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Combat Encounters goes over the fundamentals then has some additional rules for mounted combat, 3D combat, underwater combat, disease and poison. Regarding the book itself it's laid out rather well with each chapter progressing in a logical manner. Come on people, you couldn't hit Ctrl-F and typed in XX and hit find.Overall: this is a great book for teaching you how to DM. Challenge Ratings are now out the window and you return to the days of picking monsters by XP. Now of course there is a really quick fix for all of this, and that's just to ignore it all and run the game how you want.
I would actually suggest any DM of any game read through all the non-crunch sections of this book. To me it just feels like you are handing everything to the players and that the sense of accomplishment when they actually earn something they wanted instead of having the DM hand it to them (by level 5 all characters in the party should have 4 magic items). I can't tell you exactly what is missing but it just felt like there was something missing. The index is also very appreciated. The DM toolbox gives rules on customizing and creating monsters and NPCs, writing house rules and generating random dungeons and encounters. Regarding the sense of entitlement: I'll let you make your own call on that one.
The random dungeon also confused me as half of each page shows a layout of Dungeon Tiles but no where in the text are they referenced. Interior art is top notch and better then the PHB. I strongly suggest any DM or prospective DM read the tips and suggestions in this book though, there is some great stuff in there. Personally I'm trying my first campaign in 4th edition using their modules and running things the '4th edition way'. The new method of generating encounters for 4th edition games is much more GM friendly and I think actually makes more interesting encounters then any previous edition. In all this book has the best ideas and suggestions for DMing I have ever read. Now maybe to you this sounds great and is something that has been missing from the game for years.
I've never before seen an RPG that breaks down different players into types and gives suggestions on what to add into your games to make the game fun and interesting for all players. Similarly I've never seen an RPG that has a chapter on how to best spend your prep time including telling you what you should prep if you have one hour to prep, or if you have two, etc. I don't recall ever reading that magic items cost 10-40% more then list price when bought from vendors and not created with the Enchant Item Ritual.The Ugly: you hear a lot now a days about the 'next generation' being raised with a sense of entitlement. This is a touchy feely D&D where players and characters get what they want because they are entitled to have fun at the table and have get treasure that they want. Well this game is written with that demographic in mind. Campaigns talks about published campaign settings, themes, super adventures, story, running and ending a campaign. It's strongly suggested that even players who aren't present for a game get full xp and that the encounters are weakened so that the challenge isn't too high so that everyone is kept at the same level and everything is fair.
If the random magic item found in the dragon's horde isn't for the party, too bad. Non-combat encounters go over Skill Challenges, puzzles, Traps and Hazards. Quickly: somewhat conflicted book that definitely sets 4th edition up as a new game and not your old D&D.Summary: I think anyone reading this knows what a Dungeon Master's Guide is so I won't spend much time on a summary. This was also true about a section on buying magic items in a low magic campaign. The back of the book also has some Initiative cards and a two page battle grid.Hot to Be a DM goes over The Gaming Group, types of Players, the role of the DM and some ideas on Table Rules. the module.
DM's are encouraged to say yes to anything a player tries (not so ugly are the great rules for coming up with damages and difficulties on the fly to support this). Personally I guess I'm a little old-school for the style of play described in the book, but I'm willing to give it a chance and see how it works. This section combined with the DM toolbox at the back of the book, which allows for the creation of Elite and Solo Monsters as well as templates that can be added to any monster, basically means that no two encounters ever need to be the same and all of them will be quick and easy to make.The Bad: I personally would have liked a bit more Crunch. Gone are the days of fighting 6 identical kobalds. Way more text and pages are devoted to being a good DM then to rules. Basically it's the book that tells you how to DM a game of 4th edition D&D.What's surprising is that it's very rules light. The book was well produced and well written. Especially in the section that gives additional rules for combat, there are a lot of references to the PHB.
Building encounters goes over monster roles, parts of encounters with templates and settings for encounters. One page chapter introductions are nice for finding exactly the rule you need. Chapters include How to Be a DM, Running The Game, Combat Encounters, Building Encounters, Non-Combat Encounters, Adventures, Rewards, Campaigns, The World, The DM's Toolbox and Fallcrest. It noted to make the items cost more then the usual 10-40% more then list price.
The World introduces the generic D&D world, civilizations in it, the wilderness in between, the planes, the gods, artifacts and languages. Amusingly it also has rules for playing with no DM. If someone can't make it for a game (unless it's like a death in the family) then they don't get XP. Some repetition from the PHB would have been nice as well, though I do appreciate the cost savings.
Running the game covers prep work and getting started, different game modes, narration and pacing, props, giving out information, improvising, ending a game, troubleshooting and a short section on teaching the game. Rewards covers Quests, XP, Action Points and Treasure. I think I would have preferred just having two copies of the movement rules for example instead of having to reference them while reading about flying. To me though it's just not very D&D like. This isn't all of it, there's lots of suggestions like this.
Maybe after a few sessions I will decide I like it, if not then my next game will be run more like the old style players vs. Rules for creating your own Races and Classes would have been a nice start (though that's not something I usually do). Covering everything from how to prep for a game to what types of players you can expect to play with to what kind of challenges to face those players against. There's a 4th edition twist on this though where you balance the encounter and make it interesting by choosing different monster roles. Lastly, a pet peeve of mine, two references to page XX. Adventures covers published modules, fixing in game problems, building your own adventures, quests, mixing up encounters, settings and casts of characters.
It's suggested that the DM get a list of Magic Items that the player's actually want from them and then when designing the encounters put these items in. In are the days of facing a wall of Kobald Minions, supported by a pair of skirmishers and a Wormpriest and his Two Dragonshield guards. The final chapter gives a sample starting city and region with a short 5 encounter adventure.The Good: As you can probably tell by the chapter headings alone this isn't any old edition DM's guide. The encounter creation section of this book is probably it's most valuable part rules wise.
Included are some sample monsters like a death knight and lich. And a dragon might usually polymorph into a fly or mosquito.
I prefer LARP to pen and paper. Overall, a satisfying purchase, but I am no good DM.
This is the updated D& D with 4th edition rules. For example, I'm not going to shell out 75 bucks for a deluxe edition; these are the lowly ones found on the shelves of bookstores before they order you an expensive edition.
Go for it. Looks like they're getting rid of most things supenatural aside from evil deities like Asmodeus and Tiamat, plus Bahamut for a good deity.
It's subsidized so it's based on what you can afford.
Mages/wizards can now cast spells whenever they please (only being able to cast magic missile once per day/rest cycle is a real bummer to a little girl who wants to play a magic casting bad-arse as her character)., and all of the powers quickly and easily divided up into "at will," "once per encounter," and, "daily" powers. I will be hanging on to my 3E and 3.5E books, but those will be used for campaigns for D&D veterans. You know what is great about the 4E rules for D&D. They simplified and streamlined a lot of the nit-picky stuff (which, granted, some people love), and made it easier to just jump into the game.What this means is that I can start an impromptu game with my little sisters, and actually keep and HOLD their attention all the way through an entire gaming session of about 2 hours. I am switching over entirely to 4E for all new games I will be running hereafter. What they DIDN'T like, was dying (or being knocked unconscious), limited spell use, confusing power rules, and almost no low level party members being able to to HEAL.With 4E, EVERYONE can heal with the new "healing surge" abilities. Either because nobody was playing a cleric, or there weren't enough healing potions to go around.
I am fairly certain you will enjoy running a game for those people using 4E rules. But, if you are like me, and are trying to get new people into D&D, give 4E a try.
They have always liked the game, and the fun of the dice rolls, etc. Most little girls do not want to sit down and do homework to "play."I am a 3E and 3.5E rule set owning DM, and I am here to say that 4E is not for everyone.
They made it easy, and fun, for NEW PLAYERS to get into the game. Given the almost unlimited choices available in 3E and 3.5E, they would get confused, overwhelmed, and stop wanting to play.
;-)Enjoy. That is AMAZING.
I don't know about anyone else, but my parties generally ALWAYS suffered from healing problems in their lower levels.
Let me just say that I and 6 of my fellow gamers went into 4th with an open mind. This is lost in 4th. WotC has achieved the impossible, with 4th ed. In creating 4th ed. Its strength was the flexibility, not being confined to a board or a PC software. To WotC I can only say, good job -losing faithful cutomers is as difficult as gaining them. WotC no doubt tried to get some of those lucrative World of War Craft kids on board - heavy on the fighting, light on the role play, but while they will never be able to become a true substitute for online gaming, they've managed to lose their core constituents, the role players. Its irrelevant if a fighter attacks with a sword, an ax, or a chicken drumstick - all that matters is the funky power he unleashes.Double-Boarhead-Super-Doublefisted-Power-Strike anyone.
Not to speak of DM-fatigue with the poor guy struggling through pages of combat stats for each individual monster. I played D&D through every edition since the beginning: basic, expert, AD&D, 2nd, 3.0, 3.5, and now 4th. We all hoped that WotC had listened to player's feedback about 3.5. MY group and I spent hours each game debating each damn square moved like some crazy lawyers debating constitutional law. Its amazing how a company can so misunderstand its core customers. except now thats ALL anyone concentrates on.thats the core of combat. We LIKED the game but want SIMPLIFICATIONS to make it MORE PLAYABLE. I've stayed true to the original D&D, never straying to other game developers, never wanting to.
The imagination was the limit, at the risk of sounding corny. So after some 25 years of playing we have decided as a group to abandon WotC and to move on to Paizo's Pathfinder which promises to build on the d20, 3.5 D&D rules. This is a game no one wanted, at least not in my crowd. Every battle, no matter how trivial lasts hours.where is the room to role play. Some rules have been streamlined and the daily, encounter and at-will powers are smart changes but overall the game has become even more complex, not less.
I hope Paizo will know how to streamline 3.5 without giving up the essence of a great game. I dont need to get together with my friends for that. You certainly proved that you can do the first. And honestly, for mindless hack and slay robots, a PC or Xbox game beats D&D anytime. they have lost yet another loyal player.
What we have always enjoyed about D&D was that it was a revival of the old tradition of storytelling. The powers are as ridiculous as some of the advanced feats in 3rd ed. I wont go into detail about what I hate about the new game because many on this page already do this quite well. What we did not ask for is a completely new game focused on miniture, board-gaming with generic, cookie-cutter, super hero characters (let alone emo-races and Puff the magic dragons running around).
I've always favored the Big Bad, flanked by a bodyguard or two, one or two weaker spellcasters and a large group of weaker minions. Way too Gears of War or Final Fantasy for me. Also, and this is good for their business as well, they actually designed the book to instruct *new* DMs how to run adventures even never having played the game. 3.0 and 3.5 also broke from previous editions by introducing the idea of declining XP values for monsters, to reward players for taking on harder opponents and discouraging them from trying to attack larger numbers of weak creatures. I really don't like a lot of the art direction of these books either. For example, having the list of sample names per race, tiny architecture details, adventuring concepts, etc. Unfortunately, it was a somewhat unwieldy system that made it more difficult to calculate XP and had some wonky side effects- If two players who were one level apart but only a few hundred or a thousand xp apart from each other, going through a long adventure could result in the lower-level one having more XP at the end of the adventure, unless you rewarded XP after each encounter and allowed players to level up on the spot.4.0 has reverted back to the older system of having flat XP values, and it's up to the DM to ensure players are facing properly challenging opponents at least part of the time. Like all 4.0 books, the price is just too high.
I'm not sure of the actual variable cost of the book and distribution itself, but even selling the books at $20-$25 would probably result in a doubling of sales, in my opinion.2. First off, not a review of the 4.0 rules as a whole, which contain elements I mostly like, but a few I don't.However, the DMG is the best one that I've read so far, starting back since 2nd Edition. Although you *could* build encounters like this in 3.X, it would be hard to establish the numerical Encounter Level which would then lead to appropriate treasure generation. If these books were in the $15-20 range, I'd be buying at least twice as many of them. I found myself only looking at the DMG for the XP charts and treasure generation, and the occasional glance at random story-ideas for inspiration when I was running a game on short notice. So, here are things I *didn't* like:1. I often founding myself having to just chuck the clunky system out the window and making an ad hoc ruling on the actual Encounter Level or even going even further and just creating the treasure myself. I like the fact that they have put most of the core rules in the Player's Handbook, and left the Dungeon Master's Guide to discuss how to actually write adventures and generally run the game.
To me, it does smack of appealing to a younger crowd with overly muscled men wielding ridiculously over-sized weapons. Since it's so thin, I think newer DMs could have benefited from a few standard adventure ideas without having to buy additional larger modules just yet. Like the other 4.0 books, the quality of the book itself is not very good, with cheaper magazine-quality paper in the books. So, if they charged less, they would probably sell a whole lot more. Fortunately, 4.0's DMG tends to view interesting encounters in the same way that I do, and the mechanics make it easy to create an encounter on the fly.As a disclaimer, I would have rated this 4 Stars, but I found myself in the unfortunate position of seeing too many 1 Star reviews slamming this book not for its content, but for the 4.0 rule-set itself.
Also, an entire chapter or two devoted to having basic ideas for starting adventures or sprucing up adventures you're writing would have been really helpful. The book could have used more examples of some adventure ideas, but that's just a personal gripe. all in one place would have been great. Page 95 is an example of what I don't like, and the more photo-realistic 77 is an example of what I do.4. Now, it might actually be a little more feasible for a group of completely new players to pick up these books and start gaming, rather than getting drawn in by experienced friends or family members which, IMHO, has been the de facto experience for the past 20-30 years.The 3.5 DMG was absolutely horrible, possessing way too many charts, tables and material best suited for players like Prestige classes.
Don't handle the books when sweaty, and definitely don't spill anything on them.3. Of course, those who slam the book because they don't like its specific content have completely legitimate opinions. On a tangent, 3.X's rules for building fighting encounters tended to lean heavily on having homogenous challenge levels of opponents together. Yes, I understand that experienced DMs are free to do things as they want, but the default system should at least work to some extent instead of almost forcing you to deviate from it.
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