Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   silverwizard (silverwizard@convenient.email)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Apr-2023 00:26:19 JST silverwizard

   • mcv
   @mcv They need to be 14 because that's their age! (I wasn't talking about level)
   
   D&D's core Combat Thing is the Action Economy. So if you have a Dragon, it can hit 1 person for 1 hit per around (modulo some things), and the players can do more. If the Dragon spends its turn healing, then it's likely to do less healing than the players can dish out in a round, so the dragon just wasted a round.
   
   If the dragon focuses on PC, that's gonna suck because that person is likely to go down, and, whittling through their HP is gonna make the dragon run out of HP, but now you have 1 PC having a bad time, and everyone else an anticlimax. D&D fights with single enemies are basically *entirely* anticlimax.
   
   And - yeah - listening in is hard - but I recommend trying.
   • Embed this notice
     silverwizard (silverwizard@convenient.email)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Apr-2023 00:50:15 JST silverwizard

     in reply to

     • mcv
     @mcv YEAH! Grappling a dragon as a 14th level monk sounds amazing!
     
     So - mobility is pretty bad in D&D - the Dragon can move real fast - and most of the party will have a basic ranged set. There's a lot of like, web, dimensional anchor, and other tools to make it slow down.
     
     D&D's combat is really designed to make what you want hard is what I'm saying
   • Embed this notice
     mcv (mcv@nerdica.net)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Apr-2023 00:50:17 JST mcv

     in reply to
     @silverwizard
     They need to be 14 because that's their age! (I wasn't talking about level)
     Good point. Still, could be a reason to let them play at level 14.
     
     D&D's core Combat Thing is the Action Economy.
     That's true. Well, if I understand correctly, a dragon has a couple of attacks: I think they can claw/claw/bite in melee, or do a big breath weapon attack, possibly on multiple targets. It also gets the free tail slap as a legendary action.
     
     But my goal here is not to have everybody hack away at the dragon while the dragon just sits there and attacks them back; I want something more dynamic than that. I want at the start, to have most of their attacks be useless against the dragon, until they figure out how to hurt it.
     
     Of course that also means they need to survive until they figure that out; they may need plenty of access to healing. I'm also seeing this as a fight with multiple rounds, where either they or the dragon breaks off and regroups to figure out a better way to fight.
     
     And - yeah - listening in is hard - but I recommend trying.
     Well, my son, who already knows about my dragon idea, seems to want to climb on top of the dragon. First he was planning to do it as a monk and then grapple it to the ground, now he's thinking teleporting to the back of the dragon as a wizard.
     
     So having someone on the dragon's back is certainly something I'm going to take into account.
   • Embed this notice
     silverwizard (silverwizard@convenient.email)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Apr-2023 01:31:33 JST silverwizard

     in reply to

     • mcv
     @mcv I was specifically discussing spells
     
     I mean, the dragon being unable to fly away because it's slower than a Fly spell
   • Embed this notice
     mcv (mcv@nerdica.net)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Apr-2023 01:31:34 JST mcv

     in reply to
     @silverwizard Hard isn't bad. But D&D does offer a lot of the tools of what I want. Plenty of systems don't have half of this stuff.
     
     mobility is pretty bad in D&D - the Dragon can move real fast
     Also an issue I've been thinking about. If he's losing, can't the dragon just fly away?
     
     There's a lot of like, web, dimensional anchor, and other tools to make it slow down.
     Web is an interesting idea. Though wouldn't the Web be too small to capture an entire dragon? And wouldn't the dragon be too strong and easily break loose? But it's exactly the sort of thing that, if they try it at the right time, will probably work.
   • Embed this notice
     silverwizard (silverwizard@convenient.email)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Apr-2023 02:10:28 JST silverwizard

     in reply to

     • mcv
     @mcv Oh - it's slower than I remember (I'd remembered 90)
   • Embed this notice
     mcv (mcv@nerdica.net)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Apr-2023 02:10:29 JST mcv

     in reply to
     @silverwizard Is the Fly spell faster than a dragon? According to dndbeyond the spell makes you fly at speed 60, whereas a dragon (adult black at least) flies at 80.