An age old topic that was never answered!

[Dakkareth]

Ok, we'll have to bend the rules a little, but that's fine. We want funny after all.

So we'll be going with two houserules: First, there's no limit to the number of participants in a grapple. Second, an attack roll of 20-20-20 means an instant kill. The first isn't really that outlandish and the second is often used anyway, so we're fine in that regard.

We're using grappling in order to prevent the dragon from acting against the Army of Cats (tm).

Of course a cat with its grapple of -12 will only succeed an Aid Another on a 20. Also only one cat among 20 will make the will save to avoid running in fear. Thus for one successful Aid Another maneuver applied to grappling we need 400 cats.

An ancient gold dragon has a grapple of +63. If we get our grapple as high as +84 there's no way he's going to make it. Since every Aid Another success gets us a +2, we need 42 teams of grappling cats for one cat to make the check, which results in 16801 needed to successfully grapple a dragon.

Theoretically that would be enough - given time the cats would eventually score a perfect success and crush the dragon's throat for an instant kill. We don't have the 13 hours and 20 minutes that would statistically take, though. So go for a one-round kill!

The chance to roll a perfect 20-20-20 is 1:8000 - bummer. But then, nobody said anything about having only a sane number of cats available. Since we've already established how many cats we need to grapple the dragon, we now simply take 8000 such Legions of GrappleCats (tm).

The conclusion:

To kill an Ancient Gold Dragon in one round we need an Army of Kamikaze GrappleCats (tm) 134408000 strong.

I can see it before me: An epic spell called 'Invoking the Death of Infinite Cats'. Truly, one who has mastered such power, is invincible!

 

[Babylon Knight]

Dakkareth, i have to bow to you, with my hat off - you truly came up with a funny, mathematically sound and "able to be used in a game" solution

 

[Dakkareth]

Thanks .

Actually you can cut that number down to 6408000*, if you're using straight attacks, but the image of a mighty dragon being pinned down, helpless and then crushed to death by an army of cats was simply too funny to pass up .


*Same line of reasoning, but you need only 2 cats to have chance to beat AC 10, thus 40 cats to get through dragon fear and 801 to make a guaranteed successful attack through AC 39. Times 8000 makes 6'408'000.

 

[Bran Blackbyrd]

Wow... all I can say is wow.

That and that if the dragon's body falls the right direction, roughly half of the feline overpopulation problem is solved. Take that Bob Barker!

 

[paz]

Couldn't the cats fight each other to gain levels (rogue? fighter?), and take the dragon toe-to-toe when they're tough enough?

Epic cats?

 

[Romnipotent]

ok, you want a real answer...
the dragon is in a 200 by 200 foot room with a 80 ft high ceiling... giving us 3200000 square feet

lets assume for a moment the dragon takes up a 40ft cube, so thats 64000 of dragony flesh bits

That leaves 3136000 square feet of available kitty space, 4 cats fit into each 1ft square making it 12544000 cats! but the dragon can breath fire and wipe out a significant number, so we have to cram in MORE cats than can fit per round.... and the suffocation rules need quite a bit of time... as with crushing....
so lets round up... 13 million cats will prove more an annoyance than a reasonable method of execution.
13 trillion cats will crush themselves... 13 billion will just do the same... there is no way the cat can kill the dragon
The REAL question you have to ask is how many half red dragon kittens will be spawned if you just put in 4000 female cats. who cares about killing the dragon, you've got an army of furball hacking mega death purrers

on another note, 134 million cats will "spawnkill" themselves

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

You have to divide your result by nine, since due to a cat's nine lives, each of them gets ressurrected eight times before actually dying.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Couldn't the cats fight each other to gain levels (rogue? fighter?), and take the dragon toe-to-toe when they're tough enough?

Epic cats?

Genius.

 

[babomb]

Kill that Dragon!

Just one. Put him in the box with Schrodinger's cat.

But seriously, I can kill that dragon in 51,840 cats.
I'll use mobs of cats (DMG2 pp. 59-61).

Mob of Cats CR 8
N Gargantuan animal (mob of Small animals)
Init +4; Senses: Listen +2; Spot +2

AC 8 (-4 size, +2 Dex)
hp 135 (30HD)
Fort +17; Ref +19; Wil +9

Speed 20ft. (4 squares)
Melee mob (5d6)
Space 20ft.; Reach 0 ft.
Base Atk +22; Grp +30
Atk Options expert grappler, trample 2d6

Abilities Str 3, Dex 15, Con 10, Int 2, Wis 10, Cha 7
SQ mob anatomy, low-light vision, scent
Feats Improved Initiative, Improved Overrun, Weapon Finesse
Skills Balance +10, Climb +6, Hide +14, Jump +10, Listen +2, Move Silently +6, Spot +2

Now, one mob is 48 cats. Since the Frightful presence DC for an Ancient Red Dragon is 34, only 1 in 20 mobs makes it. So, 960 cats to get one mob that's not affected.

Since a mob automatically does 5d6 damage to a creature in the square in which it ends its turn, that's an average of 17.5 damage a round. After DR, that's 2.5 per round. As the dragon's space is 20 ft., we can, at most, have 4 mobs attacking it at once. That's 10 damage/round if the dragon does nothing. With 527 HP, that's 53 rounds. If the dragon does nothing.

For the sake of argument, I'll say the red dragon is overconfident and chooses not to fly (or even move). Instead, he does the attack that does the most damage. A breath weapon does 20d10x1.5 to two mobs, Ref 36 for half. That's 165, with a 20% chance for 82.5. Since the mobs has 135 HP, this means 64% of the time, he kills both, 32% of the time, he kills 1, and 4% of the time, he kills neither. Or, he kills an average of 1.6 mobs of cats (that's 76.8 cats) every round he uses the breath weapon.

With a full attack, only a 1 misses (and mobs are immune to criticals). A bite does 13.3 avg. dmg/rnd. both claws combined do 17.1 dmg/rnd. both wings combined do 13.3 dmg/rnd. The tail slap does 8.55 dmg/rnd., the crush does 13.3, and the tail sweep does 6.55. That's 72.1 damage/round. Or he kills .5 mobs every round (since the average damage is enough to kill a mob damaged by either this or the breath weapon).

Now, the dragon uses his breath weapon an average of once every 2.5 rounds. So in 5 rounds, he breathes twice, killing 3.2 mobs, and full attacks thrice, killing another 1.5, for a total of 4.7 mobs (225.6 cats). Or .94 mobs of cats (45.2 cats) every round. In the 53 rounds needed to kill him, that's 49.82 mobs (2391.36 cats). (We'll assume the mobs of cats that aren't attacking ready an action to move in when one is killed, and we'll ignore attacks of opportunity.)

We'll round and say 50 mobs are killed. With the 4 left when he's dead, that's 54. (We might be able to do it having only one mob at the end, but that's riskier.) Since we need 20 mobs for each mob that attacks, that's 1080 mobs, or 51,840 cats.

And what's more, of the cats in dispersed mobs, 30% are dead, 30% are at 0 HP, and 40% are in positive HP. So 720 cats die, and 720 are at 0 HP. So 50,400 cats are in positive HP, and 720 have a chance to stabilize (approximately 410 will).

 

[Hypersmurf]

Mob of Cats CR 8
N Gargantuan animal (mob of Small animals)

Cats are Tiny - they form Swarms, not Mobs.

I'm playing a Druid with a Swarm-o-Cats animal companion at the moment

-Hyp.