Assassinate a Dragon

[Volvagnos]

Here is the situation:
A Gold dragon has overthrown an evil ruler of a kingdom, making herself the queen. The remaining family of the king, thrown into exile, have been plotting their revenge against the Dragon-queen for quite some time, can assume at least a hundred years.

The would be assassins have secretly regained a lot of influence behind the scenes, and have infiltrated a lot of high ranking positions in the kingdom. There will be an attempt made upon the queen as soon as all preparations are complete to place the bloodline of the former ruler back on the throne.

How does a group assassinate a dragon that they have no chance of slaying in direct combat?

The PCs in the game are going to have the chance to join either side of this attempt. They may gather clues and try to stop the assassins, gaining favor with the Golden Queen, or they may join the ranks of the bloodline's forces and attempt to assassinate the queen themselves.

The Players have not yet decided on their characters, so it's still early, but I'd like to be fully prepared to drop whatever hints I need. I'm leaning towards an Old or Ancient Gold Dragon and the PCs will be way too low level to challenge the dragon directly during the attempt.

I'm going to be open to player suggestions for the attempt, but I need a solid plan for the NPCs to take.

Thanks in advance for any ideas on how to deal with this.

[Volkard Abendroth]

Shadow Apocalypse

Turn the castle's inhabitants into shadows while she sleeps and have them bum rush her.

[Tim Emrick]

I'm dotting this so that I can follow along. I have the opposite set-up in my campaign, but a lot of the same questions apply: A nation of kobolds ruled by a green dragon has conquered the high elven homeland. One of the PCs was a refugee from this war, and hopes to find help reclaiming his homeland.

[Chromantic Durgon <3]

Couple things

This sounds outside the usual parameters of Gold Dragon behavior, it might be more inline with a Sovereign Dragon.

You might find Dragons revisited interesting reading, particularly Astarathian, both for how Gold dragons operate and what tactics they employ in their defense.

As for killing one, kinda depends on the level, I'm not entirely sure honestly.

[ShroudedInLight]

Cheesiest Strat I know is a 3 person kill with Touch Injection, Skin Send, Acid Arrow, and someone to Coup the corpse. A Great Wyrm Gold Dragon has a touch AC of 0 meaning that Touch Injection hits 95% of the time. That reduces the Dragon's body to 0 HP, one casting of Acid Arrow at the helpless body will then reduce the body into the negatives rendering it unconscious. Once the body is unconscious, anyone with the Throat Slicer feat can run up and do a Coup as a standard action. If that person is wielding a 4x crit weapon, they only need to do 29 points of damage to straight kill a Great Wyrm Gold Dragon. Enter a Barbarian with Throat Slicer, and a Scythe. Less, since they need to deal 29-2d4 thanks to the Wizard. The Dragon always makes its Coup save, but it still dies from hitting negative 29 HP. You can nearly guarentee this kill. The Barbarian with 18 Strength swings for 2d4+6, which is a minimum of 8 for a x4 crit of 32.

Of course, this assumes a number of things.

1: The Dragon doesn't realize something is up thanks to its absurd Skill Checks
2: Constant Foresight makes surprise rounds impossible so you need to roll higher than it in initiative (GWGD have -2 though, so thats a little better than a coin toss).
3: A Gold Dragon with money in a position of power will be guarded by other folks, spent money on contingency spells, or bought magic items rendering the above strat irrelevant.

Is this the cheesiest way to kill low touch AC targets? Yes.

[Dastis]

Mcguffin or Save/die spam(sleep hex/drow poison/etc)

Mc guffin ideas

Dragonslayer's artifact. Probably kept by a good dragon(s) in a highly secure and secret dungeon

Dragonbane was a very rare poison in the enchanted forest book series(excellent read btw) that allowed wizards to deal with dragons that were otherwise the most OP thing in that world

A large stash of powerful scrolls. Perhaps with a umd boosting item for that one guy that didn't invest

Orb of Dragonkind

[Lady-J]

make a functioning OLC(orbital lich cannon)

[Chromantic Durgon <3]

Orb of dragonkind would be a kewl one.

[BadBird]

Have members of the conspiracy seeking strange ritual magic - eerie sacrificial blood magic, time-distorting paeans to the void, whatever - and turn finding it and figuring out how to use it into it's own issue. Then, have the conspirators accidentally unleash bizarre, chaotic repercussions and/or quasi-arcane horrors through the successful use of said magic. Then have a desperate struggle between the dragon, who is badly weakened somehow but still dangerous, and the conspirators - all while things are falling apart around them. In fact, that plotline could work for either side of the struggle.

[Louise Bishop]

Chromantic Durgon <3 wrote:

Orb of dragonkind would be a kewl one.

Yes, it would be really cool. All Dragon's hate them and would help characters fight such a powerful foe.

[The Mad Comrade]

ShroudedInLight wrote:

Cheesiest Strat I know is a 3 person kill with Touch Injection, Skin Send, Acid Arrow, and someone to Coup the corpse. A Great Wyrm Gold Dragon has a touch AC of 0 meaning that Touch Injection hits 95% of the time. That reduces the Dragon's body to 0 HP, one casting of Acid Arrow at the helpless body will then reduce the body into the negatives rendering it unconscious. Once the body is unconscious, anyone with the Throat Slicer feat can run up and do a Coup as a standard action. If that person is wielding a 4x crit weapon, they only need to do 29 points of damage to straight kill a Great Wyrm Gold Dragon. Enter a Barbarian with Throat Slicer, and a Scythe. Less, since they need to deal 29-2d4 thanks to the Wizard. The Dragon always makes its Coup save, but it still dies from hitting negative 29 HP. You can nearly guarentee this kill. The Barbarian with 18 Strength swings for 2d4+6, which is a minimum of 8 for a x4 crit of 32.

Of course, this assumes a number of things.

1: The Dragon doesn't realize something is up thanks to its absurd Skill Checks
2: Constant Foresight makes surprise rounds impossible so you need to roll higher than it in initiative (GWGD have -2 though, so thats a little better than a coin toss).
3: A Gold Dragon with money in a position of power will be guarded by other folks, spent money on contingency spells, or bought magic items rendering the above strat irrelevant.

Is this the cheesiest way to kill low touch AC targets? Yes.

skinsend is a personal spell.

Pertinent text from touch injection is as follows:

touch injection wrote:

In the case of a personal infused extract, the opponent receives both a Fortitude save and spell resistance.

You don't want to send your alchemist through 60' blindsense to poke the dragon with their finger. ;)

[JDLPF]

I'd think the best RAW legal strategy to knock this thing out would likely be a pair of alchemists of at least 10th level, a pair of wizards of at least 15th level, and a sack of dead rats.

Prior to the encounter, have the wizards create about 60 rat skeletons each whilst inside the area of a Desecrate spell (via scroll and UMD or a hired spellcaster) to let them create and control 4 HD of undead per caster level.

Prior to the encounter, have the alchemists craft 60 doses each of Hemlock poison and use the Poison Conversion discovery to turn it from an ingested into an inhaled poison.

Stick the alchemists into a Portable Hole with 60 rats each, and give each rat a dose of poison to hold in their mouth. They should continuously spend a full round action every 6 seconds to use the Malignant Poison discovery to remove the onset time for Hemlock poison. Since it lasts 1 minute per alchemist level, the alchemists can keep this effect continuously on all 60 doses at 10th level. The alchemists might want a Bottle of Air or Necklace of Adaptation if you're worried about them suffocating.

Once the wizards encounter the gold dragon, they're to drop their portable hole entrances under the dragon. Teleport Object should get the job done. Then they simply give the rats their basic commands: Move out of the hole, attack the flask in their mouth.

The dragon should get an attack of opportunity against one rat as it moves out of the Portable Hole. That leaves 119 rats afterwards that break their vials and release their inhaled poison doses. Assuming 5% failure rate on saving throws, 6 doses should succeed, for an average 3.5 points of Dex damage each.

Given the average Dex of 10 or lower, that should be enough to take out the dragon in one round, assuming it's not got some form of protection against poison or immunity to inhaled substances.

[The Mad Comrade]

Inhaled poisons will generally work just fine in a large enough dose due to the DC and duration stacking rules for poisons.

119 doses adds 236 to the save DC and extends the duration to 60 times normal.

The problem is that the effect is 1d6 Dex damage every minute. You have to keep the dragon busy for that minute before the second save (presumably) fails and the poor beast asphyxiates to death.

Obviously, if it is wearing a greater ring of inner fortitude, it doesn't care. If it isn't a GM should feel bad for failing in such an epic fashion for a home-made BBEG gold dragon. ;)

There is also the matter of paying for that much hemlock - if they're paying 10% for materials its doable at 15,000 gp for each alchemist. If they're paying the more typical 1/3rd cost at 50,000 gp per each alchemist...

[blahpers]

Yeah, that's a minute during which it can annihilate you, then cast heal, or wish if it wants to be sure.

Edit: Oh, Malignant Poison. Nevermind. And the rats don't need air--they're skeletons.

Edit II: Do you even need the rats? Seems like you could just chuck a paper bag containing 120 oh so fragile vials of poison at the dragon's center square.

[The Mad Comrade]

Malignant poison affects onset time but doesn't do a thing to shorten the timing of the effect itself.

If you're going to poison a dragon, stick with simple and use poison conversion on drow poison or oil of taggit. Both induce unconsciousness - which is not a sleep effect per FAQ answer - and are far, far cheaper to produce. One massive multiple-dose inhaled poison container will do the trick just fine at a far less exorbitant cost.

Being unconscious for 1 minute guarantees a sufficiently brutal coup-de-grace will finish it off.

One wizard uses a limited wish to penalize the dragon's next save, the second uses a Quickened true strike to deliver the inhaled drow poison gas. The alchemists, fully monstered out via mutagen and whatever else they have to get bigger and deal more raw damage tag-team the coup-de-grace.

[JDLPF]

Hmm, true. I like those improvements!

Mostly the rats are for quibbles about action economy and bags of splash weapons. After all, why doesn't anyone throw two vials of alchemist's fire glued together? Simple answer is the rules don't let a creature do that since it breaks the action economy. Undead minions are a completely RAW legal way around action economy issues.

[SmiloDan]

Are there any incorporeal undead that do Dexterity damage or drain? Them.

[The Mad Comrade]

JDLPF wrote:

Hmm, true. I like those improvements!

Mostly the rats are for quibbles about action economy and bags of splash weapons. After all, why doesn't anyone throw two vials of alchemist's fire glued together? Simple answer is the rules don't let a creature do that since it breaks the action economy. Undead minions are a completely RAW legal way around action economy issues.

For inhaled poisons specifically it doesn't matter unless I've missed something (which is entirely possible).

For multiple doses of alchemical weapons (alchemists fire, fuse grenades, et al) I believe they follow the increased size-of-weapon rules, which becomes cost-inefficient fairly quickly until you look at the siege engine alchemical ammunition for grins and giggles.

[Volkard Abendroth]

SmiloDan wrote:

Are there any incorporeal undead that do Dexterity damage or drain? Them.

Shadows may do strength damage, but they procreate very quickly.

All you need to start the process is 1 shadow, killing the serving staff and other low level NPCs. After 1d4 rounds, anything killed by a shadow becomes a shadow. This creates an exponential growth curve in the number of shadows.

By the time you reach the dragon, a few dozen shadows coming out of the walls, ceiling and floor can one-round near anything not immune to strength damage.

A slightly less gruesome method is using a Totem Staff + scrolls to summon a large number of stirges, having all stirges attack in masse. A large enough number of stirges can kill a dragon in 1-2 rounds without anyone else entering the dragon's chambers.

[Darigaaz the Igniter]

Bum rush with calcific touch.

[Volkard Abendroth]

Darigaaz the Igniter wrote:

Bum rush with calcific touch.

Can only be used once/round unless you have multiple people casting.

People entering the room still risk being one-rounded. Either by breath weapon or by spell.

One of the advantages of using a large number of shadows coming from all directions is the difficulty of kill everything with a single breath weapon attack. Characters entering the room through a bottleneck may not survive long enough to make a single attack.

[Chromantic Durgon <3]

I feel like it would be really unlikely a ancient gold dragon wouldn't notice everyone in his palace dying

[Darigaaz the Igniter]

Volkard Abendroth wrote:

Darigaaz the Igniter wrote:

Bum rush with calcific touch.

Can only be used once/round unless you have multiple people casting.

People entering the room still risk being one-rounded. Either by breath weapon or by spell.

One of the advantages of using a large number of shadows coming from all directions is the difficulty of kill everything with a single breath weapon attack. Characters entering the room through a bottleneck may not survive long enough to make a single attack.

Well yes, you'd need to have several casters and have them come from different sides. About 4 would be enough if they beat the dragon on initiative. One might go down to an attack of opportunity, but even if it does you just need to do 6 dex damage on 3d4. That's an 84.37% chance of success, not accounting for missing attack rolls.

EDIT: familiars can add to the number of touch attackers, so it's possible to pull this off with two 7th level wizards with familiars. If we were optimizing this they'd have improved initiative and the familiars would be of the variety that add an additional +4 to initiative.

[Tarik Blackhands]

Darigaaz the Igniter wrote:

Volkard Abendroth wrote:

Darigaaz the Igniter wrote:

Bum rush with calcific touch.

Can only be used once/round unless you have multiple people casting.

People entering the room still risk being one-rounded. Either by breath weapon or by spell.

One of the advantages of using a large number of shadows coming from all directions is the difficulty of kill everything with a single breath weapon attack. Characters entering the room through a bottleneck may not survive long enough to make a single attack.

Well yes, you'd need to have several casters and have them come from different sides. About 4 would be enough if they beat the dragon on initiative. One might go down to an attack of opportunity, but even if it does you just need to do 6 dex damage on 3d4. That's an 84.37% chance of success, not accounting for missing attack rolls.

Unfortunately a bunch of minimum level casters with calific are more than likely just going to rebound off SR. I mean, if they're L7 even with greater spell pen they aren't cracking SR 34 outside a 20.

Edit: even on an old or ancient you're still looking at 18s at best outside extremely overgearing the wizards which is sort of defeating the purpose of the exercise.

[Volkard Abendroth]

Chromantic Durgon <3 wrote:

I feel like it would be really unlikely a ancient gold dragon wouldn't notice everyone in his palace dying

That depends on the difficulty of the perception check, and if one is even permitted.

Silence = no sound. Nothing for the dragon to perceive.

Invisibility on the first few shadows gets the ball rolling without giving anyone a heads up the shadow is moving around

Late night/early AM: most servants will be asleep in their quarters. This gives isolated, helpless opponents. Rooms for servants should be located sequentially, i.e. down just one or two corridors.

Once you hit critical mass, the exponential growth curve allows the entire remaining castle to assimilated in 1-2 minutes as everyone is attacked simultaneously through walls, ceilings and floors.

You're not attacking anyone capable of self defense until after critical mass is reached. Remember, snacks (children) come back as shadows as well and have much lower initial strength scores.)

If you want to be less confined in your killing, start by converting a nearby town and have the entire town population fly through the dragon's ceiling without bothering the rest of the castle inhabitants.

[Darigaaz the Igniter]

Tarik Blackhands wrote:

Unfortunately a bunch of minimum level casters with calific are more than likely just going to rebound off SR. I mean, if they're L7 even with greater spell pen they aren't cracking SR 34 outside a 20.

Edit: even on an old or ancient you're still looking at 18s at best outside extremely overgearing the wizards which is sort of defeating the purpose of the exercise.

Dangit, you're right about the SR.

[The Mad Comrade]

Re: shadows ... the tricky part is aiming them all, especially once you've hit critical mass in terms of numbers, at which point the instigating characters (if they're sticking around to watch) likely get swarmed under themselves and join the Incorporeal Horde.

Smartest move is to become a shadow yourself first (then free yourself from the control of what made you a shadow to begin with) so you have command of all those that you spawn.

[Malefactor]

I think that we are forgetting two very important things. Firstly, dragon are smart. Smarter. Than. You. A gold dragon is already smarter than most elves when it first hatches, and only grows in cunning as grows in size. If it isn't smarter than you, then you are probably a high level Int-based caster, in which case it is probably wiser than you. Anything you can come up with to fight it with, it is going to have a contingency for, and it has had a very long time to set up such contingencies. This leads us into our second problem: Dragon are full casters. You know all those crazy spells that been released over the last 8 years or so? The dragon has access to ALL of them. "But Malefactor," you might be saying, "dragons are spontaneous casters! They can't just prepare whatever spells they want!", to which I say, "That is true, dear hypothetical reader, but they don't need to be." Dragons have two big tricks that they can pull, and one of them is access to the entire wizard spell list, and the ability to cherry pick the best ones. No one ever said that dragons always had to have the exact same spells known as the ones in the Bestiary, and every change can make your stratagems fail if you don't account for them. Say the dragon decided to learn a different spell than alarm or mage armor for one of its first level spells, let us say that it learned Keep Watch instead. BOOM, now this overgrown lizard who already couldn't be put to sleep now never needs to sleep, putting all thoughts of ambushing it in the middle of the night to bed for good. They could know Permanency and then you have to deal with a dragon that can See Invisibility, has Arcane Sight, and has the effects of Greater Magic Fang on all of its natural weapons. All day. Every day. Or, if the Dragon is the sort who doesn't like to get its claws dirty, it could just hang out on a timeless demiplane and interact with the world through astral projection. Any high level cheese we players can think up, a dragon can too, and to be honest, most of us don't have Int 18, much less one higher. Secondly, dragons have maxed out Use Magic Device. Something not on their spell list? They can use a scroll. Enemies keep getting rid of their protection from energy? Eh, they'll just cast it off this wand again. Artifact require you worship a certain deity? This 43 I rolled on a nat 2 says I am the head priest of the religion. Dragons are not just some overgrown lizards with a god complex. They are brilliant masterminds whose combination of arcane might and genius-level tactics should make their breath and claws the least formidable weapons in their terrifying arsenal.

Just my 2 PP, though.

[The Mad Comrade]

Well said.

[Louise Bishop]

Malefactor wrote:

I think that we are forgetting two very important things. Firstly, dragon are smart. Smarter. Than. You. A gold dragon is already smarter than most elves when it first hatches, and only grows in cunning as grows in size. If it isn't smarter than you, then you are probably a high level Int-based caster, in which case it is probably wiser than you. Anything you can come up with to fight it with, it is going to have a contingency for, and it has had a very long time to set up such contingencies. This leads us into our second problem: Dragon are full casters. You know all those crazy spells that been released over the last 8 years or so? The dragon has access to ALL of them. "But Malefactor," you might be saying, "dragons are spontaneous casters! They can't just prepare whatever spells they want!", to which I say, "That is true, dear hypothetical reader, but they don't need to be." Dragons have two big tricks that they can pull, and one of them is access to the entire wizard spell list, and the ability to cherry pick the best ones. No one ever said that dragons always had to have the exact same spells known as the ones in the Bestiary, and every change can make your stratagems fail if you don't account for them. Say the dragon decided to learn a different spell than alarm or mage armor for one of its first level spells, let us say that it learned Keep Watch instead. BOOM, now this overgrown lizard who already couldn't be put to sleep now never needs to sleep, putting all thoughts of ambushing it in the middle of the night to bed for good. They could know Permanency and then you have to deal with a dragon that can See Invisibility, has Arcane Sight, and has the effects of Greater Magic Fang on all of its natural weapons. Or, if the Dragon is the sort who doesn't like to get its claws dirty, it could just hang out on a timeless demiplane and interact with the world through...

Let us not forget Wish and Limited Wish being a common spell Dragons enjoy. So really yes they know most spells.

But yes well said.

I think the only way these low-level PCs are going to take down an Ancient Gold is going to be Cheezy things that most People tend to frown upon.

Only viable non-cheezy one is Acquiring the Gold Orb of Dragonkind. And even then a DC 25 Will save is easy Peezy for an Ancient Gold. SInce it has a +24 Will save.

[Malefactor]

Come to think of it, they could use blood money and do all the above for free, no shame whale required.

[Louise Bishop]

Malefactor wrote:

Come to think of it, they could use blood money and do all the above for free, no shame whale required.

Lol yes, they can and probably would.

[Chromantic Durgon <3]

Given the flavour behind blood magic and the age of ancient gold dragons, the spell probably hadn't been discovered and entered regular circulation when they were learning spells.

Their is of course the chance that being sorcerer like it spontaneously manifested in their repertoire; however one feels the chance of that happening to a gold dragon are infantismal.

[Malefactor]

Chromantic Durgon <3 wrote:

Given the flavour behind blood magic and the age of ancient gold dragons, the spell probably hadn't been discovered and entered regular circulation when they were learning spells.

Their is of course the chance that being sorcerer like it spontaneously manifested in their repertoire; however one feels the chance of that happening to a gold dragon are infinitesimal.

Eh, I would argue that wish or limited wish could have the power to change one of your spells known to a different spell (especially when that spell is a level 1 one at that) but once we hit the realm of wishcraft, it largely becomes a case of DM fiat.

[The Mad Comrade]

Retraining rules apply to dragons too. ;)

[Chromantic Durgon <3]

Yeah I'm not going to argue what we can do with wishes, although that's an interesting suggestion.

While I agree with your point in general that dragons are smarter than us and should have contingencies, we should still except that unless they're in a demiplane astally projecting they can't be protected from everything. Or at least that's my opinion.

I think if you don't maintain that level of rationality you risk running ruff shot over player ingenuity simply through having the attitude of "oh yeah they'd be ready for that' regardless of what that is.

The practicalities of the shadow plan are in my opinion shakey but the point stands.

EDIT: do retraining rules apply? They don't have class levels, they aren't sorcs, they just cast as them.

[Tiny Coffee Golem]

Trap the soul gems with her name written on it.

[Wultram]

I would say the most reasonable way to target a dragon that you can't brute force. Would be targeting the eggs. Mindblank scroll, someone skilled in stealth, silence, invisibility and some form of flight would get past even the carefull eye of a dragon. The eggs themselves might have magical protections as well, but that is another story. You would need some sort of fakes too likely for to fool the dragon long enough to get away.

From there you have blackmail material and most likely will cause such mental turmoil that they will not be thinking straight and that will allow you to set up a trap that will facilite the actual killing. It should go without saying that failure would be met with a wrath that does not bear thinking about.

Naturally this all hinges on there being eggs in the first place, but if a former royal house has been planning this for a century, it might just as well be some of that time was simply waiting the dragon to mate and hatch.

[Malefactor]

I suppose the biggest problem with trying to figure out what a dragon may or may not be prepared for is that since dragons have centuries to plan their defenses AND are smarter than most any human, the only way to properly show all their plans and countermeasures is to cheat (and I don't mean fudging rolls, I mean "He had always wished for his head to go back on if it got cut off by a vorpal weapon, quit whining Jimmy"), AND make things up as things come up ("Of course the dragon had three astral devas in the next room the entire time! Why wouldn't he?") which wouldn't be very fair (or fun) for your PC's.

[Chromantic Durgon <3]

Paizo has published unique mythic red and gold dragons (CR26 and 27 respectively) they might be a good place to look to for tactics.

I believe it's in Dragons revistsed or something like that.

[Ryze Kuja]

How to assassinate a dragon:

Step 1: Get an adamantine decanter of endless water and find some adhesives to glue it to an immovable rod.
Step 2: Get eaten by the dragon
Step 3: Activate the rod and decanter of endless water inside the stomach of the dragon
Step 4: Teleport out of the dragon's stomach quickly after activating the decanter/rod
Step 5: The rest of the group attacks with very long range attacks, or simply watch from afar as the dragon drowns.

The dragon gets 240 pounds of water per round, which can eventually spill into the lungs. The dragon can only move 5 feet each round at most while the rod is working, and can't throw it up, and once the water in the belly reaches max load, it can't move at all and is denied its dex bonus.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/c-d/decan ter-of-endless-water/

[Malefactor]

Ryze Kuja wrote:

How to assassinate a dragon:

Step 1: Get an adamantine decanter of endless water and find some adhesives to glue it to an immovable rod.
Step 2: Get eaten by the dragon
Step 3: Activate the rod and decanter of endless water inside the stomach of the dragon
Step 4: Teleport out of the dragon's stomach quickly after activating the decanter/rod
Step 5: The rest of the group attacks with very long range attacks, or simply watch from afar as the dragon drowns.

The dragon gets 300 pounds of water per round, which can eventually spill into the lungs. The dragon can only move 5 feet each round at most while the rods works, and can't throw it up, and once the water in the belly reaches max load, it can't move at all and is denied its dex bonus.

Pardon me Ryze Kuja, but what's stopping a dragon from just dimension dooring away from the rod, let alone just casting a spell gives water breathing?

[Ryze Kuja]

Nothing, you still need to fight the dragon, but do it from as far as possible. Dispel the Water Breathing and if you have a way to Anchor the dragon to prevent teleportation, do that too.

Edit: This basically prevents the dragon from moving via mundane means and SEVERELY limits its mobility while slowly killing it and hindering its every magical spell casting. What's the concentration check to cast a spell while drowning? Continuous damage to Constitution with a really high HD dragon? That's quite a conc check.

Continuous damage while casting 10 + 1/2 damage dealt + spell level

[Malefactor]

I suppose this biggest problem is the assumption it will eat you. That plan won't work if it stays back, casting things like baleful polymorph or feeblemind, or even if it fights in melee but doesn't want to eat any of you because it wants your magic items (or is just too picky with its meals to find uncooked adventurers appetizing). That trick might work better on linnorms, but even then you could argue that their freedom of movement would allow them to slip out of it.

[Ryze Kuja]

You can force a dragon to eat you with limited wish, pending GM discretion :)

Dragons eat people all the time. Dragons are insanely cunning and smart, but what dragon is going to have a contingency for a decanter of endless water glued to an immovable rod and dimensional anchors to prevent teleportation?

This tactic isn't even on any dragon's radar unless the dragon has actually heard of another dragon falling to this strategy before. Unlikely, imo.

[Malefactor]

Ryze Kuja wrote:

You can force a dragon to eat you with limited wish, pending GM discretion :)

Dragons eat people all the time. Dragons are insanely cunning and smart, but what dragon is going to have a contingency for a decanter of endless water glued to an immovable rod and dimensional anchors to prevent teleportation?

This tactic isn't even on any dragon's radar unless the dragon has actually heard of another dragon falling to this strategy before. Unlikely, imo.

Perhaps they don't expect to become the source a new river, but a wise dragon shouldn't go around eating (live) people (strong enough that it would be considered a fight instead of a meal) simply because they might try to cut up their stomach from the inside. It is one thing to go around eating apples, but even the most durable apple-lovers would think twice about eating one they suspect might have razor blades hidden inside.

[Ryze Kuja]

A primary requirement of this strategy is having someone who can teleport out of the dragon's stomach after activating the rod/decanter, so it has to be a squishy casty type who is most likely not going to cut your stomach.

Limited Wish can actually force a dragon to eat them though. You just have to land the Limited Wish spell.

[Malefactor]

Ryze Kuja wrote:

A primary requirement of this strategy is having someone who can teleport out of the dragon's stomach after activating the rod/decanter, so it has to be a squishy casty type who is most likely not going to cut your stomach.

Limited Wish can actually force a dragon to eat them though. You just have to land the Limited Wish spell.

Pending DM approval and the ability to get through the dragon's spell resistance, and if you have to be capable of casting 7th level spells for this strategy to work, then there has to be an easier (or at least less complex) way of defeating a dragon than getting eaten, setting up the decanter of endless water and immovable rod, making your concentration check to dimension door while being digested, and then hoping really hard that the dragon will drown before they can figure out how to get out of the mess you made.

Just my two CP, though.

[Chromantic Durgon <3]

I feel like if your casting limited wish you've left the realm of a group of assassins with no way to conventionally fight.

[The Mad Comrade]

Does the campaign have black powder available in large quantities? ;)