I may be not the greatest lover of d&d 4th ed., but this is the game I’m playing right now, so I’m trying to appreciate the good features of the game.

And what does 4th ed. do best? Correct: tactical combat!

To spice up things a bit, my group of players decided to try a new approach to 4th ed., where tactical combat should shine at its best, taking the most out of the simple and easy to remember rules. So, we tried to stop thinking about d&d as a tabletop roleplaying game: we treat it as a pure MMORPG now,  and we use it in this way in our sessions.

One of the greates differences between tabletop and massive online RPGs is that the former are mostly cooperative games, while the latter are mostly competitive (or team-competitive at best). What if you play 4th ed. in a competitive way? This is what I call D&D 4: ARENA.

To be started, imagine your players at the table dividing themselves in 2 or more teams. Then, one of the teams designs the shape and the obstacles of the arena, while the other chooses where to place its members first. This is all you need for game prep: in the next phase, players are killing each other in the most fantastic ways, having a terrific fun for the whole night.

I learned that there are just a few basic rules to play an arena game:

1. Make balanced teams. The roles introduced with 4th ed. are a great way to help balance. If you have 4 players per team, cover the 4 roles. If nobody wants to play a controller, use 2 strikers in both teams. Balance is everything in this case. One of the last games we played was a 3 striker team against a leader, defender and striker team. Guess what? The 3 strikers soon become hamburger meat.
2. Let every player make more than 1 PC. This is incredibly helpful for balance. If a player likes to use just one class or one role, let him do so, but ensure other players can cover different roles to have parties balanced in every situation.
3. Beware of ranged characters! If teams design an open-arena, they are most likely game-winners, while they may struggle in cramped fight situations. Ensure each team has his share of ranged PCs.
4. Define the rules and follow them. Common rules may cover aspects like: PCs “respawn” or not; PCs gain personal advantages or rewards when they kill or not; the goal is just killing the most or PCs have to fulfill a duty (caputre the flag, dominate checkpoints, collect items…); and so on…
5. Be careful with action points! A well spent action point may cause a PC’s death in one round. Nobody likes it. I don’t let players use action points in my arena games.
6. Don’t let players go idle when their PC dies! Have a rule for this: if your rules let player respawn, you have no problem, but if they don’t you should find a way to keep everybody at the game table for the night. I use one of these rules: if every player prepared more than 1 PC, I let them play a “tag game” wherenew PCs jump in when contenders die (if one or more players are still dying at an hirgher rate than the rest of the group, I let they re-use a died PC with some kind of penalty); if not, I prepare some critters to spawn. Players whose characters got killed can play BOTs, usually a swarm of minions each, that attack every player in the arena.
7. Have a game master supervise the game. This is not strictly required if your players are fine with it, but just a single power player can spoil the night for everybody so it’s better that one of the more respected guys at the table is awarded the title of GM. He still plays in the arena, but he works as a judge for the rules.

That’s it! Your arena is nice and ready.

I’m aware that this kind of gaming is tearing away the R of RPG, but it can be a fun experiment, now and then.

There’s no plot, no or fixed level advancement, no dungeon crawls in these games. Just simple, streamlined, tactical combat.

That’s what 4th ed. was made for, anyway.

What do you think?

I’ve been playing 4th ed. for six months now, and I’ve been GMing it for a couple more. I player 4 PCs until now: wizard, druid, bard and playtest monk, but I had the chance to see the most of the classes in action.

There are quite a few things I really like of 4th ed., and whenever I’m going to change systems I think I’ll try to implement them into my games.

The most relevant, I think, is at-will powers, beacuse I’ve never been fond of crossbow-yelding mages

But there’s a lot more of things I really hate about this ruleset, even if I could get along with many of them.

I can live with powers that have different and unrelated effects, of which the role of leader usually abuses. Oh, yeah, I can really believe the hype of seeing me swinging my sword into a goblin for a ridicolous amount of damage can make you forget you are bleeding (read: hit a foe, an unrelated ally can use a surge). Really, I can.

I can live with the fact that 99.9% of non-utility powers deal damage as a primary effect, so they can be used uniquely in combat situations. I can understand the rationale beyond this: “what’s the most exciting part of a session?” “Combat!” “And what’s so good about combat?” “Dealing damage!” “So, why don’t everybody deal damage with their actions, whatever they are doing?” “Wow, that’s just what people out there need!”

I’m even ok with 3 out of 4 arcane classes (in PHB and PHB2) using Charisma as their main stat. I used to think magic-users should be smart, these rules tell me they just need to be witty: a timely reply works better than years of hard work and study, you know.

But there’s one thing I just can’t stand at all. I tried to explain it to myself. I tried to think that’s for the good of the game. But I can’t. Maybe I’m a little man, but I can’t get along with this. It sums up in the words CHA vs AC.

What’s so bad about this? I’ll let you know what I think. Stating that a bard can use his Charisma to crush heads with a sword makes the whole game go out from any probability and deeply mines the suspension of disbelief.

Why a wandering singer, with Cha 20, should be as good at hitting a foe with a sword than a battle-hardened soldier?

Even worse: why in the world a wildshaped druid should rely on its common sense (Wisdom) to smash people with his claws?

I have only an answer for this: streamlining and empowering. Making classes hit with their powers on the base of possible stat uses, makes them easier to be dealt with at every level. Players know what their PCs are intended to do, and they can focus on these aspects. They choose a power out of a list of 4, and they don’t bother with anything else. Realism and athmosphere included.

Try to ask to your players to describe their actions, and it will be plain that this cannot work: let one of your players strike with Pounce (druid, at-will) and then ask him how his common sense, respect of traditions and experience with life helped him to dodge an arrow and jump over a foe after a charge. Let’s see what’s coming up from this.

What do you think?

And welcome to the Tower, Vanphil! Yes, welcome to me. Because I’ve been a DM for 10 years, but a blogger since today. So, this is a whole new world for me, and I’m quite excited I’m going to explore it from now on.

This blog is about roleplaying, and a great way to share my experiences as a DM. I live in Italy, where the scene is much different from outher countries , but I write in English to let my words free to fly to other counties and other traditions.

I was playing Dungeons and Dragons when the Dwarf was a class, and I’m still playing it now that bards use their charm and sympathy to slice a their swords through a gnoll’s throat (Ok, this is a rant. I’ll discuss about this later).

I played some other games in my life, and I read a big lot of books and articles about the most important game rules out there. I didn’t have a chance to play much of them here where I live, since finding new players is quite a task, and many of them are not willing to learn another set of rules. Well, many are not willing to learn ONE set of rules neither

Eventually, I found my way of the gamer, and I’m currently testing with different groups of players a new set of rules, called Vadlym.

So, this blog will be the place for my DM advices, my rants and my interesting (!) stories, but it will also be the proud home of the Vadlymers around the globe, it there’s any

So, welcome to the Tower, folks. Welcome to my place. Enjoy your stay.

Vanphil