Kill dragons with fire

[larsdangly]

I don't see why this is such a big deal; if you can manage to soak a huge animal in oil and light it up, then naturally it will have a bad day. But good luck pulling off that trick against a critter that is much smarter than you and can fly!

[hcobb]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

I don't see why this is such a big deal; if you can manage to soak a huge animal in oil and light it up, then naturally it will have a bad day. But good luck pulling off that trick against a critter that is much smarter than you and can fly!

Problem is that the Halfling with a bottle out-ranges the 14 hex dragon by a factor of 2.5

[larsdangly]

I don't know what tactical situation you have in mind, but if my IQ were 20 I'd find a different one.

That's a sort of 'flip' response, but the point is important. The main PC's in my current campaign have had 3 run ins with dragons (two four hexers and one 14 hexer). All of them involved a few turns of tense skirmishing but none of them resulted in anyone getting killed on either side, for the simple reason that the players left an escape route and used it when needed, and so did their foes. No one but a slime or a prootwaddle is going to march into a tactical situation that amounts to a firing squad.

[Cromarty]

Dragon on fire? Jump into HTH with the offending halfling.

[larsdangly]

I haven't had this happen in play yet, but I've sort of wondered what is supposed to happen if a really big dragon initiates a 'push-back/trample' attempt by landing on a small figure, such that there is at least 1 hex of 'dragon' between their initial hex and open space. Even if they make their DX save, they can't roll to open space because there isn't any!

[Skarg]

It doesn't happen in one turn by coming from the side, because even with a large figure, RAW they only push one hex. It could happen by moving over a figure that was already on the ground, or by landing there from above.

The RAW is very generous about rolling out from under, though: If no hex is open within 3 hexes, he may not attempt to roll out from under.

[larsdangly]

Ah yes; now I remember that rule. Sort of like Brazilian ju-jitsu combined with short range teleportation.

[phiwum]

I guess that nerfs the 14 hex dragon landing on folks, but a 23-hex dragon (which seems to be the next size fitting the pattern from seven to fourteen) would be able to use your strategy, Lars. So there's that.

The shape of the dragon sets an easy pattern to follow from seven to fourteen, adding seven hexes in that step, followed by nine in the next and then eleven. But, of course, I'm just playing with figures and numbers and totally not suggesting that a 23- or 34-hex dragon is really useful in a campaign.

[Skarg]

You think dragons instantly double in size rather than steadily growing through intermediate sizes from one listed size to the next?

[phiwum]

Originally Posted by Skarg

You think dragons instantly double in size rather than steadily growing through intermediate sizes from one listed size to the next?

Well, as I said, I wasn't really trying to create a house rule extending the dragons available. I was playing with the size change from seven to fourteen hexes, which involves adding two hexes to the length and two to the maximum width. The next size up following that pattern requires nine additional hexes.

Of course, there is no similar pattern going from one to two to four to seven. Indeed, there's no pattern at all really (one to two to four is of course doubling, but if you were trying to maintain the shape of four, you would go to nine, not seven, hexes next. I don't see a good eight hex shape).

Anyway, as I said, I was playing with the shapes of the dragon counters, nothing more principled than that. In my game, seven hex dragons do wake up one day having doubled to fourteen hexes, just for purely aesthetic reasons. Both seven and fourteen hexes are vaguely dragon-shaped and none of the numbers in-between work so well, so the intermediate stages are fudged away.

I imagine they molt.

Happily, subsequent growth is not a doubling in size. (The progression goes 7, 14, 23, 34, 47, ...) I reckon adolescence is a tough period for a dragon.

If you want to know how I calculated the size, here's an image of dragons from size 1 to 34. But, and I can't stress this enough, it was just idle playing and not a real suggestion for larger dragons. Honestly, the 34 hex dragon looks fat and slovenly, which is reason enough not to continue the pattern beyond 14 hexes.

ETA: I skipped size 4 for some reason, but I won't fix the image because I'm lazy.