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1. Resting - don't let your encounters be "static", just waiting for the PC's to get to them. Make your encounters "dynamic", mobile entities. Invading the BBEG's lair to recapture the McGuffin? Once you've made contact with the enemy, if you take an extended rest anywhere near it, he hits you...

Moving locations are always fabulous: One of our group's favorite encounters involved a downhill race on mine carts - complete with multiple paths of varying length, "switches" between different tracks that one might be able to Mage Hand into a different orientation, and the party sandwiched...

Agreed - there are a number of cool powers in there, but putting them all together like that you've created an unstoppable killing machine from first level. For specific critique: Armor Proficiency: the "base" Strikers only give Hide. You've given not just Chain but Scale, for a +4 AC at first...

Yeah, that's very similar to what I was thinking in build. I was considering suggesting 17-13-17-8-12-13 .. this will be noticeably weaker at Level 1 (as you'll have a 5% lower to-hit chance, as well as lower Fort and Reflex defenses). However, it does get you Hide armor; the Level 4 upgrade...

I see three real options here: 1. See if any of the other six players has a hankering to DM - ideally, the best role-player of the group, possibly somebody who hasn't DM'ed before but is willing to bite it off. 2. Work with Ted - see what his problem(s) are. a.) Overwhelmed? Maybe he needs to...

The "bad guys" are a village of pirates; by local custom, pirates must be buried at sea. Alternately, there's the viking custom of sending the dead out on burning ships; that could certainly be adapted locally. The ideal thing here, though risky, is something that causes the party to think of...

You're very nicely combat optimized - but if you're going solo I'm not sure I'd recommend Charisma as a dump stat; Int might be better. You may also be better off accepting 17's or 16's in your top stats and minimizing your weaknesses; as a solo, weaknesses are big liabilities. If this were...

That isn't just cool - that characterizes a group I'd love to play with .. if only the commute from California weren't quite so long. ;)

Personally I tend to set up the "rules" for each encounter differently depending on the context and what I think the PC's are likely to do. So, for example, in a recent encounter I had 3 goblin sharpshooters riding 3 gray wolves, chasing the party. When working through my "Tactics" for the...

Hey guys, I'm working on next week's adventure, and I've decided that one of the features is going to be the undead courtesan of the arch-villain necromancer. I'm looking for decent "courtesan-ly" powers, with a slightly "horror/undead" feel. Currently I'm taking my inspiration from the...

Gosh wouldn't it be nice if WotC had written that as "for attacks with the Weapon keyword" instead of "using a weapon"? Seriously, precision-of-language, people!

My reading from that would indicate "No" in either case (hybrid and multiclass), as the Sneak Attack power says "using a weapon", and the warlock power is pretty clear that the dagger is being used as an implement, not as a weapon. I think that interpretation may be more tactically interesting...

Sure - in my campaign anyways, we've ruled that all flavor text is non-canonical, so saying "I have made a pact with a demon that gives me the powers of the 'Fey Pact' class feature" would totally work in my world. Your DM may vary. ;) Glad to hear the last bit - it sounds like your primary...

Yes - and the flip side of that is, "don't put two full encounters in adjacent rooms and expect the party to prevent room 1 from warning room 2." Speaking from experience, that's a TPK recipe when room 2 piles into room 1 before the party have had a decent chance to spend healing surges, recover...

We had a similar experience: 20+ years gaming together, and our first 4e experience the DM figured "I'll use published material so I don't mess things up" but it turned out that the published materials didn't have great plot, didn't have those "memorable" scenes that make a campaign, and we had...

The first thing that came to mind was the Infernal Pact Warlock, as kind of epitomizing "evil spellcaster"; you can win the PC's trust by playing it closer to morally ambiguous than evil at first. UltimaGabe has the right of it, though: as soon as it becomes player vs player, you are supposed...

The other thing is, you can address some of the issues (suboptimal builds, suboptimal tactics) simply by playing monsters suboptimally. For example, the orcish berserker runs past some of the melee frontliners, conceding OA's, to hit at the scary shaman .. (who then orders the frontline to...

Yeah, I agree with erik and unan - first on the wording, and second on the "look, this is what is going to feel most fun to the player." - or alternately, feel most epic or feel most fun.

Fun! Just thinking the powers through .. the L11 and L12 are of vastly different strength in the campaign where I'm one of three PC's .. versus the one I'm DM'ing which has five PC's. Though I suppose the 3-PC game does wind up with considerably more NPC ally-assistance than the other game...

Just tossed this at my players, Zaran, after narrowly avoiding a TPK. What I decided to go with was: - The character who hit exactly zero hit points and made her first save, no lasting effect. - The character who went negative past his Healing Surge value, I offered a negotiated injury to...