Rise of Tiamat SPOILERS AHEAD!!! Need help creating powerful characters.

[Gizmogidget]

So a few months back we played the Rise of Tiamat, and perished at the hands of the white dragon boss in the beginning, when I was DM. Back then we only had 4 players one of which was a DMPC I created to assist them. We buffed outside of the cave entered, did miniscule amounts of damage do to misses. The dragon then proceeded to kill the DMPC and the cleric with a single breath weapon attack. It cast sleep on the sorcerer and tore him to pieces. Note-I was being only slightly ruthless and suggested to buff to give them a fighting chance against a rather powerful creature. The paladin was grabbed and destroyed with a full attack and then dropped from the top of the cave. Now I am a player, and were trying again only we will have 7 people, however the problem is half of them do not know how to use spells that well. The current DM and I constantly having to remind them. So I want help in learning how to have them get better at spell selection mainly because two of them really enjoying playing paladin and ranger respectively. The damage is flat though because they can never seem to remember and have trouble knowing when to cast spells such as hunters mark How can I help us get the edge so that we can overcome this boss. I know we have 7 players which puts the action economy in our favor but the problem is if we don't make him go away in the first round, I fear his breath weapon will kill half the party like it did last time.

Sorry for such the huge block of text.

[sophontteks]

ok so your a player right? cool.
lead by example and fill the niche your missing. check this guide out. this strategy by treeantmonk applies to classes beyond wizard too. http://community.wizards.com/forum/player-help/threads/4209951
be a control caster. show them the amazingness of spells and control the flow of power so your party doesnt need to lean on the casting power of newer players.

[sophontteks]

oooh. i know whats wrong....
isnt rise of tiamat the sequel to the first series?
so you are having new players jump into a sequel, skipping several levels in the process.

if that is the case, the answer is obvious. dont do that.

new players need to start at level one and progress naturally, gaining their powers slowly over time rather then all at once.

[Yorrin]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you not supposed to fight that dragon? Like it's just there for dramatic effect and it flies away eventually? Or am I thinking of a different campaign?

[Anonymouswizard]

new players need to start at level one and progress naturally, gaining their powers slowly over time rather then all at once.

This isn't certain, but I do suggest starting new players at level 1-3 just so they don't get overwhelmed with abilities.

From now on I'm going to assume that even the ones who don't know how to use spells effectively do know how to play the game properly and have at least a rough idea of how their class features work after reading through them.

So what is the entire party? Because just having the Paladin use their spell slots for Smiting isn't awful and could simplify it greatly for that player. especially if somebody else is playing a character with access to the Paladin's support spells (AFB so don't know their entire spell list).

Not sure on helping the Ranger, because I don't really know the class that well, but an idea might be for him to focus his spells on being a support/utility caster and then just have either a couple of arrow spells or Hunter's Mark for combat. It might end up with him being a bit behind in combat, but with 7 players you can afford to have someone be more of a utility character as long as they contribute to combat

For other ones, I suggest edging them away from full casters or into blaster territory. It's harder to mess up blasting than BFC or debuffing, and so all they have to worry about is whether or not to bust you the high level slots, not if they used the right spell.

[Gizmogidget]

My brother was the one who bought the campaign, and did not know it was part of a series. We have played 5e for some time and have a grasp on all the abilities from 1-7. These particular characters were part of a homebrew campaign that we did. The biggest problem is the breath weapon, which we need to mitigate as much as possible.

The dragon does fly away after 1/2 of it's HP is dealt in damage.

[Gizmogidget]

I am a very huge fan of Treantmonk and have both of his 5e wizard guides saved to Google Drive. I have read both numerous times. I was the wizard mentioned in the first post as sort of an arcane caster, focused around battlefield control. Thanks anyways for the link though.

[Daishain]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you not supposed to fight that dragon? Like it's just there for dramatic effect and it flies away eventually? Or am I thinking of a different campaign?
You're probably thinking of Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Rise of Tiamat's predecessor.

[Maxilian]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you not supposed to fight that dragon? Like it's just there for dramatic effect and it flies away eventually? Or am I thinking of a different campaign?

Old adventures? or maybe something not so old (Venonfang? LMOP?)

[Fighting_Ferret]

What buffs did the party have in place?

[sophontteks]

I am a very huge fan of Treantmonk and have both of his 5e wizard guides saved to Google Drive. I have read both numerous times. I was the wizard mentioned in the first post as sort of an arcane caster, focused around battlefield control. Thanks anyways for the link though.
Lemme go trekkie on ya then
"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life." Jean-luc

I am a big fan of treantmonk too. I worry if the players played all the way to level 7 and still do not understand the basics of their characters. I don't know of a solution to it though. Just keep doing what your doing, roleplay well, be creative, and they will learn.

If your problem is the breath weapon. Just have the paladin cast bless. You guys are getting his charisma bonus to your saving throws plus an additional 1d4 from bless.

[Gizmogidget]

We had a twinned haste courtesy of the sorcerer, a cleric aid spell, a thunderous smite spell on the paladin, mirror image on the wizard, as well as a mage armor. The haste was on the paladin and the cleric so they could heal if necessary while still staying in the fight.

[Gizmogidget]

Problem was that we knew dragons could use breath weapons and to put it short, no one wanted to be anywhere close to the dragon, so we were out of range on the paladins aura.(That would have saved us though)

[HarrisonF]

We bought some potions of frost resistance in waterdeep using some of the council as contacts to find them (using money we got from the hoard in the flying castle). I know you can't always buy magic items depending on your DM, but with Laereal Silverhand and others, it seems like they could scrounge up some since we are going towards a known white dragon.

In addition, for a dragon fight, the two things you need are healing and damage. Healing helps to keep up others. If your damage can't do damage, then you will be in for trouble. Archers are great. Blasters are great (dragons have poor Dex saves). If people forget simple things like Hunter's mark, you will probably have problem doing good damage.

[sophontteks]

We had a twinned haste courtesy of the sorcerer, a cleric aid spell, a thunderous smite spell on the paladin, mirror image on the wizard, as well as a mage armor. The haste was on the paladin and the cleric so they could heal if necessary while still staying in the fight.
Have the cleric cast bless if the paladin won't. The paladin's smite spells are swift actions so he can cast it right before he attacks, but the best idea is to just smite for damage. His smite skill does the most raw damage and it can be activated after the weapon hits. No waste and no concentration. He's a paladin, he can alpha the living crap out of that thing on top of bless and his aura.

[Fighting_Ferret]

Consider a protection from energy (cold) spell on the cleric/paladin to keep the main threat and the main healer in the fight. The breath weapon can't be used every round, but be assured that it will use it every chance it gets.

Also even though dragons have legendary resistance, they can only use it 3 times, so save or suck spells are a good idea if you have multiple casters.

Attacking from range and staying spaced out is a great idea to avoid the breath weapon, which is a large cone (60 feet if I remember correctly)

[Gizmogidget]

We had the cleric cast aid which IIRC has the same affects as bless and adds extra hit points. I am looking more for solutions that will help us take the hit if we fail. Energy resist spells do sound nice by the way.

[sophontteks]

aid doesnt match blesses awesomeness. you get to add that bonus die to both attacks and saves. plus you could have had both.

[Gizmogidget]

Yeah I guess you are correct, we mainly failed due to poor dexterity saves, and a series of unlucky rolls. We need to mitigate damage when we fail.

[sophontteks]

yeah so if paladin blesses you all pass your saves. now all he has to do is attack with everything hes got all at once. no smite spells. they are a waste. just divine smite on every hit for as much as possible.

If he has 3rd level spell slots he can smite for 4d8 after scoring a hit. if he hits twice he can use smite on both attacks for 8d8 bonus smite damage. if he crits these die are doubled.

Fighting a single powerful creature is the paladins thing. he is in his element here. What i listed is just his basic boss killing technique to start with.

[Gizmogidget]

Problem was the paladin bombed initiative, despite the haste. If he had succeeded though than he would have probably done about a billion damage.

[Gizmogidget]

Another note, paladins don't get 3rd level spell slots till level 9.

[sophontteks]

Another note, paladins don't get 3rd level spell slots till level 9.
Yeah I was snowballing your levels. If you mentioned them I missed it :P
I was just saying all of that because you mentioned he had thunderous smite warmed up when you were listing buffs and effects. I got excited because I love paladins and their crazy alpha potential.

[Gizmogidget]

We had the smite up in hopes that A. The DM would waste a legendary resistance as we had fought a couple dragons before that were weaker, or wouldn't and we would get the secondary effect maybe. Then we could pull out the big guns as necessary once the Legendary resist was gone.

[Gizmogidget]

Thanks for the help, We beat the boss yesterday night thanks.

[sophontteks]

cool idea with the smite btw