Tiers of Evil

Having well-built characters is good, but its a waste if they aren't involved in a well-built adventure. To help my DM readers, I'm going to start talking about how to build a strong campaign. I'm going to start with one of the most prominent obstacles in any party's travels: the villains. A memorable villain will give the party a reason to keep fighting. One villain won't be enough, however. As the campaign progresses, defeated foes reveal allegiances to still greater enemies. In the end, the party must go against the true villain- the man behind the curtain.

Tier Five: Faceless Legions
At the bottom of the food chain is the legions of faceless warriors who support the entire villainous empire. The party will be fighting these most of the time and they will never expect more than a couple lines of description before they lay into them. The Faceless Legions may not be exciting, but they are vital. Without a steady supply of mooks and lackeys, every fight would have to be against a memorable arch-villain.

Putting Them to Work: More than most of your encounters will feature the Faceless Legions. There isn't very much you need to consider when deploying them apart from basic strategy and stats. Make sure every encounter with hordes of nameless foes isn't the same, however. Even the most generic of lackeys has their own ideas on tactics. Overwhelmed foes might break rank and flee while especially cocky ones might attempt to take the defender one-on-one.

Tier Four: Elite Soldiers
Often, a villain will call in a more specialized warrior to slow down a group of heroes. These elites are tougher than their disposable counterparts, but they still won't last more than a single encounter. They may be a leader of their generic, faceless counterparts or they may prefer to work alone or in their own special group. No matter how they strike, they are noticeably different from other foes without adding significant story building to the fight.

Putting Them to Work: The most common use for Elite Soldiers is to spice up a battle with the Faceless Legions. Throwing in an enemy with distinctive armor or tactics can force your party to abandon their tried-and-true tactics. Just be careful how distinctive your elites are. A party doesn't have to be full of pros to figure out that the foe with the most description is the one they need to take out first.

Tier Three: Ringleaders
At this tier we begin to see enemies which the party will have some knowledge of before a battle. They may be the head of a notorious thieves' guild or the chief of a rampaging barbarian tribe, but all Ringleaders are infamous enough that the players will hear their name before running into them. Ringleaders may even be working for villains further up the chain. Numerous criminal organizations could be funding a single tier two evil without even knowing it.

Putting Them to Use: Ringleaders can be little "mini-bosses" at the end of a series of encounters. Their lackeys might give the adventurers grief over a series of quests, but the Ringleader isn't going to be able to avoid justice for long. Putting a Ringleader down is a minor reward for the players, a chance to make life marginally better for the people under their sway. It's also a great way to point their ire higher up the chain.

Tier Two: Faces of Evil
Tier two villains are the major evils of the campaign. They are likely to be people that the characters have been seeing or hearing about for the majority of the adventure. For a while, the party may have believed these baddies were the highest rung of the evil plaguing their land. These villains have connections everywhere and a ton of influence. Going up against them will test the adventurers to their limits.

Putting Them to Work: The Faces of Evil should be major foes in your campaign. They are likely to be in positions of power and getting to them will require numerous quest's worth of favors and equipment. When the party does manage to corner a Face of Evil, it should be a very difficult fight. These villains didn't get where they are by being pushovers. With them gone, the world may become a little lighter or maybe the world is put into greater danger from the evil on the next tier.

Tier One: World Eater
When the Face(s) of Evil have been defeated, the party learns of a far more terrible threat to the world. The World Eater is the top of the evil food chain; the end all and be all of the villain word. It could be a dark God or an elemental monster or even a super-powered wizard. No matter what form it takes, the threat remains the same. If the World Eater gets their way, the world as the adventurers know it will be gone forever.

Putting Them to Work: The World Eater represents the ultimate ambition of the villains of your campaign. It may be ageless and putting it's malicious intelligence towards enslaving the planet. It could just be a mindless force of destruction that the forces of evil were planning to use on their enemies. Either way, its bigger and badder than anything the party has fought thus far and it should be the epic concluding battle to your campaign.

Five Habits of Highly Effective DMs

In an earlier post, I talked about ways to be a good DM. This week, I'm going to talk about ways to be a great DM. Good DMs lead campaigns that make every meeting fun, but a great DM keeps the party chatting about their adventures between game nights. Here are five tricks that will bring any campaign to the next level.

Trick One: Build Around Your Characters
"You are confronted by your long-lost brother who still blames you for your father's death."
When your group first got together to build characters, you made sure that your players built their characters around your world (to some degree). Now, its time to return the favor. Make sure you know important facts of each player's back story: hometown, family, occupation, childhood rivals. You might even consider jotting some notes in your DM notebook (you do have one, right?).

Tricking Out: The next time the campaign train pulls into a small, unnamed town, you can pull out a hero's hometown. Will this character be welcomed or shunned? Will anyone even recognize them? Want to give your party a little "friendly" competition? Pull together a team of NPCs that have connections to each of your adventurers. Always be looking for ways to pull pieces of back story into the adventure.

Trick Two: Know Your World
"This valley has been conquered by thirteen different warlords and I can name all of them."
It's very easy (and perfectly acceptable) to simply drop your heroes in the generic DnD world and be done with it. If you want to make a bit more of your weekly adventures, take some time to customize the world. You can keep the rules and deities or go full blown home-brew. What's important is that you know how your world works and that your players are able to access the information they need to play.

Tricking Out: An easy way to customize your world is to limit class or race choices (personally, I don't suggest limiting classes). Take a look at how each class/race fits into your world and pick out ones that just don't jive. Make sure you can defend your choices as one of your players is guarantied to want to use a removed option. Know the way that your cities are governed and what place magic holds. This work will make quest building a breeze.

Trick Three: Don't Let the Books Hold You Down
"I said it's a wizard, not a Beholder."
The DnD source books hold a ton of useful information. You can find incredible monsters and detailed stories within them. Take as much from them as you want, but always remember that you are the final word. You are not limited to the words or pictures in your DnD books. If a creature doesn't quite have the abilities or appearance you need, just fudge it. No one can tell you you're wrong about your own world.

Tricking Out: If you need an epic final villain for a quest arch, but all the monsters of the party's level are beasties you aren't prepared to use, just go ahead and manipulate size and appearance to fit your needs. Its easy to claim a troll is a freakishly strong humanoid or a Beholder is a ray-firing wizard. The stats are meant to work for you, not against you. Make them do what you want.

Trick Four: Descriptions, Descriptions, Descriptions!
"The city's gates are flanked at each side by large statues of men covered in chains."
A good campaign gets the players to believe in the world their characters live in. If you want to achieve this level of play, you need to make sure you tell the players everything they would notice about their surroundings. Describing the clothing and decorations of a city can tell characters that they're in a slave state just as well as simply informing them of this fact as they enter.

Tricking Out: Good descriptions are important whenever your adventurers are encountering something you want them to remember. A vicious scar or a pair of gold-rimmed glasses will stick out in their mind each time they encounter a hated foe. A kingdom's national colors will help distinguish fellow countryman from ruthless invaders. Every little detail helps your world jump out of the game and feel real.

Trick Five: Plan Ahead
"The letter is initialed 'MG' and sealed with a small picture of a bird."
DMing by the seat of your pants and throwing together each encounter the day of your meetings is certainly a viable strategy if you don't have a lot of free time. To make your campaign great, keep a long term plan in mind. Your villain will make a much greater impact if you've been dropping hints about them for the past few meetings. When your party puts together the pieces you've been dropping, they will feel like they've accomplished something.

Tricking Out: Leaving written orders for the party to find is an easy way to lay groundwork for latter events. There are a ton of others ways, including cryptic warnings from the village soothsayer or identical methods in a series of crimes. You might consider an elaborate prophecy in which the players are important figures or just a series of enemies with identical tattoos. However you do it, this sort of planning ahead gives your players something to think about and look forward to as your adventure unfolds.

Making Your Character Iconic

If you followed the steps in my last post, you now have a well-built character and are ready to begin playing. Still, you may feel like something is missing. Ask any DnD group about the characters in their party and they will have have volumes to tell you. Rarely do their stories revolve around the stats or powers of the character, though. It's all about who the character is and what they did. Defining characters can become icons in your group and your character can become one of them.

Know Your Character's History
One of the best ways to give you character that extra kick is to know where they came from. This doesn't mean you have to write a novel on them, but you should know where they grew up, what their parents are like, and where/how they got their training. You may think this is kind of silly, but at least give it a shot. The better you know your character's past, the more ammunition you have as you explore their future.

Why Bother? A developed character history does a lot for you and your character. It will be vital in fleshing out the other components that should ultimately lead to an iconic character. Most important, however, is that your DM can use this information to customize your adventures so they better apply to your character. Instead of attacking generic town C, maybe the dragon has its eyes on your old stomping grounds.

Know Your Character's 'Triggers'
I'm using 'triggers' to mean things that make your character react strongly. They include their hopes and fears, what they love and what they hate, and anything else that has a special significance. If you've already taken the time to figure out your character's history, this part should be pretty easy. The major events that formed your character should spell out a helpful list of triggers.

Why Bother? This should be pretty obvious, but you want to know your character's triggers so that you can better play their actions from moment to moment. If royalty taxed your family into the ground, you'll play that negotiation a lot different from if your family was royalty. Again, your DM (you are telling him all this, right?) can use your information to customize your adventures. Got a thing against goblins? You can bet they'll be everywhere for a while.

Know Your Character's Goals
This is the big one; the driving force that keeps your character moving. If you've figured out your history and your triggers, you probably already know what your character's goal is. This is the thing that made your character leave their old life and become an adventurer. Your goal could be simple, like getting enough loot to live comfortably, or more complex, like overthrow the tyrannical king an establish them self as ruler of the empire.

Why Bother? Your character will not feel successful unless they are making progress towards their goal. All of their actions should come back to it. More importantly, this goal is going to keep them with the other player's characters through the roughest personality clashes. The goal is your character's fuel: without it, you will never be able to make the kinds of decisions that turn a generic character into an iconic one.

Six Steps to a Better Character

I have battled through the poor Internet connection to bring you a long overdue update. Today, we are going to dive into the process of creating a character that is strong in both development and actual playability. The process laid out in the Character Builder (online or offline versions) is a good start, but I like to jump around a little more.

Step One: Picking Your Race and Class

The Builder recommends you start by picking a class, and that’s not a bad option (especially if your party is counting on you to fill a certain role). Picking your race first can also give you a nudge towards a complete character. The key is to take a race or class that you are interested in and find a complementary other choice. It is best if your race has a bonus in your class’ primary stat. It is not essential, but it will make assigning ability scores and playing your character much less frustrating.

Questions to Ask: Who is my character? What do they do? What is my character?

Step Two: Assigning Ability Scores

Your character’s ability scores form a structure for how they interact with the world and people in it. They will excel in some areas, but fall short in others. Make sure you have an 18 in your class’ primary stat and a 16 in a secondary score. After that, the choice is all yours. If you choose to take 8 in one of your scores, consider what that means for the character. Is your character slow of speech but strong of arm? Are they good with people but terrible at taking a hit? Just remember, the stats are a good indicator of character traits, but you always have the final say.

Questions to Ask: What is my character good at? What do they suck at? What traits do they value?

Step Three: Choose Skills

Ability scores can give you an excellent sweep of your character’s traits and personality. With skills, you can tweak that overview into a more complete character. Your skill selection is limited by your class, but you should still consider the implications of those skills outside the characters’ profession. There’s a reason why your character chose to develop these talents instead of others. It is also important to consider what skill other members of your party bring to the table. If you feel strongly that your character would favor one skill over another, you should try to work with your teammates to cover all the bases.

Questions to Ask: What skills has my character cultivated? What skill do they see as being valuable? Why those skills?

Step Four: Select Feats and Powers

Feats and powers represent your character’s combat prowess and particular style. Combat should not be your only concern when building a character, but it should be your primary one. The first feats you should look at are class and racial feats. Even if you don’t want to take them right away, they can give you ideas for directions to build in. Next, consider how your character fights. Could they use extra toughness or better armor to weather the extra hits? Are they experts at their chosen weapons, guarantying accuracy when it counts? Choosing powers is simply an extension of this line of thought.

Questions to Ask: How does my character fight? What weapons do they favor? Do they especially proud of any of their techniques?

Step Five: Name and Equip Your Character

What’s in a name? Everything. This name is how everyone, friend or foe, will come to know your character. Sit and think about it, but don’t lose all of your momentum. If nothing comes, poke through your race’s entry in the appropriate Player’s Handbook. I usually hit “Random” on the builder until something I can work with comes up. Remember, the name itself doesn’t make the character memorable, you do. Equipping your character (at level 1) is really simple. Just grab the best armor you can and whatever weapon you decided on along with an adventurer’s kit. That’ll be everything you need.

Questions to Ask: Does this name work with my concept? Can I make this name memorable to friend and foe? Why wouldn’t I grab an adventurer’s kit?

Step Six: Choose Your Background

You should have a pretty good image of your character by now. If you do, choosing a background should be as easy as finding one that matches your ideas and running with it. If not, I recommend looking through your character’s skills and finding one that you believe your character is better in than the score suggests. Then, run through the backgrounds and pull out the ones that give a bonus to that skill. The smaller pool should help your decision. You can always look through the backgrounds that give more complex bonuses, but I find many of them to be a little too confusing.

Questions to Ask: What events shaped my character? Where did my character come from? How does this bonus fit my character?