Cleric 11 wants to take down grounded dragon with injury poison. Best way?

[arkieNork]

Scenario at hand:

group has scouted that there is some kind of dragon guarding an open air location (entrance to an abandoned city)
Paying scouts to observe it from afar, they have discovered this dragon cannot fly, but can burrow and its hunting grounds are full of tar pits.

Looking for best way to engage it. So far our ideas are coming around to venom - in our game we are allowed to harvest and preserve venom from monsters we kill with Survival and Alchemy checks. We've had to fight a lot of venomous things and have 60+ dozes of injury venom of various DCs and effects. We don't know yet if the dragon is immune to such, but going to try it and flee if it doesn't work. Presumably even if not immune, it would have a high fortitude score (its a Huge size dragon) and so we depending on volume of fire and getting that Natural 1 on a save.

Our only spell caster is 11th level cleric.

So far our best plan is to Summon Monster VI - Erinye and Summon Monster VI - Dao Genie. We have a scroll of fly and the UMD to cast it on the cleric. So the plan is that he stays above the battlefield, summons Dao Genie into Gaseous Form and tasks it with interfering with the dragon's burrow attempts with Transmute Mud to Rock and Stone Wall. Meanwhile Erinye gets a quiver of venomous arrows and ordered to stay air-borne, high enough to exceed whatever breathweapon it has and shoot at the dragon while the cleric buffs her with anything and everything that would improve her chances to hit.

Holes in the plan, anything we overlooked that DM might latch on to or better ways to implement it?

We don't know what spell casting abilities it has. by appearance, seems to be a custom creature.

[Inevitability]

What are your other party members and their general builds? Any magical items we should know about?

I think the plan needs work: you're relying on limited-use resources (scroll of fly, cleric's highest-level slots, poison) to employ tactics that the dragon can just... wait out underground? Even if you can dash across its territory in the minute that Summon Monster lasts, it can still unexpectedly pop up, grapple a PC, and cause a whole host of issues for the plan.

Fortunately, you have a tier 1 caster with complete list access, which makes things easier.

The Dragon Blight spell from Dragons of Faerun might be an alright option for your cleric to prepare. It's 4th-level, so probably spammable without interfering too much with your higher-level spells, doesn't hurt your party (I presume), deals 10d6 damage to dragons (no save) and threatens to stun them for 1d4 rounds on a failed saving throw. The same book also has Pacification, a 5th-level spell that lets you calm the dragon as long as you concentrate (no save) which should just let you stroll past unless it has SR.

Antidragon Aura is a 3rd-level spell that can give your entire party +3 to AC and saves for 11 minutes, so it's castable in advance of the battle.

Antilife Shell is another no-save spell that can just win the encounter for you (again, assuming the dragon has no SR or ranged options), though it's 6th-level. Notably, it'll prevent grounded creatures from being attacked from below.

But if you're not interested in even engaging with the dragon, and if your destination is open to the air, and the dragon can't fly... have the cleric cast Wind Walk and just bypass the whole encounter.

[Telonius]

First off, for any poison-related suggestions, you could probably check out this minmax post: Arsenic & Old Lace (https://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=2714.0). It's a great guide to poisons, and how best to use them.

The three biggest problems with poison are the DC (big things like dragons are usually good at Fort saves), the fact that lots of things are immune to them, and alignment issues.

The standard "dragonslayer" spell is Shivering Touch (from Frostburn). It does Dex damage, and most dragons have terrible dex scores; and is Cleric 3. But it does require a melee touch attack, and is often seen as terribly cheesy. This is a custom creature, too, so the DM may have bumped up the Dex score, or taken other precautions.

Another possibility: Earth Elemental summons. Burrowing is a hard thing to counter, so get a friend that has it too.

[Anthrowhale]

Ocular Shivering Touch using a lesser rod of maximize spell and/or Mark of the Enlightened Soul. Use some disposable minions (undead?) doing something obnoxious in it's territory to get it to reveal itself.

[arkieNork]

What are your other party members and their general builds? Any magical items we should know about?
.
Level 6 Fighter, Level 7 monk.
We only have 3 people playing in this campaign, had several casualties and and the rule is that on death, the player takes over a henchman from level 1.

We don't have much in the way of magical items equipment because in the campaign we only get loot that is randomly rolled from treasure and randomly rolled on a bi-monthly basis from stores in settlements. So far everyone has acquired a +1 weapon, and the cleric has a Crown of Swords and a +2 half plate. In our current situation we are not in position to leave the current area of operations and head to a city to shop around for magical equipment because the cleric is under a Geas he took it up to secure a minor archon's periodic service for our little mercenary company.

Thanks for the relevant spells to check out
and @Anthrowhale for the poison guide

We are basically looking for ways to cheat and munchkin our way through this encounter with the resources we have on hand so that we can at least scout the ruins safely. That's why our ideas center mostly around the Cleric risking himself while the other two guys stay back. Firstly because they are far more fragile and also out of character considerations. The Cleric is the outlier in terms of levels and thus the most 'disposable' one for our campaign. Also, we agreed to that Geas which ties this specific character to a quest, but the others who took it up are already dead. We are actually thinking of parking him and have his player start a henchman until we have others catch up to his level.

We've never dealth with Burrow before. isn't Transmute Mud to Rock and Wall of Stone just a hard counter to it? if we have our Dao Genie just ready his action to cast it, as soon as the dragon tries diving, we figure it should completely block that ability unless the dragon decides to chase down the genie.

[Chronos]

That depends on the specific burrowing ability. Some are limited to soft earth, while others can go through solid stone, and some are basically as easy as swimming, through any earthen material at all. Stone will certainly stop the likes of a giant badger, but I wouldn't bet on it against a dragon.

If you have it, Golden Ice might be a good poison option. It's a ravage, not a normal poison, which both removes the risk of poisoning yourself (assuming you're good), and also removes the ethical considerations, if your DM is a stickler about that. IIRC, it's also a contact poison, not injury, which makes application easier, and it does Dex damage. On the other hand, it's probably a lot harder to obtain than conventional poisons, and a summoned erinyes wouldn't be the best option for delivering it.

[ciopo]

I'm seconding that if you just need to scout the area, wind walk and boom done, no way that guardian can keep up with 600ft of flight speed, jist have the cleric act as bait so the other players can scout. After the initial casting you don't need to all move together, you also don'tneed to dismiss it when switching from "wind" to normal and viceversa


You would know better than us if that dragon guardian is prideful and would stay on the surface and fight, or if it would make full use of it's burrowing to retreat. My saturday GM would consider "monster retreats" as a victory for the party for example, and award us XP accordingly

[noob]

The three biggest problems with poison are the DC (big things like dragons are usually good at Fort saves), the fact that lots of things are immune to them, and alignment issues.

Poison is not explicitly evil, it is however explicitly non exalted and not allowed for paladins.
So unless the cleric was using exalted feats, it is fine.

[Chronos]

I think there is a rule somewhere that most poisons (specifically, any that causes ability score damage) are evil, but that runs into issues: For instance, the couatl, an always-lawful-good outsider, has a venomous bite.

Personally, when I'm DMing, I just treat it like any other weapon. Poisoning a town's well is definitely evil, but injury poison on the tips of your arrows? Yeah, you're already unavoidably causing pain to whoever you're hitting with those arrows anyway; the poison doesn't change that.

[Telonius]

Book of Exalted Deeds, page 34:


Using poison that deals ability damage is an evil act because it causes undue suffering in the process of incapacitating or killing an opponent.

It's a dumb rule that causes more problems than it solves, and I houserule it out of existence; but it is a published rule.

[rel]

Scouting to determine if the dragon is immune to poison, range of its breath weapon, any other interesting powers it might have and so forth seems like a good idea.

Also, a fight in which two thirds of the party doesn't participate seems boring at the table. Might be more fun to skip the combat and mix 900 doses of ingestion poison into some barbecue sauce, baste a cow with it and send that into the dragons territory.

[eBarbarossa]

Dragons, especially older ones, usually have access to spells. This could make your whole plan go sideways. If you can, find out if this dragon does and maybe find a way to counter that.



Also, a fight in which two thirds of the party doesn't participate seems boring at the table. Might be more fun to skip the combat and mix 900 doses of ingestion poison into some barbecue sauce, baste a cow with it and send that into the dragons territory.

That's true, too. But you could give control of the Dao and Erinye to the two players who are left out. That way they still get to participate even if their characters don't.