Questions about Running the Black Dragon

[FadedC]

Well if you do allow light to cancel the darkness it basically creates 2 possible scenarios

1) Sphere of darkness is absolutely useless because it takes the dragons entire turn to cast, but the wizard can cancel it with a minor action. Using this power actually hurts the dragon because he's given up his entire turn for no effect.

2) The party has no wizard so sphere of darkness is still extremely powerful.

Ultimately I think it's silly to make the black dragon's color defining ability useless to the point that he's actually punished for using it. Allowing a second sphere to override the first light is irrelevent because the dragon is punished for the second sphere just as badly as the first one.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I'm unclear on the distinction between lack of line-of-sight and lack of line-of-effect. How do you edjudicate "attacking the square you expect it to be in" from simply attacking it. (I get that it has concealment.) Any tricks?

Fitz

Here's how I'd treat it (though I've no idea if this is correct per 4E rules): Line of sight is required to target ranged attacks and targeted spells. So no impact on melee attacks (minus the blinded penalties). But unless the character is right next to the dragon, no firing a ranged weapon or targeted spell into the darkness. Line of effect isn't blocked, so firing an area spell into the darkness still works, as long as the spell targets a location and not the dragon itself. That way, it's basically a defense for the party that puts one fighter in front of the dragon, then backs up to pepper it from range. They need to close with the beast to lay the smack on it.

I like the reduction in recharge range, but I think removing the sustain minor or allowing the light cantrip to overcome the darkness is penalizing the dragon too much. Remember, it it a level 4 solo -- suppsoed to be a challenge for a party of level 4 characters. It *should* absolutely stomp a bunch of level 1s (which is why it's in the adventure!).

 

[dm4hire]

I usually rule when darkness and light spells meet, normal lighting prevails as they cancel each other. So if they are in a cave using a light spell then it would still be dark, but not completely dark once eyes got adjusted to it.

 

[FadedC]

I usually rule when darkness and light spells meet, normal lighting prevails as they cancel each other. So if they are in a cave using a light spell then it would still be dark, but not completely dark once eyes got adjusted to it.

In 3.x that is only true if the light spell and the darkness spell are of the same level. If one is higher then the other then the higher level spell negates the lower level one and keeps going. So a daylight spell would counter darkness but a light cantrip would not.

In 4.0 there is no sign of rules on that. Most likely you'd need an ability that specifically negates concealment, since that is the effect provided by the darkness sphere.

 

[Delgar]

Well I ran the dragon against 5 players and lets just say it was one heck of a fight.

In the end I kept forgeting to use it's immediate action tail slap and I forgot to use it's bloodied breath weapon. In the end only the mage was standing and both the paladin and ranger were unable to make their saves and melted into goo from the acid.

I have to say that running this fight was a blast, the players were on the edge of their seat the whole time.

However if you run the darkness as written, well you basically make most of the party completely useless, and I find that just drags all the fun out of it. I only used the darkness once and I allowed the mage to make an int check vs the dragons will to try and light up the darkness with his spell. He succeeded and the table cheered. I consider that a win.

 

[Xorn]

Did your players just continue to sit there in the darkness? Every time I've run the dragon (6 times now) I blast em with acid (and I roll her stealth at +5 for total concealment) and she gets surprise if they don't notice her.

Then the next round I always drop darkness. And every time my players scatter like roaches, both to avoid clustering for the breath weapon, and to keep her from utilizing the darkness. It doesn't move with her, so she ultimately has to drop the darkness if she wants to put it elsewhere.

After they scatter I usually have her roar, as it's her longest range ability, and try to take one of them down. But honestly, she has to get pretty close to her target, so if they just stay the hell away, the darkness becomes less of an issue. Once you get away from the darkness she drops, she has to forgoe attacking in order to drop it down again.

But yeah, if you just stand there in one spot, the darkness is deadly.

And as a reminder--the party is supposed to lose, usually. It's an 875 xp encounter for a 400-600 xp party.

 

[Delgar]

I have no problems with them supposed to lose a tough encounter. To me it comes down to fun factor. It's no fun being shut down. The player asked if he could use his light cantrip to counter the darkness, I made a ruling on the fly and the players cheered.

To me that's a win.

If I ran it as is it would have been a lose. The chamber I had drawn for them was to small for them to get far enough away from his breath weapon and the inability to target the creature in the darkness shuts down all their abilities. It would have been a frustrating fight instead of a fun one in my experience. YMMV of course.

 

[Xorn]

I have no problems with them supposed to lose a tough encounter. To me it comes down to fun factor. It's no fun being shut down. The player asked if he could use his light cantrip to counter the darkness, I made a ruling on the fly and the players cheered.

To me that's a win.

If I ran it as is it would have been a lose. The chamber I had drawn for them was to small for them to get far enough away from his breath weapon and the inability to target the creature in the darkness shuts down all their abilities. It would have been a frustrating fight instead of a fun one in my experience. YMMV of course.

Oh I'm not stating you did the fight wrong--I was just sharing that my group didn't find the darkness to be overpowering. But I used the large chamber from Olgar's original adventure, too--so it's a big cavern; there's room to run. My wizard didn't even slow down--he'd just drop a scorching burst adjacent to the darkness and catch the dragon with it that way, and like I said, my other characters would just stay the heck away.

But yeah, if you can't get away from the darkness, it's really, really nasty. But I'm okay with that--don't fight black dragons in a small room. (I'm pretty sure that rule will extend to any dragon, actually.) My fighter, paladin, and wizard put attacks on the dragon, darkness or no--but my ranger, cleric, and warlock were indeed quite irked with the effect.

That brought up a question too--if area spells are not affected by cover, does that mean Scorching Burst ignores the archer's cover in the Bandit Leaders encounter?

 

[Gort]

I really wish they'd given us a level 1 solo to play with. Wonder if there even are any?

 

[Delgar]

Looks like my Int check vs Wil defense lines up quite nicely with the new dispel magic.