Design & Dev: Monsters (DRAGONS!)

[wedgeski]

* vulnerability are lost ? Yeah. Great. A monster without weakness is a fun thing. Seriously, this is bad design. I know not all dragons had this elemental weakness, but I do think the most powerfull monsters (dragons, demons etc...) should have one weakness the PC can exploit if they find it. Unless the fight is only about pure force and cleverness is to be banned.

I don't know how you've leapt from 'red dragons are no longer vulnerable to cold attacks' to 'dragons have no weaknesses'.

 

[Ashardalon]

a) I think you mean cold effects
b) they are just using 'slowed down' as figurative language... i.e. it was't a serious hp hit.

Cheers

a) Oops. Err, I mean, as a red dragon myself, I have to spread wrong rumors about my vulnerabilities. Yes.
b) Yeah, that is probably the case, so I said "might," but I guess there is a possibiity that it is the case.

 

[Plane Sailing]

threads merged

 

[pawsplay]

Of course, in this example, we don't know...

1) What maneuver, if any, the fighter might've been using.
2) If characters get extra damage in place of iterative attacks.
3) What magic weapon the fighter might be using.
4) What level the characters are.

If we're talking about epic characters here (in the 4E sense), a single hit doing hundreds of points isn't out of the question. But that said, we don't even know for a fact that he did 500 in that shot. We just know that's the shot that dropped the dragon below half.

Yes, that sentence still makes sense if the dragon had 502 hit points and he just did 251. English sense anyway.

Can I just be the first to say.... what the.....?

Apparently it's going to be normal for dragons to breathe fire three or more times in one round?

And the cleric... all I can think of is FF, and little green numbers appearing on everyone when he heals the party from a crit.

 

[Tharen the Damned]

I thought about the possible removal of iterative attacks and the High AC of the Dragon.
Mechanically it fits: Iterative attack bonusses got worse after the first. So the chance to hit with your second, thrid etc. attack got smaller.
But you had the chance of dealing more damage.
If you change iterative attacks to only one attack, there has to be a mechanic to scale the level advancement to the hit chance and damage output.
It is easier to change the AC than the BAB advancement per level. Hence the High AC of the Dragon.
Makes perfect sense to me
(hopes that Mike Mearls pats his head for deducting this)

 

[Szatany]

Perhaps that slowing mentioned is the vulnerability. The problem of the fire/cold-weakness duality is, that it is faar to obvious, and that's basically the only weakness, that MMI monster have at all (besides the golems).

Bigger monsters should have weaknesses (it's fun), but it should be more clever, than "extra-damage". Or be based on using the environment, not about choosing the right damage type, because that'll easily become a metagame-problem.

Cheers, LT.

I'd rather prefer a system where you have a small chapter of 40 or so vulnerabilities that you assign to monsters freely to make them easier enemy. Each complete with a appropriate knowledge check to discover it of course.

 

[WhatGravitas]

I'd rather prefer a system where you have a small chapter of 40 or so vulnerabilities that you assign to monsters freely to make them easier enemy. Each complete with a appropriate knowledge check to discover it of course.

Reminds me of d20 Modern... but sounds quite good. Add a random table (because some people ALWAYS want one), and perhaps some themes (outsider-vulnerabilities, dragon-vulnerabilities and so on), and it's good to go!

Cheers, LT.

 

[an_idol_mind]

This preview leaves me cold. The more insanely powerful dragons get, the less useful they are in my games.

 

[Szatany]

Reminds me of d20 Modern... but sounds quite good. Add a random table (because some people ALWAYS want one), and perhaps some themes (outsider-vulnerabilities, dragon-vulnerabilities and so on), and it's good to go!

Cheers, LT.

Indeed:
Undead Flaws: sunlight curse, positive energy vulnerability, brain hunger

Dragon Flaws: overwhelming pride, soft belly, taste for virgins, greed

and so on.

 

[glass]

This preview leaves me cold. The more insanely powerful dragons get, the less useful they are in my games.

How do you get that it is insanely powerful? In spite of using several special abilities it had yet to drop a PC despite being reduced to half hit points itself. And of course, this is a dragon of unknown level* facing PCs of unknown level. So we know basically nothing about the power level of this particular dragon, or what that would say for the power level of dragon in general even if we did.


glass.

(* Since CR is apparently gone)