Leonine Roar

Memorial Day weekend essentially means summer is here, and after all your delicious BBQs, drinks of choice, lawn games and whatever crazy dancing you may or may not throw in, it’s also a great time of year to try some new things, including new games or returning to some gaming passions you’ve taken a break from.

Now that D&D 4th edition has been out a few years, if you have some friends you’d like to introduce to D&D 4e or want to start a new playgroup of your own or simply get everybody together again and relaunch one, it can be a little daunting or unclear as far as how to start, what to buy, and where to buy it. 

Want some help?  Here’s a few quick and simple lists:

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Retreat, fleeing  and withdrawing from combat could use more clarification or guidance as a standard part of the D&D 4e game rules. So could other encounter strategies like parlay and surrender.

Sure, lots if not most creatures will flee, to live and fight again, or just to live.  Many are willing to or are compelled to talk – for a variety of noble and practical reasons.  And some will even surrender, expecting their lives be spared per an arrangement or the unwritten rules of battle and war.

However, while all these alternatives to combat are quick and dirty to execute in many forms of cinema or literary works… doing so smoothly in D&D is hit or miss.

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Your characters’ social or interaction skills are flexible tools and creative weapons against the monsters and opposition you face throughout your adventures. 

It’s important to remember that you can and should flex your reputation, physical presence and silver tongue to influence not only complex situations and help make critical greater-scope decisions, but to apply those same ideas in influencing the starting conditions or makeup of encounters. 

Armed with Bluff, Insight, Diplomacy and Intimidate, you can directly affect the odds and victory conditions of the encounters that stand between you and victory, glory or even simple survival – before an encounter begins or combat even breaks out.

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Just this past April, Wizards of the Coast asked the Character Optimization Forum folks – people and D&D 4e players like you and me – what the good, bad and ugly is in D&D 4e.  They’re listening to and interacting with the D&D community more than ever, so it’s no wonder hundreds and hundreds of posts came back. 

What about DMs?  No worries, Popesixtus and Wrecan have us player/DMs and full time DMs covered!  Or even full time players who are curious what DMs think!  What I really like most about the DM version of this effort is that DMs tend to think at and communicate a more macro level view of D&D’s core principles, elements and features. 

After all, DMs run games, so they experience quite a lot from many different perspectives. 

And player/DMs?  Is there a greater state of D&D enlightenment?

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Recognizing and reducing game slowdown caused by a proliferation of triggers or immediate actions and interrupts isn’t just a player character issue in combat encounters.  Dungeon Masters must also do themselves and the playgroup a favor by analyzing monster complexity and making smarter monster selections when encounter building. 

The (unfortunate) reality is, monster or encounter themes, flavor and atmosphere don’t always mesh with a smooth and easy-to-run encounter.  It’s important to look over monsters and understand their complexity and potential slowdown impact when put together, not just individually.

To illustrate where monster complexity and selection can easily cross the slowdown line, allow me to briefly recount a thematically flavorful early paragon tier encounter I created and ran a few months ago.

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