Big Blue Battle -- what's that all about?

[bluegargantua]

Right,

So what's the deal with the long-winded stories taking up space on your friends page you ask?

Here's the deal:



Take a look at this beauty!

This, as the title implies is the new Gargantuan Blue Dragon D&D miniature that is coming out in a week or two.

It must be mine. I mean...duh!

But really, what do you do with a terrifying monstrous mini like this? It's not something you can bust out for casual play. You aren't always running into Blue Drgaons of Ancient age or older and if you are, your GM is a bastard, or desperate, or way too generous. You'd have to come up with these super high-level characters just to take the thing on. Either that or have more lower-level adventurers go after it...

A lot of lower level adventurers.

So here's the deal. Six players, each running a four-man squad of 12th level adventurers pitted against one Gargantuan Blue Dragon (Ancient). It will be a complete slaughter. Technically, according to the encounter calculator, this would be a very difficult, but survivable challenge. In reality anyone who manages to stagger away from this melee will be hailed as the luckiest guy in the world.

The Dragon has an AC of 38, a Damage resistance of 15/magic and a spell resistance of 27. PCs who want to go toe-to-toe with this guy will need magical weapons, solid bonus feats and high die rolls. Mages who want to blast it will need a lot of spell penetration. Oh and there's also the DC31 Will save or be shaken thanks to its Frightful Presence.

On the attack, discounting the breath weapon and the spell-casting abilities (as per a 13th level spell-user), the dragon has a base attack of +41 which means we're only rolling for crits or fumbles. With the standard bite, claw, claw, wing, wing, tail slap attack, the dragon can dish out an average of 104hp a turn. The average Barbarian character will only have 78hp and other classes will probably be lower.

So basically, the dragon will kill one PC every round. Clever use of spells, feats and special abilities will hopefully disrupt the relentless attack and the vagaries of dice rolls may prove advantageous, but you're basically hoping that you can one good shot off before you get eaten. This dragon has an average hp total of 445 so each PC needs to do at least 18-19 points of damage in order to beat it. Not terribly unreasonable on the face of it -- but as mentioned above, it's going to take a lot to get under the dragon's skin.

The prison, incidentally, is just a convenient way to keep the dragon from just flying away or tunneling out. Korfu's prison is large enough to allow for some very limited flight/burrowing so Death from Above or Below attacks are still possible.

I think I've already got a fair number of players interested in this, but there's still probably one or two slots and I could probably be tempted to run it again.

later
Tom

Comments

[katkt.livejournal.com]

Great introductory write ups, by the way.

Despite (or possibly because of?) the fact that I expect it to be a horrible slaughter ending in the demise of the entire kingdom, it sounds like a blast. My D&D3-fu isn't the greatest, but I think I'm up to the task. And if not, well, hopefully I can absorb four rounds of attacks anyway. :-)

So, if you have space and there aren't major scheduling conflicts, I'd love to play.

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

ok in our current D&D campaign we have one 12th lvl fighter and a few 11th level. I think that if we buffed the 8 of us up to 12th level (for those who weren't) and add the other teams that dragon wouldn't stand a chance. You should see our party. And we've taken dragons down before. We may have to ask a few people to come out of retirement for this but I think it would be well worth it.

But you'd have to give us enough loot for taking on a dragon of this magnitude that we woul deach walk off with a sizeable chunk after splitting it 24 ways and paying to raise the dead.

[mrf-arch.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think Earl is now tenth level, ECL 13.

Though even buffed with Curse of the Brute, he's not going to hit AC38 more than a rather modest fraction of the time.

But it does sound like a blast. When's the battle royale schedueld for?

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

I'm just thinking if we pull from the ranks of VPM who are still living and buff them to 12th lvl we could put together a pretty impressive team. Liloo woul dneed to find a way to get her arrows to penetrate AC38. Right now a 20 gets her 37 but she's only lvl 10. Two more levels and a feat or two would do wonders.

[drwex]

You people think too conventionally. Remember you get to custom-create characters for this, right? So what happens when Earl has a pocket mage doing nothing but casting spells on him? Let's see, there's Trueshot that'll give you +20 on your next attack roll, so that's one hit per round (yes, I know it takes an extra feat to be able to cast that on someone else; so what, take the feat). And there's Stoneskin to mitigate some of the incoming damage. Plus a neverending stream of Mirror Images. Who cares how much damage the dragon outputs if it's not actually hitting YOU?

I actually see the Will save as the hardest part of the mix, given that Earl's already immune to lightning, right? I wonder if that Presence is a spell-like effect, in which case it might be good to deck Earl out in some SR gear. As a 12th level caster the dragon's magic would be pretty resistable.

Then you have to start thinking about force multipliers, which largely means summoned creatures. Drugin's already shown the power of the dire celestial lion summoning (remember it gets a Smite attack that can dish out serious damage) and I'm guessing he could get something even spluftier at 12th level. In fact, since you already know you're facing a lightning creature it ought not to be that hard to summon an elemental or twelve that are immune to lightning and send them in as a first wave.

I give the dragon about six rounds, if the DM lets the players prep and we can solve the Will save problem.

Feh!

[jeffwik.livejournal.com]

The encounter calculator says we get 87,000 gold pieces worth of stuff for a CR 21 encounter, which after splitting 24 ways, is a measly 3600 gp apiece. Not even enough for a +2 sword. Less if we pay for raise deads.

Re: Feh!

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

Like I said, he has to make it worth it.

Re: Feh!

[bluegargantua]

What? Bragging rights don't count?

I mean, I suppose I could always bump up the CR or you could go in with fewer guys...actually...no, it's nothing but bragging rights.

However, the dragon's hoard hasn't been the result of random plundering, it's been a deliberate toll.

If we assume that the temple takes in only 500gp a year, over 500 years that adds up to 250,000 -- a little over 10,000 gp per player. If the temple managed to cover an average of 100gp a month, then we're looking at 600,000gp total and 25,000gp per character. I don't know what the average value of a caravan would be (and over 500 years trading patterns would probably change) so my numbers are totally made up but given the serious inflation in the D&D fantasy setting, the temple may be collecting well in excess of that every year.

I was actually thinking of giving out some D&D mini prizes as awards (first blood, first death, most damage in one round, most damage total, etc. etc.). So perhaps mercantile loot might entice you. :)

heh
Tom

Re: Feh!

[katkt.livejournal.com]

600,000gp total and 25,000gp per character.
But ... didn't the Sultan want some of that money?
I think the heroes would have to be in it just for the bragging rights. Or for the "not get killed by the Sultan" rights that come with it.

Re: Feh!

[jeffwik.livejournal.com]

Now I am imagining the heroes dragging wagon upon wagon of gold ingots to the Sultan's palace, only to be told "congratulations! And take one of these commemorative +1 daggers, etched with the Sultan's signature, valued* at over 3 602 gp! Past commemorative +1 weaponry has risen more than 1000% percent in value! (Not all commemorative weapons increase in value, some do go down.)"

Re: Feh!

[sben.livejournal.com]

Blue dragons get "triple standard" treasure, so 3xjeffwik = ~250,000.

Re: Feh!

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

The problem with firsts is that it's a turn based game and how yuo roll in the initiative order can determine who gets that first. But I could be cool on real prizes. I would have been happy with D&D fictional loot. If you can't tell, I'm totally in if you do this and I can bring my Amazon and my Sorceress. If you want more players we can see if the rest of our D&D group woul dbe interestedin doing this. You know MRF is already in but we have 2-3 players who aren't on your friends list.

[twwombat.livejournal.com]

Is there any limit on rulebooks in play? Any limit on the heroes (races/templates, multiclassing, prestige classes, spell lists, magic items subject to average gold for NPC tables, pooling gold to get one kickass weapon, etc.)? Will there be buff time before the grand melee commences?

Pretty Dragon! I need the black one m'self...

[bluegargantua]

I'd like to keep the tweaking to a low roar. Ideally I'd like to limit it to whatever you can get out of the PHB and DMG, but I know that people will want to tweak their guys out a bit more and I can't say as I blame 'em.

I can see where pooling gold and stuff together would be fun, but this leads to the potential problem of one guy loading up and the other three clerics hiding out in the prison walls and offering a quick heal when he comes back.

It's a week or two until the model comes out so there's lots of time to stew over stuff.

later
Tom

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

Hrm if it's just PHB and DMG is this 3.0 or 3.5? Also, what about things like Tome and Blood and the Feats book or the Spell Compendium? Will the dragon's abilities be limited as well to the PHB, DMG and Monster Manual?

As for temples, in our game adventueres tithe 10% of each take to thier temple and clerics and the like 20% so I can see some temples taking in a lot.

[bluegargantua]

It's 3.5 all the way.

Basically, I like the idea of your basic, iconic set of classes and races, teaming up in a big mob to try and take out a ludicrously overpowered monster and claim it's loot.

The other thing I like is not going "huh? What's that do?" every 5 minutes or so. So having a half-drow, half-fiend, lycanthrope, zombie tamplated 4th level Rogue, 1st level fighter, 3rd level undead champion prestige class -- I mean...it's a little much.

Plus it's a question of what books people have/don't have, how well/poorly the various feats/class abilities/spells are constructed in those books and so on.

But mainly, if it's in an Official WoTC D&D 3.5 book, it's probably kosher. The dragon gets to use the Dragonomicon so the PCs should get their splat book.

re: awesomesauce

[etherial.livejournal.com]

If you haven't bought the figure yet, I recommend http://www.risingphoenixgames.com/

[dirkcjelli.livejournal.com]

Does Korfu have any adherents who display domains?

[bluegargantua]

Technically no.

However, since you can pretty much worship yourself in D&D and get clerical spells, there are a number of priests of Korfu who can actually kick off divine spells. They get domain spells, but it's not clear if that has anything to do with Korfu, or just their own personal inclination. So far, the evidence is very strong that Korfu has not become a god. Yet.

For the most part, the High Priests of Korfu tend to be a high-level wizard. Partially because the first High Priest was, partially because wizards respect a guy who's gunning to be a god and mainly because the temple is pretty wealthy even outside the dragon's hoard (the temple runs a wide range of businesses at the oasis and so earns a lot of money) and a high-level wizard tends to discourage other groups from coming after you.

later
Tom

[mikecap.livejournal.com]

You're doing this to punish me for moving to New York!! Damn you!

[bluegargantua]

I think I'm also going to start up DungeonPunk again... ;)

Tom

[mikecap.livejournal.com]

Bah!! You cad.

[mikecap.livejournal.com]

If you dare to do that, I am totally running Hellboy in NYC. :P :P :P

[mikecap.livejournal.com]

And then, when you reduce its hit points to 0, it turns into Sephiroth and then you have to fight the REAL boss...

[shogunhb.livejournal.com]

If I can't play, I'd like to watch. I'll bring Lasagna!

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

-I'm interested. I already have a couple characters in mind.

[poke poke]

(Hey, stop poking me!)

-Uh, and I offer my dining room as the locale.

[ssvanguard.livejournal.com]

Just Kelsik and Thorolf can take him down in 5 rounds. You know this.

[bluegargantua]

Yeah, but we're not exactly 12th level anymore either.

Actually...if the entire Bickering 8 went up against it, we could probably do it. The Green Slime Wave from Pandora would be key. It'd be a harsh fight though.

later
Tom