BrokenChord
2014-04-22, 12:45 PM
Next session, my players are going to be entering a town where an Old Black Dragon lives. Here's a quick overview of the party:
All 12th level:
An Elf Urban Druid with a Medium Animated Object and Wild Cohort-acquired dire bat as ACs who usually uses healing and buff spells;
A Halfling Wizard with a Young Copper Dragon as a mount who focuses on blasting spells and transmutation utility spells;
An Orc Knight/Fighter who uses a guisarme, mostly prefers charging and Power Attacking but also has Improved Trip for whenever the group is forced into the defensive;
A Merfolk Dragonfire Adept who wears Mithral Twilight Nimble Feycraft Breastplate and basically huddles there in her armor using invocations and, when possible, her Enlarged Line of Lightning breath weapon;
And last but not least, an Orc Favored Soul who almost never shows up and used a homebrew feat to get the wings early, focused on blasting, but is currently 3 levels behind. Best not to include him in your calculations.
So, yeah. There's them. Keep their abilities in mind; I need to present a good and preferably lengthy challenge with this fight, as it may be the only one this (8-hour) session given where the plot is headed at the moment.
Who am I kidding, my games don't have a plot.
So, yeah. I'd like to build this dragon to be a lean, mean, city-fighting machine. The city is a large bustling business-y place, a lot like your average downtown business district with office buildings, apartments, and a few skyscrapers. I was intending to use the differing heights in the buildings to the dragon's advantage, doing things like popping behind a skyscraper and dropping down to street level to hide behind the lower buildings as it flies closer again, but I'm not sure yet.
How should I build this dragon in terms of feats, spells known, and equipment, and how should I utilize its tactics, to make it a worthy but not TPKing challenge?
My main concern so far is that the Orc Knight will feel useless; I'm considering dealing with this by having the dragon perform a sort of fly-by grapple to carry him to the top of a building, so they can melee it out for at least a round or two before the others catch up. Then I won't necessarily be playing the dragon stupidly (why the hell would it land for melee combat surrounded by his allies?) but I don't have to obviate the character for the fight.
In case it comes down to this, I'm willing to lower the dragon's actual combat effectiveness a bit if it lets him make more use of the urban environment, but hopefully I don't have to do this much.
Any and a help is appreciated, as long as it's actually an effort to help and not a joke post giving me advice to up the dragon's age category and optimize the hell out of it to murder everyone while obviating everyone completely "because it's what a smart dragon should do." I get that they're superbly intelligent, and to a degree I'm taking advantage of that. But I'm not particularly looking for an unfun TPK where everyone feels useless, as that situation is generally something I consider a failure in my DMing.
Not saying I expect most of you to do that, just, I've seen it and I'd like to avoid it.
Not that anyone who would have done it anyway will be stopped by my asking them not to.
Thanks in advance for teh halpz!
All 12th level:
An Elf Urban Druid with a Medium Animated Object and Wild Cohort-acquired dire bat as ACs who usually uses healing and buff spells;
A Halfling Wizard with a Young Copper Dragon as a mount who focuses on blasting spells and transmutation utility spells;
An Orc Knight/Fighter who uses a guisarme, mostly prefers charging and Power Attacking but also has Improved Trip for whenever the group is forced into the defensive;
A Merfolk Dragonfire Adept who wears Mithral Twilight Nimble Feycraft Breastplate and basically huddles there in her armor using invocations and, when possible, her Enlarged Line of Lightning breath weapon;
And last but not least, an Orc Favored Soul who almost never shows up and used a homebrew feat to get the wings early, focused on blasting, but is currently 3 levels behind. Best not to include him in your calculations.
So, yeah. There's them. Keep their abilities in mind; I need to present a good and preferably lengthy challenge with this fight, as it may be the only one this (8-hour) session given where the plot is headed at the moment.
Who am I kidding, my games don't have a plot.
So, yeah. I'd like to build this dragon to be a lean, mean, city-fighting machine. The city is a large bustling business-y place, a lot like your average downtown business district with office buildings, apartments, and a few skyscrapers. I was intending to use the differing heights in the buildings to the dragon's advantage, doing things like popping behind a skyscraper and dropping down to street level to hide behind the lower buildings as it flies closer again, but I'm not sure yet.
How should I build this dragon in terms of feats, spells known, and equipment, and how should I utilize its tactics, to make it a worthy but not TPKing challenge?
My main concern so far is that the Orc Knight will feel useless; I'm considering dealing with this by having the dragon perform a sort of fly-by grapple to carry him to the top of a building, so they can melee it out for at least a round or two before the others catch up. Then I won't necessarily be playing the dragon stupidly (why the hell would it land for melee combat surrounded by his allies?) but I don't have to obviate the character for the fight.
In case it comes down to this, I'm willing to lower the dragon's actual combat effectiveness a bit if it lets him make more use of the urban environment, but hopefully I don't have to do this much.
Any and a help is appreciated, as long as it's actually an effort to help and not a joke post giving me advice to up the dragon's age category and optimize the hell out of it to murder everyone while obviating everyone completely "because it's what a smart dragon should do." I get that they're superbly intelligent, and to a degree I'm taking advantage of that. But I'm not particularly looking for an unfun TPK where everyone feels useless, as that situation is generally something I consider a failure in my DMing.
Not saying I expect most of you to do that, just, I've seen it and I'd like to avoid it.
Not that anyone who would have done it anyway will be stopped by my asking them not to.
Thanks in advance for teh halpz!