BADD- evaluate my dragon DM'ing? (KotSQ, Glacier Season module SPOILERS)

[Old One]

Now That One, I Like...

Heh heh heh. I like this. After all, it's only fair. The Lich character gets a lot of advantages, and from the looks of your average party member level (11), no disadvantages in terms of ECL (otherwise, he would be considered a 14th or 15th level character, can't remember which).

Imagine the look on the player's face when the dragon whips out the phylactery and holds it between two of its massive talons. Gesturing with the other claw towards the lich's companions, the dragon whispers menacingly, "Wipe them out. All of them."

Heh heh.

Wolfspider -

Good one! Given this party's history, that would be quite fitting! Also, didn't one of them (Raff?) just get a shiny new keep? Methinks the good drake might do his best impression of a draconic B-17 with some very large ice balls...

~ Old One

 

[Victim]

Remember, the Dragon hid a corner to prevent flanking attacks. Since all the PCs could fly, via the spell I suppose, flight wouldn't be that much of an advantage. Sure, the dragon is much faster, but the Fly spell grants much better manueverability. A dragon is no good in a dogfight, even with Wingover and Hover wouldn't be that special: Good manuevering lets you Hover and change directions about as easily. The dragon would ahve to spend 2 precious feats just to barely hold on to a flight advantage. I;d rather let the dragon have other stuff, wingover seems pretty weak.

If the dragon goes to their home, then a 40 point power attack combined with some long lasting buffs should allow to rip out bits of Spellforge Keep pretty easily, even if it's magically treated reinforced masonry with 360 hp and 16 hardness per 10 x 10 section. And, with some successful knowledge checks, the dragon could know just which area to rip out to cause maximum structural damage.

Must have Heal spell.

Must have Power Attack.

Re Liches:

The DotF web enhancement lists learning the secret of becoming a lich as an appropriate quest for a cleric of Wee-Jas. I can't see that many people learning how without doing it, so Vek should fine. At least in the eyes of his fellow priests of Wee Jas.

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Given the fact that many adventures assume that PCs will gain levels and the magic items included within during the course of the adventure, I think skipping the whole thing was a pretty stupid move. Imagine a group going into the end of Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil at 4th level. Or a 1st level party at the end of the Sunless Citadel. Even without much difference in levels, our group is much more effective now than we we're at the begining of Heart of Nightfang Spire. No one died last night, so we must be doing better.

 

[Tom Cashel]

Originally obfuscated by Thread-rot


From the SRD's description of Antimagic field:

"Note: Should the character be larger than the area enclosed by the barrier, any part of the character's person that lies outside the barrier is unaffected by the field."

Doc, I think your dragon is the well-handled terror that it should be. However, I think you're cutting your "goateed, system-exploiting" characters too much slack.

Everyone "jumping" into a bag of holding? I'd not allow that. A portable hole, yes, but not a bag.

From the SRD, assuming they have a Type 4 Bag of Holding, the largest one:

"max weight: 1,500 lb., 250 cu. ft.
If the bag is overloaded, or if sharp objects pierce it (from inside or outside), the bag ruptures and is ruined. All contents are lost forever."

Now, it's a judgement call on your part as to whether the bag is pierced from within...but keep in mind that 250 cubic feet is just a tad bigger than a 6x6x6 cube. Not very big, and certainly not big enough to fit more than, say, three party members.

If you did allow them to squeeze more people into the bag, the chances of a puncture and being "lost forever" would raise significantly. And if they were squeezing into the space, they certainly wouldn't just be diving in like Ringling Bros. clowns into their tiny car...and while they try to fit everyone in the dragon could be breathing on them again and again.

At this point, I'd tell your players that you will be implementing the correct "Aid another" rules, explain to them why they can't use their bag of holding as a party-carrier, and have the dragon come back to kidnap one of them...it has the best possibilities for role-playing and humiliation and, well...hurt.

 

[CRGreathouse]

If that was the case, the alignment descriptor would say "usually evil", meaning there is a tendency in that race towards said alignment. The Liches descriptor is like a Demons or Devils... which says "always Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic Evil", meaning they are _never_ good, unless a DM houserules that particular detail, at least from my understanding.

Reread the description of "always." It doesn't mean "always."

 

[Junkheap]

Wohoo!

Well guys, i am Dming it right as we speak, and the PC's actually walked to the keep. I toned down the trek through the area tho, it would have taken too long, and was just a bash fest of wandering monsters. Picked the good ones tho, like the titan. Anywho, here's my real question.

The Ice golems(new creature)in glacier season, are basically golems(constructs)Duh!!. Anway, i am very very unclear on this, but they are immune to all spells jsut as regular golems are. They have the cold subtype, so they take double damage from fire on a failed save. The way i have been playing is that i have allowed fire spells such as fireball, delayed blast to affect the golems. Am i right playing it this way, or are they just immune to EVERY spell period, no execptions. I really really need clarification on this guys.

 

[Numion]

Re: Wohoo!

The Ice golems(new creature)in glacier season, are basically golems(constructs)Duh!!. Anway, i am very very unclear on this, but they are immune to all spells jsut as regular golems are. They have the cold subtype, so they take double damage from fire on a failed save. The way i have been playing is that i have allowed fire spells such as fireball, delayed blast to affect the golems. Am i right playing it this way, or are they just immune to EVERY spell period, no execptions. I really really need clarification on this guys.

They're not immune to all spells as normal golems. The description says that they are immune to all spells, except to those that deal fire damage. So all fire-based spells do deal damage. All those spells have the [Fire] descriptor in the spell stats in PHB.

 

[Urbanmech]

Remember that white dragons do not get access to clerical spells so no Heal for this beastie.

When he does decide to visit the defenders make sure you buff him up with the spells listed in his tatics section. They work pretty well and unless the PC's have lots of greater dispelling at their disposal they will have trouble bringing down his spell effects.

When I ran Glacier Season, the Dragon killed the halfdragon npc (16th lv), the frost giant npc, the fighter/sorcerer/dragon disciple (16th lv), and the cleric (16th lv). The wizard (16) and the monk (16) didn't die because they ran away. In the end I think they did maybe 200 damage to the dragon.

The dragon's crush attack is nasty esp if he decides to smother a spellcaster. Good luck for the spellcaster getting a spell off since the damage for it's crush is 4d6+19 minimum.

 

[Wolfspider]

So you ran a group of 16th level characters through this adventure and they had a rough time of it? I think the guy who started this thread has 11th level characters....

 

[Hatchling Dragon]

Something you overlooked

Doesn't a White Dragon have the equivilent of Spider Climb always active,, effective only on ice? Couldn't the Dragon have walked along the walls and/or Ceiling?

Where is this adventure from, sounds very interesting! If a module I'm definately interested in purchasing it, and if in a Dungeon issue I may have to pick that up.

I'd agree that the Dragon would go out and ravage the nearest settlement. You have to train 'pets', and letting irritants (ie: PC's) get past you, and especially when they didn't even warn you, is something that demands immediate punishment.

Now, you've had the Wyrm devastate the town, so the PC's have to 'rough it' in the wilderness. Since a White Dragon lives in hte area one can assume it's rather cold usually? Make certain that the characters don't have a good night's rest so that they cannot refresh spells. You have many options for bothering the players, if nothing else there's always the remaining (former) inhabitants of a certain town that are no doubt poorly disposed towards our heros (curtesy of the Dragon's speech after/before the razing).

If that isn't enough it sounds like the PC's have ignored an entire module's worth of encounters. You know the old saying: "If the PC's won't go to the Encounters, the Encounters will just have to... " Being as there's a Great Wyrm living in the area, you can be assured that these other critters only exsist upon the sufference of our Main Star, 'Mr Whitey'. If they know what's good for them they'd hop to it when the Dragon comes and tells them it's got a mission for them. At this point the pacing and concentration of encounters that night is totally up to you. Heck, let's not forget that the Dragon's breath weapon never runs out of ammo, so occational straffing runs are perfectly legit. Hard to get a night's rest when you just know that a Dragon's out there and he's mad at you.

Some ideas for critters ideal for this harrassing would of course be something with the ability to Burrow as a main form of locomotion, more on why in a second. The White Worm would be fun, or the Rhemoraz too, and even a 'pack' of Bullettes would be fun. Now you can't feel safe in the air (dragon), or the ground (burrowers) or the middle (both ). And the key to this is that the monsters are there to harass the characters, they don't have to do much more than hit-and-run raids. Thus the whole digging trick, while they've demonstrated the ability to Fly to a 'man' I don't know of many spells that allow PC's to dig like gophers If you're really really evil you can wait till the PC's have set up an ambush for 'those pesky gophers' and have the Wyrm pick that time for a straffing run, as it's probable that it can keep tabs on the PC's from much further away than they can percieve it.

Ok, we're not done yet! While the PC's are being harrassed the Wyrm's called in the cavalry. Most of those afore-mentioned critters/encounters probably aren't all that suited to raids and ambushes, but they probably are well suited to knock-down, drag-out fights. Something like what'll happen the next time the PC's show up at the Lair mabye? Sure you're trying to not kill the PC's, but they do have the option of retreat, consider it suicide if they choose to fight and loose.

Hmm... don't remember why but I'd decided early-on not to add "Knights of the Silver Quill" to my 'to read' list of Story Hours, probably becuase I had too many to catch up on already From this little snippit it sounds like I'm most definately missing out. Time to remedy that error. I have got to hear the reasoning for anyone wanting to inflict Undeath on themselfs (ie: the Lich), I hope you have something in there about that.

Hatchling Dragon

 

[reapersaurus]

After cramming a pencil in my eye socket, I gave in. What could I do?

Well, for one, you could have told them that for some reason, the teleport fails.

Read the recent posts about blocking scrying and teleportation for details.
Or just make reasons up why an ancient Great White Wyrm could have figured out in his many centuries of life how to block punk adventurers from entering his sanctum sanctorum.