[BADD] A clinic for DMing Dragons- long

[Carnifex]

Yet more...

1) Antimagic Field. A party prepared for the dragon will buff up on those Protection from Elements spells, making breath weapons nigh on useless, along with lots of other buffing spells too. If, however, the dragon knows the antimagic spell he can drop a few over the entranceway to his lair and as the party walks in... poof, their defences go. Cue one breath attack.

2) The Long Walk. This tactic won't work well against really high level characters who just wind walk / teleport / whatever around the place. Make the approach to the dragon's lair a tough one, physically - at the top of a mountain or whatever. By the time the PC's have slogged all that way they'll be fatigued at weaker when they face their scaled foe.

3) Low Manoeuverability. Use dragons with Spiderclimb and rock-shaping spells in a narrow gorge to attack the party. The dragon skitters up and down the walls in and out of vision, all the while dropping chunks of gorge rockface on the hapless adventurers below.

 

[Victim]

One:
Kill the Cleric!

A dragon's damage output in melee will almost certainly require chain healing spells to allow most characters to survive more than a round of attack. At higher levels, Heal and Harm become availible, and even worse, Mass Heal. Heal spells can negate several rounds worth of actions, at the expense of one - thus giving the group a huge advantage; perhaps 7 effective rounds if the one PC takes the brunt of 2 rounds attacks. Mass Heal provides an even greater time advantage. Harm negates one of a dragon's greatest assets, a massive store of HP. Clerics sometimes have Dispel Magic resposibilities. Since a dragon is usually an effective lower level caster for most spells, any spell he uses might be removed or countered.

Also, if a group's main healer is dead, then the dragon can beat a retreat, rest, and then come back. Without access to healing, the group will be very weak. Clerics are usually the main source of elemental resistance buffs, GMW, Bull's Strength etc. Killing the Cleric and then retreating gives these spells time to fade, and they won't be replaced easily.

2:
Abilities

Dragons get both cleric and sorcerer spells. They fight better than fighters. They sometimes will have better skills than the rogue. A whole adventuring party in one extra large winged reptile package! Unfortunately, Dragon's don't get sneak attack, so they lose out on some major uses of their skill. Even so, the Fighter/Mage/Cleric combination was a 2e favorite. And now, the buff spells are much better. The only real flaw that Dragon's will usually have is a lack of action parity; while a dragon combines skills from all 4 adventuring types, he'll act at 1/4 the effective rate of a 4 man party.

Therefore, dragons must use haste if they can, and they must attempt to deny it to enemies. A hit and run game can work for drawing out the short lived haste.

Dragon's must have at least one healing spell, preferably Heal.

If a dragon is vulnerable to an element, it should have a good protection spell against that element. Elemental protection is a good idea anyway. Powerful, long ranged spells can foil a dragon's great mobility. Most of these spells are elemental attacks.

Dragon's have impressive damage and defense in melee. However, sometimes even they need a little help, especially with stoneskin and other High Dr effects, since they lack Magic Fang type spells to give their bite and claws plusses. A dragon with the proper spells can boost his combat power to near unheard of levels. Dragons can benefit from:

Mage armor-stacks with natural armor, long duration
shield- +7 AC to most attacks, blocks magic missiles
Divine Favor: +to hit, +damage, stacks with almost everything
Shield of Faith: More AC stacking fun. PCs do it, so can you!

With just a few of these low level spells, a dragon can boost his AC to insane levels. Consider a CR 6 Young Red Dragon. We'll give him Shield and Mage Armor as his two first level spells. Divine Favor is mostly for higher levels anyway. His AC goes from 21 to 32 if shield applies. A Raging, 1/2 orc barbarian focused in his weapon, with a +2 sword, 5 points Bull's strength and amxed out starting strength has a +19 attack. He hits less than half the time, compared to almost automatically. Cases with less extreme characters have it worse. Also, the dragon's touch AC goes from an easy 9 to a 16. More pesky rays will miss, thus negating another big advantage for the would be slayers.

HIgher level spells = bigger advantage. However, even adept draong's don't get spells very quickly, so I'll leave my example to jsut the lower levels ones.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Looking at dragons the first thing we notice is that there are a number of different types, each one adapted for their environment, but have some common ground, size, intelligent, wisdom, long life and some others.

One thing that dragons have in common is they are covetous, they love treasure, this means that they have to have a place to store it. I personally think young dragons roam the world looking for a lair, fighting and killing each other for prime sites. Older dragons are too powerful for the young to go after so the young dragons raid the lesser races, this has caused issues with mostly dwarves because mines offer too much that dragons want; a lair and possible treasure. Shape changing dragons work to place themselves in positions of power to acquire treasure; these have learned to build their lairs.

Once a dragon starts their horde, they start thinking about security. It is about keeping their treasure and growing old with it. The greatest threat is other dragons that are about the same age, but dragons are aware that the lesser races want their horde too.

The best defense is a good offense. Dragons are proactive and they control the air (in most cases). They depend on death from above or ambush to feed; this means that a good line-of-sight is important for them. They would have stretches of open land or water that they could monitor.

Next there would be guards. Dragons live for a long time, they would have seen the power of religion and they would have seen it as a way to gather more wealth. Many dragons set themselves up as protectors or gods to some of the lesser races; kobolds are a prime example of this. They become the smoke detectors or early warning systems, letting the dragon know ahead of time that foes have entered its territory. Dragons reward their followers with very good weapons and armors, so be warned if a kobold has a masterwork weapon!

The lair. This is a dragon’s home and safe. Dragons spend years getting it just right; they know every part of it.

Warning signs & Forgotten paths. Dragons design parts of their lairs where sound and air will warn them of invaders. Dragons know that they live longer than what they see as the younger races, they use this to their advantage by establishing paths into their lairs that are seen as lost in history, a secret, or forgotten door. These are death traps; dragons do not forget ways into their lairs.

More later?

 

[Victim]

Yet more...

1) Antimagic Field. A party prepared for the dragon will buff up on those Protection from Elements spells, making breath weapons nigh on useless, along with lots of other buffing spells too. If, however, the dragon knows the antimagic spell he can drop a few over the entranceway to his lair and as the party walks in... poof, their defences go. Cue one breath attack.

2) The Long Walk. This tactic won't work well against really high level characters who just wind walk / teleport / whatever around the place. Make the approach to the dragon's lair a tough one, physically - at the top of a mountain or whatever. By the time the PC's have slogged all that way they'll be fatigued at weaker when they face their scaled foe.

3) Low Manoeuverability. Use dragons with Spiderclimb and rock-shaping spells in a narrow gorge to attack the party. The dragon skitters up and down the walls in and out of vision, all the while dropping chunks of gorge rockface on the hapless adventurers below.

Antimagic field is range personal, so one can't dump them at the entrance. Also, a breath weapon is Supernatural, and thus stopped by antimagic.

A dragon could use antimagic field on himself to protect against spells and deny magic weapons/armor. However, it only has a 10 ft radius, and thus is too small to cover dragons that can cast it. Even if enlarged up to 9th level, it's still probably too small.

 

[Donatello]

The one thing I haven't seen is;

Dragons know their own strengths and weaknesses; and anticipate a party knowing the same thing.

An elder red dragon would know that the average party, coming to kill him, would be loaded for bear with ice spells and fire resistance. So the dragon would go out of its way, probably much earlier in its life, to have a Ring of Elemental Resistance (Cold). Why wouldn't a red dragon cast Ice Storm? Or Cone of Cold? Green and Blacks breathe water... so have them ready with plenty of Dispel Magic spells to get rid of the party's water breathing and freedom of movement.

Also.. their lairs should be just as dangerous to get to as they are to get through. The arid desert mountain with the blue dragon lair in it should take weeks to walk to... and of course the blue would rely on its keen senses across the empty, flat terrain to see the party miles and miles away. Why engage the whole party trekking across the desert? Fly in, breathe on their pack animals and camels, and fly away. Come back later and repeat. Let the desert kill the party... fly in and scoop up the treasure later.

I can go on and on, but I think I've said enough for now.

 

[Mr. Draco]

Here's something i see forgotten often:

Dragons have access to cleric spells.
This means that any self-respecting dragon with 6th level spells is going to have HEAL.

Some might even have HARM.

Imagine this:

The party is fighting a Very Old red dragon, it's almost dead. Suddenely, it gets off a heal on itself. The fight just got alot harder.

Next round the dragon casts HARM and hits one of the PCs with it (followed with a quickened inflict spell). Scratch one PC!

Or this could add a new dimension to the hit & run attack:
The dragon grabs the pc, next round, harm, followed with anything that does damage. Rinse and repeat!

 

[Agnostic Paladin]

Getting back to the idea of having "practice sessions" amongst BADD members

Perhaps we could have members run through some of the Wizards module encounters? I think an excellent first choice would be Chatrilon in RttToEE since its a fight that has seen a lot of discussion on these boards. Including one or two examples of the dragon not being used to its potential.

 

[Donatello]

Sounds like a plan... we can meet on IRC, have Wolfspider run the encounter...

 

[Donatello]

ATTN: Bozo (A little OT)

I'd like to see your Mystra Paladin Class (or is it PrC?).

Can you either post it in an appropriate forum (House Rules, I think) or email it to me?

 

[Ravellion]

I thought they only could cast spells from 4 cleric domains, not just cleric spells period...

Rav