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Old 05-08-2019, 10:57 PM   #21
Plane
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Default Re: Fighting a dragon

I remember there was a rule for large creatures' melee attacks becoming area-effect at some point, which works fine for paw-like feet if you're doing a trample, or a fist if a giant is punching the ground...

Not sure how to modify that to reflect stuff like a massive 30-foot long tail swiping across an entire arc.

I figure it might work something like a "cone" attack but what I can't get my head around is how to design it to go left>right or right>left and the idea that it would get slowed down hitting people in the way before hitting the person at the end (rather than equal damage to all) and how someone parrying might potentially be strong enough to stop the tail and save people further down the line from the hit.
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Old 05-08-2019, 11:17 PM   #22
Anthony
 
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Default Re: Fighting a dragon

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Originally Posted by Skarg View Post
I would say that with big monsters in GURPS, unless they have some clearly overpowering advantage, they often tend to be surprisingly killable and not so dangerous.
Arguably that's the way it should be, heroes killing ridiculously huge monsters is a cinematic thing. If not, something like expanded wound size modifiers will give giant critters more reasonable durability and lethality.
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Old 05-09-2019, 04:58 AM   #23
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Default Re: Fighting a dragon

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
There is also a question about whether the dragon can kill you by walking on you. At SM+5, a dragon probably weight 30 tons, is probably going to have ST 200, and will deal 21d+21 (with Brawling at DX+2) crushing damage by trampling a character (which is considered a large area attack, so average DR protects). Against a SM+5 dragon, bring a battlesuit, because you are otherwise being to be horribly killed by the dragon stepping on you.
SM+5 is 15 yards or less long and about ST75 if human-shaped. A long skinny thing like sragons are often taken to be might well have 'only' the ST50 that [i]GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 4: Dragons[i] gives them. As for tramples, the free 1/2 ST trample on a slam is probably more relevant, as that's easier for the dragon to arrange - all it has to do is turn and it's multi-hex figure will sweep across PCs, giving it a free slam on each.

Note that all this is discussed in Monsters 4.

If you want you dragons to be scarier, by all means buff them up, of course.
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Old 05-09-2019, 05:45 AM   #24
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Default Re: Fighting a dragon

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Originally Posted by Rupert View Post
SM+5 is 15 yards or less long and about ST75 if human-shaped. A long skinny thing like sragons are often taken to be might well have 'only' the ST50 that [i]GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 4: Dragons[i] gives them. As for tramples, the free 1/2 ST trample on a slam is probably more relevant, as that's easier for the dragon to arrange - all it has to do is turn and it's multi-hex figure will sweep across PCs, giving it a free slam on each.

Note that all this is discussed in Monsters 4.

If you want you dragons to be scarier, by all means buff them up, of course.
Sometimes SM is about length, sometimes its about mass. 30 tons is on the high side for SM+5, with average probably being closer to 20 tons.

For a 30 ton beast, ST 75 is indeed about the correct strength if you are using cubic ST, which is the default for gurps. If you use squared strength instead, thus explicitly ignoring the square cube law (which is not totally inappropriate for a giant monster), ST 200 is the correct number. That's probably where the number comes from.

I'm not saying that you should use ST 200. A ST 200 dragon with DR 15 and a 6d6 area attack is a great baseline for the "Force of Nature" dragon that the OP specifically said that they didn't want. DR 15 will stop all but the luckiest strikes from a ST 14 halberd wielder, and even those will be mere scratches, requiring dozens to do anything. 6d does 21 points of damage on average, enough to devastate anything that gets hit.
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Old 05-09-2019, 07:44 AM   #25
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Default Re: Fighting a dragon

The difficulty of this encounter depends as much on the specific capabilities of the party as the interpretation of the dragon.

Any party with a decent Scout will take out even a very powerful dragon easily, unless that dragon has magical defenses against ranged attacks. Hitting the eye on a SM+5 dragon is only Skill -4 (plus range penalty). A Scout with Double-Shot can potentially take out both of the dragon's eyes in the first round of combat. Note that this is true even for a HP 200 dragon, since eye shots do quadruple damage and the threshold for crippling an eye is only HP/10. If the party has a Scout, I would give the Dragon sufficient levels of Nictitating Membrane, Damage Reduction, etc. to avoid easily getting eye-shotted, or give it spells like Deflect Missile, Missile Shield, etc.

Resist Fire is a spell easily attained by clerics and mages, and it makes you totally immune to the dragon's fire breath. A prepared party will precast this on every party member, rendering them immune to the dragon's breath. This might be ok, but if you want the breath to be scary, maybe allow the dragon to breath acid, lightning, frost, etc., or give it the ability to cast Dispel Magic in a hurry to get rid of those defensive spells.

Flight is also a common spell among delvers. If I'm a mage about to face a dragon, I make sure my principle melee fighters have this spell on before the fight, so they can immediately fly up in the dragon's face and stab it the eye/face/vitals, hack it apart, etc., ignoring terrain and effectively nullifying the dragon's flight advantage. This is a solid strategy against a dragon (we have a running joke in my group that the well-known remedy for dragons is flying ogre to the brain, since we've had two different campaigns in which an ogre/half-ogre was the principle fighter and a Flight spell allowed the fighter to smack a dragon in the brain for 5d+12 or so, knocking it out cold).

Casters don't like to get hit, so they often learn Blocking spells that can avoid any attack, even dragon's breath: Blink and Phase for example. In addition, they tend to buff their compatriots with the aforementioned Flight and also Haste, Great Haste, etc. A well-prepared caster (who has set up his more expensive spells with Delay) will be able to figure out how to make his party win. If you don't want casters to dominate, give the dragon some anti-magical abilities, place a no-mana zone at the entrance, or make the dragon an equally well-prepared caster with its own Blocking spells, self-buffs, etc. If the dragon is a superior caster to the party mage, this can swing things in the opposite direction: the dragon traps the party in Glue, for example (after Dispelling all of their Flight spells and whatnot), and starts breathing on them like crazy.

In general, it's hard to balance boss encounters in GURPS. I usually make the dragon smart but with Overconfidence (so it will fight even if the PCs seem like they could potentially win), not too much better at casting than the party's best caster, and with a few minions around to keep the delvers busy when they're not in striking distance. It can also help to give it Luck to prevent a first-round critical hit from causing an anti-climactic insta-win.
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Old 05-09-2019, 09:17 AM   #26
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Default Re: Fighting a dragon

Dragons do not necessarily have flame attacks. Robin Hoob's dragons, for example, use complex biological compounds that catch things on fire due to the corrosive effect of their breath weapon. In Shadowrun, there are dragons that use attacks from every possible element, even sand and sound. I imagine that a sonic breath weapon for a dragon would surprise quite a few players (10d crushing damage, Jet 100 yards, Cone 10 yards, Stunning).
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Old 05-09-2019, 09:21 AM   #27
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Default Re: Fighting a dragon

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
Dragons do not necessarily have flame attacks. Robin Hoob's dragons, for example, use complex biological compounds that catch things on fire due to the corrosive effect of their breath weapon. In Shadowrun, there are dragons that use attacks from every possible element, even sand and sound. I imagine that a sonic breath weapon for a dragon would surprise quite a few players (10d crushing damage, Jet 100 yards, Cone 10 yards, Stunning).
Classic western dragons from myths are just as likely to spew poison clouds as they are to spew flame. And their blood is also frequently a hazard in some way.
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Old 05-09-2019, 11:21 AM   #28
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Sometimes every part of a dragon would be toxic and would poison the land for miles around if it was not properly disposed of. In a weird science campaign, perhaps dragons possess natural fission reactors, the radioactive byproducts accumulate within their tissues (harmless to dragons, but dangerous to everything else), and their ggs could be even kept warm by radioactive decay. The breath weapon of the dragon would be toxic and radioactive, causing people to die hours or days after they flee from battle, giving rise to the idea that dragons are venomous.
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Old 05-09-2019, 11:44 AM   #29
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Default Re: Fighting a dragon

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Sometimes every part of a dragon would be toxic and would poison the land for miles around if it was not properly disposed of. In a weird science campaign, perhaps dragons possess natural fission reactors, the radioactive byproducts accumulate within their tissues (harmless to dragons, but dangerous to everything else), and their ggs could be even kept warm by radioactive decay. The breath weapon of the dragon would be toxic and radioactive, causing people to die hours or days after they flee from battle, giving rise to the idea that dragons are venomous.
Name the dragon Wormwood.
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Old 05-09-2019, 11:51 AM   #30
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Default Re: Fighting a dragon

To some degree it depends on which mythical beast you're going to classify as a dragon, there are lots of giant reptilian monsters that never get explicitly called a dragon until some later scholar goes back and reclassifies it.
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