i'd like to see what advice we could give to help all the new DMs out there.
i am mostly looking for stuff that is player friendly and possibly DM friendly at the same time.
Here is an Example for those with noncombat "Face" pcs.
if you have a noncombat "face" pc in your game, i reccomend the following
when calculating combat encounters, treat it as if the "face" were never there. assuming the face is willing to sit out of combat, than i think it will be fine to include less monsters in the mix. do not target the face, this may require a gentleman's agreement.
the same thing can be assumed of other noncombatant roles such as the after combat healbot, the utility caster, the party cook, and any pacifist who potentially took a vow of peace or a similar thing.
trick #2
tick off monster resources as appropriate for the day
too often do we see monsters who appear too "fresh" and "fully stocked" to properly immerse.
wear and tear isn't something that only happens to the pcs.
if an encounter ticks off 20% of a pc's resources. a similar ruling could be made for monsters.
if pcs aren't always going to have all thier cards on the table, the monsters should suffer similar issues.
monsters can be fatigued, wounded, or use up spells just like pcs can.
i beleive that it is not fudging for a monster to have less resources for an encounter than they do for the day.
monsters can lose resources too.
ticking off hit points, spell slots, or other monster resources as apropriate or even making a monster fatigued or exhausted could help. and not all monsters are awake 24/7 either.
it is perfectly possible to ambush an NPC wizard when he is low on spells. it need not be only the PC's this happens to.
anybody else got some tricks to post?
Traps can be walked around.
Oh, I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's true! Anyone who builds a trap, ALWAYS builds a way around it. Any mechanical trap MUST have a bypass mechanism somewhere in the building. If the trap turns the room into a boiling pit of poisonous acid, and the inhabitants of the dungeon can't happily bathe in acid and drink poison with their afternoon tea, there must be a switch somewhere that turns the trap off. On both sides of the trap, even!
This same effect is true for an inhabited dungeon with locked doors. Those doors have keys, unless they're barred and someone is on the other side of the bar. Put them somewhere. And remember that those locks are -expensive-, poor bandits and ork tribes aren't going to have them.