D&D 4E 4E Dragons - Where's the beef?
- Thread starter AnthonyRoberson
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chaotix42
First Post
OK, so my 5 13th lvl PCs faced off with the 17th lvl elder white from the MM.
First they fought the white's blaspheme guards, and only used 1 daily attack power and a daily utility in the process. The battle drained quite a few healing surges (those dudes are nasty, thanks Open Grave!) but they saved most of their big guns. After descending into the dragon's frozen cave they then fought another group of varous blasphemes and a living breath weapon. Once again they hung onto their daily powers and stuck to their at-wills/encounter powers.
Since the white dragon was the last fight for miles around and nothing was stopping the PCs from resting after fighting him I knew if I gave them another rest the fight would be pretty easy despite the level gap. So, I had the dragon bust into the chamber in the middle of the combat when there were only a few of his henchman left.
Lets just say the PCs didn't really know what to think. There was some serious
going on! The fact that they might actually be facing a losing battle seemed to seriously upset a few players. 
Retreat? 4e? Naaawwwwww.
When the dragon made his appearance he smashed his way through a blocked-off tunnel on the far side of the map, where the wizard was currently slinging spells at the few surviving monsters. When the white landed next to him, his Dragon's Fury (claw/claw/bite if both claws hit) dropped the wiz and nearly killed him - 3d10 + 18 + 2d12 cold is evil.
The warlord rushed over and got the wizard breathing again, but the dragon covered them both with his breath weapon - the warlord got smacked but I missed the wiz with a natural 1! In anger the dragon spent his first AP and did Dragon's Fury again - the wizard deflected one claw with his Shield spell, avoiding the painful bite and, subsequently, unconsciousness yet again! There was much cheering.
The dragon flew back at this point and hovered above the PCs, blasting with another breath weapon. The rogue was leaping off pillars of ice with acrobatic stunts to get melee attacks off while the paladin used Radiant Charge to fly up and smack him. Eventually the dragon came down to dish out more melee pain and the PCs opened up with every daily they had, dazing him, blinding him, dazing him again, knocking him unconscious (rogue daily Knockout), coup-de-gracing while he was unconscious, surrounding him with a wall of fire, etc. They even had to dip into their precious stock of potions of vitality just to keep everyone going!
When all was said and done the dragon was only 40 hit points or so from death when he managed to fly out of the chamber, cursing the PCs and vowing revenge! High-fives were exchanged by all, and turned to 
when the PCs realized that, with the XP from routing the dragon, they had hit 14th lvl.
In Attack of the White Dragon 2: This Time It's Personal, I won't play the dragon so boldly and will hover out of melee reach to keep the pain going longer. It was already quite late though so I didn't want to drag the fight out too long (with the previous monsters & then the dragon showing up the battle lasted 14 rounds). Plus, I won't have him barge in on an ongoing encounter, so fresh 14th lvl PCs should have an easier time of it.
tl;dr - Successful dragon encounter was successful.
First they fought the white's blaspheme guards, and only used 1 daily attack power and a daily utility in the process. The battle drained quite a few healing surges (those dudes are nasty, thanks Open Grave!) but they saved most of their big guns. After descending into the dragon's frozen cave they then fought another group of varous blasphemes and a living breath weapon. Once again they hung onto their daily powers and stuck to their at-wills/encounter powers.
Since the white dragon was the last fight for miles around and nothing was stopping the PCs from resting after fighting him I knew if I gave them another rest the fight would be pretty easy despite the level gap. So, I had the dragon bust into the chamber in the middle of the combat when there were only a few of his henchman left.
Lets just say the PCs didn't really know what to think. There was some serious
going on! The fact that they might actually be facing a losing battle seemed to seriously upset a few players. Retreat? 4e? Naaawwwwww. When the dragon made his appearance he smashed his way through a blocked-off tunnel on the far side of the map, where the wizard was currently slinging spells at the few surviving monsters. When the white landed next to him, his Dragon's Fury (claw/claw/bite if both claws hit) dropped the wiz and nearly killed him - 3d10 + 18 + 2d12 cold is evil.
The warlord rushed over and got the wizard breathing again, but the dragon covered them both with his breath weapon - the warlord got smacked but I missed the wiz with a natural 1! In anger the dragon spent his first AP and did Dragon's Fury again - the wizard deflected one claw with his Shield spell, avoiding the painful bite and, subsequently, unconsciousness yet again! There was much cheering.
The dragon flew back at this point and hovered above the PCs, blasting with another breath weapon. The rogue was leaping off pillars of ice with acrobatic stunts to get melee attacks off while the paladin used Radiant Charge to fly up and smack him. Eventually the dragon came down to dish out more melee pain and the PCs opened up with every daily they had, dazing him, blinding him, dazing him again, knocking him unconscious (rogue daily Knockout), coup-de-gracing while he was unconscious, surrounding him with a wall of fire, etc. They even had to dip into their precious stock of potions of vitality just to keep everyone going!
When all was said and done the dragon was only 40 hit points or so from death when he managed to fly out of the chamber, cursing the PCs and vowing revenge! High-fives were exchanged by all, and
turned to when the PCs realized that, with the XP from routing the dragon, they had hit 14th lvl. In Attack of the White Dragon 2: This Time It's Personal, I won't play the dragon so boldly and will hover out of melee reach to keep the pain going longer. It was already quite late though so I didn't want to drag the fight out too long (with the previous monsters & then the dragon showing up the battle lasted 14 rounds). Plus, I won't have him barge in on an ongoing encounter, so fresh 14th lvl PCs should have an easier time of it.
tl;dr - Successful dragon encounter was successful.
chaotix42
First Post
Well, it was one of their toughest fights yet, but yeah, since they made the dragon flee I guess they did well enough!
One of the most helpful parts was the warlord hit the dragon with Lead The Attack when he touched down. Add in combat advantage from all the flanking/dazing that was going on, plus the bonus to hit the warlord grants when you spend an AP and the PCs were getting like +8 to hit at times! Plus the white dragon is a brute so it doesn't have the best defenses - they've fought standard monsters with higher ACs.
The dragon started a few turns inside a Wall of Fire & adjacent to a Burning Sphere, the rogue is a daggermaster with a +3 vicious dagger, Devastating Critical, Flame Bracers...
Also, the wizard is multiclassed into cleric, so he has an extra heal. The paladin has two Lay on Hands and used one of those. They dipped into their potions and were blowing their second winds too, which is rarely necessary (usually only the dwarf fighter uses his second wind).
I could go on!
They were tapped hard after that fight though (no dailies anywhere), and another battle would have been rough! That's why I sprung the dragon on 'em early - I knew they could handle it.
One of the most helpful parts was the warlord hit the dragon with Lead The Attack when he touched down. Add in combat advantage from all the flanking/dazing that was going on, plus the bonus to hit the warlord grants when you spend an AP and the PCs were getting like +8 to hit at times! Plus the white dragon is a brute so it doesn't have the best defenses - they've fought standard monsters with higher ACs.
The dragon started a few turns inside a Wall of Fire & adjacent to a Burning Sphere, the rogue is a daggermaster with a +3 vicious dagger, Devastating Critical, Flame Bracers...
Also, the wizard is multiclassed into cleric, so he has an extra heal. The paladin has two Lay on Hands and used one of those. They dipped into their potions and were blowing their second winds too, which is rarely necessary (usually only the dwarf fighter uses his second wind).
I could go on!
They were tapped hard after that fight though (no dailies anywhere), and another battle would have been rough! That's why I sprung the dragon on 'em early - I knew they could handle it.
Last edited:
Parlan
First Post
Sounds like a fantastic encounter! Gratz!
I think this is a critical message. My group mentioned last Wednesday that they felt most challenged when they had the full five encoutners worth of battles without an extended rest and were down on surges. I'm planning on a BBEG battle at the end of a five-encounter stretch next week. Hopefully its a tough one.
On Puget Sound
First Post
In some horrific real-world situations (Cambodia, Guatemala, Sarajevo, Rwanda, Western Africa) people occasionally survived coup de grace attacks with both guns and blades, and were left unconscious or survived by pretending to be dead.
So much for dragons being powerful.
I bet any normal +4 encounter would have resulted in an TPK.
Doctor Proctor
First Post
Not necessarily. My party wiped the floor with Irontooth, which was supposedly one the hardest encounters in KotS. We had missed out on the short rest from the previous encounter when we went up against him, and had used a lot of our encounter powers up. We still won though, but it was mostly through a combination of excellent tactics in that fight, even though normally our group isn't that great with them.
Now granted, I don't think Irontooth was a +4 encounter, but we had very few powers at the time as well. For a 13th level party you're looking at 4 Encounter, 3 Daily and 4 Utility powers. Assuming a party of 5 we get 20 Encounter, 15 Daily and 20 Utility powers. Even if we go with them burning up 50% of their resources, that still leaves 10 Encounter powers, 7-8 Daily powers and another 10 Utilties. That's a boatload of stuff to toss at a Dragon.
Additionally, while he did combine the encounters into one to not allow them a short rest, it's hard to say how banged up they were. My group has gone through encounters where 3 people were dropped (sometimes more than once for each person) and the TWO Clerics we had were completely out of heals. We've also had ones where it was still a hard and nasty fight, but we were better able to spread the damage around and didn't need to burn up all our heals. So, if the opening encounter was sufficiently tough such that the party had to burn a lot of Encounter powers, but wasn't really that damaging in terms of HP loss or Healing Power usage, then they could still go into a fight against a powerful enemy more or less intact.
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