Need Anti-Dragon Feats and Spells

[CrazyYanmega]

Okay, so my party I DM is about to encounter the ruler of their country, an Ancient Green Dragon named Gahalarix. The party is carrying information about a country of undead that is planning to invade. Once the party is leaving, however:

ECL 14: Dragon Slayers. Just as Gahalarix is seeing the party off, a team of over twenty dragonslayers belonging to the Harrowers burst into the throne room. Jask, the human captain, is a level 17 Rogue who uses a green Orb of Dragonkind. The rest of the dragonslayers are level 9, consisting of 6 rangers, 4 fighters, and 10 wizards.
BOSS ENCOUNTER: Jask and 20 dragonslayers. Jirix has 3 Resistance bonus jewel shards.
^Pulled from my Story notes.

The game occurs on Wednesday, and I only have a basic template for the wizards prepared. Could someone provide optimized builds with Feats and Spells selected to take down an Ancient Green Dragon? I could really use the help. If you could provide full char sheets (I only need one of each for the rangers, fighters, and wizards) that would be fantastic, but only if you feel like it.

Ugh, for a game called Dungeons and Dragons I sure don't know how to take out a dragon. :smallfrown:

EDIT: The jewel shards thing provides a +6 resistance bonus to all saves total. It's something of an Inuyasha campaign

[LTwerewolf]

Someone's going to have to be on dedicated dispel magic duty, if not more than one person, to start stripping the dragon of all his magically goodness. Every dragon worth their salt is going to be running around with a ridiculous amount of buffs and magical items to make them entirely immune to the things they're supposed to be weak to. Other important spells for those casters: hide from dragons, spectral hand, shivering touch (in conjunction with SH for the lack of need to get near the dragon), flight, antidragon aura, energy immunity, lower spell resistance, assay spell resistance, true casting, aura of evasion, vulnerability, earthbind, find the gap, and suppress breath weapon are good ones to fire off as soon as the fight starts (before the dragon knows they're there, because of hide from dragons). Have a rogue available to drop from the ceiling and coup de grace as soon as the dragon gets paralyzed from the dex damage. Make sure the rogue has as many things as they can that add to damage and sneak attack damage. Have them take craven (make them immune to fear), give them a bane weapon, the dragonbane feat wouldn't go amiss. Everything that adds to a single big hit. You can give them a headsman's axe and use a profession executioner's check (dc 18) if he's restrained (easy to do if he's paralyzed) and if you fail the check, it's still a coup de grace. Dragon foe and dragon doom. The executioner's axe is treated as a great axe with a crit multiplier of x3, so dragondoom turns that into x5.


These dragonslayers likely understand this will be a one way trip, as a dragon's minions are not likely to simply let them walk out of there, and their best spells have to be prioritized for getting the job done. Perhaps one person can have a teleport spell ready just in case things go sideways. You can also go with confound the big folk in order to keep the dragon on the ground. If the dragon ever gets a chance to fight back, the dragonslayers have lost.

[Beheld]

If you know what Dragon you are going to be facing, you need the following things (especially if you outnumber him):

1) A way to ground him.
2) A Way to survive/Ignore his breaths.
3) A way to set him up for death besides grounding him.

So for an Ancient Green:

a) He's going to make every save, so don't even bother.
b) He has SR 27, so either you are never going to penetrate, or you are going to cast SR lowering spells.
c) His breath weapon does about 70 damage save for half.
d) He has Dominate Person 1/day
e) He has a super high Frightful Presence DC.
f) He has all the buff spells of a 13th level Sorcerer.

So the first thing I would do is reduce the number of dragon hunters and add a higher level Wizard. If you are fighting a CR 21 Dragon you want a Wizard that can beat his CL 100%, but whatever.

So here's what you do:
1) Replace a Wizard with a Cleric. Have him cast Hero's Feast just with all his slots, so that everyone is immune to fear.
2) When you see the Dragon, he activates a Bead of Karma and then Casts Mass Resist Energy twice to give everyone 30 Resist against Acid.
3) There should be a Magic Circle Against Evil or 5 spread around so that everyone is immune to Dominate Person.
4) The Cleric and a few Wizards can spam Lower Spell Resistance (Draconomicon). The save actually has at least a shot because you can reduce his CL by 13-14 for the Cleric, and 9-10 for the Wizards. So it's only +12/+16 before items and spells.
5) You probably want at least one Wizard 2/Specialist Abjurer 7 who casts Targeted Dispel Magic and takes 10 on the CL check (There's a Feat for that, I think in PHB II). He can then automatically strip all the buffs which you will definitely want to do.

So now you've covered lowering his spell resist, and being immune to most of what he's got to do from you with range (except his Breath, which you are only less then halving, but take what you can get).

Now, you still need to ground him. The basic strategy is to make him slow. One method that can work is, Cast Solid Fog around him as a few people, this will at least force him to Hover in place, which prevents him from strafing you. But instead of that, take down with Spell resistance and buffs, and then hit him with Ray of Dizziness (SpC) Which is a no save slow effect.

If you have a grounded Dragon who can't full attack, you have free fodder for all your Fighters/Rangers/Ect to gang up on.

If he doesn't land, his hover should still be annoying, but your Rangers can stand far enough away to fire arrows at him, and if he has to cast spells instead of strafing with breath attacks, his damage goes way way down, and if you can keep your Master Specialist Abjurer outside the Cloud, you can counterspell him.

[Zanos]

Most of Behelds advice is solid.

I don't think grounding will be much of an issue if they're in a throne room, but that depends on the design. A smart ruler would have an escape path he can actually fit through, for example, which might include some hole in the ceiling. Someone could cast an invisible metamagic'd solid fog on the dragon instead of the normal one, preventing him from moving more than 5ft while still allowing everyone to wreck him at their leisure with ranged attacks.

Have all the wizards use Assay Spell Resistance instead of lower spell resistance. It's a swift action to cast so they probably won't lose any actions unless they're quickening cantrips, for some reason. Between 9 CL Base, and +10 from an assay, that leaves them beating its SR on an 8 or better with no real loss in action efficiency. Create magic tattoo can be used on everyone who cares for a fairly cheap +1 to CL for the day, as well. If they also take (greater) spell penetration, they should beat his SR almost all the time.

None of the wizards can cast greater dispel and regular dispel caps at +10 to dispel, so you're either going to want a wizard who is specialized in dispelling as beheld mentioned, or dispelling him is going to be a crapshot. Even if you can reliably dispel him each successful dispel is only stripping one buff.

He is also a 13th level sorcerer, so you might want a dimensional anchor so he can't flee with teleportation magic.

From there the wizards can slam it with debuffs pretty hard. Enervation is a pretty universal debuff that will make the dragon have a very bad time if enough are stacked on it. If he isn't buffed with ray deflection or scintillating scales and the wizards go first, he could be eating 10d4 negative levels on the first round, which would make him very weak on bad rolls and kill him outright on a good roll.

[Beheld]

Have all the wizards use Assay Spell Resistance instead of lower spell resistance. It's a swift action to cast so they probably won't lose any actions unless they're quickening cantrips, for some reason. Between 9 CL Base, and +10 from an assay, that leaves them beating its SR on an 8 or better with no real loss in action efficiency. Create magic tattoo can be used on everyone who cares for a fairly cheap +1 to CL for the day, as well. If they also take (greater) spell penetration, they should beat his SR almost all the time.

Lower Spell Resistance applies to other peoples's spells too, and you have 10 Wizards. If he fails 2-3 saves he has no SR at all anymore, and you just move on to everyone ignoring SR on all the other casters that cast after the ones he failed the save on without wasting a 4th level slot. And it stacks, so instead of having a bunch of Wizards spend two feats to rolling 1d20+13 against 17 and failing still, you can just always succeed.

Also Create Magic Tattoo requires a CL of 13 to get a CL bonus.


Even if you can reliably dispel him each successful dispel is only stripping one buff.

Targeted Dispel
One object, creature, or spell is the target of the dispel magic spell. You make a dispel check (1d20 + your caster level, maximum +10) against the spell or against each ongoing spell currently in effect on the object or creature.


He is also a 13th level sorcerer, so you might want a dimensional anchor so he can't flee with teleportation magic.

Dispeller should usually just be counterspelling him every round anyway.


Enervation is a pretty universal debuff that will make the dragon have a very bad time if enough are stacked on it. If he isn't buffed with ray deflection or scintillating scales and the wizards go first, he could be eating 10d4 negative levels on the first round, which would make him very weak on bad rolls and kill him outright on a good roll.

You are right, after Lowering his spell resistance to auto succeed, stripping all his buffs, and then dizzying him, you can have the rest of the Wizards throw enervations on their first round. And then everyone who's capable of seeing him and not the dispeller can enervate again on subsequent rounds.

[Zanos]

Lower Spell Resistance applies to other peoples's spells too, and you have 10 Wizards. If he fails 2-3 saves he has no SR at all anymore, and you just move on to everyone ignoring SR on all the other casters that cast after the ones he failed the save on without wasting a 4th level slot. And it stacks, so instead of having a bunch of Wizards spend two feats to rolling 1d20+13 against 17 and failing still, you can just always succeed.

Lower spell resistance is terrible. I'll break it down.
The Dragon has a +25 fort save. The penalty from lower spell resistance reduces it to +16 vs that spell. The wizards, being NPCs, are probably elite array, so their base scores are only 17 after two levelups. Even assuming the best case scenario that these are gray elves or another +2 int race buffed with fox's cunning, that still puts their int score at 23. This gives their lower spell resistance a DC of 20 against a save of +16, meaning the dragon passes on a 4 or better. Lower SR also takes 1 round to cast like a summoning spell so it doesn't even go off until the start of your next round, and the range is short, leaving our level 9 casters having to close within 45 feet of the dragon. I'm also pretty dubious about it stacking, considering the rules on effects from the same sources.

Assay requires every wizard to cast it, but is a swift, allowing them to also cast a normal spell that round. It's a personal buff, meaning range isn't an issue, and it's guaranteed to succeed. Arcane mastery would then give every wizard with Assay and Arcane Mastery a guaranteed pass on all of their rolls to penetrate SR, which I did actually forget about.


Also Create Magic Tattoo requires a CL of 13 to get a CL bonus.

Ah, I had forgotten.


Targeted Dispel
One object, creature, or spell is the target of the dispel magic spell. You make a dispel check (1d20 + your caster level, maximum +10) against the spell or against each ongoing spell currently in effect on the object or creature.

Need to stop playing PF. They gimped normal dispel. The dispeller does still need work, though. Can't get into Master Specialist until level 4 without shenanigans, giving him 6 levels, and a +3 bonus to dispels. WIth his base CL of 9, that's only +12 to dispel against DC 24. A dispelling chord is cheap and would give that last +2 for use with arcane mastery, but only works on one check. I believe the inquisition domain gives a +4 to dispel checks. Guaranteed success on removing the dragons buffs is probably worth the loss of 5ths on one of the wizards, so he could dip a cleric level.


Dispeller should usually just be counterspelling him every round anyway.

It is an Ancient Dragon. I wouldn't count out him having a way to get a swift action spell. Dimensional Anchor is no save and just a touch attack, I'd rather be sure than bet that the dragon doesn't have a belt of battle or some manner of quickening a spell on the cheap.

[Beheld]

Lower spell resistance is terrible. I'll break it down.
The Dragon has a +25 fort save. The penalty from lower spell resistance reduces it to +16 vs that spell. The wizards, being NPCs, are probably elite array, so their base scores are only 17 after two levelups. Even assuming the best case scenario that these are gray elves or another +2 int race buffed with fox's cunning, that still puts their int score at 23. This gives their lower spell resistance a DC of 20 against a save of +16, meaning the dragon passes on a 4 or better. Lower SR also takes 1 round to cast like a summoning spell so it doesn't even go off until the start of your next round, and the range is short, leaving our level 9 casters having to close within 45 feet of the dragon. I'm also pretty dubious about it stacking, considering the rules on effects from the same sources.

I mean yeah, if you decide in advance that all the Wizards spend all their effort to optimize against SR, but literally don't even know what a 16 in their stat is or what a bonus to INT item is then sure. But you know... they could just not be intentionally dumb.


Need to stop playing PF. They gimped normal dispel. The dispeller does still need work, though. Can't get into Master Specialist until level 4 without shenanigans, giving him 6 levels, and a +3 bonus to dispels. WIth his base CL of 9, that's only +12 to dispel against DC 24. A dispelling chord is cheap and would give that last +2 for use with arcane mastery, but only works on one check. I believe the inquisition domain gives a +4 to dispel checks. Guaranteed success on removing the dragons buffs is probably worth the loss of 5ths on one of the wizards, so he could dip a cleric level.

1) The "shenanigans" is one feat.
2) Even without "shenanigans" you can get in 6 levels is the same bonus as 7, you will have 1d20+13 to dispel, so you need some minor bonus, but of course, who cares, just toss on Elven Spell Lore and Arcane Mastery and you have auto successes without items.

[Zanos]

I mean yeah, if you decide in advance that all the Wizards spend all their effort to optimize against SR, but literally don't even know what a 16 in their stat is or what a bonus to INT item is then sure. But you know... they could just not be intentionally dumb.
?
I factored in the enhancement bonus to int with fox's cunning. If you're only using items even a +4 headband is out of the range of a 9th level NPCS WBL. NPCS with class levels are built with the elite array, which is 15 14 13 12 10 8. That's a by the book DC, and I was even being generous giving you the +2 racial, since their race is likely locked already. I haven't spent all their effort to optimize against SR. It's one 4th level spell in their book, which you also used, and one feat, that I personally consider to be very, very good. You can't even argue that only a few people have to cast lower SR, because you have to wait to see the results until the next round anyway. It's garbage.

If you're going to make the assertion that he can autopass the dispel check, then provide a build that does not, in fact, do that, I'm going to call you on it. Yes, elven spell lore works fine, so the hole is patched and the issue resolved.

[CrazyYanmega]

I definitely need to recalculate this encounter. Thanks for the help!

[ExLibrisMortis]

You can replace two or three of the wizards with an elf cleric 3/church inquisitor 6, using Divine Defiance, Soultouched Spellcasting, Elven Spell Lore, Domain Focus, and Incarnum Spellshaping (from the Incarnum domain, you need the bonus essentia). That's all your feats spoken for, but it's for a good cause: CL 10 dispel magic with a +8 bonus, for a total of +18. Even if the dragon has Practiced Spellcaster, a few of these guys can stop him. Add a dispelling cord if you're not going to bother with Divine Defiance (they don't work together at all).

I'd ready an action to cast some nasty damaging spells, use that to interrupt casting, then counterspell the next attempt, if there is one.

[Beheld]

If you're going to make the assertion that he can autopass the dispel check, then provide a build that does not, in fact, do that, I'm going to call you on it. Yes, elven spell lore works fine, so the hole is patched and the issue resolved.

I didn't present a build anywhere for anything, so maybe that's your problem.

[MisterKaws]

You could replace one of the fighters with this:

Awakened Housecat(really) Fighter 1/Swordsage 9(total 12 HD, CR 11 or 12, your choice)

Stats: Nonelite Array, Str 11-8=3 Dex 12+4+2lv=18 Con 10 Int 13 Wis 8+2=10 Cha 9-2=7

Feats:

1-Don't Mind Me(here (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fools/20030401c))
3-Twining Trip
3F-Combat Expertise
6-Improved Trip
9-Underfoot Combat(damn obsolete pre-reqs)
12-Confound the Big Folk(Races of Stone)

Maneuvers: Spam Setting Sun

Yeah, it's a bit higher-leveled than your fighters, but that solves the problems with stopping it from moving, unless your dragon can win a Dex-based No-size-bonus trip against a housecat trained for tripping. Don't forget to use expansion on the cat just to remove the size penalties.

[daremetoidareyo]

You could replace one of the fighters with this:

Awakened Housecat(really) Fighter 1/Swordsage 9(total 12 HD, CR 11 or 12, your choice)

Stats: Nonelite Array, Str 11-8=3 Dex 12+4+2lv=18 Con 10 Int 13 Wis 8+2=10 Cha 9-2=7

Feats:

1-Don't Mind Me(here (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fools/20030401c))
3-Twining Trip
3F-Combat Expertise
6-Improved Trip
9-Underfoot Combat(damn obsolete pre-reqs)
12-Confound the Big Folk(Races of Stone)

Maneuvers: Spam Setting Sun

Yeah, it's a bit higher-leveled than your fighters, but that solves the problems with stopping it from moving, unless your dragon can win a Dex-based No-size-bonus trip against a housecat trained for tripping. Don't forget to use expansion on the cat just to remove the size penalties.

Amazing resource. How do you get the feline subtype?

[Esprit15]

Amazing resource. How do you get the feline subtype?

By being an awakened house cat, obviously.

[Red Fel]

Amazing resource. How do you get the feline subtype?

Per the source (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fools/20030401c):

Feline: Feats of the feline type are available only to cats and other feline creatures, including Cheshire cats (see below), lions, rakshasas, tigers, tressym (Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting), and other feline creatures.
I prefer using a Tibbit, myself. As a bonus, they have access to the "Feline" language, which pretty much applies to whomever the DM says it does. Oddly, the common housecat (Newbius imperilus) is not fluent in this language, except when spoken to by a Tibbit. Which, when you think about it, means that the Tibbit is capable of temporarily imbuing housecats with sapience. Which is horrifying.

[Zanos]

I definitely need to recalculate this encounter. Thanks for the help!
This is a pretty optimized set up. Reduce to make it such that your party has a chance to actually stop it, according to their level of optimization.

[ace rooster]

Firstly I would say that dragonslayers doesn't really cover what these people are. They are a group assembled and trained to kill this particular dragon. Anything else is doomed to fail, because if standard anti-dragon tactics exist, a dragon that makes it to ancient has not fallen for them. This being said we need to know the tactics this dragon is known to use to build has attackers.

Lets not forget that this is not just an ancient dragon, it is also a ruler of a kingdom. It has access to huge resources, so it is going to have shinies. Little things like a necklace of adaptation so he can wander about his stinking clouds and cloudkills (this one is particularly fun for advancing slowly on an enemy) with impunity, and a eversmoking bottle is a scary prospect. Larger things like a rod of absorption can break an unprepared attack, and a ring of spell turning gives you one chance to hit your DA. An orb of storms can make a perpetual blizzard, or the ability to cause one in ten minutes. It certainly puts a time limit on the encounter.

Dispels are certainly important, and I would point out that items are valid targets too. If the dragon is known (or even suspected) to have a ring of freedom of movement then shutting this down will be critical to the endeavour. A caster on constant counterspell duty can shut down most casting, provided good information on the spell list is available.

Of course this is why the dragon has a contingent lesser globe of invulnerability on it. No dispels for you :smallamused:

Of note is also that solid fog obscures vision and blocks ranged attacks, while being level 4 and not dismiss-able (though the original caster can dispel it without a roll). You will not be able to counterspell, dispel, ready to disrupt, or attack the dragon with anything other than rays if it uses the fog for concealment. The dragon has blindsense, so will see any attempt to sneak up on it, as well as having the reach to be able to full attack from out-with the reach of attackers. Even without freedom of movement and having been DAed, solid fog can go wrong for the attackers. It can nullify much of the advantage granted by numbers.