Quote:
Originally Posted by TippetsTX
Have any here ran or played in a game where you had to fight one of these bad boys?
What were the circumstances and how did it turn out?
|
I put one in the very first adventure I GM'd, but the party didn't find it. Probably best they didn't.
I also have had such dragons as monsters in the background, doing things, which could have been gone after, and they were at the deep ends of some of my encounter tables, but usually my players never thought it was a good idea to go looking for them.
I did have one player whose PC's goal was to go hunting dragons, but he didn't make it that far.
And recently I've been GM'ing hcobb's Dragon Safari suggestion in play by post on the TFT Discord server, and some other in-person playtesting. But they haven't met a 14-hex dragon, and hopefully for them, they won't. One party got wiped out by wolves.
I have playtested many dragon combats, though usually not 14-hex dragons. In general I think a number of rule adjustments are needed for large monsters in general, and for dragons in particular, to not have them disappointingly weak for what they are supposed to be.
For example, a 7-hex hydra was encountered, which would be deadly, except the humanoids managed to do 25 points of damage before it got a chance to attack, and TFT has a generic max of 25 as the threshold before even the strongest monsters fall down - so it was one damage roll away from the difference between no casualties and lots of casualties or maybe TPK.
With dragons, what they do with themselves makes a massive difference. As a dragon, wade into humans on foot and die. Let yourself get shot many times and die. Overuse your breath attack and die. Make good use of flying, Push, Dodge, avoiding engagement, and be willing to fly away to heal, and you might do a lot better.
Dragons suffer from too-low ST (4-hex dragon has the ST of a 1-hex bear, its claws do about as much damage as a wolf or a deer or a ST 10 human with a sword), its breath hits a bit harder but even if it misses weakens itself, and problems turning around and keeping foes in their front hexes unless they stay flying and fly out of range whenever forced to move first.
But if you play a 14-hex (or even 7-hex) dragon intelligently and with self-preservation in mind, they can be formidable. Especially if you reason they may have managed to acquire one or more magic items, or other tweaks I've been developing.