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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iosue" data-source="post: 6403814" data-attributes="member: 6680772">My problem with that is that the actual situation is not so binary as I win vs I lose.  I mean, the very title of this thread is "How we beat the Half-Dragon".  So you'll have to forgive me if I'm skeptical of the "preordained to lose" argument.  Nor do PCs even have to engage in the encounter.  By the book, the DM should not punish the characters for not volunteering.(On the flip side of this, we have the argument that the players themselves feel bad if they don't volunteer.  But, by the same token, they don't then feel any joy or accomplishment by the sister and children being saved.  Which makes no sense to me.)Finally, even if a player volunteers, and even if he loses, what happens between those two points has meaning and interest.  Just as an example, my character went out to fight Cyanwrath.  He was given Bardic Inspiration.  First up, Cyanwrath breathes on me.  I have Shield Mastery so if I make the save, no damage.  I rolled an 11, and everyone at the table thought I was done for.  Then I tossed on the Bardic Inspiration and made it.  The way we ended up imagining it was that from the perspective of everyone else, my character vanished in a flash of sustained lightning, until suddenly I stood up, my shield holding the lightning at bay.  (Let's just assume cinematic physics.)  After that, I knocked him down with my shield and hit him for some decent damage.  On his next attack, he hit me and took me out.So, yeah, my character volunteered to fight in a mismatch and lost.  But what happened was not just that.  There were moments of tension, moments of drama, moments of awesome.  And ultimately the villagers were saved, which was a win in my personal book, since that's what I went out there for in the first place.  Had Cyanwrath had no hostages, and was just calling out for a challenger to fight, I wouldn't have gone.  In the end, what we have is merely the situation: CR 4 Half-dragon calls out for a champion to fight for the lives of villagers.  That's the long and the short of it.  There is no plot point that hinges on the PCs doing one particular action.  There are no designated Win or Lose conditions within the adventure.  What happens next is entirely up to the characters, and the variations are near infinite.</blockquote>

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