How to crash your Dragon?

[armorwars1]

Greetings

A friend recently picked up Champions of Corruption and decided to use a number of spells from that source. His necromancer character used the spell "Wracking ray" twice on an Adult blue dragon in flight. The touch rolls were easy and he penetrated the dragons SR both times and the dragon even failed one of the saving throws. Essentially the ability damage reduced the dragons Dexterity and Strength to 1's. What happens to that dragon does he crash? Or just keep on flying?

[Pizza Lord]

armorwars1 wrote:

What happens to that dragon does he crash? Or just keep on flying?

He keeps flying. A creature is generally assumed to be able to carry its own weight regardless of its Strength (unless the situation specifically calls otherwise).

Having said that, the dragon is far more likely to crash if he tries any fancy maneuvers or gets into any aerial trouble, since his Fly skill will now have a –5 modifier from his Dex of 1. Although Pathfinder has also done some weird wording and shifting of ability damage and such, so technically it might only count as the dragon taking 9 ability damage, which equates to a –1 per 2 damage, meaning only a –4 to Dex checks. Either way.

Also, note that while the dragon can also technically fly at 1 Strength (or at 26 Strength damage, which is a –13 to Strength checks and statistics, however you want to state it), its carrying capacity and encumbrance probably should be lowered. As a huge quadruped, it's still enough to be carrying some gear and magic items, but it won't be carrying any medium sized creatures off.

Again, it's possible that Strength damage doesn't work on carrying capactity, though it certainly is a statistic that relies on Strength. Since it only goes down by 1 per 2 damage, that gets confusing. If we assume it doesn't affect carrying capacity, then we'd have to assume that temporary Strength bonuses also do not increase your ability to lift and carry things... which makes very little sense, even before worrying that gaining 2 points of Strength may only add +1 to statistics...

No...down that path lies madness, let's just keep it simple, and just assume the dragon's abilities actually are 1 each for purposes of this line of questioning.

He should be fine if he isn't suddenly over-encumbered to where he can't keep up his any required movement and doesn't botch his Fly checks.

[armorwars1]

Hello again

Statistically I understand the math of it but, in the book where it shows a chart that gives examples of creatures that could have a Strength or Dexterity score of 1 (maybe a Gelatinous Cube) any other creature would probably be partially paralyzed. Which would seem to disprove the idea that no matter the Strength total one can carry his own weight.

Strength: 1 = Lantern Archon, bat, toad / Morbidly weak, has significant trouble lifting own limbs

Dexterity: 1 = Gelatinous cube / Barely mobile, probably significantly paralyzed.

Which confused me, However, I suppose if one were to use simple logic, the larger the creature the higher the strength bonus, the smaller the creature the lesser, and so on. If it truly works like this:

A creature is generally assumed to be able to carry its own weight regardless of its Strength.

Then a 1 Strength for a dragon would be equal to like 25 human strength
the dragon would need at least that much to move around,whereas a human would need much less, say a 4 or more.
The rules do not support this (no such thing as scaling abilities in that way)

Is this making sense? Basically I'm reading certain contradictions in the rules. There doesn't seem to be any rules for this in the books that state which was mentioned above. If there are please point them out to me. Thanks

[Claxon]

The rules only state how much you can lift with strength, it doesn't actually state anything about being able to move yourself unless you reach strength 0 or dex 0.

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

You'll have to house-rule it. I'd call it perfectly reasonable to say that at Str 1 the dragon can barely crawl, and can't fly at all. It should definitely get a Fly check to land gently instead of crashing, but with Dex 1 it will probably fail.

[Pizza Lord]

Like the others say, it's about how you want to describe it, but a creature should still be able to move its own weight regardless of its Strength. If it's been weakened, it's up to you to describe how it goes about moving (sluggishly, slumped over, etc.)

Like you stated, a dragon at 1 Strength would be horrendously weak and probably struggling to move (but still able to move if not encumbered), whereas an ant with 1 Strength would have a heavy load of 2.5 pounds (1/4th normal weight being fine-sized quadruped category), meaning it could theoretically be carrying off a pineapple or dragging a gallon of milk behind it, which would make it like the Mr. Olympia of ants from our perspective. The dragon might be able to carry 7 gallons of milk and still move (at reduced speed), but we probably wouldn't congratulate it too hard for out-lifting the ant.

Obviously the system isn't meant to be super accurate, otherwise 20 ants could drag off about 250 pounds (almost any character in all but the heaviest armor and gear) and 25 could carry my fat ass out the door (with enough left over for a whole bunch of pineapples and gallons of milk to wash me down with).