So is this indeed how it works?

[Erithtotl]

Friend of mine after seeing the 4e Monster Manual:

An Ancient Red Dragon has 1390hp, but its attacks are pitiful for something that level - its bite does 45 on average, or it can make two claw attacks for 25 average damage each, it has some conditional attacks (breath weapon, tail slap) that do 30-odd damage, and a frightful presence ability. Assuming an ancient gold dragon is similar (they have no stats for metallic dragons in the MM), a fight between them would be pure comedy - they have so much fire resistance they'd be stuck clawing each other for best damage, and since they'd only be able to hit their own (or their enemy's) AC 1/2 the time, we're talking about 25 points of damage per round as two 30th level monsters duke it out. 55 rounds for one of them to die.

From what I have heard this is in line with other comments about 4e combat.

Is this indeed reality, and how is it a good thing? If it is not, where is the misconception?

 

[Agamon]

It's not about dragons fighting each other. In what game has a DM rolled out a fight between two dragons while the PCs sit and watch? (Please let me know and I'll be sure to steer clear of it)

Solo monsters a built so they can fight 5 PCs, not another dragon. If dragons fight each other, the DM has his fiat to say what happens.

 

[Erithtotl]

It's not about dragons fighting each other. In what game has a DM rolled out a fight between two dragons while the PCs sit and watch? (Please let me know and I'll be sure to steer clear of it)

Solo monsters a built so they can fight 5 PCs, not another dragon. If dragons fight each other, the DM has his fiat to say what happens.

I knew someone was going to say that. I realize that 4e throws internal consistency out the window. But wouldn't this play out the same way against a high level human fighter?

 

[Shroomy]

I knew someone was going to say that. I realize that 4e throws internal consistency out the window. But wouldn't this play out the same way against a high level human fighter?

A high-level fighter doesn't have a 1000+ hit points, more like somewhere in the 200-240 range.

 

[Victoly]

I knew someone was going to say that. I realize that 4e throws internal consistency out the window. But wouldn't this play out the same way against a high level human fighter?

Why would a single fighter be facing off against a solo monster?

 

[Incenjucar]

...Wait.. is.. is it news that AOE damage is not superior to targeted damage against a single opponent....?

...Isn't.. isn't that how it has been since.... I mean even in the real world usually...

Also, I highly approve of a dragon vs. dragon fight taking hours.

These are dragons. When they take a LEAK it should be epic.

 

[Henry]

Also considering that's five minutes of fighting for one force of nature to tear another force of nature apart, that suits me just fine. Dragons shouldn't be push-overs, not even to other dragons!

But I mainly subscribe to what Agamon says - Pitting two dragons against one another to try and prove something about game balance is like under 3e pitting two creatures of the same challenge rating against one another and saying they're supposed to be equal -- the designers repeatedly said that was meaningless, because the CRs were designed with monsters vs. PCs in mind.

A high-level fighter doesn't have a 1000+ hit points, more like somewhere in the 200-240 range.

Nor does he likely have Fire immunity to the dragon's breath.

 

[Colmarr]

Is this indeed reality, and how is it a good thing?

Fifty five rounds is five and half minutes.

If you pit the two largest dragons in the world against each other and they're immune to each other's breath weapons (which isn't unreasonable), I'd expect the fight to last at least that long, smashing trees, mountains, houses and anything else silly enough to be in the vicinity.

While I do have some quasi-concerns about the lack of "capacity to kill myself" that most monsters seem to have, this isn't one example that bothers me.

EDIT: Ninjad by Henry

 

[Erithtotl]

...Wait.. is.. is it news that AOE damage is not superior to targeted damage against a single opponent....?

...Isn't.. isn't that how it has been since.... I mean even in the real world usually...

Also, I highly approve of a dragon vs. dragon fight taking hours.

These are dragons. When they take a LEAK it should be epic.

It's not epic. It's long and boring. It's I claw you, you claw me, I claw you, you claw me, nothing else.

 

[Lurker37]

I'm quite seriously not sure where you're coming from here.

Why should a battle between two titans be over in a few seconds?

How would that be good for the game?

It seems to me that a battle between two titans ought to take long enough for the PCs to be located, begged for help, and come to intervene (whether by negotiating or by killing the first dragon who looks at them funny) before the dragons wipe out half the kingdom in their battle.

This is actually a trope of fantasy - two large powerful creatures constantly fighting, but neither able to kill the other. Being able to reproduce this in game without players sitting up and wondering how the heck the fight lasted more than a minute is not, IMO, a bad thing.

Further to that, there ought to be some way to introduce the concept that this is one in a series of running battles, sometimes with two or more days between them, which have been causing havok all over the countryside and demolished several small villages. For this to be believable, neither dragon should be within a couple of rounds of dropping dead after becoming bloodied. They need time to decide 'bother this for a game of soldiers' and disengage, so the fight can continue another day.

So a series of long-drawn out battles provides adventure hooks and makes the PCs important (assuming they've reached the appropriate levels to deal with said dragons). I'm not really clear on what one dragon killing the other in a handful of rounds achieves.