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I suspect the biggest fear would be that the players manage to come up with a sequence of events that would resolve a 6/4 encounter within 3 successes, which in turn somehow leads to a massive plot derailment for the DM. Personally though, I am not sure about how that would happen. There is a...

How is the "What if they Win it in 3" problem any different than "What if my players manage to defeat the epic final encounter I had planned within one round or less"? In general, the consensus answer to most questions is that if it wont harm your game in the long term, then reward unexpected...

Dragons as spell casters happened at least partly by accident, I think. The starting point is that having Dragons as powerful and magical creatures is a desirable trope to accommodate. They are ancient, and wise. Throwing in a few spell like abilities is a good start, but in D&D, if you want...

There are a few ways to look at this. One is that in addition to spinning the narrative relative to the checks for a skill challenge, the DM can also decide which skill check successes are applicable to the challenge. Following the intent of the rules is generally better than following the...

I think it is a great deal more plausible at the table to explain how someone survived a sword and is able to keep fighting than it is to explain how someone who just took a full auto blast from an assault rifle to do the same. But since you disagree, how about an analogy... Are you familiar...

I think there are two reasons for this myself. 1) Gygax and Arneson truly caught lightning in a bottle when they invented D&D. Not only did they do it first, but for a long time they did it the best. 2) High Fantasy is a hell of a lot easier to simulate at the game table than modern or...

Deciding not to switch because of how heavily your invested in the current system is perfectly valid. As Eric Noah said, there has never been a better time NOT to switch. However, arguements along the lines of "The Evil Corporation who Hates all that is Good and Righteous are out to screw me...

I have found that once you get around 7th to 9th level, you cannot really push the characters very hard with a single encounter without a nearly unacceptable risk of a TPK. It also depends on what your throwing at them and how quickly the players can kill them, as well as a number of other...

Do not run him solo Give the Hill Giant a bit of breathing room with a bit of back up. In most cases, Giants when run solo turn out to be Glass Cannons. They can inflict alot of damage, but they will take more than they hand out when up against a level appropriate party. A couple of Goblin /...

It does not matter which game you like. D&D (any edition), Paranoia, Call of Cthulhu, Shadowrun, or Exalted. If your players are not that interested in playing, than the game will suck. Also, it sounds like your friends went over more to play videogames than to give the 4th Edition light...

That pretty much nails the situation. The rules are, in general, not meant to be a reasonable simulation of real situations. The rules are meant to be a plausible abstraction of real situations. If the abstraction is reasonable enough to serve suspension of disbelief within the context of the...

I recently ran a fight with some Bulettes. I set up the encounter to use two. One to show up initially, and another to join in after 4 rounds. Given the HP and decent AC of the beast, I expected it to be a pretty tough fight. In practice, they turned out to be Glass Cannons. Scary glass...

If they are willing to be creative about it, I see no harm. The poison can be considered part of the treasure, but one that requires a skill check, and where failure results in the person attempting to extract it being poisoned. Success will only ever give the player harvesting the venom 1...

I have not had much success with Hell hounds, though probably because I am either not using enough, or using them too late. The breath weapon ability though does keep them viable much longer. Even if the Bab sucks, the Save for Half damage can add up if you have enough, I suppose. Also, Hell...

I have had some good times running Red Hand of Doom, Kensantana. The fiendish behir did not really have a very significant effect in my game simply because it got dropped a bit too fast. However, I did manage to swallow one of my players that game. While Grapple can work out quite handily...

The staying power of trolls is pretty impressive, but it is not perfect. My only complaint about them is that the damage output can be a bit higher than I like if you score Claw + Claw + Rend, since it is going to be all on the same target. The regeneration is not too hard to deal with though...

Whoops... I kind of meant for this to end up in the General board. Ah well. If a moderater feels like moving it, no big deal. If not, also not a big deal, but it does have a bit of a tie in to 4th edition. Simply put, some monsters are more entertaining than others in play, and it would be...

This is not meant to have someone post about Ancient Red Dragons and the like. The intent is more of a 'best bang for buck' kind of monster. So far the most effective monsters in my game have been Manticores. The spike volley and being able to fly keeps the monster competitive. I can spread...

The problem with BBEG type opponents in 2nd and 3rd edition is pretty simple. They have 4 or more other guys unloading their best attacks on them while most D&D powers are really only good against 1 target. My players are presently 9th level, and a successful attack from any one of them will...

Responses to Storm-Bringer Creatures with poison in 3rd edition essentially do not scale well with the given assumptions of how a characters durability changes as they increase in level. Because they elected to use ability damage, spamming a bunch of creatures able to do some ability damage...