Dragons are kinda boring...

[VannATLC]

I wanna post an XKCD pic

No, Hong.

NO.

It does not have a long ass-breath weapon.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I LOVE dragons as a DM. They are the ultimate adversary. They aren't 4-round bags of hit points -- they are the most powerful creatures to roam the world, ancient and alien and beyond comprehension by even the longest lived mortal races. Their motivations are so complex that the "good" ones might still kill the cleric of Bahamut and the "evil" ones might give sanctuary to travelling pilgrims. And once riled, they are terrors beyond imagining, laying waste to entire cities and even nations. only the most stalwart, most experienced, most courageous of heroes can even hope to stand against them, and even they are not garaunteed to walk away (Beowulf FTW).

3E dragons finally achieved all that for me, with a wide variety of powers and spell casting abilities and languages and skills.

All 3e dragons are CR24+?

Ultimately a monster is there to be fought or it isn't. If it isn't it doesn't need stats, which is what your 'ancient and alien and beyond comprehension' dragons sound like. This is how RuneQuest handles its big lizards, btw.

Anything that's there to be killed, which I'm guessing your dragons actually are despite all the high falutin' talk, is in a sense a 4 round bag of hit points. The trick is to make the combat encounter interesting, flavourful and tactically challenging, which 4e does better than any other rpg.

 

[Xorn]

Why didn't the dragon fly?

As stated, the fighter started off the fight by hobbling it before it could take off. The dragon breathed on him and stunned everything on her turn, but could not flee from the fighter before he recovered. She tried to take off the next round, and suffered a horrendous OA (he's swinging around a maul), and got herself re-immobilized.

Then she landed two claws and a bite, and sitting behind my DM screen I thought to myself, "Self, this solo brute is trapped by this fighter preventing her from taking off, her breath weapon hasn't recharged, and in one round she inflicted 2/3 of his health in damage.

I decided the next round she'd just wail on him. The warlord healed him (and he second winded) and the next round the dragon tagged him again--and she still couldn't take off, or even shift, without getting whopped upside the head with that dwarf's maul again.

If a fighter is adjacent to you, and has you marked, your options get--limited. So it was kill or be killed, and unfortunately for my glorious dragon, it was the latter. I almost dropped them though--one more round and there would have been casualties.

These are the same players that developed a nice tactic of the rogue intentionally provoking OAs from things the fighter has marked. I actually declined to take the OA twice, as I was faced with needing to hit the halfing's 21 AC vs OAs (and he has second chance) which would give the dwarf a free swing. As the rogue was uninjured, he was GOING to get combat advantage and sneak attack, whether the OA hits or misses. But if I make the OA, then the dwarf is going to crack him in the skull, too.

My players have fought the young black dragon with pregens three times, and now fought a young white dragon with their actual characters. They've really gotten some good strategies developed.

 

[ozziewolf]

I was the Halfling Rogue in Xorn's party and the White Dragon wasn't a push over. If it hadn't rolled such a poor stealth check and we hadn't gotten such a great perception check at the start to spot it things would have gone drastically different.

As it was even with us starting the fight if the Dragon had another 20-30 hit points the fight would have probably ended with me pushing the Tiefling Warlod into the Dragon and then sprinting for safety.

Well.. maybe I wouldn't push the Tiefling it's hard to say with out actually being in that situation. I pushed some guy we where supposed to be rescuing into a beserker once so I could make good my escape.

Really it came down to some great tactics and a little bit of luck on the rolls for us to have come out in the condition that we did.

 

[chaotix42]

Getting knocked prone is far, far worse for it, especially in consideration of the falling damage, and OA's it would trigger,

Standing up from prone does not provoke OAs.

 

[Blackeagle]

On the subject of various portrayals of Dragons, I quite liked the Dragons in the Temeraire series.

Awesome books! Basically Patrick O'Brien with dragons.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Awesome books! Basically Patrick O'Brien with dragons.

Awesome to see some other fans of the series, yeah it really is

I can't wait for the next one to come out, in July.