a challenge for my players.

Fencing

I’ve heard that Nobis is coming out in July and has mechanics for fencing, and I’m excited to see what they have come up with and may take that over what I’ve done. One thing I see players rarely take use of is blocking, parrying, and dodging. Why? Because combat is a war of hit point attrition, and the one who loses hit points faster loses.

With 3.x mechanics, you have to use your attack (sometimes full action) to block or parry an attack. Then there is a complex set of rules that allows you to oppose roll, roll again, then roll again (I’m exaggerating) and you may get a hit off on the target for doing this.

What I’ve come up with (and am currently playtesting this) is fencing points. You get your level in fencing points and they refresh every level. Fencing points can be used to dodge, or block attacks. You can block 1 attack by target once per round by burning points.

If you have 4 guys making one attack each on you, you can burn 4 points in an attempt to block. If you have three guys making 2 attacks each you can only burn three points and block one attack of each enemy. To block or dodge you roll a DEX (the modifier) or Athletics/Tumble check (whichever is higher) and dodge the attack and shift one square away. The DC is their attack roll. For blocking, you roll an opposing attack roll. If you beat them, you successfully block their attack. The next part has more on fencing options in the Eberron rules.

Eberron Rules

I like Eberron’s rules for Action Points (AP). You get 3+ your level and they add +#d6 (depending on level) to your attack, save, skill check, ability check rolls when you decided to use one. They come in handy, and allow the players to be exceptional. I give everyone the Action Surge Feat, which allows the player to burn three action points to take an extra move or attack action (basically what burning 1 AP in 4e does). In regards to fencing it also allows bonuses. If you successfully block an attack, even if it is not your turn you can burn three AP and make a free attack. If you successfully dodge an attack, you can spend 3 AP and make a move action. These actions are limited because it is NOT your players turn, but allow you to do something extra.

Pathfinder

I’m also using rules and changes from Pathfinder Beta, and when the published book goes live, I’ll assimilate what I like from that and what I like from the beta. Pathfinder has quite a few changes to feats, combat, etc. that I like.

Alright. So that’s it. My little bit of knowledge. Whether you like it or not, I just wanted to put it out there for others to criticize or take ideas from or whatever.

Enjoy!

Mike E.

The Roleplay of Prestige Classes

My games normally enforce the roleplay (non-game-mechanics) requirements for Prestige Classes (and, where relevant, feats and level progressions). It’s not enough for the character (PC or NPC) to simply meet the prerequisites, they usually have to DO something.

Pages 204-205 of DMG II, in discussing the design of new prestige classes, calls them character requirements. If a character takes a Feat, their personality and play style should reflect the attributes described by the feat. So far as I’m concerned, the flavour text is rules just as much as the game mechanics requirements are.

Taking a Prestige Class usually involves making a commitment to an organisation of like-minded individuals, or to a cause, or to a particular world-view. Sometimes this requirement makes no difference at all, and sometimes it requires a PC to go to a certain place and perform certain actions, or even roleplay an appropriate scenario, before they can take their first level in a character class. It is my belief that this adds a great deal of plausibility and realism to what is otherwise purely an issue of game mechanics but one of immense significance in terms of character development.

The problem with this requirement is that many of my campaign scenarios stretch over several character levels, especially at the lower end of the XP scale. A not-atypical example might comprise:

• An extended road trip with encounters;
• a subplot setting up or developing a broader campaign theme or plotline;
• a dungeon which propels the characters in an unexpected direction;
• more travel and more encounters;
• devopments within the subplot, which will often link it to other subplots already in existance;
• a location (possibly another dungeon) which resolves the events from the first dungeon;
• still more travel (and still more encounters);
• a conclusion to the subplot that establishes or develops the background to future scenarios, and may directly connect with one or more.

All of which take place before the characters get somewhere that provides the opportunity to filfill the requirements that permit a PC to adopt the character class that he wants, and has planned for some time. This isn’t a real problem if the level is gained at the end of that string of events, but if it falls somewhere in the middle or, heaven forbid, at the start, it can be serious issue. Characters have earned 3, 4, 5, 7, and even 13 levels on such minor quests!

Shadow Levels

To solve this problem, I came up with an idea I called “Shadow Levels” for my Shards Of Divinity campaign as a way of giving characters their levels on the spot, and yet deferring the actual choice of character class level for a more opportune time.

The House Rules

Here’s how this particular set of house rules work:

1. If you gain levels beyond what is needed to qualify for a particular prestige class, those levels can be taken as one or more “shadow” levels. A “Shadow” level means that you progress in BAB, HD, Saves, and Stat Increases as usual but all other benefits of gaining the level are put on hold. Feats can either be taken with the Shadow level or deferred until the level is converted into an actual character level.

2. Shadow Levels must be committed to a class at the time they are earned, and only one character class can have shadow levels committed to it at a time. Up to half the skill points that would be earned if the character actually gained a level in the class to which the shadow level is committed may be spent at the time the Shadow level is earned, the rest have to wait until the shadow level is converted. This means that if points are going to be needed to represent specific training that comes with the actual character level, the points are reserved for doing so, but the character can put up his other skills right away.

3. Conversion of a Shadow level to a complete character level requires the character to earn between 1 xp and 1% of the requirement for achieving the level. This just means that you actually have to do something in the way of PLAY to convert a shadow level to a real level – WHAT that something is will depend on the class in question, and its flavour text/roleplaying requirements. When all shadow levels have been converted to actual levels, the character receives this xp (which may be enough to gain another level, depending on how much was earned and how much the character needs to gain his next level)!

4. Shadow levels can ONLY be taken with the GM’s express permission and only when the character qualifies for the Prestige Class in question but cannot actually take levels in it right away for campaign continuity reasons.

5. Shadow Levels cannot be used to qualify for feats and other classes until converted.

6. All the other ‘normal’ rules of character advancement apply, eg if you earn too much xp from a single encounter you can still only gain 1 level and stop 1 point short of the next, just as though the shadow levels were levels in a character class.

That means that if your character progression calls for you to be in the capital in order to be inducted into the Prestige Class at a certain character level, you don’t have to be held hostage to the timetable of character advancement, and can continue to adventure with the group for a period of time.

The ‘commitment’ restrictions simply mean that you can’t put these things off indefinitely, so returning to the capital (or whatever) remains a priority.

The extra experience “earned” by performing whatever is required in terms of roleplay in order to qualify is both a thinly-disguised bribe to put up with the delay, and a reward for enhancing the game, and the campaign world, by doing so.

The Application Of Templates

It’s a funny thing: solve one problem, and you can often turn the solution to other problems. I had a player who was considering buying the Lich template (Shards Of Divinity is an evil campaign, so there was nothing wrong with doing so in principle). The question was how to handle the level adjustment in-play? It seemed unfair to the other players to simply permit him to add a couple of unearned levels, but there was no rules mechanism for taking templates in the course of play. It also seemed unfair to simply take away a number of earned character levels and replace them with the template’s level adjustment.

It wasn’t long before the obvious occurred to me: Why not take Shadow Levels to represent the conversion process from mortal to Lich? Since the Lich template didn’t confer additional skills, the character would forgo additional skill points for a couple of levels, but in every other way, it would work perfectly. And they’d get the xp benefits to compensate for the skill point loss.

Since then, the player has found a Prestige Class that confers Lichdom and then Demi-Lichdom over a span of multiple levels, so the technique was ultimately unneccessary, but it remains in my toolbox for future use. The downside of his choice is that it takes twenty levels of advancement, while the Template took about eight.

Shadow Feats

I was describing the Shadow Levels concept to a friend of mine, some time later, and he raised the suggestion of empoying a similar technique for characters who did not meet the roleplaying requirements of a feat, even though the game mechanics requirements (the prerequisites) were satisfied. A character could take a “Shadow Feat” that conferred half the bonus, or conferred the advantage half the time, until they completed the requirements. Again, you could only have one “Shadow Feat” at a time, so there was a deadline that had eventually to be met.

Although this proposal has not yet been introduced to the campaign, there seems no reason not to at least float the notion to the players. The objective, after all, is to enable characters to undertake the progression path they want, without interfering with the roleplay of doing so.

Or, to phrase it another way, to liberate the roleplay from the tyranny of game mechanics. After all, which is the more important?

This month’s RPG Blog Carnival theme is Steampunk. My most memorable steampunk experience is Castle Falkenstein. The card mechanic at the time I felt opened gamers up to alternative resolution systems in much the same way Amber broke out the diceless movement.

Castle Falkenstein’s crazy universe was a cross between Jules Verne and Alice in Wonderland. It had delicious flavour. Alas, the experience was short.

In Roleplaying Tips Issue #363: Characterization Encounters readers pitched in with several steampunk resources. In celebration of June’s blog carnival, I’ve reposted them here.

1) GURPS, Iron Kingdoms, Constructs

From: Chris Whitcomb

I’d highly recommend GURPS Steampunk. Also, if you’re using the d20 system, I’d highly recommend Iron Kingdoms. They have mecha combining steam-tech with magical control systems. Along the same lines you might look at the Eberron campaign setting. There’s also an older book from Mongoose called Encyclopaedia Arcane: Constructs. It was all about golems and constructs, including construction rules for making your own (both in-game and out).

2) Castle Falkenstein

From: Wolf Bergenheim

A year ago I read a Castle Falkenstein novel, Masterminds of Falkenstein, by John DeChancie. I liked it. I’ve never really considered the setting before reading the novel, but afterwards I found myself thinking of perhaps at some point running a steampunk setting. http://www.talsorian.com/cfindex.shtml

3) Steampunk Workshop

Cool site with instructions on how to make steampunky stuff, such as a steampunk keyboard and monitor. Ideal if you game with a computer at the table. http://steampunkworkshop.com/lcd.shtml

4) Steam-Tech, Factory, TOH III

From: Andy Goldman

Hi Johnn, I suggest GURPS Steampunk and Steam-Tech (by Steve Jackson Games) and Factory (by Perpetrated Press) for ideas. Also, the Tome of Horrors III (by Necromancer Games) has a Clockwork template to be added to any creature and is 3.5-compliant.

5) Brass Goggles

The lighter side of steampunk: http://www.brassgoggles.co.uk/brassgoggles/

6) Fantastic, Mysterious, and Adventurous Victoriana

An index of Victorian characters and places: http://www.geocities.com/jessnevins/vicintro.html

7) Wikipedia Entry

As always, Wikipedia brings us great info goodness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk

Introduction

I recently reformulated the way I calculate experience in my D&D 3.5 campaign. [Actually, what happened was that my computer’s power supply failed and I had nothing better to do with my time for a few hours. But anyway…] It took about a page and a half of 4 x 5½-inch notepaper, and consisted of 25 expressions and observations. When I showed it to others, they were mystified; it may as well have been written in Ancient Greek for all the meaning they took from it. So I set about re-creating the logic that had been distilled into those 21 statements.

The results aren’t for everyone, I’m the first to admit. They make sense to me, others may not find them so useful. But when the work was complete, I thought others might be interested; so I’m presenting them here as a Blog Post. Unfortunately, D&D 4th ed is completely different from 3.x Ed in this respect. (At least this observes the truism that nothing is completely understood until after it becomes outdated!) But for those who still use D&D 3.0 and 3.5, an alternative and mathematically-precise system for calculating XP awards might just hold value, so here it is.

This analysis was carried out to place XP awards in my D&D campaigns on a mathematically-defined basis and to achieve specific goals for the Xp awards system:

• The system should be mathematically precise for any combination of party member character levels and encounter constituant CRs
• The system should award bonus XP to party members of lower levels on the basis that they would have learnt more from the battle
• The system should award reduced XP to NPCs relative to PCs
• The system should award reduced XP to other participants [animals, intelligent swords, etc] relative to NPCs
• System should award XP for non-combat encounters on a consistant basis with respect to combat encounters.

Party CR

By definition in the DMG it requires aprox 13 encounters of equivalent level to that of the party for each member to gain a level. What does “of equivalent level” actually mean? Assuming that it means an equal number of opponants, each of the same level as their counterpart within the party, we have a working definition, but not yet a functional one. The DMG also gives guidelines for determining a single number to reflect the capability level of any given opponant mix, in the form of a table. When that table is dissassembled, it becomes clear that the equiavelence of an encounter can be summed up as:

1. (2 x N) @ A = N @ (A+2) where N is the number of creatures of a given CR, and A=the CR of those creatures.

Thus an encounter with two creatures of CR 5 is the same thing as one encounter of CR 7. Mathematically, this is an exponential relationship in factors of root 2, so the following can also be stated:

2. N @ (A+1) = [sqr(2) x N] @ A.

These two calculations permit any combination of encounter CRs to be reduced to a single numeric variable by reducing the constituant CRs to a common base, totalling them, and then reconverting the total to an exact EL.

This permits a functional definition of “equivalent level”:

3. An encounter is of “equivalent level” if the total EL is equal to the total of the Party CRs expressed as an EL.

Base XP Award

Because this system awards bonus XP for skill rolls, ideas, roleplaying, etc in non-combat situations, whereas the base system does not, it seemed appropriate that the base award be reduced. As an initial value, a ratio of 16 encounters of equivalent CR to 1 level advancement has been chosen. This fraction can be altered as desired.

This means, in turn, that the experience earned for a single encounter of equivalent CR is equal to 1/16th of the XP difference between the current Character level and that of Character Level +1. Analysis of the table in Chapter three of the PHB shows that this, in turn, is equal to 1000/16 x (CR+1), or aprox 62.5 x (CR+1). This value is termed E1:

4. E1 = 62½ x (EL+1), where the EL is equal to the Party CR.

However it will actually be the case, more often than not, that the party will be confronted by encounters of an EL that does not precisely match the Party CR. It might be higher, or it might be lower. Using the principles stated in the DMG, and the analysis above, it can be determined that the actual XP award for a given EL, relative to the Party CR, is

5. E2 = E1 x 1.4^D1,
where D1 = EL – Party CR.

Negative ELs and CRs Less Than 1

6. A CR of ½ is assumed to be equivalent to a CR of -1 for the purposes of XP calculation.
7. A CR of ¼ is assumed to be equivalent to a CR of -2 for the purposes of XP calculation.
8. A CR of 1/10 is assumed to be equivalent to a CR of -3 for the purposes of XP calculation.

Party Size Adjustment

At first glance, it should make no difference how many characters make up the party. They have the same number of hit points, just spread amongst more characters. They have a smaller chance to perform a successful attack, but they have more attempts to do so because the party as a whole will get more actions in a turn than if they were fewer in number but of higher levels. They have less effect when successful, but this is balanced by…. nothing? Their opponants, being of higher level in comparison, get fewer attacks but they have a greater chance of success; and when they do succeed, they will do more damage….?

Clearly, there needs to be an adjustment for the number of participants in a battle. The problem is quantifying that adjustment, as it would seem to be different based on the CR value of individual participants. Perhaps this modifier should be determined as an individual adjustment to the amount of XP received?

According to the DMG, the theoretical basis of the XP tables provided assumes a party consisting of 4 characters of equal level. Using (1), it is clear that this gives a theoretical “quarter opponant” of the encounter taking place a level of EL-4. Thus, individual awards for each party member can be determined as:

9. E3 = 62½ x (EL-3) x 1.4 ^ (D2-3)
where D2 = (EL-4) – Individual Char Level
and where D2 >=0, or,

10. E3 = -62½ x (EL-3) x 1.4 ^ (3-D2)
where D2 = (EL-4) – Individual Char Level
and where D2 <0.

Member Level Bonuses

This seems to automatically achieve the second objective of the system, awarding more XP to characters of lower level, but it does NOT do so for the reason that (in theory) they would have learnt more from the encounter, it does so simply because it takes greater contributions from multiple characters of lower levels to achieve the same effect net effect in a battle. Furthermore, the ability to learn is often considered an attribute of INT, but basing the bonus on that stat would unfairly reward Mages and other characters whose class requires a high INT and penalise other classes.

Since there is no fundamental value on which to base these that is not inherantly unfair to one class or another, the only solution is an arbitrary and abstract one based on a relative value. Fortunately, on this basis, we have the ideal value already determined in D2:

11. D2 : bonus
-5 or worse : x 1/2, then x 1/3, x 1/4, etc.
-4 : -40%
-3 : -20%
-2 : -10%
-1 : -5%
+0 : +0%
+1 : +5%
+2 : +10%
+3 : +20%
+4 : +40%
+5 or more : x2, then x3, x4, x5, x6, etc.

Thus, for an EL 10 encounter, the basis of D2 is EL 10-4=6. A character of Character Level 5 would have a relative D2 of +1, and would receive +5% to his XP award. A first level character in the same party would receive x2 XP. An eighth level character would have a D2 of -2, and would receive -10% XP.

Significant Opposition / Weak Opposition

These are relatively straightforward, using this system: the GM can simply lower or raise the CRs of individual creatures, or of the party members, or both, to allow for relative strengths. As a rule of thumb:

12. Especially costly combat for PCs: EL+1
Especially easy combat for PCs: EL-1
Opposition has especially strong tactical position at start of combat: EL+1
Opposition has especially weak tactical position at start of combat: EL-1
Opposition has significantly greater resources (magic etc) relative to the PCs: EL+1
PCs have significantly greater resources (magic etc) relative to the enemy: EL-1

Non-PC Adjustments:

When I run combat for a party consisting of both PCs and NPCs, I let the PCs make the major decisions. The NPCs will act according to their natures and classes, unless told not to (a fighter will still attack, but won’t put any real thought into which opponant [attacking the closest or biggest or whatever], or – if he’s the thinking/tactical type – will hold his action until after all the other characters have acted so that he can pick his target appropriately; and so on). This lets me run the battle more easily and ensures the PCs a starring role. As a result of this relative lack of ‘initiative’, it does not seem fair for the NPCs to get the same rewards as the PCs.

However, not all GMs agree with this practice. That’s fine; the system so far has made no distinction between PCs and NPCs, so its easy to treat NPCs as PCs if that practice suits your campaign. There are arguments in favor of this interpretation as well, relating to keeping the game balance between NPCs and PCs. To implement this more standard arrangement, simply ignore steps 13 and 14, below.

It is also my practice to award animals XP so that they can learn and become more effective. This is just a quick and dirty method of simulating these things; each level brings an extra HD, better saves, etc, as though they had progressed on the appropriate character chart. This subsystem was originally created to give familiars a chance to survive and to have an impact as their owners gained levels, and the opposition became more lethal.

Furthermore, some magic items in my campaigns gain XP, increasing the magical bonus they confer over time. However, if the item ever goes to a new owner, the item starts again at 1st level with 0 XP. This represents a stronger bonding between the character and his equipment, as it becomes more focussed.

13. NPCs receive 1/2 the XP they would have received as a PC. This includes any characters whose player does not attend the game session.
14. Anything else which earns XP earns 1/4 the award they would have received as a PC.

1/4 was chosen for the magic items, animals, etc because it means that they will go above +5 at about the same time that their owners achieve epic levels. In a campaign not intended to reach epic levels (I don’t run any at the moment), I would limit them to +5 in bonuses, and perhaps make the ratio 1/3 instead of 1/4. ensuring that the PCs have time to enjoy their plus-five item for a while when they achieve the pinnacle of their powers. This is also a good rule of thumb for the power levels of treasure awarded, by the way!

1/2 was chosen because it’s twice as much as the animals get, and thus seems a reasonable number – and it’s easy to calculate.

Low/High Treasure Adjustments

It is assumed that each xp is matched by 10 GP of value in treasure. If this is not the case (and it rarely is!), the difference is divided by the number of characters and applied as a bonus or penalty AFTER all other adjustments. Animals and items are excluded from the ‘number of characters’ for this purpose, but Familiars and similar creatures are INcluded. Thus, in a low-magic campaign, where both sides have little in the way of magical goodies, the EL doesn’t change but the XP awarded increases significantly. If a low-magic party comes up against a high-magic opposition, the EL increases, but the party may get most of it’s reward as goodies after the battle.

15. Bonus XP = [TOTAL XP Awarded – Treasure (GP/10) ] / Number Elegible Characters

The resulting bonus xp is awarded to each character. However, if the bulk of the treasure comes in one or two discrete items, it may be better to reduce their bonuses and spread the balance amongst the characters who did not receive the items. Each item should be handled seperately. Where this is the case, the provisions of the section below on Uneven Distribution Of Treasure also come into effect.

Too Much Booty

It is possible – in fact, quite easy at low levels – to have the treasure be too high for the battle, resulting in the “Bonus” actually being a reduction in the XP awarded. This can cause problems in two ways: first, with a negative value so high that a character actually “loses” XP from the battle (in theory) and second, because sometimes the treasure is not evenly distributed, which advantages one character and penalises the others in calculations for future encounters. It is necessary to address both of these issues before proceeding further.

“Negative XP” from the battle: Deferred Penalties for Treasure

15a. Characters should always earn at least 1/2 the base xp reward (5) from a battle. This is designated the “Protected” XP award – because it’s protected from the effects of a negative bonus. This rule ensures that characters always get something for their trouble. However, by removing some of the xp from the calculation, it increases the likelyhood that a negative xp modifier will be greater than the allowed margin. When this happens, some of the xp “bonus” can be deferred to future battles. The “Treasure Penalty” first wipes out the Member Level Bonuses, then the Party Size Adjustments, and then up to half the base xp awarded. This should absorb the bulk of the penalty.

15b. When some penalty is deferred, it is simply added to that character’s next allotment of Bonus XP from Treasure. I should also comment on one aspect of this rule: why not track the ‘unpaid penalty’ at a party level, which would be much simpler for the DM than tracking it by character? The answer is that this unfairly penalises those low-level characters who earn enough xp from the encounter to fully pay off their “xp penalty”, in effect spreading the penalty of the high-level characters who don’t do so onto them when they have already paid their share.

But this is a contentious issue; it can be argued that because the High-level charaters increase the overall EL of the party, they permit the GM to increase the level of opposition, and hence the XP award for ALL party members. The low-level characters are, according to this line of arguement, riding on the coat-tails of the high-level members of the party, and this ‘burdon-sharing’ is a fair way for them to pay for that ride. This is a perfectly valid arguement, in my opinion; and one that deserves some consideration. Implementing this rule requires an alternative version of rule 15b.

15b(alternative): Total penalties deferred are added to the GP value of the next treasure bonus to be awarded.

For me, the big difference comes down to whether or not the highest-level member of the party is a PC or an NPC, especially one that’s been hired specifically for the purpose of “backstopping” the PCs if they bite off more than they can chew. If the highest level member of the party is a PC, then it’s not right that the low-level PCs ‘subsidise’ that character’s involvement, and I would use rule 15b as stated above. But when circumstances add a high-level NPC to the party, especially one that they aren’t paying for in gold, the value that they get from his presence should penalise them somewhat, in which case, the alternative form of 15b should be used.

Uneven Distribution Of Treasure

It will often be the case that much of the value of a treasure will be in the form of Magic Items, which can’t easily be distributed through the party. One person gets the big item, in fact (sometimes) one character will get the bulk of the items simply because his character class enables him to make use of such items. The disposition of treasure is completely up to the players, the GM should have no say in it beyond giving voice to the attitudes of any NPCs in the party. What we are concerned with here is the impact that uneven distribution should have on XP earnings.

What is the effect of a +1 item, in terms of character capability? Well, when a character gains a level, he gains +1 to hit. When he improves his STR (usually), his damage goes up, something that can be done every 4 levels. But the character gains other things with each of those levels: hit points, possibly an increase in the number of attacks that can be made, improved saves, skill points, one in four (or more) will give the character an additional feat, and probably one or more class abilities, none of which come with the +1 item. So a +1 longsword (or whatever) adds a fraction of 1 level, and a fraction of 4 levels. Assuming that each element of the level gain is to be equally-valued (any alternative just gets us in deeper trouble), let’s total up the total number of improvements that a character will get from a single generic level.

Single Generic Level:

• HP
• Skills
• Saves
• BAB
• Total improvements = 4 per level.

plus, 4 generic levels:

• stat increase
• 4 in 5: number of attacks increase by 1, or 4 in 5 spell advancements and +1/2 of number attacks increse
• 2 feats or 1 feat and 1 in 5 spell advancement
• x class abilities (usually 2 in 4, but may be higher or lower. Assume that more frequent class abilties implies weaker individual class abilities, or the class is unbalanced.
• Total improvements = 1 + 4/5 + 1 + 2 = 4.8 per 4 levels.

So the total value of a +1 item is 1 of 4 single level improvements, plus 1 of 4.8 four-level improvements, or
1/4 + 4 x 1/4.8 = 1.08333 levels worth of gain. Call it 1 level worth of improvement.

This gives us a basis for a ruling, based on the value of a +1 in the DMG. Everything in it can be related to the value of a +1 weapon by comparing the GP values. A quick glance at table 7-9 shows that the formula for value of plusses is
value = 2000 x (plus) x (plus).

15c. V1 = sqr [Value of magic item / 2000] = value in +1s.

This gives an adjustment to a character’s level based on the amount of magic items they have in excess of the usual. The adjustment is added to a character’s level for the purposes of calculating the experience they receive. If you over-power a party with too much treasure, the members who receive that treasure effectively take a CR “hit” on encounters.

XP for Non-combat encounters:

The average character who is good at something will have +2 or better in stat bonus to the relevant skill. This will increase by +1 every 5 levels, on average. They can also be assumed to allocate a skill rank into the ability for every character level (at least). It is thus a simple matter to assign an EL to any situation based on the DC to be overcome during the encounter. There are times when this can be determined in advance (traps, etc), and times when it can’t (interaction with NPCs/roleplaying). Note that roleplaying awards are optional, and up to the DM to award or modify based on circumstances at the time. I’ve even given roleplaying bonuses in combat if they seemed appropriate!

16. Base = 2 + int (char level / 5)
17. Encounter EL = ½(DC – base)
18. XP awarded = 1/10 x normal XP award.

XP for Skill Use:

There are two occasions when these awards are appropriate. One is when a character uses a skill in such a way that it solves a problem in a surprising or unexpected way. The other is when the character uses a skill to advance the plot in some significant way WITHOUT using the die roll to take the place of roleplaying.

19. Encounter EL = ½(Actual Die Roll)
20. XP awarded = 1/20th x normal XP award.
21. Maximum award = 5 x total rolled.

Note that this award completely disregards character levels, skill levels, and DCs required. That’s because the only way to rationally construct a system that takes account of these variables is to base the system on the margin of success, but players don’t always know the DC required and I don’t always want to take the time to perform the subtraction of total minus DC in my head. I’ve tried it, and it just bogs things down too much. This method is far simpler in game play; I can just draw up a rough table showing the PCs and jot down the actual rolls they make that qualify for the award, then perform all the calculations when time permits.

EXAMPLE OF USE:

A party consists of a 4th-level character, a 6th-level character, two 7th-level characters, and an 8th-level character.

They confront an enemy consisting of one CR8 creature, two CR6 creatures, two CR5 creatures, and fourteen CR½ creatures.

The enemy has marginally more magic at their disposal, and a distinct tactical advantage, and for a while look dominant, but the party eventually score a decisive victory through superior strategy and teamwork. How much experience should be awarded?

Step 1: Determine party CR:
One 8th-level character: 1 @ 8th = 2 @ 6th = 4 @ 4th, which is the lowest level within the party.
Two 7th-level characters: 2 @ 7th = 4 @ 5th = 4 x 1.4 @ 4th = 5.6 @ 4th.
One 6th-level character: 1 @ 6th = 2 @ 4th.
One 4th-level character: 1 @ 4th = 1 @ 4th.
TOTAL: 4 + 5.6 + 2 + 1
= 12.6 @ 4th
= 6.3 @ 6th
= 3.15 @ 8th
= 1.65 @ 10th
= 1.65 / 1.4 @ 11th
= 1.18 @ 11th level
= aprox 11th. So the party is equivalent to one 11th level character.

Step 2: Determine EL:
1 CR8 creature: 1 @ CR8 = 2 @ CR6 = 4 @ CR4 = 8 @ CR2 = 16 @ CR0.
2 CR6 creatures: 2 @ CR6 = 4 @ CR4 = 8 @ CR2 = 16 @ CR0.
2 CR5 creatures: 2 @ CR5 = 4 @ CR3 = 8 @ CR1 = 8 x 1.4 @ CR0 = 11.2 @ CR0.
14 CR½ creatures: 14 @ CR-1 = 7 @ CR1 = 7 x 1.4 @ CR0 = 10 @ CR0.
TOTAL: 16 + 16 + 11.2 + 10
= 53.2 @ CR0
= 26.6 @ CR2
= 13.3 @ CR4
= 6.65 @ CR6
= 3.325 @ CR8
= 1.6625 @ CR10
= 1.6625/1.4 @ CR11 = aprox EL11.
Allow +1 for the initial tactical position, gives EL12.

Step 3: Base XP:
D1 = 12 – 11 = 1.
Base XP = 62.5 x (12+1) x 1.4^1 = 62.5 x 13 x 1.4 = 1137.5; round up to 1,138 each.

Step 4: Individual Bonuses:
8th-level character:
D2 = EL – 4 – Char Level = 12 – 4 – 8 = 0. D2 = 0 , so use (9):
E3 = 62.5 x (12-3) x 1.4^0 = 62.5 x 9 x 1 = 562.5, round up to 563.
Member Level Bonuses increase the base award by 0%, so the 8th level character receives 1138+563 = 1701.
It would take 5.3 such encounters for the character to go from exactly 8th level to 9th level.

7th-level characters:
D2 = EL – 4 – Char Level = 12 – 4 – 7 = 1. D2 > 0 , so use (9):
E3 = 62.5 x (12-3) x 1.4^1 = 62.5 x 9 x 1.4 = 787.5, round up to 788.
Member Level Bonuses increase the base award by 5%, so the 7th level characters receive (1138+5%) +788 = 1194.9 + 788 = 1982.9, round up to 1983XP.
It would take 4.04 such encounters for the characters to go from exactly 7th level to 8th level.

6th-level character:
D2 = EL – 4 – Char Level = 12 – 4 – 6 = 2. D2 > 0 , so use (9):
E3 = 62.5 x (12-3) x 1.4^2 = 62.5 x 9 x 2 = 1125.
Member Level Bonuses increase the total awarded by 10%, so the 6th level character receives (1138+10%) +1125 = 1251.8 + 1125 = 2376.8, round up to 2377.
It would take 2.95 such encounters for the character to go from exactly 6th level to 7th level.

4th-level character:
D2 = EL – 4 – Char Level = 12 – 4 – 4 = 4. D2 > 0 , so use (9):
E3 = 62.5 x (12-3) x 1.4^4 = 62.5 x 9 x 4 = 2250.
Member Level Bonuses increase the total awarded by 40%, so the 4th level character receives (1138+40%) +2250 = 1593.2 + 2250 = 3843.2, round up to 3844.
It would take only 1.3 such encounters for the character to go from exactly 4th level to 5th level, so there is a very good chance that this encounter was enough for him to gain a level and close in on his colleagues!

That’s if they are all PCs. But what if the 6th level character and the 4th level character were both NPCs? Answer – they get exactly half of the XP, ie 2377/2=1188.5 (round to 1189) and 3844/2=1922 xp, respectively. Observe that the NPC factor is continually slowing their progress, producing “slippage” in character level relative to the PCs, but the greater this slippage becomes, the more bonus xp they receive for being of a lower level. There is very little difference between what the 7th level PC and the 4th level NPC received – but it takes a lot less XP (ie, fewer encounters) for the 4th level character to gain a level and reduce the slippage. These twin mechanisms combine to always keep NPCs weaker than their PC counterparts in a party, while not handicapping them to the point of helplessness; and also mean that any low-level characters that join the party will quickly close up ground on the party.

Step 5: Treasure Adjustments:
‘The enemy has marginally more magic at their disposal’ according to the encounter recap, but this is a relative assessment, comparing enemy with party; it tells us nothing with respect to the amount of loot the enemy actually have. According to tables in the DMG, the following would be reasonable for the encounter:

• Coins: 13000 cp, 6000 sp, 3570 gp, 100 pp = 5300 gp value
• 10 gems: 7 gp, 12 gp, 40 gp, 50 gp, 90gp, 100 gp, 300 gp, 600 gp, 1200gp, 3000 gp (total value = 5399gp)
• 4 mundane items : masterwork greatsword (350gp); masterwork Dwarven Waraxe (330gp); full plate armour (1500 gp); Healer’s Kit (50gp) (total = 2230gp)
• minor magic item: Arcane scroll, 2 spells: both 1st lvl spells, caster level 3: Protection from Good, Sleep (value 150gp)
• minor magic item: Divine scroll, 3 spells: 1st @ 5th: Enduring Elements, 1st @ 5th: Obscuring Mist, 2nd @ 5th: Enthrall (1000gp)
• minor magic item: Potion Enlarge Person (250 gp)
• minor magic item: Ring Counterspells (4000gp)
• medium magic item: Studded Leather Armour +1 (1175 gp)
• medium magic item: Bastard Sword Flaming Ghost Touch +2 (32335 gp)
• Grand Total: 51839gp

It is clear even from a passing glance that the Ring of Counterspells and the Bastard Sword are the picks of the treasure pile when it comes to magic. Between them, they account for just over 70% of the total value.

From (15): Bonus XP = (1701 + 1983 + 1983 + 1189 + 1922 – 5183.9) / 5 = (8778 – 5183.9) / 5 = 3594.1 / 5 = 718.82 each. Call it 719 xp.

However, the ring is worth 4000gp, or (4000/10) = 400 xp alone. One character gets that 400 xp worth of treasure, so the others should get the xp that goes with it. In other words, whoever gets the ring gets -400 to their xp bonus, and the other 4 characters get +100 each.

Similarly, the sword is worth 32,335gp, or 3233.5 xp. Call it 3234. One character gets that 3234 xp worth of treasure, so they should forego that much xp bonus and the others get 1/4 of that value extra, each, or +809 xp.

Let’s assume that the sword goes to the 2nd 7th level character, and the ring to the 8th level character, in which case:

8th-level character:
1701 xp + 719 – 400 (ring) + 809 (sword) = 2829 xp.

1st 7th-level character:
1983 xp + 719 + 100 (ring) + 809 (sword) = 3611 xp.

2nd 7th-level character:
1983 xp + 719 + 100 (ring) – 3234 (sword) = -432 xp.
half of 1138 xp is protected, ie the character gets 569 xp. This leaves a deficit of -432-569 = -1001 xp. This will be subtracted from future xp bonuses until paid off.

6th-level character:
1189 xp + 719 + 100 (ring) + 809 (sword) = 2817 xp.

4th-level character:
1922 xp + 719 + 100 (ring) + 809 (sword) = 3550 xp.

Step 6: Future CR Adjustments:
Until the deficit of character 3 is paid off, both characters 1 and 3 (who received a significant share of the treasure) receive an EL adjustment.

Character 1, 8th level:
From 15c: V1 = sqr [4000 / 2000] = sqr(2) = 1.4. The character is treated as having +1 level for the purposes of xp calculation until the deficit is paid.

Character 3, 7th level:
From 15c: V1 = sqr [32335 / 2000] = sqr(16.1675) = 4.02088. (This should not be a surprise to anyone who has examined the DMG table for melee weapon values). The character will be treated as having +4 levels for the purposes of xp calculation until the deficit is paid.

Step 7: Recalculate Party CR for planning future encounters:
Technically, this doesn’t have to be done now. But I find that it’s helpful to do it while the procedure is at hand. Before this can be done, the DM needs to know who has gone up a level. Based on the final xp awards, lets assume that characters 2, 4, and 5 all gain levels. So we now have:

Two 8th-level characters: 2 @ 8th = 4 @ 6th = 4 x 1.4 @ 5th, = 5.6 @ 5th.
Two 7th-level character: 2 @ 7th = 4 @ 5th.
One 5th-level character: 1 @ 5th = 1 @ 5th.
TOTAL: 5.6 + 4 + 1
= 10.6 @ 5th
= 5.3 @ 7th
= 2.65 @ 9th
= 1.325 @ 11th
= 1.325 / 1.4 @ 12th
= 0.95 @ 12th
= aprox 12th. So the party is considered equivalent to a 12th level character, one better than before.

This contrasts strongly with the values for xp calculation from the next encounter:
One “9th”-level character: 1 @ 9th = 2 @ 7th = 4 @ 5th, which is now the lowest level within the party.
One 8th-level character: 1 @ 8th = 2 @ 6th = 2 x 1.4 @ 5th = 2.8 @ 5th.
One “11th”=level character: 1 @ 11th = 2 @ 9th = 4 @ 7th = 8 @ 5th.
One 7th-level character: 1 @ 7th = 2 @ 5th.
One 5th-level character: 1 @ 5th = 1 @ 5th.
TOTAL: 4 + 2.8 + 8 + 2 + 1
= 17.8 @ 5th
= 8.9 @ 7th
= 4.45 @ 9th
= 2.225 @ 11th
= 1.1125 @ 13th
= aprox 13th. This means that base xp will be reduced, and bonus xp will be increased for most characters. The character who gets the least bonus xp will be the character with the deficit, even before that is taken into account. Most parties, under this circumstance, will make sure that any “tasty” items will find their way into the hands of the characters who missed out on the powerful goodies this time around, even without this xp prod to share the spoils; that will give the character with the deficit an extra xp bonus to help eradicate the deficit – assuming there’s something nice in the next treasure!

Real-Life Shorthand

Note that in actual play, I would not spell it out the way I have above, and would not show the workings; my calculations would be abbreviated, and would look more like the example to the left.

That’s about half-a-page of handwritten working. I would expect to use more space than that tracking hit point loss, Initiative, and spell effects during the combat!

Conclusion

So, there it is. In comparison to the rather unwieldy table arrangements in the 3.0 and 3.5 DMG, this is a simple and more useful alternative – at least for me.

It also has a huge side benefit in terms of balancing opposition levels with the party. If I know the effective level of the party, I can determine what size of encounter should give them difficulty. Since I adopted this system of matching enemy EL to party EL, the players have noticed a dramatic improvement in the encounters that I run for them (from their own statements). They no longer take even apprantly one-sided battles for granted, because they can never be sure of what’s lurking in the shadows – but they know that either I’m wasting everyone’s time with a fight they will inevitably win, or I’m setting them up for a sucker-punch, possibly drawing them into a weakened tactical position for a nastier opponant to come.