Yesterday we played the dragotha fight at the end of "Into the wormcrawl fissure". I have read the fight details from other DMs on this board and that helped me inmensely, so hopefully others will find this information useful.
We play using Pathfinder rules, Core Rulebook only.
the party:
- half-elf barbarian 19
- half-elf druid 19, small cat animal companion
- human monk 19
- half-elf cleric 19.magic and protection domains. It is important to say at this point that in our group we don't use Mordenkainen's disjunction.
- half-elf sorcerer 19, infernal bloodline
- Syranus, solar ranger 5
When the party got access to 9th level spells they tought about casting gate and getting a powerful ally to help them from the beginning of the module. I suggested the creatures from the "gating in the heavy hitters" article in Dragon magazine. I statted up all of them and they chose the solar. Syranus doesn't wear the standard solar full plate but has taken gear from dead enemies to compensate for that.
The cleric player is the one who runs the solar.
Additional allies for this particular fight:
- Gantrenacht, advanced marut inevitable (from another dragon article)
- Barabog, elysian titan barbarian 6
- Zulshyn, lillend bard 3/sublime chord 10
(I converted the prestige class since there wasn't a suitable replacement in the Pathfinder system)
The bad guys:
- Dragotha: I converted him keeping his hit dice and ability scores, advancing him up to Great Wyrm (so he gets access to 9th level spells and some minor new abilities). I added some feats and changed his ring into two rings of counterspelling (each loaded with greater dispel magic)
- Zyrith: I discarded all the aerial avenger levels and advanced the standard Pathfinder Wyvern until I got the same CR (keeping the 3.5 talon attacks). Not sure if I applied the advanced template as well...
- Venk: I rebuilt her as a Warlock 19. As cool as she was in her original write up, she wasn't a challenge to my players, so I gave her all warlock levels.
Additional allies: None, as all the other denizens of the Tabernacle (Mahuudril, wormdrake, avolakias) were dead after the party "cleaned up" the place following Balakarde's advice.
The combat:
the party had advanced up to the worm's path and killed the nightcrawlers. They teleported out of the tabernacle and rested at Zulshyn's tower. They prepared all the spells and abilities based on the information Balakarde provided and research on standard dracoliches. They gathered their allies, buffed themselves up, teleported into the worm's path again and advanced until they reached the Writhing Sanctum.
Dragotha taunted them, they taunted him back and the fight was on. The whole battle lasted 6 rounds I think.
For the record, everyone had deathward, freedom of movement, haste and greater heroism up and running (except the marut wich is immune to mind-affecting effects). The druid and the cleric had prepared all the spells under the effects of an incense of meditation (all their spells were maximized). Every character had buffs that upped their AC, Saves, etc.
On the first round, Dragotha tried to dispel the deathwards but failed. Because of that, he never got to use his special breath weapon, as that would have been a waste of a standard action. Instead of using the Death Wind, he breathed fire quickening his breath but everyone saved (they were inside the radius of the Balakarde fragment that gives evasion). then used quicken spell to cast haste.
The druid casts sunburst and dragotha fails the save and is blinded. Thank god I gave him the blind-fight feat, because he spent almost the entire fight suffering from that condition.
The barbarian moves while flying and hits Dragotha. He has the slayer fragment.
The monk moves while flying and tries to hit but misses.
The marut double moves into position.
The titan moves and attacks using greater vital strike and power attack, scoring a critical hit. He has a greataxe and improved critical. The damage was along the lines of 48d6+153. Total damage was 300+.
the druid shapechanged into a huge brass dragon (immune to fire) and casted a sunburst. His animal companion moved near Dragotha while air walking. The animal was under the effects of an animal growth spell.
Zulshyn tried to greater dispel magic Dragotha, but the roll was not high enough (I forgot about Dragotha's rings but remembered later). She mainstains her inspire courage song.
The cleric advanced and casted a dispel magic, getting rid of the telepathic bond. We play the dispel magic as if no spell is specified by the player, then the highest one is dispelled.
The sorcerer tried to disintegrate dragotha but failed, even with the fragment that ups the DCs.
Venk was under the effect of retributive invisibility on one of the ledges, and started to cast eldritch chained eldritch blasts and quickened eldritch blasts at the PCs, damaging them.
Zyrith made a flyby attack with the sting using vital strike against the cleric, hoping to damage the healer. He did some damage but the character saved against the poison (he has a belt of dwarvenkind from the ebon triad vault).
Syranus moves and spends a move action to give everyone half his favored enemy bonus (undead+4, so +2).
First round over.
My memory is a little fuzzy on the details of the following rounds, so I'll summarize the results:
Dragotha alternated his turns between attacking and healing. He full-attacked the titan, the barbarian and the monk. he killed all of them except the titan, who regenerated (dragotha couldn't deactivate his regeneration) and was later healed. As all of them were flying over the river of Kyuss' blood or the ziggurat, they were affected by them. The titan in particular lost a lot of hit point due to the constitution drain.
To heal, on one turn he casted time stop to wish himself back to full health, use a harm to get rid of the blindness and quicken new mirror images. The second time he only casted wish to heal again (his concentration is high enough to cast a 9th level spell defensively without risk of failing). The negative energy infusing the room healed him a little bit every round. The party never got to dispel his buffs because they concentrated on attacking. That gave him an advantage, because the mirror images absorbed a lot of hits (none of the characters casted true seeing because all the called allies had it as a constant spell-like ability)
On his last turn he recharged his breath and quickened it again, finally damaging someone (the solar and the druid animal companion took a lot of fire damage, even with fire resist 30). Everyone else evaded.
During the fight he got hit by multiple sunbeams and 2 sunbursts. Even when he saved he took quite a bit of damage due to the incense of meditation effect and the spell's greater damage against undead. His defeat came at the hands of the titan, who hit him with his colossal greataxe. On his last turn I could have healed him again or teleported him away (the PCs hadn't thought about that), but it was getting late and I didn't wanted to steal them their hard earned victory.
The barbarian and the monk stayed the entire fight basing Dragotha, and transfering the slayer fragment between them. Both of them died on different rounds but were resurrected back to full using two miracles. A lot of their attacks were spent chewing through the mirror images (Dragotha always got the maximum number, eight).
The marut full-attacked the entire fight, hitting regularly.
The titan full-attacked every round, using power attack and hitting once or twice each round. He scored another critical, but not as damaging as the first one. the bonuses from Zulshyn's song and greater heroism allowed him to Power attack and still hit.
The druid moved so she could cast sunbeams and hit both Zyrith and Dragotha. The spell caused blindness on both of them, severely debuffing Zyrith and doing big damage to Dragotha.
Zulshyn casted different spells: sunburst, greater dispel magic and one wish. One of the greater dispel magic was countered by one of Dragotha's rings.
The cleric kept casting healing spells and reviving fallen allies. Dragotha saved against the mass heals but even then he took quite a bit of damage. She also full-attacked Zyrith once but did little damage.
The sorcerer spent her turns casting several heightened disintegrates on Dragotha and Zyrith. She also quickened some magic missiles. On one of the later rounds, she casted a glitterdust on Venk so the rest of the team could finish her off more easily.
Venk stayed invisible on the ledge, shooting the characters with her eldritch chained blasts. When the solar approached her, she tried to cast banishment from a scroll without knowing that Syranus was unde the effect of a greater spell immunity (banishment was one of the spells chosen by the caster). She died after receiving a full-attack from the solar's bow and failing to save against the slaying property while blinded with glitterdust.
Zyrith landed near the cleric and started full-attacking. Once the druid blinded him, he started missing (no blind-fight) and was later killed by a full attack from the druid's animal companion. Most of the damage he suffered came from the solar arrows and the druid sunbeams. He did next to nothing in the fight, but at least he took a lot of attacks that otherwise would have been directed at Dragotha.
Syranus the solar ranger was the character that took the most different types of actions: he casted some spells (greater dispel magic, mass heal, miracle...), moved, and full-attacked poor venk turning her into a porcupine. He also attacked Zyrith.
I think Venk and Zyrith died on the same round (4 or 5) and Dragotha was destroyed on round 6.
Final thoughts:
I think this battle accomplished the most important objective in a game session: that players had fun fighting one of the most powerful dragons ever to exist. They worked hard (and died too!) through the module to get every bit of help necessary to destroy their enemy. They used the information Balakarde provided to plan for the battle, and made an intelligent spell and item selection.
Even better, they got the opportunity to run some powerful creatures like the solar and the titan. That's not something you see every day.
Balakarde's fragments are key to this fight. After the battle, the players knew that without them they couldn't have won. They seem like too much and nerf Dragotha heavily, but also allow players to feel powerful and that's good. My players have suffered a lot in this campaing (40+ deaths up to this point), so for once it is ok if they had the upper hand against the enemy.
From my point of view (the DM), this combat was a bit boring since Dragotha was the only enemy contributing meaningfully to the fight, and the players had a lot of turns with all the allies so each round took a lot of time to resolve (combat alone took 4-1/2 hours). This combat was important so I let the players take all the time they needed.
Dragotha is a nasty creature, and his numbers are pretty impressive. The only problem is that the Balakarde fragments nullify every tactic except for full-attacking. If other DMs run this fight as written, I strongly suggest to full attack as much as possible. Don't bother casting offensive spells, because they will save and you would have wasted a turn. Regarding the breath weapon, don't forget (like I did) to use the alternate melt stone breath weapon, so characters cannot evade the fire damage. It seems unfair but the PCs will still get a lot of mileage out of the Balakarde fragments. As for the Death Wind, it depends on Dragotha making the caster level check with an area greater dispel magic to eliminate the deathwards the party will surely have. As you can see, in the end I didn't get to use it because it was a waste of time. Other option is to give him the dispelling breath spell found in the 3.5 draconomicon.
9th level spells are important. I used time stop to recover and wish to heal and buff. I casted wish prior to combat so I could get a moment of prescience bonus on initiative, since an initiative roll is a Dexterity check. If you can open the fight with a succesful greater dispel magic and then breath the Death Wind, you can get an advantage for the first round. Remember that Death Wind doesn't allow a Reflex save for half damage, only a Fortitude save against the wind. There's a reason it is only 1/day and it shares the recharge with the standard breath wepon...
When I built Dragotha, I created two different statblocks. One of them is more or less the same as the original, except for the age category (Great Wyrm as opposed to Wyrm), the extra spells and feats. The second one used the ravener template instead of the 3.5 Draconomicon Dracolich, with the thassilonian magic variant power (allows the ravener to cast spells as normal and heal). This one gives dragotha some interesting abilities: better DR, better ability scores, soul ward, improved critical with all natural weapons, a natural deflection bonus (AC 61!), etc. The only downside is that it makes some of the balakarde buffs a little less useful (no paralysis attack for example). If my players were using splatbooks (APG, UC, UM), I would have used this version instead.
Wowzers. Thanks for posting this. I'm a long ways from this fight, but it's still good to read up on. Just thinking of running this adventure gives me a bit of headache though.
Thassilonian Ravener? Where?
Thassilonian Ravener? Where?
It is a variant ravener power found on Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Undead Revisited. It allows the ravener to cast spells as normal and heal himself while doing it. I found it while reading the Ravener entry on D20pfsrd.com
That removes what I think is the only ravener weakness: the soul magic ability.
Fantastic account, thanks for sharing this! My players are slowly making their way to Dragotha -- searching for his phylactery in the Library of Last Resort. We're also playing Pathfinder, core rules only. It would be great to see how your conversion (the one you actually used), if you're willing to share. Thanks!
Fantastic account, thanks for sharing this! My players are slowly making their way to Dragotha -- searching for his phylactery in the Library of Last Resort. We're also playing Pathfinder, core rules only. It would be great to see how your conversion (the one you actually used), if you're willing to share. Thanks!
Thank you for your kind words. If you send me your email via PM, I'll send my conversion document.
Wowzers. Thanks for posting this. I'm a long ways from this fight, but it's still good to read up on. Just thinking of running this adventure gives me a bit of headache though.
I haven't encountered that many problems while running Into The Wormcrawl Fissure. Just talked to players about potential problematic spells like Wish or Miracle, and made sure we were on the same page.
Of course the monsters/NPCs are more complex, but not that much. If you forget something... well, over the years I've learned to live with it.
The module itself is pretty cool but it has some problems: (copying from another thread)
- Some of the monsters are either too low level or simply not challenging enough for a 19-20th level module. Thessalhydras and earthcancer centipedes are very cool but not up to the challenge. In my game I updated their stats to Pathfinder and added some additional abilities here and there to enhance them.
I changed the Kyuss chimeras so they had the abilities of legendary chimeras (I think it is appropriate, given how old they are). Also changed the favored spawn of Kyuss template a bit.
The avolakia clerics are CR 15 but only have a caster level of 10, wich is troublesome even to dispel basic buffs like death ward. I beefed up the base avolakia a bit by adding some hit dice and natural armor, so the CR matches the monster creation tables at the end of the Bestiary.
- The save DCs through the adventure are too low. A DC 20 at level 20? are you kidding? So even a low-level fighter can open a wormdoor inside Kyuss' home...? Not cool.
My advice would be to update al DCs by 5 so they all fall between 25-35 (25 is the standard at this level)
The wormdrake, on the other hand, is awesome. I made it gate two balors and later two frost worms. In that fight, every character died at some point (and was later revived in some way), even the druid's animal companion was turned into a favored spawn of kyuss courtesy of the wormdrake's breath weapon. The sorcerer died twice, once from a balor implosion and later from a failed reflex save when the same balor died and exploded. Of the five characters, two lost their heads to the vorpal swords (one of them was on the first attack roll in the combat).
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It has been years sense my group completed this Campaign but this fight was by far the hardest and most memorable. I think it lasted about 3-4 hours and I almost killed the party. They were completely tapped at the end and when Dragotha fell there was a huge celebration.
Pizza....Beer....Mead....and a hangover. It was awesome.
Sorry for this thread necromancy, but my group has just defeated Dragotha last night and this thread helped me immensely to prepare for the fight and make it memorable. Other DMs preparing for the fight might also benefit from these lessons.
The party consisted of the following charcters:
Dwini Yavanna (Cleric 10/Contemplative 9)
Bartleby (Archivist 9/Loremaster 3/Divine Oracle 3); Dwini´s henchman
Ian Buckminster (Sorcerer 6/Mage of the Arcane Order 9/Archmage 4)
Khoukie (Druid 19)
Olga Gimlik (Fighter 8/Cleric 1/Barbarian 6/Frenzied Berserker 4)
vs.
Dragotha (advanced to ancient wyrm, CR 29)
Wormdrake CR 20
Mahuudril CR 19
If you just look at the numbers in the http://www.d20srd.org/extras/d20encountercalculator/, this challenge computes as “unbeatable” for the characters. It was definitely not:
Despite the dire warnings of Balakarde´s ghost, the party decided to skip the whole tabernacle assault and instead directly teleport into the writhing sanctum to attack Dragotha himself. Balakarde´s descriptions of the place were enough for a greater teleport, and they brought cure disease potions along to counter the inevitable worm infestation on arrival.
Dragotha had an anticipate teleportation, greater, running and thus had three rounds to prepare for their arrival. He used these to call in the wormdrake and Mahuudril and cast some minor buffs.
The following rounds (it took 16 in all) were a showcase of how broken high level play in 3.5 with 9th level spells becomes:
Both sides used multiple time stops, gates (Dwini gated in a 48HD Solar and a 38HD wyrm golden dragon) wishes (one by Dragotha to get back to full hp and recover all his buffs and one by Ian to land the party back at Dragotha´s feet when he finally dimension doored away to the temple to recover and get more help from his avolakia clerics), a shapechange (Ian into a gold dragon) and a miracle (Dwini asked Fharlanghn to swing the tide of battle).
Dragotha managed to kill the Solar with one arcane striked full attack and would have killed Olga as well, were it not for her deathless frenzy (she was still up & fighting at minus threehundredsomething hp when Dwini cast her miracle), Bartleby died twice. Apart from that, there were no player casualities.
Lessons learned:
As Sc8rpi8n has stated before, key to the fight were Balakarde´s Fragments and action economy (3 actions by Dragotha and his minions vs. 7 by the party and their gated allies per round). To make the fight more memorable for you characters, here are my suggestions:
- absolutely advance Dragotha to ancient wyrm and thereby CL 20! He needs those 9th level spells to be competitive and last more than a few rounds. Also, change his spell and feat selection to your taste.
- give Dragotha more actions (more minions, contingent spells, pact spells, quickened actions etc.)
- let Dragotha full attack as much as possible and use his spells mainly to fuel arcane strike (in our fight, he wasted two rounds forcecaging opponents, while he could have probably killed them each with one full attack instead)