The Wizard of Oz School of DMing

[ThoughtBubble]

Allow me to be the sour voice of caution here.

3.x is good for adlibbing in that there are standard values for the difficulites of a great many things (climbing, jumping, just about any skill check). The problem comes up as a bit of a trust and control issue. I found that in games where there was more adlibbing, I felt that I was at the complete mercy of the dice to come up with a result skewed enough to make something happen. When I adlib I find that it's sorely tempting to add in things to make the game go the way I want it to go, not necessarrally the way the player would like it to. But, if there's a good bond of trust between the players and the DM, and there's a good feel for how the game's going to go, it leads to some very fun expierences.

 

[The_Gunslinger658]

Hi-

Well, my players and I are wargamers, so we thrive on cool tactical situations, you can't ad-lib a frost giant using a spiked chain now can ya?
Or two handed fighting style with Katana's with a whirlwind attack! But thats all pretty much at higher level's of play. Still, I like to craft my NPC's and pimp them out with all kinds of cool gear, feats, and so on. Then when my players are victorious, they just arn't getting a +4 Demon slayer, there getting Sabratha a two-handed black hilted sword that loves nothing better then to taste the blood of demons upon her silver blade.

Different DM'ing styles. <grin>

Scott

Actually it if you know the rules and what the NPCs should be able to do, it works quite well. As the characters get higher in level the ad mibbing just becoems more diffucult, it never becomes impossible.

And a good DM does not need "cool spells and fighting situations" to challenge his PCs.

 

[bloodymage]

I wrote an article for KoDT on running on the fly. It's what I do most of the time. Why spend hours planning out and detailing a grand scenario when the players are gonna write their own story anyway and trash your beautiful work?

 

[Crothian]

you can't ad-lib a frost giant using a spiked chain now can ya?

Yes, you can. Its not hard to ad lib anything if you know the rules. At higher level play there are more options and more varibles to know, but its no different then back in college and having to know lots of information of the different classes.

 

[Saeviomagy]

The problem with adlibbing is it becomes all too easy to just happen to defeat your PC's strategies with a perfectly formulated NPC.

And spellcasters which have to memorise... eurch.

 

[Sammael]

I just ran a session which included an encounter with a 15th level necromancer, three of his 10th level apprentices, a 10th level guard, four 6th level guards, three clerics (who were mostly inconsequential, but managed to summon a weak manifestation of their deity for a second) and two mummies. The entire 8x8 room the encounter took place in had forbiddance and unhallow cast, and contained a pool of unholy water, as well as lots of cover. Oh yeah, the party had 6 11th-12th level characters, four of which are full spellcasters. Would anybody care to ad-lib it?

 

[random user]

Once you know the basic framework you can usually just wing it, no problem.

Some things need some consistancy, but others may be constructed after the fact, if needed (and it rarely is).

IE. I have about a 10th level fighter I want to toss at people. Things I can do to boost his base attack bonus: level, strength, weapon focus, greater weapon focus, power attack, masterwork or magical weapon, etc.

So I can give him anywhere from about a +12 to +16 attack bonus depending on his specifics, or lower if I make him power attack. I can also lower it by giving him a level of expert (or wizard etc) and making him 9th level.

But some of those carry over to damage too. But for damage you can mess with weapon specialization, masterwork or magical item, and strength. So I can probably safely assign anywhere from +2 to +6 assuming no magic item, and possibly more depending on power attack.

A fighter around level 10 is going to have a reflex save around 3 (roughly level / 3 is a good rule to remember). But I can give the fighter a magic item that gives him + resists, or I can give him lightning reflexes, or I can modify his dex. If I have to I can say he has 8 levels of fighter and 2 levels of rangers. That gives him a +6 instead of +3. I can get it up to 8 by then giving him lightning reflexes as well or +10 if I give him 14 dex. I can make it +1 by making him a 8th level fighter, 2nd level warrior, with 8 dex.

Once you know the general guidelines and you don't stretch yourself too thin (ie you don't use up more feats that a character could have etc) you can really make a lot of stuff up. The NPC is in the middle and you want him to do a whirlwind attack? That's 5 feats, A 10th level fighter is going to have about 7 feats. If he hasn't shown more than 2 feats, then whirlwind away (but then remember you are running low on feats).

Non-fighter classes are especialy easy to add extra feats to by giving them one or two levels of fighter (which does have the side effect of increasing their BAB so be careful).

And everything I've talked about here is just core books. Once you add other books, you can come up with a ton of stuff.

There are of course some combinations of numbers that no statblock can explain. But if you stick to a certain range, and leave some room for padding, chances are there is a legitimate statblock out there that will represent your NPC.

Edit: around a 10th level fighter can be dangerous too, because if you need to make him 11th for some reason, then he ought to be getting an extra attack which is one of those things which is much harder to explain (though that one at least is still possible, maybe he had a one-use haste item... though then you have to mess with his ac, attack bonus and movement... so it can quickly spiral out of control if you aren't used to doing all this stuff. For somone who knows this stuff well, this "in the moment" decisions aren't that hard to manage. (Disclaimer: I don't claim to be that good, but I know people who are)

 

[Jolly Giant]

Try ad-libbing the encounter I finished DMing half an hour ago:

5 dwarf barbarian 23/battle rager 5
5 dwarf fighter 8/cleric 13/Hammer of Moraidn 10
1 dwarf cleric 31
1 celestial dwarf paladin 30/dwarven paragon 3/hammer of moradin 10/wonderworker 3
3 gnome ranger 37

vs

27 frostgiant barabarians
2 frostgiant clerics
1 frostgiant sorcerer
The spirit of Orcus, trapped in the zombiefied corpse of the tarrasque
4 red wyrmlings
5 very evil PCs

...and they're fighting in the mountains, during a blizzard!

It's been a long, strange campaign...

 

[Crothian]

Try ad-libbing the encounter I finished DMing half an hour ago:

This brings up a good point. Now ad libbing that would be tough for anyone new to that campaign, but a DM who has been running a weekly or bi-weekly game really picks up the flow of the game and the PCs and learns to ad lib for them and the game.

 

[The_Gneech]

This works okay if the DM is not a jerk, but I'm leery of it because I've met waaaaay to many DMs who would use it to negate the player-characters' abilities, or keep favored villains alive waaaay beyond their legitimate hit points, etc. If you're going to ignore the rules, you're back to "Bang! You're dead! No I'm not!"

I played in a game with a DM who 1) nerfed all the PC's stats, 2) inflated all the NPCs, 3) hid ALL die rolls, including rolling the players' dice, and 4) threw out-of-whack monsters at us when we found ways to get around being nerfed and dealing with inflated NPCs. Needless to say, I didn't stay there. But this is the danger of doing it the Oz way: DM powertripping.

-The Gneech