What will we be doing? In short:  making our own games. If you liked Worldbreakers or Tragic Imprint or Serious Skills, we’re expanding on this work and using it for some breath-taking game design.

I hope you’ll join us in our new venture!

For our final entry, we tackle the long-awaited Psionic classes – the Ardent, Battlemind and Psion.  The main issue with Psionic themes is the At-Will nature of the powers and the use of power points. Most classes, of course, do not follow this structure making mixing the two styles tricky at best. We have at least one precedent towards applying a Psionic Theme to a non-Psionic class in the Noble Adept. However, since the Noble Adept gives you neither Psionic Augmentation nor power points, more than half the Theme is useless for non-Psionic classes. This is not acceptable for theme multiclassing. In order to remedy this issue, we define a class feature that will be provided to each of the three Themes:

Undisciplined Psyche

You gain the Psionic Augmentation class feature. For each Theme at-will attack power you choose, you gain 2 power points if your primary class does not already grant you power points.

That being said, we can now define the Themes using the Noble Adept as a template.

Ardent

Contagious Exuberance

You can use the Ardent Surge power once per encounter.

Pretty standard for a leader. Not much else to say here.

Theme at Level 1

Empath (Multiclass Ardent)

Prerequisite: Ardent

Theme Feature: Choose an Ardent Mantle. You count as having that Mantle for the purpose of your Ardent Surge. You may use the associated feature power once per day. In addition, you gain the Undisciplined Psyche class feature.

Psionic classes don’t have a lot of class features, so these Themes necessarily run dangerously close to being Hybrids all by themselves. Such is the nature of the beast. Giving a daily use of the feature power instead of the constant benefit that the hybrid gets is the best compromise I can come up with.

Theme at Levels 2+

• Lv 2: Healing Bond
• Lv 3: Withered Technique*
• Lv 5: Invitation To Defeat
• Lv 6: Escalating Fury
• Lv 7: Rewarding Strike *^
• Lv 9: Feast of Despair
• Lv 10: From the Brink

*If your primary class does not grant Power Points, you must use either the Augment 1 or Augment 2 options
^If your primary class grants Power Points, this power replaces an Augmentable At-Will you already know

We’re looking for two things in each of the powers for this Theme. First, since we’re forcing non-Psionic primary classes to always use an Augmented form, the Augmented forms need to be both related and generally useful. (Some Augment 1 options are VERY situational) Second, the flavor of the Theme (as well as the others to follow) is uncontrolled psionic ability. Therefore, powers that feel like they would need discipline and practice (teleportation, zones, etc) don’t really fit. Feast of Despair lets you regain power points and should be considered strongly.

Battlemind

Soulknife

Choose a Psionic Study. You count as having that feature and can use the associate Feature power once per day.

Battlemind feature powers are universally recognized as awesome. Even one as a daily power is worth a feat. Also, have to work in some of those older iconic names in somewhere, right? WotC sure did with the old psionic defense modes…

Theme at Level 1

Psychic Warrior  (Multiclass Battlemind)

Prerequisite: Battlemind

Theme Feature: You gain the Psychic Defense class feature, except that Mind Spike and Blurred Step are encounter powers for you. In addition, you gain the Undisciplined Psyche class feature.

Battlemind is weird, because you really need the full suite of Battlemind’s Demand, Blurred Step and Mind Spike for it to work well.  Being able to mark at-will is still useful, if not completely optimal. At the end of the day, this feat/theme combination gives you nearly the whole complement of Battlemind features, just with limited useage.

Theme at Levels 2+

• Lv 2: Telepathic Challenge
• Lv 3: Lodestone Lure*
• Lv 5: Empathic Feedback
• Lv 6: Psionic Ambush
• Lv 7: Lightning Rush*^
• Lv 9: Aspect of Disembodiment
• Lv 10: Hands of the Titan

*If your primary class does not grant Power Points, you must use either the Augment 1 or Augment 2 options
^If your primary class grants Power Points, this power replaces an Augmentable At-Will you already know

Once again, Defender themes need to rely on Defending, particularly since the Battlemind’s punishment requires some forethought. This situation t overrides the previous statement about ‘uncontrolled’ Theme flavor. You still get a little of it with powers like Empathic Feedback and Hands of the Titan, though. Lightning Rush is nearly required for the Theme and will improve your defending ability by leaps and bounds (pardon the pun).

Psion

Mind Over Matter

Choose one 1st level at-will psion power. You gain it as an encounter power and may augment it once you gain power points.

Very close to the base feat, but with no skill training (of course) and the ability to augment.

Theme at Level 1

Partially Awakened (Multiclass Psion)

Prerequisite: Psion

Theme Feature: Choose a Discipline Focus. You count as having that Focus. You may use the associated feature powers each once per day. In addition, you gain the Undisciplined Psyche class feature and may use psion implements with psion and psion paragon path powers.

This was a hard call. In my opinion, you could give any class the Focus feature powers as is and it wouldn’t really break anything. However, the Hybrid only lets you pick one of the two powers per focus, so I want to keep the multiclass less than that in potency. It’s probably an underpowered feature, but I’m willing to take that chance.

Theme at Levels 2+

• Lv 2: Intellect Fortress
• Lv 3: Fuse Form*
• Lv 5: Hypnotic Pulse
• Lv 6: Telekinetic Screen
• Lv 7: Ego Whip *^
• Lv 9: Mind Blast
• Lv 10: Intellect Leech

*If your primary class does not grant Power Points, you must use either the Augment 1 or Augment 2 options
^If your primary class grants Power Points, this power replaces an Augmentable At-Will you already know

There are three very distinct flavors of Psion, so making any one of them strong in the Theme is difficult from both a flavor and mechanical perspective. Instead, I tried to pick powers that could be interpreted very broadly.

That’s it! Theme multiclassing is now complete. Since the start of this series, we’ve seen several attempts at multiclassing/hybridizing Essentials classes, with varying levels of success. In addition, the discussion from WotC that sparked this idea seems to have disappeared from the radar since none of the GenCon panels (to the best of my knowledge anyway), talked about it.  Maybe they’re keeping it a secret – I don’t know, but I’d REALLY like to.

Until next time, folks.

As At-Will closes down in its current incarnation, I wanted to take a few moments to say my piece about the state of D&D, especially 4th edition.

I’m just basically done with D&D, at least for now. Quinn cited problems with the community in his sign-off post and while I sympathize with his experiences, that’s not the issue for me. My pivot point is more systemic. We explored combat goals with Paths to Victory. We blew open the doors on skill interpretation with Serious Skills. We expanded the rewards mechanic with Penniless but not Powerless and gave ideas for fine-tuning the individual personality of a character with Off The Grid and the many Theme articles. We turned skill challenges from awkward, forced-feeling constructs into epic battles in the Elemental Sea. In short, we exposed as much of the guts of the system as possible and exploited them to the fullest. Looking around at the ‘workshop’ as it were, I don’t have anything left to tinker with. It’s time to pack up the tools and go somewhere else.

In a way, that’s where 4E itself stands right now as well. 5E is clearly on the way, even if we have no timetable or solid info on it yet. Its arrival is inevitable and any new innovations in the game will begin there. If the Legends and Lore articles are to be trusted, the game may actually be taking some steps ‘backwards’ so to speak – whether that’s a good thing or not is very subjective and not worth detailed discussion at the moment given the lack of real information. We’ll see some new powers and feats, to be sure, but the design space of 4E is full.

I should also state here that I still enjoy playing 4E, and D&D in general. I’ve found over the last year of running a regular game, though, that it’s really not my style. I’m highly improvisational and not much for writing out long involved plots, which D&D requires to maintain narrative continuity. The designers left intentionally left the storytelling almost solely in the hands of DMs and while that’s a perfectly legitimate choice, I grow tired of it. I need a new space in which to get my gaming kicks – one better suited for me.

I want to thank everyone who commented on our articles, be those comments praise or constructive criticism; I hope you all will stick around to see the new stuff we have brewing behind the curtain. I want to thank Quinn, David, Jeff, Jared and all those who have wrote for this site for letting me play in your backyard. Lastly, thank you to WotC for writing the game.

It’s not you, D&D, it’s me. You understand, right?

At-Will is done.

I took a break to see if I wanted to do this anymore, and I just don’t want to come back to it. I’ve worked hard putting up content, and have had to deal with so much treachery, rudeness, apathy, entitlement, and venom that it is no longer worth it to be involved in the community. The bad for me personally has far outweighed the good. When I started to hate game design, I knew something was wrong. I have transitioned away from doing 4e design and am now working on different projects.

For those who have supported the Worldbreakers, you are so awesome and so patient! I am working on finishing this project for you (I’m no longer going to “sell” it, as there is no incentive to sell 4e 3PP products). I am really sorry to get tripped up like this, but your support has been awesome and I do intend to honor it. This will be my last 4e project.

For those few who did support the work on the site, and are interested in other games besides 4e…do you want to see what I’m working on next? If so, I’m on twitter as qh_murphy, and I’m on G+ (Quinn Murphy).

At-Will has been a great home to many of my ideas but I need a bigger house. I hope you’ve enjoyed the site, and I hope you visit the new site (when I announce it).

Thanks to my supporters and my friends.

I mention this to you because I want you to understand and appreciate how much I think about D&D and game design.  My newborn son is almost 3 months old, I have more work at my day job and in freelancing than I could shake several sticks at…and here I am, unable to sleep because I have to say something to you.

For the underwhelming love of fantasy deities, STOP spending time making hard encounters.  I listen to many frustrated GMs who spin me this tale (tell me if it sounds familiar):

“I spent five hours building this encounter and the players tore through it in 2 rounds. The players weren’t challenged at all, and I feel like a failure for not being able to challenge them! It was supposed to be a tough fight!”

I’ve heard this, and I’ve been there.   What I’m up early this morning to say though is that when we’re feeling like this, we as GMs are looking at our jobs from the wrong viewpoint.  We are also misunderstanding combat to a degree.

Running a game is a perverse business.  On one hand, it’s a candy store; look, sunshine and saccharine! The other hand is a punch in the mouth; why were you taking my candy?  If you give players too much candy, the whole enterprise goes rotten as you turn each PC into a candyman Fonzerelli, riding through your dungeon on a Gingerbread bike going “Aaaaaaaay!”  If PCs get everything they want whenever they want, the game no longer compels anyone to play it.

But how much face-punching can you get away with?  You can string face-punching out a little longer than you can candy-giving, but in the end, no one really wants to be on the receiving end of Manny Pacquio each session without a chance to even hit back.  Too much face-punching also makes the game less compelling.

I think all decent GMs for any game system knows the formula RPGs;  put out some candy (or the opportunity to grab it), punch some faces along the way.  If players don’t get candy, there are no incentives to get punched in the face.  If PCs don’t get punched in the face, they don’t appreciate the candy.

Combat isn’t a punch in the face in D&D. It’s candy. Fighting is a reward, because that’s how the game is designed.  Part of what D&D has always been about is the thrill of overcoming monsters and getting stuff.  It is open in other areas so is open to creative hacking to do other stuff, but every edition of D&D includes copious rules for killing stuff. It is the reward even though monsters are trying to take you out, because the monsters trying to take you out is part of the thrill of the fight.  The more the monsters come at me, the more exciting it is, and the more awesome I feel for overcoming it.

If combat isn’t a punch in the face, what is?  When the bad guy gets away…that’s a punch in face.  When he steals a sacred artifact, when we fail to protect the townspeople, when the tyrant’s army wins a key battle, when an adventurer sacrifices himself to protect the world — these are punches in the face.  When we finally get a chance to put our hands on the villain or his minions, we can best describe that as a catharsis.

Imagine you could punch out someone critical in the country’s financial woes.  There are a lot of bad consequences flowing from that, but can’t you imagine that it might feel good right before they put the cuffs on?  The central conceit of fantasy adventure is that violence works. Violence rarely fixes anything in real life, but works about a dozen times every level in D&D.  At the end of the day, we get to hit something and good comes of it.

So, back to the hard encounter.  Do you ever notice that 9 times out of 10  in your hard encounter, the players are having a good time?  That the only person feeling like crap about the whole thing is you?  You tried to build a fight that would make the characters feel fear or intimidate them, and they ran you over. That in turn left you feeling a bit abused.  You spent so much time on it!  It wa supposed to be hard!

Listen, if you want a hard encounter, do this:  Let every monster stun as a minor action, no hit roll required. Or hey, triple the damage each monster deals.  Infinite hit points? I guarantee that using one of those ideas will push your PCs right to the brink….oh, but you are trying to make it “hard but fun”, right?  Or “hard but balanced”? You want an encounter that drops characters but won’t necessarily cause a TPK?

I’m not saying that it’s not possible to do that; I’m saying it’s not really worth your time.  In games as we talk about them, there is a perfect balance to strike every time between monster threat and player satisfaction.  In games as they are played, people go on hot streaks with dice. People go on cold streaks.  People discover crazy power synergies. DMs forget auras and players abuse solos.  A few good dice rolls turn a mildly challenging encounter into a very challenging encounter or a very challenging encounter into a TPK.

Players are going to whale on encounters, and that’s ok!  The game is actually designed in just that way. As a DM, you can make the combat interesting for yourself by upselling the player and monster actions through narration.  You can make the combat awesome by adding different twists that aren’t combatants. Interesting terrain and unusual parameters for the fight are  great. You can work towards unconventional consequences to your fights.  Spend your time making your fights compelling.  I’ve run a lot of fights where players have mostly had their way, but because of cool environment or cool parameters (or both), still ended up being memorable.

“But Gamefiend, the BBEG is supposed to be super tough!”

No, the BBEG is supposed to be super INTERESTING. He threatens and cajoles; he schemes and plots against the PCs; the PC foil the BBEG sometimes, but sometimes he foils them. When they face off for the final time, all sorts of crazy stuff should be going on.  Maybe after they navigate the chaos, they take the BBEG down in a round or two, but they will remember all that chaos.

Work to make your fights interesting instead of challenging, and your sanity will increase.  Maybe not much, but hey you’re a DM, so you were a little crazy already.

The biggest reason improv seems near impossible in 4e is the game’s dependence on maps (we won’t get into gridless right now ). The assumption for many with 4e is that every fight is a set piece, with more “production” placed around the battles than any other edition of D&D before it.  To even get part of the way to a nice looking battle requires planning. What happens when your characters get into a fight all of a sudden? What then?

Most 4e GMs take great pride in building awesome and elaborate set pieces with Dungeon Tiles, Dwarven Forge, and more I used to print custom color maps with Dundjinni.  I own an automated paper cutter just so I could build scenery. Have you looked at the sets that Mike Shea uses? Seriously awesome. I don’t expect GMs to give that up — I don’t — but what you should have is a good backup.  If players want total freedom, they have to cut you at least a little slack on presentation.

What I suggest is this:  build libraries of maps in different locals. In part I do this by hoarding poster maps (generally means buying lots of adventures though) and combine those and Dugeon Tiles to have a collection of maps for regions we’re in or near. If players are in a city that’s near a swamp,  it’s reasonable to have a few city maps and a few swamp maps on hand. If you can, recycle these maps whenever possible — you can always add different terrain and objects to vary the terrain. Most players aren’t going to stress repeats, especially if it means you can more easily support whatever crazy things they are going to do. When you have this base of extra maps, you can still build something that looks decent without fearing players will go off rails, leaving you totally unprepared.

The other thing you need are monsters to fill those maps with. This is very easy if you subscribe to DDI; just keep your laptop nearby with the compendium and you are just a few clicks away from filling out an encounter. What I recommend that you do on top of that is to prepare a list of the basic encounter types according to the DMG, along with the encounter XP budgets appropriate for your PC’s level. It takes a few extra minutes of prep, but here’s how it can work in play:

You see that the players are investigating a topic that you meant as a minor detail. Rather than stifling their efforts, you decide you can expand on it. The investigation is going to bring the ire of some thugs, you decide. So, while the PCs are discussing what they will do, you use the compendium and your  encounter list to draw up a quick encounter. You want it to be a quick skirmish, so you use half the XP of a normal encounter. As the PCs make their skill checks and roleplay, you’ve gotten a little encounter for this new direction that they’ve taken. They take a turn into an alley, and you pull out your reserve map…

With a little bit of forward-thinking and structure, you can turn even the heavy prep aspects of 4e into something more conductive to low-prep, on the fly GMing.

What tools do you use to prepare battles on the fly?

I promise not to be annoying with this…but have you checked out Etherkai yet?  For $2 you can support the site and get an awesome solo to terrify your players with.  

Last time, we paid homage to two  Primal Classes, the Barbarian and Seeker. We complete the circle this installment with the Druid and Shaman.

Druid

No New Feat

These Primal classes have really good multiclass feats. I really want to make a new entry feat, but..  I don’t need to. Initiate of the Old Faith is worth it on its own.

Theme at Level 1

Inner Beast (Multiclass Druid)

Prerequisite: Druid

Theme Feature: Your may use the  power granted to you by Initiate of the Old Faith at-will.

You wanna turn into a monster? Regularly? Have at it, my friend.

Theme at Levels 2+

• Lv 2: Fleet Pursuit
• Lv 3: Predator’s Flurry
• Lv 5: Roar of Terror
• Lv 6: Black Harbinger
• Lv 7: Blood-Spray Bite
• Lv 9: Primal Wolf
• Lv 10: Armor of the Wild

The point of multiclassing Druid is to turn into crazy stuff, right? Of course it is. All of these powers carry the Beast Form keyword to fully exploit your transformative abilities. That makes it a little more Striker and a little less Controller but if you’re going for single-target control, you’re in business.

Shaman

No New Feat

Like Primal Sharpshooter, Spirit Talker is an excellent use of a feat if you have a 13 Wisdom sitting around and since Wisdom is (by my count) the second-most used primary stat, you probably do. A spirit companion, an opp attack, Nature skill training and a daily bump to a skill check in one feat? There’s really no need to fix what ain’t broken. Also, it gives you access to the surprisingly effective Mending Spirit feat.

Theme at Level 1

Spirit Medium  (Multiclass Shaman)

Prerequisite: Shaman

Theme Feature: You can summon your Spirit Companion as a minor action instead of a standard action.

Theme at Levels 2+

• Lv 2: Spirit Sacrifice
• Lv 3: Sly Fox Spirit
• Lv 5: Shrieking Wind Spirits
• Lv 6: Primal Investiture
• Lv 7: Memory of Wind and Rain
• Lv 9: Four-Armed is Forewarned
• Lv 10: Call Forth the Spirit World

All of these powers emanate from the spirit companion to make the feature as useful as possible. We’re also aiming for more buffing/enabling than straight-out healing. Spirit Sacrifice is especially useful for a shaman that doesn’t actually NEED the spirit companion to function effectively.

Rounding third and heading for home we FINALLY come to the long-awaited Psionic classes in the next and final installment. Until next time, peeps!

In honor of the release, I wanted to revisit Worldbreakers as a mechanic, and talk about what I’ve learned about monster design.

More Powers does not Equal More Expressive. It’s a common trick to give a monster powers to express every ability, but in 4e that kitchen-sink design actually detracts from a monster’s uniqueness. A few powers with more dramatic abilities mean more than many powers with subtle and  nuanced effects. Less powers alo is easier to run.

For Heaven’s Sake, Use the Monster Manual 3 Math. It makes such a huge difference in the ability of a monster (especially a solo) to use the damage boost proscribed in MM3. If you need the info, you can get it here and here.

While We’re At It, Action Recovery is a Must. Action Recovery — the generic name for removing dazed, stunned, and immobilized conditions on a solo — is essential. You’ll see it with a lot of cute names on Worldbreakers, but you’ll see it. Even though Worldbreakers get a clearing effect, many parties can lock down for almost the entirety of the battle. Use this on your solos to give them a fighting chance.

Counting Rounds is Just Wrong. Yes I learned my lesson. I spent a lot of energy in playtesting trying to get the right amount of rounds for the Worldbreaker effect. I realized in one play-test that the counting of rounds is just not something you do in 4e. That’s when we went to the temporary hit point model, and that’s when it finally clicked. One thing I was trying to do with the Worldbreakers initially was to have  a flow of valley (low threat) – peak (high threat) – valley - peak – valley . Combats in 4e don’t last enough rounds for that. A better “flow” is valley – peak – valley. This gives players time to get their licks in, get their tushes kicked, and get their last licks in. It fits more naturally within the structure of the 4e combat system.

Challenge is OK, Interesting is What Matters. I think most groups will find Etherkai challenging. I expect that some groups will find him completely deadly, while others while find him to be completely soft. Here’s the thing: I built Etherkai (and the rest of the Worldbreakers) to be interesting first and foremost. A lot of powers force unconventional interactions with the players, and he does some pretty crazy stuff. I can’t as a designer control challenge at the table. Dice are fickle. Some groups are very optimized, others are just average. I can’t fully control challenge unless I can fully control all these factors. I have a lot more say in how the monster is presented. When you read a Worldbreaker monster, you’ll get a rich back story and understanding of its motivations and personality. You’ll know how to present this monster to your players in the story. No matter what happens after that, the memory of that presentation will stay.
If there is a tip I’d like to give to GMs everywhere, it’s to let go of the notion of challenge a bit. Go for interest first , and see how it liberates your gaming. Many GMs confuse difficulty or danger with excitement.  I say…look at roller coasters.  I am not saying make artificial challenges, I am saying look at how danger and excitement occupy two separate spaces. Roller coasters are prety  An encounter doesn’t have to be a killer to excite players. Make exciting encounters first.

I’ll have more lessons when the next Worldbreaker comes around. Please pick up Etherkai  (it’s $2 with great art and great layout) and let us know what you think! I hope you enjoy it.

My epic tier heroes area trying to gather up all the bits of old magic in my Forgotten Realms campaign in hopes of using it to bring back the goddess of magic who died 100 years ago. They found an old temple that was destroyed in the magic-exploding event called the Spellplague.

The temple got stuck between two worlds in a time loop when the Spellplague happened…and an aspect of Mystra happened to be there at the time. The PCs are heading into the temple and working to get access to the inner chamber where the aspect of Mystra is located.

The time loop makes this a bit more difficult because at the end of it the Spellplague “happens”, the aspect of Mystra explodes, and the entire temple resets, including all of the conversations that the PCs had. To make matters worse, the time loop is getting shorter and shorter due to a little surprise.

What I’m looking to do with this is to have an environmental effect that starts in a role-playing situation and then has meaningful effects in the combat that follows.

The Design

So I have a fragment of the dead goddess of magic blowing up every couple of minutes and having a random effect. Some of these effects will seem mundane to the players during part of the session, but once they get into combat I’ll stop just describing the fluff “you’re knocked off your feet” to the mechanical addition of “you’re knocked off your feet, push yourself back 5 squares and go prone”.

The first thing that happens is there’s an explosion, that’s an attack and it’s not something to be avoided, but it could be resisted. As such, I have a weak attack likely to miss a decent number of PCs because this could theoretically happen a dozen times or more depending on how much time the PCs take going through the temple. They’re 23rd level, let’s go +25 vs Fort. That will work out to hitting about half of the time.

The explosion will do 2d20+20 fire damage. I like going d20s here (where usually it’s to be avoided) because it’s wild, untapped, chaotic magic. Having a massive swing of possible damage makes sense. The extra +20 will also help make sure that it’s still a threat…even to all those PCs with fire resistance (which is most of them).

Next, a random effect because it wouldn’t really be the Spellplague if it just did damage, it’s gotta be scarier than that…it’s gotta mess folks up. Effect one is being frozen in time until the next time loop starts. This makes sense thematically.

Effect two gives the PC a vision of their own death. It’s disturbing. Out of combat that’s it…in combat it’s granting combat advantage (save ends).

Effect three grants Vulnerability 10 to all damage (save ends). You’re messed up and weak for it.

The fourth effect is pushing the target 5 squares and knocking them prone. Simple enough and fits well.

The fifth effect is my crowning jewel of the whole thing. The first time it hits you you lose one encounter, daily, or magic item use power. I’ll even let the player pick. What I won’t tell them is that if this effect comes up again the power is permanently changed into another power, DM-choice. I may even go crazy and give them something from the wrong class…I don’t know, but it’ll be a blast to find out.

The last effect deals with spellscaring the target. Most of my guys are already spellscared or something I invented called “Weave-scarred” so this is actually pretty mundane for my game, but I’ve added in some additional boosts for this one.

Now it occurs to me that the players might want to be a bit more active in this situation, they might have the audacity to want to do something to protect themselves. What’s more some of the effects (effect five especially) are a pretty big deal. As such I’m giving the players a chance to protect themselves from these changes. The random effect can be avoided by either sheer endurance (DC 30) or manipulating the forces of magic (Arcana DC 35). This doesn’t avoid the damage but it does avoid the random effect.

Honestly, I’m a little worried I’m being too nice and giving too many chances to avoid the bad/cool stuff in the situation. But we’ll see how it plays out in the context of my players and my campaign.

The Experience

It turns out, I probably over designed this effect, or it felt that way. I had 6 possible effects and the party saw the immediate threat and jumped into things quickly, feeling like the rush was on.

As such this only happened three times, total and the random effects that came up were, by in large, the most mundane ones of the bunch. I was really looking forward to using effect five, even described it to my players after the session was over and had several of them mention that that would have been cool.

Why did they rush through it all so fast? The damage was too high. It’s hard to do too much damage in epic tier, but when you’re doing it to the entire party on an attack it adds up quick and those that have the hit points/resistances to handle it are also the ones that have the defenses to avoid it to begin with.

If I had it to do over again I think I would change two things: damage output, and “randomness”.

In the midst of the encounter I actually reduced the damage to 2d20+10 instead of +20 or else I would have dropped several PCs before the fight happened. Instead I think I should have made the damage a lot more minor, especially before the fight happened. Maybe increase it when they actually got into the room where the explosion started. 1d10+10 would have sufficed outside the room, 2d10+10 inside the room.

That would have given them some more breathing room to take their time in the role-playing and then more of the random effects could have happened.

The second thing I would have changed is the “randomness”. There are two ways I would consider changing this. One, don’t make it truly random. I could have made a list of what happens on explosions in what order. Then I could have made sure that the coolest stuff happened first, and the players would probably have still assumed it was random. Especially if a throw a random die behind the screen.

But that doesn’t ring true to my style, I usually have the players choose their own fate with random effects, letting them roll the dice. So my second option would be to have the players all have a different random effect. So each time Mystra explodes each player rolls a d6 and then I tell them what happens.

This means that there are enough rolls happening that chances are all of them will come up at least once. The down-side…it takes more time. That said, during the role-playing encounter this is happening on a scale of every 10-15 minutes real time. In combat I was going with every 4 or 5 rounds and reducing it between each explosion. So it’s not happening so often that I think it would risk grinding the action to a halt.

All in all, however, I think this was pretty successful. The effect grabbed exactly the feel I was looking for. It appropriately threatened a powerful group of PCs. The only disappointment was more that I felt less satisfied as a DM/designer not in the experience of the players, nor in the cool factor or storytelling of the mechanic.

Have you ever made a crazy environmental effect? How did it go? How do you handle “randomness” in your games?

Well, my son was born prematurely ( 6 weeks early). He just came back home July 4th (Independence Day) and he is as awesome, inspiring and exhausting as you’d expect.  Also, my DDI submission for Wizards of the Coast got accepted.  It is a theme that utilizes Fortune Cards called the Fatedancer. It is awesome and you should check it out if you are a DDI subscriber.

Last Friday At-Will got nominated for a “Best Blog” Ennie!  If you’ve enjoyed the last few  years of At-Will, if we’ve helped your table with our material at all, I encourage you to vote for the site.

Next week, we release the first Worldbreakers book!  We’ve decided to split the book up into modules, which enables us to release great product and get great feedback. We’ve worked hard on the book and will release Etherkai, the Nightmare Dragon on July 22 via RPGNow.

By far, the most exciting month of my life!

That’s where I’ve been for the last bit. Thanks to everyone for your support these three years!  Next week we have a lot of awesome stuff to bring you.