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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WalterKovacs" data-source="post: 4766902" data-attributes="member: 63763">Part of it will depend on how new the PCs are to playing. If they are new: (a) The defender will forget to mark people ... this is especially true for the fighter since he has to basically declare whether or not he wants to mark every time he attacks. It is sometimes best to assume the fighter is marking unless he says otherwise, it's just easier that way. (b) Players may not be used to letting the other players know about their condition. It's important for them to communicate with each other, especially in they want the leader to heal them up. While he can wait until the character drops below zero before healing (you get more "bang for your buck" since you get back to zero for 'free') you risk skipping that PCs turn once or twice, and at least make them use up their move action to get back up. One way to balance this against make it seem to gamey is to have some way to make sure everyone knows when someone is bloodied in game and out (this is also important since monster and PC powers interact with being bloodied, so it's important you and the players communicate in that regard). --------------- I'm a new DM, and started DM'ing with 4e. I hadn't even played any 4e myself when I started DM'ing. I definitely had some trouble at first with making the monsters perhaps a bit too 'easy' (which was probably for the best, since the group was new as well). This mostly consisted of not realy reading the adventure heavily ahead of time. If you are going with an adventure path (like Keep on the Shadowfell) or any kind of pre-packaged encounters here are some important points: (a) Read the tactics section. This will give you an idea of 'how to play' the monsters, and not only that, but points out their various powers and how they interact with each other. It let's you know if/when the monsters might run away, etc. You can obviously change this up as you go, but at first it gives a good idea of how to play things, and can make for some interesting situations, like when a monster is able to alert the next encounter so you have a prepared group (with extra help) that can try to get suprise on the PCs. Conversely, you can reward the PCs for a quick decisive victory by giving them the opportunity to ambush the group of monsters. (b) Read the features section. This will give you infromation about the terrain features which are an important in making the encounters seem different and interesting. I know that our druid loves to be able to thorn whip people into pits whenever they come up. (c) Read just about everything. There will often be a key phrase hidden in some spot. Some monsters are just plopped into an encounter, and they have some powers that are irrelevant ... such as requiring an ally of a certain type or level that just isn't there. I recall a couple times where I made things a bit harder for the players because I misread a power (one example, a monster was able to attack twice ... but I missed the part that said it had to be against different targets), and the opposite has also happened. In some cases there are important things happening in the encounter (like constantly spawning minions, or the means to get out of a seemingly impossible to escape trap, etc). (d) Many published adventure paths fail to follow the recommended treasure parcel rules. This is a long term thing, but you'll want to figure out how you want to handle treasure and you can't rely on some adventure paths to take care of that for you (in the published modules like Keep on the Shadowfell it's worse, since they give you specific treasure which could potentially be useless for the actual party you have. The economy system, and the math expects the party is getting magic weapons, armor and neck slot items (at least) at regular intervals. EDIT: I also had a leader DM PC. I actually went with the tactical Warlord, in part because one of his at-wills was to give another PC an extra attack during the turn, and much of his help is passive (like the action point bonus, intiative bonus) making it useful as a hands off type PC. Also, the sort of game I was playing it helped turn my "give players advice of what they can do in this situation" can work 'in game' as the tactical warlord giving tactical advice. So the leader DM NPC should work out. Leader is bit of a thankless job, so it does work well as the DM NPC in that respect, as you can more easily have him step into the background doing the buffing effects and make everyone else shine a bit more.</blockquote>

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