Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
Or maybe - just maybe - you're trying to hijack a thread that already has two moderators telling you that picking fights is a bad idea. Please don't.
D&D 4E 4E Dragons - Where's the beef?
But the whole of 4th won't make much sense if you base it on reality-
My rogue has coup de graced an unconsiouc humanoid, and failed to kill them. Now, as a medical student, I know that if someone with any kind of training tries to kill a helpless person with a dagger (such as by stabbing them through the eye, or slitting their throat), the chance of them surviving is zero, regardless of how tough they are [well tehnically they might survive being stabbed through the eye, assuming they get to a hospital pretty sharpish. They'll still be incapacitated though].
However this is jusy how 4th is. You cannot have long, complex combats, which are also realistically deadly. Compared to a coup de grace, a dragons breath is clearly less deadly: people can survive some pretty horrific burns, and there is no part of dragon folklore that says that anyone but a powerful warrior will be instantly killed by a dragon's breath.
As for dragons overall- Their pretty good solos, generally at least as powerful as their level suggests. The black dragon in particular is more deadly than it should be- I played against one with a party of 5 at 3rd level. Result- inevitable TPK (unless you run away, which the Ranger did). With a cloud of darkness for an effective +5 to all defences, and all sorts of nasty attacks with ongoing damage, our party could never expect to beat that thing.
In fact, has anyone here ever fought/run a dragon and found it to be lacking in 'beef'?
My rogue has coup de graced an unconsiouc humanoid, and failed to kill them. Now, as a medical student, I know that if someone with any kind of training tries to kill a helpless person with a dagger (such as by stabbing them through the eye, or slitting their throat), the chance of them surviving is zero, regardless of how tough they are [well tehnically they might survive being stabbed through the eye, assuming they get to a hospital pretty sharpish. They'll still be incapacitated though].
However this is jusy how 4th is. You cannot have long, complex combats, which are also realistically deadly. Compared to a coup de grace, a dragons breath is clearly less deadly: people can survive some pretty horrific burns, and there is no part of dragon folklore that says that anyone but a powerful warrior will be instantly killed by a dragon's breath.
As for dragons overall- Their pretty good solos, generally at least as powerful as their level suggests. The black dragon in particular is more deadly than it should be- I played against one with a party of 5 at 3rd level. Result- inevitable TPK (unless you run away, which the Ranger did). With a cloud of darkness for an effective +5 to all defences, and all sorts of nasty attacks with ongoing damage, our party could never expect to beat that thing.
In fact, has anyone here ever fought/run a dragon and found it to be lacking in 'beef'?
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It isn't supposed to.
In 3e, they tried to make everything internally consistent, such that each and every monster's abilities was appropriate relative to other monsters.
But the problem is that few people cared, and this often resulted in redundant features which, while making perfect sense from a "world" view, often saw little use in combat, which was pretty much around 5 rounds.
So the 4e philosophy is to design the monster to provide for an exciting and climatic 5-round fight, and nothing else. Everything is centered around the PCs.
Saeviomagy
Adventurer
Is the dragon killing the entire party in 18 seconds really completely nonsensical? I mean if we go with a cinematic sort of thing: the party wail against the dragon ineffectively, it breathes once, then eats them one-by-one. They pretty much inevitably lose and it takes half a minute. That's shorter than the average scene in an action movie where this sort of thing happens...
Obryn
Hero
Have you played 4e in a difficult adventure? Or is this speculation based on a belief that more hps always means less dying?
My 4e games are fairly lethal. I've had a number of PC deaths, and a number of near-death experiences. The death rate has been as high as it was in 3e, anyway, if not higher. (But, to be fair, neither 3e nor 4e are anywhere near as lethal as my 1e game.)
Bringing this back to the OP, a 3rd level party facing a 15th level solo dragon is totally and completely hosed. No, the dragon can't bleed off all the party's HPs in a single round. But quite seriously there's almost nothing the PCs can expect to do to hurt the dragon, and the dragon will have absolutely no trouble whatsoever hurting them. HPs and damage dice are only half of the equation. The other half is Defenses and Attack Rolls - and a huge disparity there will ruin a party's chances much more than a sack of HPs will.
Dragons have no problem flame-broiling peasants in a single round. The PCs are not your average peasants, though. I think that's a feature, not a bug.
-O
keterys
First Post
Both of those examples can easily take more preparation or attention than someone would take in one action of one round of a combat - while it's not possible to miss a coup de grace, it is possible to 'miss' the eye or something similar, and a big gash to the head, being stabbed in the gut, or starting to slit someone's throat but not finishing, are all survivable.
I'd actually say that a dragon that is _Far_ too powerful for the party would make a great skill challenge.
Especially if you start by requiring a group check to 'avoid being breathed on' that bloodies anyone who fails. That'll set a proper tone of fear, then from there you can just remove healing surges and such as they get away.
D'karr
Adventurer
Jack99
Adventurer
Interesting - I wonder if that was a conscious decision or an oversight? No way of knowing unless someone speaks up, I guess
Just my opinion of course, but I do not think it was an oversight. Solo's usually already have a bunch of abilities, and a few more will definitely make them stronger, it's really not that bad. Although obviously, certain combinations can be positively lethal, I imagine.
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