Blizzard dragons, any tips on running them?
- Thread starter Grimmjow
- Start date
Arctic Wolf
First Post
Well first off, they are terrible at flying so they will want to land as soon as possible. Since they are controllers, they always try to take advantage of the terrain so maybe fight by a mountain side or something like that to show this. You might want to modify them to have an ability that makes everything difficult terrain so that their icewalk is worth having also, or just fight in that type of environment. That is all I got atm so good luck 
Derulbaskul
Adventurer
... and give them immunity or resistance to cold as that was missed by the designers....
nogray
Adventurer
Not "missed," but rather intentionally changed
All of the "cataclysmic" dragons lack resistances and immunities, and instead mess with characters if they are hit with specific types of attacks. The purpose of this design choice was explained at the time as making the creatures more interesting instead of just taking longer to kill. I think the idea is that you still might want to avoid using cold attacks against the blizzard dragon, but not basing this on something that slowed down the fight (as resistances do), but rather on inflicting complications on the party if they use cold attacks when fighting a blizzard dragon.
The volcanic dragon, as another example, causes everyone in its aura to take fire damage if it is hit with a fire attack. The blizzard dragon slides everyone in its aura two squares if it is hit with a cold attack. Having recently run a couple encounters with blizzard dragons, I can say that the sliding effect when it was hit with cold powers let the dragon set up its allies with flanking and get itself out of flanks more easily.
Derulbaskul said:
All of the "cataclysmic" dragons lack resistances and immunities, and instead mess with characters if they are hit with specific types of attacks. The purpose of this design choice was explained at the time as making the creatures more interesting instead of just taking longer to kill. I think the idea is that you still might want to avoid using cold attacks against the blizzard dragon, but not basing this on something that slowed down the fight (as resistances do), but rather on inflicting complications on the party if they use cold attacks when fighting a blizzard dragon.
The volcanic dragon, as another example, causes everyone in its aura to take fire damage if it is hit with a fire attack. The blizzard dragon slides everyone in its aura two squares if it is hit with a cold attack. Having recently run a couple encounters with blizzard dragons, I can say that the sliding effect when it was hit with cold powers let the dragon set up its allies with flanking and get itself out of flanks more easily.
nogray
Adventurer
I'm not sure how good my advice will be, but here is a recap of my experiences with the paragon adult blizzard dragon.
First off, keep track of the aura size. What I did was put a d6 by or on the mini showing the current size. It will start at aura 1, but on any turn where it starts at aura 1, have the dragon use that minor to immediately expand it to aura 3. The next turn, it will automatically become an aura 5, then the following turn, it will be used as a big attack. Since that attack happens at the beginning of its turn and reduces the aura back to aura 1, I counted that as being "the start of any turn when freezing winds is aura 1," which allowed for a recharge. I'm now not certain if that was the intent, but it really made for a dangerous encounter.
Next, keep in mind that it is a controller. Even as an elite, it doesn't have a huge pool of hit points. I recommend using it with at least one soldier monster to try and keep attention a little less on the dragon. Also, have some allies (a skirmisher or lurker, perhaps) that can take advantage of the combat advantage that is likely to be caused by all the sliding that the blizzard dragon brings to the table. Slide enemies into positions so that the dragon's allies can easily move to flank, that sort of thing. At almost no point should you let a player end his turn adjacent to the dragon -- use that slide one to help deny the PCs their flanking opportunities. You can also keep an ally of the dragon close to avoid cunning stalker-based combat advantage.
Lastly, with regards to the dragon's two basic attacks (claw and bite), one of the common tactics I tried to employ was to use the claw to slide a melee striker out of range then bite to freeze him in place. As tactics of the moment dictate, feel free to use the claw twice to really slide a couple of the characters to where the dragon's allies can have their fun.
That last bit really sums up the running of this kind of dragon. It's all about sliding the PCs where the dragon and its allies can more easily flank and where the PCs will have a harder time flanking. I'd also echo the comment by Arctic Wolf to take advantage of terrain and throw in some places where the dragon's icewalk will actually matter. This is the dragon to use for positioning PCs where you want them.
As a note, I used "flanking" a lot up there, but you can just as easily substitute the idea with other positioning concerns, such as into zones created by allies or terrain that hinders or causes damage or even out of their own advantage-gaining zones.
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