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It's an easy* way to manage encounters Easy* being relative to experience in DM'ing. As a newer DM for 5e I find that managing each encounter individually and being able to keep track of monster HP, status and whose turn it is through this method requires only some front-end work rather than...

An encounter matrix (or matrices look something like this. Imagine 4 PCs taking on 4 kobolds, 1 cultist and 2 guards (random encounter from HotDQ) - the encounter matrix would be written as such: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 PC1 PC2 PC3 PC4 K1 K2 K3 K4 C1 G1...

My group prefers battle mats - as I DM I would like to try adjudicating via TotM at some point but I feel that I'm too new to try and keep up with battle positioning, opportunity attacks and all the other combat rules mentally. To be completely honest I struggle just to keep initiative under...

I really, REALLY wish I knew how you managed that. I spend around 10 hours per session building encounter matrices, writing miscellaneous notes about each encounter (to prevent referring back to the adventure constantly and help keep the flow of the session rolling), and detailing treasure and...

So...not to advocate throwing shade upon the PC's campaign desires or long-term goals - but couldn't a conversation be had to say, "Look man, I understand you didn't mean for your character to come across as a sociopathic rapist-type, but that's how it is to the other players. Come up with...

Any update means new content and that's fine with me! My group is getting ready to kick off a new ToD campaign so this would fall just in time...

Here in southeast Texas (home of the D&D-hating, bible-thumping, revival-attending, judge-everywhere-but-your-own-issues) I've even seen the 4E starter set in my local Walmart typically nestled in with the CCG/TCG inventory. Finally, a reason to go to Walmart (I'll just continue getting my...

Here in southeast Texas (home of the D&D-hating, bible-thumping, revival-attending, judge-everywhere-but-your-own-issues) I've even seen the 4E starter set in my local Walmart typically nestled in with the CCG/TCG inventory. Finally, a reason to go to Walmart (I'll just continue getting my...

I would not adjust the hp of any DM - controlled entity, simply because there are so many other options available. Reinforcements, additional traps (even after death of the BBEG you can make it painful/costly/challenging) or false flags (sorry Mario...) that are all able to be implemented on the...

This. If they don't want to produce and release frequently, then I can definitely understand and accept that. However, to prevent others from doing so (while making perfect business sense in preventing others from cashing in until WotC has had their opportunity) just will not keep the customers...

In our group of 5 (Four players and myself as GM) we have one copy of each of the core books currently. This is an exception to our usual standards of each person having (at minimum) a PHB for whatever system we are playing at the time. So far this hasn't really been an issue as we are all...

Hi Lanefan, In response to your questions: 1. Yes, only in the event that the party chooses not to (or for some reason cannot) revive the PC, then the rules above apply. If revived then the PC suffers PHB standard penalties. 2. This is an interesting question, and causes me to stop and wonder...

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So, in our group this is the case for one, perhaps 2 of my players. Something that did go wrong, causing this apathy where character survival was concerned was a lack of agreement regarding playable classes. This was (most likely) my fault since I would not guarantee that magical healing...

For our group the standard was agreed upon prior to beginning the campaign, and as we are all (relatively) experienced players this was a topic that everyone unfortunately was familiar with. As it stands currently the first PC death is "free", meaning that if the rest of the party is unable to...

I'm preparing a (modified) HotDQ campaign for my friends who have been anxiously awaiting 5e's arrival. None of them wanted to DM and so...it falls to me. I really hope that all the doom and gloom that I've been reading about in a related thread (cough cough) isn't completely accurate or I may...

It appears that my three choices fall in line with the majority of the voters: an OGL; an e-tools suite; a return to print magazines (or digital copy substitution) as I did NOT like the piecemeal release of information that was brought about by WotC with 4e. I liked the collective approach and...

While I prefer to have a screen when I DM a game, my players prefer that I do not. One could attribute this to open rolls, etc, but I still hide them anyway. My folks simply dislike the separation between the DM and the players. I never really understood this, as when another member of our...

So two different instances - one where I was a player and one where I was DM'ing... Player - I was a Dragonborn Ranger in a Black Sun campaign that a friend of mine had built an super-long story arc for and we were about halfway through it. During a major fight with another Dragonborn cult...

Wow - tell your player to come roll for me! I need stats like that! Seriously though, they could throw darts at a wall with the classes on it and make it successful. There's no downside to your lowest modifier being "only" a +1.