Stupidly large enemy encounter

[Grod_The_Giant]

UPDATE: I ran the fight this evening. It worked quite well! I wound up having to cut the trip short a bit, as I miscalculated some of the DCs... and also everyone wound up falling on the same turn, but that worked out-- I just had the dragon swallow them. Then a lovely brutal swordfight and all was well. It was exciting throughout, and from post-game conversations I think the players quite enjoyed it. Thank you all for your help!



For the finale of my current campaign, the players are going to need to fight a dragon god. A really big dragon-god. Like, the size of an island dragon-god. And not a small island-- you could sit ten thousand people in its mouth, it it were a built-to-scale temple. (The players visited such a place earlier this campaign). And I'm... not quite sure how to set up an interesting encounter under those conditions.

The Scenario

• The dragon is aquatic, so the fight will probably take place underwater as well. (The party is all pretty well amphibious)
• The rival isn't available-- he's all the way on the other side of the world.
• The party will have a magic spear that defeated the dragon last time-- her rival stabbed her in the roof of the mouth, leaving her essentially dead until Some Damn Fool(TM) pulled the spear out because it looked shiny.

The Party

• We're playing Mutants and Masterminds 3e as a fantasy game; the players are PL 8.
• The players are reasonably comfortable with their characters, but they're not particularly clever with the rules, tactics, or power stunts.
• The players are generally pretty easy to lead around, biting happily at plot hooks and suggested missions. They've dragging That Damn Fool(TM) around with them as a sort of secondary PC (one player generally controls him except when I use him as a sock-puppet for plot) around with them, so he's an easy source of hints.
• One player has mind and matter magic-- telepathy, telekinesis, and transmutation.
• One player has space and forces magic-- most notably, she can (and does) make portals, like, all the time.
• One player is a shapeshift-y biohorror type, with a big set of different poisons
• One player is a shaman/martial artist, with curses and a giant (~30ft) battle-form.
• That Damn Fool(TM) is a super-skilled swordsman and can animate nearby objects, but one way or another he probably won't be a big part of the battle. (Most of his powers come from a "gift" the dragon gave him for waking her up-- I expect she'd take that back pretty promptly)

Anyone have any suggestions for how to set up a cool encounter? I'm quite happy to veer off-rules if necessary.

[hymer]

Anyone have any suggestions for how to set up a cool encounter?

I've no specifics, I'm afraid. If you like that sort of thing, then the need to pierce something specific could lead to the PCs needing to enter the body of the dragon. Floating down rivers of blood looking for the heart, fighting the equivalent of immune systems, encountering various organs that need to be traversed on the way.
Okay, I have the flu right now, and I'm biased.

[Lvl45DM!]

Buddy if they are fighting something the size of an island, they arent fighting something the size of the island. Its Not a monster, its a terrain.

[mame]

A good scenario. Good luck.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Buddy if they are fighting something the size of an island, they arent fighting something the size of the island. Its Not a monster, its a terrain.

I'm aware of that, but neither the medium nor the party makeup lend themselves to a Shadow of the Colossus style "climb all over the baddie" fight. Hence, you know, asking for ideas. If you have any suggestions for how to run a fight like that underwater, with a teleporter...?

[The Glyphstone]

Cultists. Minions. Parasite-creatures that live on its body. The objective of the encounter is to strike the dragon-god in its weak point for MASSIVE DAMAGE with the magic spear, but said weak point is well-defended (somewhere other than the roof of its mouth), and it takes multiple consecutive actions to drive the spear deep enough/charge its magic power/whatever (thus the teleporter can't just rush the weak point unsupported, the guardians must be eliminated to avoid disrupting the attack). The dragon itself, run as terrain hazards that attack the heroes and/or villains - at the relative scale, it's not going to have much precision.

[goto124]

The advice that will be given again and again:

Model the dragon as dangerous terrain.

[Telok]

"We need to _______ this thing in the _______ to make it open it's mouth so we can stick the spear back in!"

"The things that live near the _______ are pretty nasty, we'll need some _______ before we can go there."

"The ______ that we need is the primary food of ______, which will be just as happy to eat us too."

"If we can lead the ________s over to _______ then they'll fight was we can get the stuff we need while they're distracted."

"Those live all the way over by ______. Can e survive that long of a running battle?"

[Grod_The_Giant]

"We need to _______ this thing in the _______ to make it open it's mouth so we can stick the spear back in!"

"The things that live near the _______ are pretty nasty, we'll need some _______ before we can go there."

"The ______ that we need is the primary food of ______, which will be just as happy to eat us too."

"If we can lead the ________s over to _______ then they'll fight was we can get the stuff we need while they're distracted."

"Those live all the way over by ______. Can e survive that long of a running battle?"

I want a single battle (preferably not one that will drag on for hours, at that), not an extended campaign. This is also just about the nastiest thing in the setting; the only peer is literally on the other side of the campaign setting, and the consequences of a battle between TWO gods would be downright apocalyptic.

The advice that will be given again and again:

Model the dragon as dangerous terrain.

The issue, as I mentioned, is that the fight is underwater, and the party has fliers and teleporters besides. I'm not sure how to do "difficult terrain" that they can't easily bypass. I guess I could maybe have it in flight? Though that creates instant-lose conditions for most characters...

Cultists. Minions. Parasite-creatures that live on its body. The objective of the encounter is to strike the dragon-god in its weak point for MASSIVE DAMAGE with the magic spear, but said weak point is well-defended (somewhere other than the roof of its mouth), and it takes multiple consecutive actions to drive the spear deep enough/charge its magic power/whatever (thus the teleporter can't just rush the weak point unsupported, the guardians must be eliminated to avoid disrupting the attack). The dragon itself, run as terrain hazards that attack the heroes and/or villains - at the relative scale, it's not going to have much precision.

Not bad ideas, though the roof of the mouth bit is already cannon (at least, that's the one place they KNOW will work).

[Typewriter]

The scale here is sort of insane but a few thoughts come to mind base off of something I've done in the past.

'Map' the dragon. If you're in the ocean, nothing else needs to be mapped, just the dragon itself. Then find a way for the party to move across this area in a meaningful way - my recommendation is either a very large *magical* ship or maybe a very large (non-god) dragon or something like that - basically something that can move around this tremendous beast that can also handle the various environments it could be going through - underwater, in the sky, floating. The goal is to get from the starting point to the mouth right?

Next up is to cover the dragon in 'threat' zones. As they move their ship the threat zones they enter can cause different effects. Perhaps certain areas of this creatures body move so quickly that the wind threatens to break the sails (wind from flapping of the wings). Your giant PC could enlarge and hold the mast steady.

Perhaps the creature shifts periodically and could cause road-blocks to appear in front of the ship - roadblocks that maybe your teleporter could move the ship/dragon around

Maybe in another area there are parasites or 'angels' that see the party and move to attack on the ship.

Spend two turns underwater then have the dragon god swim upwards and leap out into the sky - if the party is sticking close to the god they'll have to follow but changing between surfaces might cause some of them to get knocked off the transport. Then the following round the thing lands back in the water and a tremendous wave hits the vehicle.

Basically, it seems to me, you can't approach this fight from a standard combat sort of encounter perspective. The entire thing needs to be treated as a puzzle with events/combats thrown in along the way.

Spoiler: My story

Show

What I had happen is similar in concept, but to a much smaller scale. It was two E6 campaigns played back to back.

In the first campaign the bad guys, who resided deep underground in a hidden lair, had gained the ability to control the Tarrasque. The party knew that 'something big' was coming and embarked on an adventure to gain the ability to control a dragon via an orb of dragonkind. They used the orb to take control of an incredibly powerful dragon to fight and slow down the Tarrasque while they ventured into the villains hideout to do away with the control mechanism. When the fight was over one of the players, who used to be a pirate, took the orb and retired from adventuring.

This worked fairly well - it made the scale of what was happening 'epic' in scope, while keeping the challenge relative to the power of the players. The only problem was that the 'epic' encounter was off-screen while they did their thing. In my next campaign, which was a follow up to this one:

The big baddie was revealed as a Kyton/Rakshasa hybrid who had fused his soul into an Orb of Dragonkind. They were too late in stopping him as he took control of a massive dragon and flew off towards the humans capital city. With little time to waste they asked the natives (who had been guarding the Orb) if there was any way to stop him. They told him that in the caves nearby was a man who might help them reach the dragon in time to try and stop its master. They got to the cave and found a ship tethered to a dragon - the captain was the old and withered PC from the previous campaign. He commanded the dragon to fly and off it went, hauling the party and the 'boat' behind it.

For this 'fight' I had two (terrible) paper cut outs I made. One was a very big dragon with a hex grid on it's back. The other was a big dragon with a paper boat tethered to it. In this fight the players had to jump from their dragon to the other. They fought their opponent who would occasionally command his dragon to turn upside down - at which point they could try to hold on or jump back to their ship. The dragons were constantly ramming each other and breathing fire/lightning at each other so the party had to avoid the threat zones these presented. All manner of checks were made to keep people from falling, tripping, sliding, etc. etc.

This worked very well. The party was actively involved in the 'epic' struggle while dealing with an incredibly powerful threat and having to avoid the dangers of the things far outside their scope of power.

[OldTrees1]

The issue, as I mentioned, is that the fight is underwater, and the party has fliers and teleporters besides. I'm not sure how to do "difficult terrain" that they can't easily bypass. I guess I could maybe have it in flight? Though that creates instant-lose conditions for most characters...

How does the teleporter function? Does it require line of sight, do they have to have seen the area once, ...?
1) Have the dangerous terrain vary from "easy to see/avoid but very very dangerous" thru "hard to see/hard to avoid but merely difficult". Thus teleporting risks running into the really really dangerous terrain while not teleporting runs into much more but not as dangerous terrain.

Flight/Swimming should not be a concern for a few reasons:
(although I suggest scaling these so flight/swimming is not prohibited, just limited)
1) The dragon is in motion and thus flying/swimming while not attached results in having to fight/use the dragon's motion. Model as changing currents.
2) The dragon might swipe at anything that it sees. Due to its size, a miss would create strong currents/gusts of wind that the swimmer/flyer would have to deal with.


Oh, it might be a good idea for the dragon to change its enviroment as another way of trying to combat the PCs. So maybe it starts on land, then dives into the ocean, and finally takes to the skies.

[MrZJunior]

They need some sort of giant robot to go toe to toe with the monster. Hey, it works for Tokyo.

That or they could win by trickery. For instance show up dressed as dragon dentists.

[Grod_The_Giant]

How does the teleporter function? Does it require line of sight, do they have to have seen the area once, ...?

If I remember correctly, it's Accurate, meaning she doesn't need to see the destination, just specify where she's trying to go. I mean, I could always BS some reason why the portals won't work and just give her a Hero Point, but that feels cheap.

Right now, I'm thinking that the dragon is just going to laugh at them and swim off, and so they'll start at the dragon's tail. With the teleporter's maximum range, it'll still take a good ten turns or so to reach the other end, so maybe each "round" of "combat" will be:

• Teleporter opens a portal and everyone piles through.
• Some **** goes down as the dragon does its thing-- first swimming, then trying to shake them off, then trying to sweep them off with magic. (Maybe some minions too, eventually). The players will have to dig themselves in somehow to resist.
• Rinse, repeat until they get to the weak spot.

And then... I like The Glyphstone's idea of having the spear take several rounds to work, so they'll have to survive a bit longer.

What do you guys think? Could something like that work?

[Jormengand]

Consider Roy's fight on the zombie dragon. The first thing that Xykon did to try to stop him wasn't a spell, wasn't one of the dragon's natural attacks, it was basically do a few rolls to throw him off. That dragon's claws, try as it might, aren't going to be able to reach someone on its back, so it's mainly going to be rolling around, trying to throw PCs around, and smashing god-knows-what along the way. Killing the dragon doesn't need to be the hard part: killing the dragon without it blowing up half the world in the process might be.

[Friv]

If I remember correctly, it's Accurate, meaning she doesn't need to see the destination, just specify where she's trying to go. I mean, I could always BS some reason why the portals won't work and just give her a Hero Point, but that feels cheap.

Right now, I'm thinking that the dragon is just going to laugh at them and swim off, and so they'll start at the dragon's tail. With the teleporter's maximum range, it'll still take a good ten turns or so to reach the other end, so maybe each "round" of "combat" will be:

• Teleporter opens a portal and everyone piles through.
• Some **** goes down as the dragon does its thing-- first swimming, then trying to shake them off, then trying to sweep them off with magic. (Maybe some minions too, eventually). The players will have to dig themselves in somehow to resist.
• Rinse, repeat until they get to the weak spot.

This seems like a pretty good way of doing it, yeah. As they portal forwards, the dragon starts trying to scrape them off against rocks, or makes a claw attack that requires everyone to defend at once; it lets off a terrible breath weapon that cooks the water around the party, or otherwise causes trouble.

Generally, you could allow for cunning action on the part of the players to make the rolls to resist the dragon's action for the turn easier - maybe the big guy goes for a kidney-punch to create a distraction, or the bio-horror keeps trying to put poison in that'll make the dragon a little bit less controlled, or whatever. Make it very clear that damage to the dragon, aside from the spear, isn't going to have more than a momentary effect, and I expect it'll be a pretty fun session.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Generally, you could allow for cunning action on the part of the players to make the rolls to resist the dragon's action for the turn easier - maybe the big guy goes for a kidney-punch to create a distraction, or the bio-horror keeps trying to put poison in that'll make the dragon a little bit less controlled, or whatever. Make it very clear that damage to the dragon, aside from the spear, isn't going to have more than a momentary effect, and I expect it'll be a pretty fun session.

That's about what I figured, yeah. Make the wind-up so big that they get a full round to prepare, with successful defense checks reducing the ultimate effect.

[obryn]

The issue, as I mentioned, is that the fight is underwater, and the party has fliers and teleporters besides. I'm not sure how to do "difficult terrain" that they can't easily bypass. I guess I could maybe have it in flight? Though that creates instant-lose conditions for most characters...

Make it active terrain. The real battle almost has to be with hero-scale stuff, with the dragon being huge and dangerous. I like the idea of telegraphing areas to get squsihed/boiled/etc.

[Squibsallotl]

For instance show up dressed as dragon dentists.

I lol'ed :)

The way I see it you either run it as terrain, or as a sort of "vehicle combat" where the party rides an airship or such armed with siege weaponry (the magic spear perhaps loaded in a ballista for the final shot).

If terrain, you'll need to get creative to make sure the PCs with additional movement modes don't find it too easy. E.g. updrafts/walls of wind from buffeting wings, scales as walls that block LoS, the area between the scales as difficult terrain, teeth and/or claws that rake across the entire battlefield each round, etc.

[Kami2awa]

Well, the Death Star run would seem good inspiration.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Okay. Here's my tentative plan:

Each sequence will last one round, during which everyone makes a check of some sort (with escalating DCs) to avoid the oncoming challenge. The more total degrees of success, the lower the DC to avoid the big attack. Which will be approximately like a normal attack, but instead of Toughness penalties it'll be "close call points"-- and more more points for more degrees of failure, instead of being dazed and the like. If anyone gets "close calls" equal to their Reflex, they fall off and are either out of the fight or die, depending. (Or maybe just use more relevant status conditions-- Impaired for a turn, Vulnerable until recovery, falling to your death might work, with two Vulnerables adding up to a fall just like two Staggereds adding up to a KO)

They'll talk to the dragon, it'll decide they're beneath its notice, and it'll swim off to crush the world itself. Teleport after it, grabbing onto the tail, and the encounter begins. The sequence of events will be:

• Tail swishes back and forth as it swims
• The dragon changes direction and starts going upwards
• The dragon bursts through the surface and spreads its wings.
• The dragon shakes off water as it beings to fly
• The dragon goes into a steep climb.
• The dragon does a barrel roll.
• The dragon summons a storm, and winds threaten to sweep them away.
• The storm drops ice and hail
• The storm spawns lightning bolts.
• One teleport away, on the back of the dragon's head, she takes control of That Damn Fool(TM) (who, after all, was empowered by her gift/curse). He gets powered up and starts going nuts, including following the party through the last portal.
• In the mouth (eye?), they have to stick the spear and have it stay there for... 3 or 5 rounds, can't decide which... while That Damn Fool(TM) does his best to kill them. They won't be able to stop him until the dragon dies-- part of his curse was to not die, which will be turned up to 11 at this point.

Then finally the dragon will plummet back to earth, That Damn Fool(TM) will possibly die like he's been wanting to for months, and... I think any one of the party members can land safely and rescue the others, one way or another. Cheers all around.

What do we think?

[Inevitability]

Let the PC's gain a divine boon/eldritch buff/spiritual awakening that allows them to grow to giant size. They'll still be smaller than the dragon (think medium-sized humans compared to the tarrasque) but at least they are big enough to fight it effectively.

The PC's get to feel awesome and you get to run an interesting fight. For additional pressure, make the enlargement only work a few minutes, with the PC's slowly shrinking if the fight goes on too long.

[The Glyphstone]

Okay. Here's my tentative plan:

Each sequence will last one round, during which everyone makes a check of some sort (with escalating DCs) to avoid the oncoming challenge. The more total degrees of success, the lower the DC to avoid the big attack. Which will be approximately like a normal attack, but instead of Toughness penalties it'll be "close call points"-- and more more points for more degrees of failure, instead of being dazed and the like. If anyone gets "close calls" equal to their Reflex, they fall off and are either out of the fight or die, depending. (Or maybe just use more relevant status conditions-- Impaired for a turn, Vulnerable until recovery, falling to your death might work, with two Vulnerables adding up to a fall just like two Staggereds adding up to a KO)

They'll talk to the dragon, it'll decide they're beneath its notice, and it'll swim off to crush the world itself. Teleport after it, grabbing onto the tail, and the encounter begins. The sequence of events will be:

• Tail swishes back and forth as it swims
• The dragon changes direction and starts going upwards
• The dragon bursts through the surface and spreads its wings.
• The dragon shakes off water as it beings to fly
• The dragon goes into a steep climb.
• The dragon does a barrel roll.
• The dragon summons a storm, and winds threaten to sweep them away.
• The storm drops ice and hail
• The storm spawns lightning bolts.
• One teleport away, on the back of the dragon's head, she takes control of That Damn Fool(TM) (who, after all, was empowered by her gift/curse). He gets powered up and starts going nuts, including following the party through the last portal.
• In the mouth (eye?), they have to stick the spear and have it stay there for... 3 or 5 rounds, can't decide which... while That Damn Fool(TM) does his best to kill them. They won't be able to stop him until the dragon dies-- part of his curse was to not die, which will be turned up to 11 at this point.

Then finally the dragon will plummet back to earth, That Damn Fool(TM) will possibly die like he's been wanting to for months, and... I think any one of the party members can land safely and rescue the others, one way or another. Cheers all around.

What do we think?

That sounds pretty good. I'd add some minor minions of some kind into a few of the stages so the non teleporter heroes can play a more active role outside the final boss fight, maybe?

[Grod_The_Giant]

So I ran the fight this evening. It worked quite well! I wound up having to cut the trip short a bit, as I miscalculated some of the DCs... and also everyone wound up falling on the same turn, but that worked out-- I just had the dragon swallow them. Then a lovely brutal swordfight and all was well. It was exciting throughout, and from post-game conversations I think the players quite enjoyed it. Thank you all for your help!