Good tactics and spells for fighting dragons?

[User3]

Okay, our DM has decided "too many Dungeons, not enough Dragons" which means we'll be fighting almost nothing but for the forseeable future.

So, what are some key tactics for dragon fights, and what spells should I show up with? Shivering Touch is banned, for obvious reasons.

[AlphaNerd]

Solid Fog?

[User3]

Slime Wave has been revised (via multiple publishings throughout sourcebooks) a total of 3 times now. It's most recent incarnation is basically a return to what it was back in 3.0's MotW.

Beyond all that blather, Slime Wave is once again an ultra-stellar anti-dragon spell. The spell gets more asskicking as the dragon gets larger in size.

[Judging__Eagle]

Hmm... try this combo:

High level cast Delay Poison or carry anti-toxins or other things to protect yourselves against poison.

Minor Creation on Terinav Root (contact poison, does dex damage; so if you hit their touch AC they'll have to make a save a round).

Get all of your group to dunk their arrows or crossbow bolts in the 1 lb per caster level that is created via Minor Creation.

The created poison will last 1 hour per level.

The least that you'll have in a casting is 7 lbs that last 7 hours.

So yeah, you'll just shoot the dragon's low touch AC and poison them with dex damage; which they tend to have little of.

The anti-toxin gear is you guys infect yourselves.

[User3]

Those are good, but I'm still a few levels shy of casting them. What's helpful at low levels? I've heard good things about Web against the smaller dragons (assuming an enclosed space), and Slow-effects on them in general (Sting Ray is nice since I only care about 1 target anyway).

What about general tactics?

[Josh_Kablack]

If you can weasel any way at all to entangle them, you will win.

For Large or smaller dragons, it works thusly:

Party Tank throws net, entangles dragon. Since this is a touch attack it almost always hits.

Rest of party uses archery, spells, and minions from a safe distance of over 30' away (adjust for reach and breath weapon shape)

Dragon either
A> Makes the Str tjeck to break net, but this is a full round action, so start over with another net

B> Takes a full attack against the party Tank, with -2 to all attack rolls. This hurts. A lot. Be sure to have the tank defensively buffed and the party healer within a single move of the Tank

C>Breathes on 1 or 2 party members. Appropriate defensive buffs are key here, as are tactics which allow you to close ranks and heal the round after a breath weapon and then disperse again the round after.

D> Attempts to cast a spell. It may or may not make the concentration tjeck, but it's casting like 8 levels behind the party wizard, and you have at least 2 characters getting actions to it's single spell here, so this is a win for you.

For dragons bigger than large, you generally have to pull something weirder out to get the repeatable entangle, but that is usually possible.

Also remember that most of their AC is natural Armor so touch attacks are huge. Now their SR shuts down a lot of touch/ray spells, but things like sneak attack with alchemists fire or attacking with summoned lantern archons can ignore most of their armor. At the higher levels, Dispel Magic is worth it, since buff spells will be adding 4-6 more points of AC to many dragons and you wizard has a much higher caster level.

[Nexis]

1. Cast Shivering touch (use some meta-magic)

2. Win against low Dex dragons

[Judging__Eagle]

1172062674[/unixtime]]1. Cast Shivering touch (use some meta-magic)

2. Win against low Dex dragons

Hmm.

You must think you're hot shit suggesting this, right?

Way to actually read the OP.








Oh, what Josh said, you can technically have more than one net, you can make the nets out of adamantine and you can make them larger.

All of which will help.

Also, if you can craft yourselves Tanglefoot bags. Those are pretty handy, have the bags spread out among the party members so that the group can always throw 2 really early in the fight. So, no matter what the Init order is, your 1st two party members can tie up the dragon.

Then back as far away as you can and your bows and crossbows can finish it off.

Carry Javelins for really, really high str characters that don't have bows.

If they want to focus on only str and want to attack at range, the Axe Thrower feat lets them use Str for throwing attack rolls instead of Dex.

[AlphaNerd]

Only weapons, armor, and shields normally made of metal can be fashioned from adamantine. Weapons, armor and shields normally made of steel that are made of adamantine have one-third more hit points than normal. Adamantine has 40 hit points per inch of thickness and hardness 20.

Tanglefoot bags, while useful, don't solve the problem for you. Dealing 15 damage with an attack is basically child's play for dragons, and even flying at half speed they'll be able to catch up to you and/or charge you. Young dragons seem to have reflex saves of approx +6-9, so throw a few and they're pretty likely to fail the DC 15 reflex save.

[Crissa]

What, you've never seen a steel net before?

-Crissa

[Fwib]

Even if your DM has never seen a steel net, consider that all that should be needed to make one is wire, and wire exists - because it is used to make chain mail and jewelery. It isn't like your characters are trying to invent gunpowder.

[AlphaNerd]

Fair enough, but I'm just trying to point out that we don't have stats for a metal net. So we don't have stats for an adamantine net. I mean, maybe metal nets have a maximum range of 5'.

Also, throwing nets have a maximum range of 10', which is probably within the reach of the dragon. The dragon should use it's AoA to disarm you. I think this works even against a readied action to net the dragon. Or am I wrong here? Do feats that increase range increments also increase "maximum range"?

A net’s maximum range is 10 feet.

[Username17]

Dragons aren't just stupid powerful for their CR, hey are stupid powerful for their size. This perversely means that true dragons are really small at almost all levels of play.

Let's consider the White Dragon, as it is the only dragon that actually has a CR 1 vesion, and all the other dragons have about the same size to CR ratio:

CR - Size
1 - Tiny
2 - Small
3 - Medium
4 - Medium
5 - Medium
6 - Medium
7 - Large
8 - Large
9 - Large
10- Large
11- Huge
12- Huge
13- Huge
14- Huge
15- Huge
16- Huge
17- Huge
18- Gargantuan
19- Gargantuan
20- Gargantuan

As you can see, for most of your life, you'd be fighting bigger critters if you were up against Magical Beasts of the same level (and remember also that these are the bullshit reported CRs not the "real" CRs).

This is important because it means that fo most of the time you're looking for ways to fight not large enemies, but small ones. At 6th level you're up against dragons (whether Green or White) that are Medium sized and have a Strength of 17 - which means that what you really want to be doing is getting them into size-modified strngth tests as often as possible.

Personally, I suggest the Bull Rush - which means that you're going to want to combine web (or better yet briar web if your DM is on Crack and will let you do it) with having a party Barbarian with Improved Bullrush or a Druid who can summon Earth elementals. Heck, even a wall or fellow party member can stand in for the web, because if you bullrush an enemy into an occupied square the target falls prone (and stalls and hits the ground if they were flying at the time).

Dragons have huge BABs and tremendous piles of hit points, but they don't have Size or Strength compared to the other monsters in their ecological niche or the heroes that face them. Weird but true.

-Username17

[Catharz]

Heh. D&D = tiny dragons on tinyer piles of gold.

[Josh_Kablack]

1172068582[/unixtime]]
Tanglefoot bags, while useful, don't solve the problem for you. Dealing 15 damage with an attack is basically child's play for dragons, and even flying at half speed they'll be able to catch up to you and/or charge you.

The key point here is that they use an attack to get free. That's 15 damage one of your party members is not taking, and since the dragon a lready made an attack, it can't charge or use it's breath weapon in the same round, and it's are limited to either taking a full round attack against nearby targets or moving at half speed towards other targets, but not getting a chance to attack them in the same round.

And as an aside to Frank's point about size, those ratios make Grapplemancy worth considering, despite the BAB gap. A CR 7 juvenille black dragon only has a grapple bonus of +16. And while a 7th level BBN is probably only around a +12, A 7th lvl wizard can throw Evards with a +15 and Summon Monster III to get a critter with +15 (+17 with Augment summon). Summon Nature's Ally IV gets a critter with +16(+18 with augment) and Improved Grab.

[User3]

Frank: that is exactly the kind of stuff I was looking for. Thank you.

Oh man, it's even worse for the "powerful" dragons like reds and golds. They have higher CRs at every age category, but that just means that at any given CR, they will be small even for a dragon.

[MrWaeseL]

Blinding Spittle is pretty nice if you can get in short range of a Dragon and not die.

[Username17]

One thing you will hear an awful lot about is the Dragon's breath weapon. About how clever dragon hunters will scam themselves approprite energy resistance. Honestly don't even bother.

Here's a White Dragon's average breath weapon damage by CR (Parentheticals hold the Red Dragon Breath weapons by CR):

CR - Breath Weapon Damage
1 - 3.5
2 - 7
3 - 10.5 (11)
4 - 10.5 (22)
5 - 14 (22)
6 - 14 (33)
7 - 17.5 (33)
8 - 17.5 (33)
9 - 21 (44)
10- 21 (44)
11- 24.5 (44)
12- 24.5 (55)
13- 24.5 (55)
14- 28 (66)
15- 28 (66)
16- 31.5 (66)
17- 35 (77)
18- 38.5 (77)
19- 38.5 (88)
20- 42 (99)

So that's the biggest and the smallest breath weapons by CR. Do you see any of them that you give a single good god damn about at the level you're fighting them? It'll go off once or twice during the combat, it'll hit two or three party members, and you won't care.

Energy resistance, even energy immunity, is a sucker's game. A Cr 14 White Dragon is not going to breathe 8d6 of Frost damage on you if it wants you dead - it's going to close to melee, cast wraithstrike, Power Attack for +/-20, and attack 6 times for about 197 damage. Maybe more if it has equipment or something.

There are two things that you have to worry about with Dragons:

1. Getting it out of the sky.
   If the Dragon really can just float around like a bird and do fly-by breath weapons it wil eventually kill your family. They fly faster than anything in the game, so you need something like web that'll drop it out of the air.
   
   
2. Keeping out of melee.
   A Dragon full attack pretty much spells the end for player characters at pretty much any level. You don't want to be there. You want to be a fair distance away. Any PC should be able to take a standard attack, and probably an attack of opportunity as well, so just back up every time it closes. Better yet, keep it tied down with a grappler, a web, or a wall of stone.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1172166143[/unixtime]]
Energy resistance, even energy immunity, is a sucker's game. A Cr 14 White Dragon is not going to breathe 8d6 of Frost damage on you if it wants you dead - it's going to close to melee, cast wraithstrike, Power Attack for +/-20, and attack 6 times for about 197 damage. Maybe more if it has equipment or something.

Do you guys actually play with wraithstrike? I kinda assumed that would fall in the insta-ban category of broken spells.

[Judging__Eagle]

Yeah, Wraithstrike is a bit broken RC.

But Frank was referring to the dragon using Wraithstrike.[/i].

[Draco_Argentum]

Not even I'm a big enough "Dragon fetishist" (as Lago puts it) to let the Dragon have spells that are banned for the PCs.

[Cielingcat]

Sadly, many DMs are. Of course, these are the same people who think dragons are dangerous spellcasters...

[Judging__Eagle]

1172232245[/unixtime]]Sadly, many DMs are. Of course, these are the same people who think dragons are dangerous spellcasters...

Which, frankly is fvcking ridiculous as thinking that a Wizard is a dangerous spell caster b/c they have true strike, or magic missile.

Omg! It can't miss!

Instead of colour spray.

[Cielingcat]

Have you seen what they post on WotC? Dragons apparantly have lairs ringed in magical traps, wards, and alarms even though they cast as Sorcerers with limited spells known, AND that they cast as such low level Sorcerers that no one even cares. But of course, any dragon that has Arcane Lock instead of Wraithstrike is a win for me.

Chart of dragon spellcasting by (official) CR

Code: Select all

[br]CR   Black   Blue   Green   Red   White[br]1      -      -       -      -      -[br]2      -      -       -      -      -[br]3      -      -       -      -      -[br]4      -      -       -      -      -[br]5      -      -       -      -      -[br]6      -      -       -      -      -[br]7      -      -       -      1      -[br]8      -      1       1      1      -[br]9      1      1       1      1      -[br]10     1      1       1      3      1[br]11     3      3       3      3      1[br]12     3      3       3      3      3[br]13     3      3       5      5      3[br]14     5      5       5      5      3[br]15     5      5       5      7      5[br]16     7      7       7      7      7[br]17     7      7       7      7      7[br]18     9      9       9      9      9[br]19     11     11     11      9      11[br]20     13     11     11      11     11[br]

[Zherog]

1172242416[/unixtime]]Have you seen what they post on WotC? Dragons apparantly have lairs ringed in magical traps, wards, and alarms even though they cast as Sorcerers with limited spells known, AND that they cast as such low level Sorcerers that no one even cares.

Obviously they have minions who cast most of the spells; and the spells not cast by minions come from scrolls the minions acquire. I mean, Duh!