D&D 5E How to tear a pc's arm off?

[Saeviomagy]

If your question is "how can the silver dragon defeat the lich", then the answer is to pick him up and drop him somewhere bad. Active volcanoes, the middle of the ocean, a chasm, a frozen lake, the belly of some enormous beast are all good choices.

If the question is "how can the silver dragon give the lich a lasting reminder that he's not invincible", then the above, followed by dangling him in a pit of acid or roasting him on an open fire until he passes out, then doing whatever he feels like in place of CDGing him seems fair.

 

[adam_antio]

The whole "pick him up and drop him in the lava" would work... if only the lich didn't prepare fly! At that point it should be something like "drag him inside a pool of acid and just endure the damage cause he's got 100+ more than him"

 

[was]

...You could avoid the dragon altogether and put a trapped magical item in the dragon's horde. Maybe a powerful/intelligent cursed object/good-aligned object (i.e. staff), which can mask its aura/alignment against detection spells, disintegrates the liche's arm when he picks it up.

 

[arjomanes]

I really like the magic item angle. Maybe it's a relic of a god or saint that the dragon is safeguarding. Maybe like all true relics, it's a body part of a saint. The hand of Saint Soandsostus, which when touched by an undead replaces its hand, and will act on its own initiative to only good. It can apear as a skeletal hand with a single silver ring on a finger. It will radiate an aura of transmutation and evocation (since a good character that holds it can cast a radiant spell 1/day).

Also, any undead hunter worth its salt would find and destroy the phylactery before taking on the lich. Until you silver dragon champion destroys the phylactery, he won't reveal himself to the lich. Also paladin or cleric levels are a MUST for the dragon. And I would rule that the natural weapons of a creature as magical as a dragon would count as magical weapons ( which means a dragon's claw counts as a +1 weapon if you find a or taake off a dragon's claw).

 

[Saeviomagy]

If the lich hasn't prepared feather fall as well as fly, then dropping him in lava works just fine. By the rules, falling happens instantly, and casting a spell can't be done in time to react to it.

Otherwise just hold him by the heel in a single claw and dunk him. Grappling and dragging is a one handed exercise.

 

[EvanNave55]

Pshaw. Sethra Lavode sneers at "two and a half centuries." Try 17+ Cycles, 230,000 years and counting.

D&D players have such an American idea of what "a long time" means. ;-)

Even most regular every day elves are older then that actually, even for many normal pc races you dont wouldn't be really old till you're in the 1,000s

 

[Deathstrike]

You're the goddam DM. What you say goes. Rip his freaking arms off. End of discussion.

 

[Zorku]

I get the whole "don't give monsters abilities that you don't want the players using" style, but having a dragon mouth deep throating an arm before you chomp it off seems like a fair limitation on the maneuver.

If the lich gets himself temporarily snuffed out and then reforms from his phylactery, he's got both his arms good as new, right? If so the whole dismemberment thing could become pretty common for the wimpy level 6 lich. Maybe some residue of whatever the dragon did (especially if the dragon gets away alive,) leaves his arm easy enough for less serious opponents to detach, though in those fights he could reasonably retrieve it and stick it back in place to resume his spell slinging- sort of an excuse to make him or other party members run around a little more, or run away and lick their wounds while they wait for him to reform.

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I think the reason that you don't see a lot of intelligent and long lived monster types being bajillionth level anything is the same reason that not all humanoids ever gain many levels. These adventuring parties generally skyrocket in power the way they do because these adventures range from remarkable to amazing. You don't level up just for existing and breaking the necks of some little rats that scurry around- you level up because you're putting your neck on the line and pushing the limits of what's possible.

Moreover there's some clause about not rewarding xp for fights that flat out didn't represent any challenge, so especially with intelligent evil NPCs the whole keeping themselves in positions of relative safety is going to keep them roughly in line with how much power is typical for the type of monster that they are. With a number of beasties we've got several entries that kind of track your typical X as they grow older- so that pretty much gives you the baseline for power gain without taking big risks and generally biding your (unlimited) time.

For the most part monsters have stats xyz just like common humans in town have stats abc. As wild and evil as the land may be it generally supports a much lower population of monsters than the bustling population of humanoids in their cities, or probably still lower than the population of some quiet rural farmland. The monsters tend to be bigger or at least meaner, but based on the total number you should have even fewer that serve as the equivalent to adventurers.