Help me kill a baby!

[molten_dragon]

If you're one of my players in my Toledo Kingmaker campaign please stay out of this thread.

Here's the story.

I'm running the Kingmaker adventure path from Paizo. If you're not familiar with it, the PCs are the rulers of a small kingdom. Currently their kingdom is at war with a neighboring kingdom.

The PCs kingdom is ruled by my wife's character, a gnome shadowcraft mage (14th level at the moment). My wife's character is married to a (female) silver dragon that she met a while ago and seduced. The two of them have a child together (making it a half silver dragon gnome), and he is the crown prince of the kingdom.

The kingdom that the PC's kingdom is at war with has recruited an old red dragon as one of their allies. This particular red dragon bears a grudge against the silver dragon for something that the silver dragon's mother did to him, and would love nothing more than to see the silver dragon dead and her kingdom in ashes.

The red dragon has recently learned of the existence of the infant prince, and wishes to assassinate him, both as a measure of revenge on the silver dragon, and as a blow to the morale of the PC's kingdom. He knows that the prince is protected, and he knows roughly what sorts of resources the PCs and their kingdom can bring to bear, but he doesn't know exactly what is protecting the prince.

This is where you come in. I (as the DM) do know exactly what the PCs are using to protect the prince, so it's a bit unfair for me to come up with what the dragon would send against them.

So if you were an old red dragon, with significant resources, and a small kingdom backing you up, what would you send to assassinate a 3-month-old half silver dragon half gnome.

Keep in mind that this should be a fight that the PC's have a chance of winning, so a dozen balors is probably out of the question.

[ILM]

Step 1: Do the PCs have any sort of protection against scrying or other divinations? (depending on the cheese level of your campaign, Contact Other Plane - if that exists in PF)
Step 2: Do the PCs have any sort of means to prevent teleportation?

[LordBlades]

I'd firs try watching(either myself or hire some casters to do it) the child via (Greater) scrying (if he's not protected against that) at different moments for a period of time in order to discern stuff like his daily schedule (where and when he sleeps/plays/goes out etc) and the most obvious defense means. Then I'd use Contact Other Plane to find out about the more subtle defenses in place and whatever else I feel is important. Do this for as long as necessary (immunity to scrying isn't hard to get, but being immune to COP is rather impossible, short of Vecna-blooded afaik). Now that I know what and when the child does, I can start planning the attack.

The easiest thing is to find a time and place when the kid is in an area that's not warded against teleporation, and then teleport a strike team to take him out. What this strike team might consist of it's up to you (the dragon himself +some additional support will probably be overwhelming).

[Acanous]

Old red dragon, you say?
This is a Kingdom we're talking about. The Dragon asks the rival kingdom for information (Know: Local, Know: Nobility and Royalty, Know: History)

Who is the prince's wetnurse, and where does her family live?

Dominate person on one of the wetnurse's family members. Have them take her out to see a new cottage they're thinking of buying. Dominate person the wetnurse.

You're red, so grab a Kobold and hit him with Polymorph any object. (Kobold->Silver Dragon/GnomeBaby. They're both close enough to make it permanent)

Nurse brings one baby out for air, then one baby in. Preferably when mom's not home. Swap is perfect unless someone hits the baby with high-level divination. If they do not, you control the kingdom by proxy in a few years, assuming you can kill off the silver.

If they DO, well now they just know the prince has been kidnapped. Any divination on you offers a will save, and they have nothing of yours to trace you with. Give the baby to the enemy city. Fair payment. If the heroes DO scry the prince, he's in evil lord badmort's castle. His new nanny is a guard with a held action and unarmed strike for the inevitable teleganking.

How this is fair:

1: There are three Knowledge skill checks on the part of the enemy. People around town will know someone was asking about the king's vassals. Before giving the PC's the arbitrary "Your baby is gone", let them hear it in a rumor. Maybe the cook comes forward with a small purse of gold, telling the party that someone was asking questions about the castle. (In general. Put them on guard, but don't give away the plot)

2: If the party refuses to leave the baby in the hands of a caretaker, this gambit fails. It is highly unlikely that they'll drag a baby around in combat scenarios, but after being put on alert, they should lay low a while. Being reckless in real life has consequences, so too does it in roleplay.

3: The child is going to be in transit a day or so, longer if the enemy kingdom doesn't want people to have a clear, easily memorable dragon-shaped billboard announcing their plans. The party has a couple days to get the kid back before execution.

If the party is truly caught unawares, and not because of ignorance or overconfidence, have the enemy king ransom the prince back to them. Make it costly, but not crippling. lv 14? 100,000 GP should do the trick.

[Balor01]

If the old dragon finds baby's location he can cast invisibility on himself and the heaviest possible item he can carry and just fly over the target and drop a huge (rock/piano/vault) onto the baby. Unless they have it in some underground dungeon.

Assassins with poison are also a good option. Being a head of a kingdom he can surely get an expensive poison, fly in at night (invisible) drop the vial into water source ... even if the baby is not killed, most of guards will die. And if he uses several poisons .. maybe also such which cause the victims to raise as undead ... profit all around.

[molten_dragon]

I'd firs try watching(either myself or hire some casters to do it) the child via (Greater) scrying (if he's not protected against that) at different moments for a period of time in order to discern stuff like his daily schedule (where and when he sleeps/plays/goes out etc) and the most obvious defense means.

You try to scry on the child and it doesn't work.

[QUOTE=LordBlades;11550063]Then I'd use Contact Other Plane to find out about the more subtle defenses in place and whatever else I feel is important. Do this for as long as necessary (immunity to scrying isn't hard to get, but being immune to COP is rather impossible, short of Vecna-blooded afaik). Now that I know what and when the child does, I can start planning the attack.

Contact other plane could be useful, but is a two-edged sword.

In order to have the best chance of getting true and relevant answers to his questions, the dragon would need to contact a greater deity, but remember that unless he succeeds on a DC 16 int check, his INT and CHA scores both drop to 8, leaving him vulnerable without the ability to cast spells for 5 long weeks. And even with an int buff from a spell, he's got only a slightly greater than 50% chance of making the check.

If he goes for something he can only fail on a 1 (i.e. elemental, positive/negative, or astral planes), then he's got less than a 50% chance of getting good information, and a pretty high chance of getting bad information with no way of knowing the difference between the two.


The easiest thing is to find a time and place when the kid is in an area that's not warded against teleporation, and then teleport a strike team to take him out. What this strike team might consist of it's up to you (the dragon himself +some additional support will probably be overwhelming).

If you try to teleport in to attack the child, that doesn't work either.

On another note, the dragon is probably unlikely to come himself to assassinate the child. He's already tangled with the party once on open ground, and it ended badly for everyone involved (3 party members dead and the dragon had to flee before he was killed). He's unlikely to enter the party's heavily fortified and defended castle to try to assassinate the kid when he could just send some dupes instead.

[molten_dragon]

If the old dragon finds baby's location he can cast invisibility on himself and the heaviest possible item he can carry and just fly over the target and drop a huge (rock/piano/vault) onto the baby. Unless they have it in some underground dungeon.

The child is kept somewhere in the PC's heavily fortified castle in the middle of the heavily fortified and garrisoned capital city of their kingdom. That's fairly public knowledge. He doesn't know exactly where.

[LordBlades]

In order to have the best chance of getting true and relevant answers to his questions, the dragon would need to contact a greater deity, but remember that unless he succeeds on a DC 16 int check, his INT and CHA scores both drop to 8, leaving him vulnerable without the ability to cast spells for 5 long weeks. And even with an int buff from a spell, he's got only a slightly greater than 50% chance of making the check.


Assuming pathfinder hasn't changed the rules for taking 10, you can take 10 on that int check.


If you try to teleport in to attack the child, that doesn't work either.

I don't think I get what you mean by this.

[molten_dragon]

I appreciate the ideas everyone, keep 'em coming.

Something else that might help you is knowing what the party makeup is (which the dragon would know).

They are all 14th level, and the party consists of:

An archivist
A sorcerer/shadowcraft mage - my wife's character and (one of) the prince's mother(s)
A cleric/crusader/ruby knight vindicator
A rogue/swordsage/something, I don't remember the exact build at the moment, but he's a combat-oriented rogue.
A barbarian/hulking hurler/warhulk
An adult silver dragon (the prince's other mother) - she's not usually a party member, but has been assisting them in battle during the war.

[Yora]

Killing a baby is really easy. Getting close enough to do so is the tricky part. So my idea would be to use a stealthy approach to simply slip through all defences and use a poisoned blowgun dart or a plain old knife.
Sending a minion as a servant into the royal chambers, or mind-controlling one of the servants would be the easiest way. The assassin could easily pass through all defenses against magic and probably won't be bothered by the guards. Depending on how tight security is, just stoll in and kill the kid.

[molten_dragon]

Assuming pathfinder hasn't changed the rules for taking 10, you can take 10 on that int check.

Ah, right you are. I was thinking that you couldn't take 10 if there was a penalty for failing, but that's only on taking 20.


I don't think I get what you mean by this.

Assuming that you can find out the child's location, you are unable to teleport to it. It is protected somehow.

[wormwood]

I'm not going to lay out a detailed plan but the gist of what i'd do is this: have the dragon and a small force attack on the outskirts of the PC kingdom. Make sure it's brutal enough that the PCs feel they need to personally intervene. As soon as they show up, have the dragon teleport away, leaving only enough forces to keep the PCs busy for a bit. That will likely make it obvious that the whole point was to get the PCs out there for some reason. It should be a clue that they should get home with a quickness.

Meanwhile, Mr. Red should have sent a second force to stealthily infiltrate the castle and gank the kid. If the PCs react quickly enough to the disappearance of Red, they get back in time to fight off the infiltrators. If they dilly-dally, then they don't and the infiltration force pits their skills against whatever defenses are there.

[Kaeso]

I know this is off topic, but if your wife's character married a female silver dragon, where did the baby come from? :smallconfused:

On topic: Dragons are proud creatures, so I assume he would want to do nothing else than kill the baby with his own claws/hands. A scenario for this would be that the dragon shapeshifts (all dragons can shapeshift, right?) into a human(oid) and finds some way to get in the castle, either through employment or good ol' fashioned sneaking. Then he'd (attempt to) assassinate the baby, either through poisoning him or by choking him to death with his own bare hands (or bear hands. Shapeshifting, remember? :smallwink:).

This still gives the PC's a chance because they could either see through the façade before the red dragon can do any harm, or walk in on the "maid" choking the baby.

Of course the dragon could still use some stealthy magic like invisibility, dominating meddling guards and so forth.

[Yora]

Important question: Does anyone know the child is targeted?

[ILM]

You try to scry on the child and it doesn't work.

If you try to teleport in to attack the child, that doesn't work either.
What kind of precautions did the PCs take, exactly? Cause within the rules, there aren't many ways to do that for level 14 characters. If you're working with houserules we'd probably need to know them. If it's just DM fiat, well... it's your game.

Interesting relevant thread. (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=11689.0)

But anyway. Bribery. Red probably has metric tons of gp, and servants need to go get supplies every once in a while. Remember 10,000 gp is more than anyone is likely to make in a lifetime. Information: priceless.

Edit: on the other hand, an old red only casts as an 11th level caster. Hm.

[ILM]

I know this is off topic, but if your wife's character married a female silver dragon, where did the baby come from? :smallconfused:
Wife's character is male? :O MIND BLOWN. :smalltongue:

[the_archduke]

You are trying to kill your wife's child... :smalleek:

What happens if you succeed?

I really hope this doesn't end badly.

[Username_too_lo]

Considering they own a damn kingdom, what's to stop the players Resurrecting the baby afterwards?

Maybe there's a series of attacks on high level clerics first - which your vindicator gets tipped off about - and a sudden drop in the availability of diamonds.

[molten_dragon]

I know this is off topic, but if your wife's character married a female silver dragon, where did the baby come from? :smallconfused

Polymorph.

[molten_dragon]

Important question: Does anyone know the child is targeted?

The PCs dont' have hard evidence that the red dragon is targeting the prince, but they are aware that the prince is a small vulnerable infant, and they are aware that the red dragon holds a grudge against the silver dragon, and they're smart enough to put 2 and 2 together.

[molten_dragon]

What kind of precautions did the PCs take, exactly? Cause within the rules, there aren't many ways to do that for level 14 characters. If you're working with houserules we'd probably need to know them. If it's just DM fiat, well... it's your game.

I don't really want to lay out exactly what they've done to protect the kid, since that would give you the same sort of advantage that I have as the DM and don't want to exploit.

I will reassure you that everything they've done to protect the child is RAW as far as I'm aware, there are no house rules relevant to the situation, and it is not in any way protected by DM fiat.

Remember that there are numerous ways for spellcasters to get access to spells that they normally wouldn't be high enough level to cast. That's all I'm willing to say.

[Coidzor]

Find out whatever other recurring villains either the party or their family members have had & prep enough disguise and spells to appear to be a reasonable facsimile.

Hire/diplo an angsty, anti-civilization druid to make a distraction by causing blizzards around the city as a distraction to lure the PCs out to deal with it.

When they go out to deal with the guy that's flattening their city, the red herring trap springs, in a bid to take out the highest ranking individual that responds.

While they're distracted by and responding to this, the real catspaws deal with the castle and prince. Preferably changelings that have infiltrated the castle staff over a period of months.

So I guess the current question is, how long of prep time does the dragon have?

[ILM]

I don't really want to lay out exactly what they've done to protect the kid, since that would give you the same sort of advantage that I have as the DM and don't want to exploit.

I will reassure you that everything they've done to protect the child is RAW as far as I'm aware, there are no house rules relevant to the situation, and it is not in any way protected by DM fiat.

Remember that there are numerous ways for spellcasters to get access to spells that they normally wouldn't be high enough level to cast. That's all I'm willing to say.
Fair enough. :smallsmile:

Not to be stubborn, but I would assume they haven't warded the entire castle. Is it possible to scry another part of the building? Another person, perhaps a servant who comes in contact with the baby? If it were possible for the dragon to scry one some part of the castle, would he be able to teleport there? Edit: for instance, by using the Scry Location spell in CS.

If not, then all I see for the moment is
a) bribing people to get info and infiltrating your men - magical means may not be the wisest due to the kind of massive aura they give off (though that could be your hint to the PCs)
b) wholesale destruction of the castle if that's within his means.

[Telonius]

So if you were an old red dragon, with significant resources, and a small kingdom backing you up, what would you send to assassinate a 3-month-old half silver dragon half gnome.


As a BBEG? I wouldn't. I would send in an advisor/tutor who would slowly corrupt the prince, turning him against his parents. Dragons are patient, and can afford to wait a few years while these mere specks of mortals have only a limited amount of time.

But, if I'm dead set on frontal assault, I'd need to know what the palace walls are made of. Are they magically resistant? Invisibility, go Ethereal, then re-incorporate in front of the baby. Splorch. Plane Shift or Teleport out of there.

Alternately, find the mother and cast "Love's Pain," from BoVD. One casting and either the baby is dead, or the dragon gets to mess with her head for not loving her child more than anyone.

[Coidzor]

Alternately, find the mother and cast "Love's Pain," from BoVD. One casting and either the baby is dead, or the dragon gets to mess with her head for not loving her child more than anyone.

Which one? IIRC, dragons are not very loving parents in general. & who knows about gnome wizards...:smalleek:

[Ksheep]

Are there any sort of sewers or tunnels under the castle? If so, could a small strike team easily enter said tunnels?

If they can, give a number of people Daern's Instant Fortress, have them enter the tunnels, and place them at strategic points around the foundation of the castle. Activate them, punching holes in the roof of the tunnels (and hopefully damaging the foundation of the castle), then deactivate them to remove the support that they were providing. Castle starts to crumble, and if the PCs are quick enough to grab the child and evacuate, then there's a good chance that the child (and many of the servants) will probably die in the collapse.

[koscum]

Old red dragon, you say?
This is a Kingdom we're talking about. The Dragon asks the rival kingdom for information (Know: Local, Know: Nobility and Royalty, Know: History)

Who is the prince's wetnurse, and where does her family live?

Dominate person on one of the wetnurse's family members. Have them take her out to see a new cottage they're thinking of buying. Dominate person the wetnurse.

You're red, so grab a Kobold and hit him with Polymorph any object. (Kobold->Silver Dragon/GnomeBaby. They're both close enough to make it permanent)

Nurse brings one baby out for air, then one baby in. Preferably when mom's not home. Swap is perfect unless someone hits the baby with high-level divination. If they do not, you control the kingdom by proxy in a few years, assuming you can kill off the silver.

If they DO, well now they just know the prince has been kidnapped. Any divination on you offers a will save, and they have nothing of yours to trace you with. Give the baby to the enemy city. Fair payment. If the heroes DO scry the prince, he's in evil lord badmort's castle. His new nanny is a guard with a held action and unarmed strike for the inevitable teleganking.

How this is fair:

1: There are three Knowledge skill checks on the part of the enemy. People around town will know someone was asking about the king's vassals. Before giving the PC's the arbitrary "Your baby is gone", let them hear it in a rumor. Maybe the cook comes forward with a small purse of gold, telling the party that someone was asking questions about the castle. (In general. Put them on guard, but don't give away the plot)

2: If the party refuses to leave the baby in the hands of a caretaker, this gambit fails. It is highly unlikely that they'll drag a baby around in combat scenarios, but after being put on alert, they should lay low a while. Being reckless in real life has consequences, so too does it in roleplay.

3: The child is going to be in transit a day or so, longer if the enemy kingdom doesn't want people to have a clear, easily memorable dragon-shaped billboard announcing their plans. The party has a couple days to get the kid back before execution.

If the party is truly caught unawares, and not because of ignorance or overconfidence, have the enemy king ransom the prince back to them. Make it costly, but not crippling. lv 14? 100,000 GP should do the trick.

This. Also, I assume your players are using spies as well, so they might get a Gather Information check if dragon doesn't roll high enough on one of his checks to figure out that something's going on.

[CTrees]

Considering they own a damn kingdom, what's to stop the players Resurrecting the baby afterwards?

That's actually exactly why I was going to suggest using an Assassin. Though, checking my work... the 'you can't res' capstone doesn't prevent True Resurrection, which makes this (one of the only times that ability is actually mechanically useful) mostly a waste.

The best solution really is to kidnap the baby and keep it alive but somewhere inconvenient, it seems. My vote, purely for being more evil, is to kill it with a Fell Drain meta'd spell. Raises the baby as a (mini) wight, and forces someone to kill it, again. If your timing is good, you can even have the undead baby attack (and need to be killed by) its own mother(s). Then they can find a very high level cleric and spend the cash to res the baby. This is an evil dragon, out for revenge, after all. Alternatively, PaO could be HILARIOUS.

Bribery is probably the surest way to get a minion in there. Alt, scry->'port into a non-protected part of the castle (a few know checks may even get you some convenient architectural information). Also, look into burrowing-unless they've got adamantine floorboards, it's real darned hard to protect against a burrow speed.

[molten_dragon]

Fair enough. :smallsmile:

Not to be stubborn, but I would assume they haven't warded the entire castle. Is it possible to scry another part of the building? Another person, perhaps a servant who comes in contact with the baby? If it were possible for the dragon to scry one some part of the castle, would he be able to teleport there? Edit: for instance, by using the Scry Location spell in CS.

Scrying/teleporting into some other part of the castle would be possible, yes. Keeping up anti-scrying and anti-teleportation spells on their entire castle is a bit beyond the PCs resources.

[Elboxo]

Pay/terrorise a maid it guard into killing it or kidnapping it, ain't no magic like no magic..... Mostly undetectable, pc's will be looking for dominations/disguises.
Alternatively spread some diseases around or put a potion of dominate person in a potion ( can you do that ? ) and invis + silence + polymorph into something tiny + fly and put the potion in one of the pc's or elite guards' room in a wine bottle, also prestidigation to make it taste like wine

[koscum]

Also, that dragon could just raise the baby as his own and when the time is right, take over the entire kingdom.

[molten_dragon]

So I guess the current question is, how long of prep time does the dragon have?

Variable, but on the scale of weeks to months. Definitely not years.

The red dragon has the support of the rival kingdom, but only because he is assisting them in their war with the PCs' kingdom. If he ignores the war to spend all his time killing the prince, the PCs will more than likely win the war and then he's got an entire kingdom, led by a group of high-level PCs gunning for him, which is a bad situation to be in.

[molten_dragon]

[QUOTE=Telonius;11550794]As a BBEG? I wouldn't. I would send in an advisor/tutor who would slowly corrupt the prince, turning him against his parents. Dragons are patient, and can afford to wait a few years while these mere specks of mortals have only a limited amount of time. [QUOTE]

He's not dead set on a frontal assault, but he is dead set on killing the baby. He wants it dead, not corrupted.

[QUOTE=Telonius;11550794]But, if I'm dead set on frontal assault, I'd need to know what the palace walls are made of. Are they magically resistant? Invisibility, go Ethereal, then re-incorporate in front of the baby. Splorch. Plane Shift or Teleport out of there. [QUOTE]

Palace walls are made of stone. They are not magically resistant. You know that there are several high-level spellcasters residing in the palace. Teleportation into/out of the area the baby is in is impossible.

[Andorax]

It seems to me like you need to start thinking like a dragon here. The crown prince is 3 months old, and the parents are adventurers. They're NOT going to retire and hang around for the next two decades until the kid is a viable adventurer in his own right...and if they do, then so what? Two decades is nothing to a dragon.

Start setting up a network of informants in the PC kingdom's capital city. Right now, the only thing you need to do here is track the PCs movements, since it can be reasonably assumed that they're not taking an infant/toddler/young child to the war front.

Wait for (or manufacture) a significant event that will draw the PCs out relating to the war. No random mayhem or distracting event that looks highly suspicious...let it be a natural outgrowth of the fact that there's a war going on.

Conceal alignment, polymorph into human, disguise yourself as a solder, fresh in from the front, with vital news for the PC rulers (oh, they're not here? Ok, then, vital news for the senchal who's running things in his stead).

You're an old Red...your bluff should be through the roof already, but failing that, a potion of glibness couldn't hurt.

Get into the castle. Resume normal form. Lay down a draconic rampage. Target the kid with Dimensional Anchor first, kill, animate, and fly off with your little zombie (humanoids turned undead can't be raised until the undead is killed).

Get out of the zone of anti-teleportation manually, then teleport to freedom. Contact Evil Kingdom and inform them that it's time to break out the higher-level spellcaster with soul bind if they want a more permanent solution.

Or summon a barghest and feed zombie-baby to it. 50/50's not bad odds.

Assuming all of the above fails horrendiously, expand your network of contacts and get in touch with a few succubi. Crown Prince is going to hit puberty eventually.

[NateClark]

Well,


Part of the problem is your dealing with so many casters. The first thing you need to do is find some way to neutralize them, one way off the top of my head is if you could find someway to turn that silver dragon against them, which also helps to manuver them into a position that makes it easier to neutralize them. The thing is that by co-opting the dragon you have the best chance at manuvering them, because PC's are unlikely to assume mindcontrol (althought Dragons seem to be most likely to have artifacts designed to do exactly that too them) Because if your players catch wiff of what your up to they just can bring too much magic to bear. First goal is to seperate the target of choice from the group....make it ideally someone with the least escape abilities..

I recommend a Good Anti magic shell, because that will cut down on the other casters tricks, put someone such as the sorc in it against good physical threats, mobilize the other characters to ride out to their rescue...

When they do so have the Silver dominated Dragon deal with the kid they will most likely leave in her protection given shes a npc....

So basically make a dungeon designed to distract the players convincing them to leave the kid with the dragon.....then SNACK TIME! Except heres the twist.....you could go one of two ways...

Make the kid INTO the dragon, given its a half dragon I believe that means it gets a draconic subtype. So when the players get righteous and smite it for its horrible act....TAA DAAA they killed the MC'ed (polyed?) kid...

Step two is to make it into a hard to track down undead creature, therefore making it unressurectable....

[Telonius]

You could always take the "Voldemort Option." Turn the Red into a Dracolich, using the kid as his phylactery. :smallbiggrin:

[tomjim]

You can't take 10 on the INT check with Contact Other Plane.

http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fm#v5748eaic9nsy

You can pay a wizard to risk it, or pay a cleric to cast Commune

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/spells/commune.html

and then kill them when they are done.

[molten_dragon]

You can't take 10 on the INT check with Contact Other Plane.

http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fm#v5748eaic9nsy

You can pay a wizard to risk it, or pay a cleric to cast Commune

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/spells/commune.html

and then kill them when they are done.

I should have mentioned we're running this under 3.5 rules, not pathfinder.

[molten_dragon]

Well,

Part of the problem is your dealing with so many casters. The first thing you need to do is find some way to neutralize them, one way off the top of my head is if you could find someway to turn that silver dragon against them, which also helps to manuver them into a position that makes it easier to neutralize them. The thing is that by co-opting the dragon you have the best chance at manuvering them, because PC's are unlikely to assume mindcontrol (althought Dragons seem to be most likely to have artifacts designed to do exactly that too them) Because if your players catch wiff of what your up to they just can bring too much magic to bear. First goal is to seperate the target of choice from the group....make it ideally someone with the least escape abilities..

I recommend a Good Anti magic shell, because that will cut down on the other casters tricks, put someone such as the sorc in it against good physical threats, mobilize the other characters to ride out to their rescue...

When they do so have the Silver dominated Dragon deal with the kid they will most likely leave in her protection given shes a npc....

So basically make a dungeon designed to distract the players convincing them to leave the kid with the dragon.....then SNACK TIME! Except heres the twist.....you could go one of two ways...

Make the kid INTO the dragon, given its a half dragon I believe that means it gets a draconic subtype. So when the players get righteous and smite it for its horrible act....TAA DAAA they killed the MC'ed (polyed?) kid...

Step two is to make it into a hard to track down undead creature, therefore making it unressurectable....

The problem with that is that dragons' spell save DCs don't go up anywhere near as fast as their save bonuses do. Even though the silver dragon is 2 age categories younger than the red, the silver would still have to basically roll a 1 on a save to fail against one of the red's spells. Even casting from a scroll (which he'd have to to pull off dominate monster) doesn't make it very likely. Plus he'd have a significant chance of failing the caster level check to actually cast it.

[CTrees]

I should have mentioned we're running this under 3.5 rules, not pathfinder.

That... definitely changes some things.

[Acanous]

any thoughts on my method, Molten?

[vampire2948]

The baby is obviously illusory.

[Slipperychicken]

If Red is aware of times the baby comes out of the castle for recreation or something, Red could learn about that and send a kill-team.


Shrink Item some lava (or other lethal things like poison from Fabricate, if lava is no-go) into a clothlike substance. Charm/Disguise as someone who has a good reason for being near the baby. Toss it at the baby (Charm: "It would be SUCH a good idea to give this new pillow as a gift to the prince! Be sure to toss it to him, you'll know why once you do it. It's going to be a surprise to help relations between our houses, so don't let the guards see it before you toss it!). If it doesn't trigger, hide it inside of whatever mattress the baby uses and let the duration expire. Cast it at night, when baby would be asleep in his room, so the effect ends then too. Lava/fire/etc fills room, kills baby.

[Lord Bingo]

I would have to second the kidnapping idea because there are simply too many ways of getting the child back, unless you argue that an infant would not wish to return from the afterlife once there.

Kidnap the child and raise him to be evil and depraved, just like the red dragon! Also, even though I sense you want this to happen soon, an old red dragon has plenty of time on his hands and he probably would not mind spending a few years planting a true ally close enough to the child to abduct him.

As mentioned earlier in the thread, it is unlikely that the characters are going to retire from adventuring in order to keep a vigil over the heir to the throne so eventually they will have to trust somebody. This will be their undoing. The child will be taken by rule of plot and getting him back will be a grand adventure -but one where the tables are turned as it is now the heroes that must overcome unknown defenses as opposed to the present situation where you are "over informed".

Still, if you must kill the child now, once you know where he is kept simply start a fire... Keep in mind, however, that to the characters/players any murder on the child will feel like a plot hammer -unfair and unnecessary. If you merely kidnap the child at least they have a chance to save it.

[CTrees]

The baby is obviously illusory.

I disbelieve the baby.

I disbelieve the unfortunate implications that could have, taken into different contexts :smalleek:

[Redshirt Army]

Ok, so you have months.

CR 20 = 220,000 gp to spend
Headband of Intellect +2 = 4000 gp
INT 22 = +6

You'll be casting Contact other Plane a lot, taking 10 on the check. Ask an extra time if the answer is "Don't Know". Don't use my wordings, the dragon has INT 22, so it can avoid obvious loopholes like "Oh we thought you meant a different child."

Let's play a game. I (and other posters) suggest questions, you give answers.
Don't forget to roll dice to see if the 1/100 chance of a lie comes up.

"For how many days will the wardings placed by my adversaries hold?"

I'm assuming this happens after the scry and teleport attempts fail.

[Acanous]

also, if you really don't want to blow a dominate, you could propably get away with a Charm and a plausable story.
The Grinch always comes to mind when I think about people useing charm effects to steal things.

"The baby is being hunted by a red dragon, and the palace isn't safe. So if you bring me the baby, I'll give you a decoy. Then when the dragon kills the false baby, you can tell the Queens about how you were such a smart and loyal servant. They'll surely be indebted to you."

statements 1, 2, and 3 are true. Statement 4 is possibly true or false, depending on if you killed the fake at a later time. Statement 5 is a lie, but plausable. One bluff check, plus bonus for charm.

[Ksheep]

Ok, so you have months.

CR 20 = 220,000 gp to spend
Headband of Intellect +2 = 4000 gp
INT 22 = +7

Um… shouldn't that be +6?

[Redshirt Army]

Um… shouldn't that be +6?

Fixed, math error from when I edited that post. +6 still works, the DC is only 16.

[LordBlades]

As I saind on one of my earlier posts, if you want to play the dragon to it's mental scores(20 int 21 wis) he can easily deconstruct the whole defensive mechanism around the baby.

Think something like this: he casts Contact other Plane with a greater deity of magic (with a +2 int item he can take 10 on the int check and pass) and starts asking: 'Is the child protected against scrying?' I assume the answer is 'yes'. 'What's the name of the ability that protects the child against scrying?'
If you wan't to go by strict RAW and say that spell names like 'Melf's Acid Arrow' don't fit into single word stipulation of Contact Other Plane, thing which raises a whole amount of issues, the dragon can either use one word custom names for spells (Melf's Acid Arrow becomes Meflsacidarrow) and ask 'Under what name do I know the ability...?'(a greater deity of magic should know what names the dragon uses due to portofolio sense) or he can ask 'What's the first/second/3rd/etc word in the name'.

He can do similar things to find out about any magical defenses the child might have 'The name of the first magical defense?', 'The name of the second magical defense?' and plan accordingly.

No spellcaster worth his spellsots will go blind into an area defended by another spellcaster.

[deuxhero]

Polymorph.


Huh, I was thinking the other way around with Alternate Form.


Edit:


Wait, why bother with CoP, IIRC, Dragons can pull from the cleric list for spells. Just grab a scroll of Commune (because situational spells are bad for your spells known)

[ILM]

Shrink Item some lava (or other lethal things like poison from Fabricate, if lava is no-go) into a clothlike substance. Charm/Disguise as someone who has a good reason for being near the baby. Toss it at the baby (Charm: "It would be SUCH a good idea to give this new pillow as a gift to the prince! Be sure to toss it to him, you'll know why once you do it. It's going to be a surprise to help relations between our houses, so don't let the guards see it before you toss it!). If it doesn't trigger, hide it inside of whatever mattress the baby uses and let the duration expire. Cast it at night, when baby would be asleep in his room, so the effect ends then too. Lava/fire/etc fills room, kills baby.
If you're going to hand items to the baby, you might want to go the full nine yards and do a trigger item Trap the Soul. :smallbiggrin:

[BobVosh]

Wait, why bother with CoP, IIRC, Dragons can pull from the cleric list for spells. Just grab a scroll of Commune (because situational spells are bad for your spells known)

Depends on the color, reds are sorc/wiz only.

This all assumes far too much about the dragon going to do this himself.

Hire a sneaky thief type with UMD to go do this. Give him scrolls of Invisibility superior, mind blank, plane shift and overland flight. Wand of knock, modify memory and silence. Potion of whatever the spell that makes zombies is. A bag of holding and a portable hole. Let him wait until the PCs have to go do...whatever it is they have to go do. Let big ole red find a good way to get them out for about a week. Oddly a bard would be the best choice, halfling/gnome for preference of +4 stealth. Also if he is a bard he will have modify memory as a spell choice, for higher DCs.

Just have him wandering around getting deeper into wherever the baby is (a bard should be able to get a general location with gather information/charms/bribes/bard charisma) until he gets close to the baby. (Remember the knocks, silence, invisibility, flight options) Whenever he can get a surprise round in moving distance of the baby he just struts up to it and combines the bag + portable hole. Then he kills the baby on the astral plane, and makes it a zombie from the potion to prevent raising. If your dragon really wants to waste more money on this, nondetection ring of a high caster level will make the astral zombie royal baby even harder to find. Bard plane shifts back to big red for his reward.

[Balor01]

Make red start a Wraithplague in the city and have him covertly dump a lot of ghoul-making poison in city water supply. That should create some diversion. :smallbiggrin:

[molten_dragon]

Depends on the color, reds are sorc/wiz only.

My copy of the monster manual says reds can also cast cleric spells and spells from the chaos, evil, and fire domains.


This all assumes far too much about the dragon going to do this himself.

This is what I'm thinking too. You don't get to be as old and wily as this dragon is by doing rash things like sneaking into your enemies' heavily defended fortress by yourself when there are lots of other people out there who will happily do it for you.

I would think he would be more likely to do the research on how to get someone in there to kill the kid and then send someone else to do it.

[molten_dragon]

Let's play a game. I (and other posters) suggest questions, you give answers.
Don't forget to roll dice to see if the 1/100 chance of a lie comes up.

"For how many days will the wardings placed by my adversaries hold?"

I'm assuming this happens after the scry and teleport attempts fail.

I will happily do this when I have a bit more time. I'll try to answer whatever questions you've thought up this evening.

[Redshirt Army]

Some questions:

How many individuals were in contact with the baby last week?
What is the first name of (Individual #X)?
What is the surname of (Individual #X)?
How many individuals guarding the baby pose a threat to me?
What is the first name of (Dangerous Individual #X)?
What is the surname of (Dangerous Individual #X)?
What priority is guarding the child to these individuals?
How many of the individuals guarding the child are susceptible to bribes?
What is the first name of (Individual #X)?
What is the surname of (Individual #X)?
How many of the aforementioned individuals are warded against scrying?
What is the first name of (Warded Individual #X)?
What is the surname of (Warded Individual #X)?
How many individual wardings were placed guarding the baby?
How powerful is (Warding #X)? (I'm trying to refer to spell level in character.)
What type of energy fuels (Warding #X)? (Divine, Arcane, Psionic, etc.)


Plus the requisite scrying on the unwarded individuals, should give us a clearer picture of what's going on.

[Coidzor]

Another thing that can be done is to get a spy into the castle... Such that the party realizes they're a spy, but also appears harmless enough that they can get led into believing they can purposefully get bad intelligence to the spy. Even appear to act upon the bad intelligence from time to time so that they don't get too suspicious.

This should provide a distraction from your real activities regarding the castle & true intentions if they believe that you've already got a spy in the castle to get information regarding the war and they know just how to play his strings.

And if they do just gank him or interrogate him, he only knows his official mission that was given to him, which was to get intelligence for the war effort and is a tool that would not be missed... And if they think they've taken care of the spy problem by ganking him, they may not look so closely at any of your actual subterfuge.

Of course, this as a strategy depends upon how your players think entirely too much...

It's possible to play off their psychology by making them think that you're so desperate that this was the best you could afford & so you're in a weak position, which, with a little bit of work with troop positions could be used to lure the party into participating actively in combat on the front lines, which would allow for a dual-strike to both decapitate the party & take out the princeling while the party is distracted by this battle they think will end the war/turn the tides/allow their forces to punch through a weakpoint in your lines & take something they really want but is really just an ambush dedicated to taking them out, preferably anyway, it could just be entirely a feint to get them out of dodge & distracted.

Depends on whether the dragons' style is to go all out in the ambush or to only commit enough resources to tie them up & make it look convincing without putting so much in the tides of the war change in and of themselves if the party wins.

[Acanous]

I think that the majority of us can agree that getting an agent inside the castle to do the work for the dragon is the best course of action, be it bribed, dominated, or bluffed.

[molten_dragon]

Okay, here are your answers.


How many individuals were in contact with the baby last week?

three


What is the first name of (Individual #X)?

Cara
Amavarean
[here the entity makes a drawn out sighing sound]


What is the surname of (Individual #X)?

Nigel
nonexistent
[here the entity makes a drawn out sighing sound, subtly different from the first]


How many individuals guarding the baby pose a threat to me?

three


What is the first name of (Dangerous Individual #X)?

Cara
Elliot
Thomasina


What is the surname of (Dangerous Individual #X)?

Nigel
nonexistent
[here the entity makes a drawn out sighing sound, subtly different from the first]


What priority is guarding the child to these individuals?

high


How many of the individuals guarding the child are susceptible to bribes?

none


What is the first name of (Individual #X)?

irrelevant


What is the surname of (Individual #X)?

irrelevant


How many of the aforementioned individuals are warded against scrying?

one


What is the first name of (Warded Individual #X)?

[here the entity makes a drawn out sighing sound]


What is the surname of (Warded Individual #X)?

[here the entity makes a drawn out sighing sound, subtly different from the first]


How many individual wardings were placed guarding the baby?

many


How powerful is (Warding #X)? (I'm trying to refer to spell level in character.)

mighty


What type of energy fuels (Warding #X)? (Divine, Arcane, Psionic, etc.)

magical

[Coidzor]

Hmm, well that's certainly a new one. Heard of names that were hisses & names that were the shadows evaporating, but never sighing before.