How do we prepare to fight a dragon about which we know nothing?

[Barak]

I agree. If he tries to challenge you, evade it.

Nice sarcasm.

There's a lot of different meanings to the word challenge. I assume that you'd hold the same view with 1st level characters facing an Avatar of Hextor? I mean, that'd sure be challenging!

A big part of roleplaying, to me, is threat assessment. Characters shouldn't assume that all possible foes will have an appropriate CR. Given the info given in the original post, to me, as a character in that game, it would be all but obvious that the threat is more than likely more than I can take on. If it was just me and my companions, depending on my character, I -might- choose to face it. But here, they have a whole city of civilians to consider as well. Would resources really be better spent trying to take on a foe that all sources point to "You'll get totally crushed. In one round!", or are resources better spent trying to save as many people as possible, then spending time trying, once more, to learn more about said foe?

It's not about pouting, it's about realistic reaction.

 

[kanithardm]

Well if the dragons that strong maybe your DM is setting ou up for an intentional TPK so he can start a new campaign. I mean thats how i end my campaigns, except for my last one we were kind of like Lets screw this and start a new campaign. Ok.

 

[Joshua Randall]

I'm curious to know how this turns out. Did the dragon encounter happen yet?

Not quite yet. It happens this Thursday (17 August 2006).

Through a combination of other-player ambivalence and dilly-dallying (read: they didn't listen to me), we were not able to do a recon-in-force on the dragon prior to the attack.

We are committed to defending the city. Civilians have already been evacuated. The DM did have some NPC mages approach us with the news that they have made a handful of +1 frost ballista bolts (which some NPC soldiers will use in city defense), strongly implying that the red dragon is indeed vulnerable to cold.

Either that or this is an elaborate screw job.

And for those of you expecting hot girl-on-girl dragon action, get your minds out of the gutter!

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Some stuff to think about:

1. One of the dragon's primary advantages is it's fly speed, and in your situations (stuck defending a city) you are caught sitting back and waiting for it to decided when and where to attack you and the city. It's a losing battle, and you're going to be better served trying to take the battle to the dragon, especially if it's possible to catch the dragon in terrain that limits its mobility.

2. Force spells are key, as are those that do holy damage, and those that bypass SR. Also, keep an eye out for any sonic spells you can prepare -- it's a very rare creature that is immune to sonic attacks.

3. Take a look at your equipment and see if there are things you can move from one character to another to beef up the AC of your tanks. A few points of AC for your squishies isn't going to make much difference, but if you can get one PC who is going to hold the line against the dragon and get his AC up into the 30's you might have a chance to hold the dragon off for a few rounds. That tank should be fighting defensively at the very least.

4. Further augment the survivability of that tank with shield other and similar spells that help redistribute the damage that the dragon is trying to focus on just one character. Remember that it's a lot easier for the cleric to heal himself, standing in the background, than it is to get close enough to heal the fighter on the front line.

5. Check out some of the other spells that you might not look at twice. In RPGA play this weekend at GenCon we made excellent use of benign transposition to get slower, clunkier PCs into position.
Step 1. Rogue tumbles into position.
Step 2. Sorcerer uses benign transposition to swap the rogue for the fighter.
Step 3. Fighter, now in base-to-base contact with the dragon and having suffered no AoOs, brings is full round of attacks down on the dragon.

6. Gettting snatched by a dragon sucks like nothing else. Find a way to get everyone freedom of movement. If the dragon has complete freedom to fly in and out of the battlefield, what's to stop him from flying in, snatching up one character, and then flying away for a few rounds until he's far enough away that he can finish off that character without interference from the rest of the party. Make sure it doesn't happen to you.

Good luck, Josh. Sounds like an exciting night.

-rg

 

[Joshua Randall]

Good thoughts on the tanking. Our plan of last resort is for the cleric to cast delay death on the paladin and let him take one for the team. (Delay death is from SpC -- you don't die at -9 hp but keep going negative; when spell duration ends, if your hp < -9, you die instantly.)

I somehow overlooked Snatching. Bleh. Now I have to figure out a way to cram freedom of movement into the buff-spell mix. (I've been self-delegated as the spell loadout planner.)

Re: benign transposition -- glad to see I'm not the only one who sees the power of this spell. Arguably the most useful 1st-level Sor/Wiz spell in the game.

Anyway, I'll let y'all know how it goes.

 

[Sejs]

Identify a dragon's strengths:

Great arial mobility.
Savage in melee.
High natural armor.
Large size.
Powerful senses.
Low/Moderate spellcasting ability.
Good saves; may be spell resistant.
Powerful breath weapon (of an unknown energy type and formation).
Usually one type of energy resistance.


In response, you want to look at ways to mitigate or counteract those strengths. As the saying goes, strategy is the accumulation of advantages against your opponent, tactics are the deployment of those advantages.

First things first: you want to do everything in your power to restrict that dragon's mobility - if she can leave at any time she chooses, she will win. Tight terrain, thick canopy, underground, something. Check with your DM if he'll allow you to use tanglefoot bags to affect the dragon's wings in anyway.

Don't worry too much about the dragon's spellcasting; chances are at that level it'll be primarily for buffs and shouldn't be too difficult to dispel (though bear in mind she can try to dispel you as well).

You don't have any information about the dragon's energy type; do what information gathering you can, failing that break out Mass Resist Energy after you engage. Have your spellcasters focus on heavy enfeebling spells or non-elemental damaging spells rather than elemental damage. Debuffing the dragon until she glows will also help mitigate some of her melee ability. Slow and Bestow Curse are to cherries, right off the bat, as is Ray of Enfeeblement or anything that doesn't allow a save.

Try not to bunch up during the fight - the more targets she can hit with a single breath weapon the worse off it is for you. At the same time, try to present the dragon with ablative targets - summoned monsters (though mind the fear), undead, or the like. If you've got access to the Planar Binding or Planar Ally spells now would be a good time to use them.

Don't cut corners - if you've got expendible items that you've been squirreling away, put them to use. Possibly invest in some scrolls for spells that are special purpose.

Unless you're really keen on dying should things go sour, have an exit strategy. Teleport or the like, ideally.

 

[painandgreed]

Why is this dragon attacking? With most civilians gone, and probably much of thier stuff, why would a dragon attack a city lacking most of the food and treasure? It's coming after something.

Why would it ever come down to fight the PCs? A huge flying dragon could simply pass the time ripping trees and boulders from the ground well away from the city and dropping them from well above spell and missle range. It could do that until there was no city left standing*. Unless it has to come down to preform some "hands on" job, there is no reason for it ever to even engage the PCs (at leat not till all visable ballista are destroyed anyway).

*In fact, if it has fire breath weapon, it could drop trees till they covered the city and then set them all on fire to burn the city down.

 

[MarkB]

Is it really a dragon? If it's not, then I am going to be really angry. Our very first commune question was: Q: Is (name of creature) a red dragon? A: Yes. That was the only straight^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H direct answer we've received.

Okay, now that does make things seem more than a little screwy. If the dragon were protected from divinations via standard means, i.e. mind blank, you wouldn't even have got that much information with your commune spell. For you to get that answer, but ambivalence on everything else, is more than a little suspicious.

Does this particular red dragon have a history to it? Has it destroyed other towns, and if so, are there any consistent reports from survivors / witnesses concerning its tactics?

 

[Fieari]

What are the chances of using diplomacy, promise of gifts, and other means to convince the Bronze dragon of helping you out?

I'm also interested in the possibility of getting past this dragon's strange aversion to all divination. If the dragon runs away after getting beaten down a bit (any smart dragon would, and as a GM myself, I know that PCs can have a knack for pulling last minute victories out of their rears in the face of overwhelming odds) then try this:

Put Arcane Mark on as many arrowheads as you can.

Hopefully at least one of these arrows will hit their mark.

Now then, when the dragon returns to its lair, use all the divination you can ON THE ARCANE MARK. Do so at frequent intervals while it's retreating, so if the lair is the cause for complete divination breakdown, you'll at least have a general idea of where to look next.

The neat thing is, if you find the lair, odds are oddly in your favor. Lairs are infrequently designed to favor the dragon, for some reason... they tend to be cramped, closed spaces where flight is not much of an option, and where at the very least, you can find bottlenecks and other ways to pin a dragon down.



However, that's only if it runs away. To get it to DO that, I highly reccomend going the poison route. Get yourself a bunch of commoner or war1 flunkies, and equip them all with poison arrows. Have them all fire. If there's at least 20 of them, odds are in your favor of at least one hit. If there's 400 of them, odds are not only of at least one hit, but that there'll be a hit followed by the dragon rolling a nat 1 on it's saving throw. If you can get "Dragon bane" or "Dragon slaying" arrows in particular, all the better, but that'd get VERY expensive, very fast. Poison can be pretty cheap.

Classic dragon slaying technique, and the reason few dragons try taking out an entire city. Terrorizing tactics work much better for demanding tribute anyway.

 

[Stalker0]

Are you aware of any minions the dragon has? You could try scrying on some people the dragon might have had contact with, that might give you some clues. You could try a commune to see if any groups are workign with the dragon, if that pans out scry on them.