Redone Black Dragon from GenCon

[Neonchameleon]

I'm considering running this guy as a solo against a level 6 party - although the party will be in a bad way by the time they meet him (slightly underequipped, out of dailies, no action points, very low on surges - and just leaving a river (after rafting over a high waterfall) to enter a swamp while wearing armour that won't pull them to the bottom).

 

[MrMyth]

Just ran a few more tests with this guy. The one change I made was to not use Shroud and the Breath Weapon on the same turn.

I threw a level 2 unoptimized party against him, and they were victorious, though they lost half the party. I tried the same group at level 4, and they were victorious with only 1 death. And I tried a group of optimized level 2 PCs, and they won without any casualties.

Each time, I assumed the Black Dragon got surprise and was in range to instinctive charge during the surprise round. (Typically followed by Breath Weapon.) That was really the scariest part of him. Once PCs get through that initial shock, he's pretty reasonable.

The Shroud remains tricky. Even just using it, then AP for a Bite, followed by a free Instinct Bite... thats 20 damage to anyone even if both attacks miss. Honestly, I'd be tempted to change the Shroud so that instead of making someone vulnerable to acid, it instead just did 5 Acid up front, and negated any Acid Resistance. I think that would hit the same thematic approach, and avoid having the 'stacking' problem it causes when paired with a flurry of other attacks, or dragon breath, etc.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Oh, jst noticed something:

fortitude 2 lower than AC. I hope more monsters will follow this guideline! Fortitude should not be too high on all monsters that are large... it doesn´t fit every monster and penalizes implement users too much...

 

[Delgar]

Well I leveled up this dragon and used it against my 6th level party. It was their 3rd encounter in the day. They had used a few daily's previously.

The combat lasted only 2 rounds. The group managed to pump out enough damage to kill the dragon and not a single one of them was knocked unconcious.

The reasons was do to a bit of good luck on the players side, combined with good tactics, combined with some good power use/tactics, and some bad luck on my side.

In his opening salvo the dragon missed the wizard with his charge, and took a bunch of damage from a few characters before opening on his initiative with his breath weapon. He needed to eat an OA to get into a decent position, which the player critted on, and then he missed all three players that were in his blast with the breath weapon. He then ate a bunch more damage, followed by a daily crit.

A strange sequence occured where the dragon got to use his tail sweep, which triggered the rangers interrupt, which bloodied the dragon, triggering the dragons breath weapon. Here he actually got a hit in with the breath weapon doing some damage.

This is where they found out it did damage to them every time they hit it, bringing the warlord down to 1 hit point with ongoing 5 on him (well 10 because of gloom).

The Avenger used his endure pain, to gain resist all 9, which meant all the acid splashing on him did only 1 point of damage, he then slide the dragon away from the warlord, and they pummeled it.

Entire combat only took 2 rounds. Damn my players!

 

[keterys]

Heh, D&D is good for that - massive streaks of luck. I mean, to miss everyone with the breath weapon probably meant you rolled 4-5 times below a 5. And a couple good crits from the players in not so many attacks.

Interestingly, even on a missed breath weapon it still does 12 or so damage each, after you factor in shroud. That's a _lot_ more serious at 2nd (30hp) than 6th (50hp). I'm very curious to see what the Adult and higher versions look like.

 

[Pelenor]

Holy Cow that thing looks evil. Certainly from the perspective of a party of lower level anyway.

I just finished running the Black Dragon combat in Talon Pass and it took the entire party to bloodied in the opening salvo (breath weapon and the frightening presence thing). After that it was something of a war or resource and hit point attrition. If I had used this beast the whole party would be dead by the second round.

Granted they were running the module at the stated level which is 2nd level.

It doesn't seem to be quite as lurkery though.

 

[Aegeri]

I ran the Dragon today as is with a change from Black Dragon to Red Dragon and some fluff changes. I increased the AC to match a solider and switched fort and reflex as he would be strength/con primary. Someone noted this earlier, but it's not because wizards made his reflex higher by some decision to reduce the fort, the black dragon has dex as his primary attribute: hence the reflex.

Otherwise it was as is, just replace "fire" when you see acid. Now this is not a test. It's a real game, with real PCs and they have never seen this kind of dragon ever before. Overall, it was an amazing fight and they said it was one of the best solos I've ever run (they've been playing with me 2 years if you're wondering).

It ended with three PCs almost dying, one on 9 HP and one on 10 HP. They killed the "Red Dragon" on the very last real "last-ditch" attempt to do so. Any further and it was a TPK, though they set the last attack up well so that it was very unlikely to have any chance of missing! An incredibly intense and exciting battle was had.

Firstly, the damage effect when bloodied combined with the dragons impressive attacks is just plain brutal. The auto damage to all melee characters adjacent is really ferocious and with the vulnerability shroud it can be very difficult to deal with. Ultimately though what really made a huge impact was my amazing ability to roll critical hits: 6 in total. With vulnerability it was 25 total damage and that's a hefty amount of HP, even for the parties Warden! I downed him without almost any problem, but due to using a potion of fire resistance it reduced the damage enough so that he didn't die.

The party was (all level 3):

Goliath Wizard
Half-Orc Warden
Revenant (Gnoll) Rogue|Assassin.
Shardmind Monk
Wilden Shaman

The hybrid was the replacement for the Runepriest who met his shadowy end last session. The most interesting part of the combat was the party was so mauled, they were faced with the antagonist (a succubus who had sent the devils and the hellfire infused dragon at the PCs). She essentially got them to give her important information as to the location of a monastery in the elemental chaos. Most importantly, the two PCs who were standing at the end (the Revenant and the Shardmind) are basically on an agreement with the devil to backstab their other ally (the Efreet Quassemi). The rest of the party though, who have agreed to aid the rather dubious efreet have no idea about this particular state of affairs (as they were having a dirt nap at the end of the encounter).

So we have a potential double cross situation and it's going to be rather dramatic! I am loving how the game is going thus far, even if it seems to be rather lethal!

Returning to the Dragon though, I think I would change the auto-damage to 2 fire damage and scale it appropriately. 5 fire damage is just a bit much. One thing I think is interesting about this dragon is the "stun" replacement effect is much better than a stun. The additional fire damage is devastating, but PCs won't remove it because it uses a standard action. Effectively, they don't sacrifice attacking for removing the incredibly debilitating effect - even though this makes sense. In reality, it's the hellfire blood/acidic blood ability that made the biggest difference. When bloodied, 5 autodamage combined with 5 vulnerability becomes a huge deal rapidly. PCs won't remove the power before the creature is bloodied, so will basically get "ambushed" quite literally by it and then chaos reigns.

So I think making it 2 damage would be much better. I would also reduce the vulnerability to 3/5/10 (that would be by tier). So at most it's getting a +3 bonus to damage and the acidic blood is doing the 'intended' 5 damage. Overall though despite being an incredibly difficult fight, they pulled through and it was tense, exciting and dramatic the whole way through. This is exactly what you want out of a solo monster. The severe beating it dealt to the party even led to some interesting roleplaying and allowed me to open another entire path to the storyline up as well. So overall I was a very pleased DM.

Final HP tallies (for the curious)

Goliath Wizard (-12, Dying, 1 failed death save)
Half-Orc Warden (-18 Dying, 2 failed death saves)
Revenant (Gnoll) Rogue|Assassin. (10 HP)
Shardmind Monk (9 HP)
Wilden Shaman (-11 HP Dying, 0 failed death saves)

As you can tell, they were in no shape to fight the succubus who turned up afterwards on full HP and flying out of range of either of the current characters still standing. But why kill individuals who show such determination when you can potentially use them to your own ends? It was quite a tense conversation, but with a few agreements with the odd backstab it soon turned to the parties favor. Now I just have to think how to utilize this delicious web of betrayal.

 

[Kurtomatic]

Bumping this thread since it appears our new boy has turned up in the Redbox Gameday adventure!

 

[keterys]

How much is he different? My understanding is that he was 2 levels lower?

 

[Kurtomatic]

How much is he different? My understanding is that he was 2 levels lower?

Yep, it turns out to be a similar but different beast. Sorry, I jumped the gun, thinking they were the same...

Only level 2 (lower stats and damage output), no devouring, no action recovery, shroud was 1/encounter instead of recharge 6, and no tail sweep. This version also has a corrected stat block, with Claw properly worded, and Acidic Blood as a triggered action (free) instead of trait.