http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dusg/20080227a
For those who are not DDI members, here is the text; but let me add a
couple of my own notes:
1. Discussion was made about keeping track of marking by various
players. This article says a creature can only be marked by one foe at
a time, and new marks supercede old ones. That means you don't really
have to worry about multiple marking powers being in play, only the most
recent one.
2. For Greyhawk fans, the author mentions he's running a paragon-tier
Castle Greyhawk game. This may bode well for seeing a 4E version of it
sometime down the road.
Now, on with the article, minus the pictures of course. The latter do
illustrate some of the techniques quite nicely.
Last month I featured good advice sent in by you on table management. I
just want to thank everyone who sent me suggestions. Even if I didn't
feature your particular nugget of game-table wisdom, I enjoyed reading
every single response.
As promised, this month, we'll talk about tracking table conditions and
all the little modifiers, conditions, and other bundles of joy that
occur in the heat of the battle grid shuffle, but rather than using 3rd
Edition Dungeon & Dragons for our examples, we'll explore some upcoming
4E-isms.
Let me start off by saying, like many DMs, I'm a sucker for little DM
table tools. Every convention I attend, I scour the dealer's hall
looking for interesting little knickknacks that promise to help me run
my game faster or help me convey information to my players with ease.
Some have fulfilled that promise and have found a place on my game table
week after week. Others collect dust in this storage bin or the other,
discarded after one session of use.
Yet, there's nothing like a new edition to make me rethink past
assumptions and to help me find new uses for old tools. And throughout
the 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons development and playtest process, I
found myself going through those bins and finding ways to use those
nifty little tools that have been lying fallow during the last edition's
play.
Bloodied
You're in the middle of a tense battle. The wicked mind flayer and its
grimlock minions have backed your group into a corner, and it is going
to take pure grit and the best tactics to get out alive. It's the
rogue's turn. Her player, Lisa, scans the battle grid. She knows that
some of the grimlocks have been hit, but she can't remember which have
been hit most often. "Which one looks the most hurt," she asks, knowing
she should strike there to make an opening in anticipation of taking out
their formidable leader.
I absolutely love the bloodied condition. Not only does it give
designers an interesting trigger to put on truly debilitating and heroic
effects, but it's also a fantastic tool of communicating the general
state of the battle quickly. (If you haven't heard about the bloodied
condition, check it out in the current D&D Miniatures rules. Because a
number of interesting powers on both the PC and monster side rely on
their players knowing when a foe is bloodied, when you start playing 4th
Edition D&D, get into the early habit of calling out when your character
or the monsters you control are bloodied. On the PC side, it lets the DM
know that he can unleash some interesting monster powers and it lets
your clerics and warlords know that you may want some hit point relief
and soon. On the DM side, it lets players know how they are doing in the
battle and gives them crucial information that will inform power and
action point choice later in the encounter.
Depending on the size of your group, it may be pretty easy to have your
players call out when their characters are bloodied. I'm one of those
DMs who doesn't mind metagame chatter, so my players are free to talk
about the particulars of their hit points and conditions, but I know
that many DMs frown on this. Whatever your take on metagaming, have your
players call out when they are bloodied when they become so. Bloodied
should be no secret. If you are dealing with a particularly large gaming
group, or, as DM, you're afraid that you're going to miss out on monster
powers that trigger when an enemy is bloodied, give each player a little
table-tent with the word "bloodied" on it. With a glance you can see the
state of the PCs and progress the action quickly.
As far as letting the PCs know when monsters are bloodied, lately I've
become a fan of actually marking the miniatures in some way. I've been
taking my D&D Miniatures and sticking a pin in the top. I can then drop
beads for different conditions. I have some white skull beads (picked up
during a Gen Con So Cal) that I've been using for the bloodied condition.
Marked
Marked is a new condition that defenders and some soldier monsters can
apply to their enemies. By itself, it gives a penalty to your target if
it attacks anyone but you, which helps defenders and soldiers fulfill
their role on the battle grid. Often, though, there are other effects
that serve as riders on the marked condition. For instance the paladin's
divine challenge -- that class's signature marking ability -- does some
amount of radiant damage once a turn when the target of divine challenge
attacks someone other than the paladin who marked him. Of course, the
fighter (the other Player's Handbook defender) features a different
effect, dissuading her mark from taking the battle elsewhere. Oh, and
this is really important to remember -- a creature can be marked by only
one opponent at a time and new marks supersede old marks.
So like the combat advantage granted by flanking, marked is relational
in nature, but unlike flaking, it can't be apprehended purely by looking
at the battle grid. In simple battles with one defender or soldier, you
won't have any trouble at all -- just have the defender's player keep
track of it -- but when you have two defenders in a group (like I do in
my Castle Greyhawk paragon-tier game) or a group of mark-using soldiers
in the encounter, keeping track of the condition can be a tad tricky,
and you'll probably want to use a rigorous method for tracking the
condition throughout the rounds.
The method I've been using lately is marking the bases with magnetic,
colored counters called Alea Tools. Each character or monster that can
mark in an encounter is given his or her own color, and when a target is
marked, that color is placed under the base. Alea Tools also offers a
tool to create 1-inch magnetized pads that you can put on the bottom of
the base to make sure that when you move the mini, the marker comes with
it. Last time I was at my local game store, I also noticed that Gale
Force 9 offers a magnetized miniature base kit. You could also use
beads, like I do for the bloodied condition.
Combat Advantage
While the combat advantage granted by flanking can be apprehended by
looking at the field of battle, 4th Edition features many other ways
that a creature can grant combat advantage. Various conditions, such as
blinded, dazed, and stunned, also grant combat advantage, and since the
rogue's sneak attack is contingent on the condition and not just the act
of flanking (or catching someone flat-footed), you'll want to find ways
in which to communicate this particular combat occurrence to rogues at
the very least. Like bloodied, I use those handy skull beads to mark a
figure that grants combat advantage to all enemies, and allow the rogue
player to keep track of the occasional enemy that grants combat
advantage only to her character (using the magnetic markers in
complicated battles if she desires).
Cards and More Cards
I really love using cards in my D&D games. Cards are portable and
flexible information devices. They fit easily in the hand, and you can
put a bunch of information on them. Right now, I am fitting entire 4th
Edition D&D stat blocks on my 3x5 initiative cards with relative ease --
including my current monstrous bad guy, an adult red dragon named
Nemisalat (and she's a solo creature to boot!). But I've lauded the
virtues of initiative cards in this column before -- no need stomping
old ground to death. For my 4th Edition games I've also been using
condition, power, and magic item cards.
Condition cards are nothing new. There have been a number of publishers
who've created condition cards, and many DMs use them. The reason that I
think they'll be especially important in your 4th Edition D&D games is
because there will be a period of time when everyone in the group is
learning the rules, and the more you can avoid page flipping, the faster
your first few sessions will run. While developing the new D&D edition,
we made sure that the new conditions were simple, talked to one another,
and were bullet-pointed so you don't have to wade through paragraphs to
find the one clause you seek. This format lends itself to simple cards
that convey information quickly. I hand players cards when their
characters are afflicted with a condition, and they hand it back when
the condition ends.
Power cards aren't entirely new either . . . other classes have had them
in the past (mostly spell- or psionic-using classes, but weapon-users
got their first taste of their use in Tome of Battle), but they are very
helpful especially when you start playing 4th Edition. Like the casters
of past editions, everyone in 4E has a healthy dose of interesting
options they can employ in combat, and their use and reuse is determined
by their rates of usage. While this greatly enhances choice and fun in
game play, if you've never used a power-heavy class in past editions of
D&D, this can seem a little daunting at first. Even relative veterans of
the system (like my home playtest group) can find being thrown into a
higher level of play daunting at first without some mnemonic tools.
Writing even the most basic description of what a power does and on what
page it appears only expedites game play. I know that some of you will
scoff at using cards in a roleplaying game, but my sincere advice is to
get over your hang-ups. Cards are tools, not the destroyer of roleplaying.
Many times the right card can enhance the roleplaying experience. I've
been using the Paizo GameMastery item cards since their release and
they're just as useful in 4E. They're relatively inexpensive, and they
feature great art and basic descriptions, plus they offer enough room
for you or your players to write what the item is or does on the back.
They are especially handy to give out when the PCs have found an item,
but aren't sure what its purpose (or true purpose) is yet. They are also
very handy in that they allow your players to keep track of inventory
and have a handy way of trading items . . . just pass the card along.
There are, of course, other companies that produce similar products, and
using index cards is probably the cheapest way of pulling off this
particular time-saving trick.
Finding Your Own Way
Of course my tools are exactly that: my tools. While I hope some of you
have found some inspiration and helpful advice (especially those of you
who will be running the first public 4th Edition D&D games at Dungeons &
Dragons Experience) my tools are based on what I have at hand, my love
of experimenting, and the quirks of my own peculiar predilections. There
is no doubt that the particulars of my tools will change the more I play
4th Edition, and there is also no doubt that you will find ways that
work better for you. The general wisdom that I hope you'll take away
from these words of advice is that it is helpful and important to
communicate what's going on in the game (and the story) to your players,
and the more you can do that with at-a-glance tools, the more time it
frees up to use your words, gestures, and general brain power on telling
a good story and presenting memorable challenges. After all, if you've
done your job right, your players are going to tell the stories of those
things for years to come long after the memory of the game mechanics
that brought them to life fades into dead neurons.
[snip mailbag questions]
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