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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CM" data-source="post: 6133079" data-attributes="member: 18340">I'd suggest a 1-month subscription to Wizards' DDI service for $10 to try it out: <a href="http://www.wizards.com/dnd/subscription.aspx" target="_blank">http://www.wizards.com/dnd/subscription.aspx</a> This gives you access to the D&D 4e compendium, every issue of Dungeon & Dragon magazines from the 4e era, the character builder, and the adventure tools. The compendium lets you quickly find stat blocks of creatures to use in your adventures, premade trap stats, spell and magic item descriptions, and so on, all with errata updates.Check out the DM's guide page 42 for suggestions on how to handle actions the players want to take that aren't covered by the rules. Take any skill challenges listed in a published adventure with a grain of salt. Don't run them literally as printed, just use them as guidelines. Use the "fail forward" theory instead--if the players do poorly in a challenge use that as an opportunity to introduce complications that they have to handle rather than outright failing.Reskinning creatures and powers is one of a 4e DM's best tricks. You can create a unique and memorable NPC opponents just by taking some random stat block from the compendium and giving it one or two player character powers. Use the updated NPC building rules on the last page of this document: <a href="http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/UpdateDMG.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/UpdateDMG.pdf</a> to calculate appropriate statistics for custom NPCs. 4e is very different from 3e and derivative games in that a NPC's ability scores don't matter. NPCs are built according to very simple rules and are defined by their unique powers rather than their ability scores and feats.As for pregens, I'm not affiliated with this site but found it in a quick web search: <a href="http://dungeonsmaster.com/pre-generated-character-library/" target="_blank">http://dungeonsmaster.com/pre-generated-character-library/</a>Hope you enjoy the game. I find that 4e is a real pleasure to DM.</blockquote>

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