Why do dragons do so little damage?

[Nightson]

You could make the cloud a minor action which recharged on a 5-6

 

[Lord Pendragon]

This is an interesting thread. I used a low-level black dragon in a game of mine recently, and found the critter to be quite deadly. It's cloud of darkness really hurt the party's offense, and he managed to get a few breath weapon recharges that really put a hurting on the party.

Then again, maybe it just seems that way to me because they aren't high enough for me to throw a dire bear at them.

 

[DracoSuave]

I'm going to be honest, I think this is less to do with the fail of black dragons, and more the fail of lurker monsters in the MM1 in general. If it doesn't get Combat Advantage damage, it generally doesn't do a lot of damage at all. I've found Lurkers without CA to be very underwhelming (except the black dragon, which is still a challenge in the right circumstances, even if it doesn't seem it on paper. It's not its damage that parties remember.)

 

[Lord Zardoz]

And in 3E, some dragons had magical spells that were not just damage. Invisibility, Shield, Dimension Door.

4E dragons are just another type of brute (not brute role, but brute monster). Nothing special about them. Just another encounter.

I am going to disagree a bit here, (though it starts to reek of a thread jack). I think that 4th Edition Monsters are on the whole, much better than they were in 3rd edition from a straight up utility perspective. I can take a monster I have never read before, look at the statblock and tactics, and run it effectively.

What I am not able to do in 4th edition as easily as I could in 3rd is use a monster statblock for an NPC.

One of the early playtest notes for 4th Edition noted that the spell casting capabilities of Dragons ended up having some less than ideal results.

1) Some spells were nearly always a subpar tactical option in combat, and often forgotten about.
2) It added spells like Mage Armour, or stat buffs that effectively become a pre-calculated stealth stat bump to the dragons
3) It did not fit thematically that the 70 ton lizard with sharp claws and big teeth would be best served to use the same tactics as a 180 pound human mage.

I will grant that outside of combat, it did allow Dragons to be more versatile as NPC's. I dispute that it made them more effective as Monsters.

The Monster Manual in 4th edition does not really provide any monsters at all that are ideal to use as NPC's directly from the page. But one of the philosphies of 4th edition is to try to get away from building monsters the same way you build characters. If you want a given creature to have a particular ability, just give it to him.

Now, if I wanted to enhance a 4th Edition Dragon to make it more serviceable as an NPC, I would probably just add a few things to a given monster entry.

- Ritual casting
- Some skill values for non combat skills like Diplomacy, Insight, and Bluff
- Add some non combat utility powers
- Add or modify a few combat abilities to enhance survivability.

Anyway, getting back on topic, I think that there are more flaws in the monster entires than I would like in 4th edition as far as balance goes. Answering the original question for this thread, the reason that Dragons do less damage is probably because they were developed earlier in the product cycle and did not get revisited before release, which probably meant that later monsters are more likely to have a damage range ideal to their level and role.

If you can get your hands on the Draconomicon book though, it does give plenty of options for customizing the dragons abilities, so you might find something you like there.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[eriktheguy]

And the dire bear can't fly, or use a breath weapon, or any other special dragon ability.

Dragons are balanced around their level, not around some metagame idea about how dragon's should be more difficult then their XP value indicates.

Wouldn't basing stats on their level rather than their XP value still be metagame? The point is that dragons should be powerful because they're dragons. In metagame terms that means that they should be able to hold their own against less powerful monsters (elite monsters of the same level).


I think what happened is that 4e was designed to make Elites dangerous by increasing things such as damage, while solos are made to induce long fights (a lot of HP and a variety of attacks to use on the party). Unlike the dire bear, the dragon could easily ignore the fighter/paladins mark and go for the casters, or just take them out with its breath weapon. Opportunity attacks and defenders are much more effective on the stupid, lower hp bear, making it a smaller threat. If solo monsters had the raw damage of elite brutes AND the staying power of a solo, they would probably massacre a party.

EDIT: yes, I realize that dragons have high damage because they are epic creatures. If you want an epic dragon, use one a few levels higher than the party. Even powerful creatures are weak if they are low leveled .

 

[SteveC]

I'm finding this ongoing discussion very interesting. For me, now that I've done four battles with dragons, I continue to be unimpressed. As I've started to see a larger sample size, the problem is that the solo dragon has that 5x experience awards, which suggests it has the power of 5 normal monsters. That's not the case by so much that it's not even funny. The dragon may have the hit points, but they don't have the attacks and the damage. Further, they don't have resistance to the effects that can cause a creature to lose actions, so in effect that stun or daze effect is 5x as useful.

WotC is starting to address these issues with some of the new creatures getting multiple turns of actions and shrugging off some status effects, so they see what's going on. I'm interested in the direction it's eventually going to go.

--Steve

 

[Edwin_Su]

i'm planning to use a dragon is the following a good way to boost damage:

challening encounter:
use dragon 3 levels higer then the players,

use left over XP to put a rider on the dragons back making the rider a warlord npc of the higest lvl the xp allouws

give dragon rider a saddel that lets him save against being pushed of the dragon.

give the warlord a few powers to boost dragons damage and saves when needed, and the at wil that lets an ally make a basic attack

could one of the number crunchers have a look at this ?

 

[Turtlejay]

I've fought 2 4e dragons, and one was a black dragon.

Despite being hampered because we caught him in his cave, he was a tough fight that required us to use a lot of our resources. The only thing that even made it doable was our warlord and the slides she gave us (white raven onslaught, i think) so that we could get him to the edge of the darkness. Even with the lack of mobility and tactics like that it was tough. Tougher than 5 dire bears. Why? A few reasons. 5 dire bears would take extra damage from area attacks (tageting more than 1 bear means you are effectively doing damage above that which you would to just 1 solo), they are beasts, so our tactics are more effective. Things like forcing a bottleneck.

The fight against the green was tough too, for different reasons. We were on a boat, and the dragon used his breath weapon on us, nothing we could do since we were clustered, and dragon fear made us leap off the edges of the boat. It was tough, and if we did not have a wizard and a ranged striker I am not sure we would have survived.

With all fights terrain matters. Dragons should be fought in a terrain that matches their epic nature, not an open, featureless grassy field. That is where you fight dire bears. Because this whole thing is in the DM's lap. He should not be calculating average damage per round, he should be setting up a fight to be entertaining and to showcase the abilities of his mobs.

Jay

 

[eriktheguy]

In addition to smart dragons using terrain to their advantage here is something I tried out in 3e.
Kobolds. They love dragons, form alliances with them, and sometimes even worship them. Partway through the battle the kobolds can attack, attempting to get sneak attacks and immobilize the players to make them vulnerable to the dragon's area attacks. The kobolds can also use traps, and both the dragons and the kobolds see the kobolds as expendable (the dragon is willing to toast a few of them with his breath if it means hitting the players). This can seriously up the threat/damage of the dragon, and also gives the controller something to do.
Another option is to simply use a higher level dragon. Dragons don't just do massive damage for being dragons, you need to choose a dragon two or more levels higher than the party to be a serious threat. If the encounter is a dragon equal or one above the party's level, this is a standard encounter and should only "challenge a typical group of characters, but not overwhelm them" (DMG, 56).
In any case, if you want a truly epic battle, always make it at least 2 levels higher than the party.

 

[Elric]

I've fought 2 4e dragons, and one was a black dragon.

Despite being hampered because we caught him in his cave, he was a tough fight that required us to use a lot of our resources. The only thing that even made it doable was our warlord and the slides she gave us (white raven onslaught, i think) so that we could get him to the edge of the darkness. Even with the lack of mobility and tactics like that it was tough. Tougher than 5 dire bears. Why? A few reasons. 5 dire bears would take extra damage from area attacks (tageting more than 1 bear means you are effectively doing damage above that which you would to just 1 solo), they are beasts, so our tactics are more effective. Things like forcing a bottleneck.

This seems unlikely, if you are talking about the level 11 Black Dragon. Dire Bears are a level 11 Elite Brute, so five of them would be a level 15 encounter.