Posted By Borne of Hate on 10/19/2006 11:17 AM
My PCs fought a green wyrmling.
The grappling dwarven bard wrestled it to the ground before it could do much adn then pinned it and the party molly-whoped it past the brink. Granted it wasnt very grandiose, it will be forever memorable when they fight his father in levels to come.

Posted By Skyscraper on 10/25/2006 8:01 AM
Interesting read. I'll note that i don't play epic campaigns, i prefer low-medium level campaigns myself and usually try to conclude them before they reach level 15, more or less. I also only use the core books, so the feats suggested in the last post are unknown to me.

However, i'm starting to see how dragons should be played out. Avoid being based at all costs

Question: if a dragon does *not* have the flyby attack and hover feats, can he still let go a breath weapon while flying? The reason for my question, is that breathing is a standard action, and a dragon without the hover feat cannot remain motionless in the air for half a round, or else he'll fall. A dragon also cannot let go a breath while moving during his standard action. Consequently, am i correct in assuming that it could not stop to breath while he's airborne without the hover feat? It doesn't seem to make sense, but on the other hand i have trouble reconciling the game mechanics with the logic of it all.

Thanks for insights and answers,

Sky

Posted By nyjastul69 on 10/26/2006 7:43 AM
My understanding is that a dragon can breathe while flying.  Assuming it's flying at the beginning of the round it has 2 choices, a standard or move action.  So it could take a standard action, say a bite or breath weeapon and then move, or move and then take it's standard action.  In the next round it has the same options.  So basically in a 2 round period the combos would be.

Round 1:
Move/Move
Move/Standard action
Standard action/Move

Round 2:
Same thing.

This results in a seeming weird situation where a flying creature can Move/Standard Action and then in the next round Standard action/Move.  It sems as though it's getting two attacks while not moving.  I believe this is just an artifact of the 'rounded' system of combat.  A flying creature doing this doesn't actually ever stop moving.  Just as a fighter who takes the same action sequence (move/attack, attack/move could theoretically do this as one continuous motion.   Note, that in any move action the flying creature is forced to move the minimum foward flying speed to maintain flight. 
 
If flying creatures couldn't do this then they would never be able to attack from the air without feats. Â

I'm at work answering a very busy phone, does any of the above make sense.

Posted By Zoons on 10/26/2006 9:08 AM
Attack of the Cheese Eating Dragon


Back in the day, a group and I were playing with a DM who liked to have things his way, but was inept at dealing with situations with in-game believability.

Our group tracked a Large (Maybe huge, I don't remember, but it was clearly bigger than the party members) black dragon to it's lair at the top of a rocky mountain inside of a cave.  The dragon was not in at the moment, and we began to slink about the cave, exploring as we went (We didn't know it wasn't home when we got there)

We entered the main chamber of the lair that was littered with treasures of all kinds.  Nervous we stood still while our thief quietly crept throughout the chamber looking for traps and other possible entrances.  Only a thin crack (about 40 feet above us in the ceiling) which presumeably was a chimeny of some sort was large enough for even a human to squeeze through, and then, only without armor.

The thief discovered what we came for and we each pointed out one other piece of treasure to take (hopefully not to be missed by a returning dragon).  While we waited for the thief to gather things we took defensive positions facing the main entranceway, in case the beast returned.

dice rolled.....  more dice.....  then *Blap*

A 800 lb. Black Dragon dropped out of the chimeny on top of our Rogue and surprising our entire group.

According to our DM at the time, the Black had been out finding dinner and had returned to the top of the mountain when it had heard the rustling of our party.  It then squeezed into the chimeny and crept silently as a mouse to the opening above our party and gotten the drop on us.  Then breathing, tearing, chewing and trampling us all to death.

We were so amused at the thought of an 800 lb. mass of teeth, claws and scales creeping silently (No doubt using some contortionary skills as well) through the solid rock chimeny, that we started busting up about it.  We concluded that in order to pull off the skills necessary to get through the crack, the dragon must be part field mouse.  One of the players was an excellent sketcher and drew a mouse/dragon hybrid to make his point, and the legend of the CHEESE EATING DRAGON was born.

It was truly a hoot.

Posted By gss_000 on 10/26/2006 4:50 PM
I don't think this is correct. If a human has to squeeze through, then the dragon, even f it was large, couldn't because it would be going through a space less than half it's size. I think they would have noticed if it was large enough for them to walk through normally. So, it is still in the "cheeze weasel" camp in terms of the call.

Posted By Zoons on 10/27/2006 6:59 AM
It was definitely before 3rd edition.  I'd say 1987-1988 timeframe.  The DM was mad because we had expected the dragon to return and catch us red handed pilfering his booty.  When we set up our defenses facing the entrance he (in my opinion) creatively came up with an alternate way to get the jump on us.

We all took it in stride as the DM (While not exactly the best DM) was a good friend.  I related the story as it was the funniest encounter with a Dragon [On Topic] that I've ever been involved with (Though mostly for the side "out of game" comments about the Cheese Eating Dragon).

Btw, 800 lbs of Dragon dropping from fourty feet in the air does A LOT of damage to a 6th or 7th level thief.  Hee hee.

Posted By nycfarmkid on 11/14/2006 9:29 AM
In the last session we played we had two memorable encounters with some dragons. The first was against a fiendish mature adult green dragon. I believe it adds up to a CR 20 creature. In the suprise round, due to the feats a character had selected, and some nice rolls, our half orc barbarian/fighter was able to trip the huge dragon as it flew past. The encounter then lasted about one round. Pretty big let down for a CR 20 dragon.

A short time later, the party was ambushed by 3 CR 13 and 2 Cr 15 Dragons. They all five used breath weapons in the surprise round, and half the party was dead before they could act. This was more like it.

The Dm has to be good at managing all the abilities at a dragon's disposal. Also, don't be afraid to replace book given feats with your own. also make sure you use feats like power attack when the dragon finally enters combat.

Posted By nycfarmkid on 11/14/2006 9:29 AM
In the last session we played we had two memorable encounters with some dragons. The first was against a fiendish mature adult green dragon. I believe it adds up to a CR 20 creature. In the suprise round, due to the feats a character had selected, and some nice rolls, our half orc barbarian/fighter was able to trip the huge dragon as it flew past. The encounter then lasted about one round. Pretty big let down for a CR 20 dragon.

A short time later, the party was ambushed by 3 CR 13 and 2 Cr 15 Dragons. They all five used breath weapons in the surprise round, and half the party was dead before they could act. This was more like it.

The Dm has to be good at managing all the abilities at a dragon's disposal. Also, don't be afraid to replace book given feats with your own. also make sure you use feats like power attack when the dragon finally enters combat.

Posted By gss_000 on 11/16/2006 2:17 PM
You actually can trip a flying creature. It is wierd conceptually, but it actually is in the rules. Essentially, they are not prone but somewhat stalled and have to take a move action to right themselves. I need to look at my books to make sure, but it is inthere.

Posted By gss_000 on 11/17/2006 1:22 PM
Creatures in D&D, unless they have perfect maneuverability, have to keep some forward momentum. 

Posted By gss_000 on 11/20/2006 11:56 AM
BTW, nice Yammato (or Argo) avatar.

Posted By gss_000 on 11/18/2006 9:55 PM
I don't agree, but I can see that. Although with a grapple, you pull the person into your square so I still think tripping is a good approximation of what you want to do in the end.