The red dragon : a joke or what?

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Responding to an earlier post. How come folks rant at sorcerers for killing the dragon (and others) like a sorcerer? If the guy's a solo sorcerer, it seems like a troop of mord swords makes pretty darn good sense. What do you expect the guy to do - march up and beat the dragon with his stick?

Same goes for monks and so forth - I mean, what the heck is the point of quivering palm if not to quiver big, bad nasties into oblivion?

If your main character is a sword swinger, then by all means hack away, but that "honorable" tactic just doesn't make sense for other classes.

[This message has been edited by Trunculo (edited May 04, 2001).]

 

Think about that though. Using your hand to kill a dragon with one hit? I'm pretty sure a monk wouldn't be able to reach any vital area of any dragon, but he is somehow able to kill it by hitting its foot once. Does that seem fair? Dragons, at the very least, should be immune to that attack.

 

Casting five Mordenkainen's Sword means you are level 15 or 16, pretty high level.
But I agree, the Dragons are somewhat easy to kill. An idea for the designers would be to give the dragons a spell like Death Fog or Death Spell which instantly slays all summoned monsters. Then you'd be more likely to use demons instead, which would feel like a more appropriate opponent to a dragon than a summoned sword or animated skeletons.


The problem is with the Quivering Palm as a concept. Instant death depending on a single roll of the die regardless of the target is IMO quite unbalanced.

There is nothing wrong with using Cloudkill to hurt a Dragon - the problem occurs when you abuse a game flaw in which the Dragon just stands there and slowly gets killed because he hasn't been "activated" by enemies.

 

Well casting 5 mordekainens swords, I can imagine that, when your solo I think you have the XP gap removed and then it's possible but try defeating him by yourself instead with some Mordekainens...

 

A Sorcerer can cast five level 7 spells at level 16. There is no need to remove the XP cap for that! Christian also stated in his first post that he did not remove the XP cap.
A Sorcerer summoning five M's Sword to defeat a Dragon is doing it yourself! I just can't see how you can possibly consider it to be otherwise.

 

I gotta go with Earl Grey on this. My question about how else a solo sorcerer could take out the dragon stands. I suppose any spell he casts could be frowned upon as not "doing it yourself". If the dude is a sorcerer though, casting spells is kind of his job, don't you think?

Or are you suggesting that some spells are more honorable than others? What if he just cast a crap-load of magic missiles and killed the dragon that way - is that "doing it himself"? How about continuously Larloc Minor Draining the snot out of the dragon?

Or are you suggesting that the only "valid" way for a magic-user to kill something is for the mu to stoke himself up and then melee the bad guy?

 

Well of course he killed the dragon and I don't say he uses a bad method or something but what I would say, it's lots of more fun to kill Firkraag standing before him and hitting him (and also use magic missiles) then casting some blades, go sit on a rock and see how Firkraag gets kicked or do I now say something that totally nobody can imagine?

 

It was a challange he's long dead now i beat the gane a couple of days ago. After i did the quests in the slums i went straiht to firkaig. I fought him so early because i wanted the scales for armour real bad. I did not cheat either it was the best battle in the game. i am now starting an evil party only problem is that their istn't enough evil npc. I might decide to use crtl=Q thing to get somebody. i wasnt planning on geting someone super powerful but someone like a level 11 or something. I havnt decided what im going to do yet though. What do think i should do

 

Generally you just flesh out the party with neutrals. The druids, Haer'Dalis, Jan and Yoshimo can all be used. You can also do the Multi Player to Single Player transfer, and have extra evil characters of your own. An evil sorceror, assassin and Barbarian, combined with the three evil in game characters would be pretty kick ass.

 

I'll tell you who is no joke...Adalon, the Silver Dragon. My evil party took her on tonight and boy were we in for a treat. Adalon is one smart cookie, not only does she do the traditional Stoneskin and Spell Turning, but heals herself and casts Death Ward on herself. We got her though, however it was just me and Edwin left standing. It was one ugly fight, gruesome, I didn't think we'd make it. Edwin get her though with the last offensive spell he had, Vampiric Touch. Not bad.

 

Yep Big-B, that´s the way to go! Among fighting the liches, the twisted rune bunch and beholders (without cloak of mirroring & shield of Balduran) the dragon fights are the most challenging ones in the game.

IMHO therefore simply killing a dragon with one spell/ special attack (no insult intended, play the way you enjoy the game) ruins the fight for me. The same applies to the trap setting story - when you´re good on stealth it´s all right, given you use these skills and don´t rest for more traps. For me it just sucks when you summon a bunch of elementals/ demons do the work while I polish my armor. I just think that remote controlled dragon killing is boring.

I have no problem with a good and honest mage fight and the use of spells on dragons in general. When mordekainen´s swords work - fine. Cloudkill also is a good spell on dragons - the girdle of inertial barrier & rings of regeneration make it possible to even melee a dragon then and with party members in sight it will move to attack and not die stationary still asking itself: "Oh hell, where´s this silly smell from ... it could possibly kill me ... Maybe it has to do with this guy I saw setting traps all around me the last week ... Hmm, I have to think about it ... AAARGH!"

When I casted finger of death on the black dragon in Sulandessalar I was prepared for a tough battle and I felt pretty fooled when the beast dropped death one second after the conversation ended.

[This message has been edited by Ragusa (edited May 05, 2001).]