05-11-2018, 04:26 PM | #31 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Making dragons slightly tougher
That would depend on where they're coming from and how they're armed. For people climbing up the cliff, taking them out as they climb is optimal. For people entering at the back, I'd assume there's a corner so people can't just hang out in a tube firing off missile attacks.
It's flexible. Most lizards are actually pretty comfortable in spaces smaller than that. |
05-15-2018, 07:55 AM | #32 |
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Saint Paul, MN
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Re: Making dragons slightly tougher
Lachimba's recent thread, Where do you target a cone attack?, got me thinking about draconic breath weapons. Currently dragons have two broad types of breath: areas and cones. Area attacks are used for acid and poison, and cones apply to fire and cold. The cones are currently 10 yards long and a single yard wide, making them more like a beam than a cone. This works well for a dragon with a tightly targeted breath. But if you wanted a dragon that fires out a great billowing gout of flame that widens as it extends, you could expand the width of the cone. A five hex width, for example, targets about 36 hexes rather than just 10, and makes it much less likely that targets can dodge out of the area (assuming they can step only one hex). This would make even a mundane (non-spell-casting) dragon significantly more dangerous.
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05-15-2018, 08:45 AM | #33 |
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Luxembourg
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Re: Making dragons slightly tougher
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05-16-2018, 08:59 AM | #34 |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: Making dragons slightly tougher
Dragon's breath can be tinkered with to heart's content. You can make damage dice whatever you like. You can make damage type almost anything, with almost any special effects. You can make it a bigger cone or bigger area effect, or even an explosion originating at the dragon's mouth. You can decide that it's persistent.
The breath of "default" dragons is designed to strike a balance between scariness and giving well-prepared parties a fighting chance, between vastness and fitting on a sensible combat map. If your needs are different, there's no requirement to hold back. You could, if you wanted, simply rule that a dragon can twist its head around like a lawn sprinkler and engulf all targets within x yards of itself, no defense allowed. This isn't even getting into "tricks": Don't like scouts? Let dragons roll vs. 3 + (Innate Attack/2) for "point defense," with success burning projectiles out of the air – destroying even expensive ones, like magical arrows and fine spears – and failure still allowing a Dodge roll. Party hanging back too far? Let dragons roll vs. DX to flap wings and blow acid or poison breath clouds (Air Move) yards toward cowering foes. Let dragons spend extra FP for higher damage or more range. And so on.
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05-16-2018, 01:05 PM | #35 |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: Making dragons slightly tougher
I also like to make the floor of their lair into incredibly bad terrain. What is intolerable for SM 0 folks isn't even a nuisance for something SM +3 or more (or that's immune to the hazard, or has enough DR to ignore it). Sudden 2 foot elevation changes, 2-3 foot wide cracks, pools/dripping streams of water, grease, flammable liquids, acids, magma, loose stone/sand*, bones of the dead, zombie body parts that are still mobile, etc.
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05-16-2018, 02:54 PM | #36 |
Untagged
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Making dragons slightly tougher
Minor, to dragons at least, parasites or lair cleaners.
Dragon fleas may not be so minor to adventurers. Some spiders "keep" frogs that eat dangers to spider young but aren't really dangerous to spiders.
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05-16-2018, 03:01 PM | #37 | |
Join Date: Nov 2006
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Re: Making dragons slightly tougher
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05-16-2018, 05:21 PM | #38 |
Join Date: Jul 2006
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Re: Making dragons slightly tougher
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05-23-2018, 09:59 PM | #39 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Making dragons slightly tougher
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05-24-2018, 07:48 AM | #40 | |
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Saint Paul, MN
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Re: Making dragons slightly tougher
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dfrpg, dragons |
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