Spastic Puma |
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Dragons are iconic in pathfinder. Just about as iconic as dungeons, I would say :P. Therefore, as GM I find it my responsibility to make sure an encounter with one as powerful as Ilthuliak, The Great Wyrm is memorable and exciting.
Enter the flying dragon. The one that makes passes, refusing to land until at least half your party is dominated, statues, or piles of ash. This is very cinematic, and brings a lot more of an older dragon's abilities to bear. After all, as porpentine would say, a dragon is a SMACC - a Spellcaster on a Mighty Awesome Combat Chassis. This also eliminates the full attack problem. However, while this makes for a longer encounter, it's still missing something. The party ranger who took favored enemy dragon (In my six years of pathfinder/dnd 3.5 every ranger I've seen has selected dragons as a favored enemy) isn't really going to mind the Dragon's tactic. Neither is the wizard hiding under his force sphere, summoning monsters every round. The paladin and fighter just bum a fly/wind walk off the wizard or cleric and now they too join the first half of the fight. Much better than the melee dragon... but this is still missing something.
Enter the Tr00 Dragon. The one who's existed for over a millenia, who's intelligence is genius-level, and who has eaten scores of adventurers in the past. He/She is a cunning creature, who often spends most of their time thinking solely on how to obtain more gold/power or keep the gold/power they already has. This is the Blue Dragon from the 3.5 Monster Manual who's lair entrance was a 120-foot hallway -- the same size as his breath weapon. This is the Red Dragon who builds his lair next to a periodically erupting lava fissure because it doesn't bother him too much and precooks his meals for him right when they wander in. It's borderline GM cruelty, but this is dragons we're talking about. They are cruel and they are smart. The players are entering the dragon's house, and now they have to play by the dragon's rules. This is the dragon we want.
The unsuspecting party falls through the cave in, heading straight into Ilthuliak's carefully planned trap. As they tumble through the air, they likely shout curses of surprise and indignant cries of "Don't I get a saving throw for that?". To which a voice in the sky replies "No, you're falling through a 77.46-foot wide pit. There are no saves to travel laterally 38.23 feet in span of a second." Defeated, (and likely mad at their GM) they find themselves with 3d6 points of falling damage,(half because mud is soft) and laying prone in a sphere of darkness that even the party half-orc can't see outside of. As the acid fog begins to eat them away for minor damage, they roll initiative, eagerly trying to find Ilthuliak who and has no problem seeing through them from the edge of the globe of supernatural darkness. She opens with an acid pool breath attack that should be quite easy to land now that the PC's are likely blind, had to spend a move action to stand up from prone, and are slowed to 5ft. movement by the mud all around them. They'll have to save vs. 24d6 acid damage that remains there for several rounds afterwards. From this point, Ilthuliak can continue to harass the PC's with spells and periodic breath attacks until they locate her in the dark pit. She can either become the flying dragon and leave the pit, picking them apart at range, or just eventually enter melee.
Well, that's all I can think of for now. Be sure to post any crazy dragon strategies you have, point out any mistakes I may have made, or just call me a sadistic bastard.
Jason Nelson RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games |
Dragons are iconic in pathfinder. Just about as iconic as dungeons, I would say :P. Therefore, as GM I find it my responsibility to make sure an encounter with one as powerful as Ilthuliak, The Great Wyrm is memorable and exciting.
** spoiler omitted **...
You might check out the giant mythic ancient black dragon in Mythic Monsters: Dragons for some ideas, or if you've got a little bit of time coming before you run the big showdown we will soon be releasing Path of Dragons with even more magnificent dragonish dirty tricks, which is described a bit in this blog post.
Dragonchess Player |
<Cough>
You may want to look at my outline for making Ilthuliak a mythic encounter...
Alternately, you can follow my strategy for Cadrilkasta in Shattered Star, adding Champion tiers and selecting Dual Path (Archmage) as a mythic feat...
Inneliese |
I definitely want to make the encounter with Ilthuliak to be quite epic, but I would also like to give her a bigger role in the campaign. I'm definitely adding a child of hers to the Hooktongue Slough (running a 6-player campaign, so I have extra xp to work with), possibly even living in his mother's former lair. I've also considered changing her morale away from fighting to the death, so she could return for a later re-match... or even to change the last bloom and have Ilthuliak come through along with the army of fey... and then retreat back to the First World if engaged by the party. (She does have teleport, after all.)
Randuril |
I definitely want to make the encounter with Ilthuliak to be quite epic, but I would also like to give her a bigger role in the campaign. I'm definitely adding a child of hers to the Hooktongue Slough (running a 6-player campaign, so I have extra xp to work with), possibly even living in his mother's former lair. I've also considered changing her morale away from fighting to the death, so she could return for a later re-match... or even to change the last bloom and have Ilthuliak come through along with the army of fey... and then retreat back to the First World if engaged by the party. (She does have teleport, after all.)
I "gifted" my crew with 4 black dragons in the slough (like #100 on the random encounter table, which I picked from and did not roll). It was a significant combat against my collection of broken PCs, but the most amusing part (to me) was that they had no clue that these were Ilthuliak's spawn and had no lair or treasure of their own. They spent game-weeks scouring the entire Hooktongue map looking for that lair. Ah, memories!