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We played this tonight and it went okay. I didn't think to ask the players how they liked the roleplaying aspect, but from my perspective as the DM, it dragged a bit. We were down a player, so there were only three PCs, and two of them got hit by Balance's effect. That resulted in just once...

My 4e group is Entering Eresh on Tuesday. I'm converting the 3e version myself rather than using the (imo substandard) official conversion. I'm planning to make a secret attack vs. Will (modifier TBD) as they enter, then hand out pre-prepared "roleplaying notes" to the ones who fail. The notes...

Sounds to me like he's saying Ravenloft taught them that they don't need to modify D&D to take advantage of the business opportunities of new gaming trends. Instead, they can make other products to take advantage of those trends and those products will be bring players to the core D&D RPG. For...

I love ENWorld's adventure paths as much as the next person, and I don't mind the auto-linking of WotBS and Zeitgeist... but the auto-linking of "Adventure Path" is driving me crazy. It makes posts hard to read and often people are talking about Pathfinder's adventure paths, which are a...

Combat length is one of the flaws of 4e. The 4e combat system is great for cinematic set-pieces, but not so good for wandering monsters and other speed bumps. Also, Encounters and LFR aren't the best showcases for 4e. I haven't played LFR, but Encounters is limited by its new and constantly...

Not directed specifically at you, but yeah. I agree. My game style is the same for everyone at the table: 4e's complex tactical combat. And in 4e, there's no by-the-book way to do combat any differently. So the Knight player has to understand the complexities of shifting, opportunity attacks...

People are asking how a "no-minis" 1e player can possibly play alongside a "detailed tactical combat" 4e player. But they're not saying that. They're saying: DM decides what style of game they want to run (i.e., "no-minis" vs. "detailed tactical combat"). Players decide what complexity of...

Onward to WotBS #5! Here's my spoiler-iffic episode summary.

Complaint: "If it's a reptile, I want it to look like a reptile!" Response (half a dozen times): "It's not a reptile!!!" Complaint: "If it looks like a reptile, it must be a reptile!" (Repeat.) Sheesh. I like verisimilitude as much as the next guy, but this faux-fantasy-realism dressed up in...

Cool idea. Yoink!

At the risk of derailing the thread, can you explain what's wrong with the artificer? I have a player using one now (level 13) wielding a wand and a hand crossbow. We're using inherent bonuses, and I did houserule a free Implement Expertise feat after he picked up Crossbow Expertise. It seems...

Sorry, that sounds like armchair quarterbacking to me. I've presented a simplified view of the situation, so it's natural you would jump to a simplistic solution. But the reality is more complex and not so easily fixed. More honesty would help, to be sure. But it isn't sufficient on its own...

This is my field. (Companies hire me to teach them how to organize and manage software development teams.) The biggest issue is that software is intangible. It's like the proverbial iceberg; for the 10% of the software you can see, there's 90% more required to make that work. And software...

Really? Does that five minutes repaginate all the articles? Does it create and layout a table of contents? Does it commission expensive full-page cover art and follow up with the artist? What works for you as a home user isn't necessarily what works for professionals. The idea of compiled PDFs...

That reminds me of a time when the party was fighting a troll in room lined with tapestries. The wizard Thunderwaved the troll next to a tapestry, then the cleric cast Command and ordered the troll to roll itself up in the tapestry. I had no idea what was being planned, but Command usually...

Inspired by the "nod to realism" thread, what are some of the cool stunts you've seen in 4e? By "stunt," I mean anything that's interesting and requires DM adjudication. I'll start. In last week's Encounters session, we had to capture a pair of unicorns. We weren't very diplomatic and got into...

This is good advice. A more fine-grained approach is to add half-monster-level damage rather than +5 per tier.

Very well! We played yesterday. It took a lot longer than expected--I had set aside 4-6 hours for the two encounters, and we ended up taking 6 hours for the first encounter alone. (We've since decided to skip the second encounter.) The players were engaged and interested the whole way through...

I'll second the recommendation to just subscribe to DDI. It's cheap and has all the crunch ever made. You can subscribe for just a month or two, play a few games, and see if 4e is your cup of tea. Alternatively, if you want to stick with the books you have, WotC republished most of the classes...

I use inherent bonuses in my WotBS campaign. (Just now wrapping up #4.) It works great. I ignore that treasure listed in the adventures and just hand out what I want, when I want. The neat thing about inherent bonuses is that you don't have to stop giving out magic items--you just don't have to...