Q. My name is Tim. I weight about 255 pounds I'm 6' 1" and I'm 15 years old. I have been trying to loose weight for the past month, but it hasn't been working so well. I've lost about 5 pounds. I'm a fairly active kid, I'm doin football so that will be my exercise. I have muscle, not a lot but there is deffinetly some there, I have been going to my schools workout room with friends that the coach set up for the team. I just need to learn how to eat right, and healthy. Any suggestions would be greatful, like what to eat breakfast lunch and dinner. Thank you
Answer
Losing 5 pounds in a month is a success. You want to aim for losing no more than 1-2 pounds each week.
The key is getting on a good diet & exercise program. Also, set goals. How heavy do you want to be? Do you want more muscle? Do you want to run faster?
So here's a sample workout program: Day 1: 3 sets of 10 of each: Incline press, pullups, Bench Press, Low row, dips, close grip pulldowns. Day 2: 1 hour cardio Day 3: 3x10 of Lunges, squats, deadlifts, clean and jerk, leg extension, leg curls, toe raises. Day 4: 1 hour Cardio. Day 5: 3x10 of Standing curls, overhead tricep extension, preacher curls, bent over tricep extensions, chinups, close hand pushups. Day 6: 1 Hour Cardio. Repeat this for 6 weeks.
Sample diet plan: Daily intake minimums: 20-30g protien (lean meat, yogurt, protien powder) 5-6 pcs of fruit, and fill up on raw vegetables (or lightly steamed) like broccoli, spinach, romaine lettuce, mushrooms, beans, green beans, peas, corn. Eat raw, unsalted nuts: almonds, walnuts, cashews..
Don't eat fried food, bread, desserts, pasta, or ANY SOY PRODUCT. Don't drink sugary stuff. Unsweet tea, black coffee and water is fine. Soda, diet soda, energy drinks, cream and sugar in your coffee is bad for your diet. Try to make your diet low in sodium as well. You'll get enough sodium from the meat.
I need help creating a D&D campaign.?
jobes201
I am a new DM and play with 4 of my friends. We have all played for maybe 2 months now, with pre generated adventures to get the general feel of it. In two weeks however we we start our own campaign, with me DMing. I would really appreciate if someone could explain a couple things:
1) How do I tell how much time ahas went by in the game? ie if I need to roll for a random encounter every hour, how do I figure out what time has passed
2) I need some more advanced traps
3) If anyone has good battle plans for a level 5 cleric, fighter, wizard, and rougue party I would appreciate it. Such as: rules on flanking, ambushing, creating trap, etc.
4) [the most important] The campaign we are creating will ideastically be the PCs becoming fighters in a large scale war. I need help ofn creating NPCs, towns, enviroments, and how to run a large scale battle.
Please do not refer me to any of the D&D rule books, I am lookgin for advice from experienced players and DMs.
Answer
1. The amount of time that goes by is however much that you decide has gone by. I'm not trying to be cryptic, it's just the easiest way to go. My advice about rolling random encounters is to open the door and throw that rule out through it. Players getting complacent going from point A to point B, sure, throw in an encounter and shake them up. Even better yet, throw in a seemingly random encounter, that actually ends up tying into a plot point. Maybe the attacking "monsters" end up being the same type raised as exotic pets by some NPC; or, the one goblin happens to be carrying a knife with a very, very distinctive hilt that used to belong to... You get the idea.
In general, time moves as you decree. You are the DM. You are, in effect, god. Want to breeze by 2 days of absolutely boring travel down a main travelway through the center of the kingdom? Do it. Forget random encounters; the King's knights keep the main roads clear of such random deterius. Want to spend an entire 4-5 hr gaming session dealing with a key dinner party with Lord Somighty, where the players get a chance to meet what will turn out to be some very important NPCs? Do it. I have spent entire evenings as my players did nothing more major than go to the market; it happens. As long as everyone is having fun, what else matters?
2. Advanced traps. It's hard to out-think that player who prides themselves on being the nasty, devious, thief. First, I'll mention the books. The DMG, Song and Silence, and the Epic handbook all have random trap tables, and example traps across the levels. Not the most original, but maybe they'll have a few things you or your players haven't thought of yet.
Sepia Snake Sigil. A low level spell that can take out a party member (for an encounter and then some) with a single failed saving throw.
The Runecaster prestige class allows magic spells to be written/recorded on almost any surface. And triggerable.
Wall of Force. Any Wiz/Sor of lvl 9-10 can cast it, and it's almost impossible to get rid of. For that matter, any 1/2-HD kobold can throw a bead of force given to him by his tribe's shaman.
Combine traps or trap effects. This is where you get your players. Go ahead and make a pit trap; make it just wide enough that the barbarian is pretty sure he can jump it, carrying some rope. Then, put a wall of force right on the other side of it; the barbarian jumps, and whamm-o. Put the incredibly difficult lock on the chest and make the rogue take 20 to even have a chance at it; include a simple poison needle trap, too. Then, when they open it up and unwrap the thin leather folded over the contents, well, it's too bad there was contact poison on it [the leather] as well.
Illusions. Put the illusionary pit 10' in front of the real one (also hidden by illusion). One of my all time favorites was an illusionary wall. The players were chasing an NPC necromancer and appeared to get to a dead end. The players search carefully and correctly determined that the one wall was just an illusion. Upon stepping through it, however, they were introduced (by way of painful level drain) to the necromancer's pet vampire who was waiting right on the other side.
Anything involving carrion crawlers or carrion crawler saliva/venom/goo. Paralysed players get downright frantic.
A final oldie but goodie is ye olde cursed item. Don't over use it. It doesn't even have to be an obvious curse. Let the ranger enjoy his new boots of striding and springing, until he tries to stop moving for any lengthy period of time (say an hour or so). A weapon created or used by an evil being could easily fucntion perfectly well, but be imbued with some overriding sinister sense of purpose.
3. A cleric, fighter, wizard, and rogue party? Wow. All 4 monster food groups. Flanking is pretty well covered in the DMG. If 2 (or more) parties a set distance apart are both attacking a single party (in melee), they get the flanking bonus; in addition, this can create an attack of opportunity situation, AND give certain rogues and assassins a chance for their sneak/death attacks. A caution on flanking- it can be abused. Picture 2 size L chars (gnoll rangers, say) with reach weapons that allow trip attacks (bill-guisarme). Give them the improved trip feat, and you have a pair that can take out almost any non-magic spewing mob in existance. Upon entering into melee (for them), they can take attacks of oppotunity, at bonuses, on their target, as well as forcing trip checks without penalty to themselves; all without their target, unless size H or better, ever being able to even get in melee with them, and being denied at least their dex bonus to their AC. If your players abuse it, use it back. If they don't abuse it, save it up for a really scary encounter to teach your melee-god PC that magic longswords +5 don't help if he can't reach his target.
Ambushes are very depends-on-the-conditions- who's wearing armor? How still and quiet can they be? Is there cover? Does any of the party to be ambushed have the ability to detect ambushes? Any weird senses like scent? Blindsight? What has the party done to "prepare" the ambush? Silence 15' radius can cover a multitude of sins. If the party is covered with blood and gore, however, even the illusionary forest hiding them won't keep their target's horses from getting spooked. Many wizards' familiars have additional senses that could pick up an ambush even the wizard himeself might miss. And most wiz/src/cler/bard have access to detect spells that could reveal an ambush. Planned right, an ambush should give the executing party a free round of actions, with the ambushed party being limited to free actions at best; rogues get their sneak attacks, and quite probably flanking bonuses can be broguht to bear, as well as cancelling dexterity bonuses to armor, etc.
Creating a trap is time consuming, and takes time and resouorces. The same sources I rattled off above also gives cost and time for the traps they list. More impromptu traps, well, are variable. It depends on how you want to play them. You can make your players rolls for everythign they do, and set up a series of contested roles vs the NPC when they encounter the trap. A more freeform approach is to just award the players for being truly ingenious' let them plan out the trap, and if depending on how good a job they do, and how clever they are, set the DC for the NPCs to avoid the trap accordingly. Laying a net on the ground, and tossing some leaves over it, may not be the hardest trap for someone to spot. Making a loud noise, or even a spirited charge at an NPC, to distract them from the weighted net about to be thrown over them by the elven rogue up in the tree...an entirely different situation.
4. I'm at a loss on how to cover large-scale battles as large scale battles. Typically, in such situations, I usually end up covering the PCs actions during the battle. Forces might attack them; they might spearhead a charge; maybe they neutralize the spell making the enemy seigeworks fire-proof. Maybe the players don't have a large effect. If the players' side is destined to be overwhelmed, it benefits no one to spend all night rolling it out. Fast forward through the two hours of fighting, maybe rolling a combat round or two to get some average damage ideas, and tell the players where they stand. See if they step up as leaders of the retreat, and how they fare keeping their remaining forces alive. By the same token, if this is the climactic battle between Army A and Army B, give the players a chance to do something important; they are PCs- their power and abilities is leagues beyond the warriors in the trenches. People like them get given "jobs to do" in battles like that.
As far as creating NPCs and towns, my best advice is don't get caught up into the details. If you want to know every building in town when you start, it's exact population, etc, use a published setting. Don't create a character sheet for every member of the town guard; know the stats of the average archer or swordsman. Don't write up Jobu the 20th level merchant; Do write up Jobu the 12th lvl Sorceror who has retired from adventuring and now serves as an innkeeper, leaving his former life behind him. That having been said, if you have a town that is goign to be your main base of operations, or a castle that is going to be center of a seige, write it up. Know its defenses, know what religions have temples in town, know what resources it has. But every trading post and waypoint your PCs pass through isn't going to be that important, and neither is every NPC they meet or every enemy they fight. Every room of an enemy stronghold is not laden with traps, and not every corridor of a dungeon contains lurking horror. Details should be details for a reason, otherwise they all too easily turn into background noise. I'm not saying only describe the important things, but I am saying only take the time to flesh out and write up the really important things. Other stuff, you can record or take notes as you describe it to the players; you don't have to know in advance what the Red River trading post is like. If the players go into the ubiquitous tavern, describe it and make a note of it; if you decide it should have a permanent NPC or two, make note of their names, etc. But if they really are nothing more than Khazund the dwarven brewer and a barmaid or two, then there's not much more detail you need to remember about them.
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