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

[Pickles JG]

I remember kiting a Giant with low level characters in 1e (ride-by lance charges I think) & a Dinosaur with Cross bows in Runequest). So the tactic is obviously not new but I am sure we did not call it that 35 years ago. Also were young & probably munchkins.

We have also kited Carrion Crawlers & Zombies in 3.5. The former was desperation as we were slow but were trying to deny the crawler its multiple tentacle attacks.

 

[Celtavian]

Also it appears blindsight doesn't do anything against stealth. The rogue class ability blindsense does.

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?

 

[Celtavian]

So it came down to your party having 3 useless characters in it because none of them bothered to have a ranged attack.

The dragon's speed isn't going to be enough to keep it out of range unless it's not attacking. Dragons for level 8 aren't legendary. I assume it was vertically challenging the party rather than horizontally.

Blindsight has limited range so a rogue can easily hide at range to get sneak attacks off.

The fighter didn't seem to do anything at all. Battemaster? Give the rogue extra sneak attacks. Eldritch Knight? Throw stuff.

Similarly the paladin sounds like he got one attack off or something.

Ideally the fghter would have barb levels and be taking half damage from everything and been throwing stuff, or gone dex and be using dual hand crossbows. The Paladin would have a couple warlock levels and be using eldritch blasts. The rogue been hiding and getting 2 sneak attacks off per round thanks to the battlemaster fighter. But even skipping any sort of min-maxing, had these three characters even just bothered to bring throwing weapons or something, things would have been different.

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?

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.

 

[Celtavian]

Well, there's a demographic question: How many adventurers has the dragon seen?

If you are in FR, it strains credulity to say a dragon doesn't understand how dangerous adventurers can be.

If you are playing in a world where all the NPCs are, in essence, playing E6, while the PCs are almost the only ones to rise to upper tiers of power, then maybe the Dragon hasn't had a serious challenge in a century or more! It may well have gotten to the point of forgetting the time when there was real risk to its personage.

One iconic dragon fits this bill. Smaug, from The Hobbit. There are few things on the planet capable of taking Smaug down in a direct confrontation, and the ones capable of the feat he largely knows by name, and has had coffee with them in the past. An entire city of dwarves didn't have the ability to take him down. So, yes, he gets cocky and arrogant, and that's his downfall.

We are in FR. A dragon worshipped by the Cult of the Dragon well aware of the capabilities of humans.

 

[Schmoe]

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?
.

This question is more out of inexperience than anything else, as I've just started reading the rules yesterday, but why didn't the fighter have any thrown weapons? I thought you could use your strength modifier with thrown weapons, so that seems like a much better option for a strength fighter than using a bow.

 

[Dausuul]

I remember kiting a Giant with low level characters in 1e (ride-by lance charges I think) & a Dinosaur with Cross bows in Runequest). So the tactic is obviously not new but I am sure we did not call it that 35 years ago. Also were young & probably munchkins.

"Kiting" (not called that, of course) was used extensively in real life. It's pretty much the entire purpose of mounted archers. The Mongols slaughtered European armies by kiting them.

Of course, when facing a dragon, you're more likely to be the kitee than the kiter...

This question is more out of inexperience than anything else, as I've just started reading the rules yesterday, but why didn't the fighter have any thrown weapons? I thought you could use your strength modifier with thrown weapons, so that seems like a much better option for a strength fighter than using a bow.

Yeah, javelins and spears are pretty standard for Strength-based fighters in 5E. Using Strength to hit with thrown weapons is one of the 4E innovations they carried over.

 

[Celtavian]

Lovely report, OP. I wonder if your opinion will change when the PCs get to level 12? Theorycrafting, it seems to me that level 11 is when the fighter really comes into his own with the third attack.

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.

At low level I was envious because most stuff is brute force and few classes are better than a fighter at brute force attacking. Like many previous editions, the saves escalate and the special attacks become more powerful. Casters have fewer means to protect the fighter from those attacks without leaving themselves open. The reality is that if the caster feels he is going to die if he doesn't get his personal buffs up, he's likely going to cast on himself to stay alive. So unless potions become a lot more common, the casters not being able to buff both himself and the martial that needs it is going to create hard choices.

Casters are once against far more versatile in their attack abilities being able to attack weak saving throws and their defenses are more versatile, especially if they need to escape. I'll let the fighter have his fun doing damage and taking his lumps when the strange effects hit him that incapacitate him. It's what he does unless he's an Eldritch Knight.

Fighter isn't bad. Best fighter I've seen in a long while. He is still very limited. Personally, I hate being that limited. You can't add much to planning and don't do much but wait to swing at something. It's never been a play-style I enjoy, though a couple of guys in our group like it. I'll leave it to them.

 

[Celtavian]

This question is more out of inexperience than anything else, as I've just started reading the rules yesterday, but why didn't the fighter have any thrown weapons? I thought you could use your strength modifier with thrown weapons, so that seems like a much better option for a strength fighter than using a bow.

Fighter carried a bow. Should have had a thrown weapon. He wasn't well prepared I imagine. The giant was maintaining a 40 to 50 foot distance between attacks. He had lair actions that caused real problems like 20 foot fog clouds that appeared doing damage every round and creating walls of ice that created movement problems as well as falling icicles in a radius every round coupled with this breath weapon. His 74 hit points lasted two or three rounds. As I stated, the cleric was dropped quick. That hurt more than anything.

 

[Rhenny]

Like most encounters it seems as if depending on the situation and how the DM plays the monster/lair actions, some PCs may be more capable than others. As long as it doesn't happen the same way all the time, I think that's good for the game. Preparation, tactics, positioning, and making the best of a bad situation is more fun to me than everyone always having a way to lay down reliable damage against the foe.

 

[occam]

White dragon.

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.)