Archive for the ‘DMing Advice’ Category

Dealing With a Power Gamer

Monday, September 21st, 2009
Sometimes, we get power gamers, it just happens. Short of actually throwing him out, there’s very little that we can actually do about him physically being in the group. But this does not mean that we have to just give up. There are ways to take the power-gamer in your ...

Tools For a High Level DM

Friday, September 18th, 2009
So you’ve been DMing for a while, and you think that you’ve gotten the hang of it. Your players are surviving (mostly) but have that edge of suspicion that tells you that they’re not complacent, that they are just looking for another, challenging encounter. And then what happens? Suddenly they’re ...

Falling Rules

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
The way falling works in 3.5 edition Dungeons and Dragons, a character takes 1d6 damage for every ten feet he falls. The first time you look at this, there does not seem to be anything wrong with these rules. 1d6 is a lot of damage for a low level character, ...

Training

Friday, December 26th, 2008
Many players have found themselves in the middle of a dungeon when they suddenly have enough XP to level up. So they do so, and for some classes like fighter or rogue that’s not so bad. A fighter gets getter at fighting by practicing, so it’s not unbelievable that they ...

Last Words

Sunday, December 7th, 2008
According to the official Dungeons and Dragons rules, a character cannot bleed to death without being unconscious first (usually for around a minute.) Regardless of if this is realistic, it does raise a problem for a player who wants to do a homage to Boromir from Lord of the Rings, ...

Multiple Intelligent Items

Thursday, November 20th, 2008
At some point, a DM might run into the situation where a character manages to get his hands on more than one intelligent item. This is not a problem for items that get along, or can at least coexist, but what about those that will not stand each other? Either ...

“Can I have a +4 to Intelligence?”

Thursday, October 30th, 2008
Most DMs run across this argument sooner or later. A player, usually a less experienced one, approaches him with a new race that he wants to play. The DM looks the race over and sees that there are higher stat adjustments than usual. When he points it out to the ...

Holy and Unholy Ground

Thursday, April 17th, 2008
Yes, rules for these kinds of sites already exist, most notably under the spells “Hallow” and “Unhallow.” However, if you want to make an unholy dungeon new and unique, or if you simply do not like the existing rules on the subject, you might want to try these alterations. Unholy or ...

“Oh Gods, He died”

Sunday, April 13th, 2008
Has this ever happened to you? You spend an entire campaign working up this one, big villain. You give him powerful henchmen, show him stealing an artifact of untold power, maybe even had him kidnap a virgin or two. Then, you give him every magic item you think he needs, ...

Magic Variants

Monday, August 27th, 2007
These days, more and more, it seems like magic in dungeons and dragons has become far too commonplace. How often have you heard someone say, in response to one of their teammates having fallen dead, “Well, we’ll just raise him in the next city.” True, technically you can do that, ...