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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Primitive Screwhead" data-source="post: 2959322" data-attributes="member: 20805">One of my recent character is a Mounted Archer.. currently with a Ride skill of 14...I had lots of fun doing off the wall combat manuevers with it!  Alot of people use the pre-rolled chart. This makes it so the players get to roll the checks, but are not warned out of the game. Another thing to do is have red-herrings for them to 'see' when they make the spot check. This is a bit harder to do but can make the game more interesting... "What, you rolled an 18? Yup.. you notice that their is a section of plants that appear to have been cultivated about 15' off the trail on the left..almost like a minature garden.."   The reason this is harder is two-fold.. coming up with cool things to see off the cuff.. and dealing with the players who decide that the zen garden has to be intricately tied to the plot and wont stop until they track down the monk who is tending it! <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" />{nothing like this *ever* happens to me...  yeah, right!} HAving them Take 10 is a good comprimise as well, altho removes some of the randomness. A Spot monkey will never be distracted by a pretty butterfly {my favorite reponse to a '1' on a Spot check..}Pre-panning is more of a staging issue than it is of forcing the PCs. For instance, when Luke and Lei are running for thier lifes on the Death Star, they encounter a skill check for swinging across the chasm. You can do similiar things by placing the door to the treasury 30' up a wall..meaning climb checks or some other means to go around it.  I try to have at least 1 thing in each session that each character is good at, this gives the player a chance to be involved.. for Fighters its easy, just toss in a monster or two.  I also try focus on 1 character per session as a 'main' , essentially spotlighting their entire capabilities. It can get really boring playing a Face Man through 15 sessions of pure combat.. Speaking of.. as DM, you authorize the character concepts that are played. This means, to me, that you are agreeing to let that characters abilities be a common thread in the adventure. Don't be the guy who runs a Sci-Fi game and allows a Power Armor jocky character...then immediately strips him of his Power Armor and sticks him as dumb fighter type for the entire campaign  {still miffed about that one.. I even drew the armor!!}  Its better to say, cool character, but I don't think I can work this into the campaign.. do you have another idea?There is tons and tons of advise on how to run a game 'right'..  don't worry about most of that, it will come with time. The most important thing to measure whether you have it 'right' is if you and your group are having fun.. I have been told this is a *game* after all <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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