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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 6114727" data-attributes="member: 20323">Some thoughts on the 3-stage dragon fight so far...[SBLOCK]I made a bunch of mistakes! (3 in favor of the PCs, 1 in favor of the dragon):First, I counted the party's total concealment from mass invisibility against the dragon's prismatic burst spell (which was an area burst). Second, multiple conditions of the same type & duration do not stack - at one point I had the dragon double dazed (save ends) - and further that Action Recovery removes all instances of certain conditions, not just one instance. Third, I forgot that Sulfurous Wrath *should* have prevented the ability to make opportunity/immediate attacks against enemies for one round (originally it was going to be an auto-blind but online feedback was overwhelmingly against that). This was important because as soon as Sulfurous Wrath began, the vampire/cavalier dominated the dragon to fly up and provoke opportunity attacks. Oops!Fourth, when Planar Firestorm kicked in, it allowed Infyrana to teleport anywhere in the chamber. However, when this happened she was blinded, and teleport is typically a line of sight effect! Oops again!There is a lot to track in these sorts of staged fights in 4e!There is a flow to the fight (fine tuning stage changes):The stage changes have been really evocative so far, even if the PCs managed to nearly stun-lock the dragon for two rounds. I made the decision to have damage/conditions from one stage carry over to the next (the 3-stage boss guidelines from AngryDM suggest they do not), as well as action points. With this fight, I broke the usual 4e rules of "one action point per encounter" and changed it to "one action point per round", which seemed fair considering (a) the dragon has multiple actions points she can use, and (b) it's a really hard fight. As part of the role-playing leading up to the fight, the PCs managed to (possibly) subvert the kobolds against the dragon...kobold minions were supposed to be present in Stage #1 but I decided to instead introduce them later in a more dramatic/ambiguous way.Player learning curve (dealing with 'game-breaking' elements):I was reading <a href="http://slyflourish.com/building_your_own_lair_assault.html" target="_blank">http://slyflourish.com/building_your_own_lair_assault.html</a> a few weeks ago and I think incorporated some of those principles designing Infyrana's lair. Most of the players had already encountered a 3-stage boss at the beginning of this campaign, but that was like 12+ sessions ago and two players unfamiliar with the model joined in, so I wanted Infyrana's Stage #1 to be the "learning curve" for the players...when they could get a feel for the unusual hazards and triggered effects, understand the map layout, gauge the danger posed by Infyrana, etc. My intention is to increase the threat in Stages #2 and #3 as the players get more comfortable with the setup.[/SBLOCK]</blockquote>

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