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Can anyone give me some basic DM monster tactical tips? I feel like I'm not particularly challenging my party (although they don't seem to be too bored or otherwise unhappy). In tonight's game of three encounters I managed to bloody a PC maybe three times total. The 2nd level knight has an...

I am trying to use the magic item rarity system in my mostly-Essentials campaign. I'm actually OK with the fairly limited Common items (at least so far), and I actually like the way it makes the more powerful and esoteric magic items more unique and exciting. But there's a real problem with Rare...

You need to make sure your player is totally onboard with what you've come up with. I think a player needs to be the one deciding on any significant permanent changes to their PC like this. Once you and the player are in league together, feel free to use BobTheNob's advice, and just start the...

Opportunity attacks aren't provoked by making melee (or close) attacks.

HS1 is very good and has a lot of interesting and funny encounters, but it kind of requires a lot of DM improvisation (the organizing mechanic of the adventure is an extended skill challenge to stay hidden in a goblin city, with the DM pretty much on the hook to improvise the minor incidents...

I prep with Microsoft Word and Excel, but print things out and run pencil-and-paper at the table. I use the laptop only to play background music. My gaming group is pretty old school, and I doubt any of them are even aware of the character builder. We are playing exclusively from Heroes of the...

I am a player in an old-school Castles & Crusades game. We've spent 10 sessions exploring Stonehell Prison, but yesterday we suddenly found ourselves teleported to a barren wasteland and confronted by a six foot tall rifle-toting white rabbit. Yeah, an April Fools side trip to Gamma World! We...

Most of the adventure scenarios that I've written in the past have followed the traditional dungeon with encounter key format. E.g., this room has 4 goblins guarding a prisoner, that room has a trap that releases several animated skeletons that attack, etc. The general assumption is that the PCs...

It was in Dragon 395 (January 2011). It's called "Channel Divinity: Vecna" and includes six Vecna-themed feats, two of which enable powers. I think it's more geared to PCs that want to worship Vecna, but you could get some useful ideas for NPCs, I think.

There was a recent Dragon article about Vecna that I think included some new game mechanics (not sure if it had themes or templates or just new feats).

I think it doesn't just have to be about whether you allow your players to end up in a TPK. It means you have to be prepared to let the players succeed or fail and let the results of that drive your story. So perhaps you have a scenario where the evil cultists are trying to obtain some magic...

There was also a straightforward 4e conversion of the original Tomb of Horrors that was distributed to members of the RPGA DM Rewards program. It is for 9th level PCs. We made it almost to the end in maybe 8 hours of gameplay (split over several sessions), and it was a lot of fun. Still very...