4e Conversion: Raptoran

Dominic Matte

I keep mentioning my ongoing Dark Sun game here and there, but I just realized that I haven't really talked about the race of one of my players. She's a raptoran - a race I first encountered in 3.5. Raptorans are bird people with feathers instead of hair, talons on their feet, and huge wings. The 3.5 version of the race was a real one-trick pony: it was a race purely designed to give players flight on their own capabilities instead of relying on magic or class.

Raptorans also have an interesting cultural tradition that makes them perfect adventurers. The coming-of-age ritual is known as the Walk of the Four Winds, in which a young raptoran leaves the flock and can return only after they have learned to fly.

Since mountains are of major importance in Athas (there are lots of them!) I thought that the raptorans, as cliff-dwellers, would be a good fit in the world. So let's take a look at how I brought this race into 4e! You can download a PDF copy of the racial stats from my Dropbox.

Solo Design: Storm Sorcerer

Dominic Matte

Solo Design is a series of articles exploring solos -- monsters designed to engage an entire party -- using monsters I've designed for my own games. 

In one session I wanted my players to fight two back-to-back solo battles with no time to rest, against two almost-legendary knights in my campaign world. More than that, I wanted the two fights to feel very different, and for the stat blocks to match the personalities of the two generals.

The first of the pair is Sir Arthur the Grey Knight, a military general and powerful storm sorcerer who wields lightning and thunder against his enemies, and can turn those elements back on his attackers. Unlike many artillery monsters, he has a couple of tricks up his sleeves to remain mobile and avoid being pinned down by a defender.

Metagaming the Metagamers: Unwinnable Encounters

Dominic Matte

This article is part of a series on metagaming and how to challenge or discourage it in your games.

Some players assume that their DM wouldn't give them a challenge they can't beat. This can mean combat encounters, skill challenges, puzzles -- whatever. This isn't a terrible assumption to make, but it can cause problems on both sides of the screen. The players can get themselves into an extremely dangerous situation and risk one or more character deaths, and the DM might lose control of a key scene or plot point.

How do you teach your players that some challenges can't be beaten? Give them a challenge they can't beat.

Dice Stacking Like A Pro

Mike

Alright.  Lets talk dice.

The game’s been going for almost two hours.  You’re waiting for your turn to come up in the initiative so you can lay the smackdown on those filthy orcs. Your drink is empty.  You’ve had your fill of cheetos.

 

What do you do?

D&D Next: Class Variety

Dominic Matte

The D&D Next discussions of character creation that introduce theme and background are excellent, and look like they'll really help create some interesting and unique characters on a fairly level playing field. There are a few concerns for balance, but that's not what I want to talk about here.

There have been some rumblings that seem to imply that the designers think that theme and background choices can fill in for certain classes, keeping the number of core classes small.

This can't happen!

Metagaming the Metagamers: Minions

Dominic Matte

In a previous article I looked at the definition and a few examples of metagaming. There are many ways to deal with metagaming players, such as simply talking to them and explaining that a really good roleplayer acts only on information known by the character, or that the player's metagaming is having a negative effect on the game.

The more entertaining (and possibly evil) option is to observe how your players metagame, build situations and encounters to exploit their thinking, and teach them a lesson by turning their expectations on their heads.

This time I'm taking a look at how you can use minions in an encounter to force players to reconsider their assumptions.

How do you organize your dungeon tiles?

Dominic Matte

I'm slowly building a collection of maps and dungeon tiles for my D&D games. I know how I'm going to organize my poster maps because of this excellent article from TheSheDM, but I'm not too sure what to do with my tiles.

Among other things, I have the City, Dungeon, and Wilderness master set boxes. I'm thinking that I should divide my tiles up to fit those themes and put them in ziplock bags in the relevant box. For example, my Dark Sun tiles would go in their own bag in the Wilderness box, and the Underdark tiles would fit in the Dungeon box.

But this solution seems a little lacking given the sheer variety in each tile set. It did occur to me to keep each tile sheet in a plastic protector like in the above solution for poster maps. That would allow me to see both sides of each tile easily, but it comes with the functional downside of having to put the tiles back into the sheet every time I use some, and it won't stop them from falling out of the slots and clumping at the bottom during transport.

Should I have a bag for major battlefield landmarks, like the Wilderness set's cabin, ruined tower, and giant skeleton? 

Should I have subcategories for the size of tiles, even though similarly-sized tiles don't have much in common?

Should I categorize tiles by content, like pits or ruins? That ignores the back side of the tile.

What are your dungeon tile organization solutions? I'd love to hear about them in the comments, and feature my favourites in a future article.