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MonsterEnvy posted:Thats assuming Stone skin is on and Stone skin offers no protection from Fire damage so it's going to need to make a dc 45 check assuming average damage. Oh, 182? gently caress it, who needs stoneskin (or whatever spell gives you fire resistance, which I assume a wizard would actually be wearing if stoneskin doesn't stop elemental damage)? A wizard just tanks that. The dragon's fire breath + triple tail lash together deal like, 150ish, assuming all of them hit/don't get saved against.
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Aug 18, 2014 23:55
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Alternatively, gently caress skeletons. Scry the dragon and turn into a copy of it with True Polymorph. You now have the same statblock as it. Proceed to fight it dragon vs dragon. If it kills you, you transform back into a Wizard with a full complement of spells and HP. If you kill it, it dies.
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Aug 18, 2014 23:59
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Don't you still get to cast spells while you're a dragon anyways?
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Aug 19, 2014 00:01
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The broader take away from this discussion being that, even if a single wizard can conceivably have trouble soloing the dragon, the solution to her problem will never, ever, ever be "Add a fighter to the party".
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Aug 19, 2014 00:06
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Jack the Lad posted:If it kills you, you transform back into a Wizard with a full complement of spells and HP. Oh my god this is beautiful.
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Aug 19, 2014 00:08
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S.J. posted:Don't you still get to cast spells while you're a dragon anyways? If you use Shapechange instead of True Polymorph, yes. I'm pretty sure this means you can: 1. Scry the dragon and True Polymorph into it. 2. The next day, go fight the dragon as an identical copy of itself. If it kills you, you turn back into a Wizard. 3. You then Shapechange into another copy of it and continue fighting dragon vs dragon, except now you can cast spells as a dragon. 4. If it kills you a second time, (i.e. it kills two copies of itself in immediate succession, one of which is also a Wizard. This won't happen) you turn back into a Wizard except you've spent your level 9 slot. But you still have all your other slots so it's pretty okay. Bonus: Dragons are immune to their own breath weapons, so there's no way for the dragon to make the Concentration save on Shapechange (its one downside) higher than DC10, meaning you have literally a 99.8% chance to pass it. Jack the Lad fucked around with this message at 00:21 on Aug 19, 2014 |
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Aug 19, 2014 00:08
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Imagine the look on that stupid dragon's face when you use its lair gimmicks against it.
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Aug 19, 2014 00:17
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Hang on, though - since the biggest kind of red dragon has 28 hit dice and presumably more than 20 CR, can you true polymorph or shapechange into it without being level 28 yourself?
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Aug 19, 2014 00:25
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Ferrinus posted:Hang on, though - since the biggest kind of red dragon has 28 hit dice and presumably more than 20 CR, can you true polymorph or shapechange into it without being level 28 yourself? No, I'm talking about a CR17 Adult Red Dragon. The Ancient Red Dragon is CR24.
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Aug 19, 2014 00:34
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Oh. So our plan for soloing the ancient is what, keeping some kind of fire resistance concentration spell up and just telling the skeletal longbowmen to let fly?
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Aug 19, 2014 00:40
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Ferrinus posted:Oh. So our plan for soloing the ancient is what, keeping some kind of fire resistance concentration spell up and just telling the skeletal longbowmen to let fly? Resistance isn't enough to avoid being one shot by fire breath, so you just gotta use numbers and stuns, or swarm him with infinite zombies (using touch of death every day to generate a large supply)
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Aug 19, 2014 00:41
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Stormgale posted:Resistance isn't enough to avoid being one shot by fire breath, so you just gotta use numbers and stuns, or swarm him with infinite zombies (using touch of death every day to generate a large supply) Not at all - it deals 156 damage max, 91 average. We'd lose whatever we were concentrating on, but we're almost certainly not getting one-shot as level 20 wizards with even Con +3 or something, and definitely not getting one-shot if we have any source of fire resistance at all going when the breath hits, which, why wouldn't we? Hell, we could Shapechange into a monster that's fire immune.
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Aug 19, 2014 00:46
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Sorry I meant for the skeleton brothers
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Aug 19, 2014 00:55
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Probably easier to just seal it in it's lair and wait for it to die. He'll only have one 90' x 5' entrance tunnel (because of the Skeleton Fear), which the wizard can easily collapse and let oxygen starvation do the heavy lifting.
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Aug 19, 2014 01:10
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Ferrinus posted:Not at all - it deals 156 damage max, 91 average. We'd lose whatever we were concentrating on, but we're almost certainly not getting one-shot as level 20 wizards with even Con +3 or something, and definitely not getting one-shot if we have any source of fire resistance at all going when the breath hits, which, why wouldn't we? Your forgeting about it's round of attacks and Fear radius. Also 146 is the average amount of hp a Wizard has with a + 3. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Aug 19, 2014 |
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Aug 19, 2014 01:21
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None of those dragons legendary actions seem very legendary. Tail whip? Wing flaps? oh nooooo
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Aug 19, 2014 01:24
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MonsterEnvy posted:Your forgeting about it's round of attacks and Fear radius. It can't do a round of attacks and breathe fire in the same turn. The ancient red dragon cannot on average one-shot a level 20 wizard, and definitely cannot one-shot a level 20 wizard who for instance has shapechanged into something fire immune, such as an adult red dragon.
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Aug 19, 2014 01:26
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S.J. posted:None of those dragons legendary actions seem very legendary. Tail whip? Wing flaps? oh nooooo The fact it can use them off turn is what is legendary.
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Aug 19, 2014 01:27
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Ferrinus posted:It can't do a round of attacks and breathe fire in the same turn. The ancient red dragon cannot on average one-shot a level 20 wizard, and definitely cannot one-shot a level 20 wizard who for instance has shapechanged into something fire immune, such as an adult red dragon. Still Weaker then an Ancient Red. And you will have to save each time you get hit and eventually you will get a 1 and fail. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Aug 19, 2014 |
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Aug 19, 2014 01:31
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MonsterEnvy posted:The fact it can use them off turn is what is legendary. I guess if you have a really low opinion of the word legendary
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Aug 19, 2014 01:34
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S.J. posted:I guess if you have a really low opinion of the word legendary The first boss fights in Final Fantasies 4 thru 7 are very legendary.
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Aug 19, 2014 01:35
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S.J. posted:I guess if you have a really low opinion of the word legendary It's legendary because it's a powerful and legendary creature. Remember a round is 6 seconds so this poo poo is happening at really fast speeds.
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Aug 19, 2014 01:38
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MonsterEnvy posted:It's legendary because it's a powerful and legendary creature. Remember a round is 6 seconds so this poo poo is happening at really fast speeds. Does it take legendary dumps? I mean I guess it probably would
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Aug 19, 2014 01:42
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MonsterEnvy posted:It's legendary because it's a powerful and legendary creature. Remember a round is 6 seconds so this poo poo is happening at really fast speeds. Uhh, against the skeleton army, it's happening every 4 minutes on average. Hell, I can post faster than this dragon can flap its wings.
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Aug 19, 2014 01:44
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When I think legendary boss action, I think of, I dunno, drawing down the moon and shattering the perceptions of all the participants in the combat, leaving them trapped in a maze of their own mind's creation, forcing the PCs to all swap character sheets with the person on their across from them as the fighter is now the magic, up is down, left is right, and evil is good, or exploiting the greed in the hearts of the party and leaving them wondering if perhaps the dragon is correct, and they should join it in ransacking the town alongside their new master, who could provide them with far more gold and magical treasure then they would ever hope to find on their own, or something. Those are just off the top of my head, I'm sure people could come up with better ones. But, eh, flapping the wings real fast? I guess that's pretty legendary too. 
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Aug 19, 2014 01:45
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MonsterEnvy posted:Still Weaker then an Ancient Red. And you will have to save each time you get hit and eventually you will get a 1 and fail. Probably not in the actual span of time the fight takes, though, since the odds of rolling a 1 twice in a row are miniscule. Now, as an adult red, you're getting hit on a 2 by the ancient red's melee attacks so you're still on a fairly short clock, but you've got the entire spell list up to level 8 at your fingertips.
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Aug 19, 2014 01:46
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Jack the Lad posted:If you use Shapechange instead of True Polymorph, yes. Huh. I had interpreted "becomes permanent" on true polymorph not as "this spell's effect continues forever without concentration", but "this is now the true body for the target." Like, if you die, you die, and if you get rezzed, this is the body that comes back.
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Aug 19, 2014 01:48
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seebs posted:Huh. I had interpreted "becomes permanent" on true polymorph not as "this spell's effect continues forever without concentration", but "this is now the true body for the target." Like, if you die, you die, and if you get rezzed, this is the body that comes back. Nope. When you get knocked to zero, any excess damage from the attack will go to your new (original) form, but unless that damage knocks you below zero again, you're fine.
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Aug 19, 2014 01:51
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True Polymorph does not work on yourself anyway. Also just learned that Dragons have innate spellcasting as a variant rule for them. Guy whos owns MM posted:A young or older dragon gets a number of spells equal to Chr mod. These are usable once per day. (There are a few sentences spelling out additional bits).
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Aug 19, 2014 01:58
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I honestly don't understand why people are running to clamp down on cool stuff. Like, using shapeshifting to turn yourself into a final bossfight, only as a good guy? Cool stuff. Raising an army of skeletons to act like a proper pop-culture necromancer? Cool stuff. Turning into a dragon to fight a dragon? Cool, and frankly pretty mythical in and of itself.
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Aug 19, 2014 02:00
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Effectronica posted:I honestly don't understand why people are running to clamp down on cool stuff. Like, using shapeshifting to turn yourself into a final bossfight, only as a good guy? Cool stuff. Raising an army of skeletons to act like a proper pop-culture necromancer? Cool stuff. Turning into a dragon to fight a dragon? Cool, and frankly pretty mythical in and of itself.
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Aug 19, 2014 02:03
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MonsterEnvy posted:True Polymorph does not work on yourself anyway. Please quote the rules text that says this.
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Aug 19, 2014 02:06
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dwarf74 posted:Because high-level D&D can be better than "look at all this poo poo wizards can do." Well, the solution isn't to come up with ways to shut it down. Like, if the fighter could three-round solo a dragon with the same level of ease as a necromancer doing it, and that level of power was consistently applied across the classes, the game would be fine, with better monsters. As it is, the basic solution is going, from this thread, to be to shut down any wizard/cleric/druid/bard options that aren't just grinding away HP like this is a bossfight in a mediocre JRPG.
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Aug 19, 2014 02:06
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Effectronica posted:As it is, the basic solution is going, from this thread, to be to shut down any wizard/cleric/druid/bard options that aren't just grinding away HP like this is a bossfight in a mediocre JRPG. No, the solution is to get everyone to play as a wizard/cleric/druid/bard. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Aug 19, 2014 |
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Aug 19, 2014 02:08
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Effectronica posted:Well, the solution isn't to come up with ways to shut it down. Like, if the fighter could three-round solo a dragon with the same level of ease as a necromancer doing it, and that level of power was consistently applied across the classes, the game would be fine, with better monsters. As it is, the basic solution is going, from this thread, to be to shut down any wizard/cleric/druid/bard options that aren't just grinding away HP like this is a bossfight in a mediocre JRPG. Even if the fighter could put out Raw DPR the lack of martial ability to be declarative like spells (e.g. X just happens) will always limit it really.
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Aug 19, 2014 02:08
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AlphaDog posted:No, the solution is to get everyone to play as a wizard/cleric/druid/bard. The solution being presented from people that want to play this game. The real solution is not to play NEXT/5e, and play something like 13th Age Glorantha or 4e or 3e Exalted when it comes out in 20 years. Stormgale posted:Even if the fighter could put out Raw DPR the lack of martial ability to be declarative like spells (e.g. X just happens) will always limit it really. You get what I'm saying, though, right? The basic problem is that fighters are boring and the solution isn't to make all the classes on the same rough level of boring.
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Aug 19, 2014 02:10
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Effectronica posted:The solution being presented from people that want to play this game. The real solution is not to play NEXT/5e, and play something like 13th Age Glorantha or 4e or 3e Exalted when it comes out in 20 years. Heaps of people seem to be saying "play as an X, it can do this cool trick where..." (eg) it summons a skeleton army and turns itself into a dragon. The "shut it down" is coming from people who don't want to admit that the game actively encourages (eg) skeleton armies and turning yourself into a dragon. e: The game is badly designed to the point where you can do lots of wacky crap without really trying very hard, as long as you don't pick fighter or rogue. The solution (if you want to enjoy the game) is to house-ban the fighter and rogue and just let the game be about NECRO TEAM 6 assaulting the secret mountain lair of Rotendrachen The Red. I will play that game. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Aug 19, 2014 |
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Aug 19, 2014 02:12
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I actually really like the lair effects! Everything that's similar to an MMO mechanic isn't automatically bad. I think it adds a nice thematic element to the game, and gives a reason for adventurers to think about things like "do I really want to fight this dragon IN ITS LAIR?"
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Aug 19, 2014 02:15
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dwarf74 posted:Because high-level D&D can be better than "look at all this poo poo wizards can do." Not since people decided a wizard getting 5th level spells at 10 was one level too long but the fighter getting his own keep and personal army was too much bookkeeping/overpowered.
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Aug 19, 2014 02:15
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I'm one of those people who doesn't really care for the solution to D&D's capability disparity between fighters and wizards to be "give the Fighter a bunch of hangers-on and a keep" because to me it just seems to be another outgrowth of the same mental roadblock that stems from not being able to imagine something fantastical that isn't the result of a guy in a pointy hat waving a wand. What's a legendary Fighter like? Eh, he has a bunch of guys with him I guess.
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Aug 19, 2014 02:36
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