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I ran a party of 6 PCs, and they chose to double up on the fighter. I printed out two copies of each character sheet, so they could have picked two of anything; we just happened to have two people who wanted to be fighters. As for adjusting the encounters, I threw in a couple of extra kobolds...

For what it's worth, 4e actually specifies that creatures know when they're marked. The consequences of breaking the mark might not always be known (this gets into some disputed areas of the rules), but a creature knows that the dude in armor has called it out, or whatever the mark may be. I...

Is there any chance you can participate in a game as a player with a DM who's running gridless combat? If it's something you want to learn to enjoy, it might help to see someone who's comfortable doing it. I personally have always run games with grids and minis (I really got into D&D with 4e)...

As long as the penalty is interesting, it's not the same as saying no. Marks in 4e are a great example. Early in my DMing career, I would always have monsters obey marks. Yes, they could attack someone else, but at a penalty. I figured that the PC doing the marking wanted the monster to focus...

My favorite way to see morale rules handled is in the encounter description. I'm used to 4e here, and they'll often have a "Tactics" section of the encounter that describes which monsters fight to the death, which try to flee, which will surrender, etc. As a matter of fact, I was just reading...

I'm a huge fan of MapTool. I now use the bells and whistles of it because I enjoy them, but when I started my use of MapTool was very bare bones. This might help you get started: MapTool Education Central | Online Dungeon Master

During my first playtest session, I ran most of the combats without minis, and one with the minis. Having the minis didn't really change anything, and I think the rules as they currently stand work better without minis. As for having fun, sure, we had a good time. We have lots of feedback to...

I enjoyed the book. In some ways, the second half is a bit like a Dungeon Master's Guide 3. I participated in a recording of the Tome Show last week where we reviewed the book; the episode hasn't been posted yet, but once it's up I think it will be a good resource for people deciding whether or...

As part of the May of the Dead blog carnival, I've posted a new, free adventure on my blog called Spooks Under Silverymoon. You can download the PDF directly here. The adventure comes with maps and monster stat blocks, of course, and larger maps (sized for 50 pixel per square grids in MapTool)...

I don't think the rules specifically say one way or the other, but I'm going to handle it at my table as follows: If you have multiple advantages or multiple disadvantages, it's no different than having just one. If you have an equal number of advantages and disadvantages, they cancel each...

Yeah, I don't have this problem. I'm going to test what I have so far, give my feedback, and then see what comes next. They're saying that we can expect more material to playtest in 5 weeks or so. I'll form my opinion of the game as a whole once we're playtesting the game as a whole. Not before.

I'm a 4e player, and I wouldn't say that I want D&D Next exactly, but it's happening whether I want it or not! I enjoy having an active community around the game that I play, with good organized play programs, ease of finding games at my FLGS and conventions, ease of finding new material for the...

It's a huge deal, but it doesn't double the chance of getting the result. The most it can do is increase your chance by half (taking it from 50% to 75%). Advantage and Disadvantage in D&D Next: The Math | Online Dungeon Master If you mean, "It gives you two chances to get the result" then yes...

As the OnlineDM, yeah, this affects me. I do have an in-person group that I'll be testing with, but I also have an online group that I would really like to test with.

I don't see a problem here. Against very low-level monsters, Magic Missile is very useful. Why is that a problem? It does d4+1 damage; if you're fighting something with more than 2 hit points, it's not an auto-kill. Certain tools SHOULD be very effective in certain situations. If the wizard is...

This is only true if your attack has +0 to hit. If you take the dwarf fighter from the playtest, he has +6 to hit with his Greataxe. This means he only needs to roll a 6 to hit the guard or a 13 to hit the chief. Having advantage when you need a 6 on the die is equivalent to just shy of a +4...

First, I haven't gotten to themes yet, but I gather that the Guardian makes it so that enemies have disadvantage against allies adjacent to the Guardian. Cool. Second, as I said, I rounded the percentages in my table to the nearest point. Having disadvantage doesn't make a crit impossible, but...

Very true, but I don't care about "damage per round" or anything like that (for which crit chance matters), but just the chance of success or failure on a given roll. If I've done my math right, the chance of a crit with advantage goes from 5% up to 9.75% [ 1 - (19/20)*(19/20) ]. I don't think...

mkill I see what you mean. I used my set of 65,000 rolls in Excel to see what the probability of meeting or beating a target number is with a single d20, advantage, and disadvantage: Target 1d20 Adv Disadv 1 100% 100% 100% 2 95% 100% 90% 3 90% 99% 81% 4 85% 98% 72% 5 80% 96% 64% 6 75% 94% 56%...

I just did a quick numerical approximation in Excel (65,000 pairs of d20 rolls), and here's what I get: Average for a single d20: 10.5 Average with advantage: 13.8 Average with disadvantage: 7.2 So, advantage is approximately equivalent to getting +3.3, and disadvantage is about -3.3. I'm...