D&D 5E 5th Edition has broken Bounded Accuracy

[Celtavian]

[shrug] It's not a very sophisticated strategy. I'd be disappointed if it couldn't find some way to counter it on its home ground. But we've already covered what happens to a dragon that can't play offense effectively--unless you can interdict all intruders with perfection, a purely defensive game will always lose strategically. You'll starve to death if nothing else.

Edit: BTW, if he's not fully submerged, what's to prevent attackers from shooting him in his sleep? The dragon's passive perception is only 23, everyone in the party can beat that except maybe the paladin (if he stays in full plate).

Not knowing when he will be sleeping.

Lair guardians. I have yet to fight a dragon that didn't have them in abundance usually causing a fight at some juncture alerting the dragon to the presence of intruders.

A very complex and difficult to traverse lair involving lots of difficult terrain and problematic entry points like underwater or far up a cliff.

Experiences do differ. I know I haven't found many dragon lairs easy to enter. Usually they are well stocked with guardians in hard to reach places protected by natural hazards.

The white dragon we fought at 8th level was on an iceberg we had to sail to. He had a tribe of humans worshipping him. He had ice trolls in his lair. He had a multilevel lair with that required some climbing. He left underwater through a cave under the iceberg. The cave where his hoard was had most of the treasure frozen into the ground requiring ice mining to free up. The entire area was difficult terrain slowing movement to a crawl. Very nasty lair. That is what I'm accustomed to. Entering a dragon's lair is usually a dungeon area unto itself.

There's no way to determine whether the strategy you offer would be effective unless everything was designed and we played it out. Since I'm not planning to do that, I'll wait for Dave to let me know how his experiments went. I do like the owl idea. I might try to use some in the future. Seems like an under CR creature to me, but I'll always take advantage of such things while I can.

 

[Celtavian]

I think you mean "vanilla dragons run by you in a high-magic, FR-style campaign setting with ubiquitous adventurers wouldn't reach adult stages." As I've explained, what, three times so far in this thread?--Darwin is right! All of those dragons don't exist in my game. The dragons all have Sorcerer levels (generally level 9 to 12 by adult age, higher if on the verge of ancient status) which makes them far more dangerous than vanilla dragons, and invalidates many of the easy strategies discussed in this thread.

Plus, I'm a lot strategically smarter than you are, judging by this thread, so my dragons are correspondingly better at leveraging the advantages they do have to stay on top of their client state auxiliaries, effectively acting as their own Imperial Legion. (You use auxiliaries to fight external enemies, and you use the Legion to put down internal revolts among the auxiliaries.) I've pointed out more than twice that my dragons proactively exploit stealth, mobility, and diplomacy. "Adventurers" showing up on their doorstep to steal treasure just isn't a thing.

You're a lot strategically smarter? Give me a break. You just figure your strategy will work with your white room math and ideal class combination that can create what you want. I doubt you pull it off in real play as easily as you seem to think it will work. What a tiresome debate this is. A bunch of owls and skeleton archers perfectly maneuvered into a dragon lair is your assumption for victory. What a joke. Yet that is your "strategically smarter" strategy. Please stop already. The joke is too much.

 

[Celtavian]

No they can't. I already walked you through the math. Shield plus Blur is a hard counter for owls and skeletons.

Eight thousand hobgoblin archers could certainly be dangerous, yes, but eight thousand hobgoblins led by a hobgoblin warlord who knows, deep in his bones, that trying to attack the dragon will get him personally killed by a dragon in the middle of the night... that hobgoblin army is less dangerous. Shield plus Blur factors into this in making it possible for the dragon to take out the hobgoblin leader (prevents "200 hobgoblin bodyguards" from being an effective countermeasure), but the key factor is strategic, not tactical: the generals don't want to fight the dragon.



Of course I'd say this. I've been saying it over and over throughout the course of this thread, haven't I? Vanilla 5E dragons are weak, apparently by design.

In fact, you've said it yourself, only your preferred fix is to give them 5000 HP instead of sorcerer levels. Different strokes.

My preferred fix is so they can fight straight up against goofy strategies like flying owls and wandering skeleton archers perfectly maneuvered in their lair.

This debate has reached the point of absurdity. Owls and skeletons. What a joke. I hope I can design a better lair than to allow this type of strategy to work. I already slowed down Sharpshooter with a house rule. That was the main problem with ranged attacking doubling damage output. I hope I can keep hit points lower without that feat spiking damage.

I'm out.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Not knowing when he will be sleeping.

Lair guardians. I have yet to fight a dragon that didn't have them in abundance usually causing a fight at some juncture alerting the dragon to the presence of intruders. *snip* The white dragon we fought at 8th level was on an iceberg we had to sail to. He had a tribe of humans worshipping him. He had ice trolls in his lair. He had a multilevel lair with that required some climbing. He left underwater through a cave under the iceberg. The cave where his hoard was had most of the treasure frozen into the ground requiring ice mining to free up. The entire area was difficult terrain slowing movement to a crawl. Very nasty lair. That is what I'm accustomed to. Entering a dragon's lair is usually a dungeon area unto itself.

[shrug] None of what you've described is a problem. Lair guardians are a nonrenewable resource and can be strafed; and the primary job of the shadow monk is recon. That's why she didn't figure much in the described strategy--as I said, her job is already pretty much done by the time combat begins, so she doesn't mind pew-pewing with a longbow for 8-9 DPR.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

You're a lot strategically smarter? Give me a break. You just figure your strategy will work with your white room math and ideal class combination that can create what you want. I doubt you pull it off in real play as easily as you seem to think it will work. What a tiresome debate this is. A bunch of owls and skeleton archers perfectly maneuvered into a dragon lair is your assumption for victory. What a joke. Yet that is your "strategically smarter" strategy. Please stop already. The joke is too much.

I was talking to DaveDash specifically, but yeah, I'm better than you too.

Remember back when you were complaining about how hard 5E was and how wizards were underpowered because you had to spend your concentration on Fly? Who pointed out to you, over and over, that ranged combat is stronger than melee in 5E? I wasn't the only one saying it (of course), but I sure caught on a lot faster than you did. That's tactics not strategy anyway, but I'm better at both of those than you are (demonstrated repeatedly throughout this thread), and so my dragons are too. I'm countering tactics that haven't even occurred to you yet, and you belatedly catch on to the tactics and propose an infeasible countermeasure (lair actions? please) while not realizing that I've already shown you a better countermeasure... yeah, no.

I'm not the only one on these boards who's good at tactics (Ashrym comes to mind, and vandaexpress seems to know the principles although we've never talked in detail), and undoubtedly there are also people who are better at strategy, but you and DaveDash aren't among either of those groups. You don't even know what strategy is, or you wouldn't be referring to a tactic like "skeletons and owls" as a "strategy." Anyway, my dragons don't hide in magma caves all day, they're proactive.

 

[Psikerlord#]

hmm this thread appears to be at an end

 

[Dragonsbane]

What, 58 pages written by people about if their bonuses go to high? It isn't enough?

Your PC bonuses or ACs are too high? House rule it, don't let things, stack, whatever. I could have written an entire adventure in the time it takes to read this thread rofl.

 

[DaveDash]

We fought a CR17 Adult Red Dragon with that group and won. The thing is though it was a Mexican stand-off for ages - we used Wall of Force to protect ourselves from the Dragon's breath initially, and used full cover effectively.
Eventually the DM decided to come in and attack, because we started using Unseen servant and Tensers floating disk to start stealing its hoard.

We had a Tiefling Wizard (Transmuter, using his stone for con bonuses) and took the risk of taking a breath weapon to the face in order to get a Bigby's Hand off at the Dragon as it came into attack, and we managed to pin it. We also rolled 05 on a d100 for the Clerics 'Divine Intervention' ability and the DM let us summon a Deva to aid us - but we could have summoned one anyway with enough gold. Bigby's Hand was effective. It locked the Dragon down just long enough for the GMW Fighter to get in there and damage it. +8 vs +8 and no disadvantage for grappling a larger creature, quite powerful.

We probably spent hmm, 3.5 hours running this fight as the DM was playing "to win" and not approaching within range of our spells and other nasty effects until the very end, where he lost patience and decided the Dragon would go in for an attack, it wouldn't be the kind of D&D fight you'd run normally unless you had really dedicated players. I was tired and also forgot a few things like Henrys Battlemaster Dice.

So I think I want to take back my scoffing at Bigby's Hand at least being ineffective. It's actually effective, abiet lucky, if you can get close enough, it gives you a good 50/50 chance to win the fight, more if you burn inspiration, play a diviner, or take the lucky feat. I think with real characters we probably wouldn't have risked them in that fight, as it did require luck to win. But with throw away characters when we decided to go all in, we came out victorious.

Still Bigbys Hand is not as effective as fly, and the fight would be incredibly tedious for most normal groups as it was one lengthy game of cat and mouse. So I wouldn't recommend going into a Dragon fight without fly and preferably haste prepared.

 

[Celtavian]

I still can't wait to try bigby's hand.That would be fun grabbing a dragon.

 

[DaveDash]

I was talking to DaveDash specifically, but yeah, I'm better than you too.

Remember back when you were complaining about how hard 5E was and how wizards were underpowered because you had to spend your concentration on Fly? Who pointed out to you, over and over, that ranged combat is stronger than melee in 5E? I wasn't the only one saying it (of course), but I sure caught on a lot faster than you did. That's tactics not strategy anyway, but I'm better at both of those than you are (demonstrated repeatedly throughout this thread), and so my dragons are too. I'm countering tactics that haven't even occurred to you yet, and you belatedly catch on to the tactics and propose an infeasible countermeasure (lair actions? please) while not realizing that I've already shown you a better countermeasure... yeah, no.

I'm not the only one on these boards who's good at tactics (Ashrym comes to mind, and vandaexpress seems to know the principles although we've never talked in detail), and undoubtedly there are also people who are better at strategy, but you and DaveDash aren't among either of those groups. You don't even know what strategy is, or you wouldn't be referring to a tactic like "skeletons and owls" as a "strategy." Anyway, my dragons don't hide in magma caves all day, they're proactive.

You're a theory crafter. You come up with some interesting but inherently flawed white room scenarios.

I'm still waiting to hear from you how your "winning" strategy of 30 skeletons would have been effective at all in the Shadow Dragon fight I ran. Even in the Dragon fight last night your "winning" strategies would have been totally useless as we were funneled down a dark tunnel towards the Dragons lair, making all your skeletons breath weapon mince meat.

Hunting through the book coming up with unproven maths doesn't make you Sun Tzu - sorry.

I eagerly await some actual play experiences in game of your tactical genius. Just because the maths says it works, doesn't actually means it works, and there's the weakness and disconnect in your thought process. In fact tactics has very little to do with maths and much more to do with maximising your strengths and minimizing your weaknesses. The fact you can't comprehend a Dragon ignoring 20 archers and dropping rocks on them from height illustrates your inherently flawed thinking, because the maths doesnt cater for that.

Your posts amuse me and remind me of a bit of the Whiz Kids in the Vietnam War. "The numbers we calculated say we should be winning, why aren't we?!"