Category Archives: Advice/Tools

200 Posts: My favorites of the second century

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This is post number 201 on my blog, so I thought I’d continue the tradition I started with number 100 of looking back at my previous 100 posts and picking out a few of my favorites. The OnlineDM Greatest Hits, Volume Two:

1. My players are smarter than I am. This post talks about my experience of using player ideas during a session. In this particular example, one of my players mused that he thought the bad guys would try to push a wall over on the PCs. I’d never envisioned that possibility, but it sounded like a great idea, so I ran with it. If your players give you ideas about what might happen and they’re good ideas, use them!

2. Creating D&D converts. Lots of us have friends or family members who we think would enjoy gaming, but it’s tricky to get them into it. This post describes my experience of introducing my brother-in-law and his wife to D&D via Castle Ravenloft and then some Living Forgotten Realms adventures when they visited over Christmas. It obviously worked, since I’m getting ready to run yet another session for them this evening over MapTool even though they’re in Texas. Their characters are at sixth level now, by the way!

3. Bonus points. Lots of DMs have used similar ideas; this is my own take on it. Basically, when one of my players does something creative or cool or especially in-character rather than just focusing on the numbers of combat and tactics, I hand them a bonus point that they can use in the future to add 1 to a die roll they make or subtract 1 from a die roll made against them. They’re great incentives to encourage the kind of play I enjoy.

4. Out of the gaming closet. In my first 100 posts, I had talked about the fact that I’m in the closet at work about gaming; I didn’t mention it to my colleagues out of fear of… I don’t know, ridicule? Well, I’m over that now, and happier for it.

5. Running an online game for new players. I’m really excited about how this particular game went, because I’m such a sucker for introducing people to gaming. In this particular instance, I had some people coming to me online, saying that they wanted to learn D&D but weren’t sure how to go about it. So, I recruited a group and ran a game for them. It was a lot of fun, and something I’d like to do regularly (maybe every few months or so).

6. Tallinn’s Tower. I’m including this post as a representative of my free adventures posts. I’ve posted two so far; Tallinn’s Tower was the second. The third is almost ready, and I’ve just finished a major revision of the first. I’m personally excited about this, although I haven’t gotten much feedback yet. I love free adventures, and I love to share them with the D&D community.

7. My first Pathfinder game. Yes, I’m branching out beyond D&D4e! I love learning new games, and since Pathfinder is so popular I really wanted to learn it. I think that so far I prefer D&D4e, but I do get the appeal of Pathfinder, too.

8. MapTool flexible monster creation. This continues to evolve for me, but I was quite happy with my take on flexible monster creation. I’ve been using this method exclusively since I wrote it, and it’s made monster building much faster. Also, I love the goofy damage dice I can use (2d13+16 for instance).

9. D&D Encounters. I DMed for the Encounters this summer and loved doing it, mainly because of the opportunity to introduce new players to the game. This particular session was great because it was my grand finale (I missed the final week since I was at GenCon), my wife played, and I met a new friend. Encounters was a lot of fun, and I hope to run it again next summer when my Wednesday night bowling league is over.

10. GenCon – D&D New Products Seminar. I have to include this one, even though it has no original material. This is my minute-by-minute note taking from the seminar at GenCon where WotC talked about their plans for the next year. To say that it was a popular post would be an understatement! I typically get around 300 hits per day on my blog; I topped out near 1,500 during the weekend of GenCon when this post was live. You guys love GenCon news!

Thank you all for reading Online Dungeon Master. I’ve really enjoyed having this way of talking to the D&D community and hearing from you, too. Remember that you can also follow me on Twitter as OnlineDM1.

MapTool geek-out update: Flexible monster creation

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Update: The new campaign file now has a cool Edit Monster macro that lets you tweak things on the fly, including Solo/Elite/Minion status. Thank you to JonathanTheBlack over on the MapTool forums!

After I put my initial pass at new damage tables and MapTool monster templates out there for the world to see, I saw some niggling problems that I wanted to correct.

First, my original damage tables had a couple of flat spots where the damage expression stayed the same from one level to the next. Since average damage is supposed to increase by 1 per level, this bugged me and I wanted to fix it.

Second, I knew I should be able to make monsters tweakable more easily with some additional properties.

Third, I wanted to handle limited damage expressions more elegantly.

Updated damage tables

My damage table now increases at every level. It also has a slightly wider range than the official tables, even at low level, but I’m okay with that. My crits will hurt a little more and my lousy damage rolls will hurt a little less than with official monsters. At the lowest levels, my expressions still have less overall variance because I’m rolling two dice right from the start (the official expressions only roll one for level 1-3). And at the highest levels I have some more variance because I’m only rolling two dice instead of four; that’s a good feature in my opinion.

I also fleshed out the table to include damage expressions for multi-target attacks (about 25% less than standard attacks) as well as limited damage expressions (25% more and 50% more than standard attacks). These took some fiddling to get right, but I’m pretty happy with where they ended up.

Tweakable monsters

I added a property for the attack bonus versus non-AC defenses (NADs); it’s just the normal attack bonus minus 2, but it makes it easier to tweak attack macros en masse. If you want a particular monster to have an easier time hitting NADs (as Soldiers do), just tweak the one property rather than editing every attack macro.

The same goes for having the 125% and 150% damage expressions; it’s easier to do something like tweak the Brute by changing the normal damage to the 125% numbers and the 125% numbers to the 150% numbers in the monster’s properties rather than in each individual attack macro.

Limited damage expressions

High-damage attacks are not perfectly formulaic; the official guidelines say to increase the damage for encounter or recharge powers by 25 to 50 percent.

I decided to add a formula. My generic monsters’ recharge powers do 25% extra damage, while their encounter powers do 50% extra damage. If it’s a multi-target recharge attack I use the standard single-target damage expressions; a multi-target encounter attack gets the 125% damage expressions.

A word on artillery monsters

The official guidelines say that artillery monsters should have +1 or +2 to hit for ranged or area attacks. This is entirely too vague for me, and messy to implement. So, I just gave them +2 to hit versus both AC and NADs. Sure, maybe they’re a little more accurate than they “should” be; I can live with that.

Putting it all together

If you want to download a template campaign file with the sample monsters and properties, you can download it here. The file was created in version 1.3.b66 of MapTool. The properties themselves have been pasted below.

#---StatsToSetManually-----
#Level:1
#Role:Skirmisher
#HPModifier:8
#Spd:6
#NativeSize:Medium
#ActPts:0
#SaveBonus:0
#HeShe:It
#ArmorClassRoleMod:0
#InitiativeRoleMod:0
#Leader:0
#MinionHP:0
#SubType:Standard
#SubTypeHPMod:1
#----StatsThatCanBeDefaulted---------
#MaxHP:{((HPModifier + Constitution + (Level * HPModifier)) * SubTypeHPMod) + MinionHP}
#ArmorClass:{Level+14+ArmorClassRoleMod+ACAdj}
#Fortitude:{Level+12+FortAdj}
#Reflex:{Level+12+RefAdj}
#Will:{Level+12+WillAdj}
#Init:{HalfLevel+DexMod-ArmorPenalty+InitAdj}
#Strength:{10+HalfLevel+StrAdj}
#Constitution:{10+HalfLevel+ConAdj}
#Dexterity:{10+HalfLevel+DexAdj}
#Intelligence:{10+HalfLevel+IntAdj}
#Wisdom:{10+HalfLevel+WisAdj}
#Charisma:{10+HalfLevel+ChaAdj}
#DefaultAttackBonusVsAC:{Level+5}
#DefaultAttackBonusVsNAD:{Level+3}
#SingleTargetDamageBonus:{DamageBonus100}
#SingleTargetDamageDie:{DamageDie100}
#MultiTargetDamageDie:{DamageDie75}
#MultiTargetDamageBonus:{DamageBonus75}
#DamageBonus100:{1+CEILING(Level*2/3)}
#DamageDie100:{6+FLOOR(Level/3)}
#DamageDie75:{SingleTargetDamageDie-2-FLOOR((Level+3)/9)}
#DamageBonus75:{SingleTargetDamageBonus-1-FLOOR((Level+1)/9)}
#DamageDie125:{8+FLOOR(Level/3)}
#DamageBonus125:{1+CEILING(Level*2/3)+FLOOR((Level+1)/4)}
#DamageDie150:{9+FLOOR(Level/3)+FLOOR((Level+3)/6)}
#DamageBonus150:{2+CEILING(Level*2/3)+FLOOR((Level+1)/3)}
#MinionDamage:{4+FLOOR(Level/2)}
#-----CalculatedOrStaticStats-----
#HitPoints:{MaxHP}
#TempHP:0
#BloodiedHP:{FLOOR(MaxHP/2)}
#DeathFails:0
*#HP:{Hitpoints}/{MaxHP} + {TempHP}
*#AC/Fort/Ref/Will:{ArmorClass} / {Fortitude} / {Reflex} / {Will}
*#Type:Level {Level} {Role}
*#Speed:{Spd}
*#Initiative:{Init}
*#ActionPoints:{ActPts}
*#Str/Con/Dex:{Strength} / {Constitution} / {Dexterity}
*#Int/Wis/Cha:{Intelligence} / {Wisdom} / {Charisma}
#E1:1
#E2:1
#E3:1
#E4:1
#E5:1
#R1:1
#R2:1
#R3:1
#R4:1
#R5:1
#PowerCharged:1
---------------------------Skills-------------------------------------
#ArmorPenalty:0
#Acrobatics:{HalfLevel+DexMod-ArmorPenalty+5*AcrTrained}
#Arcana:{HalfLevel+IntMod+5*ArcTrained}
#Athletics:{HalfLevel+StrMod-ArmorPenalty+5*AthTrained}
#Bluff:{HalfLevel+ChaMod+5*BlfTrained}
#Diplomacy:{HalfLevel+ChaMod+5*DipTrained}
#Dungeoneering:{HalfLevel+WisMod+5*DunTrained}
#Endurance:{HalfLevel+ConMod-ArmorPenalty+5*EndTrained}
#Heal:{HalfLevel+WisMod+5*HeaTrained}
#History:{HalfLevel+IntMod+5*HisTrained}
#Insight:{HalfLevel+WisMod+5*InsTrained}
#Intimidate:{HalfLevel+ChaMod+5*IntTrained}
#Nature:{HalfLevel+WisMod+5*NatTrained}
#Perception:{HalfLevel+WisMod+5*PerTrained}
#Religion:{HalfLevel+IntMod+5*RelTrained}
#Stealth:{HalfLevel+DexMod-ArmorPenalty+5*StlTrained}
#Streetwise:{HalfLevel+ChaMod+5*StrTrained}
#Thievery:{HalfLevel+DexMod-ArmorPenalty+5*ThvTrained}
#AcrTrained:0
#ArcTrained:0
#AthTrained:0
#BlfTrained:0
#DipTrained:0
#DunTrained:0
#EndTrained:0
#HeaTrained:0
#HisTrained:0
#InsTrained:0
#IntTrained:0
#NatTrained:0
#PerTrained:0
#RelTrained:0
#StlTrained:0
#StrTrained:0
#ThvTrained:0
------------------AbilityMods-------------------------------
#StrMod:{FLOOR((Strength-10)/2)}
#ConMod:{FLOOR((Constitution-10)/2)}
#DexMod:{FLOOR((Dexterity-10)/2)}
#IntMod:{FLOOR((Intelligence-10)/2)}
#WisMod:{FLOOR((Wisdom-10)/2)}
#ChaMod:{FLOOR((Charisma-10)/2)}
#HalfLevel:{FLOOR(Level/2)}
-----------------Adjustments-------------------
#StrAdj:0
#ConAdj:0
#DexAdj:0
#IntAdj:0
#WisAdj:0
#ChaAdj:0
#ACAdj:0
#FortAdj:0
#RefAdj:0
#WillAdj:0
#InitAdj:0
---------------Other-----------------------------------------
Elevation:0
AttackState:0
DefenseState:0

MapTool geek-out: Creating flexible monsters FAST

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Edit 7/15/2011: I put up a revised version of this post with a better set of damage tables and everything a day after the original went live. I’ve left the original below for posterity.

I run all of my D&D games using MapTool, whether online in the traditional MapTool way or in-person using my projector rig. I don’t use a pre-made campaign framework for my games, since I enjoy learning new things and I enjoy computer programming (as a hobbyist, not a professional). More of my posts about my learnings with MapTool can be found in my MapTool Education Central.

Today I spent a fair part of the afternoon creating flexible monster templates. This came about because I’m working on finishing up the third adventure in my Staff of Suha trilogy (part 1 is here, and part 2 is here), and I want to use custom monsters and to make it as easy as possible to run the adventure at multiple levels (adventure level 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10). I’m already updating older monsters to use the most current monster math, so I thought, why not create flexible templates for each monster role?

My goal was to make it so that I could create a new monster in very little time. All I wanted to have to do was pick a role, pick a level, and then write down any special abilities. All of the math should be baked in based on the level and role. This meant that I needed to change around my monster properties.

I’ll paste the full properties at the end of the post, but what follows is a discussion of the math you’ll see there.

The math

HP modifier is either 6, 8 or 10. Artillery and Lurkers get 6 hit points per level; Skirmishers, Soldiers and Controllers get 8; Brutes get 10. MaxHP follows the formula laid out by Wizards of the Coast post-MM3 (HP modifier times Level+1, plus Constitution).

Defenses are tied to level and role. By default, Armor Class is Level+14 and the non-AC defenses (NADs) are Level+12. Soldiers have AC of Level+16; Brutes and Artillery have AC of Level+12.

The AttackBonus is Level+5. Versus NADs it’s Level+3, but I handle that in the attack macros instead of here in the properties (maybe I should do the latter).

Ability scores default to 10+Half Level each. I tweak these based on monster flavor, of course. I haven’t seen this explicitly spelled out anywhere, but glancing through recent monsters, it appears to be about right.

Initiative is basically a Dexterity check – Dex mod plus half level. Brutes reduce this by 2, Skirmishers increase it by 2 and Soldiers increase it by 4.

The most interesting part comes with damage. The table laid out by Wizards of the Coast is nice in that it scales pretty steadily in terms of average damage (Level+8 on average for a single target attack). It’s a bit tricky, though, in that it uses varying numbers of d6s and d8s at different levels. I wanted an easy-to-program solution to this problem that would give me similar average damage and a similar-shaped damage distribution to the official numbers.

What I ultimately came up with was to always roll two damage dice and add a bonus. The size of the die varies with level. It starts as a d6 and increases by 1 every fourth level. No, that doesn’t mean it goes to a d8 at level 5 – it goes to a d7! I’m leveraging the power of MapTool here; it’s happy to roll a d7 or d17 or whatever you like, just as easily as a d6 or d8.

Thus, every attack rolls a pair of damage dice, ranging from d6s at 1st-4th level to d13s at 29th-20th level.

The static damage bonus goes up every level or every other level, starting at 2 and ending at 23. Thus, a first-level monster deals 2d6+2 damage on a normal attack and a 30th-level monster deals 2d13+23.

The distribution of results is going to be a bit different from the official results, especially at higher levels, but I like it. My damage expressions have a slightly narrower range (at 30th level, WotC’s minimum damage is 24 and maximum 52 while mine ranges from 25 to 49). However, my distributions have more variability within that range (if you roll four dice instead of two, it’s much less likely that you’ll get extreme results). Honestly, I think the shape of my damage distribution curve at higher levels is more fun; higher variance in a slightly narrower range.

Also, due to rounding I have a couple of spots on my table where the damage from one level to the next is actually the same; I’m not overly concerned, honestly.

Multi-target attacks deal a bit less damage; I won’t go into the details.

Recharge and encounter powers (and Brute attacks) also deal extra damage, which I handle in either the token properties for the Brute (altering the static damage) or in the individual attack macros for recharge and encounter powers.

The templates in action

Once I had finished putting these new properties together and creating token templates for each role, I started putting an encounter together.

Wow, was it fast! I knew I wanted a level 7 skirmisher, a level 8 soldier and a level 8 artillery. I copied the appropriate token templates, set the levels, tweaked a few stats (a bit more Reflex and a bit less Fortitude on the artillery; low Intelligence on the beast skirmisher, etc.) and then got to the meat of monster building – abilities.

I was able to focus all of my attention on what would be a cool ability for a monster to have. For instance, my Skirmisher is a beast called a Digger. It can grab an enemy with its Pincers. It can use a special move action to drag the enemy up to half its speed without requiring a check. It has a recharge power that lets it burrow under an enemy, trying to make the enemy fall into the newly created channel.

It literally took about five minutes. I gave no thought to math. I just thought about flavor and abilities.

I built this Digger with an eye on the level 8 version of the adventure, but when it comes time to run it at Adventure Level 2, all I need to do is change the level. One stat; that’s all.

The download

I figure that the best way to share this is in a campaign file that has all of the necessary properties and a set of the tokens. You can download that template file here. Note that this file was created in MapTool version 1.33.b66.

The properties

#---StatsToSetManually-----
#Level:1
#Role:Skirmisher
#HPModifier:8
#Spd:6
#NativeSize:Medium
#ActPts:0
#SaveBonus:0
#HeShe:It
#----StatsThatCanBeDefaulted---------
#MaxHP:{HPModifier+Constitution+(Level*HPModifier)}
#ArmorClass:{Level+14}
#Fortitude:{Level+12}
#Reflex:{Level+12}
#Will:{Level+12}
#AttackBonus:{Level+5}
#DamageBonus:{1+Level-FLOOR((Level+2)/4)}
#DamageDie:{5+FLOOR((Level+3)/4)}
#MultiTargetDamageBonus:{1+Level-FLOOR((Level+2)/4)-(1+FLOOR(Level/4))}
#MultiTargetDamageDie:{4+FLOOR((Level+3)/4)}
#Init:{HalfLevel+DexMod-ArmorPenalty+0}
#Strength:{10+HalfLevel}
#Constitution:{10+HalfLevel}
#Dexterity:{10+HalfLevel}
#Intelligence:{10+HalfLevel}
#Wisdom:{10+HalfLevel}
#Charisma:{10+HalfLevel}
#-----CalculatedOrStaticStats-----
#HitPoints:{MaxHP}
#TempHP:0
#BloodiedHP:{FLOOR(MaxHP/2)}
#DeathFails:0
*#HP:{Hitpoints}/{MaxHP} + {TempHP}
*#AC/Fort/Ref/Will:{ArmorClass} / {Fortitude} / {Reflex} / {Will}
*#Type:Level {Level} {Role}
*#Speed:{Spd}
*#Initiative:{Init}
*#ActionPoints:{ActPts}
*#Str/Con/Dex:{Strength} / {Constitution} / {Dexterity}
*#Int/Wis/Cha:{Intelligence} / {Wisdom} / {Charisma}
#E1:1
#E2:1
#E3:1
#E4:1
#E5:1
#R1:1
#R2:1
#R3:1
#R4:1
#R5:1
#PowerCharged:1
---------------------------Skills-------------------------------------
#ArmorPenalty:0
#Acrobatics:{HalfLevel+DexMod-ArmorPenalty+0}
#Arcana:{HalfLevel+IntMod+0}
#Athletics:{HalfLevel+StrMod-ArmorPenalty+0}
#Bluff:{HalfLevel+ChaMod+0}
#Diplomacy:{HalfLevel+ChaMod+0}
#Dungeoneering:{HalfLevel+WisMod+0}
#Endurance:{HalfLevel+ConMod-ArmorPenalty+0}
#Heal:{HalfLevel+WisMod+0}
#History:{HalfLevel+IntMod+0}
#Insight:{HalfLevel+WisMod+0}
#Intimidate:{HalfLevel+ChaMod+0}
#Nature:{HalfLevel+WisMod+0}
#Perception:{HalfLevel+WisMod+0}
#Religion:{HalfLevel+IntMod+0}
#Stealth:{HalfLevel+DexMod-ArmorPenalty+0}
#Streetwise:{HalfLevel+ChaMod+0}
#Thievery:{HalfLevel+DexMod-ArmorPenalty+0}
------------------AbilityMods-------------------------------
#StrMod:{FLOOR((Strength-10)/2)}
#ConMod:{FLOOR((Constitution-10)/2)}
#DexMod:{FLOOR((Dexterity-10)/2)}
#IntMod:{FLOOR((Intelligence-10)/2)}
#WisMod:{FLOOR((Wisdom-10)/2)}
#ChaMod:{FLOOR((Charisma-10)/2)}
#HalfLevel:{FLOOR(Level/2)}
---------------Other-----------------------------------------
Elevation:0

My thoughts on Pathfinder, based on the Core Rulebook

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I’ve finished reading through the bulk of the Pathfinder Core Rulebook in preparation for the campaign in which I will soon be a player, and I thought I’d share my thoughts here. My background with RPGs is:

  • I played a little bit of D&D 3.0 around 2002. I got the core books, read them, loved them, played a session or two, wrote an adventure, never found a good group to play with, drifted away.
  • I started playing D&D 4e in early 2010, and here I am now. I’ve played and DMed a ton of 4e over the past year and a half.
  • In that year and a half, I’ve also had the chance to play one session each of AD&D 1e, GURPS, Savage Worlds and Call of Cthulhu.

So, I’m approaching Pathfinder as an experienced D&D 4e player, with some exposure to other games, including earlier editions of D&D – but just a little.

Introduction

The first thing that struck me about the Core Rulebook is that it opens with some mild politics. I understand that this is about the OGL and such, but it’s really awkward to read all the references to Pathfinder being an evolution of “the 3.5 version of the world’s oldest roleplaying game.” I get it – they don’t own the rights to the Dungeons and Dragons name, so they can’t say the name, but the OGL lets them say a lot of other stuff… it’s very weird.

I love that the single book is basically the Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide rolled into one. I’ve really only been focusing on the player sections of the book, but I appreciate that the game master sections are right there if I want them.

The glossary on pages 11-12 is well-placed, too. Understanding things like Combat Maneuver Bonus right up front is helpful. The index in the back of the book seems to be pretty good, too. If you’re going to write a book that aims to be accessible to new players, a good glossary and index help a lot.

“Generating a Character” on pages 14-15 is not as helpful as it should be. I wish this had been an easier-to-follow step-by-step process, but it involves a crazy amount of flipping all over the book. I think an example would have helped a lot.

Races

Not much to say here. I’m fine with the races that get penalties to certain stats; it’s more flavorful. The races generally seem to have more flavor expressed in mechanics than 4e races do, but this isn’t always a winner for me. Some of the flavor is quite fiddly in practice, such as dwarves getting a dodge bonus to AC against giants and a bonus to Appraise checks involving precious metals or gems. I get the flavor, really, but the mechanics seem likely to be forgotten.

One other note: The illustration of the half-elf woman is fantastic. Half-elf males are lucky critters!

Classes

I see what people mean when they refer to the Essentials class presentations as being more like older editions. No two classes are alike in Pathfinder. They all have their own progression of different features that come at different levels, and that’s cool. Fiddly, yes, but I think the fiddliness comes from not having a Character Builder with power cards. If all of these special abilities were easy to follow and reference on the character sheet, they wouldn’t feel any more fiddly than 4e characters getting powers as they level up. So, no complaints about the progression of the classes themselves here, just a complaint about the lack of an easy-to-use character builder (though I’ve heard good – and expensive – things about Hero Lab).

It strikes me that Pathfinder seems to be a game that relies more on GM and player interpretation rather than rules – often phrased as “rulings rather than rules”. I’m fine with that, but it’s a meaningful difference with 4e.

Some things in Pathfinder make character creation harder than 4e, which gives each class a key ability score (and yes, there are some V-shaped class builds in 4e that depend on two different abilities, I know). When I tried to build a cleric in Pathfinder, I found myself gravitating toward a high Wisdom score. I then realized that Charisma is pretty important, too. And then I saw that if I wanted to have anything to do other than throw off the occasional healing spell, I’d probably want good Strength to get into melee, in which case I’d need reasonable Constitution in order to have some hit points and not just die in one shot… it’s just very different. If it leads to well-rounded characters, well, great! But it’s a very different approach.

Also, I love the way deities and domains are presented in the Core Rulebook. It’s a whole new pantheon of deities, of course, but I love that clerics pick a deity and then get spells and abilities from two of the deity’s domains. Again, good flavor.

Spells are, of course, one of the areas where D&D differs most from earlier editions and Pathfinder. All spells are “dailies” in Pathfinder (Vancian Magic). I have to say that based solely on reading the books, I prefer the 4e system. Any system where the wizard spends the first four levels of his career hiding from combat most of the time until he can start throwing the occasional fireball doesn’t seem that great to me. Yes, I know that the wizard becomes all-powerful later, but reading through the books does not make me a fan of the Linear Warriors Quadratic Wizards phenomenon. Maybe it will be more fun in play.

I’m also annoyed by the difference between character level, caster level and spell level. I get it, but it’s terribly inelegant.

Skills

Again, more flavor than 4e. More judgment calls. More proliferation. More stuff that comes up outside of combat. It’s good, it’s bad… it’s just a difference.

Feats

I didn’t read them all, as you might imagine. But this feels like an area where 4e really didn’t change much from 3.5e / Pathfinder. Feats felt very familiar to me.

Equipment

Again, much like 4e in most respects (at least for starting equipment; I haven’t delved into magic items).

The various weapons confuse me a bit, as there seem to be cases where weapon A is Pareto superior to weapon B… is the difference really just flavor, or am I missing something? The Morningstar, for instance, just seems better than the Heavy Mace. It’s cheaper, it’s lighter, it deals two different types of damage… all I can figure is that dealing two types of damage is bad in some circumstances (such as against a creature that resists piercing damage, even when it’s paired with bludgeoning). I have much to learn, I guess.

A minor innovation that I actually like from 4e is the introduction of the Adventurer’s Kit. I personally think it’s fun to pore over the list of oddball equipment I could buy for my character, but I think it’s a good idea to provide a “default gear” option for players who aren’t interested in that sort of thing.

The illustrations of gear in this book are very nicely done too, in my opinion. Good artwork in lots of places… it’s strange that I’m not seeing artist credits on the images.

Additional Rules

It’s a little weird to me that we don’t see alignment spelled out until this chapter, but I guess there really wasn’t a good place to stick it earlier. I tend to think of alignment as being a very fundamental part of the character creation process. My only other comment on this section is that I find the changes to ability scores as characters age to be annoying rather than flavorful. I guess it’s both… sigh.

Combat

Okay, I read this chapter in detail. And I have to say that this is one where I’ll largely need to reserve judgment until I play the game. So many things are fundamentally different about combat between 4e and Pathfinder that I can’t accurately judge it until I try it.

I get that there’s sort of a Standard – Move – Minor action economy in this game, but I also understand that it’s still a different animal. Full-round actions have no clear analogue in 4e, except maybe the monk’s Full Discipline… but you can still take a 5-foot step with a full round action. It’s going to take some learning by doing on my part for sure.

I will say that combat seems a lot more complicated in Pathfinder. The difference between a weapon attack, touch attack and ranged touch attack is flavorful, but harder to follow. Holding a charge on a spell – also flavorful and hard to follow. Saving throws – I think the 4e system of different defenses works much better. Concentration checks for spellcasting seem like a huge pain in the butt. All the options to do things like fight defensively seem overly complicated. The different buckets for lethal and nonlethal damage seem like a pain. And oh, all the tables! It’s going to take a lot of learning for me.

Magic

Much like combat, I’m going to have to see it in action in order to really judge. Concentration, counterspelling, the shapes of spell areas, areas that originate on a grid intersection rather than in a square, spell resistance… again, it seems really complicated. More “realism” at the expense of clarity.

The Rest

I flipped through some of the spells. I haven’t touched Prestige Classes or the GM parts of the book. I haven’t delved into multiclassing, though I understand the gist of how it works.

Overall impressions

So far, Pathfinder looks like a game that does a much better job of handling the game world “realistically” than 4e, though at the expense of simplicity. I know that tomes have been written about “gamism versus simulationism” by people who’ve spent far more time comparing and contrasting various systems than I have, so I don’t have much I can add. Until I actually get to try the system out at the table, it will be hard for me to say which (if either) I prefer.

Fortunately, I’m not too worried. I had the chance to meet with my awesome GM, Phil, and I know it’s going to be a fun game. He’s not overly concerned about rules, and he’s interested in us focusing far more on the stories of our characters rather than their mechanics. Having played in his Call of Cthulhu game at Genghis Con, I’m really excited about playing in an ongoing campaign that he’s running. I honestly don’t think the system is going to matter all that much – with good people at the table, I’m going to have a good time.

I’m going to play some Pathfinder

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Sometimes life gives you a weird confluence of events.

A couple of weeks ago, I checked out the Pathfinder Core Rulebook from my local library. I’ve since renewed it and have been working my way through it. This was just for the sake of curiosity. I love learning new games, and I know that Pathfinder is quite popular, so I thought I’d learn more about it.

Shortly after that, I received an email from the guy who ran the Call of Cthulhu game I played in at Genghis Con back in February. He was getting ready to start a Pathfinder campaign and wanted to know if I was interested. At first I had to say no because he was planning on running the game on Wednesdays when I was already running D&D Encounters (and once the fall arrives, going to my bowling league). Then the game changed to Monday nights… and I have no reason to say no! So I’m going to give it a shot.

I haven’t read the entire Pathfinder Core Rulebook yet, but I’ve read enough to understand the game in general terms (and sitting around the table with experienced players will help, too). The first session is going to be this coming Monday, and it will be a one-shot Pathfinder Society game to see how the players and GM gel together.  The plan is to start an ongoing campaign every other week after that.

So far I’ve tried my hand at putting together a first-level cleric, Beren. I wanted to keep things relatively simple but not “well, you’ve got to play a fighter” simple. Beren is a human cleric of Desna with a focus in the domains of luck and travel. He’s wise and strong and charismatic, though not especially dexterous. He’ll stab things with a starknife or bash them with a morningstar… or, you know, smite them with holy justice a few times a day (though he’ll likely do his best to heal his allies instead). I’ve probably screwed everything up in building him, but I think I should be able to get by.

Incidentally, I used this Pathfinder Character Generator to build Beren. I’ll admit that I’m spoiled by the D&D 4th Edition character builder, and I expected to see even better free tools for Pathfinder. Hm.

I’ll share more about my overall thoughts on Pathfinder in a separate post. But for now, I’m putting out the call for input – what should I be thinking about as I embark on a campaign in a new game system?

Running an online game for new players

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I love it when a plan comes together. A couple of weeks ago I received a comment on my blog from a player who had never played a tabletop role-playing game before but who was interested in trying it out. Since I love to introduce new players to the hobby, I wanted to at least run one game for this prospective new player. So, I advertised here on the blog as well as over on EN World that I would be running a one-shot game for new players.

Getting this game set up went the way I originally expected setting up an online game to go when I first did it last July. For that game, I wanted five players so I recruited seven, figuring that a couple wouldn’t be able to make it. I ended up with eight. Oops.

This time I ended up recruiting six and only four were able to make it work (scheduling was problematic). That’s okay, though – four was plenty!

We gathered Friday evening on MapTool and Skype in the time slot that I normally run my long-running War of the Burning Sky campaign (my regular players were very understanding – thanks, guys!). I gave the new players some choice about what adventure we ran, and I ended up running a Living Forgotten Realms game – CORM 1-1 The Black Knight of Arabel (available here as part of a big archive file if you’re interested). This was, coincidentally, the first LFR game I had ever gone through as a player and one of the first I had run as a DM.

I specifically wanted to run an adventure I had run before in order to keep my prep time to a minimum (time was tight last week). Most of the prep time for this game went into getting the four PCs set up in MapTool. I did change the monsters in the adventure, too. First, I updated the damage expressions and defenses and everything to the post-Monster Manual 3 numbers. Second, since this particular adventure has the possibility of three fights with the same shadow creatures over and over, I mixed things up by bringing in some monsters from the Dark Legacy of Evard season of D&D Encounters that I’m running.

The group that gathered on Friday consisted of two new players (one of them in England – I somehow manage to attract players who are willing to play in the middle of the night!), one player who was rusty, and one player who at least hadn’t played online before (but he was looking for a game and I needed the fourth player to fill out the party). We had some minor technical difficulties at first, but soon enough we were all on MapTool.

I had created characters for the two new players based on descriptions they gave me – a tiefling cleric and a half-orc barbarian. The more experienced players created their own characters – an elf mage and a goliath warden. I started with some basics about how the MapTool program works and how the rules of the game work for the new players, and then we dove in.

SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE BLACK KNIGHT OF ARABEL

The adventure began with the party on their way to Arabel to investigate reports of a black rider and shadow creatures. Near nightfall the party was approaching the city and came upon a wagon driver frantically trying to repair a wagon wheel before darkness came. The party offered to help, but just then the sun dipped below the horizon and some shadow creatures emerged. A battle ensued, using the Shadow Hulk and Shadow Seeker from the adventure, but using the Leeching Shadows from Dark Legacy of Evard instead of the Shadow Motes that were written. The fight was a little intense and the cleric ended up unconscious at the end, but the party stabilized her. They had seen the dark rider on a ridge in the distance during the fight and decided to go after him.

At this point, the party started tracking the rider through the woods and came to a steep downhill slope that was tricky for their horses. The barbarian ended up basically carrying his horse and then the cleric’s horse down the slope. It was awesome.

When the group came upon the rider’s horse, dead from shadow attacks, they started suspecting that the dark figure wasn’t commanding the shadow creatures after all. Eventually they found the dark creature and talked to him rather than fought. They learned that he was an exiled knight and that he was trying to fight the shadows, but that the townspeople thought he was commanding them. He also mentioned that his father had cursed him to an evil god. The PCs teamed up with him and tried to clear his name.

Next came a trip into town to confront his father, who wasn’t at his pub – but this didn’t stop the barbarian and the warden from starting a bar fight! I decided to roll with it and threw some brawlers at them. They fought for a couple of rounds and prevailed easily. Of course, they had to skedaddle because the barmaid went to fetch the guards (they DID start the fight, after all).

Ultimately, the group ended up at the theater where the cult of the evil god was meeting. They convinced the cultists (confused townspeople) that the cult leader was leading them astray as he wanted to sacrifice a baby to the evil god. The cultists left, leaving the party to fight the leader and more shadow creatures. This time I did use the original Shadow Motes but I paired them with the Dusk Beasts from Dark Legacy of Evard.

This ended up being an awesome battle, ranging all over the place. The mage used Mage Hand to pluck the baby off the altar, but the Dusk Beasts knocked him unconscious. The barbarian started raging and charging all over the place, twice getting knocked down to just one hit point. The cleric eventually grabbed the baby and took it up into a balcony for safekeeping, whereupon the warden smashed the ladder to the balcony to keep the cult leader from getting to it. Lots of damage, lots of heroism… it was a great fight, and the good guys just barely pulled it out in the end.

Everyone had a fun time, and I’m happy to say that one of the players has volunteered to DM the group through an ongoing campaign. Success!

This “game for new players” is something I would love to do on a regular basis, maybe once every few months. So, if you’re reading this post and are interested in learning to play D&D via an online game, drop me a line!

Being non-judgmental about play styles

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The RPG community seems to constantly be struggling with denouncing one another as having “badwrongfun”. I get it, really; people have a certain way they like to play, and they tend to see other ways of playing as “wrong”. I’m trying to fight against that tendency in myself.

This isn’t about editions or different games for me; I’m really quite happy with people who play 4e or Pathfinder or older editions of D&D or Savage Worlds or whatever game floats their boats. I hope to get the chance to play with them at some point, too! I really enjoy learning new games.

Where I struggle is within the game I’m playing (currently D&D 4th Edition). Different people get different things out of the game (as described very well in the Dungeon Master’s Guide). Some people are Actors and want to speak and act in character. Some are Explorers who want the party to discover new places. Some are Slayers who want to beat stuff up in combat. Some are Instigators who want to try goofy things to see what happens (it looks like Factotum is going to fall into this bucket).

And some are Power Gamers. They enjoy system mastery. They enjoy putting together super-powerful characters that can deal incredible damage or perform incredible healing or lock down armies of monsters or what have you. They’re optimizers, min-maxers.

I struggle with my own inner Power Gamer. If I didn’t have any kind of internal judgments of the way I thought was “best” to play, I’d be a Power Gamer. I’m good at it. I can optimize very well. I played Magic: The Gathering for years, and I was very, very good at it. I can evaluate the best options and the worst options and the options that work well together. And in a game like Magic, where the goal is to win, I embrace that.

But D&D is not about winning, at least not against the other players. It’s about working together with friends to have fun. You’re not trying to beat the DM, and the DM isn’t trying to beat you (at least not in the games that I’ve played, though I know that Lair Assault will be all about this type of game).

Thus, I tend to be judgmental toward Power Gamers, because it’s something that I struggle against in myself. And I don’t WANT to be judgmental.

Originally, I was a little judgmental toward Slayers. They just want to kill stuff and they don’t care about a story or role playing or anything like that. Give them a battle with some monsters to kill, and they’re happy. The occasional game I run with my family (my wife, her brother and his wife) is all Slayers. We played Reavers of Harkenwold, which has a great story and setting and I enjoyed running it – but I had to get comfortable with the fact that what the party really wanted to do was fight bad guys. And I got there, and had more fun because of it. With this group, I try to make sure they have lots of cool fights.

Now I’m struggling with overcoming my judgmentality (is that a word?) toward Power Gamers. Part of the problem is that a party with a mixture of Power Gamers and non-Power Gamers is going to have problems, as I discussed here. I’m still not sure how I’m going to overcome that issue, when a Power Gamer is in a party with non-Power Gamers.

But I really want to overcome it. Just because I like characters that are non-optimized and that focus on things other than combat doesn’t mean that someone who gets fun out of maximum possible combat efficiency is “doing it wrong”. I find myself rolling my eyes at discussions of “maximum DPR” and feats that feel “cheesy” to me. It’s great that your character can drop a dragon in two rounds, really, but it feels “wrong” to me.

I want to be more accepting. How can I overcome this? Just because I like to be more of an Explorer / Storyteller / Thinker at the game table (and now dabbling in Instigator) doesn’t mean that a Power Gamer is having badwrongfun. How can I welcome Power Gamers at the same table as non-Power Gamers who still enjoy exciting combats?

When I’m the DM, I maintain a little veto power over my players’ choices. If something is too crazily powerful (in my opinion), I’ll ask the player to choose something else. So far, this has worked well; the players seem to trust me enough to go with this (and I don’t have to use it very often).

When I’m a player, though, I obviously can’t restrict other players’ choices. They’re going to power game if that’s what they enjoy, and my struggle is to still have fun myself without judging them for their choices.

Does anyone else struggle with this? Do you have any tips for making peace with the fact that some of your fellow players might have completely different gaming preferences from yours, and not judging them for it?

The 4e Thief is brutally effective… and boring

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My Friday night War of the Burning Sky campaign has reached an exciting point – paragon tier! I had to delay the game by a week so that I had time to get everyone’s new and improved characters programmed up in MapTool, but we finally got together last night for some gaming with more power.

At this point, we have a party of seven PCs. We have the original five players who started the campaign in July 2010, plus two more players I added earlier this year when one of the original players got a job that caused a scheduling conflict and another player was only able to come about once every three weeks for a while. Lately, though, they’ve all been able to play, so it’s a big party.

One of the original five players was starting with a new character (11th level, of course) last night. This was the player who was running Fudrick, the gnome warlock who defected to the bad guys in the previous session. Fudrick’s player rolled up a new character – a human Thief. This is the Essentials rogue.

Meet the Thief

I had seen a second-level Thief in action once before, and the paragon thief is similar in a lot of ways. The Thief has fantastic accuracy with his attacks, especially since he has so many ways to get combat advantage. His damage is fantastic, too, with sneak attack being an almost every-round thing. Once the Thief was able to get into melee with the bad guys, they didn’t last long.

The Thief is a very effective striker, dealing out massive damage quite reliably. But after running a session with the Thief in the mix, it felt, well, boring.

I know that hitting despite a 2 on the attack die is what a Thief is built to do, but that takes the excitement out of the Thief’s attack roll. If you know you’ll only ever miss on a critical failure, there’s no drama with the attack roll.

The Math

The Thief in this party starts with a +20 to attack at 11th level. For comparison, an 11th-level monster should have an armor class between 23 (brute) and 27 (soldier), with 25 being typical (other defenses should be two points lower). Add in the fact that the Thief almost always has combat advantage (+2 to hit) and a feat (Nimble Blade) that gives him an extra +1 to hit when he has combat advantage (so we’re up to +23 now), and a feat that lets him choose whether he wants to attack AC or Reflex (which averages two points less than AC). And he can use Backstab twice per encounter for another +3 to hit.

Thus, the Thief is usually attacking at +23 versus Reflex, and twice per encounter he can bump this up to +26 versus Reflex. If by some chance the monster has a lower AC, he can attack that instead. Even-level opponents should have a Reflex defense of about 23. Level+3 opponents should have a Reflex defense of 26. With Backstab and Combat Advantage, the Thief will hit a typical foe three levels above his own on a zero, so the only chance to miss is on a natural 1.

To be clear, I do understand that “this is what Thieves do”. Their schtick is to be ultra-accurate, hardly ever missing. It works really well. And it’s boring. It’s like Magic Missile in a lot of ways (though the Thief at least gets to roll a bunch of dice for weapon damage plus sneak attack) – another power that works, but is boring.

This particular Thief is also a little boring in that if he can’t get into melee, he can’t do anything useful. Early in yesterday’s session, the party was facing down some soldiers mounted on flying drakes. The Thief actually spent one round taking the total defense action because he couldn’t do anything to a flying foe.

What to do?

So, what’s the solution for me as the DM? Well, I have a few options.

First, I could raise enemy defenses. This is a terrible idea, as making it so that the Thief needs to roll, say, a 6 to hit will mean that other PCs will need a 15 or better. Not fun for the rest of the party.

Second, I could give enemies ways to negate combat advantage. This isn’t a trait I’ve seen on many monsters, and using it would just feel like a “screw you” to the Thief, which isn’t what I want either.

Third, I could use monsters that punish melee strikers. They could have auras that deal damage or do other nasty things. I like this idea, as long as I give the melee PCs some ways to mitigate or entirely avoid the issue by doing something interesting.

Fourth, I could use monsters that are hard to get to in melee, such as fliers or artillery with protected positions. I’ll probably do this a little bit, but I won’t want to go overboard.

Fifth, I could raise hit points on monsters. I really have no desire to do this, as it leads to fights that drag on whenever the Thief isn’t hitting a particular bad guy. Plus, it’s still boring.

Sixth, I could have monsters that beat the crap out of the Thief, either by dealing tons of damage or by denying him the ability to get combat advantage by using something like immobilization (most of the Thief’s easy ways of getting combat advantage come from using move actions, though there are lots of cases where the Thief could use them even if he can’t leave his square).

I’m sure there are other options I haven’t thought of, and I’d love to hear more ideas in the comments. For now, I’ll try to think about using some enemies that are either hard to get to in melee or that punish PCs who get too close to them, but I don’t want to unduly punish the Fighter and Swordmage in the party, either. I definitely won’t make the bad guys shy about attacking the Thief when he starts dishing out massive damage, perhaps even breaking defender marks to do so. We shall see.

Resizing maps to a 50-pixel grid

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One of my few complaints about MapTool is that you can’t really export a map from one campaign to another. You can duplicate a map within a campaign, but there’s no good way to get it into another campaign. Also, if you want to create maps to share with other virtual table top users, it’s nice if you can have them pre-formatted to a certain size.

Thanks to a useful video and message board post from Eugene of the Fantasy Grounds forums (as well as from EN World), I learned a straightforward way to take maps that I’ve created in MapTool and turn them into JPGs both with and without grids so that they can be easily used by others and by myself in other campaigns.

0. Open up MapTool, Paint.NET, and this Excel tool (or a calculator).

1. In MapTool, center your screen on the map you want to export.

2. Choose the Measure Distance Along Path tool. This has two useful purposes: It makes the Layer window disappear, and it lets you count the number of squares on your map (this will be useful later).

3. Make your MapTool window full-screen by hitting CTRL + ALT + ENTER

4. Zoom in as far as you can without losing any of your map.

5. Hit the Print Screen key.

6. Alt Tab over to Paint.net and choose Edit – Paste Into New Image

7. Alt Tab back to MapTool, hit CTRL +G to make the grid go away, and hit Print Screen. Then Alt Tab back to Paint.net and again choose Edit – Paste Into New Image (you’ll have two separate image files in Paint.net – one with the grid and one without).

8. In the Paint.net image file with the grid, choose the Rectangle Select tool, zoom in pretty far, and scroll to the far left side of the map. Click (and hold) on the vertical grid line on the left side of the farthest-left complete square.

9. Drag the mouse all the way over to the right edge of the map, selecting all the way until you get to the vertical grid line on the right side of the farthest-right complete square. Release the mouse having selected right up until (but not counting) that rightmost grid line.

10. Look at the bottom of the screen and note the horizontal dimension (the first number) of the Bounding Rectangle Size. Look to the right of that at the bottom of the screen (not ALL the way to the right, as that’s the current X/Y position of the cursor) and note the horizontal dimension of the total image size.

11. Alt Tab back to MapTool and hit CTRL+G to turn the grid back on. Using the Measure Distance Along Path tool that is currently active, click and drag along a row to count the number of complete squares on the screen. You’ll need to add 1 to the running total (since the first square counts as zero).

12. In the Excel file, enter the first number you noted in Paint.net in the Selected Pixels box, the number of squares you got out of MapTool in the Selected Squares box, and the second number you got out of Paint.net in the Total Image Size box. The big number at the bottom tells you the new image size you’re looking for. The formula is:

New Image Size = Total Image Size * Number of squares selected * Desired grid size / Selected pixels
OR
New Image Size = Total Image Size * 50 / (current number of pixels per square)

13. In Paint.net, go to the gridded image and choose Image – Resize. Enter the New Image Size in the Width box (making sure the Maintain Aspect Ratio box is checked) and click OK. The image will resize.

14. Crop the image as you wish, then save it as a JPG file in a directory that you’ve taught MapTool to look for.

15. Repeat 13 and 14 for the gridless image file (the new dimension will be the same as for the gridded file).

16. Enjoy your new map files!

Reavers of Harkenwold – complete MapTool file

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Since I ended up putting all of my Reavers of Harkenwold maps into an easy-to-import format and since I had saved almost all of the MapTool monster tokens I had created for the adventure, I figured I might as well bring it all together in a complete MapTool campaign file.

The linked file (which was created in MapTool version 1.3.b66) contains:

  • A big map with all of the individual encounter maps on it (feel free to copy these to separate maps within MapTool if you prefer
  • One copy of each monster and NPC token that I created for the adventure (CTRL+C and CTRL+V will make more)
  • Complete stats and attack macros for all of the monsters on their tokens
  • A generic monster token and a generic player character token
  • Campaign macros for basic things like dice rolling and toggling conditions on and off the tokens

Now, I’ll admit that there are a few things it doesn’t contain

  • A couple of maps are not present, as I didn’t use them in my run-through of Reavers of Harkenwold
  • A couple of monsters are missing (I believe the underground goblin leader is one, and there may be a couple of others) – I simply failed to save them after I’d created them
  • Not every monster is quite as fleshed out as I’d like (senses, equipment, etc.) but they’re totally ready to use (they’ve got hit points, defenses and attack macros, which is the important stuff).

Note that this by no means replaces the adventure itself. If you want to run Reavers of Harkenwold, you still need to get your hands on a copy of the adventure (there’s no background information or even information about which monsters appear in which encounter). This is just a tool to help you run it online.

If you happen to run Reavers using this campaign file, I would LOVE to hear about it! I had a ton of fun with the adventure, and this file should let you pick it up and go (assuming you’ve at least read through the adventure so that you know what the plot is!).

Download the Reavers of Harkenwold MapTool campaign file here.