Why are Dragons's under CRd?

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 10:53 pm

One with only a single feat spent on Multiattack.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 11:08 pm

RadiantPhoenix wrote:Also, the only prerequisite for flyby attack is a fly speed, and it's in the same book dragons are introduced in. What kind of flight-capable dragon doesn't take it?

I'm assuming they use readied actions, because if they don't, they obviously can't hit it at all.

Shadow Balls · Post by **Shadow Balls** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 11:09 pm

ITT: Kaelik is a fucking retard. I didn't mention Downdraft before because I was going easy on it. Same reason I didn't mention Shivering Touch, and instead stuck to the easiest ways of doing things. But really, if the group is as you say and can only hurr and durr as an enemy flies around overhead, then bringing that bitch to the ground is actually a reasonable course of action. And Downdraft totally fucking does that to any flier, not just that specific dragon.

So even in your short bus party, in which AC 18 is actually fucking considered high, the party still has plenty of answers to an at level dragon and is not stuck holding their sack while it has their way with them.

Oh and maneuverability still doesn't fucking work that way.

A Man In Black · Post by **A Man In Black** » Wed Oct 19, 2011 11:11 pm

Shadow Balls wrote:ITT: Kaelik is a fucking retard. I didn't mention Downdraft before because I was going easy on it. Same reason I didn't mention Shivering Touch, and instead stuck to the easiest ways of doing things. But really, if the group is as you say and can only hurr and durr as an enemy flies around overhead, then bringing that bitch to the ground is actually a reasonable course of action. And Downdraft totally fucking does that to any flier, not just that specific dragon.

You're going to use Shivering Touch on a flying dragon.

I see.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Oct 20, 2011 3:02 am

A Man In Black wrote: You're going to use Shivering Touch on a flying dragon.

I see.

Didn't he mention? OBVIOUSLY they took Improved Familiar: Eyeball, and use it's "I convert your touch spell into a Ray" power to send the Shivering Touch. It's to be expected as the thing that always happens, not just this one hypothetical wizard who happens to have been pre-imagined to beat dragons!

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Oct 20, 2011 6:13 am

Josh_Kablack wrote:One with only a single feat spent on Multiattack.

All dragons that are CR 4 or 5 have at least 3 feats.

Shivering Touch

....Shadow, are you retarded? First, it's an obscure spell. Second, the dragon doesn't give a shit that you just lowered it's dex from 10-11 to 1-2 on average, I mean, sure, it's AC is a bit lower, as is it's Ref, but it flies just fucking fine. Third, what Koumei said. I find it difficult to believe that your usual cleric and wizard are spec'ed like this on a day to day basis.
(and no, fire dragons don't take double damage, and if it's a cold dragon, this spell doesn't even work.)

Regarding Downdraft, by your own argument, the dragon's not very high up, so the damage taken would likely be trivial. Also, what Kaelik said about obscurity and single 3rd level spells.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Oct 20, 2011 7:05 am

Actually the single place where you are wrong, Prak, is that it is 3d6, for an average of 10.5 Dex, so the Dragon, on average, goes to 0 Dex.

If the caster can fucking touch it. And actually has the spell prepared anyway. It is a good spell, good enough to consider and good enough that I've seen it banned. But it's not so super-special-awesome that I would automatically select it forever.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Oct 20, 2011 7:15 am

ah, right, I forgot that .5 on dice averages. So, sure, if you know you're going to face a dragon, or are a sorcerer, *and* have a way to hit a dragon with a touch spell (not impossible, even core has spectral hand) it's a good spell.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Oct 20, 2011 1:39 pm

The correct way to think about Shivering touch is with the damage roll as a saving throw.

If they make their save, they take a penalty to AC and ref saves, if they fail their save, they are unconscious. So even though Shivering touch is a good spell, even if you go through all the preplanning work and actually hit the dragon with the spell, there's a 45% (yeah, it's probably 48.something whatever) chance that he still alive and you just spent whatever you spent for very little.

Shadow Balls · Post by **Shadow Balls** » Thu Oct 20, 2011 2:27 pm

Spectral Hand. If you know you're fighting a dragon, that's standard tactics to one shot it at any level. The higher level ones will have counters to this but at level 5 they can only fuck off and die. If it has like 1 Dex left, next round you hit it with Lesser Shivering Touch.

Downdraft is much more generally applicable. In this hypothetical party that can only hurr and durr as a flying enemy stays out of their reach, bringing that bitch to the ground and getting a free rounds of attacks and AoOs on it is a really good deal and a quick way to slaughter it unless your party is entirely useless. Perhaps Kaelik only plays with basket weavers, but I'd suspect that most here would prefer to play with people that have a fucking clue, which means that this problem is prevented before it becomes a problem.

And Kaelik wants to hurr and durr about how the dragon can still grapple people with its +19 - 20 modifier. That equals -1. The Wizard has +1, the Rogue +3 or +4 or something. Yet apparently the 35% chance the dragon becomes a little bitch to a Tanglefoot Bag means it never happens, despite the fact that the odds of it grappling them in that manner are about 35%, if not lower. And yet, he claims that always works. Because he is an incompetent fucktard that does not understand math or consistency. And ya know, if the grapple does work, they just Anklet out and laugh at the dragon, who did not get them very high off the ground and their Anklet got them 10 feet closer to it. So they take some tiny amount of falling damage, that is far less than it'd do with just about anything else and they don't give a fuck.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Oct 20, 2011 4:11 pm

Spectral hand is a piece of shit. People do not prepare or even know Spectral Hand because it is insultingly terrible. Really what you're doing is not proving your point but rather the opposing view. While it is possible to take obscure collections of specialty spells and beat almost any monster, people don't actually do that unless they have incredibly exhaustive intelligence and are outfitting themselves to fight some kind of boss monster that is going to kick their ass.

The moment you find yourself claiming that someone is going to prepare and cast a Spectral Hand / Shivering Touch combo to beat an equal CR opponent (two spells that are essentially worthless against almost all opposition), you are conceding that this particular opponent is way over powered. Because if they weren't overpowered, you'd just use generically useful tactics like casting charm monster or solid fog. If you need to prepare more than one spell that is useless in a generic situation, then the opposition is not level appropriate or normal by any criteria.

-Username17

violence in the media · Thu Oct 20, 2011 4:36 pm

What -20 to grapple are you talking about? There is no -20 for moving. It's a standard action and a successful grapple check against the person you're carrying with you. I might be wrong, but as I've understood it, that -20 only comes into play when a creature is trying to hold someone with only the body part that triggered the improved grab ability, and serves to make the creature not count as grappled.

Now, I admit that I do not offhandedly know what Anklet you're referring to, but I can say that I have never played or run a game where everyone in the party had a copy of a specific magic item, regardless of it's utility.

Lastly, I thought the premise of this situation was that the party didn't specifically know they were fighting a dragon ahead of time, and that they were potentially ambushed? It just shows up as a random (or set piece, if you'd prefer) encounter as they're travelling somewhere. Maybe they're climbing a mountain or something and don't notice it sunning itself on the other side of a rocky outcropping until they're within range of it's blindsense. Who knows?

Ravengm · Post by **Ravengm** » Thu Oct 20, 2011 5:07 pm

violence in the media wrote: Now, I admit that I do not offhandedly know what Anklet you're referring to, but I can say that I have never played or run a game where everyone in the party had a copy of a specific magic item, regardless of it's utility.

He's probably referring to the Anklet of Translocation, which is really only useful for melee types since you can use it to teleport like 10 feet as a swift action (read: get your full attack routine off).

It's also not something you want your entire party to blow 1500 gp on each at level 5.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Thu Oct 20, 2011 5:46 pm

Honestly, in 3.5 dragons up to about CR 8 or so aren't that bad compared to equivalent CR monsters. Compare a random CR 1 Dragon against a Wolf, a CR 3 Dragon against an Ogre, a CR 5 Dragon against a Large Elemental or a CR 8 Dragon against a Mind Flayer, and the dragon tends to come out way ahead on HP and Saves, ahead on speed and movement modes, ahead on ranged capacity, around even on what magic it's immune to, behind on melee damage (despite getting like 5 attacks per round) and way behind on save-or-lose and PC kill combos.

Even at CR 12, the difference between a Mature Adult White and a Frost Worm is

Round 1, Dragon charges for +29 attack dealing 2d6+9 and those failing a DC 22 Will save become Shaken as opposed to those failing a DC 17 Will save being stunned for 1d4 rounds.
Round 2, DC 25 Reflex to halve 7d6 Cold as opposed to DC 22 to halve 15d6 Cold. Even without preperation, all lvl 12 PCs will live through a failed save vs the dragon. The Dragon Breath weapon is bigger, but I'm beginning to think I'm the only one on the Den who uses minis and terrain, so that likely doesn't matter in any of yinz's games.
Round 3: Dragon can melee for +27 / +25 / +25 / +25 / +25 / +25 / +25 melee for 2d8+6/ 2d6+3 / 2d6+3 / 1d8+3 / 1d8+3 / 2d6+9 - which is probably around 50 points of damage to some foolio counting criticals and the low 30s AC or equivalent miss chances, etc that PCs will have. Frost Worm is likely dead by now, but has asploded for another DC 22 reflex to halve 20d6 damage; There's a slim chance of the creature actually having lived long enough to make a single melee attack, which is at +21 for 3d8+12
Round 4: Dragon is still alive due to 10-point plus Mage Armor and shaken attack penalties, better AC, better saves, SR, DR, and having 94 more HP so it can either breathe for another 7d6 Cone or melee for another 50ish points of damage. opposed to Frost Worm and any party members who failed the initial will save as well as those who made it, but lacked anything like evasion or cold resistance or a pile of Temp HP being dead or damnned close(really, they took 61 damage even if they made both saves, which is 5 HP per level, dropping a mage with a +2 con bonus into negatives and outright killing a mage with a lower con.. If someone failed one save or it got off a bite, that 82.5-95 damage, or 7 to 8 HP per level, dropping the Ranger, Monk and Cleric with a +2 con bonus into negatives and outright killing the rogue, bard, or any rangers, clerics or monks with less than a 14 con. If someone failed both Ref saves, they took 122 damage, or just over 10 points per HD, meaning that only a dwarf fighter or raging barbarian lived without . )

So the dragon is a whole lot harder to take down, and has a few more tactical options but the frost worm can take multiple PCs down faster and hosier. That's worth a CR adjustment, but not the sort of massive CR adjustment that 3.0 dragons warranted.

********

Oddly enough, most dragons in 3.5 at the levels people actually play at are so far on the "padded sumo" side of the slider that they can be "beaten" with the tactics of
1. Get everyone in the party resistance vs its breath weapon.
2. Don't ever let it get a full attack ( unless someone has enough DR to reliably ignore the claw and wing attacks ). This means staying loosely spread out and having soft targets take the AoO for moving away.
3. Have a healbot and someone else with a Cure wand in the party.
4. Track it to its lair when it flies off due to boredom.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Thu Oct 20, 2011 6:05 pm

Shadow Balls wrote:I'm reading that, and all I'm seeing is an outbreak of the herpaderpies, mixed with whining that because his party is shit and he can't play worth a fuck that all parties everywhere are shit, and all players cannot play, and then you try to cover that up by going on some retarded ass straw man about level 1s beating a titan, as if that is remotely comparable to fucking beating an at level dragon.

PS: Minimum forward speed bitch. Suck it.

PS2: Depending on terrain and assuming a not fire dragon Web also works. So do many other spells. But no need for situational stuff, you can just beat it same as any other tough but winnable fight. Buff, focus fire, away!

PS: Hover. Monster Manual, Page 62.

Hover: When Flying, a dragon can halt it's forward motion and hover in place, fly straight down, or fly straight up regardless of it's maneuverability.

Bonus points: Since it's large, if it hovers within 20 feet of the ground (you know, to use a breath weapon), it creates a 60 foot cloud of debris that requires a DC15 concentration check to even cast.

Since con isn't one of the higher stats a wizard uses, he's probably got around a 50-60% chance of getting that spell off that round.

A dragon using tactics is hard to kill. Christ I almost TPK'd a party of 5 third level characters using two orcs and tactics.

I'd also like to ask what 5th level party is going to wake up every morning and figure that they're going to be attacked by a dragon.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Oct 20, 2011 9:10 pm

Shadow, I want a round by round tactics description for your hypothetical basket weaver party (yes, I'm calling a party specifically built to take down dragons basket weavers, I think it applies). You're the one claiming that Dragons are powerful, but not a big deal, the burden of proof lies on he who makes the extraordinary claim.

Like Frank said, I'm sure it's possible to kill a level appropriate dragon, but you need a hyper-specific build.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Thu Oct 20, 2011 9:45 pm

A party optimized to kill a specific monster are basket weavers? Sure, it's not a very realistic party, but still, I think we've reached the point where basket weaving is officially a meaningless term. As originally defined, doesn't it mean wasting character resources on totally useless options because they fit your concept, and then whining about roleplay and story when their enemies inevitably mop the floor with them?

BearsAreBrown · Post by **BearsAreBrown** » Thu Oct 20, 2011 10:11 pm

Yes. Unless you're in a "slay the dragons" campaign then the term is appropriate, no?

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Thu Oct 20, 2011 10:17 pm

I'm pretty sure optimizing to slay dragons also sets you up to kill just about everything else too. You won't be as awesome at it, but you're still going to have good saves (vs. good basketweaving), good SoDs (vs. good basketweaving), good ability to eat damage (same as before), and probably a fair amount of utility (again, vs. a fair amount of baskets).

I always saw uselessness as a key part of basketweaving. If you're themed but also competent, that's totally different

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Oct 20, 2011 10:39 pm

Unless you took one of the dozen "kill dragons" prcs, feats, weapons, whatever, which make you decent at dealing with dragons but eat up character building resources with abilities and such that don't really help with other things.

Note, I was also using the term with a bit of tongue in cheek.

Just another user · Post by **Just another user** » Thu Oct 20, 2011 11:54 pm

Koumei wrote:Well in 2E, the dragon could practically one-shot the party with a single breath-weapon use, unless I'm fabulously mistaken.

In 3E... yeah, the problem with them is well-documented.

In 4E, they have about 8.3 trillion hit points each. Not sure if they deal horrendous damage or whatever, but killing them can take so long it has commercial breaks.

OTOH, more often than not, when you go against a dragon you are prepared for it. Dragons are not random encounters, sure that red dragon breath weapon can do a buttload of damage, but when you goes against it all of your party will have some form of protection from fire, and some way to do cold damage.

That is another reason for the higher CR. When you goes against a dragon 9 out of 10 you are prepared for its weapons and its tactics, or you should.

(well, this for 2e and 3e, I'm not sure about 4e.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 12:16 am

Typical use, sure, JAU, but they do appear on random encounter tables, and they could explicably be stumbled upon, especially young dragons.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 12:50 am

I once went through a quest to get some void stone, and the final encounter was a dragon. Now it wasn't a particularly smart dragon. But still the party wasn't aware that there was a dragon living in that castle. Ironically, we ran into some void stone on our way back from hunting down some void stone.

Shadow Balls · Post by **Shadow Balls** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 11:57 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Spectral hand is a piece of shit. People do not prepare or even know Spectral Hand because it is insultingly terrible. Really what you're doing is not proving your point but rather the opposing view. While it is possible to take obscure collections of specialty spells and beat almost any monster, people don't actually do that unless they have incredibly exhaustive intelligence and are outfitting themselves to fight some kind of boss monster that is going to kick their ass.

The moment you find yourself claiming that someone is going to prepare and cast a Spectral Hand / Shivering Touch combo to beat an equal CR opponent (two spells that are essentially worthless against almost all opposition), you are conceding that this particular opponent is way over powered. Because if they weren't overpowered, you'd just use generically useful tactics like casting charm monster or solid fog. If you need to prepare more than one spell that is useless in a generic situation, then the opposition is not level appropriate or normal by any criteria.

-Username17

Some things are implied heavily without being expressly stated. In this case, it is that the Spectral Hand + Shivering Touch is for when you know you are fighting a dragon, and all of the other things, that I mentioned first and more often are for when you do not have advanced knowledge of what you will fight.

Though actually, Shivering Touch is good against anything big and clumsy. Dragons are simply the most iconic example.

TheFlatline wrote:Bonus points: Since it's large, if it hovers within 20 feet of the ground (you know, to use a breath weapon), it creates a 60 foot cloud of debris that requires a DC15 concentration check to even cast.

Since con isn't one of the higher stats a wizard uses, he's probably got around a 50-60% chance of getting that spell off that round.

Let's see... 50-60% chance to make a DC 15 check comes out to be a +4 to a +6 modifier. At level 5.

Yeah, I think it is safe to ignore anything and everything you say.

Prak_Anima wrote:Shadow, I want a round by round tactics description for your hypothetical basket weaver party (yes, I'm calling a party specifically built to take down dragons basket weavers, I think it applies). You're the one claiming that Dragons are powerful, but not a big deal, the burden of proof lies on he who makes the extraordinary claim.

Like Frank said, I'm sure it's possible to kill a level appropriate dragon, but you need a hyper-specific build.

What the fuck?

1: A basket weaver party would get slaughtered by an at level dragon. They'd also get slaughtered by an at level anything else. That is what being a basket weaver means - incompetence.
2: It doesn't require being built specifically to take out dragons. At most it requires you to fucking recognize that flying enemies are increasingly common at these levels, and you had better be able to do something about that.
3: The actual words that I actually said about dragons is that they are tough but overhyped. Bullshit like claiming you need hyper specific builds to do is is a good example of that overhyping. It doesn't change the fact that they are not nearly as uber as they are being made out to be. Stop crying about Garchomp.

fectin wrote:I'm pretty sure optimizing to slay dragons also sets you up to kill just about everything else too. You won't be as awesome at it, but you're still going to have good saves (vs. good basketweaving), good SoDs (vs. good basketweaving), good ability to eat damage (same as before), and probably a fair amount of utility (again, vs. a fair amount of baskets).

I always saw uselessness as a key part of basketweaving. If you're themed but also competent, that's totally different

Not to mention that most of it requires nothing that is specific to killing dragons, and is just standard things you should do anyways.

Swordslinger · Post by **Swordslinger** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 12:27 pm

The whole dragon thing is based on the idea that the designers don't consider flight to be all that powerful. Evident by the fact that fly is only a 3rd level spell.

Being that the game is Dungeons and Dragons, they expect the majority of encounters to happen in dungeons. That means that flight ends up being nerfed anyway because you're expected to mostly be fighting in narrow, low-ceiling corridors, and if you're not, you can always pull back to such a position. Outdoor combat is an afterthought.

As for the numerical stats, the designers are poor optimizers and probably didn't even think that dragons could cast mage armor and shield on themselves to get super AC.

As usual with 3E design style, they just tossed a bunch of crap out and saw what happened, there wasn't much of an internal plan or balance to anything.

4E dragons on the other hand actually aren't anything special. In fact, they're a joke, mostly because solo monsters are boring piles of hit points. Though dragons aren't inherently better than any other solo.