Fair dragonslaying

Remove all ads!

Cheesy depends on what you define as cheesy, there are people that think every tactic that allows your entire party to survive without a scratch is cheese, and the only way to make it fair and even the odds is have your party so underpowered that only the protagonist should survive while the party is slaughtered, strange but true But strictly speaking cheese is anything that takes advantage of bugs or exploits in the game apart for that though any tactic that can be used is legit.

Hey Rastor could you tell me more about your imroved Dragon? I want it so hard that by the time I beat it I'll be almost crying and ready to quit (not very long) and so difficult that I'll need a mass raise dead for the party (in other words not very hard)

And BTW all Dragons are NOT the most powerful creatures on whatever planet they come from Mystra's seven are the most powerful but not the most ancient.

 

Just my 2 eurocents,
The way I found to defeat dragons fair and square is to breach them, then rush with all your warriors. It's heroic! But this is no failproof tactics I admit.

 

I remember you were talking about making that mod rastor. I requested it. You actually got around to doing it? Im definetly interested.

 

Strifestrike, I wrote a real cheap script that can be applied to Firkraag, but as of right now I'm still keeping it in beta, as I have not been able to beat the Improved Firk yet so I can't even guarantee that it is possible.

I will send it to anyone that PMs me a request for it, the script does work, but I'm not sure I'd like to be getting tons of hate e-mail after my Firk mops the floor with fave chars.

 

Failproof non-cheesey tactic: Play a Fighter/Mage and set up a Spell Trigger of Stoneskin/Improved Haste/Tenser's Transformation and you can take any dragon down solo. You have ridiculous HP so bring on the bad breath! Stoneskin and your ridiculous AC make his claws useless. With Improved Haste you can easily recover from his wing buffet and you'll have enough attacks per round at such a ridiculous THACO he'll fall within 5 rounds.

 

Unless of course the Dragon grows brains and goes invisible with SIivination and runs around like [snip] and the spells go off duration and become useless.
I'm very interested with an Improved Firkraag that has that reputation. Rastor, is it like the Sola Improved Firkraag?
I didn't find it too improved at all short at above-hardcore difficulty, which made it overpowered in turn.

[ToB content removed.] -Tal

[ December 19, 2003, 15:12: Message edited by: Taluntain ]

 

He actually does use that trick. He also has a simulacrum. I would have given him project image too, but that's just plain mean.

It's similar, only mine is a lot tougher.

 

Drat. I'll try to have the other part of my brain left behind he next time I visit this thread.

Just as long as he doesn't cast spells from scripts rather than real time, I think I'll have a go at it.

 

I would hardly consider Magic resistance on a dragon to be cheesy, the manual even hints upon this tactic, the second to last line reads:

" This resistance is set so that if the target already has more magic resistance than what the priest would confer, it will actually lower the set value"

And what else would you use it for, 2% MR per level. When you get it you are at level 9 which is 18% MR, what use is that?

 

Beware, Bioware tend to like cheese and powergaming a lot. We, the noble players must decide, not them.
IMO it's cheesy, the spell to lower resistance is called "lower resistance", this one is fair.
But sometimes, Priests have better spells, like animate dead (3L instead of 5L), summon elemental (no mental fight). Do you think it is another intended instance?

 

Yes, read an AD&D manual. That's what the rules state.

If anyone was using the standard definition of cheese, my DM did let us use that magic resistance trick when I played PnP... It is sort of cheesy if you use that to start the battle since the game considers it a buff and it doesn't make the dragon hostile. Once he's hostile, though, it is not cheese.

 

"I would hardly consider Magic resistance on a dragon to be cheesy, the manual even hints upon this tactic, the second to last line reads:

" This resistance is set so that if the target already has more magic resistance than what the priest would confer, it will actually lower the set value"

And what else would you use it for, 2% MR per level. When you get it you are at level 9 which is 18% MR, what use is that?"

UH, because they are warning you that it would not be a good idea to use this spell if your own magic resistance is already higher. Same with the mage Strength spell. After all, these are emant to be BUFF spells, so I doubt most DMs would consider casting it on an enemy to be allowable. I certainly wouldn't -- unless, of course, my players also agreed to let me count their magic resistance against them whenever beneficial magic is intentionally cast upon THEM (remember how hard it was sometimes to heal Viconia in BG1...?). And, as someone else has already mentioned, the fact that buff spells cast on enemies don't make them go hostile is a limitation of the game engine, and rather runny cheese, IMHO....

 

My point is that if casting that spell on Firkraag made him go hostile, then it would be a valid tactic. He also should be given a chance to resist it, as he's unwilling to let his own resistance be lowered.

I see nothing wrong with casting it once he's already hostile. The spell should not be unresistable, however. That's another limitation, since if we were to make it not bypass resistance, then your own characters would have to get their own resistance bypassed. (This might not actually be a bad thing. You aren't stupid enough to cast it on one of your own characters to resist it.)

I'll include this in the fixpack that I'm working on.

 

Fair tactics? Just straight out attack him with your fighters then bash him with spells and such. Don't cast summons and a bunch of buffs then attack him. In a real world with dragons the dragon would know what you were doing and would kill you on site.

 

Unless you've prepared yourself without his knowing.
Though I agree casting buffs in front of the Dragon himself is cheesy, short of the Shadow Dragon when you have the ward.