Elder Red Dragon preview is up

[Larrin]

I don't miss draconic presence because its not scary, its mechanics trying to simulate your PC being afraid but failing to touch the Player.

DM: You're stunned
PC: *yawn*
DM: because of the scary magnificence of the dragon! Its scary!
PC: Hmmm? Oh I heard you, I'm still stunned, right? *yawn*.

Now its:

DM: The dragon bites you, you're taking 25 ongoing damage until you escape his mouth because you had the audacity to bloody him. You strongly suspect next turn he'll breath fire....with you in his mouth.
PC: Yikes!

If you want to simulate how scary a dragon is, make sure his powers scare the Player, not the PC.

 

[Mesh Hong]

The way I read it, unless you stun the dragon between it's Instinctive Initiative and it's turn, your stun won't have any effect other than stopping it's free action attack.

Yes as written with a successful stun you will either remove its standard turn or its free action. Either way it is going to get at least one attack every round.

 

[TerraDave]

Its consistent with the general shift from defense to offense. (I think we had another thread on that). Below the traits line, the only "deffensive" feature the dragon has is the one to shake off stun.

 

[TerraDave]

Frightful Presence is not so much powerful as a waste of time.
Typically the Dragon uses it's action to stun almost the whole party. So it trades its turn for their turns achieving very little. It requires some work & the use of an AP to make it relevant.

Were it to add it back I would make it a free action when the Dragon first attacks & give the attack roll penalty.

To follow up on the post I just made, its a defensive feature, (and is often combined with a lingering attack penalty). These are pretty common in early 4E for boss monsters.

 

[Riastlin]

Whether or not Stun should be in the game is, obviously, an issue probably best left for another thread.

However, I tend to agree with the sentiment that Stun powers for solo's are a bit "ho-hum" in my opinion. The problem, as mentioned, is that in the case of the dragon, the dragon basically trades its turn for the players. Neither deals damage, except that there's the likelihood that not all of the players are affected.

This has a further complication in that Solo battles, particularly at higher levels, tend to run into the potential for a slog-fest. Taking away actions (from either the monster or the PCs) only adds to this problem. Giving Stun to a standard, or even an elite, monster on the other hand works much better. Sure the monster trades its action for the PC's, but the monster also have friends that will now have an easier time hitting the stunned PC, or maneuvering around him, etc. Additionally, with a standard or elite, the stun-causing monster can be brought down a lot quicker, thus eliminating much of the slog-fest potential.

All in all, while I understand the "frightful" aspect of dragons, and that the fear has always been a staple of dragons, I don't necessarily have an issue with them being removed. I agree that if the dragon is built right, it will absolutely be frightening to the players, which is what we all want when we plop the dragon mini down on the map.

 

[Stalker0]

Stun should just be removed from the game altogether, it looks like they are taking steps in the right direction.

The problem isn't stun, its the amount of stun.

Creatures that can stun round after round are just brutually annoying to deal with.

The solo iconic monster of the game that gets a once per fight stun is just fine in my book.

 

[Mengu]

Solo design is such a fickle process. This looks good to pit against a 4-man party. Against a party of 5 or 6, I'd look to beefing it up a bit. But depends on environment and other factors too. These days, I look at monsters more as a starting point than anything else, knowing I have to modify them depending on my encounter design. And this gives a pretty good starting point for a solo, though it fails to feel epic.

For instance when I had my players encounter a paragon level red dragon, I used something pretty close to this (basing it off the previewed black dragon). But I made it a sorcerer dragon. It's fire could pierce resistance, gained a fire shield when bloodied, and had a Dragon Sorcery power that recharged on a 6, where it could employ various interesting tactics, such as teleportation, invisibility, or gain a reroll.

At epic perhaps I might change these to Master Sorcery, increase the recharge on sorcery, and maybe give it a fireball or meteor swarm of sorts.

I rather dislike the feeling of fighting a "rank and file dragon". Fortunately it doesn't take much to use the book dragon as a starting point, and modify it to taste.

 

[Stalker0]

Frightful Presence
Typically the Dragon uses it's action to stun almost the whole party. So it trades its turn for their turns achieving very little. It requires some work & the use of an AP to make it relevant.

I'll disagree here.

1) The dragon still gets its movement, and that movement is actually very important in the early parts of the fight. It allows the dragon to move into melee with little trouble.

Also, it allows it to bypass the defenders and get to the ranged characters more easily, that now have to deal with OAs by moving away from the dragon.

2) The fact that is does have 2 APs is an important factor. If the dragon does move in next to the wizard and decide to beat the crap out of him with two extra attacks that have combat advantage...well that's his right.

 

[Stalker0]

this is only the elder red. The mm1 elder red didn't do that either, only the ancient red.

doh!

 

[Riastlin]

2) The fact that is does have 2 APs is an important factor. If the dragon does move in next to the wizard and decide to beat the crap out of him with two extra attacks that have combat advantage...well that's his right.

Hmm, can a solo use both APs in the same round? Obviously I realize that they can bypass the 1 AP per encounter rule, but I thought they still had to be in separate rounds? Now obviously, if the dragon stuns the wizard, moves next to him, AP's then attacks, he'll still get an extra action by using the last AP the next round since the wizard won't be able to do anything. Still pretty devastating even if the second round of attacks are not with CA.