Using the Rules

This chapter covers the rules you need to play the Dungeons & Dragons game, from the moment the characters enter the dungeon to the end of the session, when they tally up their experience points.

More Movement Rules

The Player’s Handbook covers tactical and overland movement for Small and Medium creatures either traveling across the ground, or using skills such as Climb, Jump, and Swim. This section of the rules expands on that information to include creatures smaller than Small and larger than Medium and also discusses flying movement.

Movement and the Grid

While this is a game of imagination, props and visual aids can help everyone imagine the same thing, avoid confusion, and enhance the entire game play experience.

In a round-by-round simulation, particularly when you are using miniatures, movement will sometimes feel choppy. If a character runs across a room so large that it takes him 2 rounds to do so, it might seem as though he runs halfway, stops, and then runs the rest of the way a little later. Although there’s no way to avoid representing movement in a start-stop-start-stop fashion, try to keep in mind⁠—​and emphasize to the players⁠—​that all movement during an encounter is actually fluid and continuous.

Movement and Position

Few characters in a fight are likely to stand still for long. Enemies appear and charge the party; the adventurers reply, advancing to take on new foes after they down their first opponents. Wizards circle the fight, looking for the best place to use their magic; rogues quietly skirt the fracas, seeking a straggler or an unwary opponent to strike with a sneak attack. With all this tactical maneuvering going on, some way to represent character location within a defined scale can really aid the game.

Handle movement and position by using miniature figures on a grid. Miniatures show where a figure is in relation to others, and the grid makes it clear how far the characters and monsters can move.

Standard Scale

1-inch square = 5 feet

30mm figure = human-size creature

Scale and Squares

The standard unit for tactical maps is the 5-foot square. This unit is useful for miniatures and for drawing dungeon maps, which are usually created on graph paper. In a fight, each Small or Medium character occupies a single 5-foot square. Larger creatures take up more squares, and several smaller creatures fit in a square. See the Creature Size and Scale table.

Diagonal Movement

When moving diagonally on a grid, the first square moved counts as 5 feet of movement, but the second diagonal move counts as 10 feet. This pattern of 5 feet and then 10 feet continues as long as the character moves diagonally, even if some straight movement through squares separates the diagonal moves. For example, a character moves 1 square diagonally (5 feet), then 3 squares straight (15 feet), and then another square diagonally (10 feet) for a total movement of 30 feet.

Armor and Encumbrance

The Player’s Handbook explains the effect of armor and encumbrance on creatures with base speeds of 20 feet or 30 feet. The table below provides reduced speed figures for all base speeds from 20 feet to 100 feet (in 10-foot increments).

Moving in Three Dimensions

Not every creature gets around by walking and running. A shark, even though it moves by swimming, can take a run action to swim faster. A character under the influence of a fly spell can make a flying charge. A climbing thief can use part of his speed to climb down a short wall and then use the remainder to hustle toward a foe. Use the movement rules to apply to any sort of movement, not just when traveling across a flat surface.

Tactical Aerial Movement

The elf barbarian mounted on the giant eagle swoops over the group of mind flayers, launching arrows from his bow. One of the mind flayers wears winged boots and takes to the air to better confront the elf. Once movement becomes three-dimensional and involves turning in midair and maintaining a minimum velocity to stay aloft, it gets more complicated.

Most flying creatures have to slow down at least a little to make a turn, and many are limited to fairly wide turns and must maintain a minimum forward speed. Each flying creature has a maneuverability, as shown on Table 2–1: Maneuverability. The entries on Table 2–1 are defined below.

Minimum Forward Speed: If a flying creature fails to maintain its minimum forward speed, it must land at the end of its movement. If it is too high above the ground to land, it falls straight down, descending 150 feet in the first round of falling. If this distance brings it to the ground, it takes falling damage. If the fall doesn’t bring the creature to the ground, it must spend its next turn recovering from the stall. It must succeed on a DC 20 Reflex save to recover. Otherwise it falls another 300 feet. If it hits the ground, it takes falling damage. Otherwise, it has another chance to recover on its next turn.

Hover: The ability to stay in one place while airborne.

Move Backward: The ability to move backward without turning around.

Reverse: A creature with good maneuverability uses up 5 feet of its speed to start flying backward.

Turn: How much the creature can turn after covering the stated distance.

Turn in Place: A creature with good or average maneuverability can use some of its speed to turn in place.

Maximum Turn: How much the creature can turn in any one space.

Up Angle: The angle at which the creature can climb.

Up Speed: How fast the creature can climb.

Down Angle: The angle at which the creature can descend.

Down Speed: A flying creature can fly down at twice its normal flying speed.

Between Down and Up: An average, poor, or clumsy flier must fly level for a minimum distance after descending and before climbing. Any flier can begin descending after a climb without an intervening distance of level flight.

Evasion and Pursuit

In round-by-round movement, simply counting off squares, it’s impossible for a slow character to get away from a determined fast character without mitigating circumstances. Likewise, it’s no problem for a fast character to get away from a slower one.

When the speeds of the two concerned characters are equal, there’s a simple way to resolve a chase: If one creature is pursuing another, both are moving at the same speed, and the chase continues for at least a few rounds, have them make opposed Dexterity checks to see who is the faster over those rounds. If the creature being chased wins, it escapes. If the pursuer wins, it catches the fleeing creature.

Sometimes a chase occurs overland and could last all day, with the two sides only occasionally getting glimpses of each other at a distance. In the case of a long chase, an opposed Constitution check made by all parties determines which can keep pace the longest. If the creature being chased rolls the highest, it gets away. If not, the chaser runs down its prey, outlasting it with stamina.

Moving Around in Squares

The characters are all within a corridor only 5 feet wide. A fighter stands at the end of the corridor, at a dead end. He’s been poisoned and is dying. The cleric wants to get at the fighter to help, but two other characters are between them. Thus, there’s no way for the cleric to get next to the fighter and cast neutralize poison. You can rule that it’s okay for the cleric to squeeze past the characters who are in the way, cast the spell, and then move back to where she previously stood.

In general, when the characters aren’t engaged in round-by-round combat, they should be able to move anywhere and in any manner that you can imagine real people could. A 5-foot square, for instance, can hold several characters; they just can’t all fight effectively in that small space. The rules for movement of miniatures are important for combat, but outside combat they can impose unnecessary hindrances on character activities.

Bonus Types

Many racial abilities, class features, spells, and magic items offer bonuses on attack rolls, damage rolls, saving throws, Armor Class, ability scores, or skill checks. These bonuses are classified by type, and each type is briefly described below.

Bonuses of different types always stack. So a cloak of resistance +1 (adds a resistance bonus on saving throws) works with a paladin’s bonus on saving throws from the divine grace class feature. Identical types of bonuses do not stack, so a +3 longsword (+3 enhancement bonus for a +3 to attack, +3 to damage) would not be affected by a magic weapon spell that grants a weapon a +1 enhancement bonus on attack and damage rolls.

Different named bonus types all stack, but usually a named bonus does not stack with another bonus of the same name, except for dodge bonuses and some circumstance bonuses.

Alchemical: An alchemical bonus represents the benefit from a chemical compound, usually one ingested prior to receiving the bonus. Antitoxin, for example, provides a +5 alchemical bonus on Fortitude saving throws against poison.

Armor: This is the bonus that nonmagical armor gives a character. A spell that gives an armor bonus typically creates an invisible, tangible field of force around the affected character.

Circumstance: This is a bonus or penalty based on situational factors, which may apply either to a check or the DC for that check. Circumstance modifiers stack with each other, unless they arise from essentially the same circumstance.

Competence: When a character has a competence bonus, he actually gets better at what he’s doing, such as with the guidance spell.

Deflection: A deflection bonus increases a character’s AC by making attacks veer off, such as with the shield of faith spell.

Dodge: A dodge bonus enhances a character’s ability to get out of the way quickly. Dodge bonuses do stack with other dodge bonuses. Spells and magic items occasionally grant dodge bonuses.

Enhancement: An enhancement bonus represents an increase in the strength or effectiveness of a character’s armor or weapon, as with the magic vestment and magic weapon spells, or a general bonus to an ability score, such as with the cat’s grace spell.

Inherent: An inherent bonus is a bonus to an ability score that results from powerful magic, such as a wish spell. A character is limited to a total inherent bonus of +5 to any ability score.

Insight: An insight bonus makes a character better at what he’s doing because he has an almost precognitive knowledge of factors pertinent to the activity, as with the true strike spell.

Luck: A luck bonus is a general bonus that represents good fortune, such as from the divine favor spell.

Morale: A morale bonus represents the effects of greater hope, courage, and determination, such as from the bless spell.

Natural Armor: A natural armor bonus is the type of bonus that many monsters get because of their tough or scaly hides. An enhancement to natural armor bonus bestowed by a spell (such as barkskin) indicates that the subject’s skin has become tougher.

Profane: A profane bonus represents the power of evil, such as granted by the desecrate spell.

Racial: Creatures gain racial bonuses⁠—​usually to skill checks⁠—​based on the kind of creature they are. Eagles receive a +8 racial bonus on Spot checks, for example.

Resistance: A resistance bonus is a general bonus against magic or harm. Resistance bonuses almost always affect saving throws.

Sacred: The opposite of a profane bonus, a sacred bonus relates to the power of good, such as granted by the consecrate spell.

Shield: Much like an armor bonus, a shield bonus to AC represents the protection a nonmagical shield affords. A spell that gives a shield bonus usually represents an invisible, tangible shield of force that moves to protect the character.

Size: When a character gets bigger (such as through the effect of an enlarge person spell), his Strength increases (as might his Constitution). That’s a size bonus.

Behind the Curtain: Stacking Bonuses

Combat

The brave party of adventurers smashes through the wooden door and into an ambush of bloodthirsty hobgoblins with spears and rusted blades. The trio of knights charges through the forest on their gallant mounts, their lances plunging into the scaly flesh of the horrible hydra that waits near the river’s edge. The dragon takes to the air and chases the elf lord and his retinue, jaws snapping behind them as they run in terror.

Combat is a big part of what makes the D&D game exciting. There are few better ways to test your mettle against your foes than in pitched battle. Your most important job as DM is running combats⁠—​making things move quickly and smoothly, and adjudicating what happens during each round of the action.

Line of Sight

Line of sight establishes whether a particular character can see something else represented on the grid. When using a grid, draw an imaginary line (or use a ruler or a piece of string) from the square the character is in to the object in question. If nothing blocks this line, the character has line of sight (and can thus see it to cast a spell on it, target it with a bow, and so forth). If the object in question is actually another creature, measure line of sight from the square the character is in to the square that the creature occupies. If a character can see a portion of a large creature that occupies more than one square, she can target that creature for a spell or any other attack.

If line of sight is completely blocked, a character can’t cast spells or use ranged weapons against the target. If it’s partially blocked, such as by the corner of a building, spells work normally but the target’s AC increases due to the cover.

Starting an Encounter

An encounter can begin in one of three situations.

When you decide that it is possible for either side to become aware of the other, use Spot checks, Listen checks, sight ranges, and so on to determine which of the three above cases comes into play. Although it’s good to give characters some chance to detect a coming encounter, ultimately it’s you who decides when the first round begins and where each side is when it does.

One Side Aware First: In this case, you determine how much time the aware side has before the unaware side can react. Sometimes, the unaware side has no time to do anything before the aware side gets a chance to interact. If so, the character or party that is aware gets to take a standard action before initiative is rolled, while the unaware character or party does nothing and is caught flat-footed. During this time, the unaware character or party gains no Dexterity bonus to AC. After this action, both sides make initiative checks to determine the order in which the participants act.

Other times, the aware side has a few rounds to prepare. (If its members see the other side off in the distance, heading their way, for example.) You should track time in rounds at this point to determine how much the aware characters can accomplish. Once the two sides come into contact, the aware characters can take a standard action while the unaware characters do nothing. Keep in mind that if the aware characters alert the unaware side before actual contact is made, then both sides are treated as aware.

Example (Sudden Awareness): A kobold sorcerer with darkvision sees a party of adventurers coming down a long hallway. He can see the adventurers, since they’ve got light, but they can’t see him because he’s out of the range of their illumination. The sorcerer gets a standard action and casts lightning bolt at the party. Caught unaware, the party can do nothing but roll saving throws. Once the damage from the spell is assessed, both sides roll initiative.

Example (Time to Prepare): Jozan the cleric hears the sounds of creatures moving beyond a door in a dungeon. He also hears some voices, and determines that the creatures are speaking Orc. He figures that they don’t know he’s there. He takes the time to cast bless and shield of faith on himself before opening the door and using a standard action to cast hold person on the first foe he sees. He can cast the hold person spell before anyone makes an initiative check, unless the orcs heard him casting bless or shield of faith in the previous 2 rounds, in which case they become aware, Jozan doesn’t get the action that enabled him to cast hold person, and he’d better hope he gets the higher result on his initiative check.

Both Sides Aware at the Same Time: If both sides are aware at the same time and can interact, both should roll initiative and resolve actions normally.

If each side becomes aware of the other but cannot interact immediately, track time in rounds, giving both sides the same amount of time in full rounds, until the two sides can begin to interact.

Example (Both Aware and Can Interact Immediately): A party of adventurers burst into a dungeon room full of orcs, and neither knew of the other ahead of time. All are equally surprised and equally flat-footed. Initiative is rolled, reflecting that those characters with better reflexes act quicker in such situations.

Example (Both Aware but Cannot Interact Immediately): A party of adventurers comes along a dungeon corridor and hears the laughter of orcs beyond the door ahead. Meanwhile, the orc lookout sees the adventures through a peephole in the door and warns his comrades. The door is closed, so no direct interaction is possible yet. Jozan casts bless. Lidda drinks a potion. Tordek and Mialee move up to the door. At the same time, the orcs move into position, and one uses a ring of invisibility to hide. The DM records the passage of 1 round. The adventurers arrange themselves around the door and make a quick plan. The orcs turn over tables and nock arrows in their shortbows. The DM tracks another round. The fighter opens the door, and the DM calls for an initiative check from all. The third round begins, this time with the order of actions being important (and dictated by the initiative check results).

Some Creatures on One or Both Sides Aware: In this case, only the creatures that are aware can act. These creatures can take standard actions before the main action starts.

Example: Lidda is scouting ahead. She and a gargoyle spot each other simultaneously, but the rest of Lidda’s party doesn’t see the monster (though they are close enough to hear any fighting that erupts). Lidda and the gargoyle each get standard actions, and then normal combat starts. Lidda and the gargoyle roll initiative before taking their actions, and everyone else rolls initiative after those actions are concluded.

The Surprise Round

When only one side is aware of the other, the DM runs the first round of combat as a surprise round. In this round, each character gets only a standard action. Only those aware of the other side can take any action at all. This rule reflects the fact that even when a combatant is prepared, some amount of time is spent assessing the situation, and thus only standard actions are allowed to begin with.

This rule makes initiative have less of an impact, since it is in the first round when initiative matters most. Even if a warrior gets the jump on an opponent, at best he can make a single attack against a foe before that foe can react.

New Combatants

The adventurers are fighting for their lives against a group of trolls intent on throwing them into a dank pit to feed to the dragon that controls this part of the dungeon. Suddenly, in the middle of the fight, a strike team of dwarves wanders into the room where the battle rages. If, in the course of a battle between two sides, some third group enters the battle, they should come into the action in between rounds. The following rules apply to this situation, whether or not the new group is allied with one or more existing side involved in the encounter.

Newcomers Are Aware: If any (or all) of the newcomers are aware of one or both of the sides in a battle, they take their actions before anyone else. In effect, they go first in the initiative sequence. Their initiative check result is considered to be 1 higher than the highest initiative check result among the other participants in the encounter. If differentiation is needed for the actions of the newcomers, they act in order of their Dexterity scores, highest to lowest. The reason for this rule is twofold.

• Since they’re aware, but there’s no way to get an action ahead of everyone else (because the encounter has already started), they go first to simulate their advantage. This happens whether the other sides are aware of the new side or not.
• Placing the newcomers at the beginning of the round means that those who had the highest initiative check results prior to their arrival are the first characters to have an opportunity to react to them. This is an important advantage for characters with high places in the initiative order.

Newcomers Not Aware: If any or all of the newcomers are not aware of the other sides when they enter the encounter (for example, the PCs stumble unaware into a fight between two monsters in a dungeon), the newcomers still come into play at the beginning of the round, but they roll initiative normally. If one of the other characters involved in the encounter has a higher initiative check result than one or more of the newcomers, that character can react to those newcomers before they get a chance to act (the newcomers are caught flat-footed).

If more than one new group enters an existing encounter at the same time, you must first decide if they are aware of the encounter. Those that are unaware, “stumbling in,” roll initiative. Those that are aware act first in the round, in the order of their Dexterity scores, even if they are not in the same group.

Example: A group of powerful adventurers fights a naga in a dungeon room. The naga rolled badly for initiative, and all the adventurers act before it. Between rounds three and four of that battle, three orcs on a random patrol stumble in. At the same time, two more nagas arrive, having been alerted by the sounds of the battle. At the beginning of round four, the two new nagas act in the order of their Dexterity scores. Then the orcs roll for initiative, and the results of their rolls are placed within the normal initiative order for the battle. In this case, poor check results place them dead last, even after the original naga.

Then the adventurers act, able to react either to the flat-footed orcs or to the new naga reinforcements. Then the original naga acts, followed by the orcs (who probably flee from this battle, which is clearly out of their league). This same sequence is used for subsequent rounds of the battle.

Keeping Things Moving

Initiative dictates the flow of who goes when. It is the tool that the game uses to keep things moving, but ultimately it’s you who needs to make sure that happens. Encourage the players to be ready with their actions when each one’s turn comes up. Players have less fun if they spend a lot of time sitting at the table waiting for someone else to decide what to do.

Some resourceful players will learn tricks to help you move things along. When attacking, they roll attack and damage dice at once, so that if successful, they can tell you the damage that they deal immediately. If they know that their next action will require a die roll, they’ll roll it ahead of time, so that when you ask them what they’re going to do, they can tell you immediately. (“I attack with my battleaxe and hit AC 14. If that’s good enough, I deal 9 points of damage.”) Some DMs like to have players make each roll separately, so you’ll have to decide for yourself whether you allow prerolling.

One useful thing you can do is to write down the initiative sequence once it’s determined for a given encounter. If you place this information where all the players can see it, each will know when his character’s turn is coming and hopefully will be ready to tell you his action when it comes time for him to act. Don’t write down the NPCs’ places in the initiative sequence, at least not until they have acted once—the players shouldn’t know who’s going to act before the enemies and who will act after. It’s too easy to plan actions around when their opponents act.

Simultaneous Activity

When you play out a combat scene or some other activity for which time is measured in rounds, it can be important to remember that all the PCs’ and NPCs’ actions are occurring simultaneously. For instance, in one 6-second round, Mialee might be trying to cast a spell at the same time that Lidda is moving in to make a sneak attack.

However, when everyone at the table plays out a combat round, each individual acts in turn according to the initiative count for his character. Obviously, this is necessary, because if every individual took his turn at the same time, mass confusion would result. However, this sequential order of play can occasionally lead to situations when something significant happens to a character at the end of his turn but before other characters have acted in the same round.

For instance, suppose Tordek hustles 15 feet ahead of his friends down a corridor, turns a corner, and hustles another 10 feet down a branching corridor, only to trigger a trap at the end of his turn. In order to maintain the appearance of simultaneous activity, you’re within your rights to rule that Tordek doesn’t trigger the trap until the end of the round. After all, it takes him some time to get down the corridor, and in an actual real-time situation the other characters who have yet to act in the round would be taking their actions during this same time.

Variant: Roll Initiative Each Round

Variant: Sapient Mounts

Combat Actions

A troll with a longspear mounted on a purple worm can reach opponents 4 squares away. Surrounded by enemies, it can guide its mount’s attacks against the same foe that it attacks, hoping to take him out of the combat entirely, or it can attack one foe and encourage the worm to bite (and try to swallow) another while it stings a third enemy with its venomous tail. Combat can be a tactical game in and of itself, filled with good and bad decisions.

You need to play each NPC appropriately. A combat-savvy fighter with a fair Intelligence score isn’t going to allow his opponents to get attacks of opportunity unless he has to, but a stupid goblin might. A phase spider with an Intelligence of 7 might figure that phasing in behind the dexterous wizard he’s fighting is the best course of action (since the wizard blasted him with a magic missile spell last round), but an ankheg (Intelligence 1) might not know which character is the biggest threat.

Adjudicating Actions Not Covered

While the combat actions defined in the Player’s Handbook are numerous and fairly comprehensive, they cannot begin to cover every possible action that a character might want to take. Your job is to make up rules on the spot to handle such things. In general, use the rules for combat actions as guidelines, and apply ability checks, skill checks, and (rarely) saving throws when they are appropriate.

The following are a few examples of ad hoc rules decisions.

• Reinforcements show up to help the bugbears that the adventurers are fighting. Tordek can hear these newcomers attempting to open the door to get in. He races to the door and tries to hold it shut while the others finish off the foes in the room. If it were a normal door, you might call for an opposed Strength check between Tordek and the bugbears pushing on the door. Since the door is already stuck, however, you decide that the bugbears must first push it open and then (if they succeed) make an opposed check against Tordek.
• A monk wants to jump up, grab a chandelier, and swing on it into an enemy. You rule that a DC 13 Dexterity check allows the monk to grab the chandelier and swing. The player asks if the monk can use his Tumble skill, and you let him. Ruling that the swing is somewhat like a charge, you give the monk a +2 bonus on the roll to see if his dramatic swinging attack succeeds.
• A sorcerer readies a spell so that he casts it as soon as he sees a beholder’s small eyes shoot rays. (He decides this is the best way for him to determine whether the beholder’s antimagic ray is currently active.) That means, however, that the rays need to have actually fired before the spell is cast (the spell can’t go before the rays in this case). Still, the sorcerer needs to know if he gets his spell cast before he’s struck by the dangerous rays. You rule that if the sorcerer can beat the beholder in an opposed check, he can get the spell off. The sorcerer makes a Wisdom check, and the beholder opposes that with a Dexterity check.

Combat Actions outside Combat

As a general rule, combat actions should only be performed in combat⁠—​when you’re keeping track of rounds and the players are acting in initiative order. You’ll find obvious exceptions to this rule. For example, a cleric doesn’t need to roll initiative to cast cure light wounds on a friend after the battle’s over. Spellcasting and skill use are often used outside combat, and that’s fine. Attacks, readied actions, charges, and other actions are meant to simulate combat, however, and are best used within the round structure.

Consider the following situation: Outside combat, Lidda decides to pull a mysterious lever that she has found in a dungeon room. Mialee, standing right next to her, thinks that Lidda’s sudden plan is a bad one. Mialee tries to stop Lidda. The best way to handle this situation is by using the combat rules as presented. Lidda and Mialee roll initiative. If Lidda wins, she pulls the lever. If Mialee wins, she grabs Lidda, requiring a melee touch attack (as if starting a grapple). If Mialee hits, Lidda needs to determine whether or not she resists. (Since Mialee is a good friend, grabbing Lidda’s arm might be enough to make her stop.) If Lidda keeps trying to pull the lever, use the grapple rules to determine whether Mialee can hold Lidda back.

Adjudicating the Ready Action

The ready action is particularly open-ended and requires that you make the players using it be as specific as possible about what their characters are doing. If a character readies a spell so that it will be cast when a foe comes at her, the player needs to specify the exact spell⁠—​and you’re justified in making the player identify a specific foe, either one that the character is currently aware of or one that might come at her from a certain direction.

If a character specifies a readied action and then decides not to perform the action when the conditions are met, the standard rule is that the character can keep his action readied. Because combat is often confusing and fast, however, you’re within your rights to make it a little harder on the character who readies an action and doesn’t take that action when the opportunity presents itself. You have two options.

• Allow the character to forgo the action at the expense of losing the readied action.
• Allow the character to attempt a DC 15 Wisdom check to avoid taking the readied action. Thus, if a character covers a door with a crossbow, he can make a Wisdom check to keep from firing the crossbow when his friend comes through the door. A successful check means that he doesn’t fire at his friend, and is still ready to shoot the ghoul chasing the friend. A failure means he completes the action he readied and shoots the first creature through the door⁠—​his friend.

Smart players are going to learn that being specific is often better than making a general statement. If a character is covering a door with a crossbow, he might say, “I shoot the first enemy that comes through the door.” Although players can benefit from being specific, you should decide if a certain set of conditions is too specific. “I cover the door with my crossbow so that I shoot the first unwounded ghoul that comes through” might be too specific, because it’s not necessarily easy to tell an unwounded ghoul from a wounded one, especially when the judgment must be made in an instant. Ultimately, it’s your call.

Don’t allow players to use the ready action outside combat. While the above examples are all acceptable in the middle of an encounter, a player cannot use the ready action to cover a door with his crossbow outside combat. It’s okay for a player to state that he’s covering the door, but what that means is that if something comes through the door he’s unlikely to be caught unaware. If the character coming through the door wasn’t aware of him, he gets an extra standard action because he surprised the other character, and so he can shoot the weapon. Otherwise, he still needs to roll initiative for his character normally.

Attack Rolls

Rolling a d20 to see if an attack hits is the bread and butter of combat encounters. It’s almost certainly the most common die roll in any campaign. Because of that, these rolls run the risk of becoming boring. When a roll as exciting and important as one that determines success or failure in combat becomes dull, you’ve got to do something about it.

Attack rolls can be boring if a player thinks that hitting is a foregone conclusion or that his character has no chance to hit. One way that the rules address this potential problem is by providing decreasing attack bonuses for multiple attacks. Even if a character’s primary attack always hits whatever he fights, that’s not true of his secondary or tertiary attacks.

One thing that can keep attack rolls from becoming humdrum is good visual description. It’s not just “a hit,” it’s a slice across the dragon’s neck, bringing forth a gout of foul, draconic ichor. See below for more advice on description.

Critical Hits

When someone gets a 20 on an attack roll, you should be sure to point out that this is a threat, not a critical hit. Calling it a critical hit raises expectations that might be dashed by the actual critical roll. When a critical hit is achieved, a vital spot on the creature was hit. This is an opportunity for you to give the players some vivid description to keep the excitement high: “The mace blow hits the orc squarely on the side of the head. He lets out a groan, and his knees buckle from the impact.”

Certain creatures are immune to critical hits because they do not have vital organs, points of weakness, or differentiation from one portion of the body to another. A stone golem is a solid, human-shaped mass of rock. A ghost is all insubstantial vapor. A gray ooze has no front, no back, and no middle.

Damage

Since combat is a big part of the game, handling damage is a big part of being the DM.

Nonlethal Damage

When running a combat, make sure that you describe nonlethal and lethal damage differently. The distinction should be clear⁠—​both in the players’ imaginations and on their character sheets.

Use nonlethal damage to your advantage. It is an invaluable tool if your adventure plans involve the PCs’ capture or defeat, but you don’t want to risk killing them. However, if the PCs’ opponents are dealing nonlethal damage more often than not, the players begin to lose any feeling of their characters being threatened. Use nonlethal damage sparingly, but to good effect.

Players, in general, hate for their characters to be captured. When your NPCs start dealing nonlethal damage to the characters, the players may actually get more worried than if they were taking lethal damage!

You can rule that certain damaging effects deal nonlethal damage when it seems appropriate. For example, a variant rule given in Chapter 8 (page 303) states that you can make the first 1d6 of falling damage nonlethal damage. You can do so on a case-by-case basis if you wish. If a villager throws a rock at a knight, that also might be nonlethal damage. Certain types of damage, however, should never be nonlethal damage⁠—​puncturing wounds and most damage from energy attacks, such as fire.

Effect of Weapon Size

When weapons change size, many other factors change at the same time. Weapon Qualities discusses the effect of size on weight and cost. Costs there are given for Small and Medium versions of the weapons. Large versions cost twice as much. The same section says to halve the given weight for Small versions, and double it for Large versions.

To calculate the damage a larger- or smaller-than-normal weapon deals, first determine how many size categories it changes from Medium. A longsword (normally Medium, commonly used by Medium beings) in the hand of a Huge cloud giant increases two size categories. For each category change, consult the accompanying tables, finding the weapon’s original damage in the left column and reading across to the right to find its new damage.

A weapon can only decrease in size so far. Weapons that deal less than 1 point of damage have no effect. Once a weapon only deals 1 point of damage, it’s not a weapon if it shrinks further.

Splash Weapons

A splash weapon is a ranged weapon that breaks apart on impact, splashing or scattering its contents over its target and nearby creatures or objects. Most splash weapons consist of liquids, such as acid or holy water, in breakable vials such as glass flasks. Attacks with splash weapons are ranged touch attacks. Attacking with these is covered under Throw Splash Weapon. Refer to Special Substances and Items for specifics of certain splash weapons.

Area Spells

Spells that affect an area are not targeted on a single creature, but on a volume of space, and thus must fit into the grid in order for you to adjudicate who is affected and who is not. Realize ahead of time that you will have to make ad hoc rulings when applying areas to the grid. Use the visual aids {DMG 305–307} and the following information as guidelines.

Bursts and Emanations: To employ the spell using a grid, the caster needs to designate an intersection of two lines on the grid as the center of the effect. From that intersection, it’s easy to measure a radius using the scale on the grid. If you were to draw a circle using the measurements on the grid, with the chosen intersection at the center, then if the majority of a grid square lies within that circle, the square is a part of the spell’s area.

Cones: Determining the area of a cone spell requires that the caster declare a direction and an intersection where the cone starts. From there, the cone expands in a quarter circle.

Miscellaneous: Using the rules given above, apply areas to the grid as well as you can. Remember to maintain a consistent number of affected squares in areas that differ on the diagonal.

Big and Little Creatures in Combat

Creatures smaller than Small or larger than Medium have special rules relating to position. These rules concern the creatures’ “faces”, or sides, and their reach.

The Creature Sizes table summarizes the characteristics of each of the nine size categories. The Max. Height and Max. Weight columns are guidelines, not firm limits; for instance, almost all Medium creatures weigh between 60 and 500 pounds, but exceptions can exist. The figures in the Space and Natural Reach columns are explained below.

Space: Space is the width of the square a creature needs to fight without penalties (see Squeezing Through). This width determines how many creatures can fight side by side in a 10-foot-wide corridor, and how many opponents can attack a creature at the same time. A creature’s space does not have a front, back, left, or right side, because combatants are constantly moving and turning in battle. Unless a creature is immobile, it effectively doesn’t have a front or a left side⁠—​at least not one you can locate on the tabletop.

Natural Reach: Natural reach is how far a creature can reach when it fights. The creature threatens the area within that distance from itself. Remember that when measuring diagonally, every second square counts as 2 squares. The exception is a creature with 10-foot reach. It threatens targets up to 2 squares away, including a 2-square distance diagonally away from its square. (This is an exception to the rule that 2 squares of diagonal distance is measured as 15 feet.)

As a general rule, consider creatures to be as tall as their space, meaning that a creature can reach up a distance equal to its space plus its reach.

Big Creatures

Large or larger creatures with reach weapons can strike out to double their natural reach but can’t use their weapons at their natural reach or less. A creature may move through an occupied square if it is three size categories or more larger than the occupant.

Very Small Creatures

Tiny, Diminutive, and Fine creatures have no natural reach. They must enter an opponent’s square (and thus be subject to an attack of opportunity) in order to attack that opponent in melee unless they are armed with weapons that give them at least 5 feet of reach.

Because Tiny, Diminutive, and Fine creatures have no natural reach, they do not normally get attacks of opportunity. Specific creatures may be exceptions, and some may carry reach weapons that do threaten adjacent squares.

Mixing It Up

Two creatures less than two size categories apart cannot occupy the same spaces in combat except under special circumstances (for example, when grappling, riding a mount, or if one is unconscious or dead).

Creatures two size categories apart can occupy the same space without special circumstances. Half the normal number of creatures can occupy the space as usual (fractions are not allowed).

Creatures may occupy the same square if they are three or more size categories different. For instance, a human could occupy one of the squares also occupied by a purple worm.

Example: A human (Medium) fights a cloud giant (Huge). The human occupies a single space. The cloud giant occupies roughly nine spaces. If the human tried to occupy one of the giant’s spaces, up to half as many humans as normal could fit, since the creatures are two size categories apart. Since that only amounts to one-half of a human, the human cannot occupy one of the giant’s spaces without grappling.

Example: A halfling (Small) fights the same cloud giant. The halfling, like the human, occupies a single space. If the halfling tries to occupy one of the giant’s cubes, the normal number of halflings (one) could fit, since the creatures are three size categories apart.

If a creature is in at least one of the spaces occupied by a larger creature when that creature moves out of that space without taking a 5-foot adjustment or a withdraw action, then the smaller creature gets attacks of opportunity against the departing creature.

Since a creature can attack into its own space (unless armed with a reach weapon), a smaller creature in one of the spaces occupied by another creature cannot take a withdrawal action.

Any time more than one allied creature occupies an opponent’s space (either in the same square on the grid or in separate squares), the allied creatures provide each other with the benefit of flanking. If a creature occupies part of an opponent’s space, it provides flanking to all allied creatures outside the opponent’s space.

Example: A colony of stirges (Tiny) attacks a human (Medium). Up to four Tiny creatures can occupy the same space. They are two size categories apart from a human, so up to two Tiny stirges can occupy the same space as the human, and they provide each other with flanking against the human.

Example: A squad of halflings (Small) attacks a bulette (Huge). The bulette takes up a space three squares across. Since the halflings are three or more size categories apart from the bulette, they can enter the space the bulette occupies. Each halfling can only occupy one space, but the bulette occupies nine squares, so up to nine halflings can occupy the same space as the bulette. The halflings provide each other with flanking.

Squeezing Through

A creature can squeeze through a space as narrow in width as onehalf its space. While doing so, it moves at half its normal speed. It takes a −4 penalty on attack rolls and a −4 penalty to AC. While a creature is squeezing through a narrow space, it’s not possible for other smaller creatures to also occupy that space.

A creature can move through a space with a ceiling as low as half its height with the same penalties (in spaces both narrow and low, double the penalties). It can move through a space with a ceiling as low as one-quarter its height, but it must do so by going prone and crawling. The normal penalties and restrictions for being prone apply.

Standing in Tight Quarters

A creature may find itself standing atop a rocky pinnacle, fighting from the back of a wagon, or taking advantage of the cover provided by a hole in the ground. In such cases, the creature’s space decreases to match the space available on the ground, but its attacks are unaffected because its upper body isn’t constrained. It can use its weapons and natural reach without penalties.

Skill and Ability Checks

The whole game can be boiled down to the characters trying to accomplish various tasks, the DM determining how difficult those tasks are to accomplish, and the dice determining success or failure. While combat and spellcasting have their own rules for how difficult tasks are, skill checks and ability checks handle just about everything else.

Modifying the Roll or the DC

Circumstances can modify a character’s die roll, and they can modify the Difficulty Class needed to succeed.

• Circumstances that improve performance, such as having the perfect tools for the job, getting help from another character, and having unusually accurate information, provide a bonus on the die roll.
• Circumstances that hamper performance, such as being forced to use improvised tools or having misleading information, provide a penalty on the die roll.
• Circumstances that make the task easier, such as a friendly audience or helpful environmental conditions, decrease the DC.
• Circumstances that make the task harder, such as a hostile audience or doing work that must be flawless, increase the DC.

DC: The number a character needs to roll to succeed.

Example: An example of a task with that DC.

Roll (Key Ability): The roll the character makes, usually a skill check, but sometimes a saving throw, an ability check, or even an attack roll. The ability that modifies the roll is in parentheses. A “—” in this column means that the check is an ability check and no skill ranks, base save bonuses, or base attack bonuses apply.

Who Could Do It: An example of a character that would have about a 50% chance to succeed. When this entry names a character by class, it assumes that the character has the skill in question. (Other characters might have a better or worse chance to succeed.)

The DM’s Best Friend

A favorable circumstance gives a character a +2 bonus on a skill check (or a −2 modifier to the DC) and an unfavorable one gives a −2 penalty on the skill check (or a +2 modifier to the DC). Take special note of this rule, for it may be the only one you’ll need.

Mialee runs down a dungeon corridor, running from a beholder. Around the corner ahead wait two ogres. Does Mialee hear the ogres getting ready to make their ambush? The DM calls for a Listen check and rules that her running from the beholder makes it less likely that she’s listening carefully: −2 penalty on the check. But one of the ogres is readying a portcullis trap, and the cranking winch of the device makes a lot of noise: −2 modifier to the DC. Also, Mialee has heard from another adventurer that the ogres in this dungeon like to ambush adventurers: +2 bonus on the check. Her ears are still ringing from the shout spell that she cast at the beholder: −2 penalty on the check. The dungeon is already noisy because of the sound of the roaring dragon on the level below: +2 modifier to the DC.

You can add modifiers endlessly (doing so is not really a good thing, since it slows down play), but the point is, other than the PC’s Listen check modifier, the only numbers that the DM and the player need to remember when calculating all the situational modifiers are +2 and −2. Multiple conditions add up to give the check a total modifier and the DC a final value.

Going beyond the Rule: It’s certainly acceptable to modify this rule. For extremely favorable or unfavorable circumstances, you can use modifiers greater than +2 and less than −2. For example, you can decide that a task is practically impossible and modify the roll or the DC by 20. Feel free to modify these numbers as you see fit, using modifiers from 2 to 20.

Delineating Tasks

A task is anything that requires a die roll. Climbing half one’s speed is a task, as is making a pot, despite the fact that one task takes seconds and the other hours (or even days).

A single task can encompass any of the following activities.

• Moving a set distance (as covered in a skill description).
• Making one item.
• Influencing one person, creature, or group (DM decides if NPCs are acting as individuals or as a group).
• Dealing with one object (opening a door, breaking a board, tying a rope, slipping out of a manacle, picking a lock).
• Determining or acquiring one piece of information.
• Searching or tracking over one area (as described in a skill or feat description).
• Perceive one sound or sight (DM decides if NPCs are acting as individuals or as a group).

Different skills handle task delineation in different ways. In fact, the same skill may handle tasks in different ways depending on what the character is doing. For example, Heal allows the healer to make one character stable or to assist in a group’s overall healing rate over a night’s rest. Both of these are single tasks, requiring only one roll.

Sometimes, however, a task requires multiple rolls. You must decide, for example, if a character attempting to use Sense Motive on a group of ogres must treat them as a group (one roll) or as individuals (a different roll for each ogre).

If two different groups approach a character from a distance, he has to make two different Spot checks to see them if you have decided that they are indeed different groups. If a character searches one wall using the Search skill, he might find several objects of importance⁠—​but you decide that each such object requires a separate roll. In such a case, you should make the rolls beyond the first one in secret. Asking the player to make more than one roll at the same time gives him information that he shouldn’t have.

A few examples of long-term duties (and how many tasks they comprise) follow.

Character on Watch: The rest of the party sleeps while Mialee takes the watch. The DM asks for a Listen check about half an hour into her watch, and she succeeds. She hears a rustling noise in the nearby bushes (made by a goblin that was trying to sneak up on the party). She decides to investigate, and the DM calls for a Spot check opposed by a Hide check from the goblin. Mialee discovers nothing (the goblin successfully conceals itself), so she goes back to where she was keeping watch. Later, the DM asks for another Listen check (as the goblin once again tries to move in), and she succeeds again. This time she catches the goblin and alerts the rest of the party to deal with the foe. Eventually they go back to sleep, and she goes back on watch. Later, the DM calls for another Listen check, even though he knows there’s nothing to hear this time.

The duty of being on watch required three Listen checks, because the watch was broken into three segments—at the first appearance of the goblin, upon checking for the goblin the second time, and after the goblin was dealt with.

Riding: Soveliss rides his horse along rocky terrain, making no roll to perform this mundane task. He guides it down into a steep gully, and you call for a DC 10 Ride check to do so. At the bottom of the gully, an owlbear menaces a wounded centaur. The ranger spurs his mount into the fray, making no roll to do so. Once in battle, the owlbear slashes at the ranger with a powerful claw. You call for a Ride check for Soveliss to stay on the horse, and another one to keep the now-panicking horse from running off. The ranger succeeds on both checks, and then decides to leap out of the saddle and fight the beast, requiring a DC 20 Ride check. Soveliss succeeds again, meaning that he dismounts without falling and moves to engage the owlbear.

Riding a mount doesn’t normally require rolls. Only riding into difficult terrain or performing a specific task involving riding requires a roll.

Tracking: Soveliss is following a giant scorpion across the desert. He follows the vermin for 3 miles, making a Survival check each mile, but tracking in the soft sand is easy. Shortly after the third mile, a windstorm comes up. Soveliss waits it out, and it passes after an hour. Now he must make a fourth check to see if he can pick up the trail in the wind-tossed sand. This check is of course more difficult than the earlier ones, as are all subsequent checks until the tracker gets to the place where the scorpion was when the storm passed.

Normally, tracking requires a Survival check each mile, but a sudden change in situation can require an additional roll.

Sneaking: Lidda is sneaking through a dungeon filled with hobgoblins. She must pass by an open doorway beyond which is a room where the brutes are drinking from a keg of ale. She makes a Move Silently check, and the hobgoblins make opposed Listen checks, but they’re not paying much attention, so the halfling sneaks by easily. The hobgoblins aren’t even looking at the door, so no Hide check is required. To get out, however, she must pass right through a guard room. She must make a Hide check to keep to the dark shadows near the walls, and a new Move Silently check (new because the listeners are different individuals, plus they’re more alert) to get past the guards and through the room.

A new Move Silently check is needed for each different group that a sneaker is trying to avoid. Sometimes both a Move Silently check and a Hide check are needed when sneaking around. Sometimes they’re not.

General Versus Specific

Sometimes a player will say, “I look around the room. Do I see anything?” and sometimes she’ll say, “I look into the room, knowing that I just saw a kobold dart inside. I look behind the chair and the table, and in all the dark corners. Do I see it?” In both cases, the DM replies, “Make a Spot check.” However, in the second example, the character has specialized knowledge of the situation. She’s asking specific questions. In such cases, always award the character a +2 bonus for favorable conditions. It’s good to reward a character who has knowledge that allows her to ask specific questions.

If the kobold’s actually not in the room, but a cloaker waits in ambush on the ceiling, the character has no special knowledge and gains no bonus. She doesn’t get a penalty, either⁠—​don’t penalize specific questions. If both the kobold and the cloaker are in the room, two Spot checks are required (unless the monsters are working together as a group, which is highly unlikely). The character gets a +2 bonus on the check to spot the kobold and no bonus on the check to spot the cloaker.

Degrees of Success

When determining how much information a skill check or ability check gives a character, the degree of success is important to the task. For example, an invisible assassin sneaks up on a cleric. The cleric makes a Listen check opposed by the assassin’s Move Silently check, and the cleric is successful. You could describe this success to the player of the cleric in many different ways, including these.

• “You heard a noise and you know something’s out there, but you don’t see anything.”
• “You heard a noise. It sounded like a person moving, and it came from ‘over there.’ ”
• “You heard a noise. You know there’s an invisible creature about 15 feet northeast of you, and you can target that creature’s location with an attack.”

To determine how much information to give out, compare the opposed check results (or for a nonopposed check, the check result and the DC). In the example above, you give the first answer if the check merely succeeds on the check. If the cleric beats the assassin’s check result by 10 or more, he has achieved a greater success, and he gets the second answer. If he exceeds the assassin’s check result by 20 or more, he has achieved a perfect success, and he gets all the information—the third answer.

Degrees of success usually only apply when the amount of information you have to give out can be different depending on how well the character succeeds. Most of the time, the only outcome that matters is whether the character succeeds or fails.

Degrees of Failure

Usually failure itself is a sufficient problem and does not need to be compounded. However, failure can sometimes cause additional problems, such as a setting off a trap or alerting a sentry to the characters’ presence. When such consequences exist, a check that fails by 5 or more causes them to occur. For example, if Lidda the rogue misses a Disable Device check by 5 or more, she sets off the trap she’s trying to disable.

Skills that carry an additional risk on a failed check include the following. Other risks on a failure may apply, at your discretion.

Taking 10

Encourage players to use the take 10 rule. When a character is swimming or climbing a long distance, for example, this rule can really speed up play. Normally, you make a check each round with these movement-related skills, but if there’s no pressure, taking 10 allows them to avoid making a lot of rolls just to get from point A to point B.

Ability Checks

The game has no rules for trying to stay awake through the night, writing down every word someone says without a mistake, or opening the stuck lid of a container without spilling a single drop of its contents. However, in the course of an adventure any of these situations could potentially make or break an encounter. You have to be ready to make up checks for such nonstandard activities.

Using the example situations above, staying awake might be a Constitution check (DC 12, +4 for every previous night without sleep), with an elf character gaining a +2 bonus on her check because an elf is only giving up 4 hours of trance instead of 8 hours of sleep. Writing down every word that someone says would require a DC 15 Intelligence check, and a DC 10 Dexterity check prior to the Intelligence check would provide a +2 bonus on the roll. Opening the container would normally be a Strength check (DC about 17), and once that’s accomplished, a DC 13 Dexterity check is required to keep from spilling the contents.

The three kinds of ability checks you could call for to handle a nonstandard situation include the following.

• A single check using an relevant ability (as in staying awake).
• One ability check that, depending on the result, might provide a modifier on another check involving a different ability (as in writing down every word).
• Two or more separate ability checks, usually involving different abilities, to accomplish a multipart task (such as opening the jug without spilling).

You can also use a combination of an ability check and a skill check in an appropriate situation. For example, when swimming in frigid water, Lidda might have to make a Constitution check to avoid taking a penalty on her Swim check.

Decisions on how to handle nonstandard situations are left to your best judgment.

Saving Throws

Adjudicating and varying saving throws works a lot like adjudicating and varying skill and ability checks.

Which Kind of Save?

Fortitude, Reflex or Will? When assigning something a saving throw, use these guidelines.

Fortitude: Fortitude saves reflect physical toughness. They incorporate stamina, ruggedness, physique, bulk, metabolism, resistance, immunity, and other similar physical qualities. If it seems like something that a “tough guy” would be good at, it’s a Fortitude save.

Reflex: Reflex saves reflect physical (and sometimes mental) agility. They incorporate quickness, nimbleness, hand-eye coordination, overall coordination, speed, and reaction time. If it seems like something that an agile person would be good at, it’s a Reflex save.

Will: Will saves reflect inner strength. They incorporate willpower, mental stability, the power of the mind, levelheadedness, determination, self-confidence, self-awareness, the superego, and resistance to temptation. If it seems like something that a confident or determined person would be good at, it’s a Will save.

Save or Check?

A character slips and falls. He tries to catch himself on a ledge, while another character reaching forward attempts to catch him. Are these Reflex saves or Dexterity checks?

The answer to the above question is “Both.” The character attempting to save himself makes a Reflex save. The character trying to grab him makes a Dexterity check.

Key Concept 1: Checks are used to accomplish something, while saves are used to avoid something.

Key Concept 2: Check modifiers don’t take into account character level or class level. Save bonuses always do. If a task seems like it should be easier for a high-level character, use a saving throw. If it seems like the task should be equally difficult for any two characters with the same score in the relevant ability, use a check. For example, opening a door is merely a reflection of strength, not experience. Thus, it’s a Strength check. The middle ground is a skill check, such as a Balance check to avoid falling while running over broken ground. A Balance check takes level into account only if the character has ranks in the skill.

Difficulty Classes

Assigning DCs is your job, but usually the rules are straightforward. The game has a standard rule for the DC of a saving throw against a spell, and creatures and magic items with abilities that force others to make saves always have that saving throw clearly detailed (or else they function just like spells, and you use the spell rule). The general rules are as follows.

Spells: 10 + spell level + caster’s ability modifier.

Monster Abilities: 10 + ½ monster’s Hit Dice + monster’s ability modifier.

Miscellaneous: 10 to 20. Use 15 as a default.

As with checks, saving throw die rolls can be modified, or the DC can be modified. See The DM’s Best Friend.

Adjudicating Magic

At the middle range of levels (6th through 11th), most characters cast spells, and they all use magic items, many of which produce strange effects. Handling spells and effects well is often the difference between a good game and a really good one.

Describing Spell Effects

Magic is flashy. When characters cast spells or use magic items, you should describe what the spell looks, sounds, smells, or feels like as well as its game effects.

A magic missile could be a dagger-shaped burst of energy that flies through the air. It also could be a fistlike creation of force that bashes into its target or the sudden appearance of a demonic head that spits a blast of energy. When someone becomes invisible, he or she fades away. A summoned fiend appears with a flash of blood-red energy and a smell of brimstone. Other spells have more obvious visual effects. A fireball and a lightning bolt, for example, appear pretty much the way they are described in the their spell descriptions. For dramatic flair, however, you could describe the lightning bolt as being a thin arc of blue lightning and the fireball as a blast of green fire with red twinkling bursts within it.

You can let players describe the spells that their characters cast. Don’t, however, allow a player to use an original description that makes a spell seem more powerful than it is. A fireball spell that creates an illusion of a dragon breathing flames goes too far.

Spells without obvious visual effects can be described as well. Since a target who makes his saving throw against a spell knows that something happened to him, you could describe a charm spell or a compulsion spell as a cold claw threatening to enclose his mind that he manages to shake off. (If the spell worked, the target would not be aware of such an effect, for his mind would not be entirely his own.)

Sound can be a powerful descriptive force. You could say that a lightning bolt is accompanied by a clap of thunder. A cone of cold sounds like a rush of wind followed by a tinkling of crystalline ice.

Handling Divinations

Spells such as augury, divination, and legend lore require you to come up with information on the spot. Two problems can arise when dealing with divinations such as these.

The Player Could Learn Too Much: The strategic use of a divination spell could put too much information into the hands of the players, ruining a mystery or revealing a surprise too soon. The way to avoid this problem is to keep in mind the capabilities of the PCs when you create adventures. Don’t forget that the cleric might be able to use her commune spell to learn the identity of the king’s murderer. While you shouldn’t allow a divination to give a player more information than you want her to have, you shouldn’t cheat a player out of the effects of her spells just for the sake of the plot. Remember also that certain spells can protect someone from divinations such as detect evil and discern lies⁠—​but that’s not really the point. Don’t design situations that make the PCs’ divinations worthless⁠—​design situations to take divinations into account. Assume that the cleric learns the identity of the king’s murderer. That’s fine, but the adventure is about apprehending him, not just identifying him, and it’s especially important to stop him before he kills the queen as well.

In short, you should control information, but don’t deny it to the character who has earned it.

Needing Answers on the Fly: Most likely you won’t know that a character is going to use a divination spell until the spell is cast, and so you often need to come up with an answer on the fly.

One of the ways to get around this problem is obvious. To answer a question about what lies at the bottom of the dark staircase, you have to know what’s there. Chances are you already do know what’s there, or the character using the divination wouldn’t consider the question worth asking. If you don’t know, then you need to make something up in a hurry.

More difficult is coming up with a way to convey the information. For example, the description of the divination spell notes that “The advice can be as simple as a short phrase, or it might take the form of a cryptic rhyme or omen.” Cryptic rhymes are often difficult to come up with in the middle of a game. One trick is to create a rhyme ahead of time that can fit just about any question, such as “If X is the seed you sow, reap you will Y and know,” where X is an action and Y is the result. Or “If into X fate doth thee send, thou wilt find Y in the end,” where X is a place and Y is a result or consequence, such as “danger” or “treasure.”

Creating New Spells

Introducing an unbalanced spell does more damage to your game than handing out an unbalanced magic item. A magic item can get stolen, destroyed, sold, or otherwise taken away⁠—​but once a character knows a spell, she’s going to want to keep using it.

When creating a new spell, use the existing spells as benchmarks, and use common sense. Creating a spell is actually fairly easy—it’s assigning a level to the new spell that’s hard. If the “best” 2nd-level spell is invisibility, and the “best” 1st-level spell is charm person or sleep, and the new spell seems to fall between those spells in power, it’s probably a 2nd-level spell. (Sleep, however, is a strange example, because it’s a spell that gets less useful as the caster gains levels⁠—​compared to a spell such as magic missile or fireball, which gets better, up to a point, for higher-level casters. Make sure spells that only affect low-level creatures are low-level spells.)

Here are some pieces of advice to consider.

• If a spell is so good that you can’t imagine a caster not wanting it all the time, it’s either too powerful or too low in level.
• An experience point (XP) cost is a good balancing force. An expensive material component is only a moderately good balancing force. (Money can be easy to come by; an XP loss almost always hurts.)
• When determining level, compare range, duration, and target (or area) to other spells to balance. A long duration or a large area can make up for a lesser effect, depending on the spell.
• A spell with a very limited use (only works against red dragons) could conceivably be one level lower than it would be if it had a more general application. Even at a low level, this is the sort of spell a sorcerer or bard never takes, and other casters would prepare it only if they knew in advance it would be worthwhile.
• Wizards and sorcerers should not cast healing spells, but they should have the best offensive spells. If the spell is flashy or dramatic, it should probably be a wizard or sorcerer spell.
• Clerics are best at spells that deal with alignment and have the best selection of curative and repair spells. They also have the best selection of information-gathering spells, such as commune and divination.
• Druids are best at spells that deal with plants and animals.
• Rangers and paladins should not have flashy attack spells in the manner of magic missile and fireball.
• Bard spells include enchantments, information-gathering spells, and a mixture of other kinds of spells, but do not include powerful offensive spells such as cone of cold.

Damage Caps for Spells

For spells that deal damage, use the tables below (one for arcane spells, one for divine spells) to determine approximately how much damage a spell should deal. Remember that some spells (such as burning hands) use a d4 for damage, but fireball uses a d6. For clerics, a d8 damage die counts as 2d6 for determining the maximum damage a divine spell can deal.

The damage cap depends on whether a spell affects a single target or multiple targets. A single-target spell affects only one creature or has its total damage divided among several creatures. For example, a magic missile spell can deliver 5 dice of damage to one target. If it strikes more than one target, its damage dice must be divided among them. A multiple-target spell deals full damage to two or more creatures simultaneously. For example, a fireball damages everything within its 20-foot spread.

Rewards

Mialee and Tordek stand within the treasure chamber, surveying the riches before them. To get there, they slew three trolls, bypassed several devious traps, and solved the riddle of the golden golem to stop it from crushing them. Now they are not only richer, but from their experiences they have grown in knowledge and power.

Experience points are a measure of accomplishment. They represent training and learning by doing, and they illustrate the fact that, in fantasy, the more experienced a character is, the more power he or she possesses. Experience points allow a character to gain levels. Gaining levels heightens the fun and excitement.

Experience points can be spent by spellcasters to power some of their most potent spells. Experience points also represent the personal puissance that a character must imbue an object with in order to create a magic item.

In addition to experience, characters also earn treasure on their adventures. They find gold and other valuables that allow them to buy bigger and better equipment, and they find magic items that give them new and better abilities.

Experience Awards

When the party defeats monsters, you award the characters experience points (XP). The more dangerous the monsters, compared to the party’s level, the more XP the characters earn. The PCs split the XP between themselves, and each character increases in level as his or her personal XP total increases.

You need to calculate XP awards during the course of an adventure, whether it’s one you wrote or one you purchased. You may wish to award experience points at the end of a session to enable players to advance their characters in level if they have enough experience points. Alternatively, you may wish to give out XP awards at the beginning of the game session following the one in which the characters earned it. This gives you time between sessions to use these rules and determine the experience award.

As part of determining experience point awards, you need to break the game down into encounters and then break the encounters down into parts. If you’re using monsters from the Monster Manual, some of the work has already been done for you. Each monster in that book has a Challenge Rating (CR) that, when compared to party level, translates directly into an XP award.

A Challenge Rating is a measure of how easy or difficult a monster or trap is to overcome. Challenge Ratings are used in Chapter 3: Adventures to determine Encounter Levels (EL), which in turn indicate how difficult an encounter (often involving multiple monsters) is to overcome. A monster is usually overcome by defeating it in battle, a trap by being disarmed, and so forth.

You must decide when a challenge has been overcome. Usually, this is simple to do. Did the PCs defeat the enemy in battle? Then they met the challenge and earned experience points. Other times, it can be trickier. Suppose the PCs sneak past the sleeping minotaur to get into the magical vault⁠—​did they overcome the minotaur encounter? If their goal was to get into the vault and the minotaur was just a guardian, then the answer is probably yes. It’s up to you to make such judgments.

Only characters who take part in an encounter should gain the commensurate awards. Characters who died before the encounter took place, or did not participate for some other reason, earn nothing, even if they are raised or healed later on.

To determine the XP award for an encounter, follow these steps.

1. Determine each character’s level. Don’t forget to account for ECL (see Monsters as Races, page 172) if any of the characters are of a powerful race.
2. For each monster defeated, determine that single monster’s Challenge Rating.
3. Use the Experience Point Awards (Single Monster) table to cross-reference one character’s level with the Challenge Rating for each defeated monster to find the base XP award.
4. Divide the base XP award by the number of characters in the party. This is the amount of XP that one character receives for helping defeat that monster.
5. Add up all the XP awards for all the monsters the character helped defeat.
6. Repeat the process for each character.

Do not award XP for creatures that enemies summon or otherwise add to their forces with magic powers. An enemy’s ability to summon or add these creatures is part of the enemy’s CR already. (You don’t give PCs more XP if a drow cleric casts unholy blight on them, so don’t give them more XP if she casts summon monster IV instead.)

For monsters with CRs higher than 20, double the reward for a CR two levels below the desired CR. Thus, a CR 21 reward equals double the CR 19 reward, CR 22 is double the CR 20 reward, CR 23 is double the CR 21 reward, and so on.

Bold numbers indicate the amount of XP that a standard encounter for a party of that level should provide.

• The table doesn’t support XP for monsters that individually are eight Challenge Ratings lower than the character’s level, since an encounter with multiple weak creatures is hard to measure. See Assigning Ad Hoc XP Awards, page 39.
• The table doesn’t support awards for encounters eight or more Challenge Ratings higher than the character’s level. If the party is taking on challenges that far above their level, something strange is going on, and the DM needs to think carefully about the awards rather than just taking them off a table. See Assigning Ad Hoc XP Awards, page 39.

Example: A party of five PCs defeats two CR 2 monsters and a CR 3 monster. The party consists of a 3rd-level character, three 4th-level characters, and a 5th-level character. The 3rd-level character earns 600 XP for each CR 2 monster and 900 XP for the CR 3 monster. That’s 2,100 XP, and dividing by 5 (the number of characters in the party) yields an experience award of 420 XP. The 4th-level characters each earn 400 XP [(600 + 600 + 800) ÷ 5] and the 5th-level character earns 350 XP [(500 + 500 + 750) ÷ 5].

If you don’t want to deal with all that, try this handy-dandy experience calculator to do most of the work for you.

Monsters Below CR 1

Some monsters are fractions of a Challenge Rating. For instance, a single orc is not a good challenge for even a 1st-level party, although two might be. You could think of an orc as approximately CR ½. For these cases, calculate XP as if the creature were CR 1, then divide the result by 2.

Challenge Ratings for NPCs

An NPC with a PC class has a Challenge Rating equal to the NPC’s level. Thus, an 8th-level sorcerer is an 8th-level encounter. As a rule of thumb, doubling the number of foes adds 2 to the Encounter Level. Therefore, two 8th-level fighters are an EL 10 encounter. A party of four NPC 8th-level characters is an EL 12 encounter.

Some powerful creatures are more of a challenge than their level would suggest. A drow, for example, has spell resistance and other abilities, so her CR is equal to her level +1.

Some creatures have monster levels in addition to their class levels, such as a centaur ranger. In this case, add the creature’s base CR to its total class levels to get its overall CR. For example, a centaur is CR 1, so a centaur who’s also a 7th-level ranger is CR 8.

Since NPC classes (see Chapter 5: Campaigns) are weaker than PC classes, levels in an NPC class contribute less to a creature’s CR than levels in a PC class. For an NPC with an NPC class, determine her Challenge Rating as if she had a PC class with one less level. For a creature with monster levels in addition to NPC class levels, add the NPC levels –1 to the creature’s base CR (always adding at least 1).

For example, when adding class levels to some sample characters, the resulting CRs would be as given in the following table. Remember that warrior is an NPC class, and fighter is a PC class.

Challenge Ratings for Traps

Traps vary considerably. Sample traps have Challenge Ratings assigned to them. For traps you and your players create, the CR Modifiers for Mechanical Traps table can be used to calculate trap CRs in more detail. As a rule of thumb, assign +1 CR for every 2d6 points of damage the trap deals. For magic traps, start at CR 1 and then assign +1 CR for every 2d6 points of damage the trap deals or +1 for every level of the spell the trap simulates. Traps generally shouldn’t have a Challenge Rating greater than 10. Overcoming the challenge of a trap involves encountering the trap, either by disarming it, avoiding it, or simply surviving the damage it deals. A trap never discovered or never bypassed was not encountered (and hence provides no XP award).

Modifying XP Awards and Encounter Levels

An orc warband that attacks the PCs by flying over them on primitive hang gliders and dropping large rocks is not the same encounter as one in which the orcs just charge in with spears. Sometimes, the circumstances give the characters’ opponents a distinct advantage. Other times, the PCs have an advantage. Adjust the XP award and the EL depending on how greatly circumstances change the encounter’s difficulty.

Encounters of EL 2 or lower are the exception. They increase and decrease in proportion to the change in XP. For example, an EL 1 encounter that’s twice as difficult as normal is EL 2, not EL 3.

You can, of course, increase or decrease XP by smaller amounts, such as +10% or –10%, and just eyeball the EL.

Modify all ELs and experience rewards as you see fit, but keep these points in mind.

• Experience points drive the game. Don’t be too stingy or too generous.
• Most encounters do not need modifying. Don’t waste a lot of time worrying about the minutiae. Don’t worry about modifying encounters until after you have played the game a while.
• Bad rolls or poor choices on the PCs’ part should not modify ELs or XP awards. If the encounter is difficult because the players were unlucky or careless, they don’t get more experience.
• Just because the PCs are worn down from prior encounters does not mean that later (more difficult) encounters should gain higher awards. Judge the difficulty of an encounter on its own merits.

Assigning Ad Hoc XP Awards

Sometimes the XP table doesn’t quite cover a given situation. If two orcs are an EL 1 encounter, four orcs EL 3, eight orcs EL 5, and sixteen orcs EL 7 (maybe), are thirty-two orcs an EL 9 encounter? A party of 9th level characters almost certainly can wipe them out with ease. By 9th level, a character’s defenses are so good that a standard orc cannot hit him or her, and one or two spells cast by a character of that level could destroy all thirty-two orcs. At such a point, your judgment overrules whatever the XP table would say.

An encounter so easy that it uses up none or almost none of the PCs’ resources shouldn’t result in any XP award at all, while a dangerous encounter that the PCs overcome handily through luck or excellent strategy is worth full XP. However, an encounter in which the PCs defeat something far above their own level (CRs higher than their level by eight or more) was probably the result of fantastic luck or a unique set of circumstances, and thus a full XP award may not be appropriate. You’re going to have to make these decisions. As a guideline, the minimum and maximum awards given on Experience Point Awards (Single Monster) for a group of a given level are the least and most XP you should award a group. Circumstances in your campaign may alter this, however. You might decide that an EL 2 encounter is worth at least a little to your 10th-level party since it caused them to waste some major spells, so you give them half the XP an EL 3 encounter would have earned them, or 125 XP. Or you might judge that a large quantity of CR 1 monsters is indeed an appropriate challenge for a 10th-level party because the group had lost all their equipment before the fight started.

Story Awards

The PCs have rescued the constable’s son from the troll lair. They leave the lair and stop their current quest so they can return the young boy to his home and parents. Do they get experience points for this?

Some DMs want the answer to be “Of course they do.” To accomplish this, you need to set up a system in which you can award XP for accomplishing goals and for actions and encounters that don’t involve combat.

Sometimes you may want to estimate experience point awards for actions that normally don’t result in an XP award under the standard system. These are called story awards, and they should only be used by an experienced DM.

CRs for Noncombat Encounters

You could award experience points for solving a puzzle, learning a secret, convincing an NPC to help, or escaping from a powerful foe. Mysteries, puzzles, and roleplaying encounters (such as negotiations) can be assigned Challenge Ratings, but these sorts of awards require more ad hoc ruling on the DM’s part.

Challenge Ratings for noncombat encounters are even more of a variable than traps. A roleplaying encounter should only be considered a challenge at all if there’s some risk involved and success or failure really matters. For example, the PCs encounter an NPC who knows the secret password to get into a magical prison that holds their companion. The PCs must get the information out of her⁠—​if they don’t, their friend remains trapped forever. In another instance, the characters must cross a raging river by wading, swimming, or climbing across a rope. If they fail, they can’t get to where the magic gem lies, and if they fail spectacularly, they are washed away down the river.

You might see such situations as having a Challenge Rating equal to the level of the party. Simple puzzles and minor encounters should have a CR lower than the party’s level, if they are worth an award at all. They should never have a CR higher than the party’s level. As a rule, you probably don’t want to hand out a lot of experience for these kinds of encounters unless you intentionally want to run a low-combat game.

In the end, this kind of story award feels pretty much like a standard award. Don’t ever feel obligated to give out XP for an encounter that you don’t feel was much of a challenge. Remember that the key word in “experience award” is award. The PCs should have to do something impressive to get an award.

Mission Goals

Often an adventure has a mission or a goal that pulls the PCs into the action. Should the PCs accomplish their goal, they may get a story award. No Challenge Ratings are involved here: The XP award is entirely up to you.

Such rewards should be fairly large—large enough to seem significant when compared to the standard awards earned along the way toward achieving the mission goal. The mission award should be more than the XP for any single encounter on the mission, but not more than all standard awards for encounters for the mission put together (see Story Awards and Standard Awards, below). Potentially, you could give out only story awards and no standard awards. In this nonstandard game, the mission award would be the main contributor to the PCs’ experience point totals.

It’s possible that in a single adventure a party can have multiple goals. Sometimes the goals are all known at the outset: Unchain the gold dragon, destroy or imprison the two black dragons, and find the lost staff of healing. Sometimes the next goal is discovered when the first one is accomplished: Now that the illithid is dead, find the people who were under its mental control and bring them back to town.

Some players will want to set up personal goals for their characters. Perhaps the PC paladin holds a grudge against the night hag from when they encountered her before. Although not critical to the adventure at hand, it becomes his personal goal to avenge the wrongs she committed by destroying her. Or, another character wants to find the magic item that will enable her to return to her home village and stop the plague. These are worthy goals, and the individual character who achieves them should get a special award. “I want to get more powerful” is not an individual goal, since that’s what just about everyone wants to accomplish.

Remember: A goal that’s easy to accomplish is worth little or no award. Likewise, goals that merely reflect standard awards (such as “Kill all the monsters in this cavern complex”) should be treated as standard awards.

Roleplaying Awards

A player who enjoys playing a role well may sometimes make decisions that fit his or her character but don’t necessarily lead to the most favorable outcome for that character. Good roleplayers might perform some deeds that seem particularly fitting for their characters. Someone playing a bard might compose a short poem about events in the campaign. A smart-aleck sorcerer might crack an in-game joke that sends the other players to the floor laughing. Another player might have his character fall in love with an NPC and then devote some portion of his time to playing out that love affair. Such roleplaying should be rewarded, since it enhances the game. (If it doesn’t enhance the game, don’t give an award.)

XP awards for roleplaying are purely ad hoc. That is, no system exists for assigning Challenge Ratings to bits of roleplaying. The awards should be just large enough for the player to notice them, probably no more than 50 XP per character level per adventure.

Story Awards and Standard Awards

You can handle story awards in one of two ways. The first is to make all awards story awards. Thus, killing monsters would earn no experience in and of itself—although it may allow characters to achieve what they need to do in order to earn a story award. If you follow this method, you should still pay attention to how many experience points the characters would be earning by defeating enemies, so that you can make sure the PCs’ treasure totals are in line with what they should be earning.

The second way is to use standard awards for defeating enemies but award only half the normal amount for doing so, making up the other half through story awards. This method has the virtue of keeping the treasure earned at about the same rate as XP earned.

Don’t simply add story awards to standard awards (even if you compensate by giving out more treasure as well) unless you want to speed up character progression.

Experience Penalties

Characters can lose experience points by casting certain spells or creating magic items. This allocation of personal power serves a specific game function: It limits and controls these activities, as well as making them interesting choices for players. In general, however, you shouldn’t use experience penalties in any other situation. While awards can be used to encourage behavior, penalties don’t serve to discourage bad behavior. They usually only lead to arguments and anger. If a player behaves in a way you don’t want him to behave, talk to him about it. If he continues, stop playing with him.

Death and Experience Points

If a character takes part in an encounter, even if she dies during the encounter, that character gets a share of the experience points. If a character dies and is raised, the awarded experience points are granted to her after she comes back from the dead (and after she loses the level from death, if appropriate).

Character Death

It happens. Adventuring is a high-risk enterprise. Characters in your campaign will die, sometimes because they were reckless and sometimes because luck was against them. Fortunately, D&D is a game, and death doesn’t have to be the end.

Raise dead, reincarnation, resurrection, and true resurrection can return characters to life. Bringing Back the Dead briefly discusses all four. Any creature brought back to life loses one level of experience, unless brought back with true resurrection. The character’s new XP total is midway between the minimum needed for his or her new level and the minimum needed for the next one. If the character was 1st level, he or she loses 2 points of Constitution instead of losing a level. This level loss or Constitution loss cannot be repaired by any mortal spell, even wish or miracle. Still, the revived character can improve his or her Constitution normally (at 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th, and 20th level) and earn experience by further adventuring to regain the lost level.

Raise dead has a number of limitations. The caster can only raise characters who have been dead up to one day per caster level. Casting time is a single minute. It does heal 1 hit point per Hit Die, but the body of the raised character must be whole. Raise dead doesn’t regenerate missing body parts. Paying someone to cast raise dead costs 450 gp (assuming a 9thlevel caster) plus 5,000 gp for expensive material components.

Reincarnate brings back creatures dead one week or less, but in entirely new bodies. The subject of the spell faces the same level loss or Constitution loss as with other spells. Paying someone to cast reincarnate costs 1,280 gp (assuming a 7th-level caster), making it the least expensive option. The drawback, of course, is that the player has no control over the new form and may not be welcome in civilized society.

Resurrection must be cast within 10 years per caster level of the time of death. It works as long as some small portion of the character’s body still exists. Casting time is a full 10 minutes. It heals the character completely when cast, but the character suffers the same level loss or Constitution loss as with raise dead. Paying someone to cast resurrection costs 910 gp (assuming a 13th-level caster) plus 10,000 gp for expensive material components.

True resurrection, like resurrection, can be cast on a character who has been dead for up to 10 years per caster level. No part of the deceased is required for the spell. Casting time is a full 10 minutes. True resurrection restores a character completely, with no loss of level or Constitution. This is the most expensive of these spells to have cast. Paying someone to cast true resurrection costs 1,530 gp (assuming a 17th-level caster) plus 25,000 gp for expensive material components.

Making a New Character

A player may decide that she wants to make a new character rather than continue adventuring with her existing one. Or maybe you’ve recruited a new player for your campaign. When a player makes a new character for your game, you have an important choice to make: What level will the new character be?

In general, D&D encourages continuity of characters in the adventuring group. Players get a greater sense of accomplishment if they develop their characters over time. The group is more effective⁠—​and has more fun⁠—​if they learn the strengths, weaknesses, and quirks of the PCs they’re adventuring with. A sense of teamwork is hard to develop if the roster of PCs is always shifting.

But there are times when making a new character is the best option. Under the following circumstances, a new character may be warranted.

• A new player joins the campaign.
• An existing PC dies, and the party doesn’t have access to magic that brings her back to life.
• An existing PC is unable to adventure for an extended period of time. Perhaps he was turned to stone by a medusa cult, which then absconded with the statue. The rest of the party intends to rescue him, but until that happens, he should have another character to play so he’s not left out.
• The players find they don’t have a character to cover a key party role. If the player of the sole PC cleric moves away, another player might make up a new cleric so the party still has access to healing magic.
• An existing PC has become difficult to play, and the player is amenable to a new character. Perhaps you allowed an ogre barbarian PC into your game, but the players find they prefer political intrigues and urban adventures.
• A player is eager to try a new race or class.

How you handle each of these situations is up to you. Choosing a level for the new character is matter of finding the balance point where a new character is viable and fun to play without outshining the other PCs.

Under most circumstances, a new character should begin play at the beginning of the level lower than the player’s previous PC. For example, if a player wants his 9th-level paladin to ride off into the sunset, his new character starts with 28,000 XP, the beginning of 8th level. A new player should create his first character at the beginning of the level where the lowest-level existing PC is.

In some circumstances, you might want to be more lenient. If the lowest-level PC is magically imprisoned, you can let that player create a new, temporary character at the same level until the original PC is rescued. But avoid situations where a player would be punished for sticking with an existing PC rather than creating a new one. It’s bad for continuity if a player picks a brand-new 10th-level character over a longtime PC who will come back from the dead at 9th level.

You also need to tell the player creating the new character how much gear to have. The new PC should have the proper equipment to be an effective character, but his weapons, armor, and magic items shouldn’t be so good that they inspire jealousy among the other players. Two factors determine how much gear to allow: the average amount of gear among the other PCs and whether the new PC will have access to an old PC’s gear.

As long as your campaign is reasonably close to the PC gear guidelines outlined in Creating PCs above 1st Level (page 199), you can use Table 5–1: Character Wealth by Level to set the gear. For example, a new 13th-level character should have 110,000 gp in gear. If your characters are more than 20% higher or lower than the values on the table, adjust the gear value for the new character by the same percentage. If the three 12th-level characters each have 132,000 gp in equipment (50% above the norm of 88,000), give a new 11th-level character 99,000 gp (50% above the norm of 66,000).

If the new character is replacing an old PC, reduce the treasure amount by whatever the old PC leaves behind. For example, if a player creates a new 3rd-level druid because her 4th-level druid died, she can just pick up the old PC’s gear and use it, rather than getting a gear allowance from you. But if the player makes a 3rd-level rogue instead, the gear of a 4th-level druid won’t be as useful. If the party sells the druid’s gear for 1,000 gp, give the new 3rd-level rogue a gear allowance of 1,700 gp so the character will have a total of 2,700 gp in equipment. If the party instead buries the druid with her equipment, give the rogue 2,700 gp worth of equipment.

As a general rule, a new character can spend no more than half her total wealth on a single item, and no more than one quarter the total wealth on consumables such as ammunition, scrolls, potions, wands, or alchemical items.

Variant Rules

Rather than clutter the main section with all the variant rules in sidebars, they have been gathered here, and hyperlinks in the section above will lead to the individual rules here.

Variant: Roll Initiative Each Round

Some players find combat more fun if they get to roll initiative every round rather than rolling once at the beginning of the encounter. Rather than determining a sequence of actions for each round at the beginning of an encounter, the players and DM reroll for all combatants, determining a different sequence at the start of each new round. The goal is to give the combat a feeling of shifting variability.

Ultimately, this variant rule doesn’t change things much. You’ll find that it slows down play, because a new sequence of activity will need to be determined each round⁠—​more die rolling, more calculation, more organizing time. It doesn’t change spell durations, or how various combat actions work. Effects that last until the character’s next action still operate that way. The difference is that it’s possible for someone to take an action at the end of one round (such as a charge attack) that puts him at a penalty until his next action, and then to roll well in the next round so that he goes first and the penalty has no effect. This means that sometimes it can be beneficial to roll low for initiative in a round.

And consider this case: A wizard wants to cast a spell unhindered by the oncoming monk who rushes toward him. He knows that if the monk reaches him, it will be difficult to cast a spell without drawing an attack of opportunity from her. He thinks to himself that his actions will depend on whether he wins initiative in this round (you need to keep this sort of change in approach in mind if you use this variant). Meanwhile, the monk wants to reach the wizard and use her stunning attack to keep him from casting spells. They roll initiative, and the wizard wins, casting a spell on the monk (but the monk saves and isn’t affected). The monk runs forward and stuns the wizard, a condition that lasts until the monk’s next action. In the next round, the monk wins initiative again, and attacks but misses. Now the wizard casts another spell⁠—​but because he lost initiative in this round, and acted after the monk’s action, the fact that he was stunned hardly hindered him at all.

If you roll initiative each round, taking a readied action later in the same round or delaying an action until later in the same round gives you a cumulative −2 penalty on later initiative rolls. (The first time you do this causes a −2 penalty; if you take a readied action later in the same round or delay an action until later in the same round again during the current combat, the penalty becomes −4, and so on.) Taking a readied action in the next round or delaying until the next round carries no penalty, but you get no other action that round.

Even if you normally use a single set of initiative rolls for the whole combat, some turn of events could make it worthwhile to reroll initiative. For example, the PCs are fighting a drow wizard using greater invisibility. It’s a climactic encounter with the survival of the party hinging on it. The drow, on his turn, walks within 30 feet of Jozan, who has cast invisibility purge. Suddenly, the drow is visible. Under normal initiative rules, whoever happens to act next would be able to attack the newly visible drow. Aside from game mechanics, there’s no good reason to let that character act first. Additionally, everyone else will get one turn before the drow gets to act again. Instead of following the previous order, you can call for everyone⁠—​the drow included⁠—​to roll initiative again to see how fast each character reacts to the new condition (the drow becoming visible).

Variant: Sapient Mounts

A paladin’s mount is as smart as some characters. Giant eagles, giant owls, and pegasi are all highly intelligent. When such creatures are part of the action, you have two choices.

• You can force the mount to act on its rider’s initiative, just like mounts of animal intelligence. This means that mount and rider act, essentially, simultaneously.
• You can ask the player to make a separate initiative check for the mount. This means the mount moves and attacks at its own place in the initiative order, reinforcing its nature as a separate character. However, that may be extremely inconvenient for a rider who is carried away from her opponent! In such cases, of course, the rider can always delay to synchronize her initiative check result with her mount’s. Likewise, the mount may choose to delay to coincide its movement with its rider’s.

Variant: Striking the Cover Instead of a Missed Target

In ranged combat against a target that has cover, it may be important to know whether the cover was actually struck by an incoming attack that misses the intended target. First, determine if the attack roll would have hit the protected target without the cover. If the attack roll falls within a range low enough to miss the target with cover but high enough to strike the target if there had been no cover, the object used for cover was struck. If a creature is providing cover for another character and the attack roll exceeds the AC of the covering creature, the covering creature takes the damage intended for the target.

If the covering creature has a Dexterity bonus to AC or a dodge bonus, and this bonus keeps the covering creature from being hit, then the original target is hit instead. The covering creature has dodged out of the way and didn’t provide cover after all. A covering creature can choose not to apply his Dexterity bonus to AC and/or his dodge bonus, if his intent is to try to take the damage in order to keep the covered character from being hit.

Variant: Automatic Hits and Misses

The Player’s Handbook says that an attack roll of natural 1 (the d20 comes up 1) is always a miss. A natural 20 (the d20 comes up 20) is always a hit.

This rule means that the lowliest kobold can strike the most magically protected, armored, dexterous character on a roll of 20. It also means that regardless of a warrior’s training, experience, and magical assistance, he still misses a given foe at least 5% of the time.

A different way to handle this is to say that a natural 1 is treated as a roll of –10. Someone with an attack bonus of +6 nets a –4 result, which can’t hit anything. Someone with a +23 attack bonus rolling a 1 would hit AC 13 or lower. At the other extreme, a natural 20 is treated as a roll of 30. Even someone with a −2 attack penalty would hit AC 28 with such a roll.

Variant: Defense Roll

More randomness can sometimes eliminate the foregone conclusion of a high-level character who always hits, or a low-level one who never has a chance. A good way to introduce this randomness is to allow (or force) characters to make defense rolls. Every time a character is attacked, rather than just using his never-changing, static AC, he makes a d20 roll and adds it to all his AC modifiers. Every attack becomes an opposed roll, with attacker and defender matching their modified rolls against one another. (One way to look at it is that without the defense roll, characters are “taking 10” on the roll each round, and thus are using a base of 10 for Armor Class.)

The defense roll can be expressed like this:

1d20 + (AC − 10)

For example, a paladin attacks an evil fighter. The paladin rolls a 13 and adds his attack bonus of +10 for a result of 23. The fighter makes his defense roll and gets a 9. He adds his defensive bonuses (all the things that modify AC, including armor), which amount to +11. The fighter’s result is 20, less than 23, so the paladin hits.

This variant rule really comes in handy at high levels, where highlevel fighters always hit with their primary attacks, and other characters rarely do. Unfortunately, it can slow down play, almost doubling the number of rolls in any given combat. A compromise might be to have each defender make a defense roll once in a round, using that same total for all attacks made against him in that round.

Variant: Clobbered

Ultimately, damage doesn’t matter until a character is unconscious or dead. It has no effect while she’s up and fighting. It’s easy to imagine, however, that she could be hit so hard that she’s clobbered, but not knocked unconscious or dead.

Using this variant, if a character takes half her current hit points in damage from a single blow, she is clobbered. On her next turn, she can take only a standard action, and after that turn she is no longer clobbered.

This variant will often lead to slightly faster fights, since taking damage would somewhat reduce the ability to deal damage. It would also increase randomness by increasing the significance of dealing substantial but less than lethal damage. It would also make hit points more important; clerics would want to cure fighters long before fighters are at risk of dying, because they might be at risk of being clobbered. Finally, it may be easier for a superior combatant to get unlucky. That fact could hurt PCs more than NPCs in the long run.

Variant: Massive Damage Based on Size

If a creature takes 50 points of damage or more from a single attack, she must make a Fortitude save or die. This rule exists primarily as a nod toward realism in the abstract system of hit point loss. As an extra touch of realism, you can vary the massive damage threshold by size, so that each size category larger or smaller than Medium raises or lowers the threshold by 10 hit points. This variant hurts halfling and gnome PCs, familiars, and some animal companions. It generally favors monsters.

Variant: Damage to Specific Areas

Sometimes, despite the abstract nature of combat, you’re going to want to apply damage to specific parts of the body, such as when a character’s hands are thrust into flames, when he steps on caltrops, or when he peeks through a hole in the wall and someone shoots an arrow into the hole from the other side. (This situation comes up most frequently with devious traps meant to chop at feet, smash fingers, or the like.)

When a specific body part takes damage, you can apply a −2 penalty to any action that the character undertakes using that portion of his body. For example, if a character’s fingers get slashed, he makes attacks rolls with a weapon in that hand at −2 and he takes a −2 penalty on skill checks involving the use of his hands. If a character steps on a caltrop, he takes a −2 penalty on skill checks involving the use of his feet (in addition to the effects described for caltrops).

The Conditions section defines some effects of damage to specific body parts, such as what happens when a character is blinded or deafened. In addition to that information, use the table below as a guide to what rolls are modified by injuries to what body parts.

This penalty lasts until the character heals, either magically or by resting. For a minor wound, such as stepping on a caltrop, a DC 15 Heal check, 1 point of magical healing, or a day of rest removes the penalties.

You can allow a character to make a Fortitude save (DC 10 + damage taken) to “tough it out” and ignore the penalty. Also, these penalties shouldn’t stack−two hand injuries should not impose a −4 penalty.

Variant: Weapon Equivalencies

The party slays a drider armed with magic short swords. The party’s halfling rogue is delighted. Even the party’s human ranger wants one of the swords. As DM, you gently remind them that while they are short swords, they are Large weapons (see Weapon Size). The human ranger can use one of them as a one-handed weapon at a −2 penalty, and the halfling rogue can use one as a two-handed weapon at a −4 penalty.

The rules on weapon categories are based on the idea that most weapons do not look like smaller or larger versions of other weapons, nor are they used in the same fashion. The shape of a longsword reflects its primary use; it is not simply a big dagger. This variant suggests weapon equivalencies for DMs who wish to offer their players more utility from monster weapons. If a weapon has an equivalent, a character proficient in the equivalent can use the weapon with no penalty.

On the table below, find the Medium weapon in question in the left column and then read across to the size of the creature in question. For instance, a Medium battleaxe is equivalent in this system to a Large handaxe. Alternatively, find the size of the wielder and read down the column until you find its weapon. The weapon column then shows what is equivalent for a Medium character. For example, a Large battleaxe is equivalent in this system to a Medium greataxe.

Variant: Instant Kill

When you or a player rolls a natural 20 on an attack roll, a critical roll is made to see if a critical hit is scored. If that critical roll is also a 20, that’s considered a threat for an instant kill. Now a third roll, an instant kill roll, is made. If that roll scores a hit on the target in question (just like a normal critical roll after a threat), the target is instantly slain. Creatures immune to critical hits are also immune to instant kills.

The instant kill variant only applies to natural 20s, regardless of the threat range for a combatant or weapon. (Otherwise weapons, feats, and magical powers that improve threat ranges would be much more powerful than they are intended to be.)

The instant kill variant makes a game more lethal and combat more random. In any contest, an increase in randomness improves the odds for the underdog. Since the PCs win most fights, a rule that makes combat more random hurts the PCs more than it hurts their enemies.

Variant: Softer Critical Hits

Instead of making critical hits more lethal, you can make them less lethal. Do so by reducing each weapon’s threat range one step. Weapons with a threat range of 20 and a ×2 multiplier deal no critical hits at all.

This variant makes feats and magical powers that improve threat ranges less valuable, it slightly decreases the value of a monster’s immunity to critical hits, and it reduces randomness in combat.

Variant: Critical Misses (Fumbles)

If you want to model the chance that in combat a character could fumble his weapon, then when a player rolls a 1 on his attack roll, have him make a DC 10 Dexterity check. If he fails, his character fumbles. You need to decide what it means to fumble, but in general, that character should probably lose a turn of activity as he regains his balance, picks up a dropped weapon, clears his head, steadies himself, or whatever.

Fumbles are not appropriate to all games. They can add excitement or interest to combat, but they can also detract from the fun. They certainly add more randomness to combat. Add this variant rule only after careful consideration.

Variant: Skills with Different Abilities

Sometimes a check involves a character’s training (skill ranks) plus an innate talent (ability) not usually associated with that training. A skill check always includes skill ranks plus an ability modifier, but you can use a different ability modifier from normal if the character is in a situation where the normal key ability does not apply.

For example:

• A character is underwater and tries to maneuver by pulling himself along some improvised handholds. Since his body has natural buoyancy (meaning he doesn’t need to pull as hard to lift himself), the DM rules that the player should make a Climb check keyed to Dexterity rather than to Strength.
• A character is trying to pick the best horse from several that a merchant is selling. Normally this would be an Appraise check, but familiarity with horses ought to count for something. The DM lets the player use the character’s ranks in Ride instead of ranks in Appraise and applies the character’s Wisdom modifier (as normal for an Appraise check).
• A character needs to use main force to restrain a panicked horse. Normally this would call for a Strength check, but a character skilled at handling animals ought to be able to use his knowledge to restrain the horse more easily. The DM lets the player add the character’s ranks in Handle Animal (but not his Charisma modifier) to the Strength check.
• A character has created a masterwork dagger as a gift for a visiting noble. He attempts to inscribe it with intricate designs. The DM rules that this is a Dexterity check to which the character’s ranks in Craft (weaponsmithing) apply.
• A character is trying to climb a ladder to the bottom of a very deep chute. Normally, the DM would call for a Constitution check to see if the character can keep going, but he can also allow the player to add the character’s ranks in Climb to the roll.

These sorts of unusual situations are always handled on a case-by-case basis, and only as exceptions. The vast majority of the time, use the normal key ability.

Remember that when you change the way a skill works in this fashion, you should dictate when the change comes into play⁠—​it’s not up to a player to make this sort of decision. Players may try to rationalize why they should get to use their best ability score modifier with a skill that doesn’t normally use that ability, but you shouldn’t allow this sort of rule change unless you happen to agree with it.

Variant: Critical Success or Failure

If a player rolls a natural (unmodified) 20 on a check, allow him or her to make another check. If the second check is successful, the character has achieved a critical success with the use of that skill or ability, and something particularly good happens. Likewise, if a player rolls a natural 1, he rolls again. If the second check is a failure, the character has achieved a critical failure (made a critical blunder), and something really bad happens.

It’s up to you to determine the specific result of a critical success or failure. Some examples follow.

Critical Successes

On a Climb check or Swim check, the character moves twice as far as she would on a normal success.

When using Diplomacy, the character makes a good, trusted friend for long-term play.

When using a Knowledge skill, the character comes to an important conclusion related to the task at hand.

When using Search, the character discovers something that she otherwise never could have found (if anything is present to be found).

When using Survival to track, the character determines some amazing minutiae about her prey. For instance, she realizes that the three subjects she’s tracking aren’t happy with one another because they occasionally stop and apparently argue, based on where they stand in relation to each other.

When using Heal to give first aid, the character heals 1 point of damage dealt to the subject.

Critical Failures

When using a Perform skill, the character displeases his audience so greatly that they wish to do him harm.

On a Climb check, the character falls so badly that he takes an additional 1d6 points of damage, or he falls and tears away a few good handholds, making it a more difficult climb (+5 to the DC) on the next try.

When using Disguise, the character not only doesn’t look like what he intended, but actually looks like something offensive or hateful to the viewers.

When using Escape Artist, the character actually gets himself more entangled or pinned, adding +5 to the DC on the next try.

On a Use Rope check, the character breaks the rope.

When using Open Lock, the character breaks off his pick in the lock, making it impossible to open.

When using any kind of tool, the character destroys the tool.

Sometimes, there’s nothing more that can be achieved with a critical success, or there’s nothing worse than a normal failure. In such a case, ignore this variant rule.

You should also ignore this variant whenever a character takes 10 or takes 20. It’s not possible to achieve a critical success when all you’re trying to do is complete a task without worrying about completing it as well as possible, and it’s not possible to get a critical failure if you’re not under pressure when you’re making the check.

Variant: Saves with Different Abilities

To model unusual situations, you can change the ability score that modifies a save, just as you can do with a skill (see Skills with Different Abilities). This is purely a variant, however, since not all DMs want this degree of complication.

Fortitude saves against mental attacks (such as phantasmal killer) could be based on Wisdom, making it a cross between a Fortitude and a Will save. (Apply the character’s Fortitude save bonus from class and level, then add his Will modifier instead of his Constitution modifier.)

The DM may allow a character to cast a quickened dimension door spell in response to falling into a pit trap. Reacting quickly to a trap requires a Reflex save, but in this case the DM might make this a Reflex save based on Wisdom rather than Dexterity, since casting the spell is mainly a mental action.

Will saves against enchantments could use Charisma instead of Will, since Charisma reflects force of personality. (See the feat Force of Personality.)

Will saves against illusions could be keyed to Intelligence, the ability that best represents discernment.

As with skills, changes to a saving throw’s key ability are always handled on a case-by-case basis. Unless you institute changes to saving throws as a house rule, these changes are very rare.

Remember that when you change the way a saving throw works in this fashion, you should dictate when the change comes into play⁠—​it’s not up to a player to make this sort of decision. Players may try to rationalize why they should get to use their best ability modifier on a saving throw that doesn’t normally use that ability, but you shouldn’t allow this sort of rule change unles you happen to agree with it.

Variant: Spell Roll

Substitute this variant for the standard method of determining saving throw DCs for spells. Every time a character casts a spell that requires a target to make a saving throw, the caster rolls 1d20 and adds the spell level and the appropriate ability modifier. The result is the DC for the saving throw. Roll once even for a spell that affects many creatures.

This variant introduces a great deal more randomness into spellcasting⁠—​sometimes low-level spells cast by mediocre casters will have high DCs, and sometimes high-level spells cast by powerful casters are easy to resist. It downplays the level of the spell and the ability modifier. As with variant combat rules, any change that increases chance in a battle favors the underdog, and that’s usually the enemy of the PCs.

Variant: Power Components

The horn of the rare red minotaur can be combined with a potent mixture of herbs that can aid in restoring wholeness to the afflicted. So potent is the energy contained in the concoction that a cleric who uses it while casting greater restoration (and uses it up) need not devote any personal power (XP) in order to cast the spell.

This variant allows for special rare ingredients (“power components”) to be added to material spell components in place of an XP component. You’re free to allow this on a case-by-case basis. Perhaps these components exist only for certain spells. They’re certainly rare, and certainly expensive⁠—​ten to twenty times the XP component in gold pieces is a good baseline price. Further, characters may need to consult sages or cast divinations in order to find out what the proper ingredients are.

Consider not allowing characters to buy power components⁠—​instead, make them the object of an adventure. The hunt for the red minotaur can be a challenging and entertaining adventure by itself, but if the defeat of the minotaur is the first step toward the goal of bringing back a fallen comrade, the scenario takes on a larger importance.

In the same way, special ingredients can substitute for the XP that a character otherwise has to spend to create magic items.

This variant works if it makes powerful magic more colorful and if it fits the way you want to portray magic in your campaign. It fails if it means that the only hard control on casting powerful spells and creating magic items (the XP component) slips away, so that such actions become commonplace.

Variant: Summoning Individual Monsters

When a character casts a summon monster or summon nature’s ally spell, she gets a typical, random creature of the kind she chooses. As a variant in your campaign, you can rule that each spellcaster gets specific, individual creatures rather than just some random one. This variant lets players feel more ownership over the creatures that their characters summon, but it entails some special problems, so don’t allow it without considering it carefully.

Specific Creatures: Whenever a spellcaster summons a single creature of a given kind, it’s always the same creature. A player can roll the ability scores and hit points for each creature that his character can summon. His specific creatures may be above or below average. Allow the player to take average statistics instead of rolling if he wants to avoid the risk of getting stuck with bad dice rolls. (There’s no “hopeless creature reroll” for bad ability scores in this case.) The player can also name each creature and define its distinguishing characteristics.

Multiple Creatures: Whenever a spellcaster summons more creatures, the first one is always the same, and each successive creature is likewise always the same. Thus, if Mialee can summon up to three celestial eagles named Kulik, Skitky, and Kliss, then she always gets Kulik when she summons one celestial eagle, Kulik and Skitky when she summons two, and all three when she summons three. The player can roll ability scores and hit points for all three.

The summoner gets the same creatures no matter which version of a spell she uses. Mialee gets Kulik with summon monster II and she gets Kulik plus possibly Skitky and Kliss with summon monster III.

Summoning Limits: Getting the same intelligent summoned creature over and over again gives a summoner certain advantages. She can, for instance, send a creature to scout out an area for the duration of the spell and then summon it up again to get a report. If the creature is killed (and thus sent back to its home) or dispelled, however, that individual creature is not available to be summoned for 24 hours. The summoner summons one fewer creature of that kind because the unavailable creature still takes up its normal “slot”. Thus, if Kulik is killed and later that day Mialee summons two celestial eagles, she only gets Skitky (instead of Kulik and Skitky).

If a creature that a character summons is actually, truly killed (not just “killed” while summoned), it is no longer available, and the summoner gets one less creature of that kind than normal. On attaining a new level, however, the summoner may replace the slain creature (see below).

Replacing Creatures: Each time a summoner gains a level in a spellcasting class, she can drop out one of her creatures and roll up a new one to fill its “slot”. For example, at 5th level, Mialee can summon Kulik, Skitky, and Kliss with summon monster III. When she reaches 6th level, she can drop any one of her summonable creatures and replace it with a new one. If Kulik has low ability scores or if it has permanently died, she can drop it in favor of a new, randomly rolled creature, which then occupies her “first celestial eagle” slot.

Improving Creatures: Summoners can improve their creatures. Typically, they do so by giving them magic items or other special objects. The trick is, a summoned creature can’t take things back home with it. When a summoned creature disappears, it leaves all the things that it gained while on the Material Plane. Mialee can’t just summon up Kulik and give it a cloak of resistance. She has to go to its plane or bring it actually onto the Material Plane before she can give it anything it can keep. The way to get a creature to actually come to the Material Plane is to use a lesser planar ally, planar ally, greater planar ally, lesser planar binding, planar binding, greater planar binding, or gate spell, since these are all calling spells and actually bring the creature to the caster.

Variant: Free-Form Experience

Instead of calculating experience points, just hand out about 75 XP times the average party level for each character in the party per balanced encounter. Hand out more for tough encounters: 100 XP per level per character, or even 150 XP. Award less for easy ones: 25 to 50 XP. Alternatively, you could give out 300 XP times the average party level for each character per session, modified slightly for tough or easy sessions.

It’s very simple to track how quickly characters gain levels using this system. The drawback is that it generalizes PC rewards, rather than granting them based on specific accomplishments. You risk players becoming dissatisfied by gaining the same reward every session.

Variant: Faster or Slower Experience

You control the pace of character progress, and the easiest way to do that is through experience point awards. Obviously, if you want the characters to progress faster, simply make every award 10%, 20%, or even 50% larger. If you want characters to progress more slowly, give awards that are some suitable fraction of the original award.

When modifying awards in this way, keep track of the amount of change you impose on the PCs’ progress. You need to balance this with the pace of treasure awarded. For example, if you increase the amount of experience earned by the characters by 20% across the board, treasure also needs to increase by 20%, or else the PCs end up poor and underequipped for their level.

Modifying Challenge Ratings

The other way to modify character progress is to modify the Challenge Ratings of monsters encountered. If you increase the CRs, you increase the experience awards and speed up advancement.

Of course, whether or not you want to change character progress, you may decide to modify various Challenge Ratings. If you think that a certain monster is worth more (or less) than its Monster Manual rating, feel free to change it. Keep in mind, however, that just because the PCs in your campaign happen to all have bane weapons useful against aberrations, that doesn’t necessarily make beholders a lesser challenge overall. It just means that your party is particularly well equipped to deal with their challenge.

Behind the Curtain

This section covers the “Behind the Curtain” sidebars, where the “why” of certain rules are discussed rather than the “what” or “how”.

Behind the Curtain: Stacking Bonuses

Keeping track of the different types of bonuses a character gets from different sources may seem like a real bother. There are good reasons to do this, however.

Balance: The main reason to keep track of what stacks and what doesn’t stack is to keep total bonuses from getting out of hand. If a character wears a belt of giant Strength, it’s unbalancing to allow the cleric to cast bull’s strength on her as well and allow both bonuses to add up. Likewise, a character with mage armor, magic plate armor, a ring of protection, and a divine favor spell would be unbalanced if all his bonuses were cumulative. Stacking restrictions keep the game within manageable limits, while still allowing characters to benefit from multiple magic items. For instance, note that some of the items from the previous example⁠—​the magic plate armor, the ring, and the divine favor spell, for example⁠—​could work together, because they provide bonuses of different types.

Consistency and Logic: The system of bonus types provides a way to make sense out of what can work together and what can’t. At some point, when adding types of protection together, a reasonable player realizes that some protections are just redundant. This system logically portrays how it all makes sense together.

Encouraging Good Play: Categorizing bonuses by type allows players to put together suites of effects that do work in conjunction in a consistent manner⁠—​encouraging smart play rather than pile-it-on play.

Behind the Curtain: Critical Hits

Critical hits are in the game to add moments of particular excitement. Critical hits, however, are deadly. The PCs, over the course of a single game session, let alone a campaign, are subject to many more attack rolls than any given NPC. That makes sense, since the PCs are in every battle, and most NPCs are in just one (the one in which the PCs defeat them, usually). Thus, more critical hits are going to be dealt upon any single PC than any single NPC (and the NPC was probably not going to survive the encounter anyway). Any given PC is more likely to survive an encounter⁠—​but a critical hit against the character can change all that. Be aware of this potential, and decide how you want to deal with it ahead of time.

The reason that critical hits multiply all damage, rather than just the die roll, is so that they remain significant at high levels. When a highlevel fighter adds +5 to his damage roll from magic and +10 from his magically enhanced strength, the result of the 1d8 damage roll from his longsword becomes trivial, even if doubled by a critical hit. Multiplying all damage, the roll and the bonuses, makes critical hits particularly dangerous. In fact, they can completely determine the course of a battle if one or two are dealt. That’s why they make the game both more interesting and more uncontrollable.

Remember, a critical hit feels like a lot of damage, but the difference between a double-damage critical hit and a normal hit is no greater than the difference between a miss and a hit. Taking a triple-damage critical hit, however, is like getting hit an extra two times, and taking a quadruple-damage critical hit is like getting hit an extra three times.

The weapons in the Player’s Handbook are balanced with the following idea in mind: Good weapons that deal triple-damage critical hits do so only on a 20. Good weapons that deal double-damage critical hits do so on a 19–20. Axes are big and heavy. They’re somewhat difficult to use efficiently, but when one does, the effect is devastating. An executioner uses an axe for this reason. Swords, on the other hand, are more precise⁠—​sword wielders get in decisive strikes more often, but they’re not as crushing as those dealt by axes. A few other factors are considered as well (reach, the ability to use a weapon as a ranged weapon, and more), but for the most part, this is the basic rule of thumb. Thus, it would be a mistake to add to the weapon list some new weapon that dealt triple-damage critical hits on a 19–20. (Results such as this might be possible through magic or feats, but should not be a basic quality of any weapon.)

Behind the Curtain: Experience Points

The experience point award for encounters is based on the concept that 13.33 encounters of an EL equal to the player characters’ level allow them to gain a level.

Thirteen or fourteen encounters can seem to go by very quickly. This is particularly true at low levels, where most of the encounters that characters take part in are appropriate for their levels. At higher levels, the PCs face a varied range of Encounter Levels (more lower than higher, if they’re to survive) and thus gain levels somewhat more slowly. Higher-level characters also tend to spend more and more time interacting with each other and with NPCs, which results in fewer XP over time.

With this information in mind, you can roughly gauge how quickly the PCs in your game will advance. In fact, you can control it. You are in charge of what encounters happen and the circumstances in which they occur. You can predict at what level the characters will reach the dark temple and prepare accordingly. If it turns out that you predicted incorrectly, you can engineer encounters to allow them to reach the appropriate level or increase the difficulty of the temple encounters as needed.

Published adventures always provide a guideline for which levels of characters are appropriate to play. Keep in mind that this information is based on character power as well as expected treasure. The Character Wealth by Level table gives a guideline for about how much treasure a character of a certain level should possess. This guideline is based on the (slightly more than) thirteen-encounters-per-level formula and assumes average treasures were given out. If you use a published adventure but tend to be generous with experience points, you might find that the characters in your group don’t have as much treasure as the scenario assumes. Likewise, if you’re stingy with experience points, the characters will probably gain treasure faster than levels. Of course, if you’re stingy or generous with both treasure and experience points, it might just all even out.

Behind the Curtain: When a PC Falls Behind

D&D works best when all the PCs are within a level or two of each other. The classes are carefully balanced against each other at each level, and the Challenge Rating system gives you great freedom to design appropriate challenges that are fun for everyone at the table.

But often an unlucky PC⁠—​or the PC of a sometimes-absent player⁠—​will fall behind the rest of the party. If the difference is one or two levels, you don’t need to do anything special. The experience point system gives bigger awards to lower-level PCs, so a character who’s behind by a level or two will naturally catch up over time. For example, if a party of three 9th-level PCs and one 7th-level PC defeat a CR 9 vrock, the 9th-level PCs each get 675 XP (2,700 ÷ 4), but the 7th-level PC gets (4,200 ÷ 4) 1,050 XP.

The experience point system will diminish a three-level gap over time, but it might not erase it. And a PC four or more levels behind the rest of the party is a recipe for trouble. An encounter challenging to the rest of the party is overwhelming to the lowest-level character, increasing the likelihood that character will die⁠—​and thus fall further behind. The player of the lowest-level character might feel like his character can’t do anything useful, and the other players might resent having to keep the lowest-level character out of harm’s way.

If a PC falls that far behind the rest of the party, take action to restore a semblance of balance. You can discuss a new character with the player, write a solo adventure for that character to earn the XP needed to catch up, or design encounters that simultaneously provide challenges appropriate for the low-level player and the rest of the PCs.