unan oranis
First Post
The last encounter was a surprise attack by the youngest white dragon (solo brute lvl3) vs 5 1st lvl pc's who had used all of their dailies and most of their surges.
My "eyeballing" ability was pretty much off-line because it's a totally new edition, and when the bastard rolled a crit with his breath weapon on one of the rogues I thought I had made a mistake.
I gave the pc's two free action diplomacy rolls as an attempt to parlay, dc25, and they failed... so like any dm worth his dice I stuck to my guns and fired up a screaming tpk attempt. After all, I had given the pc's two perception vs 20 checks each to notice the dragon, and a cryptic warning from a spirit to "watch the skies", which they had ignored. It had been a bad day in general, the warlord had rolled four natural 1's in the last battle.
The warlock, ranger and one of the rogues weren't hit by the surprise breathweapon, everyone beat the dragons iniative, and lumped out 83 points of damage due to 3 or 4 crits, and high damage rolls (they all used an action point). Vs an AC of 18, not too shabby. And two of the party were dishing out half damage.
Everyone affected by the "freezing" made both of their saves vs the freezing effects. (4 50% chances in a row...)
The dragon drops frightful presence on the party, but only hit the ranger. No ones will defence was very high (11-13ish), so thats 4 less than 50% chances going in the parties favour AGAIN.
The dragon at this point decided things were going really badly, and flew off to fight another day instead of close for melee with these hombres.
The funnest part was my players screaming at each other that they were 1st level and generally panicing, but then slowly rallying and resolving to fight to the death... only to roll multiple crits and drive the dragon off.
Upon review, I realise that they only needed to make one save vs both of the breath weapons effects, and that we had failed to use the warlords commanding presence boost for the action point attacks, not to mention they only realised to split up once the dragon had used frightful presence.
Overall I think the encounter was exactly what it was supposed to be, normally a savage fight, but extremely tough if under the worst circumstances (surprised, knee deep in mud and resources exhausted in this case), but fair enough and with a definate chance of victory.
My "eyeballing" ability was pretty much off-line because it's a totally new edition, and when the bastard rolled a crit with his breath weapon on one of the rogues I thought I had made a mistake.
I gave the pc's two free action diplomacy rolls as an attempt to parlay, dc25, and they failed... so like any dm worth his dice I stuck to my guns and fired up a screaming tpk attempt. After all, I had given the pc's two perception vs 20 checks each to notice the dragon, and a cryptic warning from a spirit to "watch the skies", which they had ignored. It had been a bad day in general, the warlord had rolled four natural 1's in the last battle.
The warlock, ranger and one of the rogues weren't hit by the surprise breathweapon, everyone beat the dragons iniative, and lumped out 83 points of damage due to 3 or 4 crits, and high damage rolls (they all used an action point). Vs an AC of 18, not too shabby. And two of the party were dishing out half damage.
Everyone affected by the "freezing" made both of their saves vs the freezing effects. (4 50% chances in a row...)
The dragon drops frightful presence on the party, but only hit the ranger. No ones will defence was very high (11-13ish), so thats 4 less than 50% chances going in the parties favour AGAIN.
The dragon at this point decided things were going really badly, and flew off to fight another day instead of close for melee with these hombres.
The funnest part was my players screaming at each other that they were 1st level and generally panicing, but then slowly rallying and resolving to fight to the death... only to roll multiple crits and drive the dragon off.
Upon review, I realise that they only needed to make one save vs both of the breath weapons effects, and that we had failed to use the warlords commanding presence boost for the action point attacks, not to mention they only realised to split up once the dragon had used frightful presence.
Overall I think the encounter was exactly what it was supposed to be, normally a savage fight, but extremely tough if under the worst circumstances (surprised, knee deep in mud and resources exhausted in this case), but fair enough and with a definate chance of victory.
