GenCon Dungeon Crawl

[Macrovore]

So, tonight we had, like, 2 hours to play Dnd, and only 4 players (incl. the DM. normally there are about 9). So, we decided to play the GenCon Dungeon Crawl game, with the premade 20th lvl character sheets available on the WOTC site, fighting the red dragon. Since we only had 3 actual players (one of us, obviously, was the DM), we decided to each start out with one character, then after he died, then he would respawn as a different, random character (of the ones that hadn't died yet).

the players were:
Me-started as the Wizard
Skip-started as the Cleric, who for some reason has less hp than the wizard, even though he's meant for melee
Brad-started as the Barbarian.

So, we started off about 200' away from the red dragon, and I won initiative. Bam! meteor swarm, switched to sonic damage (forgot about the cold vunerability). got the meteors flung back at squishy-wizard-man, even though the dragon still took the explosions. stupid spell turning. The dragon flies up and uses his breath weapon against all of us. Brad goes up and attacks the dragon, using -5 power attack. miss. the cleric cures us and goes to flank the dragon. I try to enervate him, but I forgot about the stupid spell turning and took one negative level. The dragon snatches Brad in his jaws. the cleric mass heals us and takes away my negative level. I walk up and teleport Brad to right next to the dragon. The dragon flies away to the other end of the room and breathes fire. Brad charges, and misses. again. Dragon full-attacks Brad and one-shots him.
Brad gets a new character, the Dwarven Fighter, who teleports right near the dragon. Skip goes and blade-barriers around the dragon, so it can't do anything. It mass-heals itself, after I meteor-swarm it (figured out the cold-vunerability thing by now). The cleric shoots his crossbow, smiting for piddly damage. Brad (now a dwarf) throws his hammer and misses. the dragon stuns us with his breath weapon, teleports away and kills BOTH Skip and me.
We spawn as the druid (me), and the archer (skip). Skip hits it, like, three times in the entire game. I have few, if any, things able for me to do, as his saves are really high, he's immune to fire, and i'm too far away from any dead allies to last breath them. So, I cast all three greater creeping colds at him, and move up for him to die. He dies, and I spawn as the Warblade. I walk up, and use strike of perfect clarity. Dragon dies.

took, like, a minute, in-game. We went through 4 PCs, two of which were mine.


Then, we decided to do it again. Brad started out as the archer, Skip was the barbarian, and I was the Warblade. I got crappy init, so Brad flew over and hit him with 3 arrows. Dragon hits me and Skip with breath weapon, and we both save. Thank you, Diamond Defense. he delays, for my turn. WAR MASTER'S CHARGE!!! Skip crits, and I hit. the dragon is stunned. Brad shoots him 4 more times, and I use rabid mongoose and time stands still. I hit 7 times, two of them criticals. the total for that was 277 damage. Unfortunately, we had to wait for Skip's turn to finally kill him.


so, has anyone else tried this game? if so, how did it go with you guys?

[brian c]

I'll thank you for using my balor-marathon tactic (time stands still + mongoose boost) and showing that there's a potential for ridiculous damage output there. Interesting that out of all those characters, both times it was the ToB melees who did the most damage (although the wizard might have done better with different spells)

[Macrovore]

the wizard did almost as good, but we didn't strategize at all in the first match.

but in both games, my characters have done the most damage. with the meteor swarms, the greater creeping colds (those really add up), and the maneuvers. ToBers win.

[Selgeron]

i remember doing some cheese with wall of force when I did it. It was a while ago though. I was annoyed that the premade characters seem to be the most useless characters ever for fighting a red dragon. Who prepares fire spells for red dragons? Thats dumb...

[Jack Mann]

Meteor swarm is an area-effect spell. Spell turning wouldn't have turned those back.

[Macrovore]

i remember doing some cheese with wall of force when I did it. It was a while ago though. I was annoyed that the premade characters seem to be the most useless characters ever for fighting a red dragon. Who prepares fire spells for red dragons? Thats dumb...

well, the wizard did have mastery of elements, which saved my arse a bunch of times. but the other opponent was a black dragon. Also, clerics and druids have few, if any, simple damage spells that don't deal fire damage.

Meteor swarm is an area-effect spell. Spell turning wouldn't have turned those back.

that's what I thought. but the DM ruled that while all the explosions hit the dragon, the actual meteors flew back at me. 3 of them hit, but the one that actually hit the dragon was a crit.