Redone Black Dragon from GenCon

[keterys]

As ongoing 5, or 2 or 3 flat, I could probably live with it. It still has an unfortunate interaction with shroud even at 2 acid damage, if it can trigger multiple times, but it's a lot better.

It'll be interesting to see if the Monster Vault version is already changed, cause they ran into the same problem in playtest. That would amuse me

 

[Evilhalfling]

thanks for the new dragon, I added it to MB immediately.
althought I did drop the shroud power to an encounter ability.

I like the acid blood - would dropping it to 3 damage (8 if vulernerable)
bring it back in-line?

I also updated the young white with better damage, instinctive devouring, and 'shroud of cold' Instead of frightful presense.

 

[MrMyth]

This isn't particularly uncommon actually. In any low level solo fight, if the solo gets the first around and does enough damage to a group without a leader they are doomed. Ironically, a leaderless party is probably better off in heroic than paragon/epic. A leaderless party in epic is slaughtered like lambs to an open roast BBQ, because surgeless healing was nerfed so comprehensively and damage of monsters (and their action economy) was increased so drastically.

Not so much, actually. I just finished running a level 30 campaign, with the epic tier featuring 4 strikers, 1 controller, and 1 defender... and seriously threatening them was tough. By Epic, lack of a leader can be compensated by either simply defensive abilities (warlock often is invisible, sorcerer has lots of immediates to block attacks, etc), a good defender (warden with lots of 'pull enemies in and lock them down' effects) and the right items and powers (Diamond Cinctures, Ring of Tenacious Will, etc).

Surgeless Healing was largely meaningless to them - even before the nerf, that was really the domain of the cleric anyway. They had plenty of surges to spend - the trick was just finding ways to spend them. (Or, of course, just dropping the enemy first).

 

[Herschel]

One other thing that doesn't sit too well with me is that without a leader, it's near impossible to recover from the initial damage the dragon does with the breath and ongoing damage. But I guess that goes in the territory of DM adjusting encounters based on party composition.

If a party is crazy/dumb/reckless enough to go without a leader, I have no sympathy for them.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

nice statblock.

I guess the instnctive devouring allows th young dragon to act like a lurker if needed... it is a charge on an intiative of d20+21, which not so many chars could beat on level 4 (a rogue is on d20+11 max)

Even the second round of attacks will be on a good intiative and stealth and waterbreathing could give a surprise round... all in all, one character or 2 could be quite dead before combat has really begun.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Oh, and I find it funny that there are complains now, that solos are actually dangerous and not grindy anymore...

I guess it just takes a bit of adaption now:

Level 4 enconter challenges a level 4 party now - good (a.k.a intuitive)
Just bashíng and not moving will bring hurt - good
Action economy will be working - good
defenses are hitable for a right levelled party - good
combat gets more brutal when the dragon is bloodid - good

HP are on a reasonable level when the dragon faces 5 players of level 4. The dragon will last no more than 5 rounds.

Edit: it seems, spending an action point to do some heal checks seems like a good idea, once the dragon is bloodied...

 

[Mengu]

I also just realized the dragon has skirmisher/controller hit points, not lurker hit points.

Tried the fight again with a completely different second level party, Dwarf Warden, Half-orc Rogue, Drow Sorcerer, Goliath Runepriest, Human Invoker.

Changes I made were to turn Shroud into an encounter power, and make it so you could end the effect on yourself as a standard action (no check), or on an adjacent ally with a DC 10 heal check.

The fight was really close. Warden's resist 3 form, and Runepriest's resist 2 to allies, stone's endurance at the right time, and -4 penalty to damage rolls made a huge difference in this fight. However very close to the end when the dragon was down to 8 hit points, the instinctive devouring ate the warden, and a recharged breath (the only recharge the whole encounter) reduced the remaining PC's to acidic goo, and the dragon was victorious yet again.

There definitely needs to be some more tweaking if second level PC's are to be able to take on this dragon. The Warden/Runepriest combo was nearly perfect for this fight. And I've been running these fights with fairly optimal PC's, assuming a fresh party, which is not even always going to be the case.

I'm wondering if this dragon may be a more appropriate challenge for a party of 6 rather than party of 5.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

why do you insist, that a second lvl party should be able to beat it down?

edit: scale it down to 2nd level and you are fine. I guess, even level solos being actually dangerous is a feature, not a bug.

 

[Mengu]

If a party is crazy/dumb/reckless enough to go without a leader, I have no sympathy for them.

My typical approach to a game is, play what you want. As DM, I'll adjust encounters to fit your party composition. For kicks, I've tried 5 striker, and 5 defender parties, both of which work fine, the former can get a bit swingy, and the latter can get grindy. Leader is an important (and fantastic) role, but if no one wants to play one, the game still works.

Also in LFR games, you don't always pick your party composition. I've played in plenty of parties with no leader, lots with no controller, and some with no defender. It's all survivable.

 

[Mengu]

why do you insist, that a second lvl party should be able to beat it down?

edit: scale it down to 2nd level and you are fine. I guess, even level solos being actually dangerous is a feature, not a bug.

Because level-1, level-2 encounters are easy, level and level+1 encounters are standard, level+2 and level+3 encounters are hard. And as DM, you're supposed to vary the difficulty of encounters. So it is entirely possible that you may want your hard encounter of the day to be against a dragon, which means you should be able to pit this level 4 solo against a level 2 party, and they should be able to survive it, depleting a good bit of their daily resources.

If encounter difficulty definitions are going to change, so level and level+1 means hard, level-1 is standard, level-2 is easy, we need a heads up.