Defeating a Great Wyrm Force Dragon

[Shin Okada]

Round 0 Scry
Round 1 Teleport, Celerity, Shivering Touch-Maximized.
Round 2+ wraith-strike/Coup'd'Grace at your leisure. Level up x10 (Yeah, I know you can only get 1 lvl per session or whatever... but you get the idea), Enjoy Hoard.

Do-able as soon as lvl... 11, 12?

How do you beat SR 57 (or 75 if the DM is using Draconomicon feat) with a 11-12th level caster?

 

[akbearfoot]

For that matter, how does a mage hit a touch AC of 36?

Asking if a remotely normal group of lv 40s could beat one of these is like asking if a lv1 character could beat a CR20 monster.


Notice how the only useful suggestions were broken orb spell, broken shivering touch, and broken ego whip...with the only counter being a broken spell resistance feat.

I mean...you know....permanent use activated truestrike wraithstrike would allow a melee character to actually hit the thing. But then you're heavily in house rules territory.


First thing any dragon like this would do would be area dispel magic....Oh look, it dispels the mind blank or the heroes feast(probably)...Everyone make a DC 70s will save or flee in terror.

 

[Shin Okada]

For that matter, how does a mage hit a touch AC of 36?

With a True Strike spell, I guess. Even a 12th-level Sorcerer/Warmage/Wizard can reasonably have +8 ranged touch attack bonus. +5 BAB, +3 from Dex 16 (14 + Gloves of Dexterity +2).

A 30th-level mage will have much better chance to hit it with ranged touch attacks and also can use quickened True Strike every round.

But yeah. If the Dragon uses spells, that is completely different matter. It can cast various buff & debuff spells.

 

[the Jester]

I wasn't thinking about taking the party's level up to 59... i was trying to keep it at 30. But you're right, a 55+ party could destroy it, and they're the divine intervention, anyway, lol.

Hrm. Keeping the party level at 30... no, 40, would it be possible to defeat this creature?

Have you actually played a 3.5 epic game, especially one that started at sub-epic levels so that the players really knew how to use their characters?

Absolutely a 40th level party could take this thing on.

The epic level 3e party I dmed (see story hour in sig) got up to as high as about 33rd or 34th level (well, ECL in some cases) by the end. Could they have taken out a great wyrm force dragon? I don't know for sure. I doubt it. But they could probably do it by 40th. I was amazed, again and again, and just how incredibly epic 3e epic characters are. They could hit ACs in the 60-70 range; one pc could cast three earthquakes in a round; one pc could dish out the "Inoke Special"- a heedless charge and full attack using maximum power attack, chain of overwhelming force, psionic lion's charge, etc etc etc, and issue a good 800 hit points of damage in one round. When sheer force couldn't deal with something, they had incredible resources- amazing wealth, high positions of religious or political power, etc.- to bring to bear.

Epic pcs are powerful beyond belief, especially when well-built and well-played.

 

[the Jester]

First thing any dragon like this would do would be area dispel magic....Oh look, it dispels the mind blank or the heroes feast(probably)...Everyone make a DC 70s will save or flee in terror.

Assuming the 40th-level party is picking the fight, they're gonna go in prepared and in overwhelming ambush mode. The dragon is unlikely to go before the entire party has acted (even with Improved Initiative and Superior Initiative, I'd be surprised to see its total initiative bonus above around +11).

With 40th level pcs, this fight will be over within 3 rounds, one way or another. It will probably not be over in the first round, but it certainly could be. The party will go in prepared with spells that will buffer against a round or two of disjunctions and dispels, and covered in things that protect them from force damage. Yeah, I'm presuming access to some custom stuff; any discussion of 40th level pcs that doesn't assume that they have basically all the resources that they need is unrealistic. I know that my group would have gone in with a disjunction buffer, foresight running, probably using temporal acceleration and timestop to set things up... I can't even predict what all preparations they would have made, but they would have been extensive. In 3e, prep was the key to success.

All the above assumes that the party is attacking the dragon. If it's the other way around, they are probably all dead before they can react.

 

[akbearfoot]

Whatever wealth and resources a 40th level group of PCs has...It should pale in comparison to the amount in comparison to a great wyrm dragon of CR 59.


I've never played an epic game though, so I make a lot of assumptions.


I also find it quite unlikely that a group of PCs would 'pick a fight' with a dragon of this power...even if they knew he existed, the dragon should have layers and layers of defenses in place to avoid being disturbed.

I know if I had been alive for thousands of years and had amassed more wealth than entire kingdoms posessed I would be paranoid.


The highest level group I ran with was 18th level, and we butchered a Collossal red dragon(CR 21 version) in 2 rounds. But then again the fight started with our melee characters adjacent to him and we were fully buffed going in....If the fight had taken place in the open then it would have been a seriously different fight.


A lot of assumptions about a fight like this...Every PC has to be immune to force damage, fear effects, and grappling or they are more or less automatically toast. Also, they will fail every saving throw vs any attack the dragon uses. I don't know any spells off the top of my head that protect against force damage, so that requires customized research. The dragons lair should almost certainly be warded against planar travel, probably by anything but itself. And security should be in place so that he knows if anyone gets even remotely close.

The way I see it is its selling an encounter like this short by NOT playing one of the most powerful creatures in the book like it was meant to be used....It would seem anticlimactic to me. Basically you'd probably have to dumb it down to be beatable by a 'normal' group of PCs. By normal I mean PCs that arent made with 15 different books and a few dragon mags...PCs without items that give them 6 different +6bonuses to their stats on unslotted items, with 18 permanent buffs like truestrike and wraithstrike.

 

[thompsja]

I'd go for the gambing vorpal. We have a Ranger with favored enemy of dragon, who has a Keen Vorpal Scimitar of Speed in his primary hand, and a Keen Vorpal Kukri of Speed in his off-hand. He has used his feats in order to fully use his off-hand attacks.

Assuming that we can buff up his attack so that an AC 102 isn't that hard, he goes in with a Belt of Battle. He expends so that in one round, he will get two full-round actions.

He gets 20 attacks, and has crit threat of 30% on each attack. There is a virtual certainty that at least one attack will be crit threat. 8 attacks will be made at maximum bonus, and there is a 95% that one of those will crit.

Looking at the entry for Force Dragons, it does not appear that they are immune to critical hits.

A similar build can be made with a figher, who could get Weapon Supremancy. I will admit that I can't think of a way to get that much bonus off the top of my head without Epic Spells. But with an Artificer, we can create items fairly easily that grant Insight and Luck bonuses to weapons - should be possible.

I am also assuming that we are doing a hit-and-run - the Ranger is coming in from another plane and basically drops in on the dragon. Possible, but a dragon like that would have a throughly protected lair, with multiple wish spells used to make standard scry and fry tactics impossible. Probably made with lots and lots of Wall of Force spells, since he can easily fly through them and its enemies can't.

What did I miss?

 

[thompgc]

Vorpal only works on a Natural 20

 

[thompsja]

Vorpal only works on a Natural 20

Knew it was too good to be true. OK, with the 8 attacks at full value, only 1/3rd chance to get a 20. With all 20 attacks, you have a 2/3rds chance of a natural 20. Not good enough.

OK, let's compute damage again. The ranger is 40th level, has consistently taken dragon as his favored enemy, so he gets a +18 to damage. I'm going make the weapon +6 to bonus (so that the Force Dragon's DR doesn't apply: 3.5 revision, has the Great Wyrm Force Dragon at DR 25/epic, rather than DR 60/+12, a much lower bar). I will also make the weapon Concussive, so that it does +5 to damage (Magic Item Compendium). Strength for a 40th level Ranger - having a 34 doesn't seem out of line at all, giving him a +12 to damage.

A critical hit allows us to reroll damage plus all modifiers, but not any extra dice. Keen Concussive Dragon Bane weapons of Speed:

d6+ 6 + 5 + 18 + 12 + 2d6 = 3d6 + 41, or about 52 for a normal hit, 96 for critical for the scimitar. The kukri does d4+ 41 + 2d6 (50) on a normal hit, 94 on a critical.

He gets 8 attacks at full bonus, and 4 more at a -5 penalty. I'll assume that these 12 attacks hit him.

I will further assume that two attacks succeeded at a critical (one of each weapon).

So that's 5 * 52 + 5 * 50 + 94 + 96 = 700 points of damage, roughly. It's less than a third of his hit points. The ranger might be able to survive a round of hand-to-hand attack from the dragon.

 

[Shin Okada]

In that case, Wounding property will be much effective I guess.

But anyway, that is a dragon who casts spells as a 36th-spell sorcerer. So it may cast powerful dispelling spells (even epic ones) when something is obviously effective to him.