A Build to Embarrass Dragons

[Nettlekid]

For quite a while now, I've been trying to think of a good and strong build for a dragonslaying/Xorvintaal campaign. I've thought about Teflammar Shadowlord, Swiftblade, Eldritch Theurge, Ninja Spy, Jade Phoenix Mage, Force Missile Mage, Stalker of Kharash, Master Thrower, and all sorts. Many of them have their charms, but I don't know if I'm really feeling it. But knowing the DM involved (he, as I do, values Rule of Cool) I think something that might fly well would be a build that's good at what it does, maybe some kind of melee lockdown build, but that just...embarrasses dragons. Dragons, who think of themselves as so mighty, who look down at Medium-sized creatures as peasants and snacks. A build designed to either effortlessly grapple and pin these guys, holding their mouths shut as soon as they start to monologue, or maybe a tripper build that knocks them over and then uses Setting Sun maneuvers to toss them around. Bonus points for making a Tiny race that can do this, because the idea of a Muckdweller using Tornado Throw to zoom around a dragon, then grab its tail and do to it what the Hulk does to Loki in the Avengers is hilarious, in my mind. Does anyone have a good ultra-Grappler or ultra-Tripper build that they can suggest? Or other ways for a puny creature to show up a dragon in terms of might?

[eggynack]

Shivering touch can embarrass a dragon pretty badly. You cast one spell, and the dragon just falls apart.

[Nettlekid]

True, but that's too easy. Sure, it's something to fall back on, and to just stop a dragon outright ("I am Gyriaxaborix, Tyrant of the Dark Mountains and devourer of all-" "Nope."), but I'd rather be a little cheesy, get a Trip check of ~100 (a grapple check of like 200 is going to be pretty difficult even for high-op) and just mess with them. It's more fun to tease rather than to shut down. I guess the tripping thing could be done with high speed, Travel devotion, and Tornado Throw, but I'd like bit more finesse than that. A good build, not just a maneuver.

[Emperor Tippy]

What level?

Because at level 27 a Fine Cosmic Descryer with Delay Death up can effortlessly Grapple and pin a Great Wyrm Prismatic Dragon. Or lift one with his pinky.

Wizard 20/Cosmic Descryer 7, able to flick down the Adamantine gates of the God Emperor of Man's palace on Holy Terra with a single finger.

[Piggy Knowles]

Too bad the Justiciar's hog-tie only works on human-shaped opponents - hog-tie seems a great way to embarrass an enemy, and with Divine Insight, GotA, cunning boosts, the ship-themed soulmeld, or whatever your skill booster of choice is, I'm sure you can put together a Use Rope check that a dragon can't beat.

Is there a similar ability to the Justiciar's hog-tie without that restriction?

[Nettlekid]

Hmm...Is there any way to be able to cast 1st level spells, take a 10 level non-initiator PrC, and still get at least one 9th level maneuver by level 22? What I'd like to do is take the Blade Dancer PrC in Oriental Adventures. If I were to be a Raptoran Blade Dancer with the Burrowing Claws graft, then after 10 levels of Blade Dancer, I could have a burrow speed of 60, land speed of 90, and fly speed of 120. That sounds interesting, and could be used with Tornado Throw (especially that fly speed). Normally I'd go like, Swordsage 10/Blade Dancer 10/Swordsage 2, but unfortunately Blade Dancer requires capability of casting arcane or divine spells, and that messes up the progression. Suggestions? I wonder if a feat or a racial ability counts as actually casting an arcane or divine spell, as opposed to SLA. I guess Kobold's Rites of Passage works?

EDIT: Eh, nevermind, I wanted the high speed from the Blade Dancer, but honestly using an item like Rapid Wrath from Ghostwalk and a mode of movement whose speed is based on another speed, like the Phoenix Cloak whose fly speed is based on your land speed, would give you plenty of speed.

[Emperor Tippy]

Master White Raven crown, the only magic item in ToB. Gives you access to one maneuver of any level from the linked discipline. Only usable once per day without a recovery mechanic.

[Nettlekid]

Okay, maybe Tripping/Grappling isn't the way to go. What else would embarrass a big dragon? I think forced movement is the way to go. Bull Rushing? How could I get a super high Bull Rush check?

[tiercel]

Not sure about the specifics of a build to just physically wrestle/embarrass dragons, but there are plenty of spells you'd want in your toolbox to go with any build.

Good old (mass) resist elements will badly nerf many breath weapons, and something like stoneskin (add fire shield for spite) hurts full attacks. (Greater) dispel magic to tear down buff spells (dragon CL < CR). Spells like downdraft, earthbind, wingbind can all knock the dragon out of the sky. As previously mentioned, shivering touch is arguably abusive and banhammer material.

That's before we get to the "hose specific creature type" spells, e.g. antidragon aura, aura of evasion, hide from dragons etc.

Shutting down the dragon's abilities is embarrassing in and of itself, much less however your build wants to humiliate the critter thereafter.

One of the things you'll be up against if you are going for physical combat maneuvers is possibly just the size of the dragon: you can't even bull rush a dragon unless you are within one size category, and grapple and trip include size modifiers (also, dragons have 4 legs). Chances are you'll really want to grow, which enlarge person or polymorph or psionic expansion can help with.

Problem is that growing in size might not dish out the humiliation factor you're looking for (beaten by a "puny human"), in which case you'll want to look for abilities/items/spells that can pump up raw ability checks (trip and bull rush checks count as opposed ability checks, with modifiers, whereas grapple has its own "grapple check" which isn't an ability check, per se).

Alternatively, what you do is stop trying to fight the size disadvantage and turn it into an advantage, leveraging the "I get a bonus against things bigger than me" feats and abilities to wind up with something like the "I May Be Tiny, But You're Dead" (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19872846/I_May_Be_Tiny,_But_Youre_Dead:_the_other,_melee_Ki ller_Gnome,_for_your_pleasure.) melee Killer Gnome build.

[Nettlekid]

Those Killer Gnome tactics are quite good, and I've thought about taking advantage of them using a Tibbit for the several claw attacks, going Rogue to do high Sneak Attack with each. Call the dragon a Commoner for losing to a cat. But Sneak Attack has some pretty distinct disadvantages at high levels, mainly the comparatively low damage output. I'm pretty sure a dedicated charger build would do more damage than a similarly optimized sneak attack build. And against dragons, who have such a high to-hit that your Tiny size and high Dex won't mean too much, you want to do as much damage as you can.

I'm still looking at Tornado Throw, because that's one of very few open-ended, no cap +X to Y check. To get a +2 to your trip check for every 5 ft you move means that, against a Colossal+ Prismatic Dragon with a Trip modifier of >50 (+30-35 for Str, +16 size, +4 for quadrupedal), all you'd need is to move 125 feet in a round to match it, and 175 feet to win before rolling. Since Tornado Throw grants you a double move, and you could easy have either Quicksilver Motion or Travel Devotion active, a 60 ft move speed is all you need. If you could grab a 100 ft move speed, or 200 ft ((30+30 from Haste)*2 from Rapid Wrath=>Phoenix Cloak+30 from Haste)*2 from Rapid Wrath=300), then after your triple move you could have a whopping +360 to trip, and about 35 unbeatable trip attempts in that one turn (rushing back and forth, or tossing around a whole squadron of dragons). So far that seems like the best shot at making a dragon look silly, by tossing it back and forth.

At level 22, I could still have 9th level maneuvers even if I took a 10 level PrC, so long as I was able to enter that PrC using only Initiator levels. What would be a good build to support this?

[Nettlekid]

What about......A Swordsage 4/Warblade 7 (or any combination of Warblade and another full BAB class that adds to 7)/Eternal Blade 10/Swordsage +1? Doing that could net you some of the best maneuvers and stances in ToB (I'm quite partial to Diamond Mind, Iron Heart, and White Raven) and still let you snag Tornado Throw at the very end, as well as any Swordsage stance. Maybe a more optimal entry would be Warblade (or Warblade&full BAB)6/Swordsage 4/Warblade +1/Eternal Blade 10/Swordsage +1, so you can get 2nd-4th level Swordsage maneuvers to start with, and up to 5th level Warblade maneuvers if you choose to go Warblade all the way. Plus you get the juicy class features of Eternal Blade, like the customizable-by-battle maneuver and the wonderful Island in Time, which I think is so cool. And you get to be like Link. Does that sound feasible to people? To be an Elven warrior standing up to a great dragon, trading blows with sword and claw, and then the Elf gets fed up, throws down his weapon, grabs the dragon by the tail, and hurls it out of its own cave?

[drack]

I'd be surprised if a dragon didn't have freedom of movement, grappling things is silly when you start talking about epic level builds :smalltongue: And I think I've seen all of one homebrew that bypasses grappling immunity (out of allot of homebrew), so it's not all that common. Sadly I do not recall the class...

[Nettlekid]

Hm, I forgot about Freedom of Movement (derp), which you're right, makes all grappling invalid. But building that Eternal Blade, I've got something that looks pretty good. It ends up getting the Tornado Throw that I wanted, the 9th level maneuver of either Devoted Spirit, Diamond Mind, Iron Heart, or White Raven (I picked Time Stands Still), and with Eternal Blade you get to pick any other one of those in a battle. I'd probably go with Strike of Righteous Vitality. Not to mention Quicksilver Motion, like I needed above, and other goodies like White Raven Hammer (no-save Stun is pretty great) and of course Iron Heart Surge and White Raven Tactics, which are two of the best maneuvers in the book in my opinion. So, as far as maneuvers go, it seems pretty solid. But do you think it could actually stand up to Dragons?

[drack]

At the end of the day dragons are generalists, and as such rather weak for their effective level. Only reason they're so scary is that you fight them at a level gap where your as goo at your specialty as they are at everything. If you're looking for a dragon-specific build I couldn't help much, but I think I've heard mutterings that start with the dragonwrought kobold thingies, and stack on all the heavy duty anti-dragon stuff in the books making them pretty much immune to anything dragons normally do, and from there you can track mud all over the hoard, mock them, and most of all show how powerless they are before a kobold, the race they view as weak enough to only be fit for roles of servitude. Now that's pretty embarrassing eh? :smalltongue:

Still while I've had players who have considered it, I don't really know all the links that fit together off hand. I would refer you to one, though I think the one best suited to give such advice has been taking a half year or so thus far o from the forums.

[Nettlekid]

I don't want to be too anti-Dragon specialized, because that wouldn't be fun for my DM. He's a bit naive, especially in terms of recognizing power levels, and the whole campaign is likely to be low magic. And like I said, he and I are firm believers in Rule of Cool. Hide From Dragons and Shivering Touch every battle is much less cool than a much less effective initiator build. That and I just really like ToB.

What are good Epic feats for a melee character? There are some excellent ones for casters (disregarding Epic Spellcasting, they still have Enhance Spell and Permanent Emanation to be awesome with) and even archers get thrown the rare bone with Distant Shot, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of cool stuff for melee.

[drack]

Yup, I generally run games with at least some PvP elements, so every now and then fear of dragons will get some dragonslaying elements into people' builds, though for the most part full out dragonslayers are mostly idle talk to keep everyone from being a dragon. :smalltongue: Plus I'm sure by now dragons have found some way to deal with shivering touch. :smalltongue:

I've personally always loved the deflection chains in epic, though two/multi weapon fighting are nice. There are some other nce ones of course. Things like shooting as far as you can see or attacking everyone in 30' of you

[Nettlekid]

What's the one for attacking everyone within 30 ft?

[drack]

something to do with throwing. I use it occasionally for knife thrower assassin types, though I forget if it's throw-specific or just any ranged attack.

[Nettlekid]

Oh, okay, so not for a melee type.
I was looking at Monkey Grip and Wield Oversized Weapon just for the laughs of being the cliche anime-type who wields a weapon about twice as big as himself, but unfortunately I'm one BAB short. Maybe I'll just go with one of the Epic Destiny feats.

[eggynack]

You should generally avoid monkey grip, because it's terrible. Pick up some strongarm bracers from the magic item compendium if you truly seek an oversized weapon.

[Krobar]

Yup, I generally run games with at least some PvP elements, so every now and then fear of dragons will get some dragonslaying elements into people' builds, though for the most part full out dragonslayers are mostly idle talk to keep everyone from being a dragon. :smalltongue: Plus I'm sure by now dragons have found some way to deal with shivering touch. :smalltongue:

I've personally always loved the deflection chains in epic, though two/multi weapon fighting are nice. There are some other nce ones of course. Things like shooting as far as you can see or attacking everyone in 30' of you

My dragons typically use Friendly Fire on contingency (Exemplars of Evil, pg. 27). Yes, my dragons take Craft Contingent Spell - they're smart enough to recognize the value in that particular feat.

And End to Strife is a good spell too for those dragons that can cast cleric spells.

Edited: actually, Friendly Fire only redirects ranged and tanged touch attacks, so it doesn't work vs. Shivering Touch. But various spells exist to turn that spell or make the dragon immune to it if only temporarily.

[Rubik]

Tiny von BigMcLargeHuge, (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=132294) at your service. Take the Human Heritage feat to qualify. Make the rest of your levels totemist with a ToB dip or two, and I think you'll do fine.

[wayfare]

...Jester? Their whole job is to embarrass people. :smallsmile:

[Nettlekid]

That'd be funny, but no Dragon is going to fail the Jester's saves with those DCs.

[Piggy Knowles]

Jorath (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8011614&postcount=116) from the first ICitP is a pretty embarassing build, tossing out as much as -13 to saves and forcing enemies to roll twice and take the lower result. I'd normally consider it a bit too low-op to take into epic levels, but it seems like it could be OK based on what you've said about the campaign on this and the WotC boards.

[Nettlekid]

That's pretty cool. Unfortunately, again, because these are dragons, even a -13 to their saves puts them at pretty much normal standard for other people's saves. Against any of us, a -13 would turn Save or Dies into just plain Dies, but against a dragon, with their disproportionate-to-CR HD and thus save bonuses, it gives us only a sporting chance. That's why I've been looking at either battlefield control, direct damage, or no-save and suck/save and suck spells (like Avasculate or Final Rebuke). But I don't see myself putting that much effort into debuffs like that.

To add to more party info that I've just gotten, it looks like one player's planning on being a Warlock who prefers long range, probably going through Hellfire Warlock (and I'll point them toward Bloodlines and a Binder dip for Naberius to boost that build). The other player is likely to be some kind of melee beatstick, though I don't know what sort. She played a Duskblade once and enjoyed it once, but I don't think the damage and spell power is going to keep up with a dragon's HP and SR. Maybe she'll be a Frenzied Berserker, since she really enjoyed "accidentally" killing an annoying teammate during a one-shot campaign as a Frenzied Berserker. That's what I know of the party so far.

[Kane0]

Is homebrew allowed? If so, this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=284143) may help you in your attempts to grapple, trip and such.

[ahenobarbi]

How about usingfeats that let you do nasty things to foes 2 categories bigger than you (Underfoot Combat, Confound Big Folk from Races of the Wild)? Some builds (1) (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=133924), (2) (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19872846/I_May_Be_Tiny,_But_Youre_Dead:_the_other,_melee_Ki ller_Gnome,_for_your_pleasure.)?

[Nettlekid]

Homebrew's probably allowed, but I hate using it. There's enough unbalanced material in the books already. I don't like using ambiguous rulings. I don't even want to use Epic Spellcasting because it's too much of just "making stuff up".

Those Underfoot Combat style feats are pretty good, especially the Pebble Underfoot from Confound the Big Folk. It's good to get a small bonus, but because of the massively unbalanced bonuses a dragon would get to Trip, the better way to try would be to max out speed and use Tornado Throw, which doesn't really require Confound the Big Folk because if you're going for like, +100 on your check with high speed, you might as well go for +200 and make the Confound the Big Folk bonus insignificant.

I think I'm going to give up on trying to embarrass the dragons after all. The only way to get enough Trip, Grapple, or Bull Rush to be a cute little thing and hurl dragons around would be outrageous cheese that I don't want to get into. I've been lately just looking at attempts at dual-9 builds, going for either 9th level arcane or divine spells, and 9th level maneuvers. Unfortunately, Jade Phoenix Mage's maneuver paths (Desert Wind and Devoted Spirit) are pretty un-awesome. Ruby Knight Vindicator has a better selection, but I don't know if I love Cleric enough to dedicate myself to it. Arcane is just cooler.

[killem2]

My goliath who is a Barbarian 1 Fighter 4 (dungeon crasher), embarassed a white dragon (huge), a few weeks ago.

Due to having the Exalted Feat - Righteous Wrath, I was able to use a Psionic Tattoo, Expansion. I charged in, hit, and knocked it back 75 ft.

Then I just continued to bullrush the hell out of it, generating AoO from my teammates.

I don't know if that counts :)

[Nettlekid]

A question about the Zhentarim Skymage. It says that you're granted two scrolls of a level you can cast, and that if you have a spellbook you can immediate scribe them into your book. It doesn't actually require them to be of your class, does it? Usually the argument for being of your class would be like "it says that you have to be able to cast it, and you can't cast a spell from outside your class," but this is a SCROLL that you can cast, and it would be easy for say, a Wizard with UMD to cast a Wu Jen spell from a scroll. If that works, it would be a great way to get lots of off-class spells on your list.

[TuggyNE]

A question about the Zhentarim Skymage. It says that you're granted two scrolls of a level you can cast, and that if you have a spellbook you can immediate scribe them into your book. It doesn't actually require them to be of your class, does it? Usually the argument for being of your class would be like "it says that you have to be able to cast it, and you can't cast a spell from outside your class," but this is a SCROLL that you can cast, and it would be easy for say, a Wizard with UMD to cast a Wu Jen spell from a scroll. If that works, it would be a great way to get lots of off-class spells on your list.

Being able to use UMD to activate a scroll does not mean it's a level you can cast. :smalltongue:

[Nettlekid]

But that's just it, the text is "of a level you can cast." Let's say that I'm a 14th level Wizard, capable of casting 7th level spells. Body Outside Body is a 7th level spell. Therefore Body Outside Body is a spell of a level I can cast. If I were to get a scroll of Body Outside Body, which is a scroll of a spell of a level I can cast, and then immediately transfer that spell into my spellbook as Zhentarim Skymage allows, could I then prepare and cast Body Outside Body as normal?

I guess my question is, does "a scroll of two spells of any level he could cast" mean: "A scroll of two spells he can cast, of any level," "A scroll of two spells that he can cast, of any level he can cast," (that is to say, a scroll of two spells that I would be able to cast, being on my spell list and being of a level that I am allowed to cast,) or "a scroll of two spells, each spell being of a level he can cast"? (I'm not sure the three tones of sentences came across too well in the writing.)

[TuggyNE]

But that's just it, the text is "of a level you can cast." Let's say that I'm a 14th level Wizard, capable of casting 7th level spells. Body Outside Body is a 7th level spell. Therefore Body Outside Body is a spell of a level I can cast. If I were to get a scroll of Body Outside Body, which is a scroll of a spell of a level I can cast, and then immediately transfer that spell into my spellbook as Zhentarim Skymage allows, could I then prepare and cast Body Outside Body as normal?

I guess my question is, does "a scroll of two spells of any level he could cast" mean: "A scroll of two spells he can cast, of any level," "A scroll of two spells that he can cast, of any level he can cast," (that is to say, a scroll of two spells that I would be able to cast, being on my spell list and being of a level that I am allowed to cast,) or "a scroll of two spells, each spell being of a level he can cast"? (I'm not sure the three tones of sentences came across too well in the writing.)

Curmudgeon would probably mention something about the level only being defined in relation to a given spell list, and that the level of Wu Jen spells you can cast is -, and so on and so forth. I don't really care enough to go into the full thing though, so you'll have to go with that. :smalltongue:

[Nettlekid]

^-^ Thank you for giving me an abbreviated Curmudgeoning. That's a fair reading of it, too. After all, if it were an Archivist getting these scrolls, what level is Otto's Irresistible Dance, 6 or 8? That makes sense.

I like the look of this Zhentarim Skymage, though. I mean, to get any mount with HD=Class Level+Cha+1? If you had a 16 charisma, +2 for race, +5 levels, +5 Tome, +6 enhancement, and then a +4 from some custom item of Devil's Ego, you could control a 20 HD flying beast. I love the look of Dread Linnorm, though maybe Gray Linnorm is better because it gets Cleric spells instead of Sorcerer spells. I was thinking I wanted to go into Zhentarim Skymage with Wizard and get Cleric casting with the Gray Linnorm, but if I went Cleric and Dread Linnorm, then it might have better Cha synergy (for getting Turn Undead at the very least, Sharing DMM Persist spells with my mount). That could be...very strong. Maybe too strong. But fun to build!

[Dayaz]

...I'm desperately trying to remember the name of the feat, but there's a tripping feat that lets you make a trip attack against a flying creature and if you succeed, they fall out of the air. Gimme a day to find it (all my books are at a friends house and i'm going there tomorrow anyways) and I'll see if I can find it for you.

[TuggyNE]

^-^ Thank you for giving me an abbreviated Curmudgeoning. That's a fair reading of it, too. After all, if it were an Archivist getting these scrolls, what level is Otto's Irresistible Dance, 6 or 8? That makes sense.

No problem. :smallwink:


...I'm desperately trying to remember the name of the feat, but there's a tripping feat that lets you make a trip attack against a flying creature and if you succeed, they fall out of the air. Gimme a day to find it (all my books are at a friends house and i'm going there tomorrow anyways) and I'll see if I can find it for you.

I'm pretty sure it's not a feat, but simply a rules option; the difficulty is in making a trip attack at range.

[killem2]

...I'm desperately trying to remember the name of the feat, but there's a tripping feat that lets you make a trip attack against a flying creature and if you succeed, they fall out of the air. Gimme a day to find it (all my books are at a friends house and i'm going there tomorrow anyways) and I'll see if I can find it for you.

No feat needed!

Tripping Flyers: A creature flying with wings can be tripped. If the attempt succeeds, the creature stalls and falls 150 feet. See Rules of the Game: All About Movement for details (and a few unofficial additional rules about tripping flying creatures).

Creatures that fly without wings (and any creature with perfect maneuverability) can't be tripped while flying. If the creature is still in the air after stalling, it must succeed on a DC 20 Reflex save to recover and resume flying. Otherwise it falls another 300 feet. If it hits the ground, it lands prone and takes falling damage.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20060321a

[Rubik]

...I'm desperately trying to remember the name of the feat, but there's a tripping feat that lets you make a trip attack against a flying creature and if you succeed, they fall out of the air. Gimme a day to find it (all my books are at a friends house and i'm going there tomorrow anyways) and I'll see if I can find it for you.That would be standard tripping rules, but only if the creature can't hover and uses wings to fly.

[intothenight]

I don't have a full build for you, but if you want to take apart a dragon's arcane abilities and fry him with his own spells, there's always the spellthief. And as long as you're using draconic abilities against them, you could always take the Frightful Presence feat to scare low-level dragons with your puny humanoid appearance.

[Samuel Sturm]

This sounds like the perfect job for Chuck E. Cheese! He abuses speed boosts to be one of, if not the fastest thing in d&d, then combines it with tornado throw for silly results.

His final build version is here. (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5788.0)
And a game diary with him in action is here. (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=330.0)