D&D (2024) Check Out The New Monster Manual’s Ancient Gold Dragon

Wizards of the Coast has previewed (part of) the stat block for one of its iconic monsters on social media. Take a look!

IMG_1095.jpeg
 

log in or register to remove this ad

Am I calculating something wrong? A lvl19 PC has a High budget of 17,200.

Times 4 = 68,800
68,800 - 65.000 = 3,800 left.

So it's without lair actions, right?

EDIT: Oh, the gold dragon lair doesn't have lava :devilish:
68,800 > 65,000 (Hard) so it is not really Hard encounter. It is close, buy is always good to lean in the conservative side IME. The DMG says it is OK to be low, but it is geared to allowing the PCs to survive. We should be testing if the gold dragon can challenge them. Different goals IMO.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

Alright, since you guys have been arguing about it: tomorrow I will test the dragon agianst a 19th level party. To even out the initiative, I will add 4 Metallic Peacekeepers.

I'll use the Red Dragon lair from Fizban's, but I haven't decided on much else. Any advice to make this gold dragon keep up?

View attachment 393264
Advice Wise: Use your banish early and often (and make sure you are targeting PCs properly in initiative order so they always lose a turn, if you pick the wrong one they come back too early and then they still get their turn.

Use the weakening breath right off the bat, and reapply as needed.

Otherwise, I say don't rely on any banish shenanigans (ok reappearing in midair or dropping them in lava). I'm curious to see how well the new dragon holds up without any of those tricks.
 

Unless your group is some secret special forces team that intentionally goes around in stealth and anonymity, I would have serious trouble believing 20th level PCs would not be world famous (and probably at least well known in certain planar realms if they do planar travel).
Too busy adventuring to come into much contact with people, and when they do they don't go round telling everyone what they have been doing. They don't usually have spectators when they are in a dungeon killing monsters, so if they don't tell no one will know. Anyway, there isn't much mass media in D&D land. And it typically only takes about a year in game to go from 1st to 20th level. So no, people are not generally going to know about them.
 

68,800 > 65,000 (Hard) so it is not really Hard encounter. It is close, buy is always good to lean in the conservative side IME. The DMG says it is OK to be low, but it is geared to allowing the PCs to survive. We should be testing if the gold dragon can challenge them. Different goals IMO.
Agreed, I say go for deadly, and lets see if a "deadly" encounter at high levels now lives up to its name sake. I looked at the Metallic peacekeepers. Its a fine compliment to the gold I agree (even though they are very low CR that gas is still quite a threat to PCs due to it being a charisma save).

That said, its an aweful lot of control, might make for a boring fight if everyone is incapacitated and banished.
 

Agreed, I say go for deadly, and lets see if a "deadly" encounter at high levels now lives up to its name sake. I looked at the Metallic peacekeepers. Its a fine compliment to the gold I agree (even though they are very low CR that gas is still quite a threat to PCs due to it being a charisma save).

That said, its an aweful lot of control, might make for a boring fight if everyone is incapacitated and banished.
Just an FYI, there is no longer a "Deadly" in the 2024 encounter building guidelines. Though "Hard" has been greatly expanded at higher levels.
 



And hard still assumes the characters will be victorious with minimal losses most of the time.

It is just that if they regularly face hard encounters at some point the variance will result in a TPK.

I would expect a party at full strength to crush a hard encounter most of the time and that isn't a design flaw.

I think the misunderstanding from 2014 has continued. Likely because people want to feel their characters at imminent risk of death often but not actually have the consequences of that.

Monster strength is highly dependent on the circumstances they are faced and how the DM plays them. So much so that the designers could never design a difficulty calculation that would be accurate for most tables.
 


Its a potential perpetual Banish until the fight becomes a 1 vs 1.

Typically the best tactic will be to Banish the character with the highest HP or AC.

No on both counts.

Yes, resources that replenish after a long rest.

If the CR 24 Ancient Dragon is not the culmination of or sum totality of the encounter then what is the DM doing for an encore...throwing the Tarrasque at them?

1) If it is the culmination... then they used some of those resources before the fight. Which matters.

2) You keep treating using a powerful high level spell to reverse the damage as equalling that damage being utterly meaningless. If I have forced you to use a 7th or 8th level spell, not to make progress against the dragon, but solely to not lose the fight... then my damage was meaningful, it was something to worry about. Because you used a powerful resource to counter it.

Yes, I know that's your point and I disagree.

If we ignore the Banish effect I don't believe its anything an Epic Tier party will get worried about.

"As long as we use some of our most powerful abilities that we've saved throughout this entire adventuring day, there is nothing to worry about" is a pretty blase take. I think maybe you just equate "Worry" with "panick!!!"? That is the only way I can make sense of this.

You made the point the Party may have already used some of their best spells/resources BEFORE they fight the dragon.

I made the point the Dragon is built as a Highly Difficult threat on its own WITHOUT previous encounters.

So... what? Every monster should be designed to drop at least one PC to zero hp as the first and only encounter of the day, ignoring how people actually run the game? That seems like a recipe for disaster.

It auto-removes 1 PC from the fight and potentially locks them out of the fight while other characters remain.

My issue with it is primarily that the High DC to Low Save ratio is completely broken at Epic Tier D&D. Fix that and I don't think its unfair, but as we know Core 2024 D&D does NOT fix it.

It is literally the only thing you think is any challenge at all, and you want to "fix it" so that it isn't a challenge. Sure.

We want a 3-4 round combat not a 10 round combat. Long slogs are never fun, which is why I am suggesting upping the damage "slightly" is a better solution to increasing hit points.

As far as I can tell the hit points are fine. If we assume approx. 2/3rds of attacks hit and the typical epic character deals 60-75 damage per round (if everything hits), then that's around 45 damage (on average) per character per turn, 180 per round for 4 characters, 540 for 3 rounds, given the Dragon will beat most in Initiative we likely get to see the dragon deal at least 3 full rounds of attacks, maybe 4, against the four characters.

The problem, as I see it, is Banish is an auto removal of 1 character, so that means we recalculate to 135 per turn (3 characters) for the heroes. Meaning the Dragon now gets (on average) 4-5 rounds against three characters...compounded by the fact the dragon gets to pick the three weakest (in terms of hit points) characters to attack.

The collective HP of the PCs is around 600 (for a standard group). But remove the Fighter and you remove at least 1/3rd of the party's HP (and likely the character built to Tank with the highest AC).

So without Banish the Dragon gets 3-4 turns to defeat 600 HP, with Banish the dragon gets 4-5 turns (at least) to defeat 400 HP against targets with lower AC.

This doesn't address the point at all.

While not impossible, without Prep its improbable the Party can win. Which means its a TPK due to the design.

Absolutely not. Like, I'm stunned you even think this, I think it would be a hard fight, but occassionally taking the fighter out for a round or two is not going to turn this into an occasionally TPK.

Its not an issue because you have 80% more...

Yes, 100-20 is 80, that is how math works. But if you lose 20% of your health on a successful save, and you can face multiple attacks of the same damage a turn... that is something to be worried about, not scoffed at like you are literally immortal.

An AC of 25 means the Dragon hits 65% of the time....35% chance of missing. Likely the Fighter has a better AC than the Wizards, which is why removing the Fighter (or Barbarian) with Banish is the optimum tactic.

The Epic Fighter might have an AC of 26, 27, 28, 29, 30.

Even assuming the Fighter has AC 25 the dragon misses one third of the time against it, but likely has an easier time hitting the other characters (maybe not the Rogue arguably I suppose), who also have less HP. Its like a win-win-win for the dragon. Party DPR is down*, party HP is massively down, party vulnerability is almost certainly down with lower AC's to hit.

*Massively so in the case of a Fighter or Barbarian.

So your argument just continually boils down to "only the fighter matters to this fight, no other character is capable of doing anything meaningful. Which.. is a take.
 

Trending content

Remove ads

Trending content

Remove ads

Top