ON the superiority of dragons

[tauton_ikhnos]

A problem iam seeing is DMs not having the dragons go for the kill, If someone pulls back from combat, the dragon should be taking them out if he is smart enough to see that sign of weakness.

Our GM would love you. We don't even bother pulling back anymore, unless it's a lame mother duck ploy - it just draws fire. Usually lots of it

The dragon we fought exercised good tactics, given the info he had - I hit him first, and hardest, in the first round, so he picked me as 'teh b****', and started whaling on me. I beat his first grapple attempt (OOC, nat 20, easily luckiest roll of the night) by a huge margin, so he gave that up, went to plan B, just killing me. (D&D tactic numero uno: concentrated fire)

If he'd lasted to his Initiative in the 3rd round, he'd have killed me, then probably run and healed, then come back and did in the other two jerks whacking him.

Of course, "run away" would have brought him up against wizard's wall of stone, but them's the breaks.

 

[Crothian]

4 people loosing 80% of thier HP sounds fishy to me, now 3 people loosing +100% of thier HP sounds more like a dragon fight.

The battle happened in the air. One was taken out but he didn't die, he feel to the earth and weas able to heal himself. The mount and the archer where on the ground and both had gotten hit with the breathe weapon (quickened), and it wasn't enough to fully take them out. The physical attacks were at the elf who flying and in hand to hand combat. After taking out the first flyer, the dragon just wasn't able to take out the next.

 

[Endur]

One thing I've learned about Dragon fights is that Dragons should NEVER do a full attack (unless they are about to die or they are arrogant).

A cautious dragon should always do fly-by's. A dragon who does a full attack, even if he does more damage than the pc does, is a stationary target and tends to take damage from the melee pcs.

A fly-by dragon tends to only take melee damage from held actions and missile fire.

The other detail to remember is that if you roll a 1 on the d4 for the breath weapon, you get to blast the enemy with the breath weapon two rounds in a row. That can be deadly when you are circling around, doing flybys.

The snatch feat is great combined with a flyby. You can snatch an enemy, fly away, then drop him. Effectively splitting the party.

 

[Altalazar]

"If it bleeds, we can kill it."

Dragons are an opponent like any other. Many of them aren't all that smart, some are downright stupid.

They are neither tougher nor easier than their CR would suggest if played correctly and also with the correct level of intelligence and experience. A very young dragon is less experienced than a teenage humanoid, and probably a lot dumber as well. Which is probably why dragons aren't all that common.

So there is nothing really special about Dragons, aside from the fact that they are the second half of the name of the game...

 

[Calico_Jack73]

Nope not true. Last night the part y of 10th level characters went against a CR 12 Fang Dragon that was specifically designed by me using the Draconimicon.

If memory serves, Fang Dragons don't have a breath weapon so that nullifies the flying advantage as the dragon has to get into melee range to do anything to the party. Sure they do more damage in melee than a equal CR Metallic/Chromatic but a flying metallic/chromatic is only going to be vulnerable to ranged attacks which do far less damage than a typical party's tanks are going to be able to dish out with swords and axes.

If I were running a dragon intelligently I'd probably have it fly over the party with it's breath weapon all the while watching for spellcasters. Once the spellcaster is located I'd fly over and perform and grab the caster (possibly another character) and fly up to a decent altitude to drop them from (with 1d6 damage for every 10' I'd have it fly up to 10,000'... that'd kill just about anything). Even if the caster has featherfall it is going to take a while for him to float back to the ground and in the meantime it is just the caster and the dragon with the dragon flying by while breathing and biting. After the caster is dead I'd just continue with the firebreathing flybys. If near a watery domain the best thing a dragon could do would be to pop up, breath, and pop back down. Most area effect spells aren't going to do too much to a dragon submerged in water. Actually the best way to deal with a caster is for the dragon to grab it and dive into the middle of a lake. Try casting spells when your lungs are filling up with water. The dragon could stay below until the caster drowns. It'd also work well against heavily armored warriors. Hope you can swim in that plate mail my friend!

 

[Mercule]

I just ran a one-shot that culminated in a battle against a MA red (specifically, using the stats but not personality from the MA red in Draconomicon). The party was all 15th ECL and consisted of a Halfling Rogue, Troll/Half-Gold Dragon Ranger, Githzerai Psion, Human Cleric, and Half-Ogre Fighter. The dragon also had an elder earth elemental servitor (protected from heat), while the party had Planar Allied a Planetar.

The dragon laired in a cavern in the bowels of an active volcano. Which is to say it was hot and there was much lava. Over the lava was a network of stone-shaped catwalks that the dragon's minions could use to seek audience with the dragon (it was more throne room than lair -- that was in a side chamber).

The combat took almost six real-time hours and around 30 game rounds to play out. I'm pretty sure the dragon (CR 18) would have wiped the floor with the PCs (ECL 15) if I hadn't pulled a couple of punches and, eventually, just decided to have the dragon's arrogance make it land for a full-attack on the half-ogre. That last was done, essentially because the PCs were regrouping for a plane shift and I didn't want to deal with another 6 hour combat for a one-shot.

Dragons, if played to full ability can be way nasty. That's even without metagaming them.

 

[TwoSix]

On dragons being superior, and also totally sweet.

Facts:
1. Dragons are reptiles.

2. Dragons fight ALL the time.

3. The purpose of the dragon is to flip out and kill people.

Dragons can kill anyone they want! Dragons bite off heads ALL the time and don't even think twice about it. These monsters are so crazy and awesome that they flip out ALL the time. I heard that there was this dragon who was eating a diner. And when some dude dropped a iron ration the dragon killed the whole town. My friend Regdar said that he saw a dragon totally use his breath weapon on some kid just because the kid opened a window.