Angys Tips for Easy Dungeon Running

What you can do when you don’t have a map and or a battle grid.

Sometimes when I need to rely on theater of the mind as a DM what I doing make all the rooms in threes sizes one chess board, two chess board or one big chess board made of four chess boards

Now let’s just stick with the idea of a chessboard shaped room for a moment what is the advantage of this? The advantage is simply that now it becomes easy for anybody to describe wher they are on the chess board so instead of saying I am near the closest door you can now say I am on square E5

“They should only build build one kind of castle the kind where if you can’t think clearly in it you shouldn’t be there in the first place. ” The Heirophant of Brisbane.

Clockwork Formation

Now take a look at the above picture it’s not an exact chess board but it’s good enough.

Now let’s go on an exercise of the imagination.  Imagine that the rooms are all chess boards and you can place a circle inside one of the chess board halfs that fills the chess board half.

Ok, now imagine this circle is a clock face. Simply put your parties tank closest to the door furthest from the one you entered on this chess board, and we will call this relative north.

The reason relative north is important is because it let’s us state what directions our characters move. Now we can say something like, ” I move 3 squares to my relative northwest and  close to the furthest door  from me.”

The final thing to work on is party formation if is as follow

* The party TANK: holding the one o’clock or 12 o’clock position.

* The parties  Rogue /sniper / archer holding the 4 o’clock position.

* The parties mage or attack spell caster holding the 7 o’clock position

And the parties primary healer is holding the 10 o’clock position.

Doing things this way, now let’s say where you can say where you are relative to other players and foes.

For example, you can say” As the parties healer is am at my native home on the ten o’clock positionten feet away from the parties radial center.”

Whenever the DM asks you what formation the party is in, you can always just say clock work formation.

Now here are some core features about clockwork formation.  Since your clock is kinked to the right so is your foes this means so are you foes an that mean your take lines up in a strat line.

*Your Rogue also lines up to shoot their healer, and your healer also lines up to heal your tank or charge down the enemy rogue.

*Your mages also have a relatively easier time shooting at each other and staying safe in the process

• Clockwork formation insures you are only ever 15 feet from a player at any given point in combat.
• Clockwork formation insures every space on your half of the chessboard can be immediately threatened by somebody. (Although whips and halberds may need to be involved)
• Clockwork formation nobody is in line for a lightning bolt spell.
• When a trap goes off it should on ever affect one or two people in that formation.

Now for our game purposes you as the player need only imagine your team is standing on  clock facing foes standing on another clock. The next question becomes why, as dungeon master would you go along with these chessboard lay outs. Allow me to explain.

• 1st: You and the players will always know who is doing what and where.
• 2nd: faster, easier: more effective communication.
• 3rd: You dont have the money to buy hundreds of different dungeon tiles.
• 4th: You don’t have time to design dungeons and that might not be a core element of your story
• 5th: Better informed players will more happily engage with your story
• 6th: Once you start working in chessboard you can make better dungeons faster and more efficiently.
• 7: Your running what the enemy team is doing and your just one DM so making the theater of the mind as simple as posible helps you out even more.

So, with all that said, we are not just going to leave things here because of clockwork formation fighting comes from Oberon himself.

Oberon is the best at helping befuddled players know what to do in a new situation. To this end our game includes something called a-

Prestige Bonus.

A prestige bonus is just like a minor feat that is purchased instead earned gradually. Think of this as buying a specialty education just like going to college.

Both Oberon and the Heirophant train their teams to have lots of small Prestige bonuses for combat. So let’s see what can be learned.

“Welcome, new players it looks like you’re trying to stop theocracycy, but before you go, can I interest you in a game of Chess. ” ;

Oberon warden of Angel Haven

Prestige bonuses.

• Knight takes rook: When you are unsure of what to do you can always recalibrate this allows another player to have you take your turn right before or right after another player this in turn let’s somebody else use your character sheet to perform a master attack move. (2000.gp) / clock formation needed /
• Enpassan: Also called pawn passing allows these spells to be regarded as cantrips in terms of what other spells can be cast that same round. (5000.Gp)
• [ Healing word, sheild, misty step, falselife, mirror image, bless, web, invisibility, fog cloud.
• Castling: The following traits can cause well trained rogues to do sneak attack damage in these circumstances. Additionaly other players grant the rogue the option to do two sneak attacks a turn if they inflict these conditions.
• [Poisoned, frightened, confused, prone.] (7000 gp)
• Promote to Queen: Box car blow outs of 6,6  always grant a player one complete bonus level in bard. This means your pc will have a full set of one class abilities plus another’s as if they were a multiclass charecture their experience totals needed to level and max levels possible in one class will remain the same as before. (4000. Gp)
• Queens gambit forward two spaces: During the first turn in combat, you may make another move action as a bonus action: additionaly you can also make two bonus actions a turn through combat while in clockwork formation. (6000.gp)
• Skewer knight and rook: When one foes saves on their saving throw you may shoot use one of these spells as an immediate  reaction regardless of class list. These spells are considered bonus soul spells for that purpose.
• [Evocation orb 3rd lol, Acid Arrow 3rd lvl, magic missile 3rd lvl, bestow curse, Vampires touch 3rd lvl] (8000.Gp)
• Fork knight and rook: When two or more foes make saving throws the ones that make their save take no damage while the ones who fail take maximized damage. (10,000 gp)
• Checkmate at the back rank: Rogues with spell casting now can do sneak attack with a with a special weapon strike that converts a spell slot into arcane force damage that radiates from runes within their weapons
• [ slot one : 2d6 bonus damage, slot 2nd level 4d6, slot 3rd lvl 6d6 damage] ( 8000 ,gp for rogues)
• Aditionaly this feature also grants the user visceral magic where they may sacrifice 1d4 health points per spell level  and add it to the damage of their spell. For example: a fire ball could deal 3d4 more points fire damage if the mage also takes this as damage on herself. (+8000. GP) to all spell caster with access to 5th lvl spells (4000 GP) TO all other spells casters