How To Kill An Adult Black Dragon Without Dying Of Boredom

[helium3]

I would think that logically magical darkness trumps natural light (although a great source like being outside in the sun should weaken it a bit), since otherwise it would be impossible to use Cloud of Darkness outside in the daytime.

It was night with a full moon. The ambient light conditions were dim. They had a light source, but it wasn't where the Dragon made the cloud of darkness.

In fact, I had been constantly reminding them to remember their light source and I finally just stopped and let them suffer a while because of it. Then, I said "by the way, don't forget you have Holy Lantern up."

It's -5 actually, which is a big advantage for the dragon. I wonder if fourth edition allows you to add +x to your attack role if your opponent is a certain size? If not I'd certainly lower the penalty for concealment for such a large creature. It's a dragon for God sake, they aren't that hard to hit. It's getting through the scales that's the hard part

Right. -5 is a much bigger deal. I don't recall anyone actually trying to attack the dragon while it was in the cloud.

 

[helium3]

From my understanding, if a creature is in multiple zones, it only takes damage from the highest damage zone.

You are correct!!

My goodness, an actual rule in the PHB on what seems like a fairly obvious situation groups are going to run into.

Weird rule though.

 

[helium3]

Yeah, I also have to wonder why the OP started at level 10. I'm not going to be playing that level for a good long time.

Eh. Me and some of my players have a pretty decent handle on 4E (though not as good as we would if we had played to 10th level) and some of them are strongly agitating for switching. I have other players who haven't been paying attention to the big switch at all.

The whole series of encounters was a "ritual" that the current arc's BB (a night hag) cast in order to throw the party into a "nightmare."

The point of the endeavor was mostly just to show everyone what playing 4E was like. I wanted to do something higher than 1st level, as playing 3E at first level isn't really indicative of what playing 3E at 7th level is like.

 

[Bialaska]

If "system mastery" is still required at levels 3+ then where's the advantage. It's not like any of the other editions were any more difficult to learn at 1st level.

It may take only a few minutes for new players to skim over their powers and get an understanding of what they can do, but it takes far longer time to truly use a high level character optimally.

I play in a high-level tabletop D&D 3.5 campaign and while I've been playing 3.5 ever since it came out and would say I got a pretty good grasp on various things, it still took me about 3 sessions for my newly created character to fit in with the rest of the team.

4e is far more tactical than 3.X and when the players start understanding and taking advantage of the sliding enemies around and altering the conditions for battle, I think the group would be able to take down the dragon faster.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The dragon's bloodied mechanic is a free use of his breath weapon. Not such a big deal and certainly wouldn't have changed the encounter dynamics in any significant way.

There's more then just the Dragons power itself depending on Bloodied.
But in this case,there might not have been.
(Typical examples are Dragonborn and Tiefling special abilities if bloodied or fighting bloodied foes, the Paragon feat, at least one Rogue ability that becomes better against bloodied foes...)

 

[Byronic]

In fact, I had been constantly reminding them to remember their light source and I finally just stopped and let them suffer a while because of it. Then, I said "by the way, don't forget you have Holy Lantern up."

I'd definitely allow such a thing to cancel or at least weaken the darkness.

 

[Gort]

And yeah, all total concealment does now is give you a -2 to your attack.

Not sure where you got this idea. It's -5.

Page 281, PHB.

 

[helium3]

There's more then just the Dragons power itself depending on Bloodied.
But in this case,there might not have been.
(Typical examples are Dragonborn and Tiefling special abilities if bloodied or fighting bloodied foes, the Paragon feat, at least one Rogue ability that becomes better against bloodied foes...)

Ahhh . . . I get what you're saying. Character powers that depend on the target being bloodied.

It'll be interesting to see what happens when those kick in.

 

[helium3]

Not sure where you got this idea. It's -5.

Page 281, PHB.

Yeah. Someone else already corrected me.

 

[keterys]

At level 11+, solos gain 25% more hp (to match the spike up from players also hitting 11) which is notable. They're x5 instead of x4 basically.

Personally, I think that 4e is strongest with multiple combatants, so I think it's best to do things like a level 10 party against a level 10 (or even 9) dragon... and some other things with it. Including environmental traps, like having a ceiling to cave in at some point during the battle. This can include things that it draws in as reinforcements, like instead of creating a normal cloud of darkness it creates a creature of darkness that tries to kill them. Etc.

Just more interesting.