Can anyone make a party to beat Tiamat.

[Envyus]

As the title says. Tiamat is quite powerful and I would wonder if anyone here can come up with a 4 person level 20 party that can beat her.

First off I saw the starting gear by level chart from the DMG so I will give each character 3 uncommon magic items and 2 rare magic item and 1 very rare.

Your characters have 10 minutes to prep before they would fight Tiamat.

Can anyone think of a winning strategy.

(Also no infinite Simulacrum bull****. I interpret the spell's rules the way it's supposed to be. You can only make 1 no matter what.)

[Jlooney]

As the title says. Tiamat is quite powerful and I would wonder if anyone here can come up with a 4 person level 20 party that can beat her.

First off I saw the starting gear by level chart from the DMG so I will give each character 2 uncommon magic items and 1 rare magic item.

Your characters have 10 minutes to prep before they would fight Tiamat.

Can anyone think of a winning strategy.

(Also no infinite Simulacrum bull****. I interpret the spell's rules the way it's supposed to be. You can only make 1 no matter what.)

The big problem is that no ones knows the items so there isn't a way to pick them

[Envyus]

The big problem is that no ones knows the items so there isn't a way to pick them

You have the DM's basic rules and the online supplments for Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat. That is a lot of magic items of all kinds.

Here links to them

http://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/DMBasicRulesv.0.3.pdf
http://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/HoardDragonQueen_Supplement_PF_v0.3.pdf
http://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/RiseTiamatSupplementv0.2_Printer.pdf

[Jlooney]

You have the DM's basic rules and the online supplments for Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat. That is a lot of magic items of all kinds.

Here links to them

http://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/DMBasicRulesv.0.3.pdf
http://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/HoardDragonQueen_Supplement_PF_v0.3.pdf
http://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/RiseTiamatSupplementv0.2_Printer.pdf

I wasn't even aware these existed. All I can really say is that I'm heartbroken with what I do see on those lists.

Do you really think 3 items is really realistic? I wouldn't face a god with four people and a total of 4 major and 8 medium items.

[Tvtyrant]

(Also no infinite Simulacrum bull****. I interpret the spell's rules the way it's supposed to be. You can only make 1 no matter what.)

So does this mean I can't use True Polymorph + Magic Jar to posses the Tarrasque for the fight?

[Eslin]

Do we have previous prep time? As in aside from the ten minutes preparing specifically to beat Tiamat, do we have time on that or previous days for preparations that aren't specifically to fight Tiamat?

Side note: Where are her stats?

Side side note: Two uncommon and a rare item magic item? On level 20 characters? Seriously?

[JoeJ]

So does this mean I can't use True Polymorph + Magic Jar to posses the Tarrasque for the fight?

If you can actually pull that off, given that the tarrasque's wisdom save is +9, with advantage against magic, and it has legendary resistance as well, you probably deserve to have it work. It might be unfortunate for the other members of your party if the Magic Jar gets dispelled, however. (Unless the container is more than 100' from the tarrasque, in which case it just sucks to be you.)

[Shadow]

Posting interest.
I was thinking I'd play a rogue of some sort, maybe multiclass.
What are the character creation rules? I'll get a sheet and backstory going on mythweavers.
Any idea when the campaign will start?

[Gnomes2169]

Shadow... Wrong thread? :P

[Tvtyrant]

If you can actually pull that off, given that the tarrasque's wisdom save is +9, with advantage against magic, and it has legendary resistance as well, you probably deserve to have it work. It might be unfortunate for the other members of your party if the Magic Jar gets dispelled, however. (Unless the container is more than 100' from the tarrasque, in which case it just sucks to be you.)

Flying mount, just try for day after day until it fails its save. That is how I would do it (the big bad in my campaign is actually a level 20 wizard/tarrasque).

[Shadow]

Shadow... Wrong thread? :P

Nope. :smallbiggrin:

[Eslin]

If you can actually pull that off, given that the tarrasque's wisdom save is +9, with advantage against magic, and it has legendary resistance as well, you probably deserve to have it work. It might be unfortunate for the other members of your party if the Magic Jar gets dispelled, however. (Unless the container is more than 100' from the tarrasque, in which case it just sucks to be you.)

Have your druid walk up and contagion the Tarrasque, target constitution, it spends its turns stunned and its saves trying to beat it. Then contagion again and target wisdom, then contagion again and target charisma. Summon 16 pixies, have them polymorph the Tarrasque into a sloth just to make sure it's harmless while you're trying it. Magic jar still only has a 45% chance of working, but those aren't terrible odds.

Any particular reason summoning 24 pixies to turn her into a penguin wouldn't work on Tiamat?

[Gnomes2169]

Any particular reason summoning 24 pixies to turn her into a penguin wouldn't work on Tiamat?

She's immune to all spells below level 7, and has 5 legendary resistances to blow. Also, immunity to the stunned condition and to disease/ poison shuts down contagion and knockout venom completely.

Oh. And she can holy word to instantly kill all your pixies 3/ long rest.

[Eslin]

She's immune to all spells below level 7, and has 5 legendary resistances to blow. Also, immunity to the stunned condition and to disease/ poison shuts down contagion and knockout venom completely.

Oh. And she can holy word to instantly kill all your pixies 3/ long rest.

Ah, cool. So do we actually get to see her stats? Because if not we're not really making a party to beat Tiamat, just a party to beat what we think Tiamat might be like.

[JoeJ]

Have your druid walk up and contagion the Tarrasque, target constitution, it spends its turns stunned and its saves trying to beat it. Then contagion again and target wisdom, then contagion again and target charisma. Summon 16 pixies, have them polymorph the Tarrasque into a sloth just to make sure it's harmless while you're trying it. Magic jar still only has a 45% chance of working, but those aren't terrible odds.

Any particular reason summoning 24 pixies to turn her into a penguin wouldn't work on Tiamat?

Contagion is unlikely to be successful. The tarrasque's Con save is +10, and it has advantage saving against spells. Plus, walking up to the tarrasque may not be the safest thing to do. I'm not saying it would be impossible because it wouldn't. But you'd definitely need to have the dice gods on your side.

Summoning pixies? I take it you're assuming that Conjure Woodland Beings lets the caster rather than the DM decide what shows up? But in any case, a pixie's Polymorph is DC 12. The tarrasque has a +9 Wis save, again with advantage.

[Eslin]

Contagion is unlikely to be successful. The tarrasque's Con save is +10, and it has advantage saving against spells. Plus, walking up to the tarrasque may not be the safest thing to do. I'm not saying it would be impossible because it wouldn't. But you'd definitely need to have the dice gods on your side.

Summoning pixies? I take it you're assuming that Conjure Woodland Beings lets the caster rather than the DM decide what shows up? But in any case, a pixie's Polymorph is DC 12. The tarrasque has a +9 Wis save, again with advantage.

And with 8-24 wisdom saves depending on which spell slot you used, he'll fail it. And contagion wise, it can't not be successful - the first time you use it you target constitution, he's stunned for at least 3 rounds and cancels out the advantage. Then you move onto wisdom if you feel like it to waste any remaining saves and make sure he fails against polymorph if you're doing that and charisma to help with magic jar.

Also: I realise there's a thread on this, so I'll post it there too, but why on earth wouldn't the caster decide what shows up? The caster determines what the spells do, that's how it works. Creation doesn't specifically say that you choose what material or object you create, does that mean your DM randomly determines it? Fabricate doesn't specifically say you decide what the object is, does that mean the DM decides what is produced? No, because that is incredibly stupid, as is the idea that because conjure woodland beings doesn't specifically say that you decide which creature you want to summon that the DM randomly picks from the appropriate CR.

[Giant2005]

3x Fighter 3 (Battle Master), Rogue 3 (Assassin), Monk 2, Paladin 11 (Oathbreaker), Cleric 1 (Trickery)
1x Bard 15 (Anything) 5 (Anything)

The three multiclass guys have Expertise in Stealth, 20 Dex and use Blessing of the Trickster and Guidance on each other for a stealth check of 1D20+17+1D4 with Advantage. The Bard chucks an inspiration on them each for an extra 1D12 which means they each need to roll 19 or higher on 1D20+1D12+1D4 with advantage to beat Tiamat's perception which is easily done.
The trio sneak up on her and unleash 6 attacks (2 regular, 2 bonus unarmed strikes and 2 action surge) which include 6 smites, 4 superiority dice and crits on everything. It doesn't matter what weapon they have as long as it is magic to bypass Tiamat's immunities. They would easily down the Dragon in a single round.

[Giant2005]

Contagion is unlikely to be successful. The tarrasque's Con save is +10, and it has advantage saving against spells. Plus, walking up to the tarrasque may not be the safest thing to do. I'm not saying it would be impossible because it wouldn't. But you'd definitely need to have the dice gods on your side.

Summoning pixies? I take it you're assuming that Conjure Woodland Beings lets the caster rather than the DM decide what shows up? But in any case, a pixie's Polymorph is DC 12. The tarrasque has a +9 Wis save, again with advantage.

More importantly, Tiamat is immune to both Contagion and every spell a Pixie can cast.

[Eslin]

More importantly, Tiamat is immune to both Contagion and every spell a Pixie can cast.

Yes, we've discussed that. This is why I asked for the full stats. Though considering she's apparently immune to everything level 6 and under (which means a spellcaster has at most 4 spells to directly affect her per day) it looks like I get to make a big long post about how they clearly realised that casters were more useful than martials at that point and decided to fix it with stuff like 5 legendary saves and immunity to most spells.

Imagine if instead of those aspects, she had 'choose 5 times a creature uses an action to attack you - any attacks from that action automatically miss' and 'creatures can only use up to 4 actions attacking you, after that they can not directly attack you'. People would go crazy, they'd say she was clearly there to make martials useless. Instead she has those anti caster features, and the fact that casters are still supposed to be useful after that is pretty clear indication that unless you heavily artificially disrupt the playing field, casters are more useful than martials.

[Envyus]

I wasn't even aware these existed. All I can really say is that I'm heartbroken with what I do see on those lists.

Do you really think 3 items is really realistic? I wouldn't face a god with four people and a total of 4 major and 8 medium items.

Do we have previous prep time? As in aside from the ten minutes preparing specifically to beat Tiamat, do we have time on that or previous days for preparations that aren't specifically to fight Tiamat?

Side note: Where are her stats?

Side side note: Two uncommon and a rare item magic item? On level 20 characters? Seriously?

Rise of Tiamat you can find her stats there. The magic items supplied are based on this

http://tribality.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/20141126_213140.jpg

I feel like being kinder so I will go for High Magic instead of Standard


So does this mean I can't use True Polymorph + Magic Jar to posses the Tarrasque for the fight?

That won't really work as the Terrasque is not a humanoid and It can just use it's legendary resist to pass the save. Anyway it's useless against Tiamat as she can hurt it but it can't hurt her.


Have your druid walk up and contagion the Tarrasque, target constitution, it spends its turns stunned and its saves trying to beat it. Then contagion again and target wisdom, then contagion again and target charisma. Summon 16 pixies, have them polymorph the Tarrasque into a sloth just to make sure it's harmless while you're trying it. Magic jar still only has a 45% chance of working, but those aren't terrible odds.

Any particular reason summoning 24 pixies to turn her into a penguin wouldn't work on Tiamat?
Contagion needs them to fail 3 saves before it comes into effect. Magic Jar only works on Humanoids.


3x Fighter 3 (Battle Master), Rogue 3 (Assassin), Monk 2, Paladin 11 (Oathbreaker), Cleric 1 (Trickery)
1x Bard 15 (Anything) 5 (Anything)

The three multiclass guys have Expertise in Stealth, 20 Dex and use Blessing of the Trickster and Guidance on each other for a stealth check of 1D20+17+1D4 with Advantage. The Bard chucks an inspiration on them each for an extra 1D12 which means they each need to roll 19 or higher on 1D20+1D12+1D4 with advantage to beat Tiamat's perception which is easily done.
The trio sneak up on her and unleash 6 attacks (2 regular, 2 bonus unarmed strikes and 2 action surge) which include 6 smites, 4 superiority dice and crits on everything. It doesn't matter what weapon they have as long as it is magic to bypass Tiamat's immunities. They would easily down the Dragon in a single round.

Maybe I should put a rule up of no more then 2 classes for a muticlassing, but I digress. Anyway nothing actually stops her from having legendary actions even when surprised but that is a tad unfair.Still even then she has 36 passive perception and advantage due to her multiple heads. So it's actually more like a passive perception of 41. Which will make getting that stealth check that much harder


Yes, we've discussed that. This is why I asked for the full stats. Though considering she's apparently immune to everything level 6 and under (which means a spellcaster has at most 4 spells to directly affect her per day) it looks like I get to make a big long post about how they clearly realised that casters were more useful than martials at that point and decided to fix it with stuff like 5 legendary saves and immunity to most spells.

Imagine if instead of those aspects, she had 'choose 5 times a creature uses an action to attack you - any attacks from that action automatically miss' and 'creatures can only use up to 4 actions attacking you, after that they can not directly attack you'. People would go crazy, they'd say she was clearly there to make martials useless. Instead she has those anti caster features, and the fact that casters are still supposed to be useful after that is pretty clear indication that unless you heavily artificially disrupt the playing field, casters are more useful than martials.

She is a god she pretty much has no weaknesses. Martial or Caster.

[JoeJ]

And with 8-24 wisdom saves depending on which spell slot you used, he'll fail it. And contagion wise, it can't not be successful - the first time you use it you target constitution, he's stunned for at least 3 rounds and cancels out the advantage. Then you move onto wisdom if you feel like it to waste any remaining saves and make sure he fails against polymorph if you're doing that and charisma to help with magic jar.

Against the pixie polymorph, the tarrasque only fails on a 1 or 2. With advantage, that's a 99% chance of making each save, and a 78.5% chance of making all 24 of them.

Contagion requires the caster first hit the tarrasque's AC 25 with a melee spell attack. Then the tarrasque gets a Con save each round at +10, with advantage, against DC 19. That's an 84% chance of making the save. Remember that per Mike Mearls, the disease doesn't affect the target until after the third failed save, but even if you disregard, that it still saves at +10 and its advantage cancels out the disadvantage from Slimy Doom, so the odds are still that it will make three saves before failing three. You won't be burning up Legendary Resistance that way. And as soon as the caster ends their turn, the tarrasque can use a legendary action to chomp, which makes a second casting less likely.


Also: I realise there's a thread on this, so I'll post it there too, but why on earth wouldn't the caster decide what shows up? The caster determines what the spells do, that's how it works. Creation doesn't specifically say that you choose what material or object you create, does that mean your DM randomly determines it? Fabricate doesn't specifically say you decide what the object is, does that mean the DM decides what is produced? No, because that is incredibly stupid, as is the idea that because conjure woodland beings doesn't specifically say that you decide which creature you want to summon that the DM randomly picks from the appropriate CR.

We don't have the complete game rules yet, so I'm going to wait and see if there's anything in the DMG before coming to any decision on this one.

[Eslin]

Rise of Tiamat you can find her stats there. The magic items supplied are based on this

http://tribality.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/20141126_213140.jpg

I feel like being kinder so I will go for High Magic instead of Standard
That's starting magic items, it's assumed a level 20 character at the end of their adventures (since they're fighting Tiamat) will have more - though high magic evens it out I guess.


That won't really work as the Terrasque is not a humanoid and It can just use it's legendary resist to pass the save. Anyway it's useless against Tiamat as she can hurt it but it can't hurt her.

Contagion needs them to fail 3 saves before it comes into effect. Magic Jar only works on Humanoids.
Yep, wasn't my idea to use the Tarrasque. You could magic jar it though, just need to true polymorph it to a humanoid then swap then turn it back. Contagion comes into effect immediately and clearly states that it wears off after 3 saves, it just won't work on Tiamat.

[Envyus]

That's starting magic items, it's assumed a level 20 character at the end of their adventures (since they're fighting Tiamat) will have more - though high magic evens it out I guess.

QUOTE=Envyus;18461497]That won't really work as the Terrasque is not a humanoid and It can just use it's legendary resist to pass the save. Anyway it's useless against Tiamat as she can hurt it but it can't hurt her.

Contagion needs them to fail 3 saves before it comes into effect. Magic Jar only works on Humanoids.
Yep, wasn't my idea to use the Tarrasque. You could magic jar it though, just need to true polymorph it to a humanoid then swap then turn it back. Contagion comes into effect immediately and clearly states that it wears off after 3 saves.[/QUOTE]

From my reading of it you can interpret it two ways. The diseases effects come in right away or they come in after 3 failed saves. Both are RaW and ether could fly. The designers have stated that it comes in to effect after 3 failed saves is the intention. As both are RaW and it could be interpreted ether way I will go with you need it to fail 3 saves before it suffers the effects.

Anyway this does not matter as it has nothing to do with the Tiamat challenge as contagion does not work on her anyway.

[Eslin]

Against the pixie polymorph, the tarrasque only fails on a 1 or 2. With advantage, that's a 99% chance of making each save, and a 78.5% chance of making all 24 of them.

Contagion requires the caster first hit the tarrasque's AC 25 with a melee spell attack. Then the tarrasque gets a Con save each round at +10, with advantage, against DC 19. That's an 84% chance of making the save. Remember that per Mike Mearls, the disease doesn't affect the target until after the third failed save, but even if you disregard, that it still saves at +10 and its advantage cancels out the disadvantage from Slimy Doom, so the odds are still that it will make three saves before failing three. You won't be burning up Legendary Resistance that way. And as soon as the caster ends their turn, the tarrasque can use a legendary action to chomp, which makes a second casting less likely.
What's a Mike Mearls got to do with it? The book says it comes into effect immediately. And the Tarrasque doesn't have advantage, contagion cancels it out. And it burns legendary resistance to get rid of it faster.

Besides, what's chomp going to do to stop it? It'll do maybe a quarter of the round by round replenishing HP.


From my reading of it you can interpret it two ways. The diseases effects come in right away or they come in after 3 failed saves. Both are RaW and ether could fly. The designers have stated that it comes in to effect after 3 failed saves is the intention. As both are RaW and it could be interpreted ether way I will go with you need it to fail 3 saves before it suffers the effects.

Anyway this does not matter as it has nothing to do with the Tiamat challenge as contagion does not work on her anyway.
Well, not really. 'After failing three saves the disease's effects last for the duration' 'After succeeding on three saves the creature recovers from the disease' 'On a hit, you afflict the creature with a disease' all indicate it takes place immediately.

The irrelevance thing is true though, since she's apparently double immune. Prep time wise, do we get preparation from earlier and previous days? As in apart from the ten minutes spent preparing specifically for Tiamat, can a bard/paladin have cast find steed days before, a caster find familiar and foresight at the beginning of the day already?

[Envyus]

What's a Mike Mearls got to do with it? The book says it comes into effect immediately. And the Tarrasque doesn't have advantage, contagion cancels it out. And it burns legendary resistance to get rid of it faster.

Besides, what's chomp going to do to stop it? It'll do maybe a quarter of the round by round replenishing HP.


Well, not really. 'After failing three saves the disease's effects last for the duration' 'After succeeding on three saves the creature recovers from the disease' 'On a hit, you afflict the creature with a disease' all indicate it takes place immediately.

The irrelevance thing is true though, since she's apparently double immune. Prep time wise, do we get preparation from earlier and previous days? As in apart from the ten minutes spent preparing specifically for Tiamat, can a bard/paladin have cast find steed days before, a caster find familiar and foresight at the beginning of the day already?

You are affected by the disease but it does not say you are by the diseases effects. Anyway the designers stated that it's supposed to be fail 3 times then you are under it's effect. That is what is intended and that is how it will be in this challenge even though it is useless anyway.

[Shadow]

You are affected by the disease but it does not say you are by the diseases effects. Anyway the designers stated that it's supposed to be fail 3 times then you are under it's effect. That is what is intended and that is how it will be in this challenge even though it is useless anyway.

This is correct.
The wording is ambiguous enough to warrant differences at different tables, but the intent is that the time period during which saves are made is to be considered a kind of gestation period.
During that time you can fight the disease off (if successful), or succumb to its effects (if unsuccessful).

[Eslin]

You are affected by the disease but it does not say you are by the diseases effects. Anyway the designers stated that it's supposed to be fail 3 times then you are under it's effect. That is what is intended and that is how it will be in this challenge even though it is useless anyway.

That doesn't make sense. The disease now affecting you for the next week doesn't change the effects, so either disease never affects you or does straight away. But yes, doesn't affect this either way.

Now, once again, prep time - aside from the ten minutes, can the characters have cast spells on previous days? Can a paladin bring his steed from earlier in the week, or does he have to spend the ten minutes casting find steed?

[JoeJ]

My plan: The party includes at least one full caster capable of casting Plane Shift. Other party members can be anything.

1) Use Plane Shift to travel to the Outlands.
2) Use a portal to get into Sigil.
3) Stay there.

Nice and simple. Tiamat might be able to conquer Toril, but she can't reach you in Sigil because the Lady of Pain can keep even deities out of her city. :smalltongue:

[Rallicus]

Tiamat might be able to conquer Toril, but she can't reach you in Sigil because the Lady of Pain can keep even deities out of her city. :smalltongue:

Yet sometimes they slip through the cracks. (https://zdan1.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/vecna.jpg)

[Nargrakhan]

Yet sometimes they slip through the cracks. (https://zdan1.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/vecna.jpg)

My man there gets some bonus cred with that too. He got to the Lady of Pain's city after escaping from a nebulous association of powerful deities who's main specialty is imprisoning powerful beings to be their personal playthings (i.e. the Dark Powers of Ravenloft). Not an easy feat. I believe he's the only being to ever escape, who wasn't supposed to escape, and stayed escaped after escaping. :smallcool:

[Rallicus]

I believe he's the only being to ever escape, who wasn't supposed to escape, and stayed escaped after escaping. :smallcool:

Lord Soth, maybe? Though he didn't so much escape... more like he got released by virtue of being extremely stubborn.

[Giant2005]

Still even then she has 36 passive perception and advantage due to her multiple heads.
Multiple Heads doesn't give advantage, she just has an insanely high passive perception probably because of it. This is what multiple heads does:


Multiple Heads. Tiamat can take one reaction per turn, rather than only one per round. She also has advantage on saving throws against being knocked unconscious. If she fails a saving throw against an effect that would stun a creature, one of her unspent legendary actions is spent.

[SpawnOfMorbo]

Hmm does Tiamat have immunity to nonmagical weapons? Also does Big T's attacks count as magical?

[Giant2005]

Hmm does Tiamat have immunity to nonmagical weapons? Also does Big T's attacks count as magical?
Yes to both.

[Nargrakhan]

Lord Soth, maybe? Though he didn't so much escape... more like he got released by virtue of being extremely stubborn.

lol... yea. I sorta forgot about him.

IIRC the Dark Powers let Lord Soth go because they found it was impossible to break him, so they more or less got bored with having him around. Or if you believe the Dark Powers are actually a force of redemption, they let him go because they determined he could never be forced to accept the nature of his crimes.

It's rather interesting that one of the least powerful and ordinary intelligent prisoners found a way to beat the Dark Powers (unintention as it was)... just by being completely boring from their prospective. If only Azalin knew!

[Tvtyrant]

My man there gets some bonus cred with that too. He got to the Lady of Pain's city after escaping from a nebulous association of powerful deities who's main specialty is imprisoning powerful beings to be their personal playthings (i.e. the Dark Powers of Ravenloft). Not an easy feat. I believe he's the only being to ever escape, who wasn't supposed to escape, and stayed escaped after escaping. :smallcool:

I imagine that is how he achieved godhood. He isn't really an immortal, sleepless creature. He simply won't let himself age or sleep, sitting in a room full of secrets rocking back and forth whispering "Can't sleep or they will get me. Can't sleep of they will get me."

[numerek]

I posted this party build in the other Tiamat thread, it doesn't really on any magic items. It may not be the best party but it does provide a good starting point.

devotion paladin 10 / war cleric 4 / assassin rogue 4 / fighter 2
crusader's mantle, aura of courage, slots 5, 4, 4, 4, 3, 3
wild mage sorcerer 8 / devotion paladin 5 / assassin rogue 4 / fighter 2 / war cleric 1
twin haste, bend luck, slots 6, 5, 5, 4, 4, 4
wild mage sorcerer 8 / devotion paladin 5 / assassin rogue 4 / fighter 2 / war cleric 1
twin haste, bend luck, slots 6, 5, 5, 4, 4, 4
lore bard 8 / devotion paladin 5 / assassin rogue 4 / fighter 2 / war cleric 1
fly, bardic inspiration, longstrider, jack of all trades (+3 to initiative) slots 6, 5, 5, 4, 4, 4
They all have the below abilities
human starting 13 str 16 dex 9 con 9 int 14 wis 16 cha after 4 ASI 13 str 20 dex 9 con 9 int 14 wis 20 cha
dueling fighting style, sacred weapon, war priest, assassinate, rapiers
Which results in
24 attacks in round one with advantage against ac 25 with +11+5(sacred weapon) to hit gives 20.16 hitting attacks at 1d8 + 1d4 + 5 (dexerity) + 2 (dueling) + 2d6 (sneak attack first hit each) that is an average of 14 points of damage = 310 before smites, smites add 98d8 even if your sorcerers miss four times which is 484 damage which brings the total 794.

[MaxWilson]

As the title says. Tiamat is quite powerful and I would wonder if anyone here can come up with a 4 person level 20 party that can beat her.

I think we've already been through this. The short answer is, "Yes, a party of Eldritch Knights with Sharpshooter and Haste (or two Eldritch Knights and two wizards who make simulacra of the Eldritch Knights) can kite her to death in about two minutes." Details on request but that is the gist of it.

Assumes the stats given in the other thread, which means Tiamat isn't a spellcaster, since this relies on being able to hold her at range.


If you can actually pull that off, given that the tarrasque's wisdom save is +9, with advantage against magic, and it has legendary resistance as well, you probably deserve to have it work. It might be unfortunate for the other members of your party if the Magic Jar gets dispelled, however. (Unless the container is more than 100' from the tarrasque, in which case it just sucks to be you.)

Never use Magic Jar without Death Ward active. This will prevent you from dying when someone dispels your Magic Jar.

[Xetheral]

I posted this party early-on in the other thread:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18313030&postcount=142

With a surprise round, this party easily kills her in one round, without even needing the entire party, even allowing for legendary reactions. The party is using the actor feat and deception, not stealth, to get surprise, and her insight is only +8.

There were two objections on the grounds that the party wouldn't get a surprise round:

First was the claim that Tiamat is universally instantly hostile to humanoids anywhere and everywhere, and cares nothing for dragonish things such as praise, tribute, begging, etc. Personally I disagree: I think a god that personifies evil dragons would exhibit the standard tropes even more strongly than her followers. But if you want to run Tiamat immune to social engineering, then yes, this party wouldn't get a surprise round and probably couldn't kill her.

Second, there was another objection on the grounds that the deception skill can't be used to get a surprise round. Here I also disagree, as the rules state you get surprise when a target doesn't notice a threat. Inherently this means that either a threat isn't noticed at all (stealth), or that the threatening nature of something isn't apparent (deception). On the other hand, the rules only use stealth as an example, and don't mention deception. If you want to run the encounter where stealth is the only way to get surprise, then yes, this party wouldn't get a surprise round and probably couldn't kill her.

Edit: Just noticed the OP is the same in both threads. My post is therefore directed to others who read this thread, not meant to re-start my debate over getting a surprise round with the OP. I believe (and hope!) my summation of that debate in the objections above as-is is a fair recounting of what was said, for people who don't want to dig through the other thread to find the discussion.

[EugeneVoid]

Use fabricate or shadow whatever to get nigh-infinite gold. or rather arbitrarily large quantities gold/day

Spam arcane ward + delayed fireball.

This would never actually work, but trick tiamat to go into your demiplane or some
Blow it up

[Eslin]

True polymorph the entire party into pit fiends several days before, have them beat the crap out of her. Then once she's burnt through 1200hp worth of pit fiend hp, fight can begin as normal.

[JoeJ]

True polymorph the entire party into pit fiends several days before, have them beat the crap out of her. Then once she's burnt through 1200hp worth of pit fiend hp, fight can begin as normal.

I just saw the dev. tweet that clarifies that a True Polymorph which has become permanent does not end if the target drops to 0 hp. So if Tiamat burns through the party of pit fiends, the fight is over.

[Envyus]

Indeed it's permanent for a reason. The reason being it does not wear off.

This is not even a RaW vs RaI thing like Contagion. This is just a misinterpreted.

[Envyus]

Use fabricate or shadow whatever to get nigh-infinite gold. or rather arbitrarily large quantities gold/day

Spam arcane ward + delayed fireball.

This would never actually work, but trick tiamat to go into your demiplane or some
Blow it up

Well having lots of gold does not really help and Delayed Fireball can't hurt her.

[Gnomes2169]

True polymorph the entire party into pit fiends several days before, have them beat the crap out of her. Then once she's burnt through 1200hp worth of pit fiend hp, fight can begin as normal.

If you true polly days before the battle, you won't shift back once you are killed. You will become the pit fiends permanently, and basically toss out your character sheet the moment it becomes permanent. So you would have 1200 hp of pit fiend there to not die with... Which she can kite all day with flight (she is immune to the damage you deal with fireballs, your only real range). And her acid and cold breath deal full damage to you, same with her bite (if she decided to risk melee with 4-6 pit fiends). I'd suggest dragons instead... If they actually had magic natural weapons.

Numerek, your spell slot calculations are way, way off. Your paladin/ cleric only has 8th level caster slots, but you have it at level 11 at least... And you gave it 2 extra level 6 slots even if you had a "total casting level" of 11 (you don't). It should have 4 lvl 1, 3 lvl 2, 3 lvl 3 slots to work with, so 4/3/3/3. if you had paladin 11 and fighter 3, you would get 2 level 4 slots, bringing you to 4/3/3/2).

The wild mage sorc 8, war cleric 1, paladin 5 is considered level 12 as far as slots go, and would thus have 4/3/3/3/3/1. 4 is the maximum number of slots for level 1, 3 for levels 2-5, and you (once again) would only have 1 level 6 slot until MUCH higher caster levels were obtained. As well, sure you can twin haste... But there is no point. You could only concentrate on ONE of those hastes at a time.

I see you have two of these identical characters, and you gave them the same buffs. Too bad the same spells do not stack with one another (haste, bless, fly, longstrider, etc override, not overlap. Sorry.)

Lore bard 8/ Paladin 5/ war cleric 1 has the same number of slots as the character above, and may only have haste or longstrider up. Once again, concentration is not your friend.

You gave the attributes for these frankly silly builds, which points to the next issue: Your party is made of tissue paper. The paladin levels make it so that the tissue paper is dry at least, but with her legendary actions added in, Tiamat basically two rounds the party. It's kind of silly.

The next difficulty would be this, even with haste and an extra attack from paladin levels, your party of 4 is getting 12 attacks, not 24. They only have 60% accuracy when attacking AC 25 (+16 hits on a 9 or higher) and that averages out to 7.2 hits (or 7, since we round down in D&D. Let's be generous and say the bards and sorcs, who have 2 level 5 spell slots, hit twice, while the mostly paladin dude hits once. That's 6x8d8 (auto-crits from assassin factored in), so 48d8 from them, and the last (more paladiny) member gets 6d8 more damage on there, for a grand total of 54d8 radiant damage (233 average damage). Next we have the hits as normal from critting, netting us 14d8+35 (or 63) more damage. And then there was the sneak attack, and once again being generous, all 4 characters land one attack for sneak attack, netting a final glorious bonus of 4x2x2d6... 16d6 damage (or 56) damage. So the grand total damage this build/ team comp nets us is 362 damage. For an alpha strike, this would be great... But now you are in melee with Tiamat. Who, with legendary actions, has likely knocked at least two of your party members to less than half of their max HP. And this is assuming you can even get a surprise round to begin with (which is far from certain).

I just don't see how this build, following spell slot progression, spell stacking and concentration rules, could actually pull off the monumental task of taking Tiamat down in one round. And let's be frank here, they are really only going to get a single round before Tiamat rips them apart (9 con? And you're getting into melee? Seriously? Dude.)

[EugeneVoid]

Alternatively fill a demiplane with nigh-infinite (mindless and uncontrollable, mind you) undead and drop it on her.
I'm sure there are many ways where you can suicide bomb her to victory, but getting into a straight fight and winning hmm..

[JoeJ]

Alternatively fill a demiplane with nigh-infinite (mindless and uncontrollable, mind you) undead and drop it on her.
I'm sure there are many ways where you can suicide bomb her to victory, but getting into a straight fight and winning hmm..

Demiplanes are only 30' x 30' and you'd need to equip your undead army with magical weapons if you want them to be anything more than a smelly minor annoyance.

[EugeneVoid]

Yeah, my plan wouldn't work at all. Tiamat too strong.

[numerek]

Numerek, your spell slot calculations are way, way off. Your paladin/ cleric only has 8th level caster slots, but you have it at level 11 at least... And you gave it 2 extra level 6 slots even if you had a "total casting level" of 11 (you don't). It should have 4 lvl 1, 3 lvl 2, 3 lvl 3 slots to work with, so 4/3/3/3. if you had paladin 11 and fighter 3, you would get 2 level 4 slots, bringing you to 4/3/3/2).
The wild mage sorc 8, war cleric 1, paladin 5 is considered level 12 as far as slots go, and would thus have 4/3/3/3/3/1. 4 is the maximum number of slots for level 1, 3 for levels 2-5, and you (once again) would only have 1 level 6 slot until MUCH higher caster levels were obtained.

I think you are confused by the way I wrote it, sorry for the confusion. I was listing them by the spell slot level in descending order
so a 5th level spell slot, then three 4th level spell slots, then two 3rd level spell slot and he uses a 3rd level spell slot to cast crusader's mantle. I was only listing the best slots they have to use in the one round.
Also paladin levels count as half and cleric's are full casters so a 10 paladin / 4 cleric is a 9th level multiclass spellcaster.
8 wild mage / 5 devotion paladin / 1 war cleric is 11th level multiclass spellcaster.
8 lore bard / 5 paladin / 1 war cleric is also 11th level multiclass spellcaster.




As well, sure you can twin haste...But there is no point. You could only concentrate on ONE of those hastes at a time.

I'm sure we could have a whole forum thread on this but there are many people that believe you can twin haste and maintain the concentration as you are only casting one spell with two targets. There are many other concentration spells that target multiple things. And if you read the twinned spell metamagic on page 102 it specifically says "to target a second creature in range with the same spell"




I see you have two of these identical characters, and you gave them the same buffs. Too bad the same spells do not stack with one another (haste, bless, fly, longstrider, etc override, not overlap. Sorry.)

Lore bard 8/ Paladin 5/ war cleric 1 has the same number of slots as the character above, and may only have haste or longstrider up. Once again, concentration is not your friend.

I designed the party based on 4 concentrations. fly cast as a 6th level spell can target 4 people(which actually does change the bard to be 2 level 5 slots, 3 level 4 slots, 1 level 3 slot but that only decreases the smite damage by 1d8), 2 twinned hastes can target 2 each, bless cast as a 2nd level spell can target 4 people. Longstrider does not have a concentration duration.



You gave the attributes for these frankly silly builds, which points to the next issue: Your party is made of tissue paper. The paladin levels make it so that the tissue paper is dry at least, but with her legendary actions added in, Tiamat basically two rounds the party. It's kind of silly.


The party is designed to win in one round



The next difficulty would be this, even with haste and an extra attack from paladin levels, your party of 4 is getting 12 attacks, not 24.


In said round one they will action surge and use their war cleric bonus attacks. 2 extra attack + 2 action surge + 1 haste + 1 war priest bonus



They only have 60% accuracy when attacking AC 25 (+16 hits on a 9 or higher) and that averages out to 7.2 hits (or 7, since we round down in D&D. Let's be generous and say the bards and sorcs, who have 2 level 5 spell slots, hit twice, while the mostly paladin dude hits once. That's 6x8d8 (auto-crits from assassin factored in), so 48d8 from them, and the last (more paladiny) member gets 6d8 more damage on there, for a grand total of 54d8 radiant damage (233 average damage). Next we have the hits as normal from critting, netting us 14d8+35 (or 63) more damage. And then there was the sneak attack, and once again being generous, all 4 characters land one attack for sneak attack, netting a final glorious bonus of 4x2x2d6... 16d6 damage (or 56) damage. So the grand total damage this build/ team comp nets us is 362 damage. For an alpha strike, this would be great... But now you are in melee with Tiamat. Who, with legendary actions, has likely knocked at least two of your party members to less than half of their max HP.
5 dex + 5 cha + 6 proficiency + d4 bless = 18.5 round down 18, if they act before Tiamat (bend luck and bardic inspiration/jack of all trades help with this)they have advantage on all attacks giving an accuracy of 91% which actually results in 21.84 hits round down is 21.


And this is assuming you can even get a surprise round to begin with (which is far from certain).

The rest of my damage calculation did not include surprise auto crit.


I just don't see how this build, following spell slot progression, spell stacking and concentration rules, could actually pull off the monumental task of taking Tiamat down in one round. And let's be frank here, they are really only going to get a single round before Tiamat rips them apart (9 con? And you're getting into melee? Seriously? Dude.)
There maybe some tweaks that I haven't thought of that can make the group even better but like I said I think this is a good starting point that handles many of the obstacles, they have good movement speed, they have immunity to fear, they have luck and inspiration, they have accurate attacks, and they have many spells slots to burn. And as I said this is with out magical items, even a +1 rapier would improve accuracy that much more and add another 22 damage. I've seen that there are magical items that grant flying.

[numerek]

I posted this party build in the other Tiamat thread, it doesn't really on any magic items. It may not be the best party but it does provide a good starting point.

devotion paladin 10 / war cleric 4 / assassin rogue 4 / fighter 2
crusader's mantle, aura of courage, slots 5, 4, 4, 4, 3, 3
wild mage sorcerer 8 / devotion paladin 5 / assassin rogue 4 / fighter 2 / war cleric 1
twin haste, bend luck, slots 6, 5, 5, 4, 4, 4
wild mage sorcerer 8 / devotion paladin 5 / assassin rogue 4 / fighter 2 / war cleric 1
twin haste, bend luck, slots 6, 5, 5, 4, 4, 4
lore bard 8 / devotion paladin 5 / assassin rogue 4 / fighter 2 / war cleric 1
fly, bardic inspiration, longstrider, jack of all trades (+3 to initiative) slots 6, 5, 5, 4, 4, 4
They all have the below abilities
human starting 13 str 16 dex 9 con 9 int 14 wis 16 cha after 4 ASI 13 str 20 dex 9 con 9 int 14 wis 20 cha
dueling fighting style, sacred weapon, war priest, assassinate, rapiers
Which results in
24 attacks in round one with advantage against ac 25 with +11+5(sacred weapon) to hit gives 20.16 hitting attacks at 1d8 + 1d4 + 5 (dexerity) + 2 (dueling) + 2d6 (sneak attack first hit each) that is an average of 14 points of damage = 310 before smites, smites add 98d8 even if your sorcerers miss four times which is 484 damage which brings the total 794.

Another way to make the party

devotion paladin 12 / war cleric 4 / barbarian 2 / fighter 2
wild mage sorcerer 8 / devotion paladin 5 / eldritch knight 4 / barbarian 2 / war cleric 1
wild mage sorcerer 8 / devotion paladin 5 / eldritch knight 4 / barbarian 2 / war cleric 1
lore bard 8 / devotion paladin 5 / eldritch knight 4 / barbarian 2 / war cleric 1
They all have the below abilities
human starting 13 str 16 dex 10 con 9 int 13 wis 16 cha after 4 ASI 13 str 20 dex 10 con 9 int 13 wis 18 cha
dueling fighting style, sacred weapon, war priest, assassinate, rapiers, alert

This one trades all rogue abilities for reckless attack and more spell slot progression, which removes reliance on going first in the round. Although if they don't go first there is a chance tiamat could kill one or more of them before they act and their damage isn't good enough to handle one person dieing especially since if they lose the bard they lose flying, if they lose one of the sorcerers another guy will lose haste and if they lose the paladin then they lose immunity to fear, improved saving throws, and crusader's mantle.
Another benefit of this build is the paladin getting the 11th level improved divine smite adding an addtional d8 to all its attacks.

the below changes could be made without changing rogue for barbarian.
I moved an ability score point from wisdom to con for those people who love hit points. I spent one of the charisma ability score increases to pick up alert for a +5 to initiative. The drop in accuracy actually still results in 21 hitting attacks (24*0.877).
So the opposed initiative check now becomes.
tiamat
d20-d8(cutting words only if party is within 60 feet of Tiamat when initiative is rolled)-2d4(bend luck) average 5.5(1), max 18(17)

Sorcerers
d20(13.825 tides of chaos for advantage)+d8(bardic inspiration)+d4(bend luck)+5(dex)+5(alert), average 30.825, minimum 13

Paladin
d20+d8(bardic inspiration)+2d4(bend luck)+5(dex)+5(alert), average 30, minimum 14

Bard
d20+2d4(bend luck)+5(dex)+5(alert)+3(jack of all trades), average 28.5, minimum 16

[Heartspan]

Can the dragon godess drown? Drown her :P cost of sand? Wish in alot of sand, suffocate her.

[numerek]

I spent one of the charisma ability score increases to pick up alert for a +5 to initiative. The drop in accuracy actually still results in 21 hitting attacks (24*0.877).
So the opposed initiative check now becomes.
tiamat
d20-d8(cutting words only if party is within 60 feet of Tiamat when initiative is rolled)-2d4(bend luck) average 5.5(1), max 18(17)

Sorcerers
d20(13.825 tides of chaos for advantage)+d8(bardic inspiration)+d4(bend luck)+5(dex)+5(alert), average 30.825, minimum 13

Paladin
d20+d8(bardic inspiration)+2d4(bend luck)+5(dex)+5(alert), average 30, minimum 14

Bard
d20+2d4(bend luck)+5(dex)+5(alert)+3(jack of all trades), average 28.5, minimum 16

With that Tiamat only has a 10.3% chance of getting 14 or better the amount needed to beat the sorcerers minimum roll. And thats without cutting words. And with advantage the sorcerer is rolling 4 dice so its a 1/12800 chance that the sorcerer only rolls a 13. paladins chance of rolling minimum is 1/2540 and bards chance of minimum is 1/320 but that minimum is 16.

[Gwendol]

Nice work Numerek. After looking up Tiamat's stats I have to say "yes" to the OP question, and furthermore, that she is designed to be beatable in the situation described in the module. If she manages to establish her reign however I would guess it will be significantly harder due to the likelyhood of chromatic dragons guarding and serving her, not to mention the hoards of kobolds and other dragonkin she will likely attract.
OTOH, there will be no shortage of powerful allies to oppose her (my enemies enemy...), and I see no reason why Bahamut would let her reign free either.

[SpawnOfMorbo]

Random thought.

Is the stats in the book for Tiamat or for like an avatar of Tiamat?

And if you kill her on the Material Plane, does she just go back to whenever the hell she lives?

[Envyus]

Random thought.

Is the stats in the book for Tiamat or for like an avatar of Tiamat?

And if you kill her on the Material Plane, does she just go back to whenever the hell she lives?

It's stated to be Tiamat. If she drops to 0 Hp her body disintegrates and her essence returns to Hell were it reforms.

Anyway a group actually did a test and fought Tiamat http://worldbuilderblog.me/2014/11/14/the-tiamat-takedown/

They lost and DM forgot about Tiamat's Regeneration. Which he pointed out in a tweet after that he was mad he forgot but that it honestly would not have changed anything other then crushing all hope.

[Vogonjeltz]

Well having lots of gold does not really help and Delayed Fireball can't hurt her.

Fabricate also doesn't create matter from nothing, it just molds matter you already have. I don't even know what shadow whatever was supposed to refer to.

[andhaira]

Is Bahamut sleeping while Tiamat is stomping around? Why not call him up and you know, tell him to do the sole job he has, keeping Tiamat in check.

Also, shapeshift into a tiny creature, enter Tiamat's tummy then shapechange into a dragon. Isn't that what Suuvi did btw?

[SpawnOfMorbo]

Is Bahamut sleeping while Tiamat is stomping around? Why not call him up and you know, tell him to do the sole job he has, keeping Tiamat in check.

Also, shapeshift into a tiny creature, enter Tiamat's tummy then shapechange into a dragon. Isn't that what Suuvi did btw?

Yeah the easiest build is level 20 cleric of bahamut... He has to answer so you at least know he is aware of the crap that's going down.

[Envyus]

Is Bahamut sleeping while Tiamat is stomping around? Why not call him up and you know, tell him to do the sole job he has, keeping Tiamat in check.


He can't do anything really. Tiamat has been summoned outright through complicated ritual. You would need an equally complicated one to get him in the picture.

[Gnomes2169]

He can't do anything really. Tiamat has been summoned outright through complicated ritual. You would need an equally complicated one to get him in the picture.

I'm pretty sure that lore wise, Bahamaut is walking around in his human avatar accompanied by his seven "golden humming birds" while Tiamat is in her hell prison. I don't think his current avatar was ever actually killed, so telling him where his sister showed up very well might just get a pissed off platinum dragon and seven ancient, immortal gold dragons on Tiamat's doorstep.

[Gwendol]

He can't do anything really. Tiamat has been summoned outright through complicated ritual. You would need an equally complicated one to get him in the picture.

No, hardly. Tiamat is in prison and the ritual is designed to release her. Bahamut, and/or several other good deities will want to stop that. Really, any good cleric 20 has a decent shot at having divine intervention stopping the release of Tiamat, as does a decent number of evil clerics with opposed portfolios.

[Gnomes2169]

No, hardly. Tiamat is in prison and the ritual is designed to release her. Bahamut, and/or several other good deities will want to stop that. Really, any good cleric 20 has a decent shot at having divine intervention stopping the release of Tiamat, as does a decent number of evil clerics with opposed portfolios.

Well, if multiple deities or deities other than Bahamaut/ Io get involved, a few of Tiamat's allies (everything in hell, Cyric and I'm pretty sure Bane and Asmodeus are on that list) miiiight just see it as an excuse to cause a divine war... Which could very well annoy Ao or Io, and bring about a second time of troubles. No one wants that. If it's kept in the family, no one really has an excuse to spark that kind of retaliation.

So a god other than Io or Bahamaut who has a cleric call upon them might not send an avatar to battle help. Sparking a god war would have disastrous results on the mortal plane (it did the first ten times too), and yes, it would be worse than if they just let Tiamat win. So DI will probably just get you a spell or spell like effect if you don't get a dragon to handle the other dragon. *With a dragony dragon dragon. Dragon*.

*This passage is taken from the bad poetry found in Mondath's dresser.

[numerek]

Anyway a group actually did a test and fought Tiamat http://worldbuilderblog.me/2014/11/14/the-tiamat-takedown/

They lost and DM forgot about Tiamat's Regeneration. Which he pointed out in a tweet after that he was mad he forgot but that it honestly would not have changed anything other then crushing all hope.

I didn't watch all of it, but that fight was a joke. two of the first 3 didn't have any meaningful way to attack at range and were not able to get into melee combat with Tiamat.

I didn't exactly understand how legendary actions worked though, this makes the build decisions more difficult with barbarian levels at 2nd level they also get advantage on dexterity saving throws, but with the rogue build rogue is the only class (of the classes I used for the builds) that can give dexterity save proficiency. Just about everybody needs to be able to maintain concentration thru 2 breath weapons and one person thru a bite attack. I will have to work on a new build, most likely I will have to give up some of the over damage for more defense.

[PinkysBrain]

Melee is for suckers.

BTW, true seeing is nice and all ... but in the open it's hardly an absolute counter to invisibility, it has a range limit.

[numerek]

devotion paladin 12 / eldritch knight 6 / barbarian 2
bless, aura of courage, slots 4, 4, 3, 3, 3, 2
wild mage sorcerer 8 / eldritch knight 6 / devotion paladin 4 / barbarian 2
twin haste, bend luck, slots 6, 5, 5, 4, 4, 4
wild mage sorcerer 8 / eldritch knight 6 / devotion paladin 4 / barbarian 2
twin haste, bend luck, slots 6, 5, 5, 4, 4, 4
lore bard 8 / eldritch knight 6 / devotion paladin 4 / barbarian 2
fly, bardic inspiration, longstrider, jack of all trades (+3 to initiative) slots 5, 5, 4, 4, 4,3
They all have the below abilities
dragon born 13 str 15 dex 12 con 8 int 12 wis 16 cha
Damage resistance, two weapon fighting, defensive, sacred weapon, reckless attack, alert, resilience dex, war caster
Magic items
Attunement
Gauntlets of Ogre Power(uncommon), amulet of health(rare), ring of resistance(various)(rare)
Non-attunement
short sword+3(very rare) short sword+1(uncommon)
12 paladin
after 2 ASI+resilience dex+magic items 19 str 16 dex 19 con 8 int 12 wis 20 cha
Other characters
after 2 ASI+resilience dex+magic items 19 str 18 dex 19 con 8 int 12 wis 18 cha

Due to legendary actions I have added magical items, also my previous alternate build wouldn't work because reckless attack only works on strength based attacks. I have also switched to two weapon fighting because I needed to drop the war cleric for stat and feat considerations. unfortunately it messes with the damage calculations because sacred weapon can only apply to one weapon so the offhand attack will be less accurate.
So there are 5 attacks at d20+6(proficiency)+4(str)+5(cha)+d4(bless)+3(weapo n)=4.8 hits
15 attacks at d20+6(proficiency)+4(str)+4(cha)+d4(bless)+3(weapo n)=14.07 hits
4 off hand attacks at d20+6(proficiency)+4(str)+d4(bless)+1(weapon)=2.8 hits

Which is still 21 hitting attacks. The additional damage from the magical enhancement pretty much makes up for the dueling fighting style and lower weapon damage, though it would drop a little. As for caster levels the paladin is down to 8 but the others are up to 12 so the smiting damage will be similar as well.

The changes give proficiency in con and dex and advantage on both saves, also +4 to the con save from the amulet of health.

The rings and dragon born damage resistance will be fire, cold, lightning, poison, since acid does the least damage. Such that each person is resistant to two of those four types and each type has two people resistant to it.

Also because of legendary actions initial placement matters, if we can start between 121-140 feet away from tiamat then everybody who hasn't attacked yet will be out of range of the breath weapons. If the fight starts within 49 feet then people can move up attack then provoke an attack of opportunity to move out of range of the cone breath weapons. if the fight starts within 19 feet then people can provoke an attack of opportunity to move out of range of all breath weapons. Each player has the shield spell so there is a small chance Tiamat will miss with said attacks of opportunity and a 40% chance they will be resistant to the elemental damage. If inbetween 50 feet and 120 feet it would be good for one person to be next to the paladin and the other two forming an equilateral triangle around Tiamat. So that only two people can be hit at a time and if it is the two then they have the paladins aura.

These changes also affect the initiative contest but only by 2 points for the paladin and 1 point for the others.

Unfortunately I think even with all these changes there is still a decent chance someone will lose concentration at some point, but this is the best I can come up with so far. Also this is without having the dmg.

[Gnomes2169]

Just remember something very, very important... The moment a turn ends, Tiamat will bathe the party (or at least one person) in a breath weapon of some kind, and even with fire resistance that's still 45 damage on average for the fire breath. If the party is within 90', all of them will be hit, and a DC 24 concentration check will still be rather brutal for most characters. The weakest breath still hits for 67 damage, and since none of the chatacters have resistance to acid, it's more than likely that a DC 33 concentration check is incoming. If none of your dragonborn are black, she will probably open up with that. Your maximum concentration bonus is +16, so hitting a DC 33 check isn't all too likely.

As well, aura of protection does not stack with other auras of protection, which is a general rule (the same feature will not stack with itself). While this gives the paladins some autonomy (they can all run away so that hopefully they aren't all in the , the maximum dex saving throw the current party has is +16 at the moment, so each character has a 50/ 50 chance of failing their dexterity save against any breath, which would be disastrous on round one for the build.

[numerek]

Just remember something very, very important... The moment a turn ends, Tiamat will bathe the party (or at least one person) in a breath weapon of some kind, and even with fire resistance that's still 45 damage on average for the fire breath. If the party is within 90', all of them will be hit, and a DC 24 concentration check will still be rather brutal for most characters. The weakest breath still hits for 67 damage, and since none of the chatacters have resistance to acid, it's more than likely that a DC 33 concentration check is incoming. If none of your dragonborn are black, she will probably open up with that. Your maximum concentration bonus is +16, so hitting a DC 33 check isn't all too likely.

As well, aura of protection does not stack with other auras of protection, which is a general rule (the same feature will not stack with itself). While this gives the paladins some autonomy (they can all run away so that hopefully they aren't all in the , the maximum dex saving throw the current party has is +16 at the moment, so each character has a 50/ 50 chance of failing their dexterity save against any breath, which would be disastrous on round one for the build.

firstly your actually in one way giving the party to much credit, only one is 6th level paladin granting a bonus to saving throws and yes this makes the party very reliant on being within 10 feet of the paladin which is hard to maintain with legendary actions happening every turn.
I did leave it out of the list of abilities they all have, but they all have danger sense from barbarian 2 which gives them advantage on dex saves(I'm pretty sure they can see the gargantuan dragon that they are fighting).

45 damage would be a dc 22 concentration check.

Yes making a dc 33 concentration save would be a 28% chance. but making a dc 27 dexterity save is easier and yes I realized this but this being a 4 person party with 5 damage types coming at them I thought that covering the higher damage ones was the best move. I actually thought of giving all of them fire resistance but I think that covering the top four as best I can is the way to go. So odds of people failing both saves is 21.6%. And the amount of people that will be subjected to any first turn breath weapons largely depends on initial fight placement, even if they are all grouped together to begin with in range of a breath weapon (which seems pretty unlikely a group of people that have lived to make it to 20th level would make such a tactical mistake), the first person can move to where it can not be hit by a breath weapon that the others can be hit by since it says nothing about tiamat getting to move as well as perform a legendary action.

also anybody that rolls above an 18 on their initiative roll will then save bardic inspiration and sorcerers bend luck for use on saving throws.

Tiamat only gets 5 legendary actions points a round and breath weapons take 2 action points so the party would only be subjected to 2 breath weapons and 1 bite.

[Envyus]

I'm pretty sure that lore wise, Bahamaut is walking around in his human avatar accompanied by his seven "golden humming birds" while Tiamat is in her hell prison. I don't think his current avatar was ever actually killed, so telling him where his sister showed up very well might just get a pissed off platinum dragon and seven ancient, immortal gold dragons on Tiamat's doorstep.


No, hardly. Tiamat is in prison and the ritual is designed to release her. Bahamut, and/or several other good deities will want to stop that. Really, any good cleric 20 has a decent shot at having divine intervention stopping the release of Tiamat, as does a decent number of evil clerics with opposed portfolios.

Lorewise in the FR he can't do anything on the material plane. Unless complated rituals are used. Ao made it so that unless they are directly summoned they can no longer muck around as they please on the world.

Tiamat's not really in a prison however. She lives in the Nine Hells was the former ruler of it's first layer. Complicated ritual is just the only way to get deities on the Material Plane now.


Well, if multiple deities or deities other than Bahamaut/ Io get involved, a few of Tiamat's allies (everything in hell, Cyric and I'm pretty sure Bane and Asmodeus are on that list) miiiight just see it as an excuse to cause a divine war... Which could very well annoy Ao or Io, and bring about a second time of troubles. No one wants that. If it's kept in the family, no one really has an excuse to spark that kind of retaliation.

So a god other than Io or Bahamaut who has a cleric call upon them might not send an avatar to battle help. Sparking a god war would have disastrous results on the mortal plane (it did the first ten times too), and yes, it would be worse than if they just let Tiamat win. So DI will probably just get you a spell or spell like effect if you don't get a dragon to handle the other dragon. *With a dragony dragon dragon. Dragon*.

*This passage is taken from the bad poetry found in Mondath's dresser.
Asmodeus and Tiamat apparently don't get along too well as of the 5e Monster Manual. He stripped her of her rulership of the first layer of hell and she is still sore about that. No Divine War can really happen because of what I mentioned above.

[Tvtyrant]

Another way to do this would be to cage a hydra or 10, then shoot them with arrows and healing them until they have a ton of heads (say a few hundred each). Then set up a trap so when you summon Tiamat the hydras are released. As long as one of them wins initiative they should do all of her hit points and win.

[Envyus]

Another way to do this would be to cage a hydra or 10, then shoot them with arrows and healing them until they have a ton of heads (say a few hundred each). Then set up a trap so when you summon Tiamat the hydras are released. As long as one of them wins initiative they should do all of her hit points and win.

Then watch as the Hydra does nothing because their bite atttack's don't count as magical and Tiamat is immune to non magical attacks. You also can't summon Tiamat randomly.

[JoeJ]

Another way to do this would be to cage a hydra or 10, then shoot them with arrows and healing them until they have a ton of heads (say a few hundred each). Then set up a trap so when you summon Tiamat the hydras are released. As long as one of them wins initiative they should do all of her hit points and win.

If an allowable plan involves summoning Tiamat, then couldn't a 1st level party automatically win by not summoning her?

[Tvtyrant]

I thought Tiamat could only come to the mortal plane by ritual?

[Gnomes2169]

I thought Tiamat could only come to the mortal plane by ritual?

Yes, and that ritual is a little bit harder than a Gate spell... :smalltongue:

[JamesIntrocaso]

It's stated to be Tiamat. If she drops to 0 Hp her body disintegrates and her essence returns to Hell were it reforms.

Anyway a group actually did a test and fought Tiamat http://worldbuilderblog.me/2014/11/14/the-tiamat-takedown/

They lost and DM forgot about Tiamat's Regeneration. Which he pointed out in a tweet after that he was mad he forgot but that it honestly would not have changed anything other then crushing all hope.

Yeah we got our butts kicked. If we had some buff time and some terrain to hide behind before hand maybe, but he didn't give her any minions at all. I played the cleric and I actually never should have gotten a turn either because I used my ring of evasion incorrectly.

[Envyus]

Yeah we got our butts kicked. If we had some buff time and some terrain to hide behind before hand maybe, but he didn't give her any minions at all. I played the cleric and I actually never should have gotten a turn either because I used my ring of evasion incorrectly.

Tiamat could have been more deadly the she was played as well. But minion thing is at least accurate to the adventure path. When Tiamat is summoned in the adventure the first thing she does once she fully emerges is kill all the Red Wizards who summoned her then eat Severin or his corpse. She completely ignores the characters while doing this.

[GiantOctopodes]

The best course of action seems to be to have a Rogue 15 / Fighter 5 set up as a grappler (expertise in athletics, the grappler feat). True polymorph them into a Storm Giant, Enlarge them if you wish, and have them grapple her. With an Athletics score of d20 + 21 (9 (str) + 12 (proficiency with expertise)) and a minimum result of 31 (after accounting for practiced expertise flooring the d20 roll at 10), and a maximum result from Tiamat being a 30 (10 (athletics) + a d20 result of 20), you don't even need enlarge or advantage or anything else, the Rogue just wins every contest. The True Polymorph has an hour duration, plenty of time, and does not require the person maintaining concentration to be in range. You also have the whole thing where she doesn't engage the party until clearing the floor of everyone else, but regardless, the Rogue has 230 HP to burn through before the Storm Giant form would be dispelled, enough to take a hit or two if needed.

So the first turn, the Rogue uses Action Surge / has someone cast haste on them / whatever, to have two actions. He grapples, then pins Tiamat. Victory is achieved. Tiamat cannot take any actions or reactions, and the other 3 party members have hundreds of rounds to burn through her HP pool, so as long as they can beat the regeneration values by 1 per round, they'll win eventually. With 3 party members solely focused on that, it shouldn't be *too* hard.

So the party goes like this:
Rogue 15 / Fighter 5 (unless you have someone cast haste on the Rogue, in which case it's Rogue 11 / Whatever 9) with Grappler
Someone with True Polymorph
Other Party Member 1
Other Party Member 2

Sound like a winning plan?

[Envyus]

The best course of action seems to be to have a Rogue 15 / Fighter 5 set up as a grappler (expertise in athletics, the grappler feat). True polymorph them into a Storm Giant, Enlarge them if you wish, and have them grapple her. With an Athletics score of d20 + 21 (9 (str) + 12 (proficiency with expertise)) and a minimum result of 31 (after accounting for practiced expertise flooring the d20 roll at 10), and a maximum result from Tiamat being a 30 (10 (athletics) + a d20 result of 20), you don't even need enlarge or advantage or anything else, the Rogue just wins every contest. The True Polymorph has an hour duration, plenty of time, and does not require the person maintaining concentration to be in range. You also have the whole thing where she doesn't engage the party until clearing the floor of everyone else, but regardless, the Rogue has 230 HP to burn through before the Storm Giant form would be dispelled, enough to take a hit or two if needed.

So the first turn, the Rogue uses Action Surge / has someone cast haste on them / whatever, to have two actions. He grapples, then pins Tiamat. Victory is achieved. Tiamat cannot take any actions or reactions, and the other 3 party members have hundreds of rounds to burn through her HP pool, so as long as they can beat the regeneration values by 1 per round, they'll win eventually. With 3 party members solely focused on that, it shouldn't be *too* hard.

So the party goes like this:
Rogue 15 / Fighter 5 (unless you have someone cast haste on the Rogue, in which case it's Rogue 11 / Whatever 9) with Grappler
Someone with True Polymorph
Other Party Member 1
Other Party Member 2

Sound like a winning plan?

The Storm Giant will not have the Fighter Rogue's grappling powers. They become a Storm Giant with all those stats replacing their own. Also there is no pinning according to the rules. Tell me were you found rules that make it so you can pin and pinning them prevents them from taking actions or reactions. Because The closest thing I saw was restrained which is does nothing to prevent her from attacking.

[Scarlet Dragon]

Alright so I will give this thought exercise a go. My method involves banishing Tiamat back to her home plane via Divine Word which solves the problem of having to fight her and actually kill her, although my method would actually allow me to do that, banishing her is just quicker.
Also thing to note if the spell is lower than 5th level and needs to be at least 7th level to reasonably affect Tiamat it is cast using a 7th level or higher slot which makes it high enough to affect her.

So as to my setup: 4 Level 20 Bards with the Lore College (Following spells chosen for Mystical Secrets: 4x Magic Circle, 2x Circle of Power, 2x Antilife Shell, 4x Death Ward, 4x Divine Word, 4xPrismatic Wall, 4xWall of Force, 4xTime Stop) with the additional spell known: 4x Forcecage
Stats: I don't really care about them except to make Cha 20
Feats:Don't need though you may add them to flavor
Before the Battle: I will assume I am already at the location where Tiamat will make herself known and therefore do not need to go and find her. I also only require 1 minute and 6 seconds to prepare.
Steps:
1. One party member begins to cast Magic Circle around the party choosing Fiends (this is to protect from the Frightful Presence)
2. Gather party around one party member who will cast Antilife Shell (Since they are all within the shell at the instant of casting I interpret it as not affecting them unless they leave)
3. Each party member casts Death Ward on themselves (Used as precaution not necessary)
4. Closer to the arrival of Tiamat one party member casts Circle of Power (This is to help mitigate the breath weapons since I assume it is magical in origin though this step should ultimately be unnecessary)
5. Have all party members ready an action to use the instant Tiamat appears and is within range (30 feet) one will prepare Forcecage as a 20*20*20 Cage prison (to keep her in place and in range), another one will prepare Wall of Force and place it directly between the party and Tiamat (to completely block her breath weapons), the other two will use Divine Word.
6. Every time Tiamat rolls a save for a Divine Word one of the Bards will use Cutting Words to apply a d12 penalty to the roll.

Even if I have to make Magic Circle, Antilife Shell, Circle of Power, Forcecage, and Wall of Force level 7 to affect her (which I don't believe I need to for any of them) I would still have 11 slots left to cast Divine Word. I would also have 12 uses of Cutting Words to apply to all of the saves. Considering that it is a Charisma Save she has +9 to resist which means she would have to roll 10 or higher to succeed which would then be reduced by 1d12 which on average would raise the required roll to be 16 or higher. Thus making her chance of succeeding a save approximately 25%, given this percentage she would fail approximately 8.25 Divine Words when she only needs to fail 6.

Edit:
I realize that this method is inefficient at managing my spellcasting resources, but I decided that having redundancies was worth it. In all honesty I only require the use of the spells Magic Circle, Divine Word, Wall of Force, and Forcecage(though this can be replaced by 4 Walls of Force placed around Tiamat in a Trianugular Pyramid). I could also cut Magic Circle out entirely if I had a magic item that would grant protection from being Frightened.

[MaxWilson]

I don't think Tiamat will fit inside a 20' cube Forcecage.

[Scarlet Dragon]

It says she is gargantuan which is 20x20 or bigger. Since it doesn't say exactly how big she is I will leave that up to the relevant DM to decide, though as I stated I can substitute 1 Forcecage with 4 Walls of Force arranged in a triangular pyramid or I could even use 1 Prismatic Wall in a sphere shape, the whole point is to keep Tiamat from moving around.

[Gnomes2169]

Pretty sure you cant target or AOE a creature blocked by a wall of force unless you destroy the wall... Good try, though.

And since the thought exercise is a level 20 party, we aren't using the adventure path for purposes of when/ where Tiamat appears. I believe we may have a flat, featureless plane, or Tiamat's throne room, and it's just 1vParty. If we were going with the adventure path, though, it's doubtful that you would have many resources left, seeing as you just had to literally cut through an army of cultists to get to the chamber Tiamat is summoned in.

((And I'm pretty sure the Tiamat on the book's cover is a bit bigger than 20'x20', but that's just nitpicking. :smalltongue:))

[MaxWilson]

Pretty sure you cant target or AOE a creature blocked by a wall of force unless you destroy the wall... Good try, though.

And since the thought exercise is a level 20 party, we aren't using the adventure path for purposes of when/ where Tiamat appears. I believe we may have a flat, featureless plane, or Tiamat's throne room, and it's just 1vParty.

If it's a flat, featureless plane, then a party of 3 Eldritch Knights and a Wizard can kill her in about 2 minutes as long as they have Longbows +1, simply because they can move faster than she does and kill from from a range at which she cannot reply. (The Wizard makes a simulacrum of one of the Eldritch Knights, then casts Fly on everybody and runs and hides. The Eldritch knights all Haste themselves and then start shooting at her.)

(This is a bit of a tangent, but I just watched a Youtube video (Tarrasque Takedown) of a bunch of gamers who rolled up 20th level characters and then fought the Tarrasque. It was pathetic. Nobody even Webbed it, they just sat there hitting it with Shocking Grasp and stuff until they were all dying, and then bailed. The Fighter was the only character who was halfway effective, he did about 100 points of damage to it over the course of the fight, but everybody else was just plain pathetic. Lesson learned: just because the Tarrasque looks ridiculously weak and one-dimensional to you doesn't mean it is weak to everybody.)

[Scarlet Dragon]

Well the book is designed for level 15 characters so I imagine level 20 characters could breeze through most of it and I would have plenty of resources to do what I suggested. Also if I am using 4 walls of force to make a Triangular pyramid I can definitely make a small hole in one of the corners that is too small for Tiamat to squeeze through (especially if I use the 10 10*10 panel variant of the spell, just leave a 10 by 10 hole in the middle of the wall facing the party and presto). Wall of Force also doesn't say you can't cast spells through it, only that it blocks things that need to physically travel through it, given that Divine Word doesn't have a physical component to it there should be no problem even if I couldn't leave a hole in it.

Edit: Now that I think about it I could totally modify this idea to take out the Tarrasque as early as level 9 (Level 10 if using Bards to provide the Wall of Forces) provided I had magical ranged weapons.

[Envyus]

It says she is gargantuan which is 20x20 or bigger. Since it doesn't say exactly how big she is I will leave that up to the relevant DM to decide, though as I stated I can substitute 1 Forcecage with 4 Walls of Force arranged in a triangular pyramid or I could even use 1 Prismatic Wall in a sphere shape, the whole point is to keep Tiamat from moving around.

She is at least 50 ft tall. Seriously she is huge she won't fit in a wall of force.


If it's a flat, featureless plane, then a party of 3 Eldritch Knights and a Wizard can kill her in about 2 minutes as long as they have Longbows +1, simply because they can move faster than she does and kill from from a range at which she cannot reply. (The Wizard makes a simulacrum of one of the Eldritch Knights, then casts Fly on everybody and runs and hides. The Eldritch knights all Haste themselves and then start shooting at her.)

(This is a bit of a tangent, but I just watched a Youtube video (Tarrasque Takedown) of a bunch of gamers who rolled up 20th level characters and then fought the Tarrasque. It was pathetic. Nobody even Webbed it, they just sat there hitting it with Shocking Grasp and stuff until they were all dying, and then bailed. The Fighter was the only character who was halfway effective, he did about 100 points of damage to it over the course of the fight, but everybody else was just plain pathetic. Lesson learned: just because the Tarrasque looks ridiculously weak and one-dimensional to you doesn't mean it is weak to everybody.)

Last I checked she is faster. She has a fly speed of 120 ft if she dashs that increases to 240 ft. All of her most deadly attacks come from her legendary actions. The Wizard casts fly then she breathes on the Wizard because the Wizard is not fast enough no stealthy enough to avoid her. He takes around 90 damage and fails to keep the spell up. The Knights are about as lucky she is fast enough that they won't be able to avoid her breath weapons and they will be knocked out of haste and they won't be able to fly because she will effortlessly take down the one who lets them fly.

[Scarlet Dragon]

She is at least 50 ft tall. Seriously she is huge she won't fit in a wall of force.

Curious where does it say her exact dimensions? If I know them I could do some calculations to see if my original estimate of walls is enough, the beautiful thing about the panels variant of Wall of Force is that the panels only have to be contiguous so I can make various surfaces out of them and they don't have to necessarily be a rectangle. Also I can totally add more Walls of Force to the mix if I need to.

[MaxWilson]

Last I checked she is faster. She has a fly speed of 120 ft if she dashs that increases to 240 ft. All of her most deadly attacks come from her legendary actions. The Wizard casts fly then she breathes on the Wizard because the Wizard is not fast enough no stealthy enough to avoid her. He takes around 90 damage and fails to keep the spell up. The Knights are about as lucky she is fast enough that they won't be able to avoid her breath weapons and they will be knocked out of haste and they won't be able to fly because she will effortlessly take down the one who lets them fly.

She's not faster than the Knights. Fly + Haste (extra Dash) = 240' movement (280' with Longstrider). The wizard will have to rely on Dimension Door to break contact, but since he's not really doing anything in this fight it shouldn't be an issue to just keep recasting it as necessary. If necessary, half the Knights can take Dimension Door as well to teleport in pairs (you can have one passenger) but it shouldn't be necessary unless she somehow closes distance using her legendary actions.

You seem to be assuming that the wizard is casting Fly on the knights while within melee range of Tiamat, as if the scenario is "you're eating breakfast, and then suddenly, poof! suddenly Tiamat is ten feet away from you." Is that really the scenario?

[Scarlet Dragon]

She doesn't have the option to use her Legendary Actions for movement so you are fine on that front. She can only use them to make Bite attacks or Breath Weapons. She also can't use her Breath Weapons during her turn and can only use them as a Legendary Action which makes my tactic easily adaptable if you instead had a bunch of arrows and magical bows. Trap her in several walls of force and then place a wall of force in front of you so she can't just fry you with her breath weapon, then just pop around the corner of the wall in front of you pop her with arrows and then pop back around the wall.

[Gnomes2169]

She doesn't have the option to use her Legendary Actions for movement so you are fine on that front. She can only use them to make Bite attacks or Breath Weapons. She also can't use her Breath Weapons during her turn and can only use them as a Legendary Action which makes my tactic easily adaptable if you instead had a bunch of arrows and magical bows. Trap her in several walls of force and then place a wall of force in front of you so she can't just fry you with her breath weapon, then just pop around the corner of the wall in front of you pop her with arrows and then pop back around the wall.

And then she destroys the ground (AC 17, 27 hp/ 10x10 block according to the DMG), and basically just ignores your pinpricks and your walls of force while she goes to eat some mole people and draw you into a tunnel where your silly little arrows tactics won't work on her.

You know, like a real queen of dragons would. Because those are totally things in real life.

[Giant2005]

She's not faster than the Knights. Fly + Haste (extra Dash) = 240' movement (280' with Longstrider). The wizard will have to rely on Dimension Door to break contact, but since he's not really doing anything in this fight it shouldn't be an issue to just keep recasting it as necessary. If necessary, half the Knights can take Dimension Door as well to teleport in pairs (you can have one passenger) but it shouldn't be necessary unless she somehow closes distance using her legendary actions.

You seem to be assuming that the wizard is casting Fly on the knights while within melee range of Tiamat, as if the scenario is "you're eating breakfast, and then suddenly, poof! suddenly Tiamat is ten feet away from you." Is that really the scenario?

A Wizard can't cast two concentration spells and can't cast a concentration spell to effect more than 1 person.
More importantly than that, using Haste against an enemy that does as much damage as Tiamat is a really, really bad idea - you are almost certain to lose concentration which means instead of giving the character the benefits of Haste, you instead cost both him and yourself a turn (Wizard loses a turn by wasting an action casting a useless spell and whoever he cast it on gets stunned for a round).

[Scarlet Dragon]

And then she destroys the ground (AC 17, 27 hp/ 10x10 block according to the DMG), and basically just ignores your pinpricks and your walls of force while she goes to eat some mole people and draw you into a tunnel where your silly little arrows tactics won't work on her.

You know, like a real queen of dragons would. Because those are totally things in real life.

I never said I wouldn't place a wall of force under her as well. :D
Ideally I would box her up while she was in the air. If I need more time to do that, that is the reason I chose to have them all know Timestop.


A Wizard can't cast two concentration spells and can't cast a concentration spell to effect more than 1 person.
More importantly than that, using Haste against an enemy that does as much damage as Tiamat is a really, really bad idea - you are almost certain to lose concentration which means instead of giving the character the benefits of Haste, you instead cost both him and yourself a turn (Wizard loses a turn by wasting an action casting a useless spell and whoever he cast it on gets stunned for a round).

Why do people forget you can cast spells at higher levels often with increased effect? The wizard can cast Fly as a 7th level spell and target 5 people. The Knights can maintain their own Haste and the whole idea they were talking about was to be too fast for Tiamat to get in breath weapon range.

[Gnomes2169]

Physically, a flying Tiamat would have an outstretched wingspan of "a lot larger than a single wall of force per wing," so that might not work out perfectly. However, you are forgetting that if she is flying, she will get off at least one breath weapon after the first bard's turn, and that it is insanely easy to angle it in such a way that the full cone/ line smacks right into the bard's face (and the one that casts it will be in range). That bard will be in lots and lots of pain from that, and since you said all the bards would be next to each other... They may require new lutes. And pants.

A second wall of force would shield the party fully, but I still doubt that you could fully trap her in them if you were making a pyramid of WoF around her... Given her concept art, Tiamat is at least 50' tall with her necks leaning downwards and slightly hunched over. Given general dragon proportions, a good 60'x75' (width)'x250' (length) dragon queen could be expected, with a wing span of roughly her length accompanying that. Of course, that's just the cover of the book concept art, so it might not be the most accurate and WotC totally didn't approve of/ commission it, right? Right? :smalltongue: Rules as written, she can be anywhere from 20x20 to the size of a planet, though I think it's reasonable to go with the cover art in this case, since that's how most DM's will describe her (absolutely massive by all scales. You see what I did there? :D ... I should get more sleep). Since we are going with what a reasonable DM might assume, I think it's within reason to think she might be a bit big for the force cage/ walls of force strategy.

[Scarlet Dragon]

Due to the spells I cast prior to the engagement they would have advantage on the saving throw from the breath weapon and take 0 damage if they made the save. They would also be effectively immune to her natural attacks as long as they stayed next to each other. As to the Wall of Force idea, I still haven't totally given up on it as I could theoretically make a Giant seatbelt of Walls surrounding her restricting her movement enough that she wouldn't be able to do more than lash at the party while unable to hit them and if I threw up an additional wall of force in front of the party it would block her breath attack from reaching them.

As to her true size I was actually thinking she was closer to the proportions given with her range for her reach. She has a claw attack with reach 15 feet making me think that her legs are no more than 20 feet long, a bite attack with 20 feet reach making her necks about 25 feet in length, a tail attack with reach of 25 feet meaning its probably not much bigger than 30 feet. Given those proportions she would be approximately 45 feet tall (necks stretched out to the fullest height), 80 feet in length if fully outstretched, and about 40 feet in width. Give or take a few feet here and there. She is still a massive dragon by all measure but not quite as big as you might be thinking this is also bigger than most if not all dragons in the MM being twice the scale (I saw what you did there :D) of a dragon that just became ancient.

[MaxWilson]

A Wizard can't cast two concentration spells and can't cast a concentration spell to effect more than 1 person.
More importantly than that, using Haste against an enemy that does as much damage as Tiamat is a really, really bad idea - you are almost certain to lose concentration which means instead of giving the character the benefits of Haste, you instead cost both him and yourself a turn (Wizard loses a turn by wasting an action casting a useless spell and whoever he cast it on gets stunned for a round).

1.) The wizard is casting only one Concentration spell (Fly VII to affect everybody) and then a series of non-Concentration spells (Dimension Door) as necessary to stay out of range.
2.) Since staying out of range is the whole point of Haste, Concentration checks are moot.

-Max

[Gnomes2169]

A belt doesn't actually hold her in place, though. Given WoF's restriction on not being able to enter a creature's square (triangular slices would do so, so the pyramid idea is out), the walls would have to contain her completely to hold her... Which might be a bit harder than you think. You need 8.5 pannels to coat one side of her (her torso will be as large as her tail, not her necks, bringing her to 85' long by your measure), which eats up 9 of the pannels of your wall of force (they are 10x10 blocks and are unable to be divided any farther). To contain her front and back, you need 4 pannels on each end, which with only one wall of force left/ bard at this point isn't going to contain her. As well, with her 40' width, you would need 8 walls of force to make a complete jar, otherwise she can just wriggle her way out of one of the 10-20' gaps left in between the 4 10x90' lines. Well, 3 lines, since wall of force is a concentration effect and someone has to keep up one of your buffs. A defensive wall of force is likely a good idea, since... Well...

Anti-life shell is a spell that would need to be cast at level 7+ to affect Tiamat (she does not take the effects of spells below 7th level, and A-L shell specifies that it affects targets) and I'm pretty sure that 15-20' reach is long enough to extend into the shell. To quote:


... An affected creature can cast spells or make attacks with ranged or reach weapons through the barrier.
If you move so that an affected creature is forced to pass through the barrier, the spell ends.

I added the last paragraph to make it a bit more clear that affected creatures include creatures outside the shell as well, meaning that creatures with enough reach can, well, reach. So that doesn't exactly stop Tiamat. A wall of force could protect the party for 10 minutes on the other hand, but that has the problem of your bards being unable to chase after Tiamat when she gets beyond 30'.

As a final note, Circle of Power would still be a good thing to have up, despite eating up your concentration slot and thus a wall of force, as that advantage effectively lowers your d20 roll to save against a breath weapon from needing a 16 (27-11 (max prof+max dex)), to needing to roll a 13 (advantage will give you the basic equivalent of a +3 on the roll), and you have enough bards to inspire all day long (though only once/ round as you can only have one bardic insparation die at a given time). If you are using your bardic inspiration to lower her attack rolls with cutting words, though, and you have each bard do so every round... The bards will run out of inspirations by round 5 (4 if the bards stay within 20' and provoke a bite LA, or if they move out of the 15-20' reach of the claw/ tail and provoke a reaction from them) if each bard rotates inspirations, so that they won't run one guy dry too early. Since Divine Word's range is only 30', you will more than likely be within biting and breathing range if you want to use it, and she does have enough legendary resistances (along with a high enough charisma save with magic resistance to not need to use legendary resistance for each and every divine word) to get through the first round, minimum. The bards are only really assured a successful save against her first breath, and then the magic circle is likely going down once the second one rips into them. Odds are only 1-2 of them makes the second save, and that the ones that makes the save isn't likely going to be the one maintaining the circle (only a 8.75-17.5% chance of the right guy making the save).

Since your bards don't have resistance to any energy damage up, the concentration checks on that hit will be pretty much unmakable without bardic inspiration, and with bardic inspiration you need to roll a maximum in the BI die with a 20 con, proficiency in constitution saving throws and get a natural 20 to reach a 43 (the average result is only 28, however). But you likely won't have said bardic inspiration, given you want to make the breath's saving throw in the first place. You also likely won't have 20 con, given you wanting to max out dex/ cha for the best odds of banishing/ making dex saves. If you start with 16 in each stat (half elves can do this easiest given the point buy) then you can get a 20 in dex and cha, and an 18 in con... But you won't have proficiency with con saves, so a 17 is more likely if you want to make constitution checks (taking the resilient feat will eat one point). A variant human could get 18 and proficiency, but they would have 8 str/ int/ wis, and resilient would be their starting feat. It would also be their only feat.

I just don't think it's very likely that this plan works, given Tiamat's (guesstimated*) dimensions and the absolutely lethal nature of her breath weapons.

Oh my god this is a real word, I'm so happy. :D

[Scarlet Dragon]

Alright yeah now that you mention it I can't use Walls of Force to lock her up because of the concentration (well I could but I would need more than 4 people casting one). Forcecage isn't a concentration spell and they are so similar I forgot that WoF was. My idea was to turn the square panels around in a diamond shape pattern and have them touching each other at a corner, thus gaining an extra four feet of coverage of Wall per panel, since she can't wriggle out of a 10*10 square I could theoretically make a checkerboard pattern wall to block her movement and since it states I get to choose which side of the wall it pushes the creature I could still make a pyramidal shape. This is all moot because WoF needs concentration and thus is only viable as a means of protection and not containment with the number of people at my command.

As for Antilife Shell it specifically states reach "weapons" but Tiamat only has natural attacks which would require some part of her to enter the shell which is prohibited. This won't stop her from picking up a boulder and throwing it at the party though so it only provides a modicum of protection.

Honestly the only reason I wanted to contain her is just to make sure she stays within range, if she won't run away then I could modify my plan to focus solely on protecting the party from her breath weapons and any improvised weapon she might throw at them. But expecting her to just stay in range of a spell being cast that can literally force her back into her home plane is illogical and she has enough Arcana to know exactly what the spell will do to her.

Edit: I was planning on lowering her saving throw rolls with Cutting Words to force her to use up her Legendary Resistances, Theoretically if I could survive two rounds I would be able to cast enough Divine Words to send her back.

[MaxWilson]

Edit: I was planning on lowering her saving throw rolls with Cutting Words to force her to use up her Legendary Resistances, Theoretically if I could survive two rounds I would be able to cast enough Divine Words to send her back.

IIRC, Cutting Words cannot affect enemy saving throws. If it could it would be crazy good instead of just excellent.

[Gnomes2169]

IIRC, Cutting Words cannot affect enemy saving throws. If it could it would be crazy good instead of just excellent.

This. And as for anti-life shell, teeeeeeeechnically they are listed as "melee weapon attacks." Actually, that's not a technicality... But I understand what you mean here. If the spell is a high enough level, she shouldn't be able to bite through it.

[Scarlet Dragon]

Oh yeah I keep forgetting ability checks are separate from saving throws even though they are a check which use an ability. My bad there, she still would only have roughly 50% chance of making the save well tehnically 55% which would mean roughly 12-15 Divine Words if she makes her saves on average.

[Envyus]

1.) The wizard is casting only one Concentration spell (Fly VII to affect everybody) and then a series of non-Concentration spells (Dimension Door) as necessary to stay out of range.
2.) Since staying out of range is the whole point of Haste, Concentration checks are moot.

-Max

But they are just as fast as Tiamat with a 240 move speed meaning she can hit them with her breath weapons. By rules I put forth at the start of the thread 10 minutes of prep is all you get and fly lasts 1 minute.


Also as the battle field seems to be pretty important. Lets just assume that the party is at full strength in the temple of Tiamat. Tiamat pops up in the middle.

http://images.cdn.bigcartel.com/bigcartel/product_images/146911771/max_w-900/Tiamats_Temple_Player's_Version_(Small).jpg

[MaxWilson]

But they are just as fast as Tiamat with a 240 move speed meaning she can hit them with her breath weapons. By rules I put forth at the start of the thread 10 minutes of prep is all you get and fly lasts 1 minute.

Also as the battle field seems to be pretty important. Lets just assume that the party is at full strength in the temple of Tiamat. Tiamat pops up in the middle.

http://images.cdn.bigcartel.com/bigcartel/product_images/146911771/max_w-900/Tiamats_Temple_Player's_Version_(Small).jpg

A few thoughts:

1.) You're wrong about the duration of Fly.
2.) If you have 10 minutes to prep, and you want to use a spell that only lasts for one minute, why wouldn't you just cast the spell at the end of the prep time instead of the beginning?
3.) Yes, battlefield matters. I re-entered this thread in response to a comment from Gnomes about the battlefield being a "flat, featureless plain".


If it's a flat, featureless plane, then a party of 3 Eldritch Knights and a Wizard can kill her in about 2 minutes as long as they have Longbows +1

4.) That map doesn't have a scale. Edit: oh, it does, it's just hard to read. 1 square = 10 feet.
5.) Assuming the scale is 1 square = 5 feet, a party of archers wouldn't want to fight inside that temple. They'd probably lurk outside the temple instead. It shouldn't take long for her to emerge because she can barely fit inside that temple either. Edit: still holds even at 10' scale. They want to fight this lady in the open air.
6.) If she stays inside the temple, or even just lurks within waiting for their Fly VII to run out, she can probably win. Or at least, the archers are going to take some casualties while killing her, and the Wizard will need to switch strategies, get involved, and use Web instead of Fly. It becomes a real fight instead of a mere execution.
7.) I dunno if Tiamat is humble enough to hide inside the temple for the requisite length of time for #6 to happen. She does have a high Intelligence though...
8.) If the party absolutely has to spend ten minutes waiting for Tiamat inside the temple, they should do it from inside of a Leomund's Tiny Hut or Mordenkainen's Magnificant Mansion. Pew, pew, Tiamat dies. This is cheesey though.

[Gnomes2169]

Oh yeah I keep forgetting ability checks are separate from saving throws even though they are a check which use an ability. My bad there, she still would only have roughly 50% chance of making the save well tehnically 55% which would mean roughly 12-15 Divine Words if she makes her saves on average.

Actually, since she only needs a 9 or higher, it's a base of 60% success. Advantage would effectively be a +4 or +5 to this (according to multiple probability calculations by many people much better than me at math, the effective bonus rises as you get closer to needing a 10-11, maxing out at an effective +6, while it lowers to an effective +1 if you need to get a 1 or 20), bringing it to somewhere around 82.5% success on just a bare save. So, acurate-ish math time!

She only fails a charisma save against a magical source once every (100/ 17.5) 5.71 times. The bard party (which likely only stays standing at that range until round 2, via the laws of probability) gets off 4 Divine Words a round. So we can calculate how many rounds it will take for Tiamat to actually burn all of her legendary saves and then fail!

Fails once every 5.71 times
Round 1: 4 attempts, 0 failures
Round 2: 8 attempts, 1 failure
Round 3: (Party is most likely dead) 12 attempts, 2 failures
Round 4: (Party is most certainly dead, and is out of level 7+ spell slots) 16 attempts, 3 failures
Round 5: 20 attempts, 3 faiures
Round 6: 24 attempts, 4 failures
Round 7: 28 attempts, 5 failures, no more Legendary Resistances
Round 8: 32 attempts, 6 failures. Successfully banished back to hell

With a party of 8 bards you have the necessary amount of slots to do this... And you can also just spam magic missiles at her to kill her, and have the slots to buf everyone to lolnope levels of untouchableness. It's also not exactly within the spirit of the thread, you know. :smalltongue:

As for Tiamat being in her temple, I would think that it's the logical place to find her. It will likely be swarming with dragons and servants, but also filled with plentiful amounts of gold and other shweet lewt (tm) as it is her lair, and as such will house her hoard. She is smart enough not to be drawn out of her stronghold by four annoying insects with shiny bows, paranoid enough to assume they have a crafty plan, and jealously greedy enough to believe that they just want to draw her out so that a fith insect with spidery boots can sneak in and steal from her hoard.

So yeah, let's set this in her temple. Everyone but Tiamat is on holiday, and the doors are cursed to slam shut and arcane lock if anyone who doesn't follow Tiamat gets 50' from the entrance. (Let's also say each square on the map counts for 20', to give the party and Tiamat some wiggle room.) Sound fair to everyone?

[MaxWilson]

I'll take you up on that if you want to DM it.

Edit: elaborating now that I'm at a real computer.

Look, the basic idea is simple: Tiamat is range-limited, so you make sure you are dispersed enough that she can only threaten one character per round in her large, 600'-diameter temple. (It's hard to see exactly given the teeny-tiny pic, but I think it's about 30 squares across.)

Since OP gives you 3 uncommon, 2 rare, and 1 very rare magic item per person, the fight is actually pretty straightforward in essence:

1 Archery-based Eldritch Knight 20, 3 Valor Bard 20s (could optimize this further but I want to keep the party relatively generic and not customized purely for Tiamat-killing), and 3 Simulacra of the Eldritch Knight, one Wished by each Valor Bard. All 4 Eldritch Knights have Sharpshooter and +3 longbows (total: 4 very rare items) and the Valor Bards are using their backup +2 longbows (3 rare items), also with Sharpshooter. Valor Bards take Bless as a Magical Secret and then cast it on everybody, giving a total of 22 attacks per round, 16 of them at +18.5 to hit counting bless or +13.5 when using the Sharpshooter option (22.5 points of damage), and 6 of them at +17.5 or +12.5. That's 47.5% chance to hit and 42.5% to hit, respectively. If the Eldritch Knights spend their Concentration keeping up a Greater Invisibility on themselves, their to-hit chance goes up to 72.4%. (You could even use Leomund's Tiny Hut instead of Greater Invisibility, but I'm trying to go for simplicity instead of cheese.) Each fighter is doing 65.16 points of damage per round to Tiamat on average, or 130.32 on an action surge, so if they hold their actions waiting for her to appear, the very first thing that happens is that she takes 260 points of damage from all four Eldritch Knights and 54 more damage from the Valor Bards, and I'm not even counting Action Surges or Bardic Inspiration dice here. Then we'll roll initiative, and she'll regenerate 50 HP of damage, and all the fighters will Action Surge to inflict 520 points of damage on her while the Bards inflict another 54, and she'll be dead at the end of the first round of combat. I don't even have a use for my other 12 uncommon and 5 rare magic items.

On top of this, you can cast Seeming on animated undead so that everybody looks the same (I didn't bother because I figure Tiamat's Perception is high enough that she'll know which ones are my real fighters and which are undead using non-magical bows--but it doesn't hurt to try), you can use Leomund's Tiny Hut to save on Greater Invisibility slots (although this makes Blessing logistically difficult unless you put one Bard in each hut or make the Eldritch Knight take Magic Initiate, which isn't a terrible idea but isn't really generically optimal), and you can use Dimension Door to escape to a different arm of the temple when Tiamat starts to beat on you.

[Envyus]

A few thoughts:

1.) You're wrong about the duration of Fly.
2.) If you have 10 minutes to prep, and you want to use a spell that only lasts for one minute, why wouldn't you just cast the spell at the end of the prep time instead of the beginning?
3.) Yes, battlefield matters. I re-entered this thread in response to a comment from Gnomes about the battlefield being a "flat, featureless plain".



4.) That map doesn't have a scale. Edit: oh, it does, it's just hard to read. 1 square = 10 feet.
5.) Assuming the scale is 1 square = 5 feet, a party of archers wouldn't want to fight inside that temple. They'd probably lurk outside the temple instead. It shouldn't take long for her to emerge because she can barely fit inside that temple either. Edit: still holds even at 10' scale. They want to fight this lady in the open air.
6.) If she stays inside the temple, or even just lurks within waiting for their Fly VII to run out, she can probably win. Or at least, the archers are going to take some casualties while killing her, and the Wizard will need to switch strategies, get involved, and use Web instead of Fly. It becomes a real fight instead of a mere execution.
7.) I dunno if Tiamat is humble enough to hide inside the temple for the requisite length of time for #6 to happen. She does have a high Intelligence though...
8.) If the party absolutely has to spend ten minutes waiting for Tiamat inside the temple, they should do it from inside of a Leomund's Tiny Hut or Mordenkainen's Magnificant Mansion. Pew, pew, Tiamat dies. This is cheesey though.

Your right I should also mention that level 2 is 50 ft above level 1 (Can only be reached by flying) Level 3 is 50 ft above level 2. Can also only reach level 3 by flying.

[Gnomes2169]

I'll take you up on that if you want to DM it.

I would love to! However, I'm going to be busy with finals, work and more work for the next week, think we could do things, say, next Saturday, at around 10-12 CST, does this work for you?

... And wow, case in point, I realized that I was late for work about halfway through this post. ^^; So yeah, a bit swamped atm.

[MaxWilson]

I would love to! However, I'm going to be busy with finals, work and more work for the next week, think we could do things, say, next Saturday, at around 10-12 CST, does this work for you?

Sure, Saturdays are excellent. I'm at [email protected], let's talk details when you get off work.

[Gnomes2169]

Sure, Saturdays are excellent. I'm at [email protected], let's talk details when you get off work.

Will do, and my email is [email protected]. However, I thing a few quick ground rules could be covered here first...

The temple is already 150' across, and a large enough arena without me extending each square to a 20x20 space. we'll use the temple as-is, with all three floors to it. You may want to keep flight around.

You forgot a very important clause of simulacrum; items are not coppied. Your clones will be unarmed and unarmored if you make them on-spot, so I suggest having a few magic items for them by that point (the weakest magic weapons are rare, btw, so you'll be using dem slots). Simulacri will not have their own item pool, and you will not be able to bring an already-made one in, you do have to make one there if you are going to make any.

I will also be playing Tiamat freakishly intelligently, and her 26 int will deserve it. Just as a heads up. I will refrain from using the casting variant, and I will not let her use the (likely thousands of) magic items in her hoard. However, I will be placing massive piles of gold and other valuable items in that hoard, I will be using all three levels, and I will be counting the loot as difficult terrain... As little as that last point will matter.

I may also dimension-lock the temple, just to prevent DD schenanigans. If I don't and you use that to retreat, then I want to count it as a loss on your part unless you DD back within the following 1-10 rounds. This is a "go in there and kill Tiamat" thing, not a "go in there, get our asses handed to us and run away to reset our everything and try again" thing. (I also don't think I could justify Tiamat not finding an item to assist her/ summon allies and make the fight impossibly one-sided within those 10 rounds...)

Do you think this is fair enough and want to continue with the experiment?

[MaxWilson]

No worries about naked simulacra, you can see that in the above outline I had the valor bards carry two longbows and give the better one to the simulacrum after creation, retaining the lesser +2 weapon for their own use.

Caveats about smaller temple noted, will adapt accordingly. Any information about what is outside? Are we underground or anything?

(Btw, weakest magic weapons are uncommon, not rare. Rare is +2, very rare is +3.)

[Giant2005]

(Btw, weakest magic weapons are uncommon, not rare. Rare is +2, very rare is +3.)
The Dwarven Thrower is Very Rare too - you might want to consider that considering it is better than a standard +3 weapon.

[Gnomes2169]

No worries about naked simulacra, you can see that in the above outline I had the valor bards carry two longbows and give the better one to the simulacrum after creation, retaining the lesser +2 weapon for their own use.

Caveats about smaller temple noted, will adapt accordingly. Any information about what is outside? Are we underground or anything?

(Btw, weakest magic weapons are uncommon, not rare. Rare is +2, very rare is +3.)

Ah, fair enough on the weapons standpoint (though I would also like to run the fight with medium and low-fantasy characters at some point too).

As for what is outside, well, let's say the temple is a re-purposed/ redesigned Dragon's Well, so it's in the middle of a mountain. The top has been fixed to it, so there is only the one entrance. The floor and everything else is made of granite and obsidian.


The Dwarven Thrower is Very Rare too - you might want to consider that considering it is better than a standard +3 weapon.

The dwarven thrower is also a str weapon with much shorter range than the longbows, so it isn't the most optimal of ranged weapons for this experiment.

[MaxWilson]

Ah, fair enough on the weapons standpoint (though I would also like to run the fight with medium and low-fantasy characters at some point too).

I'm open to running it in low-fantasy mode instead, since that is actually my preferred playstyle. As long as there are at least a few +1 weapons available I'll be good. (It's actually good if the fight is hard, because Tiamat, unlike the Tarrasque, fully deserves her CR 30 rating.)

How would you like to do this? Maybe nothing but four +1 Longbows? I can't promise to win under those conditions but I'll do my best to make it happen.

[Giant2005]

The dwarven thrower is also a str weapon with much shorter range than the longbows, so it isn't the most optimal of ranged weapons for this experiment.

As per page 284 of the DMG, there is no reason that Dwarven Thrower couldn't be a Dwarven Longbow.

[MaxWilson]

As per page 284 of the DMG, there is no reason that Dwarven Thrower couldn't be a Dwarven Longbow.

Per 284, it would "retain its properties," so the Dwarven Longbow would still be a thrown weapon with a range of 60 feet. Does that make sense to you? Me neither.

Equally important is the fact that the Dwarven Thrower requires attunement, and 10 minutes of prep time is not enough for the Simulacra to attune anything.

One more comment. The way I see it, the real killer in encounters with high-level monsters is not risk but uncertainty: not knowing what the odds are. The mere fact that I'm going into this already knowing what Tiamat's movement rate is, knowing that she's immune to spells below 7th level, what her AC is, etc., is actually a huge advantage for me. If I were fighting Tiamat "in real life" I wouldn't have any of that: I might waste several turns plinking away with Lightning Bolts and Quickened Eldritch Blasts and Scorching Rays and such before figuring out that she ignores all of that. Not to mention that in real life I probably wouldn't have four magic longbows on hand to give to the Fighter's simulacra. In fact, I might not even have a fighter at all. My current party in one game consists of a wizard, a warlock/bard, and a monk. Those guys would never be able to kill Tiamat, and in fact they'd probably even have trouble with a mere Rakshasa. (That is why not having a fighter in that party makes me nervous, but at least "run away" is always an option, and all three characters are good at it.)

Anyway, I just wanted to emphasize that Tiamat is fully deserving of her CR 30 rating and is not a chump, no matter how this fight turns out.

[Gnomes2169]

I'm open to running it in low-fantasy mode instead, since that is actually my preferred playstyle. As long as there are at least a few +1 weapons available I'll be good. (It's actually good if the fight is hard, because Tiamat, unlike the Tarrasque, fully deserves her CR 30 rating.)

How would you like to do this? Maybe nothing but four +1 Longbows? I can't promise to win under those conditions but I'll do my best to make it happen.

How about one rare and two uncommon, and the Simulacrum are limited to uncommon (moderate-fantasy level)? I want to give you a chance to win, after all, and low-fantasy warriors with their low-fantasy weapons might not exactly accomplish that. :smalltongue: Tiamat is a moderate-fantasy CR 30 creature without the spellcasting variant, and likely CR 33 high fantasy if she's allowed to cast spells, so I'm fine running a moderate-fantasy party against her.


As per page 284 of the DMG, there is no reason that Dwarven Thrower couldn't be a Dwarven Longbow.

It would still be a throwing weapon made from a weapon that can't be normally thrown (this is what the dwarf thrower is), and would require a dwarf to attune it. If Max wants this as part of his build, this is fine with me.

[MaxWilson]

How about one rare and two uncommon, and the Simulacrum are limited to uncommon (moderate-fantasy level)? I want to give you a chance to win, after all, and low-fantasy warriors with their low-fantasy weapons might not exactly accomplish that. :smalltongue: Tiamat is a moderate-fantasy CR 30 creature without the spellcasting variant, and likely CR 33 high fantasy if she's allowed to cast spells, so I'm fine running a moderate-fantasy party against her.

What does the bolded text mean? Does that mean that if I have a +2 longbow, I can't hand it off to one of the Simulacra? Why not?

Is this one rare and two uncommon for the whole party? That might be a bit tough actually, since magic weapons are pretty much the only thing that harm her, which means I'd have to burn Concentratin on the Magic Weapon spell. If it's one rare and two uncommon per (real) PC I'd almost say that is too generous, but if you're offering I'll take it. Let me know which.

Oh, one final note: I'll be avoiding Tiamat-specific cheese. For example, I could have a party of things like a Fighter 2/Valor Bard 18 in order to get a fighting style and an action surge for the Valor Bard... but since I think that's a level split which I would never take in real life, I'll eschew that. Everyone that I build has to be someone I would actually be willing to play as a PC.

[Envyus]

I really want to see this. This should be cool.

[Gnomes2169]

What does the bolded text mean? Does that mean that if I have a +2 longbow, I can't hand it off to one of the Simulacra? Why not?

Is this one rare and two uncommon for the whole party? That might be a bit tough actually, since magic weapons are pretty much the only thing that harm her, which means I'd have to burn Concentratin on the Magic Weapon spell. If it's one rare and two uncommon per (real) PC I'd almost say that is too generous, but if you're offering I'll take it. Let me know which.

Just to keep the simulacri under control. I would also recommend looking through the items, just so you can see the other rare things than just the base +2 weapons... there are a lot of things that could potentially be more useful than a +2 bow, regardless of who's hands the bow is in, and most require attunement.

It's one rare two uncommon per person, though again, look at all the items before deciding it's too much. Your Christmas list will probably be 30-40 items long by the time you get through the book, and having to pick 12 (8 uncommon and 4 rare) won't exactly be the easiest of all things. :smalltongue:

Edit:


Oh, one final note: I'll be avoiding Tiamat-specific cheese. For example, I could have a party of things like a Fighter 2/Valor Bard 18 in order to get a fighting style and an action surge for the Valor Bard... but since I think that's a level split which I would never take in real life, I'll eschew that. Everyone that I build has to be someone I would actually be willing to play as a PC.

Thank you for this one, these types of builds get a bit annoying after a while...

[Gnomes2169]

So as a complete non-sequitur, one of my friends (who I am running the Tyranny of Dragons campaign set for) heard that I was doing this challenge, and he decided to give me my christmas present early. So I have the Tiamat model, which I will be stroking like an evil mastermind the entire time. :smallbiggrin:

[pwykersotz]

PLEASE post a link to the fight when you're done. I'm very curious to see how it turns out. :smallsmile:

[Gnomes2169]

PLEASE post a link to the fight when you're done. I'm very curious to see how it turns out. :smallsmile:

Well, since we are doing it over Roll20, I would gladly give you a link to the event as it was ongoing... But I don't currently have anything to record it with. Max, do you have any video recording tech?

[MaxWilson]

Well, since we are doing it over Roll20, I would gladly give you a link to the event as it was ongoing... But I don't currently have anything to record it with. Max, do you have any video recording tech?

Not that I know of, although I'm sure there's probably an app that I can use to capture screen and voice... although if we do it all in the chat window, we could simply post the chat logs somewhere. I dunno, haven't done any Internet (A)D&D before...

Would a post-combat writeup suffice?

[pwykersotz]

Not that I know of, although I'm sure there's probably an app that I can use to capture screen and voice... although if we do it all in the chat window, we could simply post the chat logs somewhere. I dunno, haven't done any Internet (A)D&D before...

Would a post-combat writeup suffice?

Yeah, that would be good enough for me. :smallsmile:

[Envyus]

Yeah, that would be good enough for me. :smallsmile:

That and a link so we can watch it as it happens.

[pwykersotz]

That and a link so we can watch it as it happens.

Although, assuming you were both willing, a cursory google search should provide utilities to capture the session, and youtube is an ever gracious host. :smallwink:

But I feel bad requesting too much. You guys do what you want and I'll be happy with what you're willing to share.

[Gnomes2169]

Although, assuming you were both willing, a cursory google search should provide utilities to capture the session, and youtube is an ever gracious host. :smallwink:

But I feel bad requesting too much. You guys do what you want and I'll be happy with what you're willing to share.

Well, I do have a yourtube account... I just have no idea how to make a video with it. I'd be willing to do things with that if I can figure it out.

[pwykersotz]

Well, I do have a yourtube account... I just have no idea how to make a video with it. I'd be willing to do things with that if I can figure it out.

I found this (http://camstudio.org/) with a quick search.

[MaxWilson]

I just learned that Tiamat has a lower regeneration rate than I thought: 30 as opposed to 50 HP per round.

I fully intend to run myself and my "PCs" through wargaming exercises against pseudo-Tiamats in advance of the event. As Eisenhower once said, "Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."

[Gnomes2169]

Oh Max, one last thing! Feel free to keep your build a secret until the day of the event, but post it here the day of so that I/ the people watching know just what the queen of dragons is up against.

Also, and this is something I probably should have realized a while ago, but feel free to ask me about my DM'ing style! I would hate to finally get to the day and then have the entire experiment ruined by a RAW argument or a houserule/ interpretation coming up that you don't particularly agree with. So ask me about anything, from falling damage, improvised attacks, stealth, cover, sundering/ object destruction rules, specific spells or class features, feats or any combination of anything above! My brain is yours to pick as you please.

((Note, most of my answers to the above are going to be pretty bog-standard. As far as I'm concerned, most rules really don't need patches, and "common sense" can be applied rather easily to rules. However, I tend to err on the admissive side of the RAW, with only a few blatant abuses (true polly/ simulacrum/ onion druid, I choose you!) standing out as things I shut down hard.))

[MaxWilson]

Oh Max, one last thing! Feel free to keep your build a secret until the day of the event, but post it here the day of so that I/ the people watching know just what the queen of dragons is up against.

Also, and this is something I probably should have realized a while ago, but feel free to ask me about my DM'ing style! I would hate to finally get to the day and then have the entire experiment ruined by a RAW argument or a houserule/ interpretation coming up that you don't particularly agree with. So ask me about anything, from falling damage, improvised attacks, stealth, cover, sundering/ object destruction rules, specific spells or class features, feats or any combination of anything above! My brain is yours to pick as you please.

I've actually already posted the essence of my build already: lots of Eldritch Knights with longbows and Valor Bards. I'll tweak the details given the close-range knife-fight quarters, but I feel pretty good about the basic outline: in my practice run today Tiamat was down to 150 HP before she even got to make her first move. That was somewhat lucky (fighter #1 did 173 points of damage all by his lonesome, fighter #2 did about 90, their simulacra rolled poorly and did much less) but I feel pretty good about the basic principle.

There is one rules question that I want to verify with you in advance. Two parts: 1.) in your world, does blindsense penetrate solid barriers? 2.) in your world, would an attack from behind an opaque barrier (Leomund's Tiny Hut hemisphere) count as coming from an unseen attacker and therefore grant advantage? The answers to these questions will determine to a large degree how the Eldritch Knights use their Concentration slots: on Greater Invisibility or something else.

Actually, one more rules question: do you have a problem with the idea of the holding actions outside of combat? Since I know that Tiamat is going to appear suddenly, do you have any issues with everyone being on hair-trigger with a held action, "if Tiamat appears, I shoot her"?

[Gnomes2169]

I've actually already posted the essence of my build already: lots of Eldritch Knights with longbows and Valor Bards. I'll tweak the details given the close-range knife-fight quarters, but I feel pretty good about the basic outline: in my practice run today Tiamat was down to 150 HP before she even got to make her first move. That was somewhat lucky (fighter #1 did 173 points of damage all by his lonesome, fighter #2 did about 90, their simulacra rolled poorly and did much less) but I feel pretty good about the basic principle.

There is one rules question that I want to verify with you in advance. Two parts: 1.) in your world, does blindsense penetrate solid barriers? 2.) in your world, would an attack from behind an opaque barrier (Leomund's Tiny Hut hemisphere) count as coming from an unseen attacker and therefore grant advantage? The answers to these questions will determine to a large degree how the Eldritch Knights use their Concentration slots: on Greater Invisibility or something else.
1) Blindsense does not penetrate solid barriers, however Tiamat does not have blindsense, so I'm not sure if this would be the most relevant of all things. :smalltongue:

2) Sure, it can give you advantage... however, if you make a tiny, immobile hut in the middle of a mountain stronghold with three levels, and somehow expect her not to drop a floor of her temple and half of said mountain on it, you might be in for an unpleasant surprise.


Actually, one more rules question: do you have a problem with the idea of the holding actions outside of combat? Since I know that Tiamat is going to appear suddenly, do you have any issues with everyone being on hair-trigger with a held action, "if Tiamat appears, I shoot her"?

You can. However, if she gets a surprise round then the held actions will not go off (not very likely, I know, but still). Sort of a "You prepared for it but you failed to notice the thing until it smacked out in the side of your head anyway" principle.

[Envyus]

I've actually already posted the essence of my build already: lots of Eldritch Knights with longbows and Valor Bards. I'll tweak the details given the close-range knife-fight quarters, but I feel pretty good about the basic outline: in my practice run today Tiamat was down to 150 HP before she even got to make her first move. That was somewhat lucky (fighter #1 did 173 points of damage all by his lonesome, fighter #2 did about 90, their simulacra rolled poorly and did much less) but I feel pretty good about the basic principle.

There is one rules question that I want to verify with you in advance. Two parts: 1.) in your world, does blindsense penetrate solid barriers? 2.) in your world, would an attack from behind an opaque barrier (Leomund's Tiny Hut hemisphere) count as coming from an unseen attacker and therefore grant advantage? The answers to these questions will determine to a large degree how the Eldritch Knights use their Concentration slots: on Greater Invisibility or something else.

Actually, one more rules question: do you have a problem with the idea of the holding actions outside of combat? Since I know that Tiamat is going to appear suddenly, do you have any issues with everyone being on hair-trigger with a held action, "if Tiamat appears, I shoot her"?

Well for one thing you can't attack from within Leomunds Tiny Hut. The fact you are wasting Wish on a single Simulacrum is sort of confusing to me as well.

Also your practice run scenario is impossible. Once one of your characters did something she would have gotten a legendary action. So She would have gotten a move off before you did that much damage.

Edit: Made a mistake you technically can attack from the tiny hut. But you still can't hurt Tiamat from inside the hut. Because spells and magical effects can't pass through it. So shooting an arrow at her from within it pretty much means you shot a normal arrow at her.

1) Blindsense does not penetrate solid barriers, however Tiamat does not have blindsense, so I'm not sure if this would be the most relevant of all things. :smalltongue:

2) Sure, it can give you advantage... however, if you make a tiny, immobile hut in the middle of a mountain stronghold with three levels, and somehow expect her not to drop a floor of her temple and half of said mountain on it, you might be in for an unpleasant surprise.



You can. However, if she gets a surprise round then the held actions will not go off (not very likely, I know, but still). Sort of a "You prepared for it but you failed to notice the thing until it smacked out in the side of your head anyway" principle.

Don't forget each level is 50 ft above the other and only can be reached by flying. Depending on were they put the hut she does not even have to bother with dropping stuff on it. She can just wait it out from were they can't hit her.

[MaxWilson]

Well for one thing you can't attack from within Leomunds Tiny Hut.

Envyus, this is like the fourth time in 7 days that you've "corrected" me incorrectly. Read the description for Leomund's Tiny Hut. Objects that start off within the hut can pass through the barrier freely for the whole duration. Arrows are objects.


Also your practice run scenario is impossible. Once one of your characters did something she would have gotten a legendary action. So She would have gotten a move off before you did that much damage.

She doesn't have any options to move with her legendary action, only attack and breath fire, neither of which is effective at range. She's a sitting duck until she gets her turn.


Don't forget each level is 50 ft above the other and only can be reached by flying. Depending on were they put the hut she does not even have to bother with dropping stuff on it. She can just wait it out from were they can't hit her.

What does this mean? Are you saying the levels are physically separated from each other by some kind of ceiling? I.e. it's not a giant hollow pyramid?

[Envyus]

Envyus, this is like the fourth time in 7 days that you've "corrected" me incorrectly. Read the description for Leomund's Tiny Hut. Objects that start off within the hut can pass through the barrier freely for the whole duration. Arrows are objects.



She doesn't have any options to move with her legendary action, only attack and breath fire, neither of which is effective at range. She's a sitting duck until she gets her turn.



What does this mean? Are you saying the levels are physically separated from each other by some kind of ceiling? I.e. it's not a giant hollow pyramid?

I corrected myself after if you look at my edit. And by move just meant actions not moving around.

No it's not hollow from what I read of it. Level 2 are floating platforms above level 1 each in their own little tower area. Level 3 is a floating platform 50 ft above level 2. Anyway this was directed at Gnome who I gave the full sized map to for use.

[Gnomes2169]

No it's not hollow from what I read of it. Level 2 are floating platforms above level 1 each in their own little tower area. Level 3 is a floating platform 50 ft above level 2. Anyway this was directed at Gnome who I gave the full sized map to for use.

It's actually this in the adventure path, but since I'm shoving this into the middle of a mountain and such, I think I'll have the levels connected to the walls and supported by pillars instead of free-floating. The blank spaces in between them, however, are definitely meant to be how you get up to and in between each platform.

[Scarlet Dragon]

Tiamat does have Truesight of 120 feet so Greater Invisibility would only be effective after that range.

Also I'd imagine the hut would survive a collapse of the ceiling on it, though I don't imagine they would like the result very much since they would be underneath a bunch of rubble.

[Gnomes2169]

Tiamat does have Truesight of 120 feet so Greater Invisibility would only be effective after that range.

Also I'd imagine the hut would survive a collapse of the ceiling on it, though I don't imagine they would like the result very much since they would be underneath a bunch of rubble.

And they wouldn't be able to DD out, since I think the hut counts as extra-dimensional. So they would have to burn a bigger slot, methinks. Not sure though.

[Scarlet Dragon]

Another thing to note, if they Ready an action to shoot her when she appears they are not ending their turn afterwards since they already ended it by choosing to use the Ready action, and are only using a reaction when the trigger occurs, which means Tiamat would not have the opportunity to use her legendary actions. Readying does not put their turn on hold like in previous editions.

Edit: If they are lucky with initiative and Tiamat is unlucky it is possible that they might get a second round of attacks on her before she can take her turn.

2nd Edit: I do believe you are right that DD wouldn't work, I would probably apply the same restrictions that Forcecage has when it comes to that kind of thing

[MaxWilson]

Tiamat does have Truesight of 120 feet so Greater Invisibility would only be effective after that range.

Also I'd imagine the hut would survive a collapse of the ceiling on it, though I don't imagine they would like the result very much since they would be underneath a bunch of rubble.

I know, but since I'm planning on staying out of 120' range anyway that doesn't bother me. Anyone closer than that will be behind the opaque wall of a Tiny Hut.

Hut being buried under rubble: Freedom of Movement pre-cast is the plan for getting out quickly in this case. Besides, she'd have to burn an action or Legendary Action in order to collapse the ceiling or sweep treasure over it.

Can you tell me more about the internal architecture? Is it a series of ledges or a full separation between floors? If a gigantic dragon goes up there, is she going to have full cover from everything on the 1st level, or are there angles from which you'd still be able to get a shot? Is she going to have any cover at all? She can barely fit inside the first level as is and the second level is much smaller from what I remember of my brief look at it earlier.


And they wouldn't be able to DD out, since I think the hut counts as extra-dimensional. So they would have to burn a bigger slot, methinks. Not sure though.

It doesn't count as extradimensional, and you're probably going to dimension lock the whole place anyway, so if I need to exit the hut for some reason (e.g. she destroyed the floor beneath) I'll just be using regular movement under Freedom of Movement (and the Mobile feat). Does that sound reasonable to you, or would you rule that Burrowing speed is needed to get out from under pile of gold/etc.


2nd Edit: I do believe you are right that DD wouldn't work, I would probably apply the same restrictions that Forcecage has when it comes to that kind of thing

I think imposing Forcecage-like restrictions on entry to Leomund's Tiny Hut alters the balance by making Tiny Hut actually more powerful because it annuls a possible counter. Think carefully before you rule this way. (It doesn't affect the Tiamat scenario, but I'm talking about in normal play.)


Edit: If they are lucky with initiative and Tiamat is unlucky it is possible that they might get a second round of attacks on her before she can take her turn.

Since Tiamat has +0 to initiative and all my fighters are DX-based archers with Alert (+10 to initiative) and Lucky and d12 Bardic Inspiration Dice, it's a virtual certainty that Tiamat is going to go last even if she rolls a 20. Rolling a 20 will still help her though because I'll have to expend some Lucky rolls and some Bardic Inspiration dice on initiative instead of on killing her.

DM question: can you please roll up 4 sets of stats for me to use?

[Scarlet Dragon]

I only mean to apply the extradimensional travel clause where the caster requires a charisma saving throw to do it. That doesn't sound like an unreasonable restriction since it already prevents spells from exiting or entering the hut while simultaneously allowing teleport spells the chance of success. Depending on how you interpret LTH this either makes its slightly stronger or weaker.

[MaxWilson]

I only mean to apply the extradimensional travel clause where the caster requires a charisma saving throw to do it. That doesn't sound like an unreasonable restriction since it already prevents spells from exiting or entering the hut while simultaneously allowing teleport spells the chance of success. Depending on how you interpret LTH this either makes its slightly stronger or weaker.

Under what circumstances would it make the spell weaker? The only one I can think of is if you are somehow physically prevented from exiting the hut, but under almost any circumstances the real effect is "nobody can teleport in, but you can teleport out just by moving outside as you're casting."

[Envyus]

I know, but since I'm planning on staying out of 120' range anyway that doesn't bother me. Anyone closer than that will be behind the opaque wall of a Tiny Hut.


I think True Sight would get through the hut. Also your invisible characters still have to have stealth checks that can beat her 36 passive perception for her not know were they are even if she can't see you.

Also no one in the hut can hurt Tiamat as no Magic Effects can pass through it. And because I want to be as super cheesy as you here that means that any magic ammo that passes through it won't count as magic.


Under what circumstances would it make the spell weaker? The only one I can think of is if you are somehow physically prevented from exiting the hut, but under almost any circumstances the real effect is "nobody can teleport in, but you can teleport out just by moving outside as you're casting."

Because that destroys the hut.

[Gnomes2169]

I know, but since I'm planning on staying out of 120' range anyway that doesn't bother me. Anyone closer than that will be behind the opaque wall of a Tiny Hut.

Oh wait, are you going to open up by ritual-ing up a lemond's tiny hut? I thought you knew it was going to be 10 minutes of prep time outside of the temple. Once you get in there, you will be hunted. Almost immediately (remember, the door slams shut, so Tiamat will know intruders are there and their approximate location).


Hut being buried under rubble: Freedom of Movement pre-cast is the plan for getting out quickly in this case. Besides, she'd have to burn an action or Legendary Action in order to collapse the ceiling or sweep treasure over it.

Freedom of movement won't get you out of a pile of rubble. It's the same principle of not using FoM to walk through a wall, or not using it to dodge a war maul. The rocks fall, you get bludgeoned and knocked down... or in this case, you sit in your little hut and watch the rocks/ gold pour over it. So get your pickaxe and shovels.


Can you tell me more about the internal architecture? Is it a series of ledges or a full separation between floors? If a gigantic dragon goes up there, is she going to have full cover from everything on the 1st level, or are there angles from which you'd still be able to get a shot? Is she going to have any cover at all? She can barely fit inside the first level as is and the second level is much smaller from what I remember of my brief look at it earlier.

Actually, she can fit rather well. Each square according to the map is 10' (this is what is says on the map itself...) and I think she's going to fit in a 40'x40' space. The circles of floor 2 and 3 are the level themselves, and the tiled sections are the holes that lead to them. She can easily get total concealment on any of the floors from the others, but if she stands near one of the entrance holes then she will only have 3/4 or 1/2 cover instead (depending on her positioning within/ beside the hole).


It doesn't count as extradimensional, and you're probably going to dimension lock the whole place anyway, so if I need to exit the hut for some reason (e.g. she destroyed the floor beneath) I'll just be using regular movement under Freedom of Movement (and the Mobile feat). Does that sound reasonable to you, or would you rule that Burrowing speed is needed to get out from under pile of gold/etc.

You will need to actually dig your way out of rubble if you want to get out of it, as covered above. Burrow speed, a suitably high athletics check and a bit of rough terrain all work perfectly well for doing so.


I think imposing Forcecage-like restrictions on entry to Leomund's Tiny Hut alters the balance by making Tiny Hut actually more powerful because it annuls a possible counter. Think carefully before you rule this way. (It doesn't affect the Tiamat scenario, but I'm talking about in normal play.)

Indeed, making it so nothing but objects can get in or out will be more of a boon to the characters within the hut, since teleportation is one of the only real ways to get into the thing.


Since Tiamat has +0 to initiative and all my fighters are DX-based archers with Alert (+10 to initiative) and Lucky and d12 Bardic Inspiration Dice, it's a virtual certainty that Tiamat is going to go last even if she rolls a 20. Rolling a 20 will still help her though because I'll have to expend some Lucky rolls and some Bardic Inspiration dice on initiative instead of on killing her.

DM question: can you please roll up 4 sets of stats for me to use?

Use the PHB point buy for stats, you seriously don't want me rolling them... if you insist on them being rolled, I'll do it, but don't be surprised when a common housecat can solo-kill all of you. :smalltongue: (also, the eagle is 5e's housecat. The thing's minimum damage 1-shots a commoner. Just as an aside)

[MaxWilson]

Because that destroys the hut.

Teleporting out of the hut destroys the hut too, so adding the "no extraplanar movement" is a nearly-pure pure buff to the spell by preventing teleporting in.

@Gnomes2169:

1.) Okay, so she's already in her temple and I'm basically kicking down the door. So noted. Obviously this means that Held Actions will work differently, and movement abilities increase in value because I can't pre-position.

2.) I was planning on casting Leomund's Tiny Hut, not ritualing one up. 1 minute vs. 11 minutes. This is a moot point though if I'm doing an entry.

3.) So noted on Freedom of Movement and rubble.

4.) She's only 40 x 40? Okay then.

5.) I don't have access to the map you are speaking of, but perhaps I will get a copy of Tyranny of Dragons and if so I will cross-reference your comments against that map. Or maybe I won't get one.

6.) It sounds like I could actually stand outside and send in a bunch of animated skeletons to grab some loot out of the mountains of treasure while keeping the party safely outside. If the doors slam shut, oh well, I lost a skeleton or six, and apparently Tiamat is huddling inside too afraid to come out. If the doors remain open, yay free treasure. While I don't plan on actually doing this because I think it violates the way you as DM want this encounter to go, I point this out because it's a reasonably-likely response in an actual adventuring scenario. I expect that Meteor Swarming her treasure would also make her pretty mad and goad her into an attack, but again I won't do this because it's not how I think you want things to happen. Correct me if I'm wrong.

7.) Go ahead and roll the stats, I prefer rolling to point-buy.

[Envyus]

Teleporting out of the hut destroys the hut too, so adding the "no extraplanar movement" is a nearly-pure pure buff to the spell by preventing teleporting in.

True and I consider putting the no extra planar movement to be pointless.

[Giant2005]

What time and day are you planning on running the Tiamat battle?
I would love to kill him too if you have the time and willingness.

[Gnomes2169]

1.) Okay, so she's already in her temple and I'm basically kicking down the door. So noted. Obviously this means that Held Actions will work differently, and movement abilities increase in value because I can't pre-position.

2.) I was planning on casting Leomund's Tiny Hut, not ritualing one up. 1 minute vs. 11 minutes. This is a moot point though if I'm doing an entry.

Yeah, you can choose how everyone steps in, but they are under attack pretty much from the word "go."


3.) So noted on Freedom of Movement and rubble.

4.) She's only 40 x 40? Okay then.

Only for the sake of not moving around a 20x85 avatar... Which literally takes up every square left to right or top to bottom (it's only a 60-90x60-90 box screen (I'll look that up again)... So I might have to make each square 10' each to keep from scrolling for days. She will be considered "curled up" at all stages of the fight, hence the shorter length and greater width.


5.) I don't have access to the map you are speaking of, but perhaps I will get a copy of Tyranny of Dragons and if so I will cross-reference your comments against that map. Or maybe I won't get one.

Well, I was sent a full sized copy that I can edit/ upload into roll20 (the editing will be so I can make three different pages for the three different layers). If you want to see it before hand, then feel free, but if you don't want to spoil it for yourself then I suggest waiting. :smalltongue:


6.) It sounds like I could actually stand outside and send in a bunch of animated skeletons to grab some loot out of the mountains of treasure while keeping the party safely outside. If the doors slam shut, oh well, I lost a skeleton or six, and apparently Tiamat is huddling inside too afraid to come out. If the doors remain open, yay free treasure. While I don't plan on actually doing this because I think it violates the way you as DM want this encounter to go, I point this out because it's a reasonably-likely response in an actual adventuring scenario. I expect that Meteor Swarming her treasure would also make her pretty mad and goad her into an attack, but again I won't do this because it's not how I think you want things to happen. Correct me if I'm wrong.

The skeleton idea would only get you a few loose coins and doodads, as the first floor is pretty much a pit carved into the bottom of the mountain. In fact, the most interesting thing there would be the massive 40x40 hole in the center of the temple that burns with unholy flames and occasionally sends out cries from the depths of hell's first layer. The treasure is 55' up on top of the second platform, and 55' above that on the third*. Unless your undead can fly, they will not reach any treasure to steal. They also wouldn't be good scouts, as the necromancer cannot see through the undead's eyes, and I'm tempted to say they would trigger the magical door-lock trap, as they are sentient (I believe the lowest int on a previously mindless undead in 5e is 6) and they are not aligned with Tiamat... So the party would basically just wind up locking themselves out of the temple.

The platforms are stated to have 50' of room in between them, and are each 5' thick. Thus, the treasure piles are technically 55' apart.

As for the meteor storm... Well you will be spending all of your level 9 slots, but with the hypothetical wizard/ sorcerer in this situation, this would piss Tiamat off. The wizard/ sorc would also have to be at least 30-40' within the temple to get a good LoS on the treasure... Which is a bad place to waste your level 9 slot.


7.) Go ahead and roll the stats, I prefer rolling to point-buy.

Okay, but you are responsible for the results, not me...

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[Gnomes2169]

(Double posting only because I am currently on my phone)


What time and day are you planning on running the Tiamat battle?
I would love to kill him too if you have the time and willingness.

Well, that depends on if Max is willing to run this with another player controlling a character, as I'll only really have time to run the battle once on Saturday. But we plan on running it at 11-12 CST next Saturday.

[Giant2005]

(Double posting only because I am currently on my phone)



Well, that depends on if Max is willing to run this with another player controlling a character, as I'll only really have time to run the battle once on Saturday. But we plan on running it at 11-12 CST next Saturday.

I meant a second battle.

[Gnomes2169]

I meant a second battle.

Ah... I'm not going to run a second one next week, but I might in the future. Maybe.

And hmmm... the last post didn't roll.

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... Okay, seriously? What's going on here...

[pwykersotz]

Ah... I'm not going to run a second one next week, but I might in the future. Maybe.

And hmmm... the last post didn't roll.

4d6b3
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... Okay, seriously? What's going on here...

Wait, is this forum supposed to have a dice roller built in?

[Gnomes2169]

Freaking. Here. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18529538&postcount=1)

And pwykersotz ... not sure exactly if it does, but I'm pretty sure most of the subforums do.

[Giant2005]

Ah... I'm not going to run a second one next week, but I might in the future. Maybe.

And hmmm... the last post didn't roll.

4d6b3
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... Okay, seriously? What's going on here...

I don't think the forum has a die roller built in. If you are planning on using roll20 to do this, you could go ahead and make the game now even if you don't plan on putting the map up or doing anything with it yet. If you did that, you could roll there and it will record the die rolls so everything would be certain to be fair. Or you could have Max roll his own stats there - it doesn't matter who rolls what as long as the history is guaranteeing honesty.
If you aren't using roll20, you could use rolz.org for the same purpose. It takes no effort to create a room to roll in and those rolls are recorded infinitely too - just create an obscure room name that no-one will ever use again to ensure that no-one else gets in there and obscures the rolls with a thousand nonsense rolls mixed within.

EDIT: NVM! You got it sorted and man those rolls are nice! Max was right to peer pressure you into doing it for him :smallbiggrin:

SECOND EDIT: If you do find the time to repeat the encounter for me one day, I would absolutely love to use those same stats!

[Gnomes2169]

EDIT: NVM! You got it sorted and man those rolls are nice! Max was right to peer pressure you into doing it for him :smallbiggrin:

SECOND EDIT: If you do find the time to repeat the encounter for me one day, I would absolutely love to use those same stats!

I know, right? Why can't I get rolls like that on character generation? :smallfrown:

And no. No one gets those stat blocks ever again. They are, as the French say... le too good. :smalltongue:

[MaxWilson]

Ah... I'm not going to run a second one next week, but I might in the future. Maybe.

Giant2005, if you want to do one next week, I have time to run a battle after my own battle. Using everything I will have just learned at that point from Gnomes2169. :)

If you choose to accept this challenge, here are the conditions:

There is a dimensional lock around the cave in which the Temple of Tiamat lies. This dimensional lock utterly destroys all ongoing spell effects and summoned/animated creatures (but not magical items) when you cross it, and it alerts Tiamat to the general nature (alignment, appearance) of whatever is incoming. You know in advance that her mentality is likely to be cat-and-mouse: she is bored and wants to kill you in entertaining ways. She will not charge right up to you, but it's not because she considers you a threat. She may very well underestimate you.

It will be up to you whether the battle is restricted to the temple itself or just the cave. I'll run Tiamat with a 20' x 140' body, and spell effects such as Frightful Presence emanate from the entire body.

If you choose to roll stats, I will roll eight sets of 4d6 drop lowest, and you get to pick any four sets. (We will assume that the four you don't choose died off or retired at low levels.) Or you may choose point buy from the PHB.

[Giant2005]

Giant2005, if you want to do one next week, I have time to run a battle after my own battle. Using everything I will have just learned at that point from Gnomes2169. :)

If you choose to accept this challenge, here are the conditions:

There is a dimensional lock around the cave in which the Temple of Tiamat lies. This dimensional lock utterly destroys all ongoing spell effects and summoned/animated creatures (but not magical items) when you cross it, and it alerts Tiamat to the general nature (alignment, appearance) of whatever is incoming. You know in advance that her mentality is likely to be cat-and-mouse: she is bored and wants to kill you in entertaining ways. She will not charge right up to you, but it's not because she considers you a threat. She may very well underestimate you.

It will be up to you whether the battle is restricted to the temple itself or just the cave. I'll run Tiamat with a 20' x 140' body, and spell effects such as Frightful Presence emanate from the entire body.

If you choose to roll stats, I will roll eight sets of 4d6 drop lowest, and you get to pick any four sets. (We will assume that the four you don't choose died off or retired at low levels.) Or you may choose point buy from the PHB.

Sounds good on all accounts! (Well except for the buff removing on entrance, effectively ruining and chance for preparation but it isn't a big deal). Thanks for the offer man.

[MaxWilson]

Sounds good on all accounts! (Well except for the buff removing on entrance, effectively ruining and chance for preparation but it isn't a big deal). Thanks for the offer man.

Okay, email me at [email protected] and let's make sure I know how to get in touch with you for the event.

I can guarantee that Tiamat will not attack you for at least 1 minute after you enter the temple cave. That will give you time to cast buffs. I will not guarantee that she will wait for you to enter the temple before making her move, but she might.

These are your eight options for stat arrays:

14, 11, 12, 14, 13, 9
13, 12, 12, 10, 12, 10
10, 11, 14, 9, 13, 16
10, 9, 11, 9, 10, 12
13, 7, 7, 14, 15, 15
13, 8, 10, 15, 11, 13
17, 9, 14, 9, 9, 6
13, 9, 14, 14, 13, 9
10, 14, 12, 17, 13, 18
12, 12, 12, 16, 16, 9


Choose any four. Edit: I took pity and rolled two more arrays, so choose from all ten instead of eight.

[Giant2005]

Okay, email me at [email protected] and let's make sure I know how to get in touch with you for the event.

I can guarantee that Tiamat will not attack you for at least 1 minute after you enter the temple cave. That will give you time to cast buffs. I will not guarantee that she will wait for you to enter the temple before making her move, but she might.

These are your eight options for stat arrays:

14, 11, 12, 14, 13, 9
13, 12, 12, 10, 12, 10
10, 11, 14, 9, 13, 16
10, 9, 11, 9, 10, 12
13, 7, 7, 14, 15, 15
13, 8, 10, 15, 11, 13
17, 9, 14, 9, 9, 6
13, 9, 14, 14, 13, 9
10, 14, 12, 17, 13, 18
12, 12, 12, 16, 16, 9


Choose any four. Edit: I took pity and rolled two more arrays, so choose from all ten instead of eight.

E-mail sent! I may have got a little more carried away with the munchkinning than I intended.

[Gnomes2169]

Okay, now that I am finally lucid enough to post this and am no longer limited to watching pink hippopotamus dancing on tutus/ quietly begging for some applesauce from the family...

Bad news on the Tiamat murder fest this Saturday. I've been horribly sick since Tuesday (ironically the day I had set aside to edit the map/ prepare for this), and between throwing up, waking fever dreams and just generally being unconscious, I don't have anything ready for tomorrow... and I really don't think I'll be in any physical state to run the online game (mentally, I'll probably be in drug land, so that's going to be completely out the window as well). If you guys still want to run this, would next week work out better?

[Giant2005]

MaxWilson and I just finished running a Tiamat encounter with the DMG's high magic level suggested equipment for level 20s.
The entire team each rolled into the high 40s for their Stealth checks and with the Cloak of Elvenkind imposing disadvantage on Tiamat's perception, she never had a chance of finding them even with active perception.
As the ambush was triggered, the first combatant (Who rolled a natural 20 for his initiative) attacked her, taking away 3/4 of her health in the first flurry. The second combatant (Who also rolled a natural 20 for initiative) then finished her off before he had an opportunity to use his action surge or bonus attacks.
We felt that was a little anti-climactic so we finished the entire round because we figured technically everyone was supposed to be acting simultaneously so they should all get their actions in before she disappeared. Considering she rolled a shameful 3 for her Initiative, the entire team acted before her. Between the 4 combatants, they inflicted 1518 damage to Tiamat before the round was over.

[Cactuar]

MaxWilson and I just finished running a Tiamat encounter with the DMG's high magic level suggested equipment for level 20s.
The entire team each rolled into the high 40s for their Stealth checks and with the Cloak of Elvenkind imposing disadvantage on Tiamat's perception, she never had a chance of finding them even with active perception.
As the ambush was triggered, the first combatant (Who rolled a natural 20 for his initiative) attacked her, taking away 3/4 of her health in the first flurry. The second combatant (Who also rolled a natural 20 for initiative) then finished her off before he had an opportunity to use his action surge or bonus attacks.
We felt that was a little anti-climactic so we finished the entire round because we figured technically everyone was supposed to be acting simultaneously so they should all get their actions in before she disappeared. Considering she rolled a shameful 3 for her Initiative, the entire team acted before her. Between the 4 combatants, they inflicted 1518 damage to Tiamat before the round was over.

Jesus - is the party posted somewhere in this thread?

[Giant2005]

Jesus - is the party posted somewhere in this thread?

Yes back on the first page but I changed them a little.

This is what they ended up as:

Fighter 1 (Lightfoot Halfling): Fighter 3 (Battle Master), Rogue 3 (Assassin), Monk 2, Paladin 12 (Oathbreaker)
Fighter 2(Lightfoot Halfling): Fighter 3 (Battle Master), Rogue 3 (Assassin), Monk 2, Paladin 12 (Oathbreaker)
Fighter 3(Lightfoot Halfling): Fighter 3 (Battle Master), Rogue 3 (Assassin), Monk 2, Paladin 11 (Oathbreaker), Bard 1
Bard (Hill Dwarf): Bard 15 (Valor), Rogue 3 (Assassin), Fighter 2


And now that I look at it, I completely forgot about the Battlemaster abilities and didn't use any of them so that third Fighter level was kind of wasted.

[MaxWilson]

Okay, now that I am finally lucid enough to post this and am no longer limited to watching pink hippopotamus dancing on tutus/ quietly begging for some applesauce from the family...

Bad news on the Tiamat murder fest this Saturday. I've been horribly sick since Tuesday (ironically the day I had set aside to edit the map/ prepare for this), and between throwing up, waking fever dreams and just generally being unconscious, I don't have anything ready for tomorrow... and I really don't think I'll be in any physical state to run the online game (mentally, I'll probably be in drug land, so that's going to be completely out the window as well). If you guys still want to run this, would next week work out better?

No worries, we can reschedule. Better do it by email because I've mostly stopped reading gitp forums.

Besides, Giant2005 already gave us an existence proof. :)

Rest well and get better soon!

[Pramxnim]

Tiamat may be killed by four burst-oriented characters in an ambush, but how would you build a party to face her in a fight that doesn't include a round wherein she was surprised? At least, I'm assuming the party managed to surprise her, because that kind of damage seems unattainable without relying on Assassinate.

Did Tiamat use her Legendary Actions during the opening round? What specific actions did the party end up using? I would love to know more details from this fight, out of curiosity.

[Giant2005]

Tiamat may be killed by four burst-oriented characters in an ambush, but how would you build a party to face her in a fight that doesn't include a round wherein she was surprised? At least, I'm assuming the party managed to surprise her, because that kind of damage seems unattainable without relying on Assassinate.

Did Tiamat use her Legendary Actions during the opening round? What specific actions did the party end up using? I would love to know more details from this fight, out of curiosity.

No she didn't use her Legendary actions. I don't know if Max simply forgot about them or decided she couldn't use them while surprised but they didn't get used. The fight was over before the end of the second turn anyway so she could have only used one that wouldn't be enough to make a difference (Plus at that point the only person she knew was there would be the one that just attacked so he would be the one hit and having used his attacks already, it couldn't change the outcome even if she managed to one-shot him somehow).
One of the Paladins was using Bless, another Crusader's Mantle and the Bard was using Pass without Trace.
The first Paladin attacked twice with his Greatsword, action surged for another two and then used Flurry of Blows for two unarmed strikes. Each of the 6 attacks had his highest level smites available which I think was 2 level 3s, 3 level 2s and a single level 1.
The next guy to attack used two Greatsword attacks each with a level 3 Smite and by then she had died.

A big contributer was my choice of magic items which is pretty much the most munchkinny thing I have ever done (Mathematically even without the excessive munchkining of these items they should have still won but it would have taken all 3 Paladins). The team used the following items:

Fighter 1: Cloak of Elvenkind, Winged Boots, Potion of Growth, Potion of Fire Giant Strength, +1 Insignia of Claws, +3 Greatsword
Fighter 2: Cloak of Elvenkind, Winged Boots, Potion of Growth, Potion of Fire Giant Strength, +1 Insignia of Claws, +3 Greatsword
Fighter 3: Cloak of Elvenkind, Winged Boots, Potion of Growth, Potion of Fire Giant Strength, +1 Insignia of Claws, +3 Greatsword
Bard: Cloak of Elvenkind, Winged Boots, Potion of Growth, Potion of Fire Giant Strength, +2 Hand Crossbow, Dwarven Thrower

As you can tell from the potion use, I was near certifiable while optimizing this team.

[MaxWilson]

No she didn't use her Legendary actions. I don't know if Max simply forgot about them or decided she couldn't use them while surprised but they didn't get used.

The latter. When you're surprised, you "can't move or take an action" on your first turn of combat, and you can't take reactions until you've already had a turn. The game doesn't define exactly how legendary actions work (honestly, they don't make a whole lot of sense in the first place) but I ruled that she couldn't take her first one due to being surprised, and I probably would have also ruled against her others during the surprise round as well but it was a moot point due to being dead. She took about 400 points of damage from the first fighter, and the second one finished her off with another 400 points of damage or so.

And, as Giant2005 mentioned, she couldn't have done anything with the legendary actions anyway if she'd had them due to not knowing anybody was there except the guy who'd just attacked her.

To clarify the scenario leading up to this:

The adventurers get to the Well of Dragons. They have this horrible premonition that they might be too late, which is confirmed when they hear gigantic roaring coming from inside the temple. They open the doors, and inside is the upper half of a Wearer of the Purple, and beyond him a gigantic open space (the temple interior), a dozen or more corpses scattered around, and a gigantic dragon. She sees them (because with passive perception 36, seeing a door open is easy), and they immediately back off away from the door, around the outside of the temple. Well, she's killed a bunch of humans already, and she knows about the battle raging outside, but mostly she's just enjoying being back on the Prime Material, so she doesn't immediately charge after the new humans to kill them--she figures she has plenty of time now to set up an empire and kill as many humans as she wants to.

So she spends another minute enjoying her new physical body and stretching. And then suddenly one of her heads explodes from a human, who had snuck up on her with a Stealth roll of 44 or 58 or something, suddenly hitting her with 400 points of damage while another human, at the same instant, inflicts another 400 points of damage to her wing. It was basically like getting hit by a .50 caliber sniper round right in the forehead. One moment she's enjoying the fruition of her plot to revive herself, with the help of hundreds of minions and dozens of chromatic dragons, the next moment there's an explosion of pain and a brief nothingness... and she's back on Avernus.

She doesn't even know what happened, and you can assume she spends the next minute in total shock and the next few hours after that punching the walls and beating up grass. And if she ever comes back to Faerun it will be with a very different, more cautious profile. Instead of revelling in her freedom she will be slinking around with her ears flattened, expecting to get squished like a bug at any moment. The whole experience was very unpleasant for her.

P.S. One thing I don't understand about the published adventure: if this is such a big deal, big enough that there are dozens to hundreds of dragons on both sides of the battle at the Well of Dragons, big enough that Szass Tam is getting involved... why is the climactic battle left up to 4 15th level PCs? I think Faerun is a terrible place to set an adventure like this. You want a low-magic world where 15th level PCs are a big deal. On Faerun, any genuine world-changing threat which is opposed by the Harpers and the Red Wizards and the Zhentarim is going to be met with so much firepower that it can't easily be represented in the D&D system, you'll have to use mass combat rules. I think you could redesign the adventure so that you'd still have a climatic fight scene (use some kind of portal or gate which is only open briefly, just long enough to get 4 human-sized creatures through but not any friendly dragons, and the PCs are the ones that go through due to DM's Fiat ensuring that everyone else is busy when the portal opens) but the current adventure design assumes that the forces of good-and-helpful-evil deliberately refrain from concentrating their forces on the greatest threat. Or you could just have it take place on a different world, one where huge mega-organizations of high-level NPCs are not ubiquitous.

[Envyus]

P.S. One thing I don't understand about the published adventure: if this is such a big deal, big enough that there are dozens to hundreds of dragons on both sides of the battle at the Well of Dragons, big enough that Szass Tam is getting involved... why is the climactic battle left up to 4 15th level PCs? I think Faerun is a terrible place to set an adventure like this. You want a low-magic world where 15th level PCs are a big deal. On Faerun, any genuine world-changing threat which is opposed by the Harpers and the Red Wizards and the Zhentarim is going to be met with so much firepower that it can't easily be represented in the D&D system, you'll have to use mass combat rules. I think you could redesign the adventure so that you'd still have a climatic fight scene (use some kind of portal or gate which is only open briefly, just long enough to get 4 human-sized creatures through but not any friendly dragons, and the PCs are the ones that go through due to DM's Fiat ensuring that everyone else is busy when the portal opens) but the current adventure design assumes that the forces of good-and-helpful-evil deliberately refrain from concentrating their forces on the greatest threat. Or you could just have it take place on a different world, one where huge mega-organizations of high-level NPCs are not ubiquitous.

Uh the Temple of Tiamat in the adventure is in the middle of the bad guys base. Szass Tam is also not getting involved he just sent some Red Wizards to take care of the traitor ones.

The good dragons and the rest of the fractions forces are a giant army and are fighting the cult of the dragon in a big battle. The Pc's are supposed to infiltrate the base and stop the ritual to summon her while the majority of the cult is out of the base.

15th level PCs are also a big deal.

[Mitth'raw'nuruo]

I think True Sight would get through the hut. Also your invisible characters still have to have stealth checks that can beat her 36 passive perception for her not know were they are even if she can't see you.

Also no one in the hut can hurt Tiamat as no Magic Effects can pass through it. And because I want to be as super cheesy as you here that means that any magic ammo that passes through it won't count as magic.



Because that destroys the hut.

Well....Unless it changed in 5E...


Arrows with magic properties would pass through.
But normal arrows (fired from a magic bow) would not pass through.....


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Edit: Stupid internet hosting site deleted the picture behind my spoiler. Thankfully the wayback machine had a copy! Only one. A close thing. Silverclaw's campaign was a joy to read. If you have not....look it up.

[Suichimo]

The latter. When you're surprised, you "can't move or take an action" on your first turn of combat, and you can't take reactions until you've already had a turn. The game doesn't define exactly how legendary actions work (honestly, they don't make a whole lot of sense in the first place) but I ruled that she couldn't take her first one due to being surprised, and I probably would have also ruled against her others during the surprise round as well but it was a moot point due to being dead. She took about 400 points of damage from the first fighter, and the second one finished her off with another 400 points of damage or so.

And, as Giant2005 mentioned, she couldn't have done anything with the legendary actions anyway if she'd had them due to not knowing anybody was there except the guy who'd just attacked her.

Legendary actions are explicitly meant to break the action economy though, they aren't reactions either. I'm not sure what the hp of your party was, but she could have at least fired off one of her 90' cone breaths.

I put the averages of your combatants HP together, since I don't know their con or anything else:
Fighter 1/2 - 10+25+90=125+Con
Fighter 3 - 10+30+84=124+Con
Fighter 4 - 10+ 6 +90=106+Con

I don't know what resistances you have but the fire breath has an average of 91 damage, with a range of 26-156. A good roll on that would've deterred quite a bit, maybe having ended it right there.

I'd love to see the log, if this was done through text.