Dragon Breath Neutered

[CapnZapp]

Is it just me who thinks it's somehow wrong (on an irrational emotional) level that negating dragon breath is as easy as buying a potion of resistance?

I might be wrong; but how does it make a dragon encounter interesting and, well, dragony, when dragon breath only is about low- to medium ongoing damage.

I mean, if the damage was more like one blast of wildly varying damage, at least the dragon could hope to roll high, and actually do some damage.

If your breath causes typed damage that never goes above 15 or 20, and then causes say ongoing 10, then a simple level 10 potion (I believe) with resistance 10 will for all intents and purposes completely shut down this the most iconic of all iconic D&D attack forms.

Am I not thinking straight? Am I blinded by something? What's your thoughts?

 

[CapnZapp]

I can add that I'm thinking along the lines of those other potions (that give you a much higher resistance, but only for a single attack).

Negating a single dragon breath could be interesting, because then you could still fear the next recharge...

But with a potion of resistance? The dragon should quickly realize its trademark attack is completely worthless against even dimwitted adventurers.

(Yes, I realize the DM can work around this by sneaking the dragon upon the PCs when they aren't ready. But that's not fun IMHO. I want the iconic straight-up fight; but I also want it to feature interesting dragonbreath?

Is that possible in D&D? Is that even something the designers cared to make happen? Unless I arbitrarily say "sorry, town's clean out of potions" I simply don't see it)

 

[CapnZapp]

I can understand "because the dragon can potentially recharge its breath each and every round it can't be that powerful" but wouldn't the dragon encounter and the epic-ness of the story be much better served if the dragon could stack its breath?

That is, the DM rolls for recharges each round, only the dragon can save up its charges?

Then when perhaps it's saved up three charges (its initial breath and rolling two 5s or 6s) it could unleash its first breath, doing triple damage - which then could be more of a scare, and actually stand a chance of beating any pesky potions of resistance (while making those "potions of resist once" more valuable)...

Thoughts? Advice? Cautions?

 

[Thundershield]

Is it just me who thinks it's somehow wrong (on an irrational emotional) level that negating dragon breath is as easy as buying a potion of resistance?

I might be wrong; but how does it make a dragon encounter interesting and, well, dragony, when dragon breath only is about low- to medium ongoing damage.

I mean, if the damage was more like one blast of wildly varying damage, at least the dragon could hope to roll high, and actually do some damage.

If your breath causes typed damage that never goes above 15 or 20, and then causes say ongoing 10, then a simple level 10 potion (I believe) with resistance 10 will for all intents and purposes completely shut down this the most iconic of all iconic D&D attack forms.

Am I not thinking straight? Am I blinded by something? What's your thoughts?

You're probably right, but I've had few problems with it, partly because I make dragon encounters fairly spectacular. All dragons are big nasty solo monsters, which I go about warily. I never use solo monsters for "random" encounters but instead set up huge plans when I finally do use them.

For instance, last Friday we ran an encounter where an Elder Blue Dragon encounter was broken up into 4 sub-encounters. First they faced only the dragon, and when it was down to 75% of its HP, it flew off to another part of its melted-sand-glass-citadel and started summoning some elemental warriors, creating an entirely new encounter. When it was bloodied, it used its breath and then flew off again, making for the last encounter at the summit of the citadel, where they'd fight the airborne dragon. When the players reduced it to 25%, its wings were torn and it fell, shattering the platform they fought on so everybody fell into the main hall and the dragon animated its breath, making for a last stand.

It was a really spectacular fight, and by dividing it into sub-encounters, I let the players regain some of their power (3 encounter powers), heal a bit (spend 1 surge free), but effects also ended, meaning potions and those pesky daily effects ended.

Sure there was an uproar when I first informed them that their effects ended, but when the players realized it was much like when a normal encounter ended they were fine with it - also because then they could take that into account for the next phase of this grand-scale fight.

This works particularly well at high levels where the players have multiple Daily powers and effects, allowing them to go through multiple powers without utterly cluttering the fight or having the solo monster limp around with 16 different effects crippling it.

Also, it would mean the players would need 4 potions each to make themselves resistant to the dragon's breath, at the cost of 4 healing surges. I can live with that.

 

[N8Ball]

That's a pretty great way to run and intelligent solo, Thundershield. I really like the drawn out suspense of this kind of epic multi-encounter.

 

[bganon]

What you say is kinda true for the youngest dragons, but I think most breath weapons are about more than damage, and older dragons get to stack on some nasty stuff. If you really want scarier breath weapons you could give younger dragons versions of the ancient's abilities. (oh, and a resist 10 potion is level 14, iirc)

Black - a potion will negate maybe 1/2 to 2/3 of the damage, but the -4 AC penalty is much nastier, really. Later on they can blind you, too... stumbling around in the dark with crumbling armor sounds scary to me.

Blue - deal a LOT of damage with their breath weapon, the potion will barely negate half. Plus elder/ancient blues can also Wing Clap for thunder damage, and potions alone can't give you resistance to both. They're also artillery monsters with surprisingly strong melee options, which is pretty scary.

Green - a potion will negate most of the damage, but there's still the slow effect (and aftereffect). And good god, Mind Poison is nasty; it's pretty close to "save or lose". Fortunately only ancients can use it.

Red - ancient reds have a decent shot at totally negating your resistance every time they breathe on you, -and- they have an aura, -and- they can immolate you. Honestly I think you're expected to have resist fire 15 to even survive against an ancient red dragon. Resist fire does help a lot against younger reds, but they have the defenses and hit points to just outlast wimpy PCs.

White - in some ways have the scariest breath weapon... big damage (you'll be lucky if a potion negates half), plus -all- ages slow and weaken on a hit. And elder/ancient have Icy Tomb... have fun being stunned. The ancient can negate the resistance, -and- has an aura that deals 30 damage... again, I think you're expected to have cold resistance to even take on an ancient white dragon.

That's just the MM, the other chromatics in Draconomicon have riders as well. And the metallic dragons are generally even more focused on doing nasty things other than damage with their breath weapons.

 

[Squire James]

As I recall, in 3e it was fairly easy for any level 5+ caster to basically negate a dragon's breath weapon with a spell if they were prepared for it. The potions make it possible in 4e to a lesser extent.

A DM is well within his rights to allow for the possibility that the dragon has heard of Potions of Resistance and might take measures to circumvent them (like flying away to wait the potions out once it realizes they've been used). Perhaps some special dragons ignore or reduce resistances. If you're tossing a lot of dragons at the players, vary them a little bit (e.g. let one dragon suffer, another dragon ignores it somehow, and yet another does something suboptimal to circumvent it).

For that manner, a DM is well within his rights to ban certain items if he really feels they damage his game. For instance, I've done so with that Orb that increases some Wizard's save penalty abililty to auto-win levels.

 

[keterys]

Personally... I think the resistance potions were a horrible addition to the game. Your mileage may vary, but I doubt anyone outside your play group will beat you up for tossing them.

Now, whether your players consider the game better for letting them burn surges to make themselves immune to a dragon's breath or not, I can't answer. I would say that a dragon confronted with people immune to its breath might be inclined to just leave, though.

 

[Derren]

Its not only dragons where this is a problem.
Remember when the Balor preview was posted? Many people said that the damage is way to low and that having fire resistance would block nearly all his damage.
And it looks like those people were right. The Tiefling fire resistance alone is enough to more than half the damage a Balor can do.

 

[keterys]

Yeah, resistances are thrown around like candy and I don't think it's a good idea. A little resistance here or there, sure, but immunity to ongoing damage, auras, and minions of a certain energy at your tier and effectively weakening or worse other attacks really neuters themed concepts. A party going up against your magma things and hellhounds and all that might easily have half or more people having fire resistance.