D&D 5E Observations and opinions after 8 levels and a dragon fight

One other thing about dragons--looking at my minis, I'd say an adult dragon has a wingspan about 60 feet. Something that size needs a lot of momentum to stay airborne, which means it needs a huge amount of room. Maybe it can do it in the main cavern of its lair, but odds are that most of the tunnels aren't nearly that big. If you can find a way to draw it into those tunnels, you have a much better chance of taking it.

How can you provoke the dragon into putting itself at such a disadvantage? Well, there's one sure way to nark off a dragon, without revealing your true strength and putting it on guard. What you need is a burglar.

occam said:

By the book, a young white dragon isn't a legendary creature, and an adult is a Challenge 13 creature. Did your group of 8th-level PCs take on an adult white dragon in its lair? If so, they should rightly have been turned into bloody smears on its ice-cavern floor, or have been added to its collection of frozen adventurer ornaments. I think it'd be difficult to make conclusions about PC effectiveness, if that were really the situation. (The encounter still sounded awesome, however.)

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The fun thing about playing a new edition is I don't know what age it was. We fought the thing the best we could and trusted that it was possible to win. We did win, but we took losses. The particular DM that ran the encounter isn't know for his ruthless tactics. He did a good job with the tactics. The dragon was overwhelming. It was luck that we drove it off before it killed us. We almost tried to run, but due to the ice wall sealing us off we threw everything we could at it and somehow a couple of us lived. So maybe it was beyond our ability at level 7. We made level 8 after the dragon ran.

Celtavian said:

Doubtful. Fighters are extremely limited. You eliminate their visibility or movement, you can control them. There are lots of ways to do both. They have weak saves for spells like banishment and wisdom attacks. They are very common at higher level.

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But by that level the Fighter can use Indomitable, the Champion has her second fighting style, the Battlemaster has d10 superiority dice, has two more manoeuvres, and can use those manoeuvres without diminishing her combat capability compared to other characters.

Celtavian said:

B l in d s ig h t A creature with blindsight can perceive its surroundings without relying on sight, within a specific radius. Creatures without eyes, such as oozes, and creatures with echolocation or heightened senses, such as bats and true dragons, have this sense. You can’t hide from a creature that can see you, and if you make noise (such as shouting a warning or knocking over a vase), you give away your position. An invisible creature can’t be seen, so it can always try to hide. Signs of its passage You plan to run Blindsight so that a rogue can use Stealth within range of Blindsight and justify it how?

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Nothing about that says they see hidden objects. The question is how do you justify not allowing stealth? It gives examples of echo location as being blindsight, echo location is the same as sight except with sound waves instead of light, there is no reason why you can't hide from it if you can hide from something using light. In your case it's not even relevant since dragons have a very limited range and your rogue would have been out of it even if you're houseruling blindsight makes you immune to stealth.

Celtavian said:

Why do some keep missing the part where the fighter shot the dragon for 12 points and had a 14 dex? Or the party where the paladin pulled his bow with an 8 dex?

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We don't consider doing one attack to be doing anything. This is particularly true for a battlemaster who should be giving the rogue extra sneak attacks or something similar.

Celtavian said:

As a fighter you can only pick one fighting style unless you're a champion. He was a battlemaster. Unfortunately, the dragon did a lot of damage and hammered him quite quickly. The paladin survived longer and managed to do a great deal of burst damage. The vast majority of the damage was done when the dragon engaged the paladin melee after dropping the fighter. A paladin built for defense isn't as easy to bring down as a fighter built for offense.

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Your fighter ISN'T built for offense which should be obvious from the fact that he didn't do anything offensively. A fighter built for offense is either a dual hand crossbow wielder or has barbarian levels to give himself advantage and along with the barbarian levels comes rage that reduces all damage by 50% making him ALSO a better defensive build than the paladin would be.

Chocolategravy said:

We don't consider doing one attack to be doing anything. This is particularly true for a battlemaster who should be giving the rogue extra sneak attacks or something similar. Your fighter ISN'T built for offense which should be obvious from the fact that he didn't do anything offensively. A fighter built for offense is either a dual hand crossbow wielder or has barbarian levels to give himself advantage and along with the barbarian levels comes rage that reduces all damage by 50% making him ALSO a better defensive build than the paladin would be.

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You're confusing "built for offense" with "hyper-optimized for every possible scrap of offense."

Sacrosanct said:

I think it started in the early EQ MMO days. At least that's the first time I saw it used. It basically means constantly moving out of range while firing missile weapons. Ideally taking the monster down before it can reach you.

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Ah. Thanks.

Is it horribly dated/aged of me that when I see "EQ" my mind immediately says "ElfQuest"? Feels old. Like my fly is down and my grognard is showing. [Given the "MMO" next to it, I gathered you mean EverQuest. But not my first thought. hahaha.]

Chocolategravy said:

Nothing about that says they see hidden objects. The question is how do you justify not allowing stealth? It gives examples of echo location as being blindsight, echo location is the same as sight except with sound waves instead of light, there is no reason why you can't hide from it if you can hide from something using light. In your case it's not even relevant since dragons have a very limited range and your rogue would have been out of it even if you're houseruling blindsight makes you immune to stealth.

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No house rule. It's pretty simple. It perceives as though seeing without sight. Pretty easy to understand. You can't stealth if it sees you. That means things like invisibility don't work against it because invisibility only blocks sight. Hiding only stops you from being seen as in sight. If the dragon perceives like sight without sight, what would you as a DM say blocked it's ability to see you while stealthing? Hiding behind a rock doesn't work because it doesn't need sight to perceive you. Normally you hide or stealth by blocking sight. How do you block dragon senses that don't need sight, yet perceive as well as sight?

Chocolategravy said:

We don't consider doing one attack to be doing anything. This is particularly true for a battlemaster who should be giving the rogue extra sneak attacks or something similar.

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You mean one time? He only gets to give the rogue an extra sneak attack one time. Since we have no rogue and he couldn't make it into melee, it didn't happen. I hope you have to fight a dragon played in an intelligent fashion. When it's moving 80 feet a round flying with reach strafing you, I want to see how you deal with that. You seem to think it is quite easy when not optimized for ranged attacks. I'm very doubtful that you will find it so.

Your fighter ISN'T built for offense which should be obvious from the fact that he didn't do anything offensively. A fighter built for offense is either a dual hand crossbow wielder or has barbarian levels to give himself advantage and along with the barbarian levels comes rage that reduces all damage by 50% making him ALSO a better defensive build than the paladin would be.

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Your idea of built for offense and my idea differs. I guess you consider a Great Weapon Mastery Fighter with Great Weapon Fighting Style built for what? Or are you going to make some conceited, exaggerated comment like the one above concerning what every player should choose when playing a fighter or optimizing for offense.

A barbarian is not a better defensive build than a paladin focused on armoring up. Not getting hit is always better than taking even half-damage. A dragon can wander off waiting for the rage to drop, which is quite easy to do prior to a barbarian being able to maintain rage without striking his opponent or taking damage. You seem to think rage "just works" or lasts long enough to outlast the dragon moving. It doesn't. It's a nice ability, but not limitless. Reckless also gives the dragon advantage. They do a lot of damage even when it is halved. I will grant you that a barbarian is better than a fighter combining offense and defense.

Any melee would have been nigh useless with the dragon maintaining distance and using strafing attacks. You keep overlooking the reduced visibility as well from the fog clouds and the ice walls. The dragon was looking for a party member to rush, so he could cut that member off and kill them alone. Sorry, but fighters and barbarians are not going to beat dragons by themselves in melee combat.

Celtavian said:

The fun thing about playing a new edition is I don't know what age it was. We fought the thing the best we could and trusted that it was possible to win. We did win, but we took losses. The particular DM that ran the encounter isn't know for his ruthless tactics. He did a good job with the tactics. The dragon was overwhelming. It was luck that we drove it off before it killed us. We almost tried to run, but due to the ice wall sealing us off we threw everything we could at it and somehow a couple of us lived. So maybe it was beyond our ability at level 7. We made level 8 after the dragon ran.

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Yes, I think at least some of the observations were the result of taking on a CR 13 dragon with a level 7 party. I have no doubt that some will see the the fact that: (a) a party can be given the option to take on a challenge that will, in all likelihood, result in a TPK; and (b) actually win, after significant losses, to be yet another "feature" of 5e.