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Thread: Dragons
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03-02-2003, 06:02 PM #11
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Dragonslayer: The bumbling young adventuoring mage kills the dragon, and instead of being hailed the hero, the king comes along, sticks his sword in the corpse of the wyrm, and claims the kill! PCs are left with nothing...
MUHAHAAAAA!"You need people of intelligence on this mission... quest... thing."
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03-04-2003, 01:51 PM #12
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Regardless of your personal opinion about if the players should have been able to kill the dragon, they did. If you go on to punish them for it, then they'll just stop killing anything. Sure you can send every wizard on the continent or every dragon after them, and you'll probably kill them off, and then what? The games over, your players are pissed, and you just ended a campaign out of a puerile belief that dragons are unslayable, untouchable gods.
I'm not saying that killing the dragon shouldn't bring them difficulties, just don't throw an endless horde of unkillable monsters at them till they die for killing your monster.
And about dragonfear, Paladins can extend their immunity to fear to their friends (I believe, I don't have a PHB handy) and clerics have spells that protect people from fear. Besides, will is the best save for spellcasting classes, it's not unbelievable that they would pass their checks. And if you pass the dragonfear check you don't have to keep testing each round by my understanding.
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03-04-2003, 08:19 PM #13
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On Tue, 4 Mar 2003, Ilmarinen wrote:
> puerile belief that dragons are unslayable, untouchable gods.
I think that`s a bit harsh. Certainly, everything ever given stats in D&D
(including actual gods) has been distinctly killable by clever players
with enough planning and magic. If you want actually unkillable, you have
to work much harder to make them that way than the D&D designers have ever
done. Sure, dragons get tougher with every edition, but to a party of
mid-to-high level characters armed with the right spell effects, dragons
are really not that hard. It`s an arms race, which players seem fairly
good at winning.
In any case, having unkillable, godlike dragons is a perfectly fine goal
from a world-building perspective -- it`s just that the dragons printed in
the MM are not at all unkillable, nor particularly godlike in power, so if
you want unkillable and omnipotent you need to change the dragons` stats
drastically before letting players at them. If you want them sufficiently
powerful, then you needn`t even roll:
PC: "I attack the dragon!"
DM: "It doesn`t notice you at all. It keeps sleeping peacefully.
By the way, your sword needs to save against crushing blow."
If however you ever let them roll at all, expect them to eventually be
able to find a way to beat it.
> Regardless of your personal opinion about if the players should have
> been able to kill the dragon, they did.
That`s the other problem -- clever players blindside DMs who thought they
had planned defenses for every eventuality, but somehow didn`t predict the
very first thing the players thought up. The most important part of the
PC-vs-monster arms race is not in items or stats, but ideas -- and
frequently the DM loses simply by being outnumbered by the players.
Ryan Caveney
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03-06-2003, 08:37 AM #14Originally posted by ryancaveney
That`s the other problem -- clever players blindside DMs who thought they
had planned defenses for every eventuality, but somehow didn`t predict the
very first thing the players thought up. The most important part of the
PC-vs-monster arms race is not in items or stats, but ideas -- and
frequently the DM loses simply by being outnumbered by the players.
Actually, this is why I rarely ever plan out an adventure with any great detail. A few maps and ideas are more than enough to run an entertaining adventure, and most players won't notice if you're making it up on the fly, as long as you can think quickly and can come up with good ideas at a moment's notice.Let me claim your Birthright!!
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