Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Ginyu549 03-04-06, 02:35 AM	Ok, here's a tough one, but one that I would think should be do-able. Can you build a group of 4, 10th level sorcerers that could take down a Great Wyrm ASAP? Is it even possible? and if so, how many rounds would it take? I am thinking there will be some definite spell selection synergy here and some definite defensive and offensive capabilities. Lets try to keep gear to book value with RAW items only unless crafting feats are involved.
scrollreader 03-04-06, 03:04 AM	Off the top of my head ... Human Sorceror (Spellgifted trait: Necromancy) 1 Fortify Spell, Sudden Maximize 1 Spell Thematics 3 Storm Magic 9 Sudden Empower Cast Lesser Shivering Touch, sudden maximized and sudden empowered for 6+(.5*d6) dex damage. Use fortify spell to increase your CL by 8 (Casting it as a fifth level spell). Spell thematics and storm magic and spellgifted increase it by another 3. Meaning a CL of 21. You have a fifty fifty chance of beating his SR. When two of them do, he's down for the count. Game over. Then use disintegrate to CDG him. Total time: 1 round, to drop him. Two rounds until he's actually /dead/. Defensive buffs can be your traditional anti-dragon suite.
FireAge 03-04-06, 03:06 AM	Should be impossible unless you have a lousy DM. Let's assume a 20 cha. They'll have 6,7,7,7,6,4 spells. The dragon will have globe of invulnerability up, making sure all of your spells of 4th level or lower are useless. It's also a 19th level caster, which means he'll have mind blank up at all times. You can't beat his spell resistance, even with assay resistance, you'll lose 50% of your spells. Lower spell resistance won't work because of globe of invulnerability. The only way you can keep up to his air speed is if you use dimension door while holding each other, but that would group you together, meaning you would all die from a wail of the banshee, or similar effects. Anyway, best of luck to you if you still want to try.
Slyver 03-04-06, 03:08 AM	Well, any great wurn will have a spell resistance of 30-33, rather difficult for a 10th level sorcerer to get through, so any spells would require an automatic bypassing of SR. Also any great wurm worth his salt will have contingency spells set up to insure a lack of death and or absolute defeat (they have been around a long ass time for a reason). They have a fear DC in the high 30-low 40s range, another thing difficult to overcome. They will very likely know you are coming before you know they exist. Hmm, what else... Their worst save is going to be reflex which will be a minimum of 20, which is rediculous for a 10th level caster to have any reasonable faith in being able to beat. We won't discuss their combat abilites, supernatural and spell like abilties, 500+ hps, or breath weapon as if it comes down to that the entire party better have already written their will's. As far as I can think of, their only weakness to that level of spellcaster is their low touch attack AC. I can't think of 4 fifth level arcane spells in any combination that will ignore SR and saving throws sufficiently to kill or otherwise incapacitate a 40ish HD creature. Sorry. There is a reason they are CR 25+. I may be completely wrong here, and I anxiously await being disproven, but I don't think it is possible within a resonable probability. Slyver P.S. Now if you asked for fighter type builds we might be able to talk.
FireAge 03-04-06, 03:10 AM	Off the top of my head ... Human Sorceror (Spellgifted trait: Necromancy) 1 Fortify Spell, Sudden Maximize 1 Spell Thematics 3 Storm Magic 9 Sudden Empower Cast Lesser Shivering Touch, sudden maximized and sudden empowered for 6+(.5*d6) dex damage. Use fortify spell to increase your CL by 8 (Casting it as a fifth level spell). Spell thematics and storm magic and spellgifted increase it by another 3. Meaning a CL of 21. You have a fifty fifty chance of beating his SR. When two of them do, he's down for the count. Game over. Then use disintegrate to CDG him. Total time: 1 round, to drop him. Two rounds until he's actually /dead/. Defensive buffs can be your traditional anti-dragon suite. Shivering touch? Good luck overcoming his globe of invulnerabiliy with that. Or his contingency: Someone tries to shiver me timbers -> Teleport outta here. Which all dragons with sufficient caster levels have had since the invention of this spell. Just like they used to have contingency: Someone tries to "harm" me in 3.0.
scrollreader 03-04-06, 03:12 AM	It does depend a great deal on the dragon. Assuming you're taking him by surprise, or he you, the tactic above works. If the dragon is at all optimized ... heh. Kiss the party goodbye. (I really like the antimagic-rapidstrike physical dragon, myself)
Ginyu549 03-04-06, 03:16 AM	Lets assume its a normal, non-optimized great wyrm. It will be hard enough like that.
Slyver 03-04-06, 03:19 AM	Shivering touch? Good luck overcoming his globe of invulnerabiliy with that. Or his contingency: Someone tries to shiver me timbers -> Teleport outta here. Which all dragons with sufficient caster levels have had since the invention of this spell. Just like they used to have contingency: Someone tries to "harm" me in 3.0. Hmm, heighten spell may take care of the globe. With 4 of them we actually have a reasonable chance of getting through the SR. Now we just have to worry about beating the 40 DC fear check, the contingency spells and the fact he knew you were coming. Slyver
FireAge 03-04-06, 03:23 AM	You don't get to become 1000+ years old without being optimized. And I'm not taking about "board optimized" here. But ok, let the TS decide which Great Wyrm (color etc), than we can talk ;) Besides he'll probably have a toe nail dagger with the spellblade enchantment: shivering touch on it :cheer:
Ginyu549 03-04-06, 03:32 AM	How about a black dragon, and as a party of four sorcerers you just know its a great wyrm, you don't know all it's feats and abilities, so you just have to plan as best you can. Assume that getting to the creature will be no problem and you should only be concerned about winning the combat.
Ginyu549 03-04-06, 03:53 AM	this may not be the place for this question, but since you all are here.... I always wondered if spells like MGOI even worked for dragons like this since their size is much larger than the area of the spell.
FireAge 03-04-06, 04:25 AM	Quote from SRD: Combat Gold dragons usually parley before fighting. When conversing with intelligent creatures, they use Intimidate and Sense Motive to gain the upper hand. In combat, they employ bless and their luck bonus; older dragons use their luck bonus at the start of each day. They make heavy use of spells in combat. Among their favorites are cloudkill, delayed blast fireball, fire shield, globe of invulnerability, maze, sleep, slow, and stinking cloud. It's a 6th level spell, so they need to be caster level 11, which they do not become until they are old. Which gives them a size of Gargantuan, which means they are 20 ft. , which means they fit. So this would mean they fit until they become wyrms. Hmm, so this was a line of argumentation leading nowhere :) We'll I guess it's up to the dm then, but I'd say yes.
Khan the Destroyer 03-04-06, 04:33 AM	Well, the Sorcerers can each take the Extra Spell feat to nab Unliving Weapon from Book of Vile Darkness. This feat has spell resistance and a Will saving throw, but it only applies to the undead creature that you target the spell with. The actual damage that creatures take when the undead creature explodes doesn't have a saving throw. Anyways, get some undead minions (maybe through a cohort) and start casting this spell on them. It will last for 10 hours. At caster level 10, the average damage is 15/skeleton. That means that for an average great wyrm black dragon, you would need about 35 skeletons with Unliving Weapon cast on them. Now, the average 10th level sorcerer gets 6 3rd level spells per day. That's already 24 castings of Unliving Weapon between the 4 of them. Versatile Caster from Races of Dragon allows a sorcerer to sacrifice two spell slots of the same level to cast a spell one level higher. So, they can each sacrifice their 6 2nd level spells per day for another 3 castings of Unliving Weapon. That's a total of 36. Now, the only hitch is getting the skeletons there. I'm not exactly sure how to do this. Maybe they can use a bag of holding, or the Shrink Item spell or something. Maybe tell the dragon they are presenting him with an undead army (though getting all 35 within 10 ft. would be tricky anyways). In any case, this damage bypasses the Globe of Invulnerability, the Spell Resistance, and the saving throw problem. We just need to figure out how to get the skeletons there and it should be a wrap. Don't forget that they have money to spend. I'll try to think of a way to implement this, when I'm not really tired. (This is all based on Ginyu's premise that the dragon is straight out of the book and not in an optimal position to defend itself. Otherwise, this would be a lot of wasted effort for the sorcerers :).)
Tleilaxu_Ghola 03-04-06, 04:53 AM	pffft. Dragons. Here's what ya need: a divine caster that's able to cast explosive runes (get it via) extra spell feat. Now you need to boost the crap out of your caster level. You can do this in the following way: +4 CL from prayer beads. +1 CL from primitive casting (adding material components,) +2 CL from frozen magic (casting in extreme cold) ----- Total 17 CL To beat the SR of a great wyrm red dragon you need to roll a 15 or higher (a 6/20 probability of success). Likewise to kill him you need to have 192d6 of damage on average. Let's make that 200d6 to be safe. This means you need 34 successful explosive runes, which means you should pack 114 explosive runes. Scribe these runes on pieces of newspaper and make a paper mache ball out of them. Somehow render the ball immune to fire. Then take the ball with you when you confront the dragon. Buy a contingent superior invisibility (contingent upon someone tickling you) and tickle yourself just before you walk in. Go up to the dragon (no way he will detect you) and activate an area dispel on yourself and the bomb. The resulting explosion will completely destroy you and the dragon. But that's ok because you have arranged a resurrection spell and bought a psychich chirurgery (to remove the negative level). Net effect: you blow up the dragon, but spend years preparing.
scrollreader 03-04-06, 04:59 AM	*wonders if there's a salient optimzation ability: ignore OP at will* I mean, really. 4 10th level sorcerors. No CoDzilla in this sandbox. :P
Slyver 03-04-06, 05:00 AM	So we have a dragon that has been killing would be adventurers since the time of Jesus Christ (relatively speaking) and in all that time he can be suprised by 4 low level sorcerers taking 9 rounds to remove 36 skeletons out of various bags of holding, glowing with recently cast spells? Umm, right. This is someone who eats breakfast with dieties. I don't care how you contrive it, if it works, it is because the DM wanted it to. No sane Dragon would allow it. Slyver
Slyver 03-04-06, 05:08 AM	pffft. Dragons. Here's what ya need: a divine caster that's able to cast explosive runes (get it via) extra spell feat. Now you need to boost the crap out of your caster level. You can do this in the following way: +4 CL from prayer beads. +1 CL from primitive casting (adding material components,) +2 CL from frozen magic (casting in extreme cold) ----- Total 17 CL To beat the SR of a great wyrm red dragon you need to roll a 15 or higher (a 6/20 probability of success). Likewise to kill him you need to have 192d6 of damage on average. Let's make that 200d6 to be safe. This means you need 34 successful explosive runes, which means you should pack 114 explosive runes. Scribe these runes on pieces of newspaper and make a paper mache ball out of them. Somehow render the ball immune to fire. Then take the ball with you when you confront the dragon. Buy a contingent superior invisibility (contingent upon someone tickling you) and tickle yourself just before you walk in. Go up to the dragon (no way he will detect you) and activate an area dispel on yourself and the bomb. The resulting explosion will completely destroy you and the dragon. But that's ok because you have arranged a resurrection spell and bought a psychich chirurgery (to remove the negative level). Net effect: you blow up the dragon, but spend years preparing. You know, this is brilliant, except it can't possibly work. It has been medically proven through countless experiments that it is impossible to tickle yourself. Sorry Slyver :)
Rashomon 03-04-06, 05:20 AM	So we have a dragon that has been killing would be adventurers since the time of Jesus Christ (relatively speaking) and in all that time he can be suprised by 4 low level sorcerers taking 9 rounds to remove 36 skeletons out of various bags of holding, glowing with recently cast spells? Umm, right. This is someone who eats breakfast with dieties. How don't care how you contive it, if it works, it is because the DM wanted it to. No sane Dragon would allow it. Slyver What happened to the diplomacy builds? Or the simple expedient of taunting the dragon into EATING you and THEN ramming the bag of holding into the portable hole up your sleeve?
runestar 03-04-06, 05:49 AM	Or perhaps your sorcs could all cast fabricate and use it over and over again to make infinite cash, then pay someone to planeshift you to union city where you can hire that assassin guild to take out the dragon for you? :P
lostone 03-05-06, 02:59 PM	Or the simple expedient of taunting the dragon into EATING you and THEN ramming the bag of holding into the portable hole up your sleeve?Well I assume the OP wants the group to survive the encounter. :D And the person being swallowed would go with the dragon to the astral plane and still have the problem of being in the dragon's belly. IIRC a Monk 6/Cancer Mage 1 that has has Festering anger for a couple years can drop the dragon in one hit. :D Give him Brutal Throw and a javelin in case the dragon is flying. Instead of Monk 6, Ranger 6 also works.