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My group and I are finally converting to 4E. I'm the DM for a group of six players (fighter, paladin, rogue, ranger, wizard). I plan to stick mostly to published adventures until we're all comfortable with the ruleset. My issue is that the published stuff all seems balanced for a party of four...

If a creature triggers a symbol of pain and then fails the save, it suffers a -4 penalty on most checks. This lasts for an hour after it leaves the 60' radius around the symbol. Is that magic effect on the creature ongoing (and therefore dispellable), or instantaneous? The spell description...

I've got a reference question. What books contain psionic artifacts, or artifacts particularly useful to psionic characters? I have a plot idea for the rather distant future of my campaign, and I need to decide what MacGuffin the players will wind up chasing. My game is in Eberron, but I don't...

I seem to recall reading that when an interrupt does damage, the opponent's triggering action is prevented. Now I can't find a page that says so, and I wonder whether I'm misremembering. Obviously it's possible for the triggering action to be halted because the interrupt changes the...

Powers with duration generally last until the end of an encounter. Do we know yet whether there are hard rules on what that means? What made me think of this was the Angel of Vengeance in the most recent excerpt. It can mark an opponent with one of its powers, and then until the end of the...

Yes, it's another freedom of movement thread. My players now have an NPC cohort with the Travel domain, and I'm trying to nail down exactly what he's capable of. (By fiat, I am assuming the Travel power to be exactly equivalent to the spell.) I think I know how I want to treat it in regard to...

What are some options for expanding the "dying" zone, between -1 and -10 hp? That's an extremely narrow window, and most characters will go straight from "alive and fighting" straight to "dead" without a stop in between. I want to make random combat death a bit less likely in ordinary...

WotC has posted the Mythic Exemplar PrC as part of their Complete Champion excerpt. In the 10th level ability, this line stood out to me: "In addition, you are under a permanent freedom of movement effect, unless the spell level of the impeding effect exceeds your character level." Is the...

In my upcoming Eberron campaign, I'd like to have the warlike Valenar elves be slightly mechanically different from the standard, citified Khorvairan elves. I've got maybe one or two ideas that I think could work, but I'm not quite sure, and I wonder what you all can suggest. Since the two...

How much does it bother you when an adventure designer makes up his own rules, that don't necessarily have anything to do with the RAW? We're running into a lot of this in our current campaign, and it's really driving me nuts. For example, last night we ran into an area that is cold enough to...

Feeblemind is a weird spell. It's a mind-affecting compulsion, but not "mind control" per se. It's an instantaneous effect that reduces ability scores, but is neither ability damage nor ability drain. What exactly is the effect? And in what various ways can it be fixed? The spell description...

My group is apparently about to complete Return To The Temple Of Elemental Evil. The DM estimates that we have about 10 sessions left, which is kind of amazing to think about, since we started sometime in 2004. I'm volunteering to DM the next campaign, to give our current overworked DM a rest...

Can an evil cleric use a scroll of a [Good] spell, or vice versa? The cleric class description only says that they can't "cast spells" of an alignment opposed to his or his deity's. Reading a scroll is not actually casting a spell, it's just activating a magic item. The cleric still has the...

Is there a way to specify, or at least influence, the random check on reincarnate? This would be less for powergaming and more for a running joke. In my party of 6, we originally had 2 dwarves, and the four other characters were various races. When my human warlock got killed, reincarnate was...

How does the horizon walker's "Aligned" planar mastery work? (I think we've covered this question before, but I'm not finding it on the search.) The ability description says that you "mimic the dominant alignment of the plane," but also that "spells and abilities that harm those of the opposite...

If a magical effect changes your alignment or personality, does it stay in effect while you're dead? Say we have a LG character who picks up the wrong magic item, and gets cursed with an alignment change. He's now permanently CN, even if he later drops the item. Shortly after the change, he...

The Dead Walk is the warlock invocation that basically emulates animate dead. The warlock can raise skeletons or zombies basically at will, and even if he doesn't supply the material component, the undead stay around for a minute per caster level. My warlock has been using this for a couple of...

Is there such a thing as flaming armor in a published rulebook? I know the SRD has one for fire resistance, but I'm looking for something that makes the armor itself hot and firey. I'm designing a warforged named "Sear" who is, among other things, a priest of a fire deity. I'd like to have him...

Using any combination of race, class, and PrC, how many permanent immunities and resistances can you put on one PC? I'm not trying to make an invincible Superman, I'm just curious whether it's possible to avoid all the bad status effects without resorting to spells and items. I think the best I...

My warlock PC is probably going to die very soon, so it's about time to roll up a replacement. Unfortunately, I find myself without any inspiration on which character class to choose. I thought I'd ask you clever folks if you have any ideas. The party's current makeup: fighter, cleric, bard...