Dragon encounter...

[dragonis111]

I will be running a dragon encounter with just me as the dm also playing a character and a friend playing as well. It will be a young white dragon, if I leave the dragon's stats alone, what level should me and my friend be to have a decent chance of beating it? Thanks in advance My character is a goliath barbarian btw, IDK what my friend's character will be.

 

[dragonis111]

Anybody have any advice? we are doing this tomorrow and any help will be greatly appreciated!

 

[Benlo]

Lvl 3 or 4 should be able to handle a Young White Dragon well enough. How big is the party?

 

[dragonis111]

The party has 2 characters plus a rage drake(gained from a previous adventure)

 

[surfarcher]

Two level 3s will likely get slaughtered.

Now if each of the character has some kind of hireling, familiar or such... Consider the Rage Drake one, now you just need another. If your friend doesn't play a healer maybe make the extra one a Cleric.

 

[Saagael]

You might look at the end of the Draconomicon 2: Metallic Dragons book and see the rules about turning a solo dragon into an elite. It'll still be the level of a solo, but much more manageable for a party of 2. In your case, it nicely downgrades it to "doable" territory.

And if you're running it from the book, you might also look at lowering it's defenses, since DMG2 edited solos to not get bonuses to defenses, and keep elites/solos with the same defenses as normal monsters.

 

[Amaroq]

Well, the Young White Dragon is a Level 3 Solo Brute, right?

Consider that to be about equivalent to four Level 3 monsters, in your planning.

Consider the rage drake to be equivalent to a player character, assuming its the standard Level 5 monster, possibly ridden as a mount?

I'd think three Level 3 characters would have a fairly easy time of it against four creatures, so I'd expect them to have a similarly easy time against one solo - unless the encounter features some terrain which suits the dragon, allowing it to slow people down, cluster them together for its Breath Weapon, avoid being flanked, use its flight to advantage, etc.

That said, the fight is going to be very "swingy", e.g., subject to the luck of the dice: Level 3 characters will be quite vulnerable to it, especially if the dragon goes "all out": for example, an opening round attack of "Breath Weapon, move adjacent to the guy who got hurt worst by the breath weapon, Action Point, Dragon's Fury" .. If all for of those hit, average damage would be 15, 9, 8, and then 12 damage ... 44 hit points in a single round may not drop every Level 3 character, but it would drop most - it would've taken down my Level 3 fighter with 16 con and Toughness ... and at that point, the party could be in some serious trouble, especially if they don't have ready access to healing besides their Second Wind(s).

On the other hand, if he misses with the breath and one of the claw attacks, he's done a meagre 9 damage, and the party haven't even broken a sweat yet. That's what I mean by "swing-y".

The difficulty of the fight also depends how you want to play your dragon:

Is he young, brave, and dumb? If so, he might come in self-assured, land, figure he's "drawing them in", and bust out his action points early in attack. This is most likely to kill the PC's .. but its also the most likely way to result in a satisfyingly dead dragon at the end of the night.

If he's already mature and a bit wise, and concerned most with surviving to be a very old dragon, he might save an Action Point and the Frightful Presence powers for when he thinks he's losing .. bloodied and out of breath weapon? Frightful Presence (hopefully stunning at least one adjacent enemy), then Fly maximum speed, then use an Action Point and Fly maximum speed, all the while gaining height so that he can get out of reach of the melee weapons and rage drake.

For drama, it might be best to play the "young, brave, and dumb" version, but have him single out the rage drake from the get-go, all but ignoring the humans to challenge the biggest opponent ... its got several benefits from a story perspective: the dragon gets to showcase how dangerous it is, it doesn't risk a PC down in the first round, bloodying the rage drake will up the tension early, and the rage drake gets to show off its "when I'm bloodied" powers. That's classic "show off against the buff NPC to demonstrate how dangerous my BBEG is" ....

In fact, after talking out the benefits, I think that's the strategy I'd write for him if I were facing two PC's and a Rage Drake. If I wanted him to be a recurring villain, I'd reserve the second action point so that he could try to escape at about one-quarter hit points ... if you want him to fight to the death, I think I'd still hold onto one action point and the frightful presence "in reserve" until he's bloodied, and have him break them out in succession: frightful presence, action point, attack ...

The more I think about it, the more it feels touch-and-go for two Level 3 PC's .. Level 4 might be safer? .. but that said, a couple well-chosen or well-placed magic items can keep this fight well in hand:

L2 Armor of Resistance, +1, Resist 5 cold
L3 Stoneborn Armor, +1, 10 + ConMod Temp HP
L4 Frozen Armor, +1, Resist 5 cold
L3 Strongheart Weapon, +1, full damage when weakened
L4 Cloak of the Walking Wounded, +1, doubles Second Wind
L4 Potion of Resistance, Resist 5 cold

Not to mention all of the items which have dailies that can apply "save ends" effects to the solo: sure, he makes 80% of his saves, but that means there's still a chance that L4 Lullaby Weapon could put the combat to an end by round two .. Also useful might be an L5 Poisoned Weapon (ongoing 5, weakened), an L2 Reproachful Weapon (-2 to hit), etc.

If you want to avoid "cheese", you might set up the session to include one or two "before the dragon" encounters, which might include chances to get some of those items .. say, a skill challenge with the mayor of the village who, if impressed, may front the party two potions of resistance; a fight with some bandits who have a Cloak of the Walking Wounded, etc.

 

[dragonis111]

@Saagael: I like your idea of downgrading the dragon to an elite from a solo.

@Amarog: Thanks a bunch for all your thoughts on my encounter, I will definitely be running your "young, brave, and dumb" tactics for the dragon, having him single out the rage drake first, secondly both of us will be level 4, my goliath barbarian is wielding a lvl 2 bloodclaw maul and took chain-mail proficiency along with goliath great weapon prowess, so of course he is now wearing chain-mail. I also favor your idea of adding favorable terrain for the dragon, I think there will be an icy slope 15 feet long the pcs must climb, probably acrobatics dc 15(separate check for each 5 feet) take 1d4+1(per 5 feet fallen) on a fail and knocked prone when moving across, or they can freely shift 1 square per round, but the dragon will be able to move freely on this terrain due to ice-walk ability leaving them open for his attacks. I have about 12 hours left to prepare my encounter so I better get number crunching!

EDIT: as for my friends character we haven't met yet so I don't know what he is playing. The rage drake that we got as a reward from another adventure is more of a pet, not a mount, my friend's previous character from that adventure died so he will be making a new one(different class and race).

@Amarog: I would really like to hear of what you think so far on my encounter.

 

[Amaroq]

Sounds good so far, mate. I'd probably drop the damage for falling on the ice, myself, because I've found that hindering terrain, in general, is bad enough for the PC's. I like that you've gone with "shift is safe / automatic, actually moving is harder", that feels like a good mechanic.

If this is somebody you haven't met, though, you might want to drop it to:

- The 15' are Difficult Terrain (cost 2 movement to leave the square)
- Special: you can Shift out of a slope square.
- Special: if you make a non-Shift action which includes movement in, out of, or through a slope square, you must make one DC 15 Acrobatics check; failure ends your Move action with you sliding back down to the bottom square of the slope.
- Special: a rope to hold onto can give a +5 bonus to the Acrobatics check.

I'd probably also put some "deep powder" out at some of the outer edges of the battlefield, simply Difficult Terrain for all involved, to keep the action logically contained.

You might start your Dragon on top of a cliff, bellowing a challenge ... drama drama drama!! Plus it gets to fly down into the fight.

Don't be afraid to knock off the Rage Drake entirely before turning on the two PC's, I suspect that the Dragon should win that fight, but take a lot of "ow" from the PC's. I'd treat the Drake as a PC: 0=incapacitated, maybe not even unconscious just prone, helpless, screaming in pain ... but not dead. Potentially heal-able if somebody has a healing power, needing death saves as per a PC .. in fact, given his size, you might give him 4 death saves instead of 3, as though he had that feat.

In fact, if you feel like the Dragon is winning too badly, he might spend an extra round savaging the defeated Rage Drake - think of the way a dog picks up prey and shakes its head to break its neck. Then he tosses the (now unconscious) Drake aside into the deep snow, and growls menacingly at the party. (Again, its an upping-the-tension-of-the-scene thing, plus a good behind-the-scenes lever you can pull if you feel like the Dragon has been getting lucky, hitting too much, to give him time if one of the PC's hasn't made it up the slope yet, etc ..)

If the Dragon is clearly winning (e.g., not bloodied yet, Drake down, one PC down, one PC bloodied), you might have it demand the party's surrender rather than a TPK ... he might demand loot to add to his hoard, or even have a quest for them .. "I need X piece of loot, but its beyond a small dwarven cavern I can't get through ... if you swear to fetch it for me, I'll give you your lives..." (queue Diplomacy check ...)

Given that this fight is you as DM, you as PC, and friend as PC, I think you'll want to be careful about how the Dragon picks who to attack, after the Drake goes down.

Seriously, it might be, "Breath Weapon if it recharged, claw-claw-bite if it didn't, here's a d6, one-through-three he targets you, four-through-six he targets me" .. keeps you out of the "Hey, you didn't attack yourself enough" accusation by putting targeting on the dice. If one of you is a Defender and has it Marked, "shade" the die roll by making it 1d6+1 or 1d6-1 so that he goes for the person who has him marked most of the time, but ignores the mark some of the time thus giving the Defender's "hey you ignored my mark" power a moment to shine.

Good luck with it - I look forward to hearing how it goes!!

 

[dragonis111]

We had the encounter 5 minutes ago, my friend ended up bringing his brother, we were all lvl 4(we each had one lvl 2 magic weapon), a goliath barbarian, dragonborn ranger, elf avenger, and the rage drake, the pc's did too good at first so as the dragon died it roared calling in another young white dragon which started dropping the weakened characters, thanks for all your input Amarog.

Here is a recap of the battle, after initiative rolled, my friend went first(elf avenger), then me(goliath barbarian), then his brother(dragonborn ranger), then the dragon, and the rage drake last.

The first 2 of us moved closer, then the ranger used his twin strike hitting it at least once, then the dragon moved in using the action point for frightful presence which didnt work(roll was too low) then used his breath weapon doing some considerable damage to my barbarian and the avenger. then the rage drake carged using his rending claws ability, then my friends avenger moved around the dragon, I used devasting strike for a whopping +10 vs ac, 2d6 + 1d8 + 8 damage, we kept these same tactics untill we bloodied it though the dragon did manage to bloody the rage drake with dragon's fury which actually helped, the bloodied breath weapon missed all of us, and the dragon retreated past the icy slope, the rage drake just charged at it, suprisingly rolling a 15 or higher 3 times in a row clearing the slope and used rending claws again. As the dragon died it roared calling in a second one, the second one got a surprise round and killed the avenger first turn, then proceeded to kill the ranger who was doing the most damage to the dragons during the encounter, and after that my friends gave up.