sorta newb DM question - are the adventure supplement books worth buying?

[TerraDave]

Right, if you are looking for encounters, the H-P-E official adventures have plenty of interesting ones. The problem is that, in the context of the overall adventure, they are less then the sum of their parts.

You can also find short adventures and encounters in the various DM oriented books: Dungeon Delve, Draconomicon, Open Grave, (I think), probably the planar ones (?).

Note, all these have outdated monster damage.

 

[thegrumpyyoungman]

yeah i guess my biggest hurdle as a fairly new dm is coming up with interesting and involved encounters. i can do the cool plot lines and stuff, but the biggest issue for me is coming with a battle that has that little extra something to make it memorable. i dont want straight dice rolling and combat math...i want the extra component that keeps the players on their toes while trying to get positioned strategically.

i have a DDI subscription and i try to read the adventure articles, but i like the idea of having a campaign/adventure tie in with the encounter instead of just the notion of "hey check out this fight". for instance, i pulled several ideas and things from the Dead by Dawn adventure from DDI. good stuff there.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

yeah i guess my biggest hurdle as a fairly new dm is coming up with interesting and involved encounters. i can do the cool plot lines and stuff, but the biggest issue for me is coming with a battle that has that little extra something to make it memorable. i dont want straight dice rolling and combat math...i want the extra component that keeps the players on their toes while trying to get positioned strategically.

i have a DDI subscription and i try to read the adventure articles, but i like the idea of having a campaign/adventure tie in with the encounter instead of just the notion of "hey check out this fight". for instance, i pulled several ideas and things from the Dead by Dawn adventure from DDI. good stuff there.

Well, simple things can easily be enough. I made an encounter which was basically a room, at the bottom of 5 steps, with a table near the entrance, a cell at the back, and several baddies scattered about it. That can be enough. The bad guys will try to off the guy in the cell, and the party just has to blitz in get the key or kill any orc that tries to go into the cell, win the fight at some point and rescue the prisoner. Simple.

The dwarf leaps down the stairs and onto the table. The badguy controller trips him and he flies onto the floor, but being a dwarf keeps his feet! The other characters roll in, an orc tries the flip the table, someone shoots him. The rogue leaps across the table, over an orc and nails the guy with the key near the back of the room. It is already good, that table got great mileage. The main bad guy is tripping PCs when they try to get past, one archer nails a couple guys before he goes down. It was fairly memorable.

One encounter I had a huge ball rolling around the encounter area and 2 minions way up on ledges at the other side of the room controlling it, while the enemy artillery are on a platform on top of the ball, lol. There were anti-gravity zones too so you could fly across the room. The dwarf floated helplessly into the air halfway through, lol. The rogue lassoed one of the bad guys on the ball with her grappling hook and pulled him off. Everyone kept scrambling to stay out from under the ball. It was pretty funny.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I've heard good things about the EN campaign War of the Burning Sky - I believe its available digitally for a reasonable price.

That said, I haven't run it myself (I'm a homebrew adventure guy) but @DM Magic is doing so currently, and he would likely give you the low down if you ask nicely.

 

[OnlineDM]

Actually, I think the strength of War of the Burning Sky is more the interesting world and plot lines and less the cool encounters. It sounds like thegrumpyyoungman doesn't need help on the plot stuff.

As much as I'm enjoying running War of the Burning Sky, I don't think there's too much there for this particular DM (though it's free to download if you subscribe to EN World for $3 per month).

 

[Dedekind]

I'll put in another plug for Dungeon Delve. Even if you drop the modest plot lines, they provide fairly interesting tactics.

I will repeat that H3 has fantastic encounters (considering how bad the adventure is).