True, but one would figure that it has some muscles just like humans do that close of their throat unless they are swallowing so you can't see down the whole thing.
I didn't think anything on a dragon was anything like a human...
It should also curve so being able to see in its mouth wouldn't let you see very deep into its throat, especially when its head is likely 20 feet above the ground which is a really poor angle for that sort of thing.
it was on all fours with his neck out so not 20 feet off the ground, but ground level with PCs
WAY too much time to say something like "since you can only see his throat for brief periods of time while he's talking. It takes about 3 seconds to cast a spell which is enough time for him to stop talking, use his arcana skill to figure out what spell you are casting and turn at an angle that prevents you from seeing your target, I'm going to give him a reflex save to prevent it from working"?
lets double check here... my way game went on WITH NO KNEW PROBLEMS and everyone had a fun day. Your way we would make up a ref save and most likely have a hard fight no one wanted... and atleast 1 PC could have died or the whole game could have TPKed when it was one of the highest level games we ran and one of the most fun... in retrospect with all that you still can't see I made the right call?
Heck, "I cast a spell at the dragon" seems a lot like saying "Roll initiative, we're starting a fight. Let's see if I get my spell off before the dragon acts." Which, in the cast of a CR 24 dragon it is almost guaranteed that the dragon goes first and kills the caster before he finishes the words for the spell.
when someone declairs an action we normally roll initiative AFTER the action is made... you start the fight with X then we roll init....
I'm not looking for a funny story when I play a D&D game. Well, I am, but the funny stories are told outside of the game. The game itself is meant to be as "realistic" a simulation of living in a fantasy D&D world as possible.
we are just looking for fun.
This same thing likely would have happened at our table. Someone would suggest using a wall of force to choke the dragon. We all would laugh, saying how stupid that would be if it actually worked. I'd laugh as the DM that someone would think I'd allow them to break the game like that. I'd say "Roll for initiative then if you are going to attack the dragon. There is no surprise round because you can both see each other". Then the player would say "No, I'm just joking. I know that dragon would kill us...I don't want to die."
OK, and just to double check... why? I mean if you can't ever try something out of the box why have a DM to begin with?
Then we'd all tell the story of how it would have been funny if the DM allowed it and they'd have gone up 3 levels and gotten a million gold and been the most powerful people in the world. But it would stay just that, a funny story about how the DM was smart enough not to allow it.
nice shadow insult... I must not be a smart DM... yup totally dumb of me to run a game for years that everyone loved to play...how could I be so stupid...
I do it EVERY time. Allowing it even once is a bane to your game. The players realize that all they need to do to win is make you laugh. Then every battle becomes a battle to see who can come up with the silliest plan first.
OR, and just throwing this out there, maybe you have huge epic battles, and little skirmishes and everyonce in a while (once every 2-3 levels) one big OMG moment where they pull off something huge... and because no one abuses it and they only come up organicly no one tries to 'just make you laugh'
This seems like a poor explanation as to why it can't be done again. I wouldn't be satisfied with that explanation. It feels arbitrary like my success in a battle is entirely up to the DM. If he wants us to be able to kill a CR 24 dragon without a roll, we get to....but use it on anything he wants to stay alive and it suddenly doesn't work.
so in your mind, my epic red dragon who was going to be an important NPC and had stats AND A NAME was someone I wanted the PCs to kill? and at some point I am going to have some NPC more important? An entire adventure changed mid moment basedon this the whole game went in an unexpected direction... it was not the way I saw the scene going...
What's the point of having abilities on my character sheet if I have no idea whether one is going to work from battle to battle? What's the point in rolling dice if the DM is just going to decide whether we win on a whim?
I dicided that the story the PC wizard told me was entertaining and fit the world, and that I could deal with it, and everyone at the table agreed... no one AT THE DAMN TABLE agreed with you that alone should make that rueing right at that table...
No, impossible victories need to stay impossible for the purpose of sanity and the integrity of the game world. Ancient dragons like that are extremely feared for a reason. They are extremely powerful and it takes near godly level magic to defeat them. Having them die in one spell without a roll affects the perception of them. By the players, the PCs, the other people in the campaign world, and most importantly ME. I don't want dragons to be considered jokes in my game. I don't want to avoid using them as an enemy because they can be defeated too easily.
I didn't avoide using them... they got a gold dragon patron around 12th level (who had paliden levels no less) and they fought 3 other dragons after this one in more 'normal' circumstances...
It wasn't that cool. It was a string a battle encounters that ended in one press of a button. Followed by me hinting that they should follow the adventure I had planned out since I put a lot of effort into writing up NPCs and a storyline that I thought was kind of awesome. Followed by them saying "No...you just want us to leave our warehouse so you can kill us.." Followed by me getting so frustrated that I gave up running the game.
so instead of rolling with it and finding away to have fun you got frustrated, well my example was a lugh and keep going... but insult MY intelligence and think I did something wrong when I got better results... interesting...
I like to keep the in game separate from the out of game. Sure, the players were being jerks out of the game. But their characters were just doing what made the most sense. The world doesn't suddenly become deadlier because I have a beef with the players. My NPCs don't know anything about what happened out of the game.
I just figure "if this were a movie, and something has to happen to be interesting what would it be." I even gave you an idea it took me only a minute to come up with...
All it really taught me is that it would have never gotten that bad if I hadn't allowed them to do something obviously game braking simply because they wanted to and it was funny.
Alll it tells me is you don't like thinking out of the box you want everything to run as expected and Players need to go with you or walk.