NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Krensus" data-source="post: 4423137" data-attributes="member: 59340">The first thing I think you have to consider is whether the dragons will gain experience along with the two PCs.  If so, because they are more powerful than player characters, there becomes an issue of whether or not they receive the same amount of xp a character does at the end of an encounter.  In your proposed method of deciding what a challenging encounter would be for the party, the xp gained gets turned up while the number of actual characters in the party stays the same, which leads to turbo levelling if xp intended for 10 people is divided by only 4.  Due to the nature of this particular game, you may not care, but it is something to consider.  As for the dragon itself and it's worth expressed in PC's, I'd say it's about 2-3.  It has plusses to hit that are a bit  above the PC curve at 15th level (7+7+3+3=+20 vs. a dragon's +22) and some powerful abilities like stunning every creature in 5 squares.  If the dragon does not level along with the party, then this gap will slowly diminish, reducing it's utility at later levels.    The main issue with the dragons are that they will have about 5 times the hit points of a character of 15th level and are Large size, allowing them to completely block off areas and "tank" for the other PCs.  To resolve this without making an overwhelming encounter that would be a headache to run, I'd recommend giving all monsters some type of "dragonbane" attack that is identical to their normal attack, but deals an extra 10 damage vs. a dragon.  In addition, I'd use several skirmishers or lurkers so that the normal PCs aren't simply hiding behind the dragons and need to move tactically themselves.  The key is to keep encounters manageable from your side of the table while still providing a sense of danger and excitement to all members of the party-even if they're a dragon. To heal the dragon, I'd recommend allowing it to Second Wind as a daily ability, but while out of combat it could use one of the 2 healing surges it has (MM p.7).  This allows the party to keep going once the dragons have taken a beating, and for the dragon to be able to heal when it has suffered unexpected damage.  The last thing to consider is the greedy nature of dragons and how big a part that will play in your game.  Will they get a share of the loot?  Will they have their own item wishlists?  Will they contest the other party members for a larger share, or will you play it down such that they are more beneficent?  This sounds like a fun game, but I can see what some of your issues are in planning how to do the whole thing and I wish you the best of luck.Krensus</blockquote>

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