Re-Flavoring your Flavor Text

There are those who say that there is not any role-playing in 4E. These same people are the ones who constantly make this other false argument; that all classes in 4E have 'spells,' mistaking Powers for general magic. I'm not trying to call anybody out or rekindle any old arguments (grognards, I'm talking to you), but I will give you a few more ways to make them choke on their fallacies.

Every power has its own name. The name will give you a general idea of what the power does, but the real details are found in the power's flavor text (that line or three of fluff you'll find directly under the power's name but before the crunchy, mechanical bits). The flavor text is designed to give you an idea of what a power may look like when you use it. You don't need to follow it, exactly or at all, its in there to help you role-play in combat (ZOMGS!!1!!! yes, they really actually do promote role-playing in 4E...).

Anyway, I want to give you a few examples of how you may re-flavor a power's flavor text, so that every time you use so-and-so power, it doesn't always have to look exactly the same.

• Sudden Surge (Fighter, Lv 7): Instead of the bland text provided, perhaps you cleave right through your foe; maybe change it to "you roll" past your opponent? One thing to keep in mind, the mechanics don't change at all, nor do they have to. Sure, to "roll" would imply Acrobatics skill usage which I would use should someone actually try such a move (and that of course would be a move action); but with this power, its just flavor. If it isn't game-breaking, no reason not to include it.
• Eldritch Rain (Warlock, Lv 3): Who says Eldritch energy has to be purple? Also, instead of 'rays' as implied by the original flavor text, why not 'rain' as implied by the power's name? Sure, its a Ranged power (implies that it's source originates from your square), but for the sake of the power, you could say that the 'rain' originates from a square above the target's square, it doesn't change the power at all (to an area or zone for example), its just flavor.
• Sunbeam (Druid, Lv 9): This is pretty tame, flavor-wise. You could say that the clouds part, for example. Or if you're indoors, perhaps the sunbeams shoot out of your eyes! Again, change the color (from the typical yellow that is obviously already assumed...) if you wish, personalize your sunbeam! Also, coming from the eyes reinforces one of the crunchy bits of that power, on a hit your target is blinded!
• Angelic Visage (Invoker, Lv 10): This one is begging for your input! You transform into a death angel -- give us some details! How do your wings appear? Are they full feathers or perhaps sinewy, leathery bat wings? How about a halo? Is it a simple platinum ring or maybe a wicked ring of dark blue flames? Maybe your foe shrieks as he flees -- maybe, he cries like sissy girl. See, there is so much you can decide to explain how this power may look when you use it!

I'm always open for suggestions. If you've got some great flavor you've created for your PC's powers please feel free to share it with me. DM's, you can use these same ideas to better flavor your monsters in combat as well! Let me know, I'm interested to hear what you all come up with!

1d4+5 is an RPG blog with a heavy D&D (4E) flavor. It is updated once or twice a week (with an occasional bonus post here or there) without warning and on my schedule. If you would like to use any of my content, be sure that I am given the proper credit for its use. You can follow DM_Ron on Twitter, and keep an eye out for a 1d4+5 fan page on Facebook in the near future. Keep rolling those 20's!

You must know... yourself?

I was supposed to have a shiny new copy of Primal Power to review for you all (before it hits shelves), but my distributor fell through and I cannot begin to describe how upset I am with them right now. I'm sure you don't want to read a rant though, so I'll talk about something else.



This one is for the players! If you're like me, you don't have a lot of time to actually play your favorite RPG. You've got three or four hours, once a week (if you're lucky), and you have to make the most of it! How you rp is up to you, I'm not here to discuss that today. Today I want to talk about player preparedness in combat.



Combat in 4E D&D is supposed to run fast, smooth, and should be enjoyable for the players to partake in. This is true for seasoned veterans of the game, but if you're relatively new combats tend to slow things to a crawl. How can you avoid this?

1. Make your own PC, and if you can't for whatever reason, at least take some time before sitting down at the table to familiarize yourself with your PC. This is probably the most important thing for a player to do during a game: Be familiar with your PC!


2. After 1st level, familiarity becomes a slight afterthought because now you're adding more to the equation. New feats, powers, paragon paths and epic destinies make things even more confusing. Know how feats and traits affect your PC as your PC becomes more experienced!


3. I probably don't have to say this, but making your PC properly helps out a lot too. You may want to have a guy that is equally good with melee as he is with ranged and be pretty even across the board with skills (a jack of all trades if you will), but really you don't. 4E is a team game, unlike other incarnations of D&D that shall remain nameless... The point is that you don't have to be good at everything, just one thing (or maybe... three things). Anyway, if your PC is built properly he will excel in only a handful of things. This allows you to have a general focus, but more importantly (back to 1.) it'll be easier to be familiar with your PC!


4. Finally, when you are in combat, be ready for your turn! Know what you're going to do ahead of time. Yes, sometimes your plans will change from other person's turn to other person's turn, but if your PC is built properly you'll probably be able to do whatever it is you had planned originally. When you finish a turn, immediately begin to figure out what you want to do next round. Keep that in the back of your mind, because you may have to change that. If circumstances change, change as necessary. At the very least, know what you're going to do on the turn before your turn.


5. I'm only adding this to be thorough, but some people will tell you to speed up combat make all of your rolls at the same time. I say this is horse poop. Not everyone is a math major. Even if you are skilled at math, you still need to take a moment to add everything correctly (especially when you've got different bonuses on different enemies due to effects that occur throughout the battle). You could be attacking 3 different enemies with an area attack for example, but one of them gives you a +2 bonus to hit because of your friend warlord. Another gives you a +2 to damage, and he's also vulnerable to the fire damage you're dealing. The last one is insubstantial but prone plus he's subject to the two fore-mentioned bonuses. See? No point, just make each roll as you need to. Plus, as DM I prefer to see what my players are rolling (I've been playing without the screen -- they can see all of my rolls, why shouldn't I see all of theirs?) as they roll, rather than roll ahead of time and tell you what they got. Plus, that takes a lot away from the game for me. I always like watching that roll and cheering when a 20 comes up or groaning when I see that 1. The dice rolling can be one of the most exciting parts of the game; imagine making that important roll and everybody stands around you, staring at the die in sheer anticipation of what result it will yield in the end! Gives you a little tingle, doesn't it?

Well, that's it for this "episode" as I've been calling them. I guess I could call them articles but are they really? I mean, they're not really episodes either but... You know what, don't judge. I like it, and that's how I roll.

So next time on 1d4+5... No point in a Primal Power review from me, if I can't give it to you a day early I won't have anything to tell you that you won't get from other, more popular blogs and your favorite podcasts. I do have a few things I've been working on, and I'll be hitting you with that soon. Until then, keep rolling those 20's!

Creative Skill Use (and other ways to overcome Skill Challenges)

Keeping on par with the discussion of Skill Challenges, it is important to know that even though any given SC would best be overcome with particular skills that are key to the challenge, you don't always have to stick to the norm. An SC dealing with the PC's trying to persuade a wealthy merchant to loan them some gold for whatever reason (ok, yeah -- as if the PC's really need anyone to loan them money... just work with me here) would typically best be solved with Bluff, Diplomacy, perhaps Insight, and Intimidate mostly. But what if you're the guy with 8 Charisma and training in Athletics?

This is when you need to start thinking of creative ways to use the skills that your PC is trained in. In the above example you could assume that the scene takes place in an office or maybe a private booth in an upper-class restaurant. Your PC is not a talker really, he was just supposed to be muscleman competitor who was forced to resign because he always made the rest of the competition look bad. He trained in Intimidate, but he's still not all that good at it. Let's just say that he is trained in Athletics also, and has a nice ability score bonus to go with it. Oh, whatever shall you do? Use Athletics to flip a table or desk (success grants a +2 bonus on the next Bluff, Diplomacy, or Intimidate check made by any PC).

Using one of the SC's presented in the DMG2, I'm going to only highlight on skills that are not mentioned in the text of any given challenge to try to give examples of ways to use skills differently. Of course, I won't be able to cover them all, some just won't work in certain situations, but I'll give you one or two for each example I use. I'm not going to detail the SC, I'll just give its title and you can follow along starting on p. 89 DMG2.

Closing the Portal
Athletics could be used as in physically smashing or kicking the portal to weaken a part of it to give a +2 bonus to the next Thievery check made on it (if the Athletics check fails, the PC should lose a Healing Surge from causing the portal to shoot him with necrotic energy or something).
Insight could be used as a secondary skill to Arcana, possible to notice a pattern or something similar in the energies (possibly after a Perception check as a minor action).

Aside from trying to figure out ways to make skills work that normally wouldn't, you have several other options you can use as well. If the SC occurs as a typical encounter or within a combat encounter (yes to my players who are reading; I do put SC's in some combat encounters. You have been warned) there are several utility powers, including the new Skill Powers that will be introduced to the general public in PHB3, that can be used during an encounter. Not to mention some racial traits as well (half-elves, I'm talking to you). For longer or extended SC's, the use of certain rituals can count for successes or in some cases even bypass the entire thing!

The point is, to get over the mechanical feel to SC's you have to look past just what's on the paper. Think of less-obvious ways to use your skills and powers (given a particular situation, even an appropriately-named attack power could be used if the player can come up with a reason for it) and don't overlook rituals either. Coming up with new actions and descriptions for what you do gets you past the dice rolling because you're able to create a picture depicted by the result of the roll. Failure isn't always the end. If you fail an SC, you'll still be able to find some other way; it'll just be more difficult.

Next time on 1d4+5...
I've got my campaigns to run tomorrow and the following night. I'm sure something interesting will come up. It usually does.

Role Play vs. Roll Play (and why this is a stupid concept)

On a recent episode of Kicked in the Dicebags, Jonathan's girlfriend, Kristin, had previously asked some listeners to provide the podcast with some questions, a typical Q&A session. One of the questions was something along the lines of, "What is your favorite RPG system and why?" Her answer is the reason for this post you are about to read.

It isn't because of her preference to one system over another -- it was her reasoning behind it. She said that she wasn't really into D&D because she's, "more of a r-o-l-e roleplayer than a r-o-l-l player." Despite her claim to having some experience with the system, it is obvious that she really doesn't. It probably isn't her fault, but instead the fault of the DM running those games for her. Or it could be something that she's missing entirely in a role-playing game.

Before I go on any further, there are some terms that need to established: roll, roll play, role, role play, and roleplaying game (RPG). Roll is, obviously, as in to roll a die to determine the result of any action you may take in any given RPG. Roll play refers to people more or less declaring the use of a given skill (say, Diplomacy), rolling a die, and then accepting the result and not following up with any actual speaking or interaction except for the rolling of that die/dice. Role is simply the role you play in a game, your character. To roleplay, is the act of playing that role, your character but not just a sheet full of numbers and stats. It means to speak as your character would (funny voice or not) and do the things he would do in the scope of the world provided for him (not go against his personality, despite what certain stat numbers might say). A roleplaying game is a game in which you the player take on the role of a character. However, because an RPG is in fact a game, to effectively roleplay within its boundaries requires the use of certain mechanics to be in order to decide how you succeed and fail at various things throughout your character's life.

My players all roleplay thier characters and they do it well. Its all in how you play the game. I run mainly 4E D&D campaigns and roleplaying is a must. Now, contrary to popular belief, a die roll is not required for all roleplaying situations; it is only required when a situation has a chance of failure having an adverse effect on the rest of the game. EXAMPLE: The PC's stumble into a small village in the middle of a swamp. Under normal circumstances, one PC could simply just walk up to a local and say (literally, in-character) "Pardon me, do you know where some weary travellers may find refuge for the night?" Of course, the NPC would just simply point the way and all is progressing. But, suppose that the locals resent and distrust outsiders and would prefer that they stay any place but this village, and then you have to work within the scope of the game's mechanics.

Take a look at your character sheet there, do you see all those numbers listed next to abbreviations like Str, Int, and Cha? That's not you, that's your character! Based on what a 17 Intelligence translates to in game terms, most regular people fall short of that, generally in the Average 10-11 range. You are not as smart or as charming as your character. Especially if you're playing a character who's world is defined by one of those stats. Sometimes, it works the opposite way. If your PC has a low Int score you most likely are smarter than your character. It can be really hard to play something you're not. I've seen several rogues and most of their players simply aren't charming enough to play them up to what their Cha score suggests. That is why dice come in when failure to do something can alter the course of the game. Suppose you need to convince a nation's beloved king to impart a secret of great importance upon you so that you may vanquish a foe quicker and easier -- without it, it will be a long, ardous battle that may see the very end of some of your beloved companions. Of course, the king isn't going to just tell anybody this secret... You get the idea.

You don't need dice for the menial things, but if a single word or phrase is all that hangs in the balance of begging to not be thrown in prison or getting a well-reputed freelancer to accompany your group on their next adventure, the dice define your character's abilities in the context of the game world.

There are certain caveats: If a player, in-character says or tries something that is so profound, or just plain creative (I'm thinking of the token one-liner that just makes the whole group start cracking up -- as long as its appropriate to the situation), they should either get a nice bonus for the roll (+2 to +5) or just an auto-success as warrented by the situation. If someone says something like what was said by Jim Darkmagic, a character in a recent D&D podcast, "Now that your wife's dead, let's dance," would totally earn something at my table -- for that it would probably be a +2 to the attack roll.

Basically, the dispute between roll-playing and roleplaying is a ridiculous concept when it is directed at RPG's. You are not your character, nor is the DM really that NPC. You are not as skilled as your PC's are at certain things, mechanics help you describe that better than simple play-acting ever could. Just because you roll dice to determine success or failure in any given task does not mean you shouldn't portray your character. Even a simple, "Please sir, I'd never survive in a prison," along with your Bluff roll is acceptable.

Next time on 1d4+5...
Perhaps this calls for a discussion on Skill Challenges? Or maybe I'll talk about religion in RPG's, something I had been planning on doing for awhile now and today found out that The Podgecast had a discussion about it on their last episode. It don't matter, I have other things on the subject that they failed to discuss upon. Until next time, keep rolling those 20's!