# How Do You SURVIVE A White Dragon?



## RangerWickett (Aug 22, 2013)

Level 4 PCs will be hitting at least 1/3 of the time, probably more like 1/2, and doing maybe 13 damage per hit? So 4 to 6 damage per PC per round on average. Five man band gets you 20 to 30 damage. So 7 to 10 rounds of combat. That's a long fight, and that's assuming they're not spending time dealing with the environment. 

In theory this could work, but I wonder if it has too many moving parts.


----------



## I'm A Banana (Aug 22, 2013)

7-10 rounds of combat is kind of quick considering this is condensing 5 encounters (roughly 6 rounds each) into one!  And the intent with the moving parts is that this keeps a long combat dynamic. If the conditions are changing and there's a lot of things to do, that keeps it from slogging too bad.

Still, it might be a lot -- each round is basically "The blizzard attacks you. You take your actions. If you move, the ice attacks you. If you hit the dragon, the dragon attacks you."


----------



## Blackbrrd (Aug 23, 2013)

I love the concept, but I think there are some big issues.

Let's say you have a Tiefling Wizard with Flaming Sphere. It does 1d4+5(int)+2(2xfeat)+1(magic) = 10.5 automatic damage each round the sphere starts adjacent to the Dragon. It costs the Wizard a minor action to maintain and a move action to move. He can use magic missile in addition for 7 auto-damage. A typical twin-strike crossbow wielding ranger has 2x attacks with +5(dex)+3(weapon)+1magic+1feat=55% chance of hitting for 1d10+2 and a +70% chance of 1d8 quarry damage for a total of ~14damage a round. Total damage: 10.5+7+14= 31.5. These two characters alone do enough damage to take the dragon out in 6-7 rounds, so a full party should do it in 3-4 rounds.

I am a bit unsure of the rules though. The first rule seems to just make melee characters more or less useless, while the second rule seems to be basically making you unable to attack for a long period. I think the second rule should be worse for ranged characters and less daunting for melee to balance it out and stopping the encounter from being a continual: "I roll a skill check / I am blind" encounter.

Let's take the wizard from my first post, he would not move and try to overcome rule #2 any round he is blinded. Not too terrible. The same goes for the Ranger. A Fighter would probably be sliding to his death trying to follow the dragon, being blinded. Quite possibly starting rounds both prone and blinded.

Maybe have the second rule just affect characters that haven't moved. It would balance it out between melee/ranged at least.


----------



## Ajar (Aug 23, 2013)

Yeah, there's a lot going on, but I do think the fundamental concept is sound. I'd have to think a bit about balance and streamlining around the edges. I'd want to leave the dragon's attacks alone, though. I like dragons to be sort of like an elemental force -- a white dragon breathes a whole freaking blizzard that engulfs the entire zone, not just a blast 5 or 10. And anyone within their reach should get autoattacked by a claw or tail. So I love how you did the dragon.


----------



## Stormonu (Aug 27, 2013)

Perhaps give the white dragon some "counters" to ranged attacks or spells?  We're talking fighting in a blizzard, so you could incorporate some sort of skill check to get off a ranged attack, a penalty or allow the dragon to "spit" a single-character-sized blast of cold back at the attacker.

Against spells, which will likely be ranged, we could go with some sort of fizzle or reflection attacks; the dragon makes a free opposed roll to cause the spell to fail, and once per third of its hit points can reflect a spell back at the caster.

Finally, you could impose some sort of sanction for standing still - if you don't move, say at least 15 feet, the dragon gets to make a free attack against you - a tail slap, stomp to knock down/force balance checks on the ice for those that haven't moved or wintry blast directed at the "easy", unmoving target.


----------



## Jhaelen (Aug 27, 2013)

Ajar said:


> I like dragons to be sort of like an elemental force -- a white dragon breathes a whole freaking blizzard that engulfs the entire zone, not just a blast 5 or 10.



There's a specific kind of dragons like that in 4e: The catastrophic dragons. One of them is the aptly-named blizzard dragon.


----------



## Kasbark (Aug 27, 2013)

I like the idea. Even though i don't play 4E so i won't be using the exact rules, i'll defenetly use some of the ideas here when my players next fight a massive monster of some kind.


----------



## sabrinathecat (Aug 27, 2013)

How to survive a white dragon? come bundled up in electric blankets, place all your gold and a small flock of sheep at the entrance to the dragon's cave, yell "we're not worthy" in draconic, and run.


----------



## warfangiscuter (Aug 29, 2013)

How to survive: Get 9000 halflings with enchanted poisoned +3 arrows and longbows at the mouth of the cave. then run in there with everburning torches and chuck them around. If there is a magic user in your party, make him/her cast a light spell. then find a way to smoke the dragon out. then create an arrow rain while you and your companions insult that scaly idiot's mother. CONGRATS! you have roasted lizard!


----------



## sabrinathecat (Aug 29, 2013)

Wait outside the cave for the rest of the party to go in. When the sounds of bloody death stop, walk in and congratulate the victor, and offer to be her accountant, for the modest fee of allowing you to continue living.


----------



## Jhaelen (Aug 30, 2013)

Bring buckets with red paint, splash the dragon with it and watch it freeze to death


----------

