I Hate Resistances

During the development of 4e, I argued against including resistances against energy types. My argument was pretty simple:

Resistances create a disparity in value between energy types, but only if the DM uses a particular mix of monsters. Fire attacks blow in the campaign that has lots of red dragon and azers, while cold attacks such in an arctic campaign.

Story-wise, resistances mess up intuitive themes. Take my second example from above. If you were playing in an Arctic themed campaign, you might think it's a cool idea to play an ice wizard. Well, if you're fighting lots of ice creatures, that's actually a terrible choice. The folk of the frozen north should study and use fire magic. The desert nomads use ice magic. Sure, you can explain around that, but it's a jarring inconsistency. I'd rather have the flexibility to do it how I want.

Now, there are some story reasons for resistances. The fire elemental can walk through magma without harm, but you can easily get around that by placing all the mechanics in the right place. For instance, the elemental might have the "magma born" ability, which lets it ignore fire damage from terrain.

In place of resistances, I prefer two mechanics.

First, I think it's OK if a monster has limited access to damage denial. Maybe once or twice a combat it can reduce the damage from an appropriately themed attack.

What I'd prefer, though, are special abilities and bonuses that trigger when you use the "wrong" energy type. Blasting the red dragon with fire hurts it, but it also lets the dragon use its breath weapon again. Using a cold attack on the frost knight gives him +5 AC for a round. Blasting a ghoul with necrotic energy gives it an action point.

I like those sort of drawbacks because they make battles more interesting. You can try to finish the dragon off with your fire attack, but you risk giving it a powerful counter-attack. You can more easily dial the power of such abilities up or down, whereas resistance in even its weakest form (resist 5) is powerful at low levels and still quite useful at epic.

So, that's my stance on resistance.

Powers as Roleplaying Tool

I've started to stat up a few major villains for my Temple of Elemental Evil campaign, the guys that the PCs will face when they reach the finale of the heroic tier portion of the campaign. While thinking things over, I had a flash of insight.

Back in the day, I read a novel called A Gathering of Heroes written by Marion Zimmer Bradley's brother, Edwin. While I'm sure most of you have never read or even heard of it, the book had a big influence on my attitude toward D&D. Namely, I loved how EZB depicted his villains. I can still vividly remember how each of the main, evil guys fought and frustrated the heroes.

My favorite bad guy from the novel is Svaran the Black, a warrior of middling skill who also happens to fit perfectly into an impenetrable suit of armor that the bad guys steal from the dwarves (it's a very typical fantasy setting, though overlaid with elements of Celtic myth that I find appealing). Svaran's armor allows him to fight recklessly and relentlessly.

When the protagonist, Istvan, finally defeats Svaran, our villain suffers a moment of pathetic recognition when he understands Istvan's gambit and realizes that he's about to die. The mighty Svaran, slayer of heroes, general of the armies of evil, squeals like a baby and begs for mercy. IIRC, he even pleads, "I'm not supposed to die. I'm invincible," or something to that effect.

EZB was a good enough writer that he pulls off the scene, using the main villain's only line of dialog to evoke both a sense of pity and sweet revenge. Sure, Svaran killed several heroes during the novel, but in the end he's just a coward hiding in a suit of impenetrable armor. Istvan notes several times during his battles against him that Svaran is a middling warrior who would've been an anonymous toady to evil if he hadn't been the only guy who could fit into the armor.

As a reader, Svaran's death both illustrates some interesting depth for the character while also providing a satisfying victory.

I've been thinking of doing something similar for my NPCs in 4e. Sure, they'll have the typical spells and tricks to make them daunting enemies, but I'd also like to insert a few powers that are a mechanical expression of the NPC's personality and role in the campaign, built along with quotes or other material to go along with the attack.

To use Svaran as an example:

* Svaran can make a basic melee attack as an opportunity action, but he must allow the target to make a basic melee attack against him as a free action. He fights recklessly, relying on his armor to deflect blows. Each time he does this, I roleplay him a bit, describing his arrogance and overwhelming confidence, how he completely ignores attacks as they clang against his armor.

* When he's bloodied, that ability goes away, but instead he now gets a new attack he can use to strike anyone who hit him in melee the round before. He fights with increasing desperation, growing more cautious but desperately attempting to make each attack count.

* When he's down to his last few hit points, he misses his next turn and utters the line above.

The idea is that as the PCs tangle with him, his personality and role in the story inform how he fights in a direct, obvious way. A few other ideas:

* The PCs face a vampire and his succubus lover. If a PC harms the succubus, the vampire gets a huge attack and damage bonus against him on his next turn.

* A psychopathic dwarf assassin fights with a disturbing lack of emotion. If he hits a PC, that PC suffers penalties on attacks against him. When the dwarf is bloodied, he snaps into a psychotic fury. He can attack only the PC who bloodied him, and gains some temporary hit points to let him shrug off the inevitable opportunity attacks as he rushes at his victim.

* Two NPCs are hated rivals. If they can catch each other in area attacks, along with at least two PCs, they do so.

I like the idea of these "scripts" because they make a fight different. Sometimes, the tactically smart play for an NPC is boring and flavorless. If every NPC fights as well as the DM can run them, you lose a lot of what makes an NPC unique. Ideally, the players think of the fight in terms of the NPC's personality ("That dwarf was crazy! He ran across a pool of acid to get to Baldar.") rather than in terms of powers ("That dwarf had a nasty sneak attack abililty.")

Merry Christmas!

I have the barest sliver of a wireless connection, so I'll keep this brief. Here's my little Christmas gift to you, a new monster prompted by someone on RPG.net (I think Peter LaCara). The idea is that if elves are related to the eladrin, what is the Feywild equivalent of a goblin?

My answer the boggart. I'm sure that name has been used in D&D before, but I'm coopting it for this annoying little beastie. Have fun, and merry Christmas!

Blindheim

Here's another conversion of a "classic" (in my eyes, at least) Fiend Folio monster: the blindheim.

It's All in the Details

This is why I love writing D&D stuff:

"With an Arcana check (DC 23) the PCs learn that the entire plateau is, in fact, the broken shaft of a spear used to pin some monstrous creature to the bottom of the Sea of Howling Souls."

Tip o' the hat to Amityville Mike at The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope for this post. It proved useful this week in working on an adventure.

I think that's one of the things I love best about working on RPGs. There's no layer between designer and the end product, or the methods used by "customers" and producers. Really, we're all producers. Some of us just do it on company time.

Outdoor Survival!

As a little, early Christmas gift to myself, I bought a copy of Avalon Hill's Outdoor Survival board game. For those not in the know, Gary suggested using the Outdoor Survival board as a map for the overland environs in a D&D campaign. If it worked in 1974, I think it'll work just fine now.

The game board is going to serve as the regional map for my Keep on the Borderlands sandbox game. Here are my impressions of the map so far:

Pros

• It's a mounted gameboard, making it more durable and giving it a nice, solid feel. As a physical artifact, I like the heft of it. It'll just feel nice to lay it down on the table and ask the PCs where they want to go.
• It has plenty of mountains, swamps, forests, and other nooks to explore. It looks like a wilderness ready for exploration.
• It lacks an obvious scale, so it's easy to simply treat the hexes as huge regions or tiny bits of wilderness. There aren't any huge bodies of water, so any map that needs oceans or seas is right out, but otherwise it's flexible.

Cons

• The map comes in three pieces. I would've preferred one big map.
  
• There are 10 cabins scattered about the map. Most of them are on the center map piece. They might be a distraction if you choose to ignore them. Otherwise, that's 10 places (ruins? settlements?) that the map imposes on you. I don't mind it so much, but it could prove a bit restrictive.
• There are deer icons all over the map, presumably markers for the Outdoor Survival game. They're a little distracting.
• There's a lot of blank plains on the map. I'd prefer more mountains and forests.
• The hexes aren't numbered. Either I'll to number them myself (and mark up my precious map!) or make a smaller, reference copy of the map in my notes. This is easily the biggest drawback, IMO. I think I'll sketch a copy in my notebook, but it would've been nice to use hex reference numbers instead.
  

Still, overall I'm happy I dropped the money on a piece (albeit a tangential one) of D&D lore. I'm excited to run a sandbox game in 4e. The game's design makes it perfect for that style of campaign. 4e's emphasis on a structure - the standardized math, spread of monster level vs. PC level, and treasure independent of encounter type - make it easy to throw together a lot of material quickly and to build the world on the fly.

I Like Dwarves

Ever since I read The Hobbit I've been fascinated by dwarves. I love the stunty little guys! As I mentioned in the last D&D podcast, I've been messing around with some dwarf sub-types. Here's one of them:

Iron Dwarves
Hailing from the deepest reaches of the mountain depths, iron dwarves are basically redneck dwarves. They seek out the furthest veins of precious minerals and even venture down into the Underdark in pursuit of precious metals. Few non-dwarves have even seen an iron dwarf, as these greedy, grasping creatures only show up in civilized realms (usually dwarf towns) long enough to sell their ores and invariably spend all their accumulated wealth on strong drink and similar diversions.

Iron dwarves rarely become adventurers. After all, life on the fringe of the Underdark is an adventure unto itself. Between dodging drow and mind flayers, surviving cave ins, and digging mine shafts that could suddenly open up to a cave filled with dire corbies or ochre jellies, iron dwarves have enough problems to deal with without seeking out trouble.

Iron dwarves that do become adventurers are invariably derided as soft and weak by their kin. Sure, charging into a dragon's lair might be dangerous, but real dwarves earn their fortunes the hard way: by ripping them out of the earth with pick and shovel.

Game Stuff
Iron dwarves use all the normal rules for dwarves, but with two exceptions:
+2 Strength instead of +2 Wisdom
When an iron dwarf uses his second wind, he can choose to forgo regaining hit points. Instead, he may regain the use of one his expended encounter attack powers.

Because the King Wears Green Boxers!

In response to my last post, fire snake aries asks:

It sounds like you're really good at improvising and adapting the area and what its inhabitants do depending upon what happens. I try to do that, but it's tough! I always seem to find myself thinking, "Uhh... I have no idea what should happen now."

When you make these dynamic decisions on the fly like that, how much of it is simply you thinking, "What would actually, logically happen here?" and how much is more like, "What can I do that will be cool, but won't be too unreasonably hard on the PCs?"

I always want to make the players feel like they're dealing with a real, living place with occupants which interact with one another organically, so that there are definite ramifications to their actions beyond simply the current encounter. YET, I always worry that if I really do this, it will almost certainly end in a TPK. How do you balance that?

I felt rather clever when everything went down the way it did because of a little technique I've applied to my dungeons.

Back in the day, there was a ton of DM advice about creating a history for your dungeon. The idea was to think of the dungeon before it became a ruin, determine the rooms' uses, and then push time forward, account for the ravages of time and wandering monsters, and use that to drive what the place looks like when the PCs enter it.

I do something a little similar when placing monsters in a dungeon. I try to answer the following questions:

1. Why did these guys come here?

2. What keeps them here?

Answering these questions is useful, because it helps set the stage for quick decisions and improvisation. In the kenku's case, the answers were:

1. The kenku are thieves and bandits looking to make some easy cash.

2. Iuz's lieutenants pay them to act as spies and raiders.

During the last session, it was a lot easier to plot the course of events with those two things in mind. The kenku were in it for the money and they were here because they got paid. Why wouldn't they run to help the wizard?

The simple, but boring, answer is that they just didn't hear the alarm gong. I decided that I needed something more interesting to keep the action going. If they heard the gong, why wouldn't they come? That suggests conflict or some active plan on their part.

The risk to this approach is that you might create stuff that you never need to use because the PCs just kill the monsters when they meet them. For instance, in the same dungeon the PCs fought a band of hobgoblins. The hobgoblins had traveled to the moathouse from the south looking for mercenary work. I had built up an entire skill challenge that allowed the PCs to bargain with the practical minded, hobgoblin commander. They ended up just killing most of them.

OTOH, if I create a monster background that I like and it never comes into play, I just recycle it for the next dungeon.

Really, it's just building in details that seem a little pointless but have the potential in play to come in handy when you have to improvise. I don't obsess over the details, but rather look for some simple, one sentence explanations that can come in handy. It's all about the useful parts of simulation (depth, detail) without the bad parts (drowning in minutia).

Why I Love D&D

Today's session of Temple of Elemental Evil reminded me how much I love D&D.

The characters were in the dungeon beneath the moathouse, locked in a fight with a doppelganger wizard who had posed as Burne. Immediately before the fight, they had accidentally triggered a gong that rang and alerted the entire dungeon level. Luckily for the PCs, they had already defeated most of the creatures on the level. Or, if you're a pessimist, they had unluckily only defeated most of them.

So, while the PCs fought the doppelganger and his orc guards, a pair of ghouls rushed down the hall to attack the party from behind. The characters managed to close and bar a door to hold back the ghouls for a few rounds, just long enough to defeat the doppelganger and the orcs. They had one round to get ready before the door finally splintered to pieces and the ghouls charged in.

By the end of the fight, half the party was down and everyone was badly injured, but the characters were victorious. They trudged out the escape tunnel from the dungeon and made camp. As one PC was down to 1 hit point and zero healing surges, the party felt a trip back to Hommlett was too risky. It was near dusk, and everyone was in bad shape.

This is when things got interesting.

See, I had spent a fair amount of time stocking the moathouse and its dungeon, and my inconsiderate players had skipped half the encounters. I had all these monsters in the dungeon, and the cruel, cruel dice had dictated that only the two ghouls had heeded the ringing gong.

On the fly, I decided that the kenku that the dice had determined took their sweet time responding to the alarm were upset with the doppelganger. They figured that, if they tarried and the wizard died, they could clear out the treasure in the dungeon and take over the place.

So, as the PCs rested, the kenku went to work. With the ghouls dead, I judged that the kenku were able to command the skeletons that still remained in the crypts. The kenku then organized a search party to make sure the PCs weren't still around.

That led to a brief fight in which the badly injured, really hoping for an extended rest party managed to cut down all three kenku. There was another tense moment when some skeletons almost stumbled across the party's camp, but the undead failed to notice the characters.

At that point, with one search party gone the kenku decided that the characters were still close by. As dawn broke they went on one, final sweep of the dungeon. As the characters woke up, the shrill, high pitched screams of dying kenku echoed from the moathouse.

The kenku had found something the PCs had missed. Something terrible, something hungry, something angry.

Anyway, I love D&D because when the session began we had the party trapped in a room with two ghouls outside, trying to batter down the door. It ended with the characters outside the moathouse, wondering what's going on. I never could've guessed that we would've ended up with the kenku ransacking the dungeon and unleashing a very, very bad thing.

A Magic Item for... ME!

I love playing fighter/wizards. Here's a little toy I've invented for my own use in 4e, to help out that multiclass combo:

Runeshield Level 2+ Magic Item

This iron shield is covered with arcane runes. In the hands of an arcanist, these runes glow with yellow fire.

Level 2: +1, 520 gp

Level 7: +2, 2,600 gp

Level 12: +3, 13,000 gp

Level 17: +4, 65,000 gp

Level 22: +5, 325,000 gp

Level 27: +6, 1,625,000 gp

Property: This shield functions as an implement for any arcane class, but its wielder must be proficient with shields of the appropriate type in order to use it as an implement. It adds the listed enhancement bonus to attack rolls and damage rolls for arcane powers that use implements. Note that the enhancement bonus applies only in this situation. It does not apply to AC or Reflex.

Property: The shield grants a +4 bonus to AC against opportunity attacks provoked when you cast an arcane spell.

Skill Challenges as Tool for Putting Demogorgon on Dungeon Level 1

Here's a stray thought about skill challenges. Back in the 1e days, you'd hear all sorts of stories about dungeons where Orcus and Tiamat stomped around on level 1. Meeting those monsters is, obviously, instant death.

In 4e, you could do the same thing, but if you want to give the PCs a chance to live, use the encounter as a skill challenge. You could even make it a level 1 (or whatever is appropriate) challenge to give the PCs a chance and work the big bad guy into the story.

For instance, the PCs open a door to a summoning chamber in the abandoned wizard's lab, and out bursts Demogorgon. Before he returns to the Abyss, his two heads demand that the PCs do him a favor. Cue the skill challenge (success, you're in Demogorgon's debt; failure, he eats a few PCs).

There's no reason why the superstars of D&D's monster world can't show up early in a campaign, and the skill challenge system is a good way to use them in situations other than combat.

Roll for Initiative! Wait, No, Don't Roll!

Over at The Art of the Near TPK, Gregor talks about his take on 4e initiative. The post reminded me of an initiative variant I've thought about using.

There's no more rolling for initiative. The characters all take their turns in whatever order, then the monsters. You can ready actions and what not, but that has no effect on when you take your next turn. There's no delaying, since both groups go in whatever order they want. There's a clean up phase for the party as a whole after the party's turn, and one for the monsters. Durations key off those end points.

The nifty thing is that it takes care of any weird complexity with delaying and durations. Let's say an NPC monk dazes the paladin, and the daze lasts until the monsters' next clean-up phase. It's clear that the paladin is going to lose his next turn. He can't delay to avoid it (not that you can in 4e, but we had to put in some semi-convoluted rules to make sure that worked out).

OTOH, if the cleric has a spell that can end the daze, you don't need to deal with the complexity of delaying to make that happen. On the party's turn, the cleric just goes before the paladin.

As Gregor points out in his post, that allows for a lot more teamwork and coordination on both sides of the screen.

Anyway, rolling for initiative was too popular for me to get this, or any of the other, changes I had in mind for 4e.

Giant Ticks!

Inspired by a post on Jeff's blog, here's my 4e take on the giant tick. In this case, I'm tackling it as a hazard rather than as a monster, so I guess that makes it more the "noticeable larger than normal but perhaps not truly giant" tick. I'd peg it as about six inches long, not huge by any means, but pretty scary when you think about it.

Barrow Tick, Level 6 Hazard

A barrow tick is a common dungeon predator, particularly in areas where ogres, trolls, and giants dwell. The tick attacks the first creature that moves within 10 feet of its position. It leaps out in a blur of movement and attacks with a poison that deadens the victim's sense of touch, making it possible for the tick to feast undetected.

One the tick attacks, it slowly drains the victim's blood. Unless the tick is removed or killed within a minute of its initial attack, the victim loses 2d10+8 hit points. Each time the victim takes a short rest while the tick is still present, he loses another 2d10+8 hit points. If the victim is unlucky enough to take a long rest without noticing the tick, the poor sod loses all his healing surges and is at 1 hit point when the rest ends. The tick, for its part, departs after such a feast.

The tick makes Stealth checks to remain hidden from view, but any close examination of the victim reveals its presecence. The next time the victim takes damage, he also realizes that he has lost blood (the DM should inform him of his new hit points total) and may make Perception checks to notice the tick on him. The tick is general clever enough to attack itself to the victim's back or some other spot that makes it hard to notice.

Barrow Tick: +8 attack vs. Reflex, Stealth +14, speed 5, AC 18, Fortitude 16, Reflex 15, Will 13, the tick suffers a -4 penalty to all defenses while it is attached to a victim, hit points 1, though the barrow tick never takes damage from an attack that misses; 2d10+8 damage on initial exposure, another 2d10+8 after each short rest.

Edit: Changed damage from 25% of max to a normal damage expression. Since this is a level 6 hazard, I aimed it to do about 25% of a 6th level PC's hit points. That makes it scale easier. I can just adjust the damage upward or downward for different levels.

RPG Carnival: Homebrew Alignments

Donny_the_DM has decreed that the theme of this month's RPG Carnvial is homebrewing. So, let's talk alignments.

4e has breaks alignment down into lawful good, good, unaligned, evil, and chaotic evil. Prior to that, D&D used an axis of good - evil and law - chaos. I saw BAH! to both. Alignment is pretty much ripped screaming from Moorcock's Eternal Champion stories, particularly the saga of Elric of Melbinoné. The awesome thing about Elric, IMO, is that he can and did directly interact with the great powers of Law and Chaos, the very beings that formed the basis of the Multiversal struggle that Elric and the other eternal champions were caught up in.

What's this mean for your campaign? Well, here's how I'm handling it.

Rather than use alignment to describe good or evil, it instead describes the power source that your character sees as the most important piece of the cosmic pie. If push came to shove and only one power source could rule, which one would your character pick?

Of course, that means that the power sources have to stand for something. Well, here's my stab at it:

Divine (Deity-centered)
A character who embraces the divine alignment places the gods above all else. Divine characters typically worship a single god. They place their god's teachings and dictates above all other concerns, and actively battle members of rival faiths.

An adventurer with the divine alignment tithes to his church, seeks out enemies of the faith to slay, and relies on the church hierarchy for guidance.

A commoner with the divine alignment attends church services, prays regularly, tithes to the church, and obeys the church above the rule of law (unless his church is the law).

If the world ended in a final battle, those of the divine alignment would stand by their gods and fight for them.

Arcane (Self-centered)
The arcane alignment places its faith in its own adherents. Magic is power, and those who can master it are a cut above the rest. The other power sources can be explained and understood just like magic, with sufficient study and research. There's no reason to worship a source of power. Instead, such well springs of might exist to be studied and used. This attitude extends to everything else. The world is full of useful tools, and those who can master them deserve to do as they wish, without interference from others.

An adventurer with the arcane alignment is in it for himself. He seeks knowledge and power, primarily to improve himself and his skill. If he has to choose between helping himself and helping his companions, he is at least tempted to take the selfish path.

The commoner with the arcane alignment is probably a hedge mage or a would-be arcane apprentice. He sees the mastery of the arcane arts as the key to power, power that he wants.

If the world ended in a final battle, those of the arcane alignment would rely on their own power to survive. They'd try to leave the other factions to destroy each other, either to continue their studies in peace or to make a bid for cosmic domination that only one being can win.

Martial (Mortal-centered)
The martial alignment eschews external sources of power. Training, focus, and drive are all that these characters need to achieve whatever they want, and whatever they might want is a diverse list indeed. Most martial characters pick a mortal cause to embrace, whether that is the concept of democracy, their own personal drive for tyranny, or the freedom and peace of their home village. Martial characters fight for something rooted in the mortal world of men. They tend to view those of different alignments with suspicion, as they can never understand the impulse to rely on talents and power that comes from an outside source.

An adventurer who follows the martial alignment is a crusader for some cause, though that cause could be his own coin purse. He gets into dangerous situations because he is driven to by some overarching goal. It is the fate of martial characters that, when they resolve one cause or quest, their drive and ambition pushes them to find a new, grander and more epic one.

A commoner who follows the martial alignment similarly fights for a cause, and if given a good reason could very well become an adventurer. The farmer who volunteers in the local militia, the street urchin who picks the pockets of a merchant, and the peasants who hide their wounded king from a band of assassins all follow the martial power source.

If the world ended in a final battle, those of the martial alignment would rally to their causes. A great swordsman might stand watch over the vale he was born in, sworn to slay any god or archlich who dares enter it, while the queen's elite knights rally around her banner to ensure the realm's survival.

While the alignments map to the power sources, that doesn't mean a PC's power source is his alignment. A warrior who considers himself the greatest swordsman in the world might wander in search of skilled warriors to slay in battle, thus proving his skill. While such a character might use the martial power source, his alignment is arcane. He studies his craft, improves it, and thinks of himself and his skills first and foremost. A wizard might be an ardent worshipper of the sun god, using his spells to blast the priests of the god of devouring darkness, while a cleric might pray to Thor, but she studies divine magic to heal and protect the people of her home city.

There's room for the other power sources, and perhaps factions such as the Abyss, the devils of Hell, and the Far Realm.

A Simple Algorithm for Generating DCs

As has become something of a habit for me lately, I wrote an adventure on the plane ride home from GenCon. Lately, it's rare that I have 3 to 4 consecutive hours to do anything other than (sometimes) sleep.

I'm a big believer that laziness is the mother of insight. Many folk see a tendency toward sloth as a bad thing, but if not for sloth, we'd still be living in caves, hunting brontosauruses, and hiding from thunderstorms. It's the human capacity for laziness that drives us to make short term sacrifices (inventing science was no easy feat) for long term pay offs (computers for everyone!).

Thus, I found myself writing an adventure while wedged into seat 24D with a pencil box, a notebook, and two Forgotten Realms sourcebooks (the new 4e one and the DM's book from the old gray box). I had put my D&D books into my luggage because, frankly, I didn't want to carry them around.

The monsters were pretty easy to generate for the adventure - I either remembered their levels, or I built them from scratch (the formulas are easy peasy to memorize, and again my commitment to laziness pays off - I don't need to carry the DMG).

However, I was a little annoyed when working on traps, terrain features, and just general stuff that needed DCs. I couldn't remember the DC progression. I puzzled over it for a few minutes, then realized that my laziness had saved me once again. In an insight so obvious that I feel like punching myself, here's Dr. Mearls' Patented, Super Easy, Instant DC Generator:

1. Start with 10.
2. Add half the trap, encounter, or challenge's level.
3. Do you want only people trained in the skill to have a shot at success? If so, add 5.
4. Think of the stat a PC would need to have a 55% chance of success, assuming the PC is trained if you want only trained guys to have a chance of success. Add that stat's modifier.

Voila! Instant DC.

Here's an example:
In a dungeon aimed at 6th level PCs, there's a locked door. It's a really good lock, so only a rogue or someone trained in Thievery has a chance to open it, but someone who is trained doesn't need much natural talent to open it.

So:
10
+ 3 (half of level 6)
+ 5 (assume training)
+ 1 (a Dex 13 character who is trained should be able to handle this one)

Is a total DC of 19. Voila! An untrained character with a good Dex still has a 30% chance to open the lock.

If you know the PCs' stats, you can achieve a fine control of the DC by using the process above, plugging in the PC's stat mod, then adding 1 to the DC for every 5% you want to drop the success chance.

The nice thing about this method is that it pushes you to think of what the PCs can do, and it's simple enough (IMO) that you can use it on the fly.

OK, back to taking care of all the chores that have piled up since I've been away. I'll talk about GenCon later this week.

In Praise of Wandering Monsters

Wandering monsters have been a fixture of D&D since the beginning. I can't even begin to explain how or why Gary included them. Did his players have a tendency to dither outside dungeon chambers? Was he bored and looking for an excuse to throw a gelatinous cube at the party? Who can say?

(Well, I'm sure someone can say, and if they want to roll in here and say it, fire away!)

My old gaming groups never used wandering monsters. There was enough adventure in the rooms of our dungeons, and enough of our adventurers took place in urban settings, that we never saw the need for them. The resource model for earlier D&D editions was such that, from a strictly mechanical perspective, each wandering monster meant one fewer monster the group could handle before heading home.

Wandering monsters do add the element of the unexpected for both players and the DM, and there's always the chance that something cool and memorable happens when you add situation A, condition B, and wandering monster roll C.

The interesting thing to me is that, of all the versions of D&D, 4e is perhaps best suited to make the most of wandering monsters. The characters lean heavily on their ability to take short rests. Wandering monsters are a spanner in that works. To wit:

When the characters take a short rest, roll 1d20. On an 19+, a wandering monster stumbles across them at some point during their rest.

(Insert a table of wandering monsters here, based on your adventure.)

Voila! Each time the PCs rest, there's a chance they fail to regain their precious encounter abilities and hit points. Instead, they're looking at a mob of angry critters. Even if the party is safely holed up in a room, and the monsters pass them by after a few tense Stealth and Perception checks, you've added a compelling element of uncertainty, danger, and chaos to the adventure.

If you want to get fancy (and who doesn't want to get fancy?), you can tie your wandering monster checks to a skill challenge. Let's say the check starts at 15+. Each success in the challenge bumps that threshold up by 1, each failure drops it by 1. You could use Perception, Stealth, Streetwise, and so on, along with judging the PCs' actions in the dungeon, to manage the challenge.

So, time to dust off those old wandering monster tables. They're more useful now than ever.