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Setting Party level vs an Ancient Red Dragon
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<blockquote data-quote="Oofta" data-source="post: 7299059" data-attributes="member: 6801845"><p>Well I <em>did</em> just run a fight with an ancient red dragon, so I had to look up a few things. I had the advantage of the group not knowing exactly what they were going to face or when, and the group is not particularly into optimizing.</p><p></p><p>In our fight, I was quite surprised the cleric didn't use Calm Emotions (he may not have had it prepared and I kept him pretty busy healing), but it's a concentration spell. Even with resistance, there's no guarantee someone's going to make a DC 22 con save to maintain concentration. Add to that, that the group needs to stick together in easily-breathed on space.</p><p></p><p>As far as a bunch of the other stuff ... it depends on the DM, tactics and how mean you want to be. I'm a mean DM so I'd probably have earthquakes opening up pre-prepared chasms, magma eruptions not only annoying the characters (probably targeting the casters again) but also possibly igniting barrels of oil tied to the ceiling and so forth. As far as getting a surprise round, with a passive perception of 26 I don't see it happening. Either the dragon will hear them coming or the PCs will make a ruckus fighting the minions.</p><p></p><p>That and the dragon has had <em>years</em> to prepare for this; any dragon that has gotten to the point of being ancient is going to be paranoid IMHO.</p><p></p><p>But it depends on how the session is run and what the DM allows. Heck, he could have the dragon in a 50X50 chamber on top of his pile'o'loot snoozing away. I'd just expect a swingy fight. In my game the dragon recharged his breath weapon on each of the first two rounds after the first and I was able to catch the entire group in the blast (90 foot cones are huge). They still managed, but it was touch and go.</p><p></p><p>With a different group and slightly different rolls, the results may have been dramatically different.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Oofta, post: 7299059, member: 6801845"] Well I [I]did[/I] just run a fight with an ancient red dragon, so I had to look up a few things. I had the advantage of the group not knowing exactly what they were going to face or when, and the group is not particularly into optimizing. In our fight, I was quite surprised the cleric didn't use Calm Emotions (he may not have had it prepared and I kept him pretty busy healing), but it's a concentration spell. Even with resistance, there's no guarantee someone's going to make a DC 22 con save to maintain concentration. Add to that, that the group needs to stick together in easily-breathed on space. As far as a bunch of the other stuff ... it depends on the DM, tactics and how mean you want to be. I'm a mean DM so I'd probably have earthquakes opening up pre-prepared chasms, magma eruptions not only annoying the characters (probably targeting the casters again) but also possibly igniting barrels of oil tied to the ceiling and so forth. As far as getting a surprise round, with a passive perception of 26 I don't see it happening. Either the dragon will hear them coming or the PCs will make a ruckus fighting the minions. That and the dragon has had [I]years[/I] to prepare for this; any dragon that has gotten to the point of being ancient is going to be paranoid IMHO. But it depends on how the session is run and what the DM allows. Heck, he could have the dragon in a 50X50 chamber on top of his pile'o'loot snoozing away. I'd just expect a swingy fight. In my game the dragon recharged his breath weapon on each of the first two rounds after the first and I was able to catch the entire group in the blast (90 foot cones are huge). They still managed, but it was touch and go. With a different group and slightly different rolls, the results may have been dramatically different. [/QUOTE]
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