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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Archus" data-source="post: 4361008" data-attributes="member: 25334">My party of 5 survived the white dragon with no deaths but almost no healing surges or HP left. <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Human Paladin - Went down twice and was dying at the end of the battle with no healing surges (having spent his last to do a lay on hands on the rogue right before going down).  Her mark was very useful during the battle (the extra damage when harming the rogue and warlock helped).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Half-Elf Fighter - Down to 3 hp at the end with very few surges left.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Eladrin Rogue - Went down once at the beginning of the fight (crit breath weapon) but was a critical part of damage during the fight and down to 2 hp at the end.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Minotaur Warlock - Survived the successful claw/claw/bite by 2 hp which hit despite all odds (-2 from the fighters mark, -2 because of shadow-step, but 3 19s did the trick)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Human Wizard (npc) - Only hit twice in the whole battle do to crappy luck.</li> </ul>I made the dragon match the one in the monster manual since the one in the adventure had 32 more hp.All dailies had been expended before the battle and they had pressed through the whole dungeon with no extended rest.  The good news is that since it was encounter 5, everyone had an action point.The Warlock, Wizard, and Rogue were surprised in the first round and the dragon's fear effected the Fighter and Paladin so nobody got to do much useful that first round.  In the second round the breath weapon took out the rogue (crit) and did average damage to many.  Things started off poorly for our heroes.After many rounds of exceptionally crappy dice on the party's part, they finally prevailed.  Fortunately the dragon's breath weapon didn't recharge too much after early on in the fight (and they took care to be on opposite sides).  The group ensured the Rogue had combat advantage (with the fighter or rogue holding an action to flank or until flanking was established).They considered fleeing after round one but the Warlocks burning hands moved the dragon back and gave them a very brief respite shake it off (it immediately moved back and attacked but its claws weren't that effective).  After they had done 60+ points of damage and I smiled and said "it isn't even bloodied yet", they considered fleeing again.  But by that time they had moved into the room and wouldn't have been able to all escape.  Good thing they didn't flee, I've seen that is often a deadly mistake and the route turns into a slaughter (sad that the dragon didn't hit with any opportunity bites <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devil.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":devil:" title="Devil    :devil:" data-shortname=":devil:" /> ).Due to their lack of a leader; I had given out 1 healing potion to each at the beginning they also found a couple because the treasure in the dungeon was too low given the DMG guidelines.  My kindness came with a price, there were an additional 4 minions in each of encounters 2 to 4.We observed a few things:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Solo fights can drag on</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Solo fights can degenerate to "I hit him" because the cool abilities are expended early on and the at-will powers not be useful or even after a while don't sound any more interesting than a basic attack.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Many of their powers weren't very useful in this fight.  Many powers chosen were the kind to move things around and they just didn't want to do that most of the time.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Spending an action point to miss and expend your cool encounter/daily to be ineffective isn't particularly fun.</li> </ul></blockquote>

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