SPLIT: Using the Bones Dragons, or: How many Dragons can you use?

[GreyLurker]

My plan right now is to write a Pathfinder campaign that uses every single miniature. So every Dragon I'm getting is going to have his moment.

 

and now that it looks like the Torn Armor KS is going to succeed I'm going to have fun thinking up a particularly nasty encounter with 2 Clockwork Dragons.

[ShadowRaven]

give them steam breath

[Foxfire]

Steam Breath? That's not creative enough! Although it would be cool to have it outside the Dragon Sauna and when the dragons want more steam for their steam bath, they stoke it's furnace :D

 

Time Breath is where it's at. Either aging the creature, babyfying (not sure what word to use to describe de-aging a person back to babyhood), or timestop, haste breath or various other 'timely' uses of their most fearsome attack.

 

Or you could have a clockwork dragon that's lost a gear and so it's a half second out of time and flickers in and out. Oh the ideas that we can use on such cool beasties.

 

The wife suggest acid breath weapon attack. You know, because of the grease and fluids in the gears

Edited March 23, 2013 by Foxfire

[ShadowRaven]

yes, I suppose, depends n their power source really. I was thinking steam as a product of an internal boiler, but if you are going magic, well then you could have all sorts of interesting magical effects. from prismatic spray to something that alters the fabric of time (not sure how you would make that work in game play, there's got to be saving throws somehow) to waves of raw energy.

[ObsidianCrane]

In 4E the time breath is easy, daze, slow and stun attacks with or without save ends are great ways to represent it. In 3E blergh... Go read Time Stop for ideas.... Or Slow I guess... In all other editions just say what it does and write it out a bit more formally. (This highlights pretty much why I hate 3.X & yes that includes PF.)

 

Hmm might have to stat Clocky up for 4E...

[darkvizor]

I love dragons ! I have partys stumble on them , of course they fail save vs dragon fear . They always fail ... Dragon flies away , leaves minions to nearly kill the party . That's was when party was 3rd level . They are fifth now . The dragon will still kill them. Hummm... Maybe a dragon encounter this week .

[ShadowRaven]

daze slow and stun type attacks are easy enough to do in pathfinder as well, it's the scale that gets tricky. Timestop however is a terrible spell to base a breath weapon off, it doesn't do enough. Now something that did temporary (or even permanent if you're feeling mean enough) damage to stats could be fun. a drop in DEX and/or STR could get really interesting.

 

it's kinda funny though, I hate 4e and loved 3.5 and love Pathfinder, you're exactly the opposite it seems. To each their own eh?

[VDog]

I *love* the concept of altering time with him. A very very intricate way to mess with your players would be a "rewind time" skill. As the DM you'd basically have to write down each round on a big paper, how much dmg was done in the round, by whom, and by what abilities. Give the dragon (depending on system) a certain number of uses, or cooldown between abilities, or recharge (i.e. 4E) to "rewind" the effects of one of the previous rounds. Players would have to re-roll all attack and damage abilities used in that round (hence why the GM would have to record all pertinent info.) So whenever there's a damage heavy round on the dragon he can change time... doesn't guarantee they will do less as they could actually roll better, but would be a very interesting dynamic fight. Maybe on that re-wound round let the dragon do some sort of special attack. After all their re-rolls for that round you say "As your character sorts through the confusion of his memories shifting and changing you look down with a shock and see wounds appearing on your body that weren't there a few seconds ago, then your memory catches up and you remember the explosion of space and time that accompanied the chronological shift."

 

If you were evil you could even save his abilities until he's almost dead, then rewind a few different rounds at once, possibly negating huge damage for him, and dealing huge damage to the party if they fail their "save vs space-time alteration" (fortitude or spell save.)

 

Oh the fun possibilities...

[ObsidianCrane]

it's kinda funny though, I hate 4e and loved 3.5 and love Pathfinder, you're exactly the opposite it seems. To each their own eh?

Oh I have fond memories of BECMI, 2E & 3.X and I'm ok with 3.X as a player as well, I can certainly build some cool characters using the system. But I mostly DM and in the time I can sort out 1 monster for 3.X (that isn't "as written") I can sort pretty much a whole encounter including custom monsters for 4E. Of course I've never had play issues with 4E up to and including running battles with 20+ models on each side. I'm pretty happy with Next for players now, but the DM side is still bugging me. Hopefully the PC stuff will be pretty much done by GenCon and they can really get into the DM stuff for the next 6 months.

 

Also Time Stop is incredibly useful, just not for doing direct damage, which is usually what PCs are thinking of when they consider spells. Be more devious. :)

 

As it is after this I'll have 3 different large Red Dragons (old GW, PF, and Fire Dragon). So I see an encounter that might well feature a collection of Reds.

 

Of course now I want some more the size of Deathsleet, Ebonwrath and Clocky. In fact if I got a Red of that size I would have the leaders of one of the evil groups in my setting all covered. That would let me run an epic campaign end where the PCs confront the 3 of them.

[GreyLurker]

I love the idea of them being Time based

 

One could be forward and the other could be backward.

 

 

be a heavy book keeping encounter but I really like the idea

[Frankthedm]

My plan right now is to write a Pathfinder campaign that uses every single miniature. So every Dragon I'm getting is going to have his moment.

Don't forget the Giant {Rebuild} template! It lets you start using the bigger miniatures much sooner and will make the fights feel much more memorable, helping undo a decade of cramming way too much dragon into too dinky of a miniature.

 

Rebuild Rules: Size increase by one category; AC increase natural armor by +3; Attacks increase dice rolled by 1 step; Ability Scores +4 size bonus to Str and Con, –2 Dex.

 

Turn that CR10 large Red Dragon who's packing more HP and damage output than a horse sized creature deserves into a CR 11 Huge Red Dragon. What is even better, by making the dragons bigger in this way, the GM has few extraneous abilities to screw around with in the combat.

 

to

Edited March 23, 2013 by Frankthedm

[ClauseRose]

I'm kicking myself for not getting a Nethyrmaul now that I think it would be awesome to "rebuild" him into a living Red. I'd get a chance to try sculpting on something that has already been created

[ShadowRaven]

Oh, I don't disagree, Timestop is an awesome spell, just not something for a breath weapon. it just doesn't feel 'right' even for a draconic construct as opposed to a real dragon.

[JackMann]

I did a series of Far Realm based maneuvers for martial adepts in 3.5 based around the far realm. They were largely centered around unusual mechanics. One of the gimmicks I came up with was "initiative damage." That is, if you hit them, their place in the initiative order changes. That might be useful for a clockwork dragon's breath weapon.

[Sergei]

I'd like to point out that in the "Dragons Night Out" scenario we run eight dragons on the table with 10 (soon to be 12) dragon models for the players to choose from. This isn't including the "suprise" dragon we pull out in the middle of the game.

 

If you're at Reapercon, ORIGINS, or BASHCON (and possibly GENCON) you should check it out.

 

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