Fieari
Explorer
Okay. Well, I have a heart for the little itsy bitsy baby dragons. And of course, for a low level party, they can be quite deadly indeed. But of course you know, that dragons of any age are CR'd for a party prepared for the fight. Upper Krust's more rigourous re-CRing of monsters, which has affectionatly been named KR, states that the white wyrmling, CR 2, is KR 4, twice the value. That's pretty consistant across the board with dragons. They're dangerous little snots, and wizards of the coast would like to pretend they're weaker than they are, grouping them with weaker encounters, hoping to garauntee a "memorable" fight with each fight.
I wanted to remind the players that all chromatic dragons are devious little monsters worthy of respect. So when they were somewhere between level 3 and 5 (I forget exactly), I "trapped" a room by making it the lair of an orphan white hatchling. The room in question being the cold storage room in a mysterious abandoned castle.
After being told that the door handle was icy cold, they spent a fair bit of time trying to disarm the "trap" before finally having the rogue open the door, cautiously, releasing the tiny little fellow to wreak havok. It won initiative, and strafed them with a fly-by breath attack, and since they were inside a castle with narrow corridors, it's manueverability enabled it to completely clear line-of-sight by dodging around a corner... actually, two corners.
The adventurers were not impressed. I mean, the little thing was a white dragon, the weakest of all dragons, right? And it was a freaking Hatchling! Size of a housecat, and they were intrepid adventurers, with bright shiney swords and spells and things!
So they chased after the little snot. But of course, none of them were faster than it, and they all failed their spot checks as the dragon got itself a brandnew surprise round on them, comming up from behind, strafing them with the breath weapon again, and zipping down another corridor. They never even got a shot off at it.
Well, now the party is really annoyed. They split up, deciding to alert the others by voice when they see it again, and array themselves tactically so that even if one person gets surprised, they won't ALL be caught off guard. So they finally win initiative on the thing (I had them keep rerolling initiative, because the lil' fellow kept going off to hide before attacking again; eager to keep surprising the bigjobs) and they still have to deal with 15' ceilings and a tiny li'l blighter that can fly out reach of their melee attacks while still nailing them with its breath weapon.
Now, the party composition is Monk, Rogue, Bard, Sorcerer. They have ranged weapons, they're just not all that good with them. So they're missing quite a lot, and it has some cure light wounds potions in its hoard, and now it knows that the most dangerous fellow is the sorcerer with fire magic. So the next time it comes back, and the party is split up again, it lands for a full attack or two on the sorcerer, who drops, and the wyrmling is off again before the rest of the party can really do anything.
This keeps up for a while, and the party has learned to respect the little guy quite a bit. They finally take care of it with a rather good Fascinate roll on the part of the bard.
In fact, the party was so impressed by him, that they put him to sleep (nonlethal damage, not a spell), caged him up, and decided to try to train him via draconomicon rules, hopefully changing its alignment first. But that's another story.
I wanted to remind the players that all chromatic dragons are devious little monsters worthy of respect. So when they were somewhere between level 3 and 5 (I forget exactly), I "trapped" a room by making it the lair of an orphan white hatchling. The room in question being the cold storage room in a mysterious abandoned castle.
After being told that the door handle was icy cold, they spent a fair bit of time trying to disarm the "trap" before finally having the rogue open the door, cautiously, releasing the tiny little fellow to wreak havok. It won initiative, and strafed them with a fly-by breath attack, and since they were inside a castle with narrow corridors, it's manueverability enabled it to completely clear line-of-sight by dodging around a corner... actually, two corners.
The adventurers were not impressed. I mean, the little thing was a white dragon, the weakest of all dragons, right? And it was a freaking Hatchling! Size of a housecat, and they were intrepid adventurers, with bright shiney swords and spells and things!
So they chased after the little snot. But of course, none of them were faster than it, and they all failed their spot checks as the dragon got itself a brandnew surprise round on them, comming up from behind, strafing them with the breath weapon again, and zipping down another corridor. They never even got a shot off at it.
Well, now the party is really annoyed. They split up, deciding to alert the others by voice when they see it again, and array themselves tactically so that even if one person gets surprised, they won't ALL be caught off guard. So they finally win initiative on the thing (I had them keep rerolling initiative, because the lil' fellow kept going off to hide before attacking again; eager to keep surprising the bigjobs) and they still have to deal with 15' ceilings and a tiny li'l blighter that can fly out reach of their melee attacks while still nailing them with its breath weapon.
Now, the party composition is Monk, Rogue, Bard, Sorcerer. They have ranged weapons, they're just not all that good with them. So they're missing quite a lot, and it has some cure light wounds potions in its hoard, and now it knows that the most dangerous fellow is the sorcerer with fire magic. So the next time it comes back, and the party is split up again, it lands for a full attack or two on the sorcerer, who drops, and the wyrmling is off again before the rest of the party can really do anything.
This keeps up for a while, and the party has learned to respect the little guy quite a bit. They finally take care of it with a rather good Fascinate roll on the part of the bard.
In fact, the party was so impressed by him, that they put him to sleep (nonlethal damage, not a spell), caged him up, and decided to try to train him via draconomicon rules, hopefully changing its alignment first. But that's another story.
