Faster Combat Resolution With Intimidate

In my experience, Intimidate is vastly overused in social/roleplay interactions and severely underused in combat. Many players choose to intimidate NPCs in situations where intimidate is close to an automatic fail. A look at published modules and their automatic fail situations can give us some examples: intimidating a noble while in his court and in the presence of his guards; intimidating a prisoner in front of his crew when they have lost all hope of leaving prison alive; intimidating someone who is willing to be a martyr for his cause. In essence, people that have too much to lose or, in the alternative, nothing left to lose, are very hard and in some instances impossible to intimidate. You could probably Bluff them out of their life and soul, but today's topic is Intimidate in combat so let's stick to it.

During combat, a player can use his standard action to Intimidate one or more opponents that are bloodied. It is an opposed check against the enemy's Will. However, it is by no means an easy check. If the target of your Intimidate is already bloodied – which is a requirement – it is safe to say it is hostile to you, and hostile targets gain a +10 to their Will in this situation.

Intimidate in combat can be a high risk gamble. Yet, its reward can be quite sweet:

Success: The adventurer forces a bloodied monster to surrender, gets a monster to reveal a secret, or cows a monster into taking some other action. This skill is not mind control, so a cowed monster is unlikely to take any action that would cause immediate harm to himself.

Rules Compendium, p. 148.

Attempting to Intimidate a monster means you exchange your attack for your Intimidate attempt. This is not a bad thing. A recently bloodied monster can take anywhere from 3 to 5 rounds to kill. If your Intimidate check is successful, combat ends right then and there, with the monster's surrender.

Intimidate is not limited to just one target, either. You can attempt to Intimidate all bloodied enemies that are able to see and hear you. You must roll against each individual monster's Will separately but this is not bad, either. It is like getting the opportunity to attack several monsters in the same round without even having to worry about your weapon's range, as long as the monsters can see and hear you.

Think about what this means. Your group of 5 adventurers is fighting 7 monsters. After a few rounds, four of them are bloodied, three are not. This fight still has a long way to go. On your turn, you decide to Intimidate the four monsters that are bloodied. Let's say you are only successful against two. The result is that those two monsters surrender to your party, right then and there. The odds have now changed drastically in your party's favor. The players that were focused on attacking those monsters that surrendered can now switch to the remaining mobs. Combat length has thus been shortened.

Intimidate does not work against all monsters. Monsters immune to fear cannot be intimidated. However, the important thing is to remember that when you are in combat, you have options that go beyond sword, spell and arrow. Use them wisely for quicker combat resolution.

The Keep on the Borderlands

One of my fondest memories from when I started playing Dungeons and Dragons is from circa 1980-1982, when TSR Games published a Basic Set that included none other than Dungeon Module B2 The Keep on the Borderlands. I remember the many sleepless nights playing this module with my brother and my cousin. Initially we focused our adventures in the Caves of Chaos. Only later did we discover the many adventures to be had inside the Keep itself, as well as in the forest surrounding the caverns.

If you are like me and for a long time now have been wanting to revisit that adventure, I got good news for you. Michael Weimholt, a.k.a. Weem, from TheWeem.com has redone the original maps in Photoshop and his maps are a thing of beauty. He has high resolution maps, lower resolution maps, player maps without the keys, secret doors and traps... all to be printed in color and used in your next gaming session. There is one drawback, though. Back in 1980, squares represented 10' each instead of the 5' of 3e and 4e. Notwithstanding, his maps are beautiful and you can easily incorporate them into an existing adventure, as a quick fix when you are running short on time or even when the players do the unforeseeable and a sudden twist in your campaign demands a dungeon pronto.  You can see and download them all here: Caves of Chaos Reimagined by Weem.

If, like me, you've been looking for a free weekend (or three) to convert The Keep on the Borderlands to 4e, I got great news for you.  The guys from DnD Corner.com already went through the trouble and have produced a damn good conversion of Module B2 The Keep on the Borderlands.  Be advised, though, this is not your daddy's Module B2.  While the original Keep on the Borderlands was for characters ranging  in levels 1 - 3, the 4e conversion is for characters level 3-5.  Like Weem's maps, the 4e conversion is also free of charge.  You can download it here:  Module B2 Keep on the Borderlands Revisited - Available for Download.

Download these products, check them out, play them through and let us know what you think.

Dungeon Master or Dungeon Bastard?

A couple of days ago, one of my best friends sent me a link to a freely available documentary in Hulu.com called The Dungeon Masters (2008). Granted, I have not finished watching the documentary, however I had to write this column after the first 7 minutes of the video. It is not that the video sucks, because it does not – at least not in those 7 minutes. It is Richard Meeks.

We meet Richard Meeks while he is DM'ing a 2^nd Ed. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons session in GenCon 2007. Initially, he seems like very engaging and fun Dungeon Master. A few seconds later, he is handing down double crits and attacks that make the character hit lose one level. He is also being accused of cheating by his players. However, it is what happens next that struck a dissonant chord with me. In an interview, Richard Meeks explains how he killed his players because they were being too greedy and he did not like that. In so doing, he broke up a group of “6 or 7 friends” that had been playing together for 9 years... and he smugly smiles about it as if it was his crowning achievement as a Dungeon Master.

As he tells the story, the characters had been “lovingly developed over 7 years worth of playing.” In his own words:

I killed them all. They were stuck in a room knee deep in gold and I was just really mad that they were being so greedy. And out of the 8 or 9 around the table, they all jumped through the door. It's just that it was not a door, it was a sphere of annihilation and I said 'Ok, you've all jumped into the doorway, give me your character sheets.' And then they go 'Why?' And I say 'You're all dead. You've stepped into a sphere of annihilation.' And they all got up from the table, handed me their character sheets, packed up their dice and books, and went home.

I think the verbatim quote above summarizes many of the things you can do wrong when playing the role of the Dungeon Master. Let's go through them.

First, being a Dungeon Master doesn't pit you against the players. Your role is not to beat the players. You don't get to 'kill them'.  A decent Dungeon Master will not trick his players into walking through a doorway only to tell them it is a sphere of annihilation. Be fair. Give your players a fighting chance. If anything, bend the rules in their favor so that they at least have a fighting chance. A sphere of annihilation is a magically powerful spell or item (or whatever you want to call it). Any magic using player should be able to passively perceive there's some strong magical/arcane force or aura around that doorway. Worst case scenario, at least give them some type of saving throw.

Second, don't put your players in impossible positions and then get upset because they acted like every mother's son. Seriously, you put your players in a 'room knee deep in gold' and then get upset because 'they were being so greedy'? What did you expect would happen? More importantly, what would you have done if you were a player in a room knee deep in gold?

Third, don't get mad and punish players because they did not act the way you expected them to. As a Dungeon Master, your job is not to run players through a linear script. To me, the biggest difference between a tabletop RPG and an MMORPG is precisely that: total freedom in the tabletop game versus very limited options in the computer game. If the players did not act as you expected them, it is your job as the Dungeon Master to adapt. You feel like they dropped the ball because they did something you did not plan for? That's where the fun of being a Dungeon Master lies. Pick up the ball where they dropped it and carry it forward to a fun encounter. Don't shove the ball down their throats.

Fourth, death does not have to be the end of the adventure. This is something many Dungeon Masters forget. When the players die, they go somewhere. What happens when they get to Hell, the Abyss, the Shadowfell, Valhalla or wherever you want them to go? Can they get a chance to redeem themselves and come back to life by helping an Archdevil in a power struggle against other Archfiends? There is more intrigue among infernals, eternals, elementals, devils and angels than you can find anywhere else. Let the fun continue, just change the setting.

In the end, it is all about having fun together with your players.  Don't break up a group of 6 or 7 friends whose characters have been lovingly developed over 7 years worth of playing because you put them in an impossible position and they acted like anybody else would. Even if you feel you must kill them, you can still let the fun continue in a different plane. Embrace your role - be a Dungeon Master, not a Dungeon Bastard.