Dungeon Master’s Guide Sneak Peek!

Dungeon Master’s Guide designer Monte Cook

• Chapter 1: Dungeon Mastering
• Chapter 2: Characters
• Chapter 3: Running the Game
• Chapter 4: Adventuring
• Chapter 5: Campaigns
• Chapter 6: World Building
• Chapter 7: Rewards
• Chapter 8: Magic Item

Chapter 1: Dungeon Mastering

The Dungeon Master’s Guide launches readers right into the heart of DM-ing with tips on teaching the game, determining style of play, running a typical session, and more. Monte gives us an advance look at keeping game balance here.

"This chapter is filled with suggestions and guidelines for being a good DM, based on over twenty years of DM-ing. If a book called the Dungeon Master’s Guide doesn’t tell you how to be a DM, then where would you ever find such information?"

Keeping Game Balance

A lot of people talk about game balance. They refer to rules they like as "balanced," and rules that don’t seem to work as "unbalanced." But what does that really mean? All game balance does is to ensure that most character choices are relatively equal. A balanced game is one in which one character doesn’t dominate over the rest because of a choice that he or she made (race, class, skill, feat, spell, magic item, etc.). It also reflects that the characters aren’t too powerful for the threats that they face, yet neither are they hopelessly overmatched.

Two factors drive game balance:

Good DM Management: A DM who carefully watches all portions of the game so that nothing gets out of his or her control helps keep the game balanced. PCs and NPCs, victories and defeats, awards and afflictions, treasure found and treasure spent--all these aspects must be monitored to maintain balance. No one character should ever become significantly greater than the others. If this does happen, the others should have an opportunity to catch up in short order. The PCs as a whole should never get so powerful that all the challenges become trivial to them. Nor should they be constantly overwhelmed by what they must face. It’s no fun to always lose, and always winning gets boring fast. (These types of games are known as "killer dungeons" and "monty hauls," respectively.) When temporary imbalances do occur, it’s easier to fix them by altering the challenges than by changing anything about the PCs and their powers or equipment. No one likes to get something (a new magic sword, for example), only to have it taken away again because it was too unbalancing.

Player-DM Trust: Players should trust the DM. Trust can be gained over time by consistent use of the rules, by not taking sides (that is, not favoring one player at another’s expense), and by making it clear that you’re not vindictive toward the players or the PCs. If the players trust you--and through you the game system--they will recognize that anything that enters the game has been carefully considered. If you adjudicate a situation, the players should be able to trust it as a fair call and not question or second-guess it. That way, the players can focus their attention on playing their characters, succeeding in the game, and having fun, trusting you to take care of matters of fairness and realism. They also trust that you will do whatever you can to make sure that they are able to enjoy playing their characters, can potentially succeed in the game, and will have fun. If this level of trust can be achieved, you will be much more free to add or change things in your game without worrying about the players protesting or scrutinizing every decision.

The "Characters" chapter covers everything from generating ability scores and designing NPCs to creating new races and classes, including the all-new concept of prestige classes. Here, Monte tells us why it’s okay to tinker with the standard classes.

"This is the chapter that corresponds with the whole beginning portion of the Player’s Handbook. It’s not the same information -- it’s the opposite side of the coin. While the players are reading about the races and classes available for their characters, the DM is reading about ways to change and add to what’s presented, how to handle NPC creation, creating PCs higher than 1st level, and more. It’s full of ways to handle questions every DM gets, like ‘Can I play a bugbear?’ ‘Can my paladin swap out one of her special abilities for a different one?’ ‘Can I roll my ability scores in a different way?’"

Behind the Curtain: Why Mess around with Character Classes?

The standard character classes fit into virtually everyone’s campaign. They’re flexible, and skill and feat selection allow them to be truly customizable. Most character concepts can be covered using the classes as written. Modifying classes is mostly a tool that you can use to tailor things to best fit your campaign. It shouldn’t come up that often, since it’s rarely necessary.

DMs who create their own worlds may find the classes need some focusing to make them specific to a particular campaign. If, in developing your own world, you design a culture steeped in a long-standing hatred of magic, you might alter the fighter to be a demonslayer and give the class a limited weapon selection and special feats that work best against outsiders. The ranger might become a wizard-hunter, the cleric could be a protector with early access to dispel magic and various defensive spells, and all PC classes might be imbued with the ability to use detect magic once per day.

Sometimes, however, players come to you and say that they like a certain class, but they want to change a single feature or two. Michele might want to play a ranger with no desire to obtain more than one favored enemy. She wants to play a beast-slayer, and her character hates dire wolves. She’s also interested in the paladin’s warhorse. You can decide, as a DM, that it’s acceptable to trade those ranger abilities for the paladin’s mount. In fact, you might decide that it’s not a fair trade, and that Michele’s character can have the detect evil ability as well. (She is, after all, giving up an ability usable at 1st level as well as one that comes into play later for one that she can’t achieve until 5th level.) Allowing a player to play the character she wants to play is always a desirable goal. Sure, sometimes it can’t be achieved--the player asks for too much, or what she wants doesn’t fit with your campaign--but the effort to accommodate reasonable modifications is almost always worth it.

Chapter 3: Running the Game

All DMs know that there’s a lot to "running the game," including staging encounters, handling combat, dealing with the environment, making skill and ability checks, rolling saving throws, and adjudicating magic. From this chapter, Monte offers some rules for PCs on ice.

"Every game has strange situations. The characters are tied up on a raft, going down the rapids, on fire, and need to steer away from the herd of gorgons falling into the river going over a cliff like lemmings. How the heck do you deal with that kind of stuff? This chapter provides rules and suggestions for how to deal with the crazy stuff, as well as the not so crazy stuff--like poisons, disease, drowning, weather, etc."

Cold Dangers

The prickly fingers of icy death have robbed many an adventurer of her life. Prolonged exposure to cold temperatures and harsh weather can wear down a character who isn’t protected against the climate. Hypothermia, frostbite, and exhaustion can quickly kill in bad weather. The best defense against cold and exposure is to get under cover and keep warm.

Cold and exposure deal subdual damage to the victim. This subdual damage cannot be recovered until the character gets out of the cold and warms up again. Once a character is rendered unconscious through the accumulation of subdual damage, the cold and exposure begins to deal normal damage at the same rate.

An unprotected character in cold weather (below 40° F) must make a Fortitude saving throw each hour (DC 15, + 1 per previous check) or sustain 1d6 points of subdual damage. A character who has the Wilderness Lore skill may receive a bonus to this saving throw and may be able to apply this bonus to other characters as well (see the skill description on page 76 in the Player’s Handbook).

In conditions of extreme cold or exposure (below 0° F), an unprotected character must make a Fortitude save once every 10 minutes (DC 15, +1 per previous check), taking 1d6 points of subdual damage on each failed save. A character who has the Wilderness Lore skill may receive a bonus to this saving throw and may be able to apply this bonus to other characters as well (see the skill description in Chapter 4: Skills in the Player’s Handbook). Characters wearing winter clothing only need check once per hour for cold and exposure damage.

A character who sustains any subdual damage from cold or exposure suffers from frostbite or hypothermia (treat her as fatigued; see page 84). These penalties end when the character recovers the subdual damage she took from the cold and exposure.

Chapter 4: Adventuring

The D&D game is, at its heart, about adventuring. Chapter 4 offers background on different styles of adventures and encounters, including the classic dungeon setting. Need help outfitting that vault? Monte gives us some tips on the well-dressed dungeon.

"When you are designing adventures, you need to have some sort of basis on which to build your idea. How tough is it to open a portcullis? How do I describe these strange features in this encounter area? How much damage does an arrow trap inflict? How tough should the encounters be? What do I do if I’m out of ideas but I have to come up with something? Turn to Chapter 4, and you’ll at least have a place to start."

Table 4-5: Dungeon Dressing--Major Features and Furnishings

Chapter 5: Campaigns

Moving on from adventures to longer-term games, Chapter 5 provides guidance for those ready to establish and maintain campaigns, handle NPCs, and more. The first section discusses the setup to bring a party of adventurers together.

"Campaigns are weird. There’s really nothing else like them in any other sort of game. Campaign management (and that includes a little player management as well) is both a skill and an art. This chapter gives some advice and some ideas."

The Adventuring Party

Bringing the group of adventurers (the party) together can be a challenge. Not for the players--they are all sitting around the table--but for the characters. What brings such a disparate group of races and professions together and makes them a team that goes on adventures together? The objective when answering this question is to avoid the dissatisfaction players feel when they sense that they are adventuring with their comrades only because these folks are the other PCs. One way to prevent this feeling is to have the players create their characters together and put the burden of determining how they have come together on them before the first adventure ever starts. Here are a few other suggestions:

Happenstance: The first adventure is set up so that someone is putting out a call for mercenaries or adventurers to do some task, and the characters are the men and women who happened to answer the call. Alternatively, all the characters meet and discover that they are headed to the same place.

History: The characters are lifelong friends who have met in the past. Despite their different backgrounds and training, they are already good friends.

Mutual Acquaintances: The characters don’t start as friends but are introduced as trusted friends of mutual friends.

Outside Intervention: The characters are called together by an outside force--someone with authority enough to get them to do as she says--and are commanded to work together, at least on the first adventure.

The Cliché: The characters all meet in a tavern over mugs of ale and decide to work together.

Chapter 6: World Building

It’s a logical step from designing your own dungeons and towns to creating whole new realms and worlds. Chapter 6 outlines the major points to cover: creation methodology, geography, demographics, economics, politics, war, religion, and magic. For those who want their world to be really out of the ordinary, Monte has this advice.

"Don’t be limited by anyone’s imagination but your own. Want to do something weird? Great. Here’s your starting point."

Differing Magic

Another way to create a divergent game is to change the amount of magic available.

Low Magic: In a low-magic game, spellcasters and magic treasure are about twice as rare as normal. Magic items aren’t for sale because they’re too rare to ever think of parting with for mere gold. The occasional trade of an item or its sale for gold is possible, of course, but it is a rarity in the economic structure.

Common people almost never see magic. Some might not even believe in it. A spell or a magic-using creature completely bedevils the common folk and terrifies them. All magic-using creatures, including characters, may be thought of as "demons." They might be persecuted. Witch trials and the like could be a common fate for wizards and sorcerers. Clerics and other divine spellcasters are probably safer than arcane spellcasters, but they might not be, depending on the culture.

High Magic: Spellcasters and magic treasures are twice as common as presented in these rules, if not more so. Most characters have a level or two of wizard or sorcerer. Even a shopkeeper might be at least a 1st-level spellcaster. Magic items are bought and sold in clearly marked shops like any other commodity. Spells are used to light homes, keep people warm, and communicate. The function they serve is as commonplace as modern-day technology is in the real world.

This sort of campaign can be directed one of two ways. The first is to take the world of the utterly fantastic route, where magic is sophisticated and common, and to create a world unlike anything anyone but you has ever imagined. The second is to take the comical route, where magic simply becomes technology--little imps in boxes perform calculations like computers, and people have magical transmission television sets. The second route can be fun, but the sort of light-hearted parody it leads to is probably not a good basis for a long-term campaign.

Chapter 7: Rewards

To keep your players interested, DMs need to be generous--and creative--with their rewards. In this chapter you can discover a spectrum of strategies, including rewards of experience, treasure, and more. When the situation calls upon you to dole out XP on the fly, Monte has a few suggestions.

"We worked really hard to come up with an experience progression that moved people through levels at a fairly steady pace -- one at which we think will keep the game interesting. Tied with that is a baseline with which to give out treasure, so you always know how much is too much or too little. Obviously, level and treasure gaining are up to you, however, so this chapter also tells you how to speed up or slow down either factor."

Assigning Ad Hoc XP Awards

Sometimes the XP chart doesn’t quite cover a given situation adequately. 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 the standard orc cannot hit him or her, and one or two spells cast by a character at that level could easily destroy all thirty-two orcs. At such a point, your judgment as the DM 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 defeat 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. As the DM, you’re going to have to make these decisions. As a guideline, the minimum and maximum awards given on Table 7–1: Experience Point Awards (Single Monster) for a group of a given level are the least and most 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 amount an EL 3 encounter would have garnered, or 125 XP. Or you might judge that a vast number of CR 1 monsters are indeed an appropriate equal challenge for the same 10th-level party because the group had lost all their equipment before the fight started.

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

Chapter 8: Magic Items

Perhaps the most frequently thumbed section of the Dungeon Master’s Guide is destined to be this catalog of magic items. But more than just a roster of descriptions, Chapter 8 also offers details for creating items and handling them in play. Monte gives us a sneak peek at one of his favorites.

"Ah, magic items. Everybody loves ‘em, but they can be a pain. In the new D&D game, we tried to give a better framework for them without stifling creativity for the weird, unique stuff. In this chapter you’ll find rules for balancing a +3 sword with a +2 flaming sword, as well as the crazy stuff -- intelligent items, artifacts, the Apparatus of Kwalish… you get the idea."

Bracers of Armor

These items appear to be wrist or arm guards. They surround the wearer with an invisible but tangible field of force, granting him an armor bonus of +1 to +8, just as though he were wearing armor. Both bracers must be worn for the magic to be effective.

Caster Level: 7th

Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, mage armor, creator’s class level must be twice that of the bonus placed in the bracers

Market Price: 1,000 gp (+1), 4,000 gp (+2), 9,000 gp (+3), 16,000 gp (+4), 25,000 gp (+5), 36,000 gp (+6), 39,000 gp (+7), or 64,000 gp (+8)

Weight: 1 lb.

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