Another Airship Encounter

[Amaroq]

I imagine perching to be like stealthing: it occurs at the end of a move action when you move into position. In this case, the dragon flies next to the ship, then perches as a free action. The dragon can only use Shake once per round (it's in the power block), so that overuse is out. My group is grossly overpowered (I like it that way), so I don't feel bad pulling out the bad-ass dragon tactic of: spiral into view and perch on the ledge to surprise the players, then shaking the ship to knock them prone, then using dragon breath to catch them all in it.

Failure will mean the player is hanging, but for dear life (to save the creative player from plunging to their death).

We've gone with a bit of a cartoon-esque mechanic:

Free-fall is a free action which happens automatically at the end of your turn if you haven't had physical support at any point during your turn.

Basically, fall on your turn, its generally because of a failed skill check during an action, so not falling on that turn gives every other PC once chance to save you ..

.. That puts a compelling tactical mini-game into play: "Save Fred or he falls to death!" .. and ensures that Fred's player will get one creative chance to save himself, even if he's knocked off the dragon's back by the dragon's action.

You can expect to see all sorts of creative aspects from your characters with that kind of thing: the most obvious, to me, being shooting Fred with a harpoon, but throwing him a rope, teleporting him back to the airship, teleporting myself to him, triggering a magic item, flying under him so that he falls onto me, and many others come to mind!

(And if we're help to our "height" idea from earlier, Fred at terminal velocity can only change two height levels .. so he's still not off the battlefield after one turn of falling, he's just a lot harder to save!)

Note, also, that Fred might, say, Grab an adjacent dragon as a Standard, try to Climb onto its back as a Move, fail by lots, and "start falling again" .. but because he had support at any point during his turn, he doesn't actually fall at the end of his turn.

That makes falling a lot less deadly (and makes the scene more cinematic in feel), which lets us use the standard Climb rules, e.g., fail by 4 or fewer = failure to move, fail by five or more = lose your grip and "start falling".

Then you can really apply that same basic mechanic to all of the skills involved: a Grab failure by four leaves you "hanging on for dear life" while a Grab failure by five leaves you "falling" ..

You might even enjoy scaling your Athletics check to jump onto the dragon, to take into account a phenomenal success:
Success to the Hard skill check level / natural 20 = landing on its back (supported), standing in a fencer's crouch.
Success to the Medium skill check level = landing on its back (supported), prone
Success to the Easy skill check level = landing on its back (supported), but prone and sliding off
Failure by four = landing on the tail (unsupported), need to Grab hold
Failure by five / natural one = wow, you missed the dragon entirely.

Not that you have to have those rules in place and formalized ahead of time: you can always run that kind of thing "off the cuff", I'm just tossing ideas around because this is a lot more fun than work!

 

[Saagael]

Note, also, that Fred might, say, Grab an adjacent dragon as a Standard, try to Climb onto its back as a Move, fail by lots, and "start falling again" .. but because he had support at any point during his turn, he doesn't actually fall at the end of his turn.

You might even enjoy scaling your Athletics check to jump onto the dragon, to take into account a phenomenal success

I like that, it's very concise. To hop up on a dragon, it would take a grab action and an athletics check, whether the dragon is flying or perching.

I'm adding to the post with all the powers on it to reflect some of the improvised items that can be used, as well as adding some new powers.

A quick question to the users of Enworld: is there a way to use spoiler blocks so I can organize the powers a bit nicer and they don't take up several pages?

 

[Amaroq]

Hey, you ran this this weekend, right? I'm very excited to hear how it went, if you're up to sharing it!

 

[Rachel]

A very nice airship pic I found from the EPG:

 

[Saagael]

Hey, you ran this this weekend, right? I'm very excited to hear how it went, if you're up to sharing it!

I would love to share my experience, but sadly I have not run this yet. I will in the future, but my group only plays once a week, and they're about 5 weeks away from hitting this encounter, though it might be less if they skip out on a couple of scenes. I'm the type of DM who gets an idea, and ponders over it for months before it actually happens just to make sure it's balanced, fun, challenging, and varied. This was one of those moments where the more time I have to get feedback and let the idea sit, the better off I'd be when I use it.

I will post a follow-up once it happens. In the meantime, feel free to keep throwing ideas out there for me to use. This goes for everyone else, too!