BADD- evaluate my dragon DM'ing? (KotSQ, Glacier Season module SPOILERS)

[Lothar]

This thread bugged me so much that I decided to de-lurk, register, and post my first message.

To Dr. Midnight's PCs:

I'm pretty sure that at least one of you guys are reading this thread, so please pass this on to the rest.

You are showing disrespect to your DM. You basically told him to skip the entire adventure and to just let you fight the big bad at the end and take the treasure. You also are pretty sure that the dragon would normally be too much for you all to handle. But you are challenging the DM to give out a TPK, confident that he won't.

To Dr. Midnight:

The PCs seem to not fear death at all. If a powerful evil dragon doesn't scare them, nothing will. The dragon has the abilities and motive to kill the entire party easily. I suggest not holding back at all. Destroy the inn they are in while they are sleeping. I suggest a meteor storm or 5 DB fireballs triggered at the same time. Then just pick through the ashes and collect any magic items that survived the bombardment. If you want a more fair but less realistic fight, the BADD members' suggestions will work too. After which, Jabba the Hutt style frozen trophies would be appropriate.

Now, the kicker is that this won't end your campaign. Since you already mentioned that the dragon doesn't know that the cleric is a lich (although he probably should), his philactery won't be destroyed. He will eventually be able to steal a body to return back to undeath. He will then be either in the dragon's lair or the village and with luck (wink, wink) can recover enough of the other PCs to raise them. Of course stealing a body and destroying their soul is an evil act, so you should probably adjust his alignment after that.

That will leave the PCs alive, without any magic items, and with a newfound respect for powerful monsters (and the players for the DM).

Good Luck!

 

[MasterOfHeaven]

Truth be told, I'm with Lothar on this subject. Having an epic campaign is a great thing, but if the PCs are at the point where they think that because they are in such a campaign, they are free to do whatever they want, it is not worth it to allow the nature of the campaign to protect them from reckless, arrogant and downright stupid decisions.

Even Luke, Han and Leia knew when to run away and when to bow before the face of a superior threat. After all, what would've happened to Han if he had, instead of escaping through the asteroid field in the Empire Strikes Back, turned around and attacked the Star Destroyers?

It sounds like your players just aren't taking this campaign seriously anymore, and more than anything else, that will ruin any epic feel you hope to generate in this campaign, in my opinion. I think you might want to go for the jugular here and TPK the party. The situation certainly warrants it.

As Lothar said, you can bring them back if you want to, although I think they would better learn their lesson if their characters stayed permanently deceased.

You could, if you wanted to stay in the same campaign world, have whatever evil forces the PCs are trying to stop emerge victorious because no one can now stop them, and set the new campaign 20-50 years in the future, with the forces of evil in control.

In any event, I don't think you are really going to get your players attention or respect until you show them that you will punish them appropiately if they do something incredibly stupid or arrogant. Because, as it is now, it seems like the players think they can do whatever they want without having to face any real consequences.

 

[Urbanmech]

Hey Dr. Midnight, it might be helpful if you post the stats for the dragon so that everyone can weigh in better on retalatory tactics and tell you of things you may be forgetting. Obviously don't post the stats if you believe that your players will read them, but even then if they know in the game it will be obvious that they have been lurking on this thread. I can't wait to see this all be posted in your story hour and play out.

 

[Galfridus]

One player mused "If I were DM'ing, I'd have the dragon come after us all, immediately... because he can scy to see where WE are, right?" he laughed and the others dismissed it.

I sat there with a poker face.

This is the best part of being a DM.

 

[Old One]

Go Easy...

Having followed the exploits of Dr. Midnight's crew since the beginning, I would say the good Dr. really doesn't have a problem with killing PCs when they do something silly. He has a body count to rival the highest body count Story Hours out there!

That said, I think he pulled his punches this time (primarily through "sins of omission") and is looking for good ways to remedy it. Is a TPK warrented? Probably. Should it happen? Maybe yes, maybe no...

He has gotten enough ideas in this thread to TPK them ten times over, but what fun is that? Humiliation, embarrassment, stripping of valuables, psychological and physical torture should come first...simple death pales in comparison!

Let's just see what he comes up with, shall we?

~ Old One

 

[KarinsDad]

Haven't read the entire thread, but wanted to comment on the Bull Rush problem.

I have a house rule for this exact thing. The Great Wyrm has a +20, a Fighter with an 18 Strength would have a +4. Dragon rolls a 2 for 22, Fighter rolls a 3 for 23. Fighter wins.

This is ridiculous in my opinion.

So, I changed opposed Strength rolls to include the actual number, not the modifiers.

So, Dragon becomes +39 while Fighter is +18 and this Fighter can never win.

Now, there are still close cases where the Fighter could still win, say he had a 22 Strength. He rolls a 20, the Dragon rolls a 1. Opps. But, that is due to the wimpy 27 Strength of the Dragon. They still did not correct THAT problem in 3E. And, the house rule is 1 time in 400. Much better than the 1 in 25 of the core rules (for this example).

If you wanted to get even more realistic, you could double the Strength score before adding it in. Then, your 10 Strength villager would almost never (1.5%) be able to knock back the 18 Strength blacksmith. But, that does not allow for the heroic portion of heroic fantasy.

 

[reapersaurus]

This is ridiculous in my opinion.

So, I changed opposed Strength rolls to include the actual number, not the modifiers.

I completely agree, and prefer this approach now.
I remember this discussion from over a year ago, and how this was probably the simplest solution to the problem that a 10 STR commoner could beat a 18 STR strong-man around a third of the time.
It has helped to take away some of the vagaracies of that big D20 randomness.

Oh - and Dr. Midknight:
I really don't see how scrying and teleporting is an example of your players being creative.
It just means that your players know how to work the 3E spell system better than you do. <--surface observation

 

[Dr. Zoom]

KarinsDad wrote:

I have a house rule for this exact thing. The Great Wyrm has a +20, a Fighter with an 18 Strength would have a +4. Dragon rolls a 2 for 22, Fighter rolls a 3 for 23. Fighter wins.

I am not sure I follow this. To my calculation, the great white wyrm should have a +25 for a bull rush (+12 for size G, +13 for Str 37). If he is charging, it is +27. Also, Fighter gets +4 and rolls a 3 and gets a 23? I am sure there is typo there. You meant rolls a 19, right?

So, if my numbers are correct: wyrm rolls a 1 and gets a 26 (28 if charging) while fighter rolls a 20 and gets a 24. Fighter loses every time without any boost to his Str.

 

[Plane Sailing]

To the person who wondered what the stats for this dragon are...

I just checked up the stats for this dragon in "glacier season", and CR20 is right. A group of 11th level characters could be annihilated in short order. One of the first spells it casts is haste, which allows it to do a move and a full attack, and it has something like +45 to hit... and Power Attack... (Check up the example Gargantuan White Dragon in the SRD for further details)

The suggested tactics include full attacks on a single target to wipe it out before moving on to the next one. Barring some uncannily bad rolling on the part of the DM, the dragon should toast pretty much any non-fighter in two rounds, wizards in just one.

It could always use one of its wing attacks each round to trip a fighter (must have a great chance at the opposed check!) to prevent him using his own full attack in response.

Cheers

 

[Zelda Themelin]

Not entirely accurate. Some dragon types are listed in the MM as being able to cast spells from the cleric list and the X, Y, and Z domains. On the chromatic side, blues and reds can do this, while I think the other 3 types are out of luck. Most of the metallics can do it, IIRC. White dragons can't, unfortunately.

While I'm talking about them, I feel the need to vent. It makes absolutely no sense to me that the metallic dragons are typically larger and more powerful than the corresponding chromatic. Does anyone have a good reason why there is not draconic balance, or is it simply a holdover from TSR's "evil must always be weaker and lose in the end" phase?

-Tiberius

Mmh, you are probable right about this one, though could you tell where does it say this. I tried to find it, and missed.

Agreed, I hate 'evil must be weaker'-thing too. Compare Solar and it's evil counterparts for example, it's not only dragons, it's anything powerful. And is there evil Titan-power level similar monster (no, this is not Scarred Lands discussion). Also, all evil dragons have lower mental stats than good ones. Why? Is evil more stupid? Can't it be charismatic?


Ah, other thing, dragon doesn not need to have 'avarage' stats, as they seem to use in every module. That kind of defeats whole idea of monsters having stats. To make your dragon more powerful, don't forget it can have better stats than 'avarage' to start with.