How To Kill An Adult Black Dragon Without Dying Of Boredom

[helium3]

At the end of last weekend's game session I matched my party (5 10th level 4E characters) against an adult black dragon. Here's my experience:

As promised, combat was very mobile. In particular, I could see why the dragon is a "lurker." The dragon was able to use its ability to create darkness to retreat and attack the party from a different direction and force them to ready actions.

Though the dragon had some great attacks (my favorite being frightful presence) none of them were capable of killing any of the party members outright. As far as I'm concerned, that's a good thing. Its nice to be able to evoke dread without resorting to "I hit you and you die."

Also as promised, individual rounds were quite zippy in their resolution and everyone including the dragon got to do "cool stuff."

But . . . there was a definite downside. After somewhere between 15 and 20 rounds of combat (I lost count) the dragon was not quite bloodied. Yep. Two hours of combat and we weren't yet halfway through the encounter. It was starting to feel vaguely reminiscent of the end of our Age of Worms game.

Now, there are some mitigating factors involved that could explain this and I'll list them below:

(1) Player unfamiliarity. For most of the players, they had between four and 8 hours of 4E under their belt. It's entirely possible that there's some crucial aspect of the game (figuring out how to syngerize damage is my guess) that they just haven't figured out yet.

(2) Non-optimized characters. By this I mean that the pregens they were using (crafted by yours truly) weren't put together with an eye to creating intracharacter or intercharacter synergy. I just picked powers that sounded interesting and were somewhat consistent with the 3.5E characters I was trying to replicate.

(3) Some of their daily powers had been used by this point. They had already fought two encounters before the dragon and all of the characters had used one or two of their daily attack powers by this point.

(4) No controller. The 3.5E party I was trying to replicate with the pre-gens didn't have a wizard so the 4E party didn't either. Not sure if this would've made a huge difference or not.

So, the considerations listed above can account for why combat eventually degenerated into a very cinematic and mobile, yet FRUSTRATINGLY BORING grindfest.

Like I said earlier, combat had already been going on for 15 to 20 rounds. As enjoyable as 4E combat is, at about that many rounds it just starts to SUCK. No amount of "cool powers" can make it fun.

The prior combat encounter was also decidedly on the long side. With three of the monsters (2 Flameskulls and a Helmed Horror, both monsters with regeneration.) essentially choosing to ignore their ability to flee and regenerate. If they had done that, combat would have lasted FOREVER, or at least until the party ran out of Healing Surges and died.

With the dragon, I'm pretty sure that smarter playing on the part of the party would have increased the "DPR" but doing so would have been tough. Here's why:

(1) Daily attack powers with ongoing damage suck against dragons. The black dragon got a +5 to all its saving throws, so any imparted condition that was ended by a save lasted one or two rounds at best.

(2) It's very difficult to provoke OA against a large creature (creatures in general, actually). It has Reach 2, so it doesn't usually have to move to get at a particular morsel. Besides, its breath weapon and cloud of darkness recharge frequently. Both of those could be used to deal damage or move around without provoking OA's.

(3) Extra damage from the Paladin's divine challenge was easy to avoid simply by using Twin Attack to attack the Paladin AND someone else. Or I could just breath on the paladin and anyone else in the area.

The one tactic that would be effective against the Dragon would be "create a damaging zone and push, pull or slide the dragon into it." The only problem is that this effectively counts as a maybe two characters doubling their DPR. By my estimate you'd need every character to do this to get that dragon killed in 20 rounds.

So, the ideal tactic in this situation would've been:

(1) Create several overlapping zones (preferably those that can be moved) that deal damage of different types to the dragon when it starts its turn in them.
(2) Use one or more forced movement powers to place the dragon squarely in the "Square Of Death" created by the overlapping zones.
(3) Always have a source of light present right next to the dragon so that it can't get much use out of its Zone of Darkness power.
(4) Get all your melee capable characters in close so that they can get all those sweet and juicy OA's when the dragon tries to move out of the "Square of Death." Besides, a successful OA interrupts and halts the dragon's move so it has to waste more actions on attempts to move.
(5) DO NOT use this tactic until the dragon has used its Frightful Presence and action points (with the Frightful Presence being more important). If it manages to wiggle free, all those wonderful (the immobile ones at least) zones are useless. You'll be hard pressed to get the dragon into the same tactical position a second time.

What's my point? Well, simply this. Is the average group of 4E players going to be able to pull this off? Are multiple characters going to be able to create damage dealing zones of different type and sustain them while also keeping the dragon from getting out of the "Square of Death?"

Frankly, I don't know. It seems do-able, but it also seems like a VERY specialized tactic. Something that a party would only have ready if they KNEW they were going up against a Solo Monster.

Anyone have any thoughts? Anyone else play out an encounter like this yet?

 

[Surgoshan]

Your strategy looks good, but I have to correct you on one point;

Besides, a successful OA interrupts and halts the dragon's move so it has to waste more actions on attempts to move.

A succesful OA does in fact interrupt the dragon's move, but only a fighter's OA can halt movement.

 

[MrMyth]

I suspect it was a combination of being new to the system, and up against a creature that fights in an extremely defensive style. Out of curiousity, what level was this at, and about how much damage was each classes at-will's doing?

 

[Obryn]

I haven't, but I'll be interested to see how this plays out.

I love epic battles, and even the idea that a battle against a single monster can go on that long makes me happy.

However, if it turns into a boring grindfest, that's no good either.

What kinds of terrain were available? If it's just a fight-in-a-box, then I can see it getting boring sooner rather than later.

-O

 

[Tony Vargas]

That was interesting, thanks for posting. It seems obvious at a glance that whittling through a solo's quintupple hit points is going to make for brutally long combats, but it's nice to see an example.

I think player unfamiliarity could have a lot to do with it, as could party synergy - in 4e, party optimization may be more important than character optimization - or party composition (strikers are obviously ideal vs solos, since they inflict high damage against individuals, lack of an area-blasting controller might not have hurt all that much, but an orb-wizard controller could have been a big boost with his WIS penalty to a save vs one victim).

 

[Starfox]

I've read in DMs tips for 3.5 somewhere (in Dungeon I beleive) that dragons are supposed to be foreshadowed mosters. So the idea that they are supposed to know they'll be facing a dragon is not far-fetched.

 

[Boarstorm]

I've had a similar problem with dragons from a playtest a few weeks back.

I'm thinking of stealing a page from WoW for this one (heresy, I know, but...): battle stages.

Say once the dragon is knocked below 75%, he retreats somewhere and activates dragon NPC ritual #1 and summons up a bunch of ghost minions (or whatever is thematically appropriate) and chortles and taunts the PCs from safety while the players deal with the new threat, then having caught a breather, he flies back in perhaps with a new power and the fight begins again.

By breaking each fight up like this, and having the big bad "evolve," I'm thinking it might break up the experience enough and lead to more enjoyable encounter.

Just be sure to tell your players if you're going to do something like this, so they ration their daily/encounter abilities.

 

[matthewseidl]

Adult black dragon has 560 hit points. If you're facing 5 PCs (a fine fight at level 10 vs a level 11 solo), and assume each PC hits half the time, thats 2.5 hits a round. Over 20 rounds, that would be 50 hits. Are you saying your average damage was < 11 per hit? That seems really low. I'm in a level 6 game, and its pretty easy for a striker to dish out 23 damage a hit on average. If you round down for a defender and say 20 damage on an average hit (remember that daily/encounter powers should be more than that), you're still talking about 28 hits. At 2 hits a round (assuming some misses and some actions spent healing), thats still only 14 rounds.

So yea, I'd be interested to know the party makeup and if they were missing more than that.

 

[Harr]

4-8 hours of play and fighting an adult black dragon? :O My players were barely coming to grips with kobold slingers by that time! That could definitely have something to do with it...

Although, I think in these types of mega-fights it's common to have terrain hazards and resources that the characters can utilize to their advantage (or detriment), stuff like a magic circle, a lake of fire, a ravine, some negative energy, etc, would keep it from getting boring after all, (KotS spoiler):

Spoiler

A level 1 rogue can take care of Kalarel in 1 round if he just knows which way to push

Of course I'm not saying the dragon should be killable in one round, just that there should be something lying around that a clever player can leverage to speed stuff up. Stalactites that fall maybe, etc.

 

[helium3]

A succesful OA does in fact interrupt the dragon's move, but only a fighter's OA can halt movement.

Ahhh. You are correct!!

Of course, that makes executing this strategy much more difficult. Now all the dragon needs to do is soak the OA from the fighter and then convert its standard to a move.

Or use one of its TWO action points to move.