D&D Tactics

There was some interesting chatter on Twitter on Wednesday January 19, 2011 regarding tactics. @newbiedm mentioned wanting something akin to the “Player’s Strategy Guide” that Wizards of the Coast released, but for DMs. Basically, something that told DMs, “Okay, your party has x, y, z characters, here’s how you challenge them!”

As I wrote to both him and @SarahDarkmagic, I don’t believe that something like that is appropriate. I think that the key to challenging PCs in a 4th Edition D&D encounter is building the enemy “party” just like a player party would. What you want to focus on is the tactics within the enemy party, rather than build ways to stop the players’ characters.

Infernal Ire

For Christmas this year my wife bought me Dante’s Inferno. Not the poem, the video game. Yes, I know, I’m about a year late to the party but that’s not really the point.

Thanks to Snowpacalypse 2010 I had the opportunity to play it a lot this week. As I did, I came across a couple of things that really irritate me in video games, and realized that those things have parallels in in D&D, and I might actually be guilty of doing them as a DM.

The Recycle Bin – Final Fantasy 8 and OMG TEH SATAN!!

November 16, 2010.  Since there’s nothing else going on today, nothing note worthy at all in any way shape or form, I figured I’d at least give the community something to talk about. And I think I’ll talk about the evils of rolling dice. Now, don’t get me wrong, nothing beats a handful of polyheardals […]

The Recycle Bin – Up the Citadel Tower

In the tabletop world of 4e, there are plenty of factors a DM has to consider when making an exciting encounter.  The type, role, and number of monsters, the terrain the encounter occurs on or in, where the PCs and NPCs are placed when initiative is rolled, the resources the PCs should be expected to […]