Fighting a Dragon at low levels

[Theo R Cwithin]

General question:

If you manage to grapple and pin a dragon, can you prevent it from using its breath weapon in the same manner that you can prevent someone from speaking?

 

[Dragonwriter]

General question:

If you manage to grapple and pin a dragon, can you prevent it from using its breath weapon in the same manner that you can prevent someone from speaking?

Wasn't there another thread on that very question a while back? (if not several?)

It stands to reason that if he can't talk, he can't spit/spray from the mouth. I don't believe it is in the rules anywhere, but it is a common sense thing.

Whether or not it is smart to grapple the dragon in the first place is a different question.
(And if the dragon is smart, you wouldn't get a chance to grapple it anyway.)

 

[radmod]

General question:

If you manage to grapple and pin a dragon, can you prevent it from using its breath weapon in the same manner that you can prevent someone from speaking?

Interesting question. If you couldn't, I would probably allow it just because it sounded interesting.

A similar question pops up in the faq.
Can a Dragonfire Adept use his BW in a grapple?
Their answer was:
"p. 60 of the Rules Compendium outlines a series of maneuvers that can be used in a grapple. Unfortunately, using a supernatural ability is not one of them. " Then they fudge and say check with your DM because they may rule it as being a spell.
So, if we follow the same reasoning, your question becomes moot because a dragon grappling couldn't even use his breath weapon.

Technically, this would mean you couldn't even use an SLA in a grapple unless the DM allowed it.

 

[Dragonwriter]

"p. 60 of the Rules Compendium outlines a series of maneuvers that can be used in a grapple. Unfortunately, using a supernatural ability is not one of them. " Then they fudge and say check with your DM because they may rule it as being a spell.
So, if we follow the same reasoning, your question becomes moot because a dragon grappling couldn't even use his breath weapon.

Technically, this would mean you couldn't even use an SLA in a grapple unless the DM allowed it.

I personally find that line of thinking a little silly... If you can concentrate to cast a spell, why can't you use an innate ability like something that relies on breathing? Especially when such a thing cannot be interrupted by getting punched...

And one more reason to say "forget the RC, here's what I'm ruling."

 

[Jhaelen]

But in any case, I don't see how a 5th-level party is going to easily handle a dragon unless the DM nerfs the environment in the party's favour.

Well, who claimed it was supposed to be an easy encounter? It's a challenging encounter, but not an overwhelming encounter.

If you can prepare for the encounter, the most important thing to do is to get resistance to acid. Ask your cleric, or get potions/scrolls.

Now regarding non-iconic parties:
I think, there's two basic philosophies:
1) The DM adjusts encounters so the non-standard party doesn't have any problems.
2) The DM doesn't care about the party setup and simply uses a variety of standard encounters.

I'm firmly in the second camp. A party that cannot deal with standard encounters is dysfunctional. PCs will continue to die until the party setup resembles something that _can_ survive standard encounters.

As a DM I will point out potential problems, e.g. when the party currently doesn't include a healer. I expect my players to deal with the situation in some way:
Buy magic items, hire an npc, etc.

Imho, dysfunctional parties are a self-correcting problem.

IIRC, when my players fought the dragon in 'Forge of Fury', one or more of them dropped during the fight, but nobody died. At least two pcs were killed in different parts of the adventure, though:
One dropped to his death when trying to charge over a hanging bridge, and one was killed by sneaking into gray ooze.

Nobody got killed when they encountered the roper, btw. because they were clever enough to realize they had no chance to beat it and instead successfully followed a diplomatic approach.

Note, that this is also a potential solution to overcome the black dragon encounter the OP is expecting. Not every encounter has to be resolved using combat.

 

[Persiflage]

"p. 60 of the Rules Compendium outlines a series of maneuvers that can be used in a grapple. Unfortunately, using a supernatural ability is not one of them. " Then they fudge and say check with your DM because they may rule it as being a spell.
So, if we follow the same reasoning, your question becomes moot because a dragon grappling couldn't even use his breath weapon.

Technically, this would mean you couldn't even use an SLA in a grapple unless the DM allowed it.

If anyone can, dragons can...

Grappling: Dragons do not favor grapple attacks, though their crush attack (and Snatch feat, if they know it) use normal grapple rules. A dragon can always use its breath weapon while grappling, as well as its spells and spell-like or supernatural abilities, provided it succeeds on Concentration checks.

That's pretty conclusive, isn't it?

Also:

Supernatural Abilities: Using a supernatural ability is usually a standard action (unless defined otherwise by the ability's description). Its use cannot be disrupted, does not require concentration, and does not provoke attacks of opportunity.

So pretty much the only way to prevent supernatural abilities being used is by a condition that prevents standard actions being taken. The Rules Compendium can get stuffed


As for SLA's in a grapple... They follow the rules for spellcasting for concentration checks, AoO's and disruption and therefore prompt the same concentration checks when used in a grapple because there's no reason to think they don't.

[Tongueincheek] I know I'm sounding a bit definitive there when the rules aren't quite explicit enough to support it, but here's my reasoning... An interpretation of a rule can be said to be definitive when you can state with certainty that every sane person(*) would see it that way. A DM would have to be insane to rule that you couldn't use SLA's in a grapple, because if he did he'd have nerfed thousands of monsters whilst having very little effect on most PC's.

(*) WoTC Customer Services are, for the purposes of this discussion, by definition not "sane people". I'll leave it up to the reader to decide which half of the qualification they fail on. [/Tongueincheek]

 

[radmod]

Oh, I completely agree, Parsiflage, but I tend to be sane (I think).

We've got to stop agreeing like this.

 

[haora]

Well, I know this is a dead topic, but since we managed to confront and kill the dragon a few days ago, I just thought I would give clousure to all those who help here

We ended up meeting the dragon a few more times before the actual fight (we ran like little girls all those time ofcourse), but on our last meeting, we were prepared, healed up and with an extra party member (druid lvl5), so we decided to stay and fight.
Long story short, our priest had adquiere some form of fireball collar, which had 2 beads, and used them both on the dragon, that helped.
Also having the druid helped since she had a flaming sphere, which also caused severe damage.
We had no chance to get the suggested pots before the fight, so there was no resist acid, no fly pots and the rest, partially because we forgot to buy them on the only place we had a chance..., still, we managed to kill the drake in the end.
It was a pretty tough fight, but rewarding.. too bad we were betrayed in the end, by our priest, which resulted on two of us dying (the fighter and the rouge), the druid running away and the bad guys (including our priest) winning...
Oh well, thanks again for all your help guys...

 

[Thanael]

You know what's really miserable? If the DM is playing the dragon properly, then it will know in advance almost *everything* you try. One of the rarely played aspects of most dragons is that they can polymorph into utterly normal looking humans.

Umm, only the gold, silver and bronze dragons get Alter Form, all others would have to learn it as a spell. And a black dragon doesn't get spells until he's a young adult.

BTW unless you're using pathfinder, dragons are much weakened when taking on another form.