Redone Black Dragon from GenCon

[Herschel]

Survivable usually, but I definitely design incentives to having a balanced party. Nobody wanting to play a leader is goofy and I generally don't have mercy on them for that. Sub-optimal characters are fine, but the party should start with a Leader and a Defender and whatever else fills in after is good but designing and running encounters also needs to be fun for me, and leaderless parties in campaings or repeatedly ruin my fun.

 

[keterys]

Level 4 enconter challenges a level 4 party now - good (a.k.a intuitive)

Sort of... what if you want the dragon to have backup, or minions? The system has repeatedly said we should be having encounters of level +1 to level +3 to challenge people, and that an even level fight is a relatively easy fight that will eat up some resources.

Just bashíng and not moving will bring hurt - good

Overly simplified analysis. Some groups may have literally nothing they can do about it. It's not like you can shift away after your turn to avoid getting hit when _you_ hit it, and it's not like the prone guys from tail sweep can avoid being adjacent, or the unconscious allies the dragon is standing next to...

Action economy will be working - good

On the monster side, this is true. This is a very good thing - its shroud might potentially be worse on a player-side action economy than the frightful presence was. That one is trickier to guage.

defenses are hitable for a right levelled party - good
combat gets more brutal when the dragon is bloodid - good

Both good, though again the method to get there may not be appropriate for all parties. You're missing the fact that the objections are not with the concept behind the changes, those are largely getting applauded, but with the actual math behind them that appears to be overboard.

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

If they're having to use thrown weapons because they can't melee, this might not be true. Also, you may not be factoring in the -2 attacks from shroud, nor how often party members may be down. This could easily go more rounds.

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

Cause the DMG says it should work that way, and all of the other monsters work that way? I mean, just putting it out there.

Only if all of the other monsters are also changed to have a high likelyhood of TPKing at n+2 is it really appropriate.

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.

Not necessarily - that doesn't make a large difference in its damage.

How many normal monsters worth of threat should a solo be? Ie, should a group be able to do an n+2 encounter with non-solos with the same danger level as an n level encounter with a solo? In what way is that good design?

 

[UngeheuerLich]

we just need to change our perception of medium and hard. level +0 should be the default difficulty. New monster building guidelines effectively made monsters as hard as they should be, reducing the too fast level advancement (it was faster than the promised 10 encounters) and reducing grind by effectively reducing defenses and HP. As level +0 is the new level +2... so you say the dragon needs tweaking, I say, you should adapt to the new dragon and use it solo and at level 4. Maybe it will make a great encounter, just by itself... what we all wanted from the start...

@ minions... it is just a higher level encounter then

@ -2 to hit, -2 damage, -2 defenses -64 hp, i.e -32 hp while bloodied...

i guess that makes a lot of difference actually... (you can basically fight with shroud on and be still effective than before...

also fail to see, how overpowered 18 main to 14 main is, when effectively doing this to a monster is no large difference...

i guess normal monsters are also harder now... so normal monsters at +0 are also difficult enough now...

 

[keterys]

Which would be totally fine...

If the rest of the system worked that way...

Which it doesn't. That's the entire point

 

[UngeheuerLich]

won´t it after new guidelines and essentials monster vault and dm kit?

Isn´t that the entire point? Maybe the new black dragon is slightly op for its level, i admit... but it should be much more fun out of the box, a IIRC the old black dragon was OP too, but in a very grindy way...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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 monster level should indicate level of challenge, otherwise what is the point of ranking monsters by level? This was the problem with 3.x's CR system, it was worthless because you couldn't conclude ANYTHING from CR, it was just a meaningless number that maybe vaguely hinted at whether the opponent was good for high or low level play.

So, if 5 standard monsters of level+3 should be a punishingly difficult but doable encounter, then a single level+3 solo should be as well. Obviously nothing is perfect, but if the encounter is basically almost impossible even without terrain then the monster is effectively more like level 7 and should be labeled as such. More to the point it should be cut back a bit so it actually IS a level 5 encounter.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Risking to repeat myself:

- CR worked well in 3.x - not perfectly but very close - you just need to put a bit more effort in it to make it work (looking at subtle things like int etc, using appropriate tactics not metagaming too much)

- level +3 normal monsters with new damage and design guidelines seem too be hard, not standard encounters now.
- maybe the black dragon is a little bit stronger as needed but pretty close to what i expect.

 

[MrMyth]

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.

Well, remember that a level+2 fight is legitimately classified as a "hard" encounter. A fight that could swing either way could fall into that category.

I suspect that it is very much a fight you need to play 'smart' to win. You need to balance getting close to allies (to cleanse them of the Shroud) with staying spread out (to avoid breath weapon and tail swipe).

The biggest danger that I see is simply it going nova at the start of a fight. Get a surprise round, which is uses to charge (instinct) and dragon breath. Round 1, good chance of winning init, and if breath recharges, it shrouds and action points to breath again. That will leave a party in real bad shape.

Of course, sometimes that just means they need to try and run for it. This guy is fragile, so a group that isn't immediately put on the complete defensive can probably hammer him down real fast.

 

[MrMyth]

So, if 5 standard monsters of level+3 should be a punishingly difficult but doable encounter, then a single level+3 solo should be as well. Obviously nothing is perfect, but if the encounter is basically almost impossible even without terrain then the monster is effectively more like level 7 and should be labeled as such. More to the point it should be cut back a bit so it actually IS a level 5 encounter.

We've seen one test that results in the dragon wiping the party twice - that doesn't mean it is a guaranteed death. I can just as easily imagine 5 monsters of level+2 taking down a party as well. My first intro to 4E, when it was previewed at Winter Fantasy, I think, involved one adventure that got TPKed by some hobgoblins, and another that got TPKed by the original black dragon. Was the problem the specific monsters, or that we were playing some pregen characters again level +2 or +3 encounters?

That's the point - this is a hard encounter, whether it is a dragon or otherwise. Is it too hard? Maybe, though I don't think we have enough experience yet to really judge.

I suspect well optimized level 2 characters will still be able to handle this guy. I suspect an average group of level 2 PCs will find it a tough fight and maybe die. I suspect an average group of level 4 PCs will be able to handle this guy.

Really, the biggest danger I see is that a fight with this guy can get too easily influenced by a few circumstances - it becomes a lot harder a fight if he surprises the party and catches them in a tight environment. How much does the DM take that into account? That's always been a tough question to answer.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Yes, going nova at the beginning of a fight seems stupid. Maybe when using them wiselyat the second part of the encounter, the dragon can be killed rater easily. Aiding another also seems to be a good idea to get high damage dailies in. So i guess this design will mak combats memorable...