Pielorinho
Iron Fist of Pelor
Okay, Spider, you wanna play rough? You wanna create a thread for ideas that we can't join? Fine, then -- shoo, shoo!
Last session ended with out party stumbling on the lair of a huge red dragon. Through the use of combined tactics, we barely escaped without a single death; had we stood to fight, I believe we all would have died.
But this session, we need to go back into the face of danger, and I want some ideas for doing so.
Before I continue, this thread contains spoilers for RttToEE. Since I'm playing in it, I'd appreciate other folks not further spoiling the adventure: no saying, "Well, past the red dragon's lair is an underground river which you could use for cover" or anything like that. However, if you're playing through the adventure yourself, beware the spoilers I'm gonna post.
So here's the sitch.
After bumbling around the Dwarven Mines for a long time, we've finally decided to cross the stalagos and go after the bad boys inside. Our party consists of:
* A sorcerer9, reincarnated as a swarm of bees (basically, has no weight and can barely use equipment), who's good at lightning bolts, Otto's Resilient Sphere, and Dimension Door, and can also dispel magic.
* An elven monk/rog with 11 levels, with an AC in the high 20s/low 30s and a decent longbow
* A dwarven cleric10, with the earth domain and one other domain
* A dwarven cohort fighter8 (?) whom we've not yet seen but who will probably be a tank; and
* Myself, a dwarven druid10 with an emphasis on earth-magic and a prayer bead of karma and the natural spell feat.
We planned our entrance to the inner temple carefully, wearing disguises and learning passwords and so forth, and did such a good job of it that we didn't alert the perimeter guards nor activate the gigantic lightning rods that surround the stalagos. We made it to an inner door without incident and unlocked it, finding ourselves in the doorway of a massive torchlit room --
-- and then the huge, 10' by 20' red dragon in the middle of the room lifted its head and looked at us. It greeted us as temple worshippers for a brief moment before registering that no, under our evil-guy cloaks, we weren't Tharizdunophiles at all.
We got our butts out of there quickly. Wall of thorns on the doorway and on the dragon. Monk goes running his butt for safety. Sorcerer dimension doors the druid and the cleric across the bridge.
As the monk goes running, he starts getting peppered by magic missiles and nearly dies, so the sorcerer goes back via dimension door and rescues him. Once we're all safely back on the other side of the bridge, we sealed the passageway with a wall of stone.
And there we ended, shaken but alive. I had all kinds of spells prepared that were totally useless: transmute rock to mud doesn't work on worked stone, and flamestrike just tickles red dragons.
Here's the email I sent to my fellow players:
Do y'all have other ideas that we should be thinking about? What would be good tactics for a group such as ours to use against such a massive dragon?
Daniel
Last session ended with out party stumbling on the lair of a huge red dragon. Through the use of combined tactics, we barely escaped without a single death; had we stood to fight, I believe we all would have died.
But this session, we need to go back into the face of danger, and I want some ideas for doing so.
Before I continue, this thread contains spoilers for RttToEE. Since I'm playing in it, I'd appreciate other folks not further spoiling the adventure: no saying, "Well, past the red dragon's lair is an underground river which you could use for cover" or anything like that. However, if you're playing through the adventure yourself, beware the spoilers I'm gonna post.
So here's the sitch.
After bumbling around the Dwarven Mines for a long time, we've finally decided to cross the stalagos and go after the bad boys inside. Our party consists of:
* A sorcerer9, reincarnated as a swarm of bees (basically, has no weight and can barely use equipment), who's good at lightning bolts, Otto's Resilient Sphere, and Dimension Door, and can also dispel magic.
* An elven monk/rog with 11 levels, with an AC in the high 20s/low 30s and a decent longbow
* A dwarven cleric10, with the earth domain and one other domain
* A dwarven cohort fighter8 (?) whom we've not yet seen but who will probably be a tank; and
* Myself, a dwarven druid10 with an emphasis on earth-magic and a prayer bead of karma and the natural spell feat.
We planned our entrance to the inner temple carefully, wearing disguises and learning passwords and so forth, and did such a good job of it that we didn't alert the perimeter guards nor activate the gigantic lightning rods that surround the stalagos. We made it to an inner door without incident and unlocked it, finding ourselves in the doorway of a massive torchlit room --
-- and then the huge, 10' by 20' red dragon in the middle of the room lifted its head and looked at us. It greeted us as temple worshippers for a brief moment before registering that no, under our evil-guy cloaks, we weren't Tharizdunophiles at all.
We got our butts out of there quickly. Wall of thorns on the doorway and on the dragon. Monk goes running his butt for safety. Sorcerer dimension doors the druid and the cleric across the bridge.
As the monk goes running, he starts getting peppered by magic missiles and nearly dies, so the sorcerer goes back via dimension door and rescues him. Once we're all safely back on the other side of the bridge, we sealed the passageway with a wall of stone.
And there we ended, shaken but alive. I had all kinds of spells prepared that were totally useless: transmute rock to mud doesn't work on worked stone, and flamestrike just tickles red dragons.
Here's the email I sent to my fellow players:
Thoughts I've had:
1) The bad guys now know we're coming.
2) They'll have time to prepare their turf.
3) They may prepare in one of a couple of ways: they may either attack us straight out the gate (i.e., over the stalagos) or they may wait until we get into the complex and then attack, trying to wall us in. We need to have contingencies for either plan.
4) If we take the fight to them, we'll be taking it to a battleground that they have prepared.
5) If we go somewhere else, they may perform divinations to anticipate our moves.
We've got lots stacked against us. In our favor, we have:
1) We know about the red dragon, and can prepare for fighting it if we decide that's an appropriate course.
2) We know about the wasps and the magic-missile casters, and can similarly prepare for them.
3) We have relatively flexible tactics; if they prepare for the last battle, we might be able to surprise them by fighting differently.
4) We know other routes in: if they prepare to fight us in the red dragon's lair, we might find it easier to take a different approach altogether.
5) We have access to scry and divination, both of which will help us figure out what they might be up to.
So, ideas:
* Wear our amulets and other protections, cover ourselves with invisibility, fly, and go in upstairs -- i.e., fly in through the same towers that were spitting out wasps before.
* Same as above, but go in through the boats we found underground.
* Go head-to-head vs. the red dragon. On entering, immediately prepare the battlefield by casting wall of stone just inside the entryway to create battlements with arrow-slits and such. Cast various protection spells on all of us, and cast dispel magic on the red dragon straightaway. I can ready a quench spell to deal with its first fireblast; if it turns out to be a nasty spellcaster, I can fill the area with an insect plague, at least temporarily preventing it from casting spells (and possibly frightening off any lower-level mooks in the area. I might also summon some arrowhawks to help whittle away the hit points, and it might not be a bad idea for our new cleric friend to do likewise (or summon some other critter with fire resistance and a touch attack). If we do this, hopefully the sorcerer can keep a dimension door handy for when the dragon starts beating our butts into the pavement.
Do y'all have other ideas that we should be thinking about? What would be good tactics for a group such as ours to use against such a massive dragon?
Daniel