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Wait till they run out? Not really understanding why you need to stop them. They are a striker striking. One way strikers strike is to deal damage even on a miss.

At first glance yes, but at second glance no. The problem with 'I am going to attack you because your evil!!!!!' paladins and clerics is that they wouldn't last two microseconds in a group of people. People might not like someone, even have deep reservations about their character/goals, and...

4E is rather balanced, both in the books and in the DDI stuff. Especially for an RPG system. 4E has been putting out content for quite some time now. If they haven't made piles of horribly unbalanced material so far, is it even remotely reasonable for people to act like it could be just...

If you want further player options, consider military personality archetypes. Someone could choose to be a "Blue Falcon", someone else could be a "Four and Fly", another could be a "Hoorah-Hoorah", a "Dirt Bag", or a "Field Soldier". Honestly, MOS based differentiation between player...

I think the biggest problem for RPGs is the spotlight concept. D&D is a team based game, yet the big theory on how to run it has nothing to do with teamwork. Alternating spotlights on people isn't teamwork. It is a table full of people playing many different single player games. The...

Obviously you should check with your players, even if for no other reason than to let them know what the world is like so they can create proper backgrounds for their characters that are consistent with the world. Also, if you do it, try and do it some justice. Try to avoid something trite...

When 4E came out, there were a number of people who said that 4E was terrible because they couldn't play a fighter who "just swung a sword" and that they couldn't understand the system because of that. Then you had the 4E and Pathfinder schism that cost WotC customers. I suspect that many of...

Players will do what they think they can do. Using a familiar setting can cause the players to do things, because they know how to avoid the GM thwarting them. Using an unfamiliar setting can cause players to not do things, because they don't know how to avoid the GM thwarting them. That...

The best way to teach someone a life lesson is to teach it to yourself where the person you want to learn it is watching. Anything worth doing is something you are going to screw up ten times over before you get it right. Getting down on yourself for making a mistake doesn't make a lot of...

I've not bought any of the EN world products before (not saying anything negative about the products, simply saying that none of them piqued my interest for whatever reasons). Now this Santiago stuff though... Well the first thing I did when I saw that preview page was send an email to a...

I think the real real problem with magic item shops is that players won't spend their gold on anything else unless the GM arm-twists/railroads them into doing so. Players are just not going to drop large sums of gold "points" on something silly like a priest having a statue of their deity...

If you suggest that the food/shelter at the location the PCs will be traveling to might be disagreeable, with such a description creating the possibility in their minds of the risk of a minor numeric penalty, watch how quickly and how much energy they put into tracking food/shelter. Don't make...

If you know mechanically what you are shooting for, it makes it easier to build towards that, and then the plot and scenery just falls into place around it. You know the general story you want to tell, but the mechanics that will be used to tell it will help define the details of the story...

I'll echo what has been stated many times: Rangers are strikers, wizards are controllers. Strikers do damage, controllers make the DM angry. Some Wizard tips: -Minions. They can be really nasty flanking, opportunity attacking, movement blocking pests. Someone has to kill the minions, and...

Yea, the 'all players light up like a Christmas tree when detect magic is cast' is the origin of the term. That being said, you could have 4E characters that satisfy that requirement, so obviously there is a bit more to it. I think the real, if somewhat less dramatic definition is: Even if...

Strikers study tactics. Defenders study logistics. If the GM is letting the party rest too often, then logistics don't matter. Actually, if the GM is letting the party rest too often, then nothing short of finishing encounters quickly matters. If the GM is following the design of 4E and...

It is a daily power. You should always give the player the benefit of the doubt on something like a daily since it is only going to crop up in one out of every four encounters. If in practice it turns out to be absurdly overpowered, you can explain that to the player and tone it down later...

The online CB isn't CB version 2.0, it is CB 2, an entirely new product. Planning to have CB 2 eventually replace CB 1 and ending support for CB 1 is fine. Not planning to support updates for CB 1 version 1.'it-bleeping-works' while at the same time launching CB 2 version 1.0 is not fine. Now...

For me, the hands down winner for this one is Planescape. Awesome to read. Can be fun to run. Usually horrible to play. The basic problem is that in a setting where anything is possible, the players simply don't have any mental reference points that give them the capacity to 'expect' how the...

I really doubt it will be doing 3 or 4 points of damage at level 10 under usual circumstances. Blaster wizards pretty much want to start with 13 dex and 13 wis to get the feats they pretty much need to function and to get the epic crit feat naturally. Especially if they want to function...