First-time DM questions (new to D&D)

[Truename]

I don't know if there is an error on the screen or if the screen statistics are updated, but I'm pretty confused to say the least. I'm mainly concerned with how these stats affect skill challenges. It seems like numbers on the DM Screen would make skill checks FAR too easy. If anyone could enlighten me, I'd highly appreciate it.

Both the DMG and the screen are in error. The DMG has the first printing numbers and the screen has the second printing numbers. Wizards recently made a third round of fixes to the DCs and I think they finally got it right. There's a publicly-available article in Dragon (I think) containing the new DCs, and they're also in the recently-released Rules Compendium, which is excellent.

I'd suggest returning the screen and waiting for the new 'deluxe' screen to come out. Or go without--a screen isn't really necessary.

 

[Da3mon]

Instead of the DM screen I usually have my laptop open, running Masterplan. If you have a DDI sub it makes life soo much easier as a DM, planning encounters, designing dungeons, and just keeping track of combat. Also you can easily search documents or the character/monster builder if you need something really quick.

If you like free stuff, or making your own, I recommend checking out NewbieDM.com he has awesome tutorials on scaling battlemaps, how to make monster tokens yourself (my tip: older checkers pieces are around 1'' and printed token can be glued on them for awesome tokens ). And even if you dont run Kobold Hall from the DMG check out the DM Starter Kit from the downloads section, it helped me greatly ever since.

If you want to run a prebuilt adventure check out The Slaying Stone. I recently ran it with a new party of players and it has great roleplaying opportunities, not just a dungeon crawl. They really enjoyed it, my older players even asked me why didnt I started with this thing? xD If you want to build your own, having a DDI sub is really helpful just having the Monster Builder to search for the right monster you need.

 

[hopeless]

New to d&d

Hello all!

My friends and I recently decided to take the plunge and learn D&D together. We currently own the 4th edition core rulebooks and each of us are making our way through them gradually.

I have taken on the task of being the DM even though I've never played a game of D&D in my life. I feel pretty confident though and I've almost completely read the DM Guide. However, I have a few questions that may seem hilarious to you guys, so please bear with me. I might have accidentally skimmed through the answers to these questions, so please don't be too hard on me.

1. I'm a little confused when it comes to the skills. Can EVERY PC make a perception check whenever they want to if they are untrained in perception? Say the party is taking an extended rest in a forest, and each of them is taking turns on guard duty. Can a PC make a perception check while on guard duty if they are untrained? Also, if this is possible, can the same be done with every skill (history, arcana, streetwise, etc), or is perception an exception?

Yes any skill can be used untrained of course they have better chance if it was trained however Insight and Perception have an extra use which comes under Passive Insight and Passive Perception which equals their skill +10 and indicates what they would notice without actively declaring they're checking such as traps, monsters lying in wait and even treasure hiding beneath say a skull in a spider's web.
Like the other skills those trained in these have a better chance of passing such checks even if not actively looking in these skills' case.

2. My friends have almost completed their character sheets and backgrounds and we intend to buy some more of the necessary equipment soon. What should we make sure to pick up with a budget of say $80-$100 dollars? What are some of the essentials we NEED to have and what are some extra things you would suggest?

You can print off power cards using online facilities which in my case involved typing them out before printing them off but I did buy three of the basic power card sets.
Ideally you only need one copy of at least the phb, dmg and monster manual to start playing. The player's guides for eberron and forgotten realms are only needed if you want to play in that setting or fancy running a swordmage, drow, etc that comes with that book.
You only need the campaign setting if you plan on running your games there but you can easily run games using your own devised settings but just remember that your first few games should be looking to have fun and getting used to the rules as in the first game i played in it became a case of either trying to deal with overwhelming adversaries or adversaries we couldn't fight because they were airborne and nobody had ranged weapons.

3. On average, how many combat encounters are in a given dungeon? Can the PCs take rests while inside a dungeon?

I'd say you could get away with three encounters before they needed an extended rest.
And yes they can rest inside a dungeon admittedly some dms can be quite nasty if your players don't prepare for the possibility of being interrupted before they can fully rest.

4. I may not have reached this section yet in the DM guide, but I will go ahead and ask anyways. What happens to monster equipment/weapons once they are defeated by the PCs? Can PCs simply raid the bodies?

It should be physically present rather than vanish for no reason.
Yes they can loot the bodies although some might claim the equipment isn't worth picking up and some dms might think up nasty ways to persuade their players to avoid such activities.

5. Feel free to give me any additional advice for a first-time DM/first-time PCs.

Be careful when deciding what monsters they're going to fight and especially loot as too much of either can lead to your game ending purely because they're not ready for that kind of opposition or they end up carrying equipment that leaves you no option but to allow the monsters to carry even better equipment leading often to a treasure build up that you find yourself unable to deal with.

See what they want to play and ask them what details they want to give about their characters and if they include some background history throw something in that they recognise so they have a reason to say go down into that dark dank dungeon or even go so far as to let them explain their reasons for becoming an adventurer.

For example on character of mine was a Narfell Warlord who was searching for a new home for his tribe and became a follower of Torm which he identified with because of his quest.

Another was a half elf paladin of Kelemvor who joined his order after the orphanage where he was raised was burned to the ground by Banites and he swore to never allow others to suffer like he had.

For the warlord his tribe and his quest was the important subplots whilst as for the paladin his past wasn't revealed but had it been it would have explained why an Unaligned Paladin was behaving like a LG Paladin but without the lawful stupid parts that I've seen in certain of the forgotten realm novels!

Thanks in advance!

You're welcome and I hope this helps with my luck since I haven't read the rest of this thread this has probably been mentioned already but let us know how your game went!

 

[Merkuri]

However, my new question is what would you guys suggest we use to represent monsters? I wish we had the money to buy tons of minis, but that's just not the case. When we Play MTG, we tend to use pennies as counters. Correct if me I'm wrong in this belief, but I don't think our D&D combat encounters will be very exciting if we're using pennies, nickels and dimes to represent monsters. What do you guys primarily use, and what is the most cost-effective solution for young/poor college students?

You can use just about anything to represent monsters. Coins work fine. If you want to add a little more "personality" to them you can print out tiny portraits of the monsters and tape them to the coins.

I've seen some people use Leggos or other toys. Really anything works as long as it fits within a 1 inch square (or larger, if the monsters takes up more than 1 square).

I think if you want to buy some cardstock paper there are some sites online that will let you print out cardboard standups for monsters that you cut out and fold.

 

[Plaguedguy]

The cheapo solution is to grab some sticky-labels at your local office supply store and tack them onto coins. Write the monster name and a # on them and you're good to go.

Alternately there are a few print-and-play token sets available as pdfs but you're still going to have to mount them on something.

 

[OnlineDM]

If you like free stuff, or making your own, I recommend checking out NewbieDM.com he has awesome tutorials on scaling battlemaps, how to make monster tokens yourself (my tip: older checkers pieces are around 1'' and printed token can be glued on them for awesome tokens ). And even if you dont run Kobold Hall from the DMG check out the DM Starter Kit from the downloads section, it helped me greatly ever since.

I second the recommendation of NewbieDM's token-making tutorial. I did it myself (shown here), and the tokens I made from washers, a glue stick and photo paper with a one-inch hole punch are fantastic (and cheap!). I've since moved on to using a projector and MapTool for the monster tokens, but the physical washer tokens are great, too.

 

[huskythegeek]

That tutorial is perfect! Thanks for the heads-up.

Even more questions (after thoroughly reading the combat chapter):

- Say I implement a monster with stealth into an encounter. Do I still give it a physical representation on the board or do I just keep track of its movement myself. If so, what happens if a character becomes blinded? The book talks about how they have to "randomly" swing at a square where they think an enemy might be. I'm VERY unclear on how I would run these types of situations.

- How do skills work in combat? Do they count as standard actions? The books seems kind of unclear on this. How and when can PCs use skills during a combat encounter?

- How much info do the PCs know about the monsters? Do I, as the DM, declare the types of monsters they are fighting at the beginning of the combat encounter? Do the PCs get to know the the AC and other defenses of the monsters or is it all secret? What about their ability scores and powers? Seems like the book is totally silent on these issues.

 

[Truename]

- How do skills work in combat? Do they count as standard actions? The books seems kind of unclear on this. How and when can PCs use skills during a combat encounter?

Look in the skills chapter. Every skill describes associated actions, and those actions have timings. Be sure to look at the errata too if you're not using the Rules Compendium.

- How much info do the PCs know about the monsters? Do I, as the DM, declare the types of monsters they are fighting at the beginning of the combat encounter? Do the PCs get to know the the AC and other defenses of the monsters or is it all secret? What about their ability scores and powers? Seems like the book is totally silent on these issues.

That's also in the skills chapter, near the beginning, under 'monster knowledge.' Again, if you don't have the RC, check for errata.

 

[Da3mon]

That tutorial is perfect! Thanks for the heads-up.

Even more questions (after thoroughly reading the combat chapter):

- Say I implement a monster with stealth into an encounter. Do I still give it a physical representation on the board or do I just keep track of its movement myself. If so, what happens if a character becomes blinded? The book talks about how they have to "randomly" swing at a square where they think an enemy might be. I'm VERY unclear on how I would run these types of situations.

Since I have usually my laptop as a DM screen with Masterplan on to help coordinate combat, I only put a token to my map when the players actually see the monster. It gives them a bit unknown, and more fun^^

- How do skills work in combat? Do they count as standard actions? The books seems kind of unclear on this. How and when can PCs use skills during a combat encounter?

As far as I understand it, most of them standard actions, only a couple of them are minor. Like lets take Religion for example, in the middle of combat, the cleric wants to take a look at a monster and check out his holy symbol. Since he is just looking at it, and its a pretty common symbol (lets say Gruumsh) its just a minor. If the cleric wants to interfere with a ritual that the orc is casting that would be a standard, since it involves lots of praying

- How much info do the PCs know about the monsters? Do I, as the DM, declare the types of monsters they are fighting at the beginning of the combat encounter? Do the PCs get to know the the AC and other defenses of the monsters or is it all secret? What about their ability scores and powers? Seems like the book is totally silent on these issues.

Right away they can learn much using a monster knowledge check, about the lore of the monster, like where they live, what they eat etc. During playing your players can easily get a grip on what defenses your creature has, during rolls (Missed it buy that much! - usually gives away a score), but it mostly just helps them figuring out, that a zombie has low Reflex def, and they should hit that thing. I dont tell them, but when they ask I make them a check (Insight mostly) as a minor, for lets say the dragon cant use his breath right away. In my experience let them figure it out, its more fun.

 

[Riastlin]

I wouldn't put a stealthed monster on the map until the PCs see it. Once one sees it, its safe to put it on as the PC will use a free action to shout "Hey, over there! Its a dinosaur!"

As for being blinded, I believe its just a flat -5 penalty to the attack roll but that is off the top of my head. If the monster were to go invisible, you can once again take the marker off the board and ask the PCs to make perception checks to determine if they can hear it.

Skills usually are standard actions, but the skill entries in the book discusses the different action types required.

Finally, knowledge of monsters is determined by how well the PCs do on their knowledge checks (different types of monsters fall under different knowledge skills). The book should also discuss this.

One additional piece of advice, going back to the earlier question of what to buy, I highly recommend the new Rules Compendium. For $20 you get pretty much all of the mechanical rules in one place (doesn't have the powers, just the mechanics). The good thing about this is that it incorporates all of the "updates" to the rules that have been released over the last 2+ years and puts everything into one handy dandy paperback book.