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… and Paragonic trials, and … Epical trials. Encounters are what fills the play time of D&D, creating the adventure in the adventure.

The Dungeon Master’s Guide begins covering this in Chapter 3: Combat Encounters, before all that other shit about storylines and campaigns. It’s little more than a supplement to the Players Handbook combat chapter. Extras covered are things like forced Marching, Mounted combat and Flight - which is thankfully simplified. Just move two squares per round to stay on the wing, stay under your altitude limit, avoid crashing if your higher than your safe distance or halt descent with DC 30 check … it’s a bit more simple.

Fighting with poison, fighting disease, fighting fish; the star of this section is the Difficulty Class and Damage by Level chart. To enable you to improvize quickly this baby provides easy, medium and hard difficulties for whatever a creative player could conceive of as well as different damage intensities depending of if the manuever is comparable to an At-Will or Encounter power of that level. The 4th level halfling swings one handed from a chandelier to kick an old man - an EVIL old man - down a flight of steps, you’ve got it right there: swing is DC 21, Strength vs his Fortitude attack, 3d6+4 tumbling damage.  

After this we roll into building encounters. Monsters are now categorized by similar roles as the player characters: Artillery, Brutes, Minions, or Leaders to name some. This, along with the blatant expression of movement in squares instead of feet, marks D&D’s return to it’s miniature battles roots. Classes and monsters serve certain tactical functions against each other. This helps ensure that everyone has something to do, and I can print out character counters to serve as minis - without spending on what are essentially action figures, raising my geek credt too high - so it’s a good thing. 

Encounter construction I’m liking alot. Chose the level of encouter you want, with each having an experience point (XP) value for standard monsters. Multiply the XP value by the number in the hero party to figure out your XP budget. Populate the encounter with baddies until you’ve spent your budget. TAH-fuck’in-DAH! Done. The Catch: you should watch out for bunches of monsters 4 levels below the party as being too simple to be fun; a five levels higher monster will be putting the team on a skewer for shish kabob.

They further provide a few encounter templates to let you do the math quicker for just opening up the Monster Manual to pick the creatures of the right level relative to the heroes. Some advice on varying terrain and examples of fantasy type setting elements finishes things up nicely in this chapter.

The DM’s Toolbox, Chapter 11, should have followed here since it’s complementary.  Rules are given for increasing monster powers by adding equipment and templates - good examples given. Included are guidelines for creating monsters that further lets you under 4th editions mechanics and allow you to add newness. Teaching DM’s to fish, bravo.   

Most impressive in the book are the Non-Combat Encounters, specifically the Skill Challenges. Set a level, which will determine the skill check difficulties by the afore praised chart. Choose a level of complexity 1 to 5, this tells ya how many rolls are need to succeed and how many strikes ya get. Choose you skills involved and consequences, you’re all done. PLUS, XP is figured by multiplying complexity by level. The writers include several fully fleshed out example scenarios from negotiations to chases to interrogations.

Chapter five also features puzzles, not much new here - though they can be run as Skill challenges too, and traps. I found the traps kind of an intersting choice to detail since the Difficulty Class and Damage table can be used to freestyle them. Mostly they’re detailed like monsters with XP awards for level.  

Despite it’s mechanical simplifications, all in all I think the DMG could have been an extra chapter in the Players Hanbook. It’s only half useful, but in some ways the highlights carry the dead weight, but not by much.

Next we’ll look at the Monster Manual and it’s dark denizens.

After the basics of learning how not to piss off players and get dice thrown at you, adventure planning and execution is the next step for a beginner DM.

To teach this a game could go two ways: 1. provide a summary of how to write genre appropriate fiction or 2. just say “We’ve got a bunch of adventures for you to run! BUY ONE!” The 4th edition Dungeon Master’s Guide does only a little of 2, but so exhaustively covers 1 you want to choose 2. Salvatore makes the big bucks for his adventures written to a big audience, you’re working for free in the basement for a handful of fellow geeks for free snacks - maybe.

The sixth chapter starts with a brief discussion on how to run published adventures: customize it to hook your party into the happenings, cut/paste their setting into yours, if they zig where the writers wanted a zag, or prematurely climax *SKEET*, clench your ass tight and get ready to improvize! OH NOES! The whole begining section is padded out with a lot of rhetorical question filler: Is the number two bad guy the real threat? What’s the real reason for the kobold invasion? Are you ready to get to the answers you paid for?

Here’s a freebie from me - listen to what you’re players ask themselves in discussion story events. Write them down and brainstorm answers to be incorproated into the plot. Gives things a personalized feel.  

The effort to teach the DM how to fish in building adventures is broken down to several components. Structure just goes over the basics that we all already know and expect from a story: building tension and action using encounters with hints of the climax until you get to the difficult climax then wrap up the loose ends and give rewards - English 101. That sentence saves you two pages of reading. Quests answer “Why are we doing this?” without out the metagame answer “For experience, prizes, and more POWER, dumbass!” A bucket of cliche, but they do advise minor quests that engage individual party members. You’re saving the world but Hemmel the Halfling is also crusading for smaller chairs - it’s makes a better world.

Encounter mix is about varying the challenges to be overcome on the road to glory. Start with easy stuff below party level, advance to party level stuff, end with level three higher than party to climax, basically the mechanic explanation of structure. Factoring in player types into your selection processis crucial  - let the spot light hit each hero. 

Next is Setting, where they impress me by detailing not just the details of various climes but showing how to give a place personality - in a minor way. A hobgolin fortess will be different from a yuan ti lair: the first will have lots of hair care products, while the second will be more humid with snake accessible.  There’s alot of lists of what goes where, in case you dont know dungeons dont have tress and sharks dont plague forests. They conclude with support cast - or NPCs you shouldn’t kill helping you get to the ones you do.

Chapter seven is about rewards and is therefore composed of tables saying what a level X monster gives players of level Y whom survive it. Challenges are are divided into Standard, minion, elite, and solo in the new general monster cartegories. Minions come in 6, 8, and 12 packs, existing mainly to make your hero look heroic, goblins. Solo’s are so horrible they make you earn the title of savior, Beholder. Gone are the challenge rating formulas of thrid edition, and good riddance. The writers further answer what is overcoming an encounter: beating it into submission. No XP for avoidance.

A new table is given for quest rewards, or goal achievement. This relieves alot of previous edition guess work, another welcome simplification. Treasure tables counter this trend, but justifiably so.  Attention is paid to not letting the characters get too powerful too fast and wisely emphasizes that magic items compliment the characters. For every encounter - of every level - there’s a recommendation of what could be won.   

Campaigns comes next as is the most worthless. Essentially these can be seen as linked adventures or one super adventure that will take many games to complete with tension building with the player’s levels. They give you the Fellcrest setting in the last chapter and could’ve detailed how they built that campaign setting to show you how it’s done, illustrating the points made in this extraneous chapter.  Have you ever watched an entire season of an action-based TV show, that’s a D&D campaign essentially.

The World chapter is a misnomer. It should’ve been titled “Building a World with a D&D Feel”. The do give some backstory to the gods in the players handbook and some artifacts of them, but little meat. After your characters save/conquer the Nentir Vale, you’re on your own as to the rest of the world. Gone are specific ways in which you create a settlement, which were likely ignored anyway.

Not very informative or different from previous editions - I cant speak to AD&D as we were forbade from reading that wellspring as new players. Next we’ll look at their guidance on encounters, the building blocks of adventure.

 July the 3rd will mark the inaugural recording of the Dominion Cast. To most it would appear another podcast, but you citizens and shy lurkers will behold the power through sound! Your jealous ears - that have long hated your eyes for the marvelous maddness witnessed upon the pages and posts - will be annoited. 

90% of communication is non-verbal, so you’ve been only getting 10% of the magnificience. Prepare for the full blast!    

DAMN YOUR EYES!

The premiere cast will be an actual play and discussion of 4th Edition by some of the High Dominionites posted next week.

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