Need Help With A Dragon Encounter

[Serpentine]

So I've been mulling over this encounter with a couple of people and worked out a lot of stuff, but I've hit a bit of an obstacle.

There's the encounter as I've worked it out now: the party will reach a river. The bridge will be out, but there will be a ford between a waterfall and a deep pool. The party will (hopefully...) cross the river at the ford. When they get to the middle of the river, a Young Adult and Adult Dzalmus Dragon (Dragon #349) will attack, one from the waterfall one from the pool, both starting with their breath weapons.
The problem is the Warlock and his damnable bamf. I know the party will decide he should carry the party across one by one. I can make the river too wide for him to cross in one dimension door, but it'll still wreck the dragons' ambush. I have 3 possible ideas to solve the problem:

1. The dragons have a spell, probably dimensional anchor, that they can use to negate the Warlock's dimension door ability. The problem is, if the party knows someone's cast a spell like that on them, they'll be ready for the ambush. Dimensional anchor is also a visible ray spell, which means they'll be able to tell where it came from. Something that lets me say "you try to teleport back, but for some reason it just won't work now! What a puzzle!" will obviously put them on edge, but without really knowing why. So, is there any spell or spell-feat/metamagic combination that the dragons can use which will disguise the source of the bamf negation?

2. As 1, except the neutralisation doesn't come from the dragons, but some creature in the river itself (and I was already thinking of having some other monster in the river, just to make things more intense - possibly bloodbloaters, although that will probably be too much assault on Constitution (the dragons' breath weapon)). Any creatures that could accomplish that?

3. The dragons take advantage of the party's decision, and spring their ambush when the party is split, half on each side of the river. This is the one I'm leaning towards, but it may well work too well - if the dragons can identify which party member is the Cleric, they will probably focus their attack on the other half of the party, rendering them completely screwed without any way to cure the Constitution damage. Character death will mean an inconvenient resurrection side-quest (death is slightly trickier in this game), and guilt on my part (it's a problem I have as a DM...). But it won't necessarily be so bad - it's usually the Cleric who keeps dying, so it'd probably be a nice change for the monsters to go out of their way to avoid her.

I've pretty much decided to go with #3, haven't I. But does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions, or even just wanna confirm that it'll be okay if the party cheats to cross the river, and if that results in PC deaths?

edit: Bonus puzzle!
In the table for the Dzalmus Dragon under Breath Weapon, it says it does 6d8 damage for the Adult. Nowhere, in the text or anywhere, does it say what sort of damage that is, nor anything about it. The bit about the breath weapon says it's "a cone of vampiric life-draining gas. Every creature within the area... must succeed on a Fortitude save or take 1 point of Constitution damage per age category... The victim must then succeed on a second save at the same DC 1 minute later or take the same amount of damage."
So yeah. What sort of damage is it, and does the second wave of it include the physical damage or just the Constitution damage?

[SamBurke]

Something small an insect-y might work (I'm thinking Stirge?) as a mosquito. Tolkein wrote an entire chapter of LotR about midges, ya know. The stinkers are annoying. At the very least, it'll reduce resources, and make them less likely to suspect something, until the DA. Then, they've got two things to think about (The insects AND the main encounter).

If you wanted, you could even set up the insects as the fake encounter, so they think they're breezing through your material for the night, then hit them with the big stuff. Going from the height to depth of emotion is more powerfully... erm... "Moving." XD.

[Serpentine]

Maybe, but I don't think stirges is the way to go - again, too much Constitution damage (I've already lost one PC to that mistake...).

[Godskook]

Anticipate Teleport from Complete Arcane would 'kinda' shut down the Warlock's bamf. And you only need 1 sorcerer level to be able to cast it from the Dragon herself(I'm guessing this is a mother-child pair).

[SamBurke]

Maybe, but I don't think stirges is the way to go - again, too much Constitution damage (I've already lost one PC to that mistake...).

Just change the damage type to straight up pain, or some small thing (Maybe sickened?). And Stirges themselves were just a suggestion, as anything insect-y would work. Even pseudodragons...

[Serpentine]

Mates, actually.

Thinking of having a couple of swarms involved - some on land, some in the water. Found a few promising ones, but anyone got any good ideas? Thinking CR ~ 6-10ish.

[Xiander]

My first idea was homebrewing some sort of anti-teleport-zone. Possibly through a homebrewed spell or item.

[SamBurke]

Mates, actually.

Thinking of having a couple of swarms involved - some on land, some in the water. Found a few promising ones, but anyone got any good ideas? Thinking CR ~ 6-10ish.

Pixies could work in air, if you made them a little more insect-y and hive-minded...

Kythons is the standard answer, of course, unless you don't want creepiness... Oh. Right.

Other than that, I'd have to actually look stuff up... :small sigh:

EDIT:

Water Naga might work... It's CR 7. Obviously you wouldn't use the poison (1d8 Con won't hurt too much... cause you'll be dead.). Though, the spells might overshadow the dragons' entrance.

Water Elementals (Large, Huge, and Greater are 5, 7, and 9) are also possible, using tons of smaller ones if you wanted that swarming feel.

Formians are good. CRs from 1/2 to 17 lets you design a number of encounters. And, they're ants. Swarms is pretty much what they do.

[Tyndmyr]

1. The dragons have a spell, probably dimensional anchor, that they can use to negate the Warlock's dimension door ability. The problem is, if the party knows someone's cast a spell like that on them, they'll be ready for the ambush. Dimensional anchor is also a visible ray spell, which means they'll be able to tell where it came from. Something that lets me say "you try to teleport back, but for some reason it just won't work now! What a puzzle!" will obviously put them on edge, but without really knowing why. So, is there any spell or spell-feat/metamagic combination that the dragons can use which will disguise the source of the bamf negation?

Well, there's a chance of it missing...but Cityscape has answers for this. Firstly, invisible spell. It's generally awesome, and can result in other fun things. Alternatively, there's a feat to make a spell originate from elsewhere. It's specifically to avoid looking like you're responsible for a spell. It's epic.


edit: Bonus puzzle!
In the table for the Dzalmus Dragon under Breath Weapon, it says it does 6d8 damage for the Adult. Nowhere, in the text or anywhere, does it say what sort of damage that is, nor anything about it. The bit about the breath weapon says it's "a cone of vampiric life-draining gas. Every creature within the area... must succeed on a Fortitude save or take 1 point of Constitution damage per age category... The victim must then succeed on a second save at the same DC 1 minute later or take the same amount of damage."
So yeah. What sort of damage is it, and does the second wave of it include the physical damage or just the Constitution damage?

I would adjudicate it as negative energy. Strictly speaking, it's untyped if they just messily forgot to type it, but I feel like negative energy is strictly fluffier in this situation, and the slight hit to effectiveness for typing it is probably not a big deal unless you have undead around.

Another idea on the teleporting. Anticipate Teleport does not require targeting the player, and is a very reasonable spell to have up in an ambush spot. He'll still be able to bampf, but it'll take a few rounds every time. This is a clue for them, and provides interesting in combat options and decisions.

[Godskook]

edit: Bonus puzzle!
In the table for the Dzalmus Dragon under Breath Weapon, it says it does 6d8 damage for the Adult. Nowhere, in the text or anywhere, does it say what sort of damage that is, nor anything about it. The bit about the breath weapon says it's "a cone of vampiric life-draining gas. Every creature within the area... must succeed on a Fortitude save or take 1 point of Constitution damage per age category... The victim must then succeed on a second save at the same DC 1 minute later or take the same amount of damage."
So yeah. What sort of damage is it, and does the second wave of it include the physical damage or just the Constitution damage?

My best guess is that the dice of damage is a copy-pasta error caused by using the standard dragon template. And by RAW, text trumps table, and the text says the breath weapon only deals con damage.

Damage+Con damage is a nasty, nasty combination. If you wanted to keep the damage, *DON'T* include it on the secondary save. That's a poison save, and it has no precedent to work that way.

[Serpentine]

Yeah, I was considering just removing the damage. If I leave it, I'll probably just halve it or something.

Hokay. Thanks for the feats Tyndmyr, that was exactly what I was looking for, but I think I'm gonna go with option #3: when half the party is across the river, the dragons will attack. If they make a perception and/or similar check to tell which one's the Cleric, they'll go for the other group. Otherwise it'll be random (or maybe I'll have them attack not-the-cleric anyway, cuz I think that player feels a little picked on...). If this technique is too effective and one or more characters die, then I can have a Gate to the Afterlife behind the same waterfall, which will make a resurrection easier - if the party doesn't have any, I can even explain away the "balms and oils" being in the dragons' hoard, as they killed someone else heading there to resurrect someone.

'sallgood! Thanks for your help, all.

[Serpentine]

Glitch-fix?

[Dr.Orpheus]

the dragon should be surrounded by a ring of kobalds with tower shields and the shield wall feat

[Serpentine]

We've already had a bunch of kobolds and a dracolich. Don't want that to get old.

Well, I ran it. Kinda went better than I could've expected, although it also went on for longer (but that's okay, because it also meant it wasn't too easy).
If anyone cares...
To get across the river, it was decided that the Warlock would bamf the gnome Cleric across because she was the shortest and would have the most trouble with the water. Then they just hung around over there while the rest crossed. So the dragons attacked when the rest of the party was part-way across.
The swordsage got knocked out by damage and Con damage, but then the Cleric used her ranged touch spell ability to use Restoration on her, and then she remembered she has damage reduction thanks to an item, but she nearly went down twice. Then again, she got the death-blow on the second dragon.
The first dragon ultimately got taken down by poison - the poison dusk lizardfolk Ranger sat underwater pooting poison darts at it, and eventually it failed its Fortitude saves and was dunked back to 0 Str.
The swampstrider swarms I sent in were absolutely useless. The Cleric never went in the water during the battle, the Warlock's aura knocked them all out, the Ranger spent all his time under the water, the Swordsage used a stance that let her hang out 5ft above the water, and the Magma Druid summoned a Huge earth elemental that held the Knight and herself out of the water (and, being aquaphobic, she was all "why didn't I think of this BEFORE getting in the water?!"). So yeah, they couldn't get at any of us. And not enough action happened on the shore to disturb the locusts there.
But that's okay, because the dragons (which I bumped up a couple of HD) were pretty much perfectly challenged for us - they were tough enough to make it a slog to bring them down (possibly slightly too much soo...), viscious enough that they got the party scared, but mundane enough that the party could bring them down without too much concern.

All in all, not too bad a session I reckon. Although I was expecting them to get to the next plot point this game :/ Ah well, next game.