I have a group that was getting their ass kicked by a white dragon, until they summoned lantern archons (it is hard to imagine that it is balanced to have 4 DR2 creatures wrecking on a CR 15... something seems broken).
Admittedly I did forget the dragon fear.. and I won't when they try to finish the dragon off...
But here is my ultimate question... the dragon can cast resist energy... and the archons attack is essentially an energy beam... could the dragon cast Resist Energy, selecting light, which is not one of the normal selections. It doesn't seem unreasonable that a CR15 dragon cannot find a way to shake off a couple peons.
(For those wondering... this is Freezemaw from RotRL).
No. Resist Energy can only protect from fire, cold, acid, electricity, or sonic damage. The spell even says so. The lantern archon also doesn't do energy damage of any they, it is just untyped damage.
Archons are pretty fragile, which is why they have those sweet lasers. They're extremely good against most evil things.
That said, a dragons breath weapon should delete any archons in a 60f cone.
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Not havingthe stats of the actual dragon, I'll jut assume it is roughly the same as the CR15 ancient white dragon i nthe Beastiary.
The dragons breath weapon will automatically kill any lantern archon it hits, even if they made their save.
The dragons freezing fog ability can kill them in 2 rounds.
The dragons blizzard ability gives the dragon obscures all vision beyond 5 feet (Except for the dragon, thanks to Snow Vision), giving the archons a 20% miss chance.
Just getting the lantern archons within 10 feet will kill them in 2 rounds (cold aura).
The dragons at will wall of ice can limit where the archons can shoot from, potentially gathering them together so an area effect (like the breath weapon) can take them all out.
Even with the archons damage reduction, an average hit from the dragons bite or tail slap attack will kill them. The average damage from the dragons claws can kill one in 2 attacks. The rays only have a range of 30 feet, so will always be in danger of the dragon being able to move and attack, and the dragon can't miss with one of its natural weapons unless it rolls a 1.
Then you have all the options a 9th level sorcerer would have, depending on the spells it knows.
With perfect flight on the archons and poor on the dragon, your controller would be pretty poor indeed to let more than 1 get killed in any round. No, it's the dragon fear that is the only thing to really mitigate the lantern archons.
Perfect flight and poor flight mean absolutely nothing beyond a modifier on fly checks. The dragon and the archons can do the exact same things while flying, and can move in the exact same way. Truthfully, the dragon is actually better at flight than the archons - it has a +16 fly check compared to +14, and a 200 foot speed compared to only 60 feet.
The only way lantern archons are move maneuverable than dragons is their innate at will teleportation ability. But as a summoned monster, it can't use that.
But this is all beside the point that it's pretty weird to have sonic as an energy type, but not light... which is literally an energy.
It is literally in the lantern archon's description that the rays of light bypass all damage reduction. Whether you think it weird or not, that is how it is. But the damage from those rays is also a modest 1d6. Hardly game breaking.
All of which is aside from the original question... how is light not reasonably an energy type?
The ray being light is nothing more than descriptive fluff. Damage type is what determines if it is energy or not. The lantern archon's light ray doesn't have a damage type. As untyped damage it is not energy damage.
Even being specified as energy does not make it energy damage. Positive energy and negative energy say they are energy, but as far as the rules are concerned they are not. Only fire, acid, cold, electric, and sonic damage is considered energy damage.
Follow up question... would any level of darkness spell suppress their light ray?
No. It being a beam of light is nothing more than descriptive. Darkness won't stop it any more than darkness stops a scorching ray. It can give a miss chance for concealment, however. But that applies to all attacks, not just light-based ones.
It's not an energy type because no one made it an energy type.
Darkness of any kind has no effect because neither the Rays or any darkness spell I can find says it it effects the Rays.
I'll see you're SM 3 Lanturn Archins and raise you SNA 1 Striges.
Positive/negative/force are all separate energy types. It's a legacy thing from the old D&D days. There are good mechanical reasons for keeping things specialized, though, you don't want 1 spell (Resist energy) to resist every single thing, you need force effects vs force effects, neg vs positive, ghost touch vs incorporeal, negative levels vs don't fight it etc.
Elements beating each other didn't really take off until those pocket monsters capitalised it which was two decades after D&D already masoned in its laws.
but creatures can have positive and negative energy resistance... and what about force
Even being specified as energy does not make it energy damage. Positive energy and negative energy say they are energy, but as far as the rules are concerned they are not. Only fire, acid, cold, electric, and sonic damage is considered energy damage.
Positive energy and negative energy both are and are not energy. They are energy in that both of them say they are energy. They are not energy in that everything that grants energy resistance, like resist energy and protection from energy do not apply. Also, the rules on energy damage to objects does not include positive or negative energy.
Force also isn't an energy. It is just a descriptor.
Perfect flight and poor flight mean absolutely nothing beyond a modifier on fly checks. The dragon and the archons can do the exact same things while flying, and can move in the exact same way. Truthfully, the dragon is actually better at flight than the archons - it has a +16 fly check compared to +14, and a 200 foot speed compared to only 60 feet.
The only way lantern archons are move maneuverable than dragons is their innate at will teleportation ability. But as a summoned monster, it can't use that.
Actually, there is a big difference between them both... Dragon uses wings to fly while Archons fly due to magical means.
Dragon will always hesitate before making complicated flight maneuvers (even DC20 or 25 ones, or even all of them if your GM rules she still may fail a DC10 check if rolling 1) unless she doesn't mind plummeting down and taking damage. Archons won't give a damn, at most they'll drop 10ft without taking damage.
A simple spell like Gust of Wind can increase chances for the dragon to plummet if she decides to do a barrel roll or a 180º turn.
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Perfect flight and poor flight mean absolutely nothing beyond a modifier on fly checks. The dragon and the archons can do the exact same things while flying, and can move in the exact same way. Truthfully, the dragon is actually better at flight than the archons - it has a +16 fly check compared to +14, and a 200 foot speed compared to only 60 feet.
The only way lantern archons are move maneuverable than dragons is their innate at will teleportation ability. But as a summoned monster, it can't use that.
Actually, there is a big difference between them both... Dragon uses wings to fly while Archons fly due to magical means.
Dragon will always hesitate before making complicated flight maneuvers (even DC20 or 25 ones, or even all of them if your GM rules she still may fail a DC10 check if rolling 1) unless she doesn't mind plummeting down and taking damage. Archons won't give a damn, at most they'll drop 10ft without taking damage.
A simple spell like Gust of Wind can increase chances for the dragon to plummet if she decides to do a barrel roll or a 180º turn.
Skill checks don't auto fail, nor auto suceed.
Dragons fly better and faster than lantern archons.
Dragons breath weapon range, and reach should have those archons down if they were a problem.
Actually, there is a big difference between them both... Dragon uses wings to fly while Archons fly due to magical means.
Dragon will always hesitate before making complicated flight maneuvers (even DC20 or 25 ones, or even all of them if your GM rules she still may fail a DC10 check if rolling 1) unless she doesn't mind plummeting down and taking damage. Archons won't give a damn, at most they'll drop 10ft without taking damage.
A simple spell like Gust of Wind can increase chances for the dragon to plummet if she decides to do a barrel roll or a 180º turn.
The highest DC to maneuver is only DC 20. The only DC 25 mentioned in the fly skill is for when you collide with an object your size or larger. Under normal circumstances, the dragon can not fail unless he is trying to immediately turn 180 degrees or climb upward at more than a 45 degree angle. He can't fail the check if damaged while flying, so is at no risk to fall.
You only risk falling if you fail by 5 or more. With it's +16 fly check, the dragon can't fail any of those maneuvers by enough to fall. Rolling a 1 on a skill check is not an automatic failure - this is the rules forum, a GMs houserules have no bearing here.
The gust of wind spell does give a -4 penalty to fly checks (which apply to both the dragon and lantern archon). It does make is possible for the dragon to fail to hover or turn, or even possible for the dragon to fall if attempting to turn 180 degrees or fly up at a high angle.
The same spell also makes it only half likely that the lantern archon can move against the wind at all. It also makes the archon less likely to hit (-4 all ranged attacks). And the dragon is still more likely to pull of a flying maneuver than the archon.
But as for what I actually meant when I said that, the rules for flight changed in Pathfinder. In 3.5 D&D, what you could do was limited to your flight maneuverability (perfect maneuverability could hover, while poor couldn't unless it had a feat). In Pathfinder, flight maneuverability only gives a modifier. All flying creatures, regardless of maneuverability, follow the same rules. They must move at least half their speed forward, they must make a check to hover, they must give up some movement to turn, and so on. I assumed (possible incorrectly) that when Lannister2112 brought up the poor/perfect maneuverability thing, he was still thinking of 3.5 D&D rules where those did change how a creature flew.
Under normal cirumstances, the dragon and lantern archon succeed at the same checks 9moving less than half speed, hovering, turning more than 45 degrees). Neither risk falling when hit by an attack while flying. They have a chance to fail the same checks (turning up to 180 degrees, flying up at a high angle), however neither risk falling if they fail (The archon can't fall as it flies magically the dragon can't fail by enough to fall).
So yes, under normal circumstances, the dragon and archon follow the same rules, with one exception. The dragon has a chance to smack into the side of a mountain and fall (if he is stupid). Since both succeed on the same checks, and can fail the same checks, the dragon is the better flier even with its poor maneuverability, as it has a 200 foot fly speed compared to a 60 foot speed. The dragon can fly around outside of the archons range while its breath weapon recharges, then fly toward the archons and breathe. The breath will automatically kill any archon it hits, and since the dragon keeps moving, it limits the archons to only getting one or possibly two attacks off every few rounds.
Anyone who thinks the archons have any chance against a dragon like this is simply wrong. At best, they are a minor annoyance.
In all seriousness, the archons are next to useless, as the panic from the frightful presence probably lasts longer than their duration and they only have a 10% chance to make the DC (assuming the white dragon mentioned before). The few that are not panicked die in a single breath or chomp.
If the dragon actually felt threatened he could also easily kite them, killing one off and get a distance greater than 90 feet between the remaining ones utilizing flyby attack.
The type of flight doesn't really matter in the example, as the dragon shouldn't need to perform any of the DC 20 maneuvers to begin with (and wouldn't even fall unless he rolled a 1 on those). All other fly checks are auto-success, as strange GM houserules shouldn't be relevant in this forum.