D&D General DM Says No Powergaming?

[hawkeyefan]

Those are skill check rules, not combat rules.

I doubt it. This is about how weak dragons now are due to overly bounded accuracy. It was good that they bounded it, but they should have played a bit looser with it and not allowed regular weapons to hurt an older dragon.

But there's no combat if the PCs aren't involved. The dragon can only be weak if it doesn't do a good job of interacting with PCs.

Stats are representative of interactions with PCs. If a bunch of NPCs are gonna duke it out, the DM is most likely going to decide. Which is where the whole "the rules aren't in charge, you are" type of clause that everyone likes to mention actually applies.

Ignoring that now but then marching it out in every other discussion where player input or binding rules are mentioned is absurd.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Again, this doesn't seem like a bounded accuracy issue. It seems like you think they should have damage reduction, which is perfectly reasonable.

A lot of things should have damage reduction, IMO. Dragons are, however, near the top of the list.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The expectations of play and what the rules allow for are not the same thing, sometimes ridiculously so.

Sure, but I think I'd be very surprised if anyone in my group mentioned that their expectation for play was that a dragon's stats won't allow it to be defeated by a thousand commoners.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But there's no combat if the PCs aren't involved. The dragon can only be weak if it doesn't do a good job of interacting with PCs.

Stats are representative of interactions with PCs. If a bunch of NPCs are gonna duke it out, the DM is most likely going to decide. Which is where the whole "the rules aren't in charge, you are" type of clause that everyone likes to mention actually applies.

Ignoring that now but then marching it out in every other discussion where player input or binding rules are mentioned is absurd.

Where has WotC ever explicitly said that statblocks only exist for interactions with PCs? Is that just assumed?

 

[tetrasodium]

Was their fear aura greater than the range of a longbow? I don't remember.

I don't remember 100% about 2e but in 3.5 the red dragon frightful presence was 180ft range with:

Spoiler: DCs by Age as follows

• Special abilities were cumulative from weaker unless replaced by a better version but the MM75/76 table let them inherit rather than repeating over & over again in unwieldy textblocks
• Wyrmling: CR4 , Breath Dice: 2d10 &DC15 ,Frightful Presence DC -, SR -, Special Abilities: Immune fire/vuln cold
• Very Young: CR5 , Breath Dice: 4d10 &DC18 ,Frightful Presence DC -, SR -
• Young: CR7 , Breath Dice: 6d10 &DC19 ,Frightful Presence DC -, SR -
• Juvenile: CR10 , Breath Dice: 8d10 &DC22 ,Frightful Presence DC -, SR -, Special Abilities: Iocate Object
• Young Adult: CR13 , Breath Dice: 10d10 &DC24 ,Frightful Presence DC21 , SR19, Special Abilities: DR5/Magic
• Adult: CR15 , Breath Dice: 12d10 &DC26 ,Frightful Presence DC24 , SR 21
• Mature Adult: CR18 , Breath Dice: 14d10 &DC28 ,Frightful Presence DC26 , SR23, Special Abilities: DR10/Magic
• Old: CR20 , Breath Dice: 16d10 &DC31 ,Frightful Presence DC 29, SR 24, , Special Abilities: Suggestion
• Very Old: CR21 , Breath Dice: 18d10 &DC33 ,Frightful Presence DC31 , SR26, Special Abilities: DR15/Magic
• Ancient: CR23 , Breath Dice: 20d10 &DC36 ,Frightful Presence DC34 , SR 28, Special Abilities: Find the Path
• Wyrm: CR24 , Breath Dice: 22d10 &DC38 ,Frightful Presence DC35 , SR 30, Special Abilities: /DR20 Magic
• Great Wyrm: CR26 , Breath Dice: 24d10 &DC40 ,Frightful Presence DC38 , SR32 , Special Abilities: Discern Location

that is how you make a dragon encounter something that cam be done at any level not by crippling the whole bunch of them to be safe for the lowest level PCs & NPCs

Longbow shortbow light xbow & heavy xbow had range increments of 100ft/60ft/80ft/120ft with a -2 for each range increment beyond those plus a -4 penalty for shooting into melee

I'd say that for 1e &2e odds are extremely good that the fear aura/frightful presence was at least as long range & seem to remember it being something like simply seeing the dragon.

 

[Greg Benage]

Longbow shortbow light xbow & heavy xbow had range increments of 100ft/60ft/80ft/120ft with a -2 for each range increment beyond those plus a -4 penalty for shooting into melee

Yeah, so fear aura wouldn't save the 3E dragon from the Thousand Peasants scenario, either...but they had DR, right?

 

[tetrasodium]

Yeah, so fear aura wouldn't save the 3E dragon from the Thousand Peasants scenario, either...but they had DR, right?

Yea, I even included it in the list in the special abilities.
dr5/magic up to dr20/Magic. depending on the age

 

[hawkeyefan]

Where has WotC ever explicitly said that statblocks only exist for interactions with PCs? Is that just assumed?

I don't know if WotC has ever said it, I'm just talking about the actual process of play.

Generally speaking, the game involves the PCs interacting with NPCs. Not the players watching a DM having a bunch of NPCs battle it out.

As I said, it may come up at times that one NPC has to interact with another... an ally of the PCs is going to try to persuade someone he knows to assist the PCs or similar... and in those instances, sure, use the stats. But for larger scale events of the kind we're talking about.... a thousand NPCs versus a monster... in every instance I can think of and every example I've ever seen online except white room analysis wankery... the DM just decides what happens.

 

[Oofta]

When it comes to fighting ancient dragons, there are a lot of assumptions. In the battle of Agincourt, the English fielded 5,000 archers. Able bodied Englishmen at the time were required to have and practice with their longbow, to the point where they actually deformed their skeletons. Since we're talking real people here not D&D NPCs, what their level would be is a bit up in the air, but I would think they would be better than your standard commoner.

So, is this a surprise attack? Have people had a chance to prepare? What's the location and terrain? How common are these kind of attacks?

A small town could easily be wiped out but if a dragon continues their attacks, an army will be raised. Throw in potential countermeasures like ballista, even ones that are designed to just bring down a dragon so they could be attacked on land. Many things weren't invented until they were needed, we didn't have flak cannons until we had airplanes bombing cities. There's no reason to think that people would just sit around waiting to be toasted by a dragon if dragons were a real thing. There's no historical anti-dragon weapons in the real world because there are no dragons, but if they were real people would figure out how to fight them. Even without level 20 PCs running around to save the day.

 

[pemerton]

@hawkeyefan

Just to add to, and agree with, what you're posting: the D&D combat rules are not a generic wargame system. They're for resolving a particular sort of small-scale skirmish.

Whatever reasons there may or may not be for thinking that dragons are under-tuned in a particular ruleset, the question of how many peasants does it take to bring down a dragon if we apply the D&D combat rules surely can't be one of them!