Minion Craze or Portal Pleasure

This encounter remains to be one of my groups most favourite and is still talked about to this day.

The room has no monsters except for minions, the general goal is to disable all the portals, and activate another one so the party can leave

Each blue square is a portal. And are far enough a part it’s hard for the wizards to make it to one each turn

At the start of combat and on each minion’s initiative, every active portal summons in a new minion who goes immediately.

To disable a portal requires someone to be adjacent to it, standard action, arcane {Trained} check DC [(5 per tier) + 15]

The pit in the room should be at least 10 feet per tier, and is used by the minions.

This encounter can go on for a few good rounds since the players need to climb back up and in, and it can get out of hand fast since 12 minions per round are going to be spawning in. But it is loads of fun for everyone

I used a Modified Groom Guardian, only difference was it had Fly (hover). I recommend the same but adjusting it for whatever level you need.

**Rules note: I’m not sure about the rules of teleporting something in air, but it is one of those things that as a DM you should allow in the case of the monster because it is indeed an attack**

Groom Guardian: Demonomicron Page 93: http://www.wizards.com/dndinsider/compendium/monster.aspx?id=5105

Dynamic Worlds

Ok so my main goal with the blog is to get the ideas i've been building up and putting it out there for other dm's to use in their campaign.

Tonight I want to talk about the Dynamic World.

One of my favourite things about the D&D Challenges they have released is that they keep changing things up and the environment from one round to another is in a state of constant change

Dynamic Terrain

So when you build your encounter, you can create some options on how the terrain will change and when will it change. Will it change on a certain round or if players step over the area.

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Flooding Room

In this encounter you have a 'trapped' room that does not seem to have an exit. The room is full of columns and pillars of different sizes. Players cannot see the top of the room. When the trap is trigger the room begins flooding and fast. Water rushes from above coating the walls making climbing them almost impossible.

Roll initiative for the water, each round on its turn flood the room 1 square high for each tier the players are.

Some characters can fly, some can swim, other characters can try and jump from pillar to pillar until they get to the top.

On round 2 add some slimes or other swimming creatures that enter battle and cause havoc with the swimming players.

On round 3 add some tiny/small flying based creatures that have been startled by the noise and are attacking the party. This causes problems with the flying members of the party and those trying to jump around

In general the encounter should be free form a bit, it should take the characters 4+t rounds to reach the end. (t being their tier)

If you want to add some extra damage add falling rocks on round 4, burst 1 in random x/y locations

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The flooding room is just one example of dynammic terrain, the idea that the world the players live and breath in changes every moment

Another classic example of this is a collapsing floor.  Perhaps the characters need to cross a damaged section of the keep and if they stay too close parts of the floor collapse. Maybe some collapse anyway

The idea is thinking about how your encounter can change. In the epic levels you can realy experiment. Imagine the party fighting a demon where you have 4 maps set out. Each round on a initiative order everyone plane shifts. they still are in their x/y position but now they are some where different.

Earth, Air, Fire, Water. Works great. 1 encounter 4 maps.

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It takes some work to set this up and change things every round, but the players will remember it for some time

Anyway, that's the start. Until next time keep your dice on the table.

Return of the DM

As the undead corps raises to attack a player, i too must get up and start blogging again

December 19th, 117 days ago wow i can't belive that was my last post

Sometimes life gets busy and prevents us from playing the game we enjoy. With Busy work and a new kid life does indeed get busy.

What's been going on!

D&D Encounters

Can you belive we are half done season one already. Next week will be session 6. Over all the Encounters have been great.

There is something about the magic of undermountain that forces my players to roll like crap. Undermountain was for some of us our first true introductions to D&D some 15 years ago. (holy crap im old). Every one of my normal crew who played in those games were looking forward to playing in the #dndenc

The game started off rather good, with the players realy owning the first encounter. But then as things started to pickup and they entered into undermountain the trouble begain. They worked their way through the skill challenge with was possibly the most memorible one ive seen and found the entrance to the lost halls.

Now the players are searching through the halls to discover more information, find treasure, and perhaps discover secrets of undermountain.

Overall the game was well designed and so far loved by players.

Its Hammerfast Time!

If you've had the kind of weather i had these last few days youll know there has been some enjoyable days. A little known fact about us canucks, is that we like to BBQ any chance we can.

Last weekend was no exception, bright sun, cold breeze, we fired up the bbq and had a impromtu #dnd game. Everyone made dwarves and we decided to run in Hammerfast since i picked up the booklet.

What a great little book, if your a dwarf fan it is a must have. Lots of great NPC's, adventure ideas, storylines, and leaves everything open to the DM.

I used some old maps from some previous game day events to run the encounters on, those maps sure do come in handy. And we played well into the night. The game was so enjoyable the players decided to play again the next day. Promptly running into a 14th level mind flayer (Party level 2)

In anycase D&D for me is on the upswing again, and i shall do my best to at least post once a week on news and other geek items.

Tip for Organizers: Need more players comming out to your events? Offer a bonus action point for 1st time people.