I dont know about the rest of you but i have an announcements section on my board, i dont want members to ba able to start a topic in this section for obvious reasons, but i do want them to be able to reply to the topics created by an administrator, but this isnt possible without giving them permission to create a topic..

Is there a way around this.

Go to General-> Categories & Forums -> Click the Next to your announcement forum -> Permissions -> Turn on Advanced mode (Link to turn in on is at the bottom of the simple permissions edit.) ->
Find the section titled 'Reply to a message' and Change the permissions to allow everyone to reply, Then find the section titled 'Open a topic' and change it to Admins only. (And anyone else you want to be able to open a post there.)

Magic! Cheers pal!