Kendra Deverin has served as Sandpoint’s mayor for the past eight years. Lawmaker, judge, and general peacemaker, Deverin has proven to be both an adept diplomat and stern hand when need be—skills likely honed during her youth in Magnimar and adventuring in the region. With a personal—some say sisterly—style of governing, Kendra holds the abiding respect of most of Sandpoint’s people, charming them with her fiery temper and tenacity for justice (as demonstrated during the Late Unpleasantness). A council of several of the town’s most respected and affluent landowners aids Deverin’s work. While several councilmembers have their own agendas and visions for the town, the mayor’s no-nonsense attitude assures that council decisions ever work toward the common good.
Meting out the town’s good justice, sheriff and councilmember Belor Hemlock keeps watch over Sandpoint’s people. Held as something of a local hero, Hemlock is lauded with being the man who brought the serial killer, Chopper, to justice. Although rarely faced with misconduct more severe than vandalism and public drunkenness, the sheriff is both a keen wit and a skilled swordsman, and openly proves both when the rare crime requires it. While the town’s chief enforcer, Hemlock knows the difference between the word of the law and its intent, and often gives those under his protection the benefit of the doubt.
Their sheriff’s work aside, Sandpoint’s people realize they must often fend for and defend themselves, especially on the outlying farms. In the rarest and most extreme cases— and even then thoroughly discouraged—mob justice is sometimes all that satisfies the outraged people.
Sandpoint: The Law
Character Creation Summary
Follow these steps to create your D&D character. You can take these out of order; for example, some people prefer to pick their powers last.
1. Choose Race
a. Dragonborn
b. Dwarf
c. Eladrin
d. Elf
e. Half-elf
f. Halfling
g. Human
h. Tiefling
2. Choose Class
a. Cleric
b. Fighter
c. Paladin
d. Ranger
e. Rogue
f. Warlock
g. Warlord
h. Wizard
3. Determine Ability Scores
a. Start with these scores: 8, 10, 10 ,10, 10, 10
b. You have 22 points to spend in improving them. Use the cost in the table on page 17 of the PHB.
c. Apply your racial adjustments after you determine your scores.
4. Choose Skills
The entry for your class tells you how many skills you’re trained in and what skills you can choose.
5. Select Feat
a. You select one feat.
b. If you’re human, you have an additional feat, so you start with two feats.
6. Choose Powers
a. Choose two at-will attack powers from the list in your class description.
b. Select one power from the list of 1st-level encounter attack powers in your class description.
c. Choose one power from the list of 1st-level daily attack powers in your class description.
7. Choose Equipment
You begin your career with 100 gold pieces, enough to equip yourself with basic gear (and maybe have a few coins left over).
8. Fill in the Numbers
The calculations you need are described on page 30 of the PHB in the instructions on completing your character sheet.
9. Role-playing Character Details
Flesh out your character with details about your personality, appearance and beliefs.
Daily Art Preview: Black Dragon
Black dragons are malicious beasts that disgorge acid. They primarily lurk in fell swamps but are also drawn to places with strong ties to the Shadowfell.
Art by Lars Grant-West
Daily Art Preview: Harpy
Harpies use their sweet songs pacify victims before tearing them to pieces with their claws.
Art by Dave Allsop
Excerpts: Rituals
Performing a Ritual
Rituals are complex ceremonies that create magic effects. You don’t memorize or prepare a ritual; a ritual is so long and complex that no one could ever commit the whole thing to memory. To perform a ritual, you need to read from a book or a scroll containing it.
A ritual book contains one or more rituals that you can use as often and as many times as you like, as long as you can spare the time and the components to perform the ritual.
A ritual scroll contains a single ritual, and you can perform the ritual from that scroll only once. After that, the magic contained in the scroll is expended, and the scroll turns to dust. Anyone can use a ritual scroll to perform the ritual it contains, as long as the appropriate components are expended.
Performing a Ritual
To perform a ritual that you have mastered, you spend a certain amount of time (specified in the ritual description) performing various actions appropriate to the ritual. The actions might include reading long passages out of the ritual book, scribing complex diagrams on the ground, burning special incense or sprinkling mystic reagents at appropriate times, or performing a long set of meticulous gestures. The specific activities required aren’t described in most ritual descriptions; they’re left to your imagination.
A ritual requires certain esoteric components, which you purchase before you perform the ritual and which are expended when the ritual is complete. Each ritual specifies the cost of the components you need.
If a ritual requires a skill check, the check usually determines the ritual’s effectiveness. Even if the check result is low, a ritual usually succeeds, but if the result is high, you can usually achieve better effects.
How to Read a Ritual
Rituals are described in a consistent format, the elements of which are outlined below.
Name and Flavor Text
Beneath a ritual’s name is a short passage of flavor text that tells what a ritual accomplishes, sometimes expressing that information in terms of what the ritual looks like or sounds like as it’s being performed.
Level
Each ritual has a level. You have to be that level or higher to perform the ritual from a book or to copy it.
Time
Performing a ritual takes the specified amount of time. Using a scroll cuts that time in half.
Duration
This entry shows how long a ritual’s effects last after the completion of the ritual. The effects of a ritual usually last longer than those of a power.
Component Cost
This is the value of the components that must be expended to perform a ritual. A ritual’s key skill determines the kind of components required.
Alchemical Reagents (Arcana): Typically these are small vials full of powdered metals, rare earths, acids, salts, or extracts from creatures such as dragons or basilisks.
Mystic Salves (Heal): Restoration rituals use mystic salves, dabbed or painted on the creatures to be healed. These salves come in small jars and include blessed oils and unguents made from rare spices.
Rare Herbs (Nature): Rare herbs are usually collected and preserved during certain times of year, such as when the moon is full.
Sanctified Incense (Religion): Sanctified incense is prepared during certain religious rites and is burned as a powder or a stick.
Residuum (Any): The concentrated magical substance that results from performing the Disenchant Magic Item ritual, residuum can be used as a component for any ritual. You can’t usually buy it on the open market; you acquire it by draining it out of magic items.
You can use the components associated with a key skill for any ritual that uses that skill. For example, if you stock up on alchemical reagents, you can use them when you perform any Arcana-based ritual. Ritual components are not interchangeable; you can’t use alchemical reagents to perform a ritual requiring sanctified incense, for example. But you can use residuum for any ritual.
You can buy ritual components at some shops, your allies can provide them (sharing the cost of a ritual with you), or you might find them as treasure. However you acquire components, record their value on your character sheet. When you perform a ritual, mark off the ritual’s cost from the appropriate components.
Some rituals’ descriptions note other costs, including healing surges or a focus item (such as a mirror or a crystal ball for a scrying ritual). A focus item is not expended when you perform a ritual.
Market Price
This entry is the cost to purchase a ritual book containing the ritual or to copy a ritual into an existing ritual book. A scroll containing a ritual costs the same amount.
Key Skill
A ritual’s key skill determines the type of components required to perform the ritual, and if a ritual requires a skill check, the key skill is used for the check. If this entry ends with “(no check),” then the ritual does not require a skill check.
If a ritual has more than one key skill, you choose which skill to use. Your choice determines both the components you use and the skill you use for any checks required by the ritual.
Unless a ritual’s description says otherwise, you make your skill check when you finish performing a ritual. You can’t take 10 on one of these skill checks.
Effects
The text that follows the foregoing information describes what happens when you finish performing a ritual.
Rituals by Level (first 10 levels)
Level Ritual Key Skill
1 Animal Messenger Nature
1 Comprehend Language Arcana
1 Gentle Repose Heal
1 Magic Mouth Arcana
1 Make Whole Arcana
1 Secret Page Arcana
1 Silence Arcana
1 Tenser’s Floating Disk Arcana
2 Endure Elements Arcana or Nature
2 Eye of Alarm Arcana
2 Water Walk Nature
3 Detect Secret Doors Arcana
4 Arcane Lock Arcana
4 Enchant Magic Item Arcana
4 Hand of Fate Religion
4 Knock Arcana
4 Travelers’ Feast Nature
5 Brew Potion Arcana or Religion
5 Hallucinatory Item Arcana
5 Magic Circle Arcana
6 Commune with Nature Nature
6 Cure Disease Heal
6 Discern Lies Religion
6 Disenchant Magic Item Arcana
6 Leomund’s Secret Chest Arcana
6 Phantom Steed Arcana
6 Sending Arcana
6 Speak with Dead Religion
8 Linked Portal Arcana
8 Raise Dead Heal
8 Remove Affliction Heal
8 Water Breathing Arcana or Nature
8 Wizard’s Sight Arcana
10 Consult Mystic Sages Religion
10 Detect Object Arcana 
Detect Secret Doors
With a smile and a wink, you show Soveliss the outline of the trapdoor he missed.
Level: 3
Category: Exploration
Time: 10 minutes
Duration: Instantaneous
Component Cost: 25 gp
Market Price: 125 gp
Key Skill: Arcana
Make an Arcana check. Use the result as a bonus to a Perception check you immediately make to find any secret or hidden doors in your line of sight. If anyone aided you while performing this ritual, they can’t help you make the resulting Perception check.
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Cure Disease
Even the most horrid affliction disappears in response to your healing touch.
Level: 6
Category: Restoration
Time: 10 minutes
Duration: Instantaneous
Component Cost: 150 gp
Market Price: 360 gp
Key Skill: Heal
The Cure Disease ritual wipes away a single disease afflicting the subject, whether the disease is active or still incubating. The subject is completely cured and loses any negative side effects and symptoms of the disease.
This ritual is physically taxing to the recipient; if used on an injured character, it can even kill him or her. Upon completing this ritual, make a Heal check, using the level of the disease as a penalty to this check. The result indicates the amount of damage the character takes. Assuming the character survives, this damage can be healed normally.
Heal Check Result Effect on Target
0 or lower Death
1–9 Damage equal to the target’s maximum hit points
10–19 Damage equal to one-half of the target’s maximum hit points
20–29 Damage equal to one-quarter of the target’s maximum hit points
30 or higher No damage
If you know that your subject is suffering from multiple diseases, you must choose which one this ritual will cure. Otherwise, the ritual affects whichever single disease you knew about. You learn the disease level when you begin the ritual, and at that point you can choose not to continue, without expending any components.
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Raise Dead
You bend over the body of your slain comrade, applying sacramental unguents. Finally his eyes flutter open as he is restored to life.
Level: 8
Category: Restoration
Time: 8 hours
Duration: Instantaneous
Component Cost: 500 gp
Market Price: 680 gp
Key Skill: Heal (no check)
To perform the Raise Dead ritual, you must have a part of the corpse of a creature that died no more than 30 days ago. You apply mystic salves, then pray to the gods to restore the dead creature’s life. The subject returns to life as if he or she had taken an extended rest. The subject is freed of any temporary conditions suffered at death, but permanent conditions remain.
The subject returns with a death penalty: –1 to all attack rolls, skill checks, saving throws, and ability checks. This death penalty fades after the subject reaches three milestones.
You can’t restore life to a creature that has been petrified or to a creature that died of old age.
The subject’s soul must be free and willing to return to life. Some magical effects trap the soul and thus prevent Raise Dead from working, and the gods can intervene to prevent a soul from journeying back to the realm of the living. In all cases, death is less inclined to return paragon and epic heroes; the component cost is 5,000 gp for paragon tier characters and 50,000 gp for epic tier characters.
* * *
Welcome wizards, clerics, and other initiates to Rituals 101, where you will learn what rituals are and what they are not.
Rituals take time to cast. Unlike a wizard’s spells or a cleric’s prayers, which can be cast under pressure and at a moment’s notice, rituals require preparation, costly components, and time—these are effects that must wait for a quiet moment before you call on their power.
Rituals are used for effects you cannot accomplish in other ways. Looking upon a creature from afar, traveling halfway across the world with a few steps, speaking with distant friends, leaving behind a mouth to speak your message: these are all capabilities that rituals offer. Some rituals supply the abilities of absent comrades, such as magically opening locks or sensing secret doors. Using them in such a way, however, is rarely your first choice; letting the rogue pick the lock is the cheaper and faster option.
Some powers that will be familiar from past editions of the game now reside in rituals. Enduring illusions, for example—from false walls to goblins made from nothing but trickery—are rituals. You can also summon a prepared treasure chest full of gear (or empty, to fill it with treasure), or create a floating disk to carry your loot. Rituals help you understand languages you’ve never studied, conjure mounts, and lift curses and diseases from your friends.
Rituals fall into one of nine categories:
Binding (Arcana or Religion): These rituals seek to lure, ensnare, control, or protect you from other beings, sometimes from other planes.
Creation (Arcana or Religion): These rituals are used to craft magic items and other special objects.
Deception (Arcana): Deception rituals cloak reality behind various facades.
Divination (Arcana, Nature, or Religion): These rituals provide advice, information, or guidance.
Exploration (Arcana, Nature, or Religion): A catch-all category, exploration rituals include a variety of effects useful in everyday adventuring.
Restoration (Heal): These rituals remove ill effects from the living or bring back the dead.
Scrying (Arcana): Scrying rituals let the caster spy on locations, objects, or creatures.
Travel (Arcana): Travel rituals transport characters from one place, or plane, to another.
Warding (Arcana): These rituals provide various forms of protection.
That’s a look at what rituals are. Here’s what they are not. Rituals are not buffs for combat. There are no rituals that give you temporary hit points, make your attacks do more damage, let you fly above the battlefield, or wrap you in coronas of flame that scorch your enemies.
That said, rituals can tactically inform combat: If you cast Arcane Lock on the door to the barracks before the alarm went off, if you cast Water Breathing before fighting in the city of canals, if you used an illusion to increase your apparent numbers, then you may well have gained an advantage in a fight. Rituals are primarily utility, and can only be used for tactical advantage by the clever.
--Peter Schaefer
Daily Art Preview: Wraith
This restless apparition lurks in the shadows thirsting for souls. Those it slays become free-willed wraiths as hateful as their creator.
Art by Steve Argyle
Daily Art Preview: Foulspawn
Foulspawn are deranged humanoids corrupted by contact with the Far Realm, a maddening and distant plane.
Art by Dave Allsop
Excerpts: Fallcrest
The Town of Fallcrest
Where do the player characters go when they’re not battling through dismal dungeons or exploring ancient ruins? Where do they go to spend the treasure they win and rest up for the next adventure? The answer is simple: a base town.
A base town is a haven where the heroes can interact with patrons, listen for rumors, sell art objects or magic items, and buy new gear. It might be an elven tree-village that happens to be located near a dungeon the heroes are exploring, a prosperous human trade-town that interesting people pass through, an isolated dwarf stronghold in the borderlands, or a true city inhabited by thousands of people. Whatever the nature of the base town, it’s the place your player characters return to between adventures, and the place where new adventures begin.
Chapter 11 of the Dungeon Master's Guide introduces a town called Fallcrest, which you can use as a base town for your first D&D game.
Fallcrest
Fallcrest stands amid the Moon Hills at the falls of the Nentir River. Here travelers and traders using the old King’s Road that runs north and south, the dwarven Trade Road from the east, and the river all meet. The surrounding ridges shelter several small valleys where farmers and woodsfolk live; few are more than six or seven miles from the town. In general the people outside Fallcrest’s walls earn their living by farming or keeping livestock, and the people inside the walls are artisans, laborers, or merchants. People with no other prospects can make a hard living as porters, carrying cargo from the Lower Quays to the Upper Quays (or vice versa).
Fallcrest imports finished goods from the larger cities downriver and ironwork from the dwarf town of Hammerfast, and exports timber, leather, fruit, and grain. It also trades with the nearby town of Winterhaven.
The surrounding hills hold several marble quarries that once produced a good deal of stone, but the area has little demand for ornamental stone these days, and only a few stonecutters still practice their trade.
A small town built from the ruins of a larger city, Fallcrest is the crossroads of the Nentir Vale.
Population: 1,350; another 900 or so live in the countryside within a few miles of the town. The people of Fallcrest are mostly humans, halflings, and dwarves. No dragonborn or eladrin are permanent residents, but travelers of all races pass through on occasion.
Government: The human noble Faren Markelhay is the Lord Warden (hereditary lord) of the town. He is in charge of the town’s justice, defense, and laws. The Lord Warden appoints a town council to look after routine commerce and public projects.
Defense: The Fallcrest Guard numbers sixty warriors (see the accompanying statistics block), who also serve as constables. Moonstone Keep is their barracks. The Lord Warden can call up 350 militia at need.
Inns: Nentir Inn; Silver Unicorn. The Silver Unicorn is pricier and offers better service; the Nentir Inn sees a more interesting clientele.
Taverns: Blue Moon Alehouse; Lucky Gnome Taphouse; Nentir Inn taproom.
Supplies: Halfmoon Trading House; Sandercot Provisioners.
Temples: Temple of Erathis; Moonsong Temple (Sehanine); House of the Sun (Pelor).
Fallcrest’s Story
Up until four centuries or so ago, the Moon Hills and the surrounding Nentir Vale were thinly settled borderlands, home to quarrelsome human hill-chieftains and remote realms of nonhumans such as dwarves and elves. Giants, minotaurs, orcs, ogres, and goblins plagued the area. Ruins such as those on the Gray Downs or the ring-forts atop the Old Hills date back to these days, as do stories of the hero Vendar and the dragon of the Nentir.
With the rise of the empire of Nerath to the south, human settlers began to move up the Nentir, establishing towns such as Fastormel, Harkenwold, and Winterhaven. A Nerathan hero named Aranda Markelhay obtained a charter to build a keep at the portage of the Nentir Falls. She raised a simple tower at the site of Moonstone Keep three hundred ten years ago, and under its protection the town of Fallcrest began to grow.
Over the next two centuries, Fallcrest grew into a small and prosperous city. It was a natural crossroads for trade, and the Markelhays ruled it well. When the empire of Nerath began to crumble about a century ago, Fallcrest continued to flourish—for a time.
Ninety years ago, a fierce horde of orcs known as the Bloodspears descended from the Stonemarch and swept over the vale. Fallcrest’s army was defeated in a rash attempt to halt the Bloodspears out on Gardbury Downs. The Bloodspears burned and pillaged Fallcrest and went on to wreak havoc all across the Nentir Vale.
In the decades since the Bloodspear War, Fallcrest has struggled to reestablish itself. The town is a shadow of the former city; little trade passes up and down the river these days. The countryside for scores of miles around is dotted with abandoned homesteads and manors from the days of Nerath. Once again the Nentir Vale is a thinly settled borderland where few folk live. This is a place in need of a few heroes.
Some Key Locations
16. Moonsong Temple
The third of Fallcrest’s temples is devoted to Sehanine. It also includes shrines to Corellon, Melora, and Avandra. The Markelhays regard Sehanine as their special patron, and over the years they have given generously to the temple. The temple occupies a commanding position atop the bluffs, and its white minarets can be seen from any corner of Lowtown.
The leader of the temple is High Priest Ressilmae Starlight, a wise and compassionate elf who finished adventuring decades ago and retired to a contemplative life. He is a musician of great skill who happily tutors the local children, even those who are poor and can’t afford to pay for their lessons. He has limited access to the following ritual scrolls: Cure Disease (2), Raise Dead (1), Remove Affliction (1).
19. Naerumar’s Imports
Considered the finest of Fallcrest’s retail establishments, Naerumar’s Imports deals in gemstones, jewelry, art, and magic trinkets. The owner is Orest Naerumar, a tiefling who displays impeccable manners and discretion. Orest corresponds with relatives and colleagues in several towns and cities outside the Nentir Vale; given a few weeks, he can order in low-level magic items or other items of unusual value. Similarly, Orest purchases interesting items such as these, since other dealers in distant towns or cities might be looking for them.
Orest doesn’t ask questions about where characters in his store found the goods they’re selling to him, but he is not a fence—if he knows that something was obtained illegally, he declines to purchase it.
DM Tip: Orest normally arranges for halflings of the Swiftwater clan to transport special orders—jewelry, gems, or magic items of value. However, he sometimes makes other arrangements for items that seem especially valuable or dangerous. If the player characters are looking for something to do, Orest can hire them to carry or guard exceptionally valuable goods he’s sending to a merchant in another town.
Orest NaerumarLevel 8 SkirmisherMedium natural humanoid, tiefling rogueXP 350Initiative +8 Senses Perception +5; low-light vision
HP 79; Bloodied 39
AC 21; Fortitude 19, Reflex 23, Will 22
Resist fire 9
Speed 6Dagger +1 (standard; at-will) Weapon+11 vs. AC; 1d4 + 1 damage.Sly Flourish (standard; at-will) Martial, Weapon+14 vs. AC; 1d4 + 9 damage.Dazing Strike (standard; encounter) Martial, Weapon+14 vs. AC; 1d4 + 4 damage and target dazed until the end of Orest’s next turn.Infernal Wrath (minor; encounter)Orest gains a +1 power bonus to his next attack roll against an enemy that hit him since his last turn. If the attack hits and deals damage, Orest deals an extra 5 damage.First StrikeAt the start of an encounter, Orest has combat advantage against any creatures that have not yet acted.Sneak AttackOnce per round, Orest gains +2d6 damage when he has combat advantage.BloodhuntOrest gains a +1 racial bonus to attack rolls against bloodied foes.Alignment UnalignedLanguages Common, DwarvenSkills Bluff +13, Diplomacy +14, Insight +11, Stealth +10Str 13 (+5) Dex 19 (+8) Wis 14 (+6) Con 15 (+6) Int 15 (+6) Cha 20 (+9) Equipment usually unarmored, might carry a level 6 through 8 magic dagger
23. Blue Moon Alehouse
This brewhouse on the banks of the Moonwash Stream is the best tavern in Fallcrest. The owner is a nervous, easily flustered fellow of fifty or so named Par Winnomer. The true genius behind the Blue Moon is the halfling brewmaster Kemara Brownbottle. She is happy to let Par fret about running the taphouse, while she spends her time perfecting her selection of ales and beers.
The Blue Moon is popular with halfling traders whose boats tie up along the Lower Quay, well-off town merchants, and the farmers who live in the countryside south of Fallcrest. The old dwarves Teldorthan (area 24) and Sergeant Murgeddin (area 18) hoist a tankard or two here on frequent occasion, and both can provide beginning adventurers with good leads on potential adventures.
Daily Art Preview: Devourers
When a raving murderer dies, his soul passes into the Shadowfell. There it might gather flesh again to continue its lethal ways, becoming a devourer.
Art by Dave Allsop
Sandpoint: The Town
“Welcome to Sandpoint! Please stop to see yourself as we see you!”
—Mirrored Sign Outside Sandpoint
A simple, relatively peaceful town with all the color and common oddities one expects from a tightly-knit community, Sandpoint sits at a point on the Lost Coast halfway between Magnimar and Windsong Abbey. Wood buildings and cluttered docks line the town’s natural harbor, while farms and the manors of wealthy citizens dot the surrounding countryside.
During the day, fishing, farming, lumbering, glassmaking, and shipbuilding occupy most of the townsfolk, who commonly retire to their homes by way of Sandpoint’s many taverns. A playhouse and would-be museum make unusual attractions in such a small community, but Sandpoint’s true landmark is the Old Light, a lighthouse of ancient origins that lies in ruins.
A relatively peaceful town, devoid of many of the dangers of a true frontier town and intrigues of a sprawling city, Sandpoint has nonetheless had its share of roubles. The fading scars of a recent terror still linger, a time most folk refer to as the Late Unpleasantness.
Just over five years ago, a madman stalked the streets of Sandpoint, killing dozens. Known as Chopper, the killer’s month long terror ended bloodily when an eccentric local artisan was revealed as the murderer and killed during his attempted capture.
Adding to the pain, less than a month later the local chapel burned to the ground in a conflagration that nearly consumed the town’s northern half and left the local priest dead.
Emerging from the shadow of these events, though, Sandpoint has healed and rebuilt, with many townsfolk viewing the coming dedication of a new church as a symbolic end to the healing and return to normality.
Key Points:
1. Sandpoint Cathedral
2. Sandpoint Boneyard
3. The White Deer (tavern)
4. The Way North (map house)
5. Jeweler
6. Junker’s Edge
7. Gorvi’s Shack
8. Sage
9. Locksmith
10. Sandpoint Garrison
11. Sandpoint Town Hall
12. Savah’s Armory
13. Risa’s Place
14. Rovanky Tannery
15. Red Dog Smithy
16. The Pillbug’s Pantry
17. Bottled Solutions
18. Cracktooth’s Tavern
19. House of Blue Stones
20. Sandpoint Glassworks
21. Sandpoint Savories
22. The Curious Goblin (bookshop)
23. Sandpoint Theater
24. Carpenter’s Guild
25. Sandpoint Lumber Mill
26. General Store
27. Turandarok Academy
28. Madame Mvashti’s House
29. Grocer’s Hall
30. Vernah’s Fine Clothing
31. Wheen’s Wagons
32. Scarnetti Mill
33. The Hagfish (tavern)
34. Valdemar Fishmarket
35. Sandpoint Market
36. Sandpoint Meat Market
37. The Rusty Dragon
38. Goblin Squash Stables
39. Two Knight Brewery
40. Sandpoint Mercantile League
41. Sandpoint Boutique
42. Fatman’s Feedbag
43. The Pixie’s Kitten
44. The Feathered Serpent
45. Hannah’s
46. Sandpoint Shipyard
47. Valdemar Manor
48. Scarnetti Manor
49. Kaijitsu Manor
50. Deverin Manor
Excerpts: Swarms
Well, the release of the new game is right around the corner, so it's time to blow the lid off this thing. Since 4E was first announced, gamers have besieged us with phone calls, emails, and even a protest march demanding one thing above all else: How do swarms work in 4E?
Well, the day is at hand. We're about to pull back the curtain on what might be the greatest stride forward in swarm design known to mankind. But first, how did we end up in this glorious state?
Well, swarms are cool, but researching how we think swarms might actually work into D&D was not so cool. For this, we locked a designer in a sealed box with 100,000 ants. We threw rocks at hornets' nests, drop kicked beehives, and stuck our hands into crates of scorpions. From these experiences, we drew the following conclusions:
Oh my god, insects can sting.
No, seriously. That HURTS.
We decided that any of those feats were more fun than the 3E swarm rules.
The 3E swarm rules fell into the trap of simply trying to model reality as we know it, from movies, comics, or the real world. That might be a great move if you want to build a simulator, but it isn't so hot for a game. Instead, we wanted rules that were evocative. You should feel like you're fighting a swarm, but that feeling should be less like boredom and more like "GET THESE THINGS OFF OF ME."
So, a few highlights about 4E swarms:
Swarms are hard to hurt. Hacking at a pile of bugs with a sword is inefficient, but it's also scary to face a monster that's hard to hurt. The swarm marches on in a relentless wave. We liked that feel, and we could easily set the swarm's hit points to balance the effect.
They're hard to push around, again to make them feel relentless.
They can go almost anywhere. Closing a door doesn't do much to slow down a swarm. The bugs simply crawl under it, or through the cracks in the door's frame.
Originally, a single swarm "monster" was four Medium size groups of creatures. They worked similarly to minions, but the effect on the table was disappointing. Swarms didn't feel like tides of hungry critters, more like disposable bags of hit points. We tried toughening them, but that worked against the 4-for-1 discount they offered. In the end, we dropped the split and worked to simplify and streamline our existing rules.
So, now the swarm piece of the 4E puzzle has fallen into place. 4th Edition is right around the corner, and with it endless waves of hungry bugs, drakes, and other nasties.
--Mike Mearls
From the Monster Manual Glossary:
Swarm: A swarm is considered a single monster even though it is composed of several Tiny creatures. Most single swarms are Medium, but some can be larger.
A swarm takes half damage from melee and ranged attacks. It is vulnerable to close and area attacks, as indicated in the monster’s stat block.
A swarm is immune to forced movement (pull, push, and slide) effects from melee and ranged attacks. Close or area attacks that impose forced movement affect the swarm normally.
A swarm can enter or move through an enemy’s space; this movement does not provoke opportunity attacks. An enemy can enter a space occupied by a swarm, but the space occupied by the swarm is considered difficult terrain, and doing so provokes an opportunity attack.
A swarm can squeeze through any opening large enough to accommodate even one of its constituent creatures. For example, a swarm of bats can squeeze through any opening large enough for one of the bats to squeeze through. See the Player’s Handbook for squeezing rules.
Drake
Needlefang Drake Swarm
Savage marauders the size of cats, needlefang drakes swarm over their victims, pull them to ground, and strip them to the bone in seconds.
Needlefang Drake SwarmLevel 2 SoldierMedium natural beast (reptile, swarm)XP 125Initiative +7Senses Perception +7
Swarm Attack aura 1; the needlefang drake swarm makes a basic attack as a free action against each enemy that begins its turn in the aura.
HP 38; Bloodied 19
AC 18; Fortitude 15, Reflex 17, Will 14
Immune fear; Resist half damage from melee and ranged attacks;
Vulnerable 5 against close and area attacks.
Speed 7
Swarm of Teeth (standard; at-will)+8 vs. AC; 1d10 + 4 damage, or 2d10 + 4 damage against a prone target.Pull Down (minor; at-will)+7 vs. Fortitude; the target is knocked prone.Alignment UnalignedLanguages —Str 15 (+3) Dex 18 (+5) Wis 12 (+2) Con 14 (+3) Int 2 (-3) Cha 10 (+1)
Needlefang Drake Tactics
Incited by hunger, needlefang drakes fearlessly rush toward their prey, knock it prone (using pull down), and use their swarm of teeth to feast upon it.
Stirge
Stirge Swarm
Stirges are bloodsucking, bat-like horrors that lurk in caves and ruins. Lone stirges are little more than pests and nuisances—but they are rarely encountered alone. Stirges tend to gather in large flocks that can exsanguinate an adult human in a matter of minutes.
Stirge SwarmLevel 12 BruteMedium natural beast (swarm)XP 700Initiative +9Senses Perception +6; darkvision
Swarm Attack aura 1; the stirge swarm makes a basic attack as a free action against each enemy that begins its turn in the aura.
HP 141; Bloodied 70
AC 24; Fortitude 21, Reflex 24, Will 23
Resist half damage from melee and ranged attacks;
Vulnerable 10 against close and area attacks
Speed 2, fly 6 (hover)
Bloodsucking Swarm (standard; at-will)+15 vs. AC; 2d6 + 4 damage, and ongoing 5 damage (save ends).Alignment UnalignedLanguages —Skills Stealth +14 Str 8 (+5) Dex 16 (+9) Wis 10 (+6) Con 11 (+6) Int 1 (+1) Cha 4 (+3)
Stirge Swarm Tactics
Stirge swarms gave rise to the old dwarven saying: “I don’t have to outrun the stirges, I only have to outrun you.” A hungry swarm will chase its prey for miles, if need be.
Daily Art Preview: Zombies
Most zombies are created using a foul ritual. Once roused, a zombie obeys its creator and wants nothing more than to kill and consume the living.
Art by Steve Argyle
Daily Art Preview: Rot Harbringer
Sometimes known as angels of decay, rot harbingers are hateful winged undead that inflict a rotting curse with their touch.
Art by Dave Allsop
Excerpts: Archons
Archons are militaristic creatures native to the Elemental Chaos. Vaguely humanoid in form, they serve powerful primordial entities as well as various elemental lords and princelings.
Archons trace back to an ancient time when the world had hardly been formed, when primordial beings battled the gods for control of creation. In this cataclysmic conflict, the deities marshaled armies of angels and cadres of exarchs, and though the primordials could call forth titanic beasts and giants, they could not muster a true military to face their enemies until they found the means by which elemental creatures could be reshaped and hammered into soldiers. The warriors formed through this process were the first archons.
* * *
We designed archons to serve a parallel function to the angels: smart, organized extraplanar monsters that work for the movers and shakers beyond the world. In the case of the archons, they work for the primordials. Their backstory describes them as an important step at the dawn of time in the arms race between the deities and the primordials. When the primordials saw armies of angels, they developed an army of their own: elementals-turned-soldiers called archons, each invested with the power of a specific element.
The battle between the primordials and the deities is over—at least for the time being. But the archons remain in the service of great powers that reside within the Elemental Chaos: Efreeti pashas, primordial nagas, salamander lords, and not a few demon princes. They’re also used as guardians at larger githzerai monasteries. Most remain amid the Elemental Chaos, but over the centuries many have found their way to the world, where they roam free or are bound to primordial cults, powerful spellcasters, liches, and other individuals and groups that typically bind elementals to service.
It’s also obvious that the Monster Manual only scratches the surface of available archons. We give you three fire archons (at levels 12, 19, and 20) and three ice archons (at levels 16, 19, and 20). But the Elemental Chaos is vast, and fire and ice are only two of the many forms it takes. Now that we’ve (thankfully!) separated the word “elemental” in the D&D sense from the classical Greek elements of earth, fire, air, and water, there’s plenty of room for archons of your own design. (And I imagine you’ll see more archons from us, too.)
How to Use Archons in Your Game
Archons are useful because of their single-mindedness. They’re intelligent, but they have no culture or society of their own. They’re intentionally disconnected from their roots so that every big bad evil guy can have archons in his employ—probably acquired in some dark ritual or bargain with the sinister forces from the Abyss or wider Elemental Chaos. Likewise, every soon-to-be-disturbed tomb or secret fortress can have archon guardians; they don’t age and they don’t mind waiting centuries for interlopers (read: the PCs) to come along.
Archons share some similarities with elementals, but two important differences will often point you toward one or the other when you’re designing a D&D adventure. First, archons are a lot smarter than elementals, so they’re a good choice when you want social interaction with the PCs or a monster that shows more than ordinary cunning during a combat encounter. Second, archons are focused on a single damage type, while elementals generally display aspects of multiple elements and damage types. Archons are thus good when you want to really emphasize a single element, whether you’re mixing them with other monsters that share that damage type or deliberately choosing complementary monsters.
--Dave Noonan
Daily Art Preview: Trolls
A troll eats anything that moves, from grubs to humans, and is rightly feared for its ravenous appetite, feral cunning, and remarkable regenerative power.
Art by Sam Wood
Excerpts: Minions
The evil baron calls for his guards, the orc chieftain leads a screaming horde in a terrible charge, the necromancer animates a dozen skeletons that rise to fight the PCs. The D&D game is full exciting scenes and encounters where the PCs must face a potentially overwhelming number of foes. In previous editions of the game, these encounters might have been filled with low-level “mooks” who would be promptly ignored by the PCs, since the PCs usually possessed sufficient AC or saving throws that they could ignore attacks from dozens of CR1 goblins or skeletons.
In the 4th Edition of D&D, we wanted to capture the concept of those creatures, but provide a rules framework that let them be a relevant part of the encounter. To this end, we created the minion role as a rules construct to allow a DM to more easily include such monster hordes.
Goals of the minion:
Drop in one hit: the minion essentially does his job if it can keep a PC occupied for a turn. Depending on its level and role, a typical monster might take four to six basic attacks to knock out. To provide the same amount of challenge, a group of four to six minions should take about the same number of actions. For a while, we considered giving minions some small amount of hit points, a small enough number that they would drop in one hit. But then we ran into a few situations where the minion would take only a few points of damage, forcing the DM to track minion hit points anyway. Eventually, we realized that the best way to make sure they go down in one hit is by giving them a single hit point. (You could think of it as if you are always doing enough damage to kill it.)
Have sufficient defenses: A PC should hit a minion at about the same rate as that PC would hit a typical monster of the same level. If the PC only misses on a natural 1, then that part of the fight becomes trivial. Thus, the minion’s defenses are set using the same scale as other monsters of its level. Similarly, while minions are meant to be easily dispatched, we didn’t want it to be too easy, so we decided that minions shouldn’t die when missed by an attack roll, even if that attack would normally deal damage on a hit. Of course, they might still die if they take damage from other sources, like walking through a wall of fire or getting hit by a Cleave from a fighter.
Have a meaningful attack: Minions shouldn’t automatically fail at their attacks, or always be hoping for a natural 20. Their attack bonus should be similar to monsters of their level, though their damage is a fraction of other monsters. One minion attacking a PC is more of a nuisance, but a group of them can be as dangerous as any monster. The damage for minions is always flat instead of rolled, which again helps speed up play as the DM only needs to roll one die for each minion.
* * *
From the Monster Manual Glossary:
Minion: Minions are designed to serve as shock troops and cannon fodder for other monsters (standard, elite, or solo). Four minions are considered to be about the same as a standard monster of their level. Minions are designed to help fill out an encounter, but they go down quickly.
A minion is destroyed when it takes any amount of damage. Damage from an attack or from a source that doesn’t require an attack roll (such as the paladin’s divine challenge or the fighter’s cleave) also destroys a minion. However, if a minion is missed by an attack that normally deals damage on a miss, it takes no damage.
* * *
Using Minions
A cool aspect of the minion idea is the way that you can scale your encounters as PCs progress through the Heroic, Paragon, and Epic tiers, while still using similar creature types throughout the campaign. An 8th level encounter might involve battling ogres, but later in that campaign you might have an earth titan that has enslaved an ogre tribe, and thus create a 16th level encounter with an elite earth titan and a bunch of ogre bludgeoneer minions. You can create fun Paragon-level encounters using abyssal ghouls (16th level skirmishers with 156 hp), then a few levels later stock your Epic-level encounter with abyssal ghoul myrmidons (23rd level minions).
When you use minions, you should use those of a level appropriate to the encounter you’re building. The concept of minions is to provide fun filler for encounters, not to provide a way for a 1st level character to gain 1,000+ XP for defeating a 23rd-level abyssal ghoul minion by rolling a natural 20. Minions are a rules abstraction, and one of the many tools a DM has to build exciting encounters.
Also keep your party makeup in mind when using minions, as well. PCs with attacks that target more than one enemy or that target an area will love fights against minions, and it provides a nice contrast with, say, a solo monster fight where those abilities are less useful.
--Stephen Schubert
Daily Art Preview: Skeletons
Animated by dark magic and composed entirely of bones, a skeleton is emotionless and soulless, desiring nothing but to serve its creator.
Art by Ralph Horsley
Excerpts: You and Your Magic Items
As you gain levels, the mundane equipment you purchased as a starting character becomes less important; it’s overshadowed by the magic items you acquire on your adventures. Magic armor that can cloak you in shadow, magic weapons that burst into flame, magic rings that turn you invisible, or Ioun stones that orbit your head to grant you great capabilities—these items enhance and supplement the powers you gain from your class and enhance your attacks and defenses.
Magic items have levels, just as characters, powers, and monsters do. An item’s level is a general measure of its power and translates to the average level of character using that item. In practice, your character will end up with some items that are three or four levels above your level and others that are several levels below. There’s no restriction on using or acquiring items based on their level, except that you can’t use the Enchant Magic Item ritual (page 304 of the Player's Handbook) to create an item above your level. If, for some reason, your 10th-level character finds a 20th-level magic sword, you can use it to full effect.
You can sometimes buy magic items just as you can mundane equipment. It’s rare to find a shop or a bazaar that routinely sells magic items, except perhaps the lowest-level items. Some fantastic places, such as the legendary City of Brass in the heart of the Elemental Chaos, have such markets, but those are the exception rather than the rule. Your DM might say that you can track down a seller for the item you want to buy or that you might have to do some searching, but in general you can buy any item you can afford.
You can also use the Enchant Magic Item ritual to create an item of your level or lower. In terms of the economic transaction, creating an item is the same as buying it: You spend money equal to the market price of the item and acquire the item. Some DMs prefer to have characters enchant their own items rather than buy them, particularly for more powerful items.
As you adventure, you’ll come across magic items as part of the treasure you acquire. Often, these are magic items much higher than your level—items you can’t enchant and can’t easily afford to buy. Ideally, these are items that someone in your party can use effectively, which makes them very rewarding treasure.
If you find a magic item you don’t want to keep, or you find an item that replaces an item you already have, you might end up either selling the item or disenchanting it (with the Disenchant Magic Item ritual; see page 304 of the Player's Handbook). This isn’t a favorable transaction for you—the sale price of a magic item, or the value of residuum you get from disenchanting it, is only one-fifth the normal price of the item. That means selling an item gives you enough money or residuum to buy or enchant an item that’s five levels lower than the original item.
Identifying Magic Items
Most of the time, you can determine the properties and powers of a magic item during a short rest. In the course of handling the item for a few minutes, you discover what the item is and what it does. You can identify one magic item per short rest.
Some magic items might be a bit harder to identify, such as cursed or nonstandard items, or powerful magical artifacts. Your DM might ask for an Arcana check to determine their properties, or you might even need to go on a special quest to find a ritual to identify or to unlock the powers of a unique item.
Prices
The purchase price of a permanent magic item depends on its level, as shown on the table below. The purchase price of a consumable item (such as a potion or an elixir) is much lower than the price of a permanent item of the same level. The sale price of a magic item (the amount a PC gets from either selling or disenchanting an item) is one-fifth of the purchase price.
Prices shown are the base market price for the items. The actual cost to purchase a magic item depends on supply and demand and might be 10 to 40 percent more than the base market price.
Magic Item Prices (first 10 levels)
Item Level Purchase Price (gp) Sale Price (gp)*
1 360 72
2 520 104
3 680 136
4 840 168
5 1,000 200
6 1,800 360
7 2,600 520
8 3,400 680
9 4,200 840
10 5,000 1,000
* Or equivalent gold piece value of residuum acquired from disenchanting an item
Magic Item Categories
Magic items fall into seven broad categories: armor, weapons, implements, clothing, rings, wondrous items, and potions. Items in a particular category have similar effects—all magic weapons give you bonuses when you attack with them, and all magic boots have powers relating to movement. Aside from those broad generalities, though, magic items possess a wide variety of powers and properties.
Within the broad category of clothing, items are grouped by kind of clothing—whether you wear the item on your head or your feet, for example. These are called item slots, and they provide a practical limit to the number of magic items you can wear and use. You can benefit from only one magic item that you wear in your arms slot even if, practically speaking, you can wear bracers and carry a shield at the same time. You benefit from the item you put on first; any other item you put in the same item slot doesn’t function for you until you take off the first item. Sometimes there are physical limitations as well—you can’t wear two helms at the same time.
Wondrous items include a variety of useful tools, from a bag of holding to a flying carpet. Each item’s description indicates how a character accesses its effects.
All magic armor gives you an enhancement bonus to your Armor Class. All magic weapons and implements give you an enhancement bonus to your attack rolls and damage rolls when you use them to make an attack. All magic cloaks, amulets, and other neck slot items give you an enhancement bonus to your Fortitude, Reflex, and Will defenses. Other magic items don’t generally give you bonuses to these numerical statistics, though there are some exceptions.
Flaming WeaponLevel 5+You can will this weapon to burst into flame.Lvl 5 +1 1,000 gp Lvl 20 +4 125,000 gp
Lvl 10 +2 5,000 gp Lvl 25 +5 625,000 gp
Lvl 15 +3 25,000 gp Lvl 30 +6 3,125,000 gp
Weapon: Any
Enhancement: Attack rolls and damage rolls
Critical: +1d6 fire damage per plusPower (At-Will Fire): Free Action. All damage dealt by this weapon is fire damage. Another free action returns the damage to normal.Power (Daily Fire): Free Action. Use this power when you hit with the weapon. Deal an extra 1d6 fire damage, and the target takes ongoing 5 fire damage (save ends).
Level 15 or 20: 2d6 fire damage and ongoing 10 fire damage.
Level 25 or 30: 3d6 fire damage and ongoing 15 fire damage.
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Phasing WeaponLevel 14+This weapon’s projectiles phase in and out of reality when fired, slipping through cover as if it weren’t there.Lvl 14 +3 21,000 gp Lvl 24 +5 525,000 gp
Lvl 19 +4 105,000 gp Lvl 29 +6 2,625,000 gp
Weapon: Any ranged
Enhancement: Attack rolls and damage rolls
Critical: +1d6 damage per plus
Property: Your ranged attacks with the weapon ignore the penalty to attack rolls for cover or superior cover.
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Holy AvengerLevel 25+The most prized weapon of any paladin.Lvl 25 +5 625,000 gp Lvl 30 +6 3,125,000 gp
Weapon: Axe, Hammer, Heavy Blade
Enhancement: Attack rolls and damage rolls
Critical: +1d6 radiant damage per plus, and you can spend a healing surge
Property: A holy avenger deals an extra 1d10 radiant damage when the power you use to make the attack has the radiant keyword.Power (Daily): Minor Action. You and each ally within 10 squares of you gain a +5 power bonus to Fortitude, Reflex, and Will defenses until the end of your next turn.Special: A holy avenger can be used as a holy symbol. It adds its enhancement bonus to attack rolls and damage rolls and the extra damage granted by its property (if applicable) when used in this manner. You do not gain your weapon proficiency bonus to an attack roll when using a holy avenger as an implement.
* * *
We’ve been saying for a long time that we wanted magic items in 4th Edition to take up a smaller portion of a typical character’s array of options than in previous editions. The primary method used to accomplish this was to expand the average character’s class- and race-based power options. Even if a 4th Edition PC carried around the same array of gear as his 3rd Edition counterpart, you could still honestly say that those items were a smaller percentage of his options than before.
However, that semantic flourish wouldn’t really change the perception among many players that the average character simply had to carry around too many items to keep up with the foes he faced. Between six different stat-boosting items and at least three AC-boosting items (four counting shields), the typical player character faced an enormous drain on resources simply to stay competitive with the enemy. Something needed to change.
In 4th Edition, only three magic items are important for your attacks and defenses to keep up with the escalating power of the monsters you face. These are your weapon, your armor, and your amulet or cloak (also known as your neck-slot item). Together, they enhance your attack rolls, damage rolls, and all four of your defense scores.
The game assumes that the “plus” of each of these three items follows the normal enhancement curve of items in the game: +1 from 1st to 5th level, +2 from 6th to 10th, and on up to +6 from 26th to 30th. Many (perhaps even most) characters will have at least one item slightly ahead or behind this curve, but if you’re more than a couple of points ahead of or behind the expected progression, you may find your foes notably less (or more) challenging than normal.
Beyond those three key items, characters are free to accessorize in whatever manner they prefer. If you like to carry only the choicest items, picking and choosing the most powerful pieces of equipment that you can find or afford, that’s a reasonable plan. In fact, you could reasonably survive with just a good weapon, a good suit of armor, and a good neck-slot item.
On the other hand, if you prefer to wield a larger array of lower-powered magic items, that’s OK too… with some caveats. Most items are tied to body slots, so there’s a built-in limit to the sheer quantity of items most characters can easily tote around. In addition, each character can only activate a few different magic item powers in a given day, so the guy who brings a loaded pack full of flashy items doesn’t get as much bang for his buck. Again, your class powers should be the main focus of your character, not the precious little trinkets you swiped from cave-dwelling fiends.
--Andy Collins
Excerpts: The Quest’s the Thing
Quests are the fundamental story framework of an adventure—the reason the characters want to participate in it. They’re the reason an adventure exists, and they indicate what the characters need to do to solve the situation the adventure presents.
The simplest adventures revolve around a single quest, usually one that gives everyone in the party a motivation to pursue it. More complex adventures involve multiple quests, including quests related to individual characters’ goals or quests that conflict with each other, presenting characters with interesting choices about which goals to pursue.
Using Basic Quest Seeds
When you’re devising a simple adventure, one to three basic seeds are enough to get you started. A classic dungeon adventure uses three: The characters set out to explore a dangerous place, defeat the monsters inside, and take the treasure they find. One simple quest can be enough, such as a quest to slay a dragon.
You can combine any number of basic seeds to create a more multifaceted adventure. The more seeds you throw in the mix, the more intricate your adventure will be. You might add timing elements to one or more of the seeds to create more depth in your adventure.
Once you have your seed or seeds, you can start getting specific. Go back and answer the questions in “Components of an Adventure” on page 100, keeping your quest seeds in mind. Again, you don’t need to follow any particular order. You might come up with a set of monsters you want to use first, you might invent a cool place or item, or you might choose a seed or three. You can then use Chapter 4 and the “Adventure Setting” section of this chapter to help flesh out your adventure.
Major Quests
Major quests define the fundamental reasons that characters are involved. They are the central goals of an adventure. A single major quest is enough to define an adventure, but a complex adventure might involve a number of different quests. A major quest should be important to every member of the party, and completing it should define success in the adventure. Achieving a major quest usually means either that the adventure is over, or that the characters have successfully completed a major chapter in the unfolding plot.
Don’t be shy about letting the players know what their quests are. Give the players an obvious goal, possibly a known villain to go after, and a clear course to get to their destination. That avoids searching for the fun—aimless wandering, arguing about trivial choices, and staring across the table because the players don’t know what to do next. You can fiddle with using another secret villain or other less obvious courses, but one obvious path for adventure that is not wrong or fake should exist. You can count on the unpredictability of player actions to keep things interesting even in the simplest of adventure plots.
Thinking in terms of quests helps focus the adventure solidly where it belongs: on the player characters. An adventure isn’t something that can unfold without their involvement. A plot or an event can unfold without the characters’ involvement, but not an adventure. An adventure begins when the characters get involved, when they have a reason to participate and a goal to accomplish. Quests give them that.
Minor Quests
Minor quests are the subplots of an adventure, complications or wrinkles in the overall story. The characters might complete them along the way toward finishing a major quest, or they might tie up the loose ends of minor quests after they’ve finished the major quest.
Often, minor quests matter primarily to a particular character or perhaps a subset of the party. Such quests might be related to a character’s background, a player goal, or the ongoing events in the campaign relevant to one or more characters. These quests still matter to the party overall. This game is a cooperative game, and everyone shares the rewards for completing a quest. Just make sure that the whole group has fun completing minor quests tied to a single character.
Sometimes minor quests come up as sidelines to the main plot of the adventure. For example, say the characters learn in town that a prisoner has escaped from the local jail. That has nothing to do with the main quest. It pales in importance next to the hobgoblin raids that have been plundering caravans and seizing people for slaves. However, when the characters find and free some of the hobgoblins’ slaves, the escaped prisoner is among them. Do they make sure he gets back to the jail? Do they accept his promise to go straight—and his offer of a treasure map—and let him go free? Do they believe his protestations of innocence and try to help him find the real criminal? Any of these goals can launch a side quest, but clearly the characters can’t pursue all of them. This situation gives them the opportunity to roleplay and make interesting choices, adding richness and depth to the game.
* * *
Everyone knows that in Dungeons & Dragons you earn experience points to gain levels. Heck, even people who have never played D&D know this— it’s become so ingrained in the pop-culture idea of the game and its mechanic has replicated itself with great frequency into the realm of digital games. But just how you gain XP has evolved since the game’s inception, and with 4th Edition it’s continued to evolve. One of the biggest evolutions in 4th Edition D&D is the inclusion of quest XP rewards.
Now, I can hear the old timers quibble: “Come on, Stephen, quest XP is nothing new, I’ve been doing it for years.” And if you quibble thusly, you’d be right. Almost every D&D campaign out there grants a bit of bonus XP for completing story objectives, and this has been going since the first time a gamer lifted a d20 and stared at it in glossy-eyed wonder. The big difference between 4th Edition and older D&D editions is that we designed it into the game; it’s not just an afterthought, an ad hoc idea, or a suggested house rule. We actually took into account that people already do this, then gave better guidelines on how to do it well, and crafted the numbers behind character advancement with quests in mind.
Dungeons & Dragons is both a combat game and a storytelling game. Fighting foul beasts and despicable villains is fun. The grand majority of pages in our rulebooks give you the means and the toys you need to play that part of the game. Storytelling by its nature is more fluid, more natural; it has few (if any) hard and fast rules, but many guidelines and points of advice. While D&D abounds with levels, powers, shifts, opportunity attacks, effects that push, ongoing damage, and grabs, it also features heroes (or, soft-hearted scoundrels) who take chances to achieve goals that we can only dream of doing and in ways that are only as boundless as our imagination. It’s purely in the realm of action adventure. And when action and story fuse perfectly, it’s gaming ambrosia—the perfect way to spend an afternoon with friends.
Quest XP, and the idea of quests as benchmarks for rewards in a larger sense (the story chapter ends where characters gain a pile of rewards in the form of XP, treasure, favors, titles, castles, whatever) is a rare, evocative, satisfying, and natural way for those two aspects of the game to talk to one another directly.
Quests also serve as the DM’s dangling carrot. Not only do they say “fun lies this way,” now they also point to rewards with some amount of transparency. People like to have an idea of the rewards they will get for tasks… or at least the minimum rewards. Your players are no different. Quests are a way in which they’ll have a basic idea of the minimum rewards for what they do, and they’ll appreciate it. You’ll find this very handy if you create a more sandbox approach to quests. Throw a few of them out there, and see which ones they bite at. Using quests in this manner allows you to make your world seem larger than it really is, and let your players make more choices for their characters, encouraging them to invest themselves even further in your creation.
XP Evolutionary Dead Ends
Quest XP is one of the newest evolutions in how PCs gain experience in D&D, but it didn’t get to this point without some other experience point ideas dying off. Let’s take a quick look at three XP evolutionary dead ends that got us where we are today.
Treasure Worth = XP
Isn’t treasure supposed to be its own reward? The problem in early D&D is that it wasn’t. In fact you couldn’t do a whole lot with treasure except for accumulate it and gain XP from it. That’s right; you gained XP just for picking up a gold piece. To be fair, how much you gained was based on how much challenge the treasure’s guardian represented, but a simpler method is to place the challenge XP fully in the guardian (in 4th Edition, this means the monsters, traps, hazards, or skill challenge) and let wealth be the reward wealth is by its very nature—purchasing power.
The Teeny, Tiny, Micro Story Reward
Back in my early days of the RPGA (2nd Edition AD&D), we used to get “story rewards” for the craziest things. Did you talk to the mayor? Gain 10 XP! Did you pick the flower that the mayor told you not to pick? 15 XP! Did you buy a pickle from the vendor on the Avenue of Swords? 25 XP! These story rewards were so pointless, small, and absolutely endemic that you would spend large chunks of the adventure talking to everyone you could just so you would get them all. These ideas were prevalent in a period of time where writers wanted to write wacky guess-what-the-writer-is-thinking stories, not sword and sorcery action stories, and pulled the PCs along a long line of encounters as “helpful” benchmarks. The problem was that it didn’t feel like D&D. This was especially true when you played through adventures based on the lyrics of 70’s pop songs or adventure where you got to play characters that were magic items, children, or furniture (I’m not joking).
The Roleplaying Reward
I’ve seen a lot of games (both in early RPGA and home games) that gave XP for good roleplaying. By good roleplaying do I mean the quality of your character acting? The problem with the roleplaying reward is this: You’re almost always going to give out the maximum to everyone at the table. Why? Because telling someone that they didn’t do a good job of roleplaying in a game where everyone is there to have fun seems overly judgmental, can create hurt feelings, and is… well… just downright crappy. It’s also so very meta and arbitrary that it begs questions about other forms of bonus XP. Why not give similar bonus XP for rule knowledge? Playing well with others? Bringing the most snacks?
--Stephen Radney-MacFarland
Daily Art Preview: Shadar-kai
Shadar-kai cling to darkness and shadows. They are a bleak and sinister humanlike people that inhabit the Shadowfell and serve the Raven Queen.
Art by Chris Stevens and Espen Grundet Jern
Daily Art Preview: Roper
This subterranean creature grabs victims with its tentacles and drags them within reach of its monstrous, toothy maw.
Art by Warren Mahy
Excerpts: Economy & Reward
Rewards
Experience points, treasure, action points, and intangible rewards keep characters moving on from encounter to encounter, level to level, and adventure to adventure. Small rewards come frequently, while large rewards provide a big boost once in a while. Both are important.
Without frequent small rewards, players begin to feel like their efforts aren’t paying off. They’re doing a lot of work with nothing to show for it. Without occasional large rewards, encounters feel like pushing a button to get a morsel of food—a repetitive grind with no meaningful variation.
Characters gain experience points (XP) for every encounter they complete. They gain action points when they reach milestones, generally after every two encounters. They gain treasure as they complete encounters—not after every encounter, but sporadically over the course of an adventure. They gain a level after completing eight to ten encounters (including quests).
Gaining a level (see page 27 of the Player’s Handbook) is the most significant reward the game has to offer, but even that reward has its own tidal rhythm. Characters gain new attack powers at odd-numbered levels, and they gain new feats, ability score increases, and global adjustments to all their attacks and defenses at even-numbered levels. Both are exciting, but they feel different.
XP Rewards
The Experience Rewards table provides XP values for monsters of every level—minions, standard single monsters, elite monsters, and solo monsters. Use the “Standard Monster” column for NPCs, traps, and noncombat encounters (skill challenges and puzzles).
Following is the first 10 levels of the Experience Rewards table.
Experience Rewards
Monster Level Minion Standard Monster Elite Solo
1 100 25 200 500
2 125 31 250 625
3 150 38 300 750
4 175 44 350 875
5 200 50 400 1,000
6 250 63 500 1,250
7 300 75 600 1,500
8 350 88 700 1,750
9 400 100 800 2,000
10 500 125 1,000 2,500
Quest Rewards
When the characters finish a major quest that they’ve been pursuing for several sessions, divide the XP reward among all the characters who participated in the quest, even those who aren’t present in the particular session when the PCs complete it. That’s only fair—a major quest is like an encounter that stretches over multiple game sessions, and everyone who participates deserves to share in the reward.
Following is the first 10 levels of the Quest Rewards table.
Quest XP Rewards
PC Level Major Quest Reward Minor Quest Reward
4 PCs 5 PCs 6 PCs
1st 400 500 600 100
2nd 500 625 750 125
3rd 600 750 900 150
4th 700 875 1,050 175
5th 800 1,000 1,200 200
6th 1,000 1,250 1,500 250
7th 1,200 1,500 1,800 300
8th 1,400 1,750 2,100 350
9th 1,600 2,000 2,400 400
10th 2,000 2,500 3,000 500
Awarding Treasure
While experience points are fundamentally an encounter-based (or quest) reward, treasure is a larger-scale reward doled out over the course of an adventure. You plan treasure in terms of the eight to ten encounters it takes characters to advance from one level to the next.
During the course of gaining that level, expect a group of five characters to acquire four magic items ranging in level from one to four levels above the party level. In addition, they should find gold and other monetary treasure equal to the market price of two magic items of their level. So a 6th-level party would find four magic items, one each of levels 7 through 10, and gold worth two 6th-level items, or 3,600 gp.
At the start of an adventure, look at the adventure in chunks of eight to ten encounters. (Include major quest rewards as if they were encounters, and if the party completes five minor quests, include those five rewards as a single encounter as well.) For each of those chunks, look at the treasure parcels on the following pages. Find the level of the characters as they work through those encounters, and note the parcels of treasure you will give out over the course of the encounters.
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Heroic Tier Treasure Parcels
Party Level 5 Total Monetary Treasure: 2,000 gp
Magic item, level 9
Magic item, level 8
Magic item, level 7
Magic item, level 6
550 gp, or two 250 gp art objects + 50 gp, or one 500 gp gem + 50 gp
500 gp, or one 250 gp art object + 250 gp, or five 100 gp gems
340 gp, or three 100 gp gems + 40 gp, or one 250 gp art object + one potion of healing + 40 gp
340 gp, or one 250 gp art object + 90 gp, or 300 gp + 400 sp
160 gp, or one 100 gp gem + 60 gp, or one potion of healing + 110 gp
110 gp, or one 100 gp gem + 10 gp, or one potion of healing + 60 gp
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Paragon Tier Treasure Parcels
Party Level 15 Total Monetary Treasure: 50,000 gp
Magic item, level 19
Magic item, level 18
Magic item, level 17
Magic item, level 16
14,000 gp, or 140 pp, or one 7,500 gp art object + one 5,000 gp gem + one 1,500 gp art object
12,000 gp, or 120 pp, or one 7,500 gp art object + 4,500 gp
8,500 gp, or one 7,500 gp art object + 1,000 gp, or one 7,500 gp art object + one 1,000 gp gem
8,500 gp, or one 5,000 gp gem + one 2,500 gp art object + 1,000 gp, or eight 1,000 gp gems + 500 gp
5,000 gp, or one 5,000 gp gem, or one 2,500 gp art object + one 1,500 gp art object + one potion of vitality
2,000 gp, or two potions of vitality, or two 1,000 gp gems
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Epic Tier Treasure Parcels
Party Level 25 Total Monetary Treasure: 12,500 pp
Magic item, level 29
Magic item, level 28
Magic item, level 27
Magic item, level 26
3,500 pp, or 20 ad + one potion of life + one 50,000 gp art object, or 30 ad + two potions of recovery
3,200 pp, or 20 ad + two potions of recovery + one 50,000 gp art object + 200 pp, or 30 ad + four 5,000 gp gems
2,000 pp, or 20 ad, or 10 ad + four 15,000 gp art objects + eight 5,000 gp gems
2,000 pp, or 1,000 pp + two 50,000 gp art objects, or four 50,000 gp art objects
1,000 pp, or one potion of life, or twenty 5,000 gp gems
800 pp, or five 15,000 gp art objects + one 5,000 gp gem, or one 50,000 gp art object + six 5,000 gp gems
Civilization
Commerce
Even small villages give characters ready access to the gear they need to pursue their adventures. Provisions, tents and backpacks, and simple weapons are commonly available. Traveling merchants carry armor, military weapons, and more specialized gear. Most villages have inns that cater to travelers, where adventurers can get a hot meal and a bed, even if the quality leaves much to be desired. When characters stop in at a settlement to rest and restock their supplies, give them a bit of local flavor, such as the name of the inn where they spend the night, and move on with the adventure.
Even small villages rely heavily on trade with other settlements, including larger towns and cities. Merchants pass through regularly, selling necessities and luxuries to the villagers, and any good merchant has far-reaching contacts across the region. When characters have magic items to sell, a traveling merchant is in town—or will be soon—to take it off their hands. The same applies to exotic mundane goods as well: No one in the village makes silk rope or has much use for it, but merchants making their way between major cities carry it all the time.
Traveling merchants are also a great way to introduce adventure hooks to the characters as they conduct their business. Since they make their living traversing roads that are not as safe as they used to be, merchants hire competent guards to keep their goods safe. They also carry news from town to town, including reports of situations that cry out for adventurers to get involved.
These merchants can’t provide specialized services, however. When the characters are in need of a library or a dedicated sage, a trainer who can handle the griffon eggs they’ve found, or an architect to design their castle, they’re better off going to a large city than looking in a village. These services are less important in the economy of the game than magic items and other goods, so you shouldn’t feel as though you have to compromise your common sense for the sake of game play.
Of course, it’s natural for characters to travel far beyond their native villages as they pursue adventure. When they’re in the City of Brass, they should be able to buy even the most expensive magic items readily. If it doesn’t interfere with the flow of your game, it’s fine to expect that characters will travel to larger cities to do business as they reach higher levels and deal with larger sums of money.
The Magic Item Economy
Most of the time, characters find magic items on their adventures that are above their level. These are exciting items, and the characters have a strong incentive to keep these items and use them. As characters attain higher levels, the items they find might replace items they already have—the fighter finds a +3 flaming sword and no longer wants his +2 magic sword.
When this happens, the characters ordinarily sell those items—it’s slightly more beneficial to do that than to use the Disenchant Magic Item ritual, because the characters don’t have to pay the component cost. A merchant, agent, or fence buys items from the character at one-fifth the items’ value, in the hope of selling them at significant profit (usually, above the items’ value). Buyers are hard to find, but the profit to be made makes it worth the merchant’s risk.
Characters can use the monetary treasure they find, as well as the gold from selling items, to acquire new magic items. They can’t make items above their level, and can’t often afford items more than a few levels above theirs. It’s to their benefit to use the Enchant Magic Item ritual for items of their level or lower, rather than buying these items from merchants, agents, or fences, because of the 10–40 percent markup over items’ value that these sellers charge. When they want items above their levels, they have to go to merchants.
The game still works if you decide that magic items can’t be bought and sold in your world. Characters can rely entirely on rituals to duplicate the economy of buying and selling without money changing hands.
The residuum they collect from disenchanting items provides the expensive ritual components they need for the enchanting ritual. If you want characters to rely entirely on these rituals, remove the cost to perform the Disenchant Magic Item ritual, making it just as efficient as selling.
On the flip side, you can drive the characters to markets instead of rituals by altering the prices they pay for magic items. You can remove the random markup, or even alter it to allow the possibility of finding items for sale below normal price. For example, roll 1d6 as usual, but a 1 means the item is available for 10 percent below the base price, a 2 means it’s available for the base price, and 3–6 means a 10 percent to 40 percent markup. Items are readily available, and sometimes characters can get a good deal.
* * *
3rd Edition treasure works like this:
If I put 5th-level characters through 13-1/3 encounters of their level, they’ll gain enough experience to become 6th level. On average, they’ll also gain 21,333 gp, 33 sp, and 33 cp. Or that’s the goal, anyway.
In practice, the ochre jelly won’t have any treasure at all.
The young black dragon will have randomly-generated treasure worth 4,800 gp on average (triple standard), but depending on my dice it could come out to nothing at all, or the PCs could come away with a jackpot of over 50,000 gp in cash-equivalent treasure (coins, gems, and art) plus magic armor worth as much as 15,000 gp.
The 5th-level NPC bard will have 4,300 gp worth of gear (skewing heavily toward magic items that the characters will sell at half value).
If I’m a conscientious DM, I should add up the treasure value of all those 13-1/3 encounters and make sure it comes out somewhere close to the target 21,000 gp, so that my characters stay on track. Or else I can just do what most DMs do: trust that it’s all going to balance out, and end up with characters that are under-equipped (nine times out of ten) for their level.
4th Edition treasure works like this:
If I put 5th-level characters through 10 encounters of their level, they’ll gain enough experience to become 6th level. They’ll also gain four magic items above their level (one 6th, one 7th, one 8th, and one 9th), and total gold-equivalent treasure equal to double the value of a 5th-level magic item, or 2,000 gp. That’s the goal, and here’s how it works out in practice.
When I’m planning those 10 encounters, I look at the 5th-level treasure parcels in the DMG. That’s the treasure I’m going to give out, conveniently divided into ten chunks. The ochre jelly’s not guarding any of that treasure, but the dragon has (let’s say) three parcels.
The 5th-level NPC has a 6th-level item—not because he needs it, but because it’s one of the treasure parcels. The characters don’t find magic items that are beneath their notice—they won’t walk out of the drow enclave with a wheelbarrow full of +1 rapiers.
I might even tuck some of that treasure away in a locked vault without a monstrous guard, and save a parcel or two for a quest reward.
It’s a lot easier to be a conscientious DM in Fourth Edition. I don’t have to add up the value of all the treasure I’m giving out and make sure it adds up—I just have to check parcels off the list when I give them out, and make sure that I’ve crossed everything off the list by the time they hit 6th level.
--James Wyatt
Daily Art Preview: Stirges
Stirges are bloodsucking, batlike horrors that lurk in caves and ruins.
Art by Lars Grant-West
Daily Art Preview: Fire Giants
Self-proclaimed lords of flame, fire giants are militaristic tyrants who enjoy testing their mettle against formidable adversaries.
Art by Jason Engle
Excerpts: Epic Destinies
Your epic destiny describes the mythic archetype you aspire to achieve. Some characters have a clear epic destiny in mind from the moment they began adventuring, while others discover their epic destiny somewhere along the way.
Most people don’t ever come close to achieving an epic destiny. Whether they simply failed in their journey, or whether the universe never intended them to gain such lofty heights, is unknown and unknowable.
Your epic destiny sets you apart from such individuals—you know you’re destined for greatness and you have every opportunity to achieve it.
Extraordinary Power
Compared to a class or paragon path, an epic destiny grants few benefits, but those it bestows are exceptional. Certain laws of the universe work differently for you—and some don’t apply at all.
Your race, class, path, and other character elements might define what you can do, but your epic destiny defines your place in the universe.
Immortality
Each epic destiny defines your lasting impact on the world or even the universe: how people forever afterward remember and talk about you.
Some people achieve lasting fame or notoriety without achieving an epic destiny, but that’s a fleeting thing. Inevitably, those people are forgotten, lost in the murky depths of history. Your epic destiny ensures that your name and exploits live on forever.
The End
Perhaps most important, your epic destiny describes your character’s exit from the world at large (and more specifically, from the game) once you’ve completed your final adventure. It lays out why, after so many adventures, you finally take your leave of the mortal realm—and where you go next.
Gaining an Epic Destiny
Epic destiny abilities accrue from 21st to 30th level. As shown on the Character Advancement table in Chapter 2, your epic abilities pick up where paragon path benefits leave off.
After gaining all other benefits of reaching 21st level (including class features, ability score increases, and the like), you can choose an epic destiny.
Epic destinies are broader in scope than a class or paragon path. Though most have certain requirements to enter, even these typically apply to a wide range of characters with various backgrounds, talents, and powers.
If you don’t choose an epic destiny at 21st level, you can choose one at any level thereafter. You retroactively gain all benefits of the epic destiny appropriate to your current level.
Fulfilling Your Epic Destiny
The “Immortality” feature of your destiny is not gained at 30th level. Instead, it is gained when you and your allies complete their Destiny Quest. This is described more thoroughly in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, but essentially, your Destiny Quest is the final grand adventure of the campaign, during which you face the greatest challenges of your characters’ careers.
This quest might actually begin before 30th level (in fact, most do), but the climax of the quest can only occur after all participants have reached 30th level. Upon completing your Destiny Quest, your adventuring career—and your life as a normal mortal being—effectively ends. Your DM might give your character a little time to put affairs in order before moving on, or it can occur spontaneously upon completion of the quest. Work with your DM to determine the appropriate timing based on your character, your destiny, and the quest.
Once you’ve completed your Destiny Quest and initiated your ascension to immortality, your character’s story has ended. He lives on in legend, but he no longer takes part in mortal events. Instead, it’s time to create a new group of adventurers and begin a new story.
Archmage
As the Archmage, you lay claim to being the world’s preeminent wizard.
Prerequisite: 21st-level wizard
Your lifelong perusal of grimoires, librams, tomes, and spellbooks has finally revealed the foundation of reality to you: Spells are each tiny portions of a larger arcane truth. Every spell is part of some far superior working, evoking just a minuscule fraction of that ultimate formula. As you continue your studies, you advance your mastery of spells so much that they begin to infuse your flesh, granting you a facility in their use undreamed of by lesser practitioners.
You are often called to use your knowledge to defend the world from supernormal threats. Seeking ever greater enlightenment and the magical power that accompanies it, you are at times tempted by questionable relics, morally suspect spells, and ancient artifacts. Your destiny remains yours to choose—will you be archmage or archfiend?
Immortality, of a Sort
Archmages are an idiosyncratic lot. There’s no telling what choices the preeminent wizard of the age will make when he has completed his destiny. The following section details a path several Archmages have walked, but your path might vary.
Arcane Seclusion: When you complete your final quest, you retreat from the world to give your full time and attention to the study of the ultimate arcane formula, the Demispell, whose hyperplanar existence encompasses all the lesser spells there ever were or ever will be.
To aid your study, you build a sanctum sanctorum. At your option, your retreat provides you complete seclusion, and thus could take the form of a tower lost somewhere in the Elemental Chaos. However, you might desire to retain a tie to the world, and thus build a sanctum with a connection to the world. In such a case, you might found a new order of mages for which you serve as the rarely seen High Wizard. Alternatively, you might found a school of magic, for which you serve as the rarely seen headmaster.
Regardless of your retreat’s physical form or temporal connection, your contemplation of the arcanosphere persists. As the years flow onward, your study of the fundamental, deep structure of the cosmos removes you from the normal flow of time. Eventually your material shell fades as you merge into the Demispell itself.
Thereafter, your name becomes tied to powerful spells and rituals used by lesser wizards.
Archmage Features
All Archmages have the following features.
Spell Recall (21st level): At the beginning of each day, choose one daily spell that you know (and have prepared today, if you prepare spells). You can use that spell two times that day, rather than only once.
Arcane Spirit (24th level): Once per day, when you die, you can detach your spirit from your body. In arcane spirit form, you heal to maximum hit points and gain the insubstantial and phasing qualities. You can cast encounter spells and at-will spells while in arcane spirit form, but you can’t cast daily spells, activate magic items, or perform rituals. If you die in arcane spirit form, you’re dead.
At the end of the encounter, after a short rest, your arcane spirit rejoins your body, if your body is still present. Your current hit point total is unchanged, but you no longer experience the other benefits and drawbacks of being in arcane spirit form.
If your body is missing, you will need other magic to return to life, but can continue adventuring in arcane spirit form if you like.
Archspell (30th level): Your comprehension of the ultimate arcane formula and of the spells that constitute it reaches a new threshold. Choose one daily spell that you know. You can now cast that spell as an encounter spell (rather than as a daily spell).
Archmage Power
Shape MagicArchmage Utility 26You reach into the ebb and flow of arcane energy and pluck a spell you have already used out of the invisible tide, instantly recalling it to memory.DailyStandard Action PersonalEffect: You regain one arcane power you have already used.
* * *
When your character reaches 21st level, you can choose your epic destiny.
What does that mean?
Your epic destiny is a few things, actually. While it’s true that your epic destiny allows you to bend, break, or ignore some of the laws of the universe, an epic destiny isn’t merely about acquiring even more power. After all, you continue to gain more and more powerful class powers as you rise toward 30th level, some of which are nearly as fantastic as those your epic destiny provides.
You see, what your epic destiny is really about is defining your place in the universe. Your epic destiny is the mythic archetype your character aspires to achieve. Once you reach 21st level, the greatness you always knew you were destined for is no longer theoretical; it is actual.
As you continue to gain levels, working toward 30th, the challenges you take on become larger and more significant, potentially affecting nations, worlds, or even the universe itself. Thus, your epic destiny shapes your lasting impact on the campaign and helps determine how people forever afterward remember and talk about you.
Did you defeat Atropus, the roving World Born Dead? Did you defeat the Hulks of Zoretha when they rose unlooked for in the ancient wastes? Did you stem the catastrophic tide of Pandorym when it revived enough to begin eating even the gods?
Yes, perhaps you did.
And once you’ve achieved so much, your epic destiny allows you a way to gracefully step aside, to make room for new generations of heroes to take up the fight. After all, your immortality is assured, whether in myth or in actuality (depending on the destiny you chose). Upon completing your epic quest, where you faced the greatest challenges of your career, your destiny describes why, after so many adventures, you finally take your leave of the mortal realm… and where you go next.
--Bruce Cordell