My group had their fight with Gottrod last night. I came very, very close to killing 3 PC's. In the end all of PC's just managed to survive with Gottrod killed just before he was about to breath on 3 of the party for a second time.
The main problem my group had was a lack of ranged damage. The party consists of a Conjurer, Hexblade, Rogue, Cleric and Warblade. The Conjurer doesn't really have much in the way of damaging area-of-effect spells. She's mainly a battlefield controller. The Hexblade doesn't have any ranged weapons. The Warblade is largely ineffective at ranged attacks. He can make them but his damage is a lot less than it is in melee. The Cleric is a bit of a party buffer/healer. The Rogue can do a little bit of ranged damage but it's pretty minimal.
The fight started with the party spotting Gottrod about 100 feet away (I put Jared's hut on a hilltop) as he was laying waste to Crazy Jared's "castle". The party started the encounter on horseback (they only had 3 horses between the 5 of them thanks to a passing Roc the previous day :-) ) so they were able to close the distance to Gottrod pretty quickly.
However it also meant that Gottrod was nicely set up to hit 3 of the PC's with his breath weapon. The Rogue managed to avoid the blast with his Evasion. It was lucky that he did as Gottrod's breath did 37 points damage. That would have been enough to kill the Rogue outright (he's 6th level but rolled horribly for HP's).
The Cleric cast Command on Gottrod and he failed the save, rolling a 3. I'm not sure why the Cleric did this as it just meant that Gottrod was now in melee range of him and proceeded to take the Cleric into the negatives with his next attack.
The Warblade and Conjurer were still a bit away from the fight at this point. The Conjurer cast fly on the Warblade, allowing him to get into melee with the dragon. The Warblade and Hexblade moved it to attack Gottrod, with the Warblade taking an AoO bite for his trouble. The two of them were able to do a bit of damage to Gottrod while the Rogue went to the aid of the Cleric.
Still relatively healthy, Gottrod took to the sky once more, taking a couple of AoO's for his trouble. The Conjurer tried to Glitterdust him (again, I'm not sure why) which unsurprisingly had little effect. The Rogue was able to do a little more damage with his sling while the Warblade flew up (taking another AoO bite) and used a manoveur to take the dragon's HP's into the teens.
In return he received a full attack that just about took him out. I don't know how many hit points he had left but I think it wa in the single digits. To make matters worse, the next round Gottrod had his breath back.
At this point in the fight I was wondering if I should get Gottrod to
flee the next turn or breathe on the PC's again. I knew that if I did it would probably kill 2 or 3 of them, even if they made their save. I didn't really want to slaughter the party but it was looking increasingly likely.
Thankfully for me I didn't have to make that decision. Just before Gottrod could act again the Warblade got to attack. He made a full attack and hit the dragon with both attacks, killing him. Thankfully none of the PC's were standing directly under the dragon's body, otherwise I think he would have killed them by falling on them!
Overall it was a good fight. I would have liked to have seen Gottrod escape to bother the party at a later date but it wasn't to be. Amazingly, despite playing D&D for well over 10 years that was the first Dragon fight I have DM'd. I've fought against 2 back in my 2E ADD days but this was the first 3.xE Dragon I've put up against the PC's (I did attack them with a kobold polymorphed into a medium Bronze Dragon but I don't think that counts!).
Dragons are definitely as tough as I thought they were. I knew they were strong for their CR and this fight proved that for me. A lot of the previous combats my party has breezed through. There are 5 PC's and they have access to most splatbooks so they are stronger than core only PC's. On top of that Jarrod was inspiring competence on them the whole combat, resulting in some attacks hitting instead of missing.
Having said that, my players made quite a few tactical mistakes. Their first mistake was charging off towards the dragon as soon as they saw him. They should have waited until the Conjurer had cast Haste on everyone before charging off.
Secondly, they stood together in a nice group for the dragon to hit them with his breath weapon. Next time I think they'll spread out.
Thirdly, the normally smart Conjurer player didn't seem to play this combat well at all. He cast Glitterdust on the dragon instead of a number of better spells he could have cast. Given that the dragon had blindsense anyway (not that he knew that though) it wouldn't have really done much to him. He also seemed more concerned with staying away from the Dragon to avoid its breath weapon than getting in and helping fight.
Hopefully they learn from this combat because Aushunna is just around the corner! Things could get messy there too! :-)
Olaf the Stout
Yes, my players had a tough time with Gottrod too. Fortunately, they had a dragon shaman with them who managed to plead their case and they surrendered. Gottrod ended up demanding the head of the black dragon he had been fighting recently. They were low on ranged offense too, something they have since substantially corrected.
Overall, the Bhal-hamatugn adventure was tough for them. They suffered two deaths - one to Gottrod and one to Aushanna.
Not the same for me, they spotted Gottrod far away, buffed and the elven archer started to shoot.... Gottrod breathed on the dwarf from the sky but the elf made a critical hit and the dragon flew with only 10hp left.
My group just returned from Bhal-Hamatugn so they hit Gottrod two sessions ago. They had a very similar problem when it came to the fight but it played out a bit differently.
The party are all gestalt characters. Drow rogue/sorcerer, elf paladin/druid, dwarf barbarian/monk, ogre barbarian/ranger. The party are melee monsters. They have wiped the floor with everything they have come across so far. Dungeons are straight-up kill zones for them.
This encounter though, out in the open against a flying opponent, they were seriously outmatched. They didn't know he was a dragon because, as far as everyone knows, dragons are extinct. In the first round the ogre charged as he swept overhead and blasted the others with his breath weapon. The ogre had to run back in his second round so one of the big damagers was out due to poor tactics.
The party's only ranged damage was the drow's lightning bolts. Once she dumped the two or three she had, which he made his saves for, the party was reduced to firing heavy crossbows as the dragon swept down and did massive bite damage. After the second breath weapon the party was pretty messed up, except for the ogre who made his save for the second attack.
They were starved for ideas and the dragon was clearly winning, he had barely been hurt.
Then an inspired bit of improvisational thinking came from the ogre. His player might do some stupid things but when pressed he comes out with some impressive ideas. His idea: ogre vs dragon, greco-roman style.
He jumped on the f*cking thing's back and started a grapple. He's pretty badass with the grapple but was no real match for Gottrod. He did succeed in driving the beast to the ground, however.
The bad part is the ogre found himself staring eye to eye with a p*ssed off red dragon. He got the full attack suite at the top of the next round and got the majority of his eightysomething hitpoints knocked off. Gottrod was taking no prisoners. The party closed in to attack and got a point blank breath weapon that scattered them again.
Little did Gottrod know he was about to loose the advantage. The barbarians waded into a flurry of scales that seriously screwed them up but combined they can take down anything up close. A flurrying dwarf rager and a dual greataxe wielding ogre can do that, I have learned.
Gottrod wasn't an easy takedown, he stayed in the fight a couple more rounds and kept all but the barbarians at range. But he finally dropped.
PLAYER: I'm gonna jump on it's back.
DM: You're gonna what?
PLAYER: I want to grapple it.
DM: It's a f*cking dragon!
PLAYER: It's not that big.