Dragons are wimpy

[hcobb]

How do you save the dragons?

https://youtu.be/1_RChAAFpD4

[larsdangly]

Are you taking full advantage of their ability to fly, push back/overrun and otherwise control engagement?

Perhaps the best relevant house rule I've ginned up is automatic 'toughness' for high ST figures, which, if added on top of their scales, makes them hard to hurt.

[Skarg]

No, it's a vanilla 4-hex dragon (being ridden by a 37-point goblin wizard with a stone flesh ring, +1 magic cloth armor, 12 mana, 12-point powerstone), who again are stuck in a corridor with a low ceiling and decide to charge into two adj DX 14 light crossbowmen and two halberdiers. (This time there's the reasoning they're invading the goblin sorceress' home.)

In the last one, the ST 6 goblin wizard had no armor but survived till the end because no one chose to attack her.

At least this time, the dragon didn't pointlessly start out by charging. Henry starts out with the suggestion I made the last time (Reverse Missiles on dragon before engaging), and even has the humans waste a turn hesitating when that spell roll fails. But Henry seems to be making a thesis demonstration here that my idea is no good, since he multiplies the spell cost by the dragon's hex size and maintains the spell for several turns while the crossbowmen deduce the wizard is doing that and so only end up shooting at it once over all those turns. It also doesn't buy any time for the wizard to do anything good because she keeps missing casting rolls and only tries to cast Fire and staff III zap anyway.

Then he gives the other side a break by having the sorceress sit on the back hex of the dragon, and skip her own turn when that means she couldn't cast the creation spell she wanted where she wanted. (This wizard has very few combat spells for her IQ, including Wizard's Wrath, but nah, why use that?)

Then he gives the dragon a break by using a house ruling of pole weapon charge rules so the halberds don't actually get given ANY advantages this time when the dragon charges them (RAW they'd get +2 DX, first attack, and +1 die damage). Maybe that house rule only applies if the dragon doesn't do a Push, because there was a good RAW Push move that the dragon didn't take that turn.

The next turn, the dragon did do a push, but one which allows one halberdier to step to the dragon's Rear, but knocks down the other... but then some nice TFT chaos kicks in when the dragon hurt itself for 6 points trying to trample him!

I'm not sure why the scenario adds a very peculiar 37-point goblin sorceress, if this is supposedly a dragon test.

In general, however, I would tend to concede that 4-hex dragons are wimpy, and that 4 efficiently-created 32-point fighters with talents can expect to usually beat them if forced to fight in a confined space.

[hcobb]

Yes, the goblin sorceress would be 13% more effective if she just took off her armor. Cloth armor is way too encumbering to justify in this game, much less anything heavier.

[Chris Rice]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Yes, the goblin sorceress would be 13% more effective if she just took off her armor. Cloth armor is way too encumbering to justify in this game, much less anything heavier.

Unless you're attacked by lots of nuisance creatures who do 1 point of damage; then you're toast without cloth armour.

[hcobb]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

Unless you're attacked by lots of nuisance creatures who do 1 point of damage; then you're toast without cloth armour.

That's what the Stone Flesh ring is for.

Applying the armor loophole from ITL 161 to get a reasonable result.

[larsdangly]

Ah; I'm afraid I didn't have the time to watch the video. But it does sound like it isn't a very compelling test of the powers of dragons.

Anyway, I view a 4 hex dragon as the 'nuisance creature' version of dragons; it is unsurprising that a group of 4 adventurers could kill one that was jammed into a tiny hallway and forced to do irrational things.

[larsdangly]

We're hearing quite a bit about this 'armor loophole rule' recently. What are you talking about? The only possibly relevant thing I can see on that page is the description of stat-enhancing magic items.

[hcobb]

DX 14 Knight in fine plate armor with a +4 DX ring.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

Anyway, I view a 4 hex dragon as the 'nuisance creature' version of dragons; it is unsurprising that a group of 4 adventurers could kill one that was jammed into a tiny hallway and forced to do irrational things.

Agreed. Its only damaging attack that doesn't greatly fatigue itself only does 2d-2. If faced with groups of efficient 32+ point fighters, especially with missile weapons, it needs to be careful and probably stay in the air to avoid just getting shot to death or ganged up upon, use the breath attack from the air a few times and fly away.

I have seen 4-hex dragons take out less formidable groups of 4 warriors without flying away, but they took advantage of initiative and flight to avoid getting ganged up on, took out the missile weapons and wizards first, etc.