Hello everyone. It's been awhile since I've visted these boards. In fact I don't know if I've posted since Eric was running his site.
What brings me back are two dragon tactics my DM has used in the past and asked that I mention since he is currently without a connection.
Tactic One:
The first was his concern on whether or not other DMs are making full use of the Snatch Feat for dragons. Specifically the Snatch and Throw tactic.
In my group's case (Ftr 16, Clr 16, Rog 16, Wiz 17) we were on a quest for an artifact that we needed to remove a rather nasty curse from one of our members. The final guardian of this artifact just so happened to be a White Great Wyrm in a rather large room.
The main tactic this dragon was using was to Snatch the fighter if he got within range using an attack of opportunity and throw him across the room like a cat with a mouse.
Everytime this happened the fighter took 4d6 from the bite, plus 12d6 from being thrown (the last 10 feet being subdual of course.) In addition to basically taking 16d6 damage the battered fighter was now 120 feet and several rounds away from being able to bring his damage dealing Feats and weaponry in to play again giving the dragon time to focus on attempting to neutralize the other party members.
Tactic Two
This tactic is pretty much an escape tactic. In this case our party was roughly level 14 or so and was fighting a Dracolich. In the second or third round of combat I barely slipped a Heal spell past the Dracolich's Spell Resistance dropping the creature down to 4 hitpoints. (Yes we play with the standard Heal/Harm rules, but as the DM has shown quite painfully it works against us just as well as for us.)
What we didn't know was that the huge pillar of stone behind the dracolich was actually an illusion covering a permanent teleportation circle. The creature turned, took a few steps into what we thought was solid rock and *poof* he was gone.
At this point we were all a bit stunned, cussing and grumbling about the thing escaping. The DM asks us what we want to do...the fighter moves up to the portal, but doesn't enter. The wizard and the rogue do the same. The DM looks at me, the cleric, and asks what I do. Well up until this point I had played the character as a one man war on undead. He hated undead, despised them with all his being. I didn't really have a choice even though I as a player knew it was a VERY bad idea. I ran into the circle...and the DM takes my figure off the map. He then asks what the rest of the party does...they follow their comrade in arms into the circle and wherever it leads.
At this point the DM takes the rest of the figures off the map and tells us that we see the dracolich flying away into the distance as we plummet to the ground from a rather high elevation.
Well the rogue and the wizard survived due to a potion of feather fall and a hastily cast fly spell (with some hefty concentration penalties,) but my cleric and the fighter became nothing more than a couple of chunky colorful messes contained only by our armor....very similar to two cans of SPAM dropped from the top of the Empire State Building.
After that experience potions of feather fall or some other way to avoid a plummet to our death has become part of all of our desired standard adventuring gear.
So take heart members of B.A.D.D. that there is most definately one DM out there that plays Dragons as the devious, intelligent, powerful, and above all dangerous creatures that they are meant to be. Also know that we his players absolutely love it.
What brings me back are two dragon tactics my DM has used in the past and asked that I mention since he is currently without a connection.
Tactic One:
The first was his concern on whether or not other DMs are making full use of the Snatch Feat for dragons. Specifically the Snatch and Throw tactic.
In my group's case (Ftr 16, Clr 16, Rog 16, Wiz 17) we were on a quest for an artifact that we needed to remove a rather nasty curse from one of our members. The final guardian of this artifact just so happened to be a White Great Wyrm in a rather large room.
The main tactic this dragon was using was to Snatch the fighter if he got within range using an attack of opportunity and throw him across the room like a cat with a mouse.
Everytime this happened the fighter took 4d6 from the bite, plus 12d6 from being thrown (the last 10 feet being subdual of course.) In addition to basically taking 16d6 damage the battered fighter was now 120 feet and several rounds away from being able to bring his damage dealing Feats and weaponry in to play again giving the dragon time to focus on attempting to neutralize the other party members.
Tactic Two
This tactic is pretty much an escape tactic. In this case our party was roughly level 14 or so and was fighting a Dracolich. In the second or third round of combat I barely slipped a Heal spell past the Dracolich's Spell Resistance dropping the creature down to 4 hitpoints. (Yes we play with the standard Heal/Harm rules, but as the DM has shown quite painfully it works against us just as well as for us.)
What we didn't know was that the huge pillar of stone behind the dracolich was actually an illusion covering a permanent teleportation circle. The creature turned, took a few steps into what we thought was solid rock and *poof* he was gone.
At this point we were all a bit stunned, cussing and grumbling about the thing escaping. The DM asks us what we want to do...the fighter moves up to the portal, but doesn't enter. The wizard and the rogue do the same. The DM looks at me, the cleric, and asks what I do. Well up until this point I had played the character as a one man war on undead. He hated undead, despised them with all his being. I didn't really have a choice even though I as a player knew it was a VERY bad idea. I ran into the circle...and the DM takes my figure off the map. He then asks what the rest of the party does...they follow their comrade in arms into the circle and wherever it leads.
At this point the DM takes the rest of the figures off the map and tells us that we see the dracolich flying away into the distance as we plummet to the ground from a rather high elevation.
Well the rogue and the wizard survived due to a potion of feather fall and a hastily cast fly spell (with some hefty concentration penalties,) but my cleric and the fighter became nothing more than a couple of chunky colorful messes contained only by our armor....very similar to two cans of SPAM dropped from the top of the Empire State Building.
After that experience potions of feather fall or some other way to avoid a plummet to our death has become part of all of our desired standard adventuring gear.
So take heart members of B.A.D.D. that there is most definately one DM out there that plays Dragons as the devious, intelligent, powerful, and above all dangerous creatures that they are meant to be. Also know that we his players absolutely love it.
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