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The scenario sounds fun. I'd ask the players what they want to paint, and make three checks (Int/Wis/Cha) to determine the result: Creation Int for detail or novelty. Wis for emotion and purpose. Cha for accessibility. Examples Int (low): "crude," "simple," "crafted with so little care," "a...

In my experience, skill challenges too often led to an exercise in reading the DM's mind or fearful player participation, despite the awesome goal of enabling drama and connecting dots between character sheets and character fantasy. My solution was turning skill challenges into a rule of thumb...

5E will epic fail if everything it brings us is something we have seen before.

I also begged for some city help awhile back and you might find something useful buried in the thread. A user named Gilladian was extremely helpful to me there. I like Quickleaf's advice -- divide up the city into districts and throw out some notable features that a tourist is likely to...

I downloaded and tested it and it was only 84 hp when the caste is "solo." Switching the caste to "standard" made it look good. By default I had it set to a Solo Controller -- maybe that was confusing -- so I'll update the file to be "Standard" caste by default. I tried to make it really basic...

[/zzz] Just a dumb, tired thought that's probably been discussed before: if the purpose of save or die is fear-inducing super-scary monsters that would (should?) be a higher level anyway, why not just make save or die effects apply if a monster is +x levels higher than you? And maybe you save or...

I also built a spreadsheet because I'm fickle about formatting. It presents information as a simplified stat block that you can print. To aid improvisation, it lists all four damage categories for your monster with notes and example powers from the PDF that adjust dynamically based on your caste...

Nice catch. My players haven't brought up this concern (and may never notice) but it's something I'll watch for. Keep in mind that it's still totally up to the DM how to use karma, and that absorbing damage is bragging rights to a good defender. But the point about strikers gives me pause...

It's any roll. In the case described above -- where a player "did something cool" to chop off an enemy's hand and I assigned a 19-20 requirement to succeed knowing they'd dump karma into it -- the hand was carrying an unstable magic element the players wanted, but (on a roll) it shattered and...

I wanted to share my experience implementing karma points in my homebrew campaign in case it benefits someone else. After a few sessions of experimenting and tuning, I feel enthusiastic about my results. Players get 1 karma point if they miss every target on their turn. At the end of each...

It's been extremely helpful. Thank you so much. I have another quick question that I hope someone might help me with. How was news usually delivered through a large medieval city? If a medieval building was accosted by demons the night prior, how would word of it get around? Were their ever...

Enjoyable thread. When someone mentioned that D&D is often players' first introduction to the hobby, I wondered whether a CAS or CAW system would be a better introductory point. CAS games like 4E seem to curb the negative and positive effects of DMs. I like 4E because it dulls my fear of doing...

Thanksgiving at the DeAndy's Why do they want to unite us? When they bring us all together, all we do is fight. :(

Impressive gibberish! I wish I was better at improvising a language, even mimicking others, but alas. I hoped others in the same predicament had favorite generators like this one for generating handy excerpts from the various D&D tongues.

Does the community have favorite gibberish generators, to emulate "warlike," "elegant," "militaristic," etc. languages during a gaming session?

Thanks Gilladian. These are great blanks I need to fill. Yeah, this is one of the big things I have to decide on. I need to re-read some of the suggestions in the handbooks for some options. Roughly, I see a council elected from select "decision-makers" in each district (?) that informs the...

I wanted to share results of input from this thread hoping it encourages more feedback and helps improve the setting. Despite not knowing how well I'm doing, I constantly find myself wanting to share the product of all my preparation. City Inspiration I started by looking for images that...

I committed to the karma point change and it gives me a good vibe. As far as surges, the party has a clear bias towards resting whenever possible and I hope a few more carrots to go on will help with resource tension without breaking anything. I know that working with resting is part of the DM...

I'm also an unseasoned DM with a similar background, so your post resonates with me. I have recent experiences running games for two groups of players with absolutely no 4E experience and except for two of them, even no experience role-playing. The first group was hit and miss, but the second...

TO MY PLAYERS: This ruins everything. Please keep out. I'm an unseasoned DM who would love some help and input on a newly launched city campaign, especially with regards to creating a memorable city, anticipating the effect of house rules, and ideas on how my campaign background can connect...