Fighting Signature monsteres [Archive] - Wizards Community

Fighting Signature monsteres [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
LGMoses
12-03-06, 11:00 AM I don't want any spoilers but who all here has fought signature monsters such as Dragons and beholders and such? How common are they? How many people died? etc.

I'm especially interested in any war stories involving beholders? :D
Lomiat
12-03-06, 11:18 AM My wizard has fought one beholder and one dragon. No one died in those parties. He's 11th level, with 67 ARs, and didn't see either until roughly 10th level. My 11th level fighter has seen neither in his 56 ARs.

I ran a module that had a beholder at a higher APL than the one at which I played it, and at interactives, I've seen a number of dragons that my PCs didn't face (thankfully, as they were quite scary: Picture high-level PCs about to retire at 18th level in two or three mods working out how they're going to make their retreat...).
Randall Montgomery
12-03-06, 11:21 AM I personally have faced three beholders with my 11th level wizard, and have survived two disintigrate rays and two finger of death rays (not to mention grappling one with telekenisis). Our group's barbarian actually took the full brunt of a ray attack in one encounter, taking all ten rays and living to tell about it. As far as dragons, I can only remember facing one, from the now-retired Here there be Dragons (duh)! I expect that now that our group is playing APLs in the double-digits, they'll be more common.
Lupo
12-03-06, 11:42 AM I don't want any spoilers but who all here has fought signature monsters such as Dragons and beholders and such? How common are they? How many people died? etc.

I'm especially interested in any war stories involving beholders? :D

one beholder

two dragons, one in the same module as the beholder, one the most silly calculated EL encounter, the famous dust module where the EL was adjusted UP two levels because the players had the "advantage" to be strapped on griffons, without control over the mounts, who were 95% sure to fail their initial dragon-fear save . . . . . the griffon's riders were way better, their chance of failing the save was ONLY 75%. we lost three griffons and one rider in the encounter, but only because we had a fairly strong party for the APL.

about three or four half-dragon templated monsters.

ciao

martin m.
DuctShuiTengu
12-03-06, 02:05 PM 1 Beholder, 2 Gauths

3 Dragons (2 Red and a White)

1 Dragon Skeleton

EDIT: 2 Dragon Zombies

I think 3 Illithids (not sure if those count)

And... I believe 5 demons and 2 Devils

EDIT: Correction, a lot more evil outsiders than that. Just remembered All Roads Lead to Rauxes, which had more than that by itself.

the famous dust module where the EL was adjusted UP two levels because the players had the "advantage" to be strapped on griffons, without control over the mounts, who were 95% sure to fail their initial dragon-fear save . . . . . the griffon's riders were way better, their chance of failing the save was ONLY 75%. we lost three griffons and one rider in the encounter, but only because we had a fairly strong party for the APL.

Yep, that'd be the one White Dragon we faced. We were lucky enough to be able to get relatively close to the ground before abandoning the gryphons. Managed to heal back up while the dragon chased down the gryphons, then tricked it into chasing us over to the edge of the cliff where the druid proceeded to use stoneshape to drop part of the mountain on him. We were barely able to hack the dragon to bits once it was pinned there and couldn't just strafe the party with its breath weapon. Though we were playing up slightly anyway (our table was a solid 7, we chose to play up to 8, and the DM calculated (I haven't done the math to check this) that the Gryphons pushed us up enough to get the APL 10 version of that encounter)
jstorrie
12-03-06, 03:26 PM One mind flayer at APL 2.

One beholder and two mind flayers at APL 6.

Oh, Zeif.
copper_wyrmling
12-03-06, 04:02 PM Hmmm, dragons and beholders...

My cleric has fought three beholders in Perrenland regionals, and two in Iuz metaregionals. We had one PC turned to stone in one of those encounters, but apart from removing him from the rest of that combat, it wasn't a big deal, as we had the necessary magic to restore him. I don't really enjoy fighting beholders: natural flight and massive range on their darkvision and their rays leads to annoying and drawn-out combats if they've got a big enough area to work in. (I remember the 200ft-high cavern inserted to give them plenty of room to move... it would've made more sense if we'd been more than 100ft below the surface *grumbles*).

In my experience, the best strategy for killing beholders is usually just a load of direct damage. Their Ref saves and touch AC are low, they have no SR and no energy resistance - if you're playing an arcane, just get out of the AMF (carry an everburning torch or something so it's obvious when the magic switches back on), blast them from range, then (if they survive) drop prone as a free action and hope they roll poorly on the rays. That's what my sorcerer did on the one occasion she encountered a beholder, and it worked rather well - it went down in one round from the scorching ray volleys.

As for dragons, my L15 cleric recently fought her first one (it wasn't a MM dragon, it had a force breath weapon). My fighter encountered some medium black dragons at APL 4. My sorcerer has fought a bunch, including:
- Young adult red dragon
- Huge white dragon (not sure of age category)
- Ghostly medium blue dragon
- Skeletal large white dragon
- Red, white, blue, green and black large zombie dragons
She is also on friendly terms with a ghostly copper dragon, a gold dragon, and a red dragon.
retro
12-04-06, 12:18 AM one the most silly calculated EL encounter, the famous dust module where the EL was adjusted UP two levels because the players had the "advantage" to be strapped on griffons,
Oh, yeah. My cleric, with no ranks in Ride or Handle Animal, copped the dragon's breath while strapped to the griffon's back. He had to make the ride check to land the badly-injured griffon from behind the frozen corpse of the griffon-rider. Luckiest nat 20 I ever rolled...
Seriously, there have been a few dragons- my favorite was either the white in Hanging Glacier, or the red in a current Iuz metaregional with a fairly... unique...favour. Eh, copper_wyrmling?
One beholder, in another Iuz- we all hid behind a smokestick, and nailed it with direct-damage spells. But we were TPKed by gauths, another time.
Japangirl
12-04-06, 03:44 PM I have fought a few white dragons, two beholders, and one gauth (sp? It's a baby beholder, basically). This is on a character with 60something ARs. The most common monsters I've seen are demons and undead, but that's a function of the region I play in.
wooti
12-05-06, 08:50 AM I've fought many many gauths (even died to one (well really it was my fellow adventure's fireball that killed me, but the gauth took down all my buffs)). Only one Beholder, atleast one the gauth was a beholder at higher apls. I've found a few dragons, about the right number. I think dragons should be a rare and scary things and thus should be used sparingly and as the climax of an adventure or series. In general I'd say this is how they are used in LG.
The_Jester
12-05-06, 01:02 PM Do Rust Monsters or Illithids count?
solbergb
12-05-06, 04:34 PM I don't want any spoilers but who all here has fought signature monsters such as Dragons and beholders and such? How common are they? How many people died? etc.

I'm especially interested in any war stories involving beholders? :D

My monk has fought a fiendish beholder on the fire elemental plane (well, sorta, he didn't contribute much in that fight) and was instrumental in the defeat of a "boss" beholder (core special BBEG) using abundant step to bring a melee-cleric and a rogue over, using Sun School Martial Arts to get a free attack after doing abundant step and grappling the beholder in place while they bashed on it.

Dragons....in his mid levels he grappled a pretty young green dragon into submission but around about level 11 he had his rear handed to him by a white dragon with some extra tricks in a core special. He's also fought a ghostly blue dragon, and was peripherally involved in the defeat of a ghostly green dragon. My sorceress worked for a fairly powerful red dragon, who would have eaten her due to a prior altercation with its half dragon children if her disguise had not held up. That was a rather tense adventure.

My other characters have not fought either, but two have fought Gaut's (spelling?) - the "little" beholders and one had to deal with an endless stream of gas spores in the middle of a climactic battle at the end of a story arc. One character fought several corporeal undead dragons of various sizes.

You get them from time to time, but they're fairly rare in my experience. Fiends are much, much more common.
Japangirl
12-05-06, 08:21 PM Ah yes the red dragon. I specifically avoided playing the mod involving the red dragon with my rogue who had previously beaten up his half-dragon kid.
trollbill
12-06-06, 01:35 PM My fighter encountered some medium black dragons at APL 4.

You, too, eh? My character fought those 2 at 2nd level, which might not have been so bad except he was the party tank. Fortunately, I had a pair of higher level clerics that were alternately hitting me with buffs and cures. Must have been breathed on at least 4 times.
Halworth
12-06-06, 03:18 PM 1 Dragon

2 Beholders

Knocked out for most of the dragon fight.
Turned to stone on the first round of the beholder fight.

Not to hijack you thread too badly, but.....I grappled the second beholder and I think the judge may have mishandeled it.

How would being grappled affect a beholder?

Pinned?
kenobi65
12-06-06, 03:42 PM In 27 ARs, I've never seen any dragons or beholders...but then, I'm just now starting to play APL 6, and I don't think my region (Verbobonc) is particuarly known for those beasties.

I've only seen one dragon, period, and that was in a module I ate (the now-retired core special Here There Be Dragons, which I think several others are referring to; IIRC, there's a dragon in it at every single APL).
Lomiat
12-06-06, 05:39 PM Not to hijack you thread too badly, but.....I grappled the second beholder and I think the judge may have mishandeled it.

How would being grappled affect a beholder?

Pinned?

I don't think it would do much to the Beholder. Beholders are naturally bouyant, meaning they don't have to actually do anything to fly, and they fire their eye rays as free actions, meaning they don't have to take attack actions to fire them. Both the picture and the text *suggest* (though they don't explicitly rule anything) that the eye stalks can move independently of the body, and, therefore, could turn and fire at a grappling opponent, provided the opponent has some part of his/her body on the part of the beholder the eye stalk could target (beholders are one of the few, if not the only, monster[s] which create "facing" rules). But, given that grappling rules put the grappler in every square the beholder is in, one would expect that the beholder would be free to fire every single eye ray at its grappling opponent.

In other words, unless I was in an antimagic field, I'd stay out of a grapple with a beholder....
solbergb
12-06-06, 08:29 PM Playing the red dragon mod after getting the emnity was due to vaguaries of convention mustering that let three tables form roughly balanced instead of a complete mess with several folks not being able to play. Fortunately stacking all the disguise cheese I could muster combined with distance modifiers to the dragon's spot check and a low die roll kept me from having to exit the module with a word of recall favor and leaving only my cohort to help the party.

Grappling beholders...there is variation, but iat a minimum it does stop it from moving (and thus spinning around to get all rays pointed in one direction during its turn...the XXX rays per arc matters) and sometimes (if you are enlarged) brings it down to earth. Locking the beholder into one position also fixes which way the anti-magic eye is pointing, which can have huge tactical implications.

There is also usually the following, but this is Judges just making rules up so YMMV

1. The rays can target the grappler but suffer the usual 50% chance to hit the beholder instead. This is especially funny when fighting two beholders, as the non-grappled beholder may cheerfully risk hitting his companion (CE and all) in order to remove the risk of getting grappled.

2. A pin can shut one "eye" of the grappler's choice, assuming he can identify which is which. (in my case I grabbed the disintegrate eye, since I'd just been targeted with it and it seemed the most likely to provide an escape for the beholder). From a flavor standpoint, consider gripping the stalk and pointing it right back at the beholder (so the only thing it can hit is itself). Normally pinned is very very hosed, but a beholder has so many stalks that barring something like being shapeshifted into a giant octopus, the judge has a lot of grounds to rule that you can't really get control of them.

Some DM's harm it more with the grapple. It isn't at all clear in general whether rays and similar non-weapon-missile attacks can be used in a grapple at all, or whether they can target folks outside of the grapple. The grapple rules imply that only melee attacks are possible, but the "grapple for gun" meme is cinematic and usually some kind of penalty or randomness to the result is what is ruled.
_m_
12-06-06, 10:27 PM no beholders as yet, but at least a dozen dragons.

im seem to recall my poor familiar getting power attacked and breathed on by 2 adult red dragons in 2 rounds...

2 miles above a city...

by itself...

and not dying :D
Randall Montgomery
12-06-06, 10:28 PM How would being grappled affect a beholder?
Pinned?

Well, in the situation where my Wizard grappled the beholder, it basically just denied him his Dex bonus so the rest of the party could close in and pound the snot out of him for a round. After that, the antimagic ray turned around and nullified my telekenisis spell and he was free to go, but it did what we wanted it to do. I've often wondered if I should've asked the DM if I could've used a grapple check to prevent him from moving his antimagic cone onto me, but at the time it was 11 PM, I was about 4 hours into a battle interactive, and high on Mountain Dew and adrenalin, so it just didn't occur to me.

To go back to the original topic, I've also ran across a few Gauths in my time, but darned if I can remember how many. We had one module where we encountered 4 of the things (APL 8), and afterwards the DM realized he'd made a mistake and there should've only been 1. That one hurt, but since no one actually died, we just shrugged and moved on.
LGMoses
12-06-06, 10:42 PM Man, I can't w8 till I get powerful enough to experience that kind of battle. The only thing keeping you going is the adrenaline and whatever caffiene you've imbibed recently.
Reska
12-06-06, 11:56 PM I've fought a dragon at APL 2....course, it was the special at WF.
Lupo
12-07-06, 01:01 AM Man, I can't w8 till I get powerful enough to experience that kind of battle. The only thing keeping you going is the adrenaline and whatever caffiene you've imbibed recently.

just wait till you fight thingies like this when you are NOT powerfull enough ;)

welcome to Living-Greyhawk :D

ciao

martin m.
Calinon
12-07-06, 05:55 AM After last nights session, I believe I'm up to two white dragons, two red dragons, a blue dragon, a pair of skeletal dragons, five zombie dragons and a two headed dracolich. No beholders though; just a few gauth.
Reylance
12-08-06, 09:45 AM Hmmm... three green dragon offspring of Sassy, lots of half-dragon spawn of Sassy (she gets around), the blue dragon of the moathouse, the dragon from War of the Dust, the ghost blue dragon, a red dragon in a core special, I think some undead dragons here and there, a white dragon and half-dragon, a dracolich, and there have probably been more I don't recall.

Beholders, I've run into a few times. Most recently, there was an adventure with three of them, and they were frustrated, unable to harm me with good saves, mettle, and prescient sense.
Britt
12-08-06, 12:04 PM Did noone else fight the shadow dragon at Gencon way back? That was fun. I think I fought at least a dozen or more dragons of different varieties: ghost, zombie, skeleton, red, blue, white, green, shadow, maybe others.

Beholders, I know I fought at least two in one combat and don't remember others.
SteveMND
12-19-06, 12:44 PM While my characters have encountered a handful of dragons (usually just young ones), I've only encountered one beholder so far. It was in a regional module, and unfortunately, it was perhaps the least impressive of the regional mods I've played. The entire mod seemed based around the one fight at the end, which led to a feeling where the authors probably said "Oh, here's a cool combat idea!" and just sorta cobbled a module around it.

I've kinda come to expect that sort of writing at the Core level of the campaign, but not so much at the regional level.;)
Bob_the_Theurge
12-19-06, 12:54 PM I don't want any spoilers but who all here has fought signature monsters such as Dragons and beholders and such? How common are they? How many people died? etc.

I'm especially interested in any war stories involving beholders? :D

In our region, there are three options.

Option 1: if the dragon is green, run like heck.

Option 2: if the dragon is kinda black and shadowy, run like heck, even faster.

Option 3 has suboptions, and involves the dragon being red.
Option 3a: if you are a male character or a female with less than 14 charisma, run.
Option 3b: if you are a female character with 14 or higher charisma, smile prettily and prepare to get asked for a date.

Oh, and try to avoid phrases like "Seriously, a delver, just how bored were you?"
CrystalBlue
12-19-06, 01:25 PM I remember I had to face two beholders. Well, face is a kind of subjective term. We played at APL 12 and had a level 8 Fighter/Barbarian/Other Stuff character with us. Second round, he killed the first beholder with a spiked chain...then cleaved and killed the second one. I believe the damage was around 56 per hit. Yes, my level 12 Cleric/Knight of the Holy Shielding now feels very inadequate next to him. I mean, we played an 8 hour adaptalbe mod...and we finished in 2.5 hours because he was there. But I guess that's the kind of characters that people are forced to make here in LaCrosse...thank you, Shieldlands and Highfolk. Thank you...
Lupo
12-19-06, 01:51 PM In our region, there are three options.

Option 1: if the dragon is green, run like heck.

Option 2: if the dragon is kinda black and shadowy, run like heck, even faster.

Option 3 has suboptions, and involves the dragon being red.
Option 3a: if you are a male character or a female with less than 14 charisma, run.
Option 3b: if you are a female character with 14 or higher charisma, smile prettily and prepare to get asked for a date.

Oh, and try to avoid phrases like "Seriously, a delver, just how bored were you?"

ok, but what direction???? :P

considering the numerous half-dragon templates on anything biological and even beyond - there was something strange about the last elementals i have encountered - i doubt that the dragons cut such a clear line at charisma 14 or take so much time to contemplate about gender issues :D

ciao

martin m.

ps: i would give a dragon a try, as long as my druid can enlarge his tiger and there is a clear path for a charge, maybe even with a "swift, fly" for the flying tiger trick.
Shieldhart91
12-19-06, 03:22 PM Four undead dragons at once at Level 2. But after running it, I realized why it wasn't that hard to kill them :P

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
LGMoses 12-03-06, 11:00 AM	I don't want any spoilers but who all here has fought signature monsters such as Dragons and beholders and such? How common are they? How many people died? etc. I'm especially interested in any war stories involving beholders? :D
Lomiat 12-03-06, 11:18 AM	My wizard has fought one beholder and one dragon. No one died in those parties. He's 11th level, with 67 ARs, and didn't see either until roughly 10th level. My 11th level fighter has seen neither in his 56 ARs. I ran a module that had a beholder at a higher APL than the one at which I played it, and at interactives, I've seen a number of dragons that my PCs didn't face (thankfully, as they were quite scary: Picture high-level PCs about to retire at 18th level in two or three mods working out how they're going to make their retreat...).
Randall Montgomery 12-03-06, 11:21 AM	I personally have faced three beholders with my 11th level wizard, and have survived two disintigrate rays and two finger of death rays (not to mention grappling one with telekenisis). Our group's barbarian actually took the full brunt of a ray attack in one encounter, taking all ten rays and living to tell about it. As far as dragons, I can only remember facing one, from the now-retired Here there be Dragons (duh)! I expect that now that our group is playing APLs in the double-digits, they'll be more common.
Lupo 12-03-06, 11:42 AM	I don't want any spoilers but who all here has fought signature monsters such as Dragons and beholders and such? How common are they? How many people died? etc. I'm especially interested in any war stories involving beholders? :D one beholder two dragons, one in the same module as the beholder, one the most silly calculated EL encounter, the famous dust module where the EL was adjusted UP two levels because the players had the "advantage" to be strapped on griffons, without control over the mounts, who were 95% sure to fail their initial dragon-fear save . . . . . the griffon's riders were way better, their chance of failing the save was ONLY 75%. we lost three griffons and one rider in the encounter, but only because we had a fairly strong party for the APL. about three or four half-dragon templated monsters. ciao martin m.
DuctShuiTengu 12-03-06, 02:05 PM	1 Beholder, 2 Gauths 3 Dragons (2 Red and a White) 1 Dragon Skeleton EDIT: 2 Dragon Zombies I think 3 Illithids (not sure if those count) And... I believe 5 demons and 2 Devils EDIT: Correction, a lot more evil outsiders than that. Just remembered All Roads Lead to Rauxes, which had more than that by itself. the famous dust module where the EL was adjusted UP two levels because the players had the "advantage" to be strapped on griffons, without control over the mounts, who were 95% sure to fail their initial dragon-fear save . . . . . the griffon's riders were way better, their chance of failing the save was ONLY 75%. we lost three griffons and one rider in the encounter, but only because we had a fairly strong party for the APL. Yep, that'd be the one White Dragon we faced. We were lucky enough to be able to get relatively close to the ground before abandoning the gryphons. Managed to heal back up while the dragon chased down the gryphons, then tricked it into chasing us over to the edge of the cliff where the druid proceeded to use stoneshape to drop part of the mountain on him. We were barely able to hack the dragon to bits once it was pinned there and couldn't just strafe the party with its breath weapon. Though we were playing up slightly anyway (our table was a solid 7, we chose to play up to 8, and the DM calculated (I haven't done the math to check this) that the Gryphons pushed us up enough to get the APL 10 version of that encounter)
jstorrie 12-03-06, 03:26 PM	One mind flayer at APL 2. One beholder and two mind flayers at APL 6. Oh, Zeif.
copper_wyrmling 12-03-06, 04:02 PM	Hmmm, dragons and beholders... My cleric has fought three beholders in Perrenland regionals, and two in Iuz metaregionals. We had one PC turned to stone in one of those encounters, but apart from removing him from the rest of that combat, it wasn't a big deal, as we had the necessary magic to restore him. I don't really enjoy fighting beholders: natural flight and massive range on their darkvision and their rays leads to annoying and drawn-out combats if they've got a big enough area to work in. (I remember the 200ft-high cavern inserted to give them plenty of room to move... it would've made more sense if we'd been more than 100ft below the surface grumbles). In my experience, the best strategy for killing beholders is usually just a load of direct damage. Their Ref saves and touch AC are low, they have no SR and no energy resistance - if you're playing an arcane, just get out of the AMF (carry an everburning torch or something so it's obvious when the magic switches back on), blast them from range, then (if they survive) drop prone as a free action and hope they roll poorly on the rays. That's what my sorcerer did on the one occasion she encountered a beholder, and it worked rather well - it went down in one round from the scorching ray volleys. As for dragons, my L15 cleric recently fought her first one (it wasn't a MM dragon, it had a force breath weapon). My fighter encountered some medium black dragons at APL 4. My sorcerer has fought a bunch, including: - Young adult red dragon - Huge white dragon (not sure of age category) - Ghostly medium blue dragon - Skeletal large white dragon - Red, white, blue, green and black large zombie dragons She is also on friendly terms with a ghostly copper dragon, a gold dragon, and a red dragon.
retro 12-04-06, 12:18 AM	one the most silly calculated EL encounter, the famous dust module where the EL was adjusted UP two levels because the players had the "advantage" to be strapped on griffons, Oh, yeah. My cleric, with no ranks in Ride or Handle Animal, copped the dragon's breath while strapped to the griffon's back. He had to make the ride check to land the badly-injured griffon from behind the frozen corpse of the griffon-rider. Luckiest nat 20 I ever rolled... Seriously, there have been a few dragons- my favorite was either the white in Hanging Glacier, or the red in a current Iuz metaregional with a fairly... unique...favour. Eh, copper_wyrmling? One beholder, in another Iuz- we all hid behind a smokestick, and nailed it with direct-damage spells. But we were TPKed by gauths, another time.
Japangirl 12-04-06, 03:44 PM	I have fought a few white dragons, two beholders, and one gauth (sp? It's a baby beholder, basically). This is on a character with 60something ARs. The most common monsters I've seen are demons and undead, but that's a function of the region I play in.
wooti 12-05-06, 08:50 AM	I've fought many many gauths (even died to one (well really it was my fellow adventure's fireball that killed me, but the gauth took down all my buffs)). Only one Beholder, atleast one the gauth was a beholder at higher apls. I've found a few dragons, about the right number. I think dragons should be a rare and scary things and thus should be used sparingly and as the climax of an adventure or series. In general I'd say this is how they are used in LG.
The_Jester 12-05-06, 01:02 PM	Do Rust Monsters or Illithids count?
solbergb 12-05-06, 04:34 PM	I don't want any spoilers but who all here has fought signature monsters such as Dragons and beholders and such? How common are they? How many people died? etc. I'm especially interested in any war stories involving beholders? :D My monk has fought a fiendish beholder on the fire elemental plane (well, sorta, he didn't contribute much in that fight) and was instrumental in the defeat of a "boss" beholder (core special BBEG) using abundant step to bring a melee-cleric and a rogue over, using Sun School Martial Arts to get a free attack after doing abundant step and grappling the beholder in place while they bashed on it. Dragons....in his mid levels he grappled a pretty young green dragon into submission but around about level 11 he had his rear handed to him by a white dragon with some extra tricks in a core special. He's also fought a ghostly blue dragon, and was peripherally involved in the defeat of a ghostly green dragon. My sorceress worked for a fairly powerful red dragon, who would have eaten her due to a prior altercation with its half dragon children if her disguise had not held up. That was a rather tense adventure. My other characters have not fought either, but two have fought Gaut's (spelling?) - the "little" beholders and one had to deal with an endless stream of gas spores in the middle of a climactic battle at the end of a story arc. One character fought several corporeal undead dragons of various sizes. You get them from time to time, but they're fairly rare in my experience. Fiends are much, much more common.
Japangirl 12-05-06, 08:21 PM	Ah yes the red dragon. I specifically avoided playing the mod involving the red dragon with my rogue who had previously beaten up his half-dragon kid.
trollbill 12-06-06, 01:35 PM	My fighter encountered some medium black dragons at APL 4. You, too, eh? My character fought those 2 at 2nd level, which might not have been so bad except he was the party tank. Fortunately, I had a pair of higher level clerics that were alternately hitting me with buffs and cures. Must have been breathed on at least 4 times.
Halworth 12-06-06, 03:18 PM	1 Dragon 2 Beholders Knocked out for most of the dragon fight. Turned to stone on the first round of the beholder fight. Not to hijack you thread too badly, but.....I grappled the second beholder and I think the judge may have mishandeled it. How would being grappled affect a beholder? Pinned?
kenobi65 12-06-06, 03:42 PM	In 27 ARs, I've never seen any dragons or beholders...but then, I'm just now starting to play APL 6, and I don't think my region (Verbobonc) is particuarly known for those beasties. I've only seen one dragon, period, and that was in a module I ate (the now-retired core special Here There Be Dragons, which I think several others are referring to; IIRC, there's a dragon in it at every single APL).
Lomiat 12-06-06, 05:39 PM	Not to hijack you thread too badly, but.....I grappled the second beholder and I think the judge may have mishandeled it. How would being grappled affect a beholder? Pinned? I don't think it would do much to the Beholder. Beholders are naturally bouyant, meaning they don't have to actually do anything to fly, and they fire their eye rays as free actions, meaning they don't have to take attack actions to fire them. Both the picture and the text suggest (though they don't explicitly rule anything) that the eye stalks can move independently of the body, and, therefore, could turn and fire at a grappling opponent, provided the opponent has some part of his/her body on the part of the beholder the eye stalk could target (beholders are one of the few, if not the only, monster[s] which create "facing" rules). But, given that grappling rules put the grappler in every square the beholder is in, one would expect that the beholder would be free to fire every single eye ray at its grappling opponent. In other words, unless I was in an antimagic field, I'd stay out of a grapple with a beholder....
solbergb 12-06-06, 08:29 PM	Playing the red dragon mod after getting the emnity was due to vaguaries of convention mustering that let three tables form roughly balanced instead of a complete mess with several folks not being able to play. Fortunately stacking all the disguise cheese I could muster combined with distance modifiers to the dragon's spot check and a low die roll kept me from having to exit the module with a word of recall favor and leaving only my cohort to help the party. Grappling beholders...there is variation, but iat a minimum it does stop it from moving (and thus spinning around to get all rays pointed in one direction during its turn...the XXX rays per arc matters) and sometimes (if you are enlarged) brings it down to earth. Locking the beholder into one position also fixes which way the anti-magic eye is pointing, which can have huge tactical implications. There is also usually the following, but this is Judges just making rules up so YMMV 1. The rays can target the grappler but suffer the usual 50% chance to hit the beholder instead. This is especially funny when fighting two beholders, as the non-grappled beholder may cheerfully risk hitting his companion (CE and all) in order to remove the risk of getting grappled. 2. A pin can shut one "eye" of the grappler's choice, assuming he can identify which is which. (in my case I grabbed the disintegrate eye, since I'd just been targeted with it and it seemed the most likely to provide an escape for the beholder). From a flavor standpoint, consider gripping the stalk and pointing it right back at the beholder (so the only thing it can hit is itself). Normally pinned is very very hosed, but a beholder has so many stalks that barring something like being shapeshifted into a giant octopus, the judge has a lot of grounds to rule that you can't really get control of them. Some DM's harm it more with the grapple. It isn't at all clear in general whether rays and similar non-weapon-missile attacks can be used in a grapple at all, or whether they can target folks outside of the grapple. The grapple rules imply that only melee attacks are possible, but the "grapple for gun" meme is cinematic and usually some kind of penalty or randomness to the result is what is ruled.
_m_ 12-06-06, 10:27 PM	no beholders as yet, but at least a dozen dragons. im seem to recall my poor familiar getting power attacked and breathed on by 2 adult red dragons in 2 rounds... 2 miles above a city... by itself... and not dying :D
Randall Montgomery 12-06-06, 10:28 PM	How would being grappled affect a beholder? Pinned? Well, in the situation where my Wizard grappled the beholder, it basically just denied him his Dex bonus so the rest of the party could close in and pound the snot out of him for a round. After that, the antimagic ray turned around and nullified my telekenisis spell and he was free to go, but it did what we wanted it to do. I've often wondered if I should've asked the DM if I could've used a grapple check to prevent him from moving his antimagic cone onto me, but at the time it was 11 PM, I was about 4 hours into a battle interactive, and high on Mountain Dew and adrenalin, so it just didn't occur to me. To go back to the original topic, I've also ran across a few Gauths in my time, but darned if I can remember how many. We had one module where we encountered 4 of the things (APL 8), and afterwards the DM realized he'd made a mistake and there should've only been 1. That one hurt, but since no one actually died, we just shrugged and moved on.
LGMoses 12-06-06, 10:42 PM	Man, I can't w8 till I get powerful enough to experience that kind of battle. The only thing keeping you going is the adrenaline and whatever caffiene you've imbibed recently.
Reska 12-06-06, 11:56 PM	I've fought a dragon at APL 2....course, it was the special at WF.
Lupo 12-07-06, 01:01 AM	Man, I can't w8 till I get powerful enough to experience that kind of battle. The only thing keeping you going is the adrenaline and whatever caffiene you've imbibed recently. just wait till you fight thingies like this when you are NOT powerfull enough ;) welcome to Living-Greyhawk :D ciao martin m.
Calinon 12-07-06, 05:55 AM	After last nights session, I believe I'm up to two white dragons, two red dragons, a blue dragon, a pair of skeletal dragons, five zombie dragons and a two headed dracolich. No beholders though; just a few gauth.
Reylance 12-08-06, 09:45 AM	Hmmm... three green dragon offspring of Sassy, lots of half-dragon spawn of Sassy (she gets around), the blue dragon of the moathouse, the dragon from War of the Dust, the ghost blue dragon, a red dragon in a core special, I think some undead dragons here and there, a white dragon and half-dragon, a dracolich, and there have probably been more I don't recall. Beholders, I've run into a few times. Most recently, there was an adventure with three of them, and they were frustrated, unable to harm me with good saves, mettle, and prescient sense.
Britt 12-08-06, 12:04 PM	Did noone else fight the shadow dragon at Gencon way back? That was fun. I think I fought at least a dozen or more dragons of different varieties: ghost, zombie, skeleton, red, blue, white, green, shadow, maybe others. Beholders, I know I fought at least two in one combat and don't remember others.
SteveMND 12-19-06, 12:44 PM	While my characters have encountered a handful of dragons (usually just young ones), I've only encountered one beholder so far. It was in a regional module, and unfortunately, it was perhaps the least impressive of the regional mods I've played. The entire mod seemed based around the one fight at the end, which led to a feeling where the authors probably said "Oh, here's a cool combat idea!" and just sorta cobbled a module around it. I've kinda come to expect that sort of writing at the Core level of the campaign, but not so much at the regional level.;)
Bob_the_Theurge 12-19-06, 12:54 PM	I don't want any spoilers but who all here has fought signature monsters such as Dragons and beholders and such? How common are they? How many people died? etc. I'm especially interested in any war stories involving beholders? :D In our region, there are three options. Option 1: if the dragon is green, run like heck. Option 2: if the dragon is kinda black and shadowy, run like heck, even faster. Option 3 has suboptions, and involves the dragon being red. Option 3a: if you are a male character or a female with less than 14 charisma, run. Option 3b: if you are a female character with 14 or higher charisma, smile prettily and prepare to get asked for a date. Oh, and try to avoid phrases like "Seriously, a delver, just how bored were you?"
CrystalBlue 12-19-06, 01:25 PM	I remember I had to face two beholders. Well, face is a kind of subjective term. We played at APL 12 and had a level 8 Fighter/Barbarian/Other Stuff character with us. Second round, he killed the first beholder with a spiked chain...then cleaved and killed the second one. I believe the damage was around 56 per hit. Yes, my level 12 Cleric/Knight of the Holy Shielding now feels very inadequate next to him. I mean, we played an 8 hour adaptalbe mod...and we finished in 2.5 hours because he was there. But I guess that's the kind of characters that people are forced to make here in LaCrosse...thank you, Shieldlands and Highfolk. Thank you...
Lupo 12-19-06, 01:51 PM	In our region, there are three options. Option 1: if the dragon is green, run like heck. Option 2: if the dragon is kinda black and shadowy, run like heck, even faster. Option 3 has suboptions, and involves the dragon being red. Option 3a: if you are a male character or a female with less than 14 charisma, run. Option 3b: if you are a female character with 14 or higher charisma, smile prettily and prepare to get asked for a date. Oh, and try to avoid phrases like "Seriously, a delver, just how bored were you?" ok, but what direction???? :P considering the numerous half-dragon templates on anything biological and even beyond - there was something strange about the last elementals i have encountered - i doubt that the dragons cut such a clear line at charisma 14 or take so much time to contemplate about gender issues :D ciao martin m. ps: i would give a dragon a try, as long as my druid can enlarge his tiger and there is a clear path for a charge, maybe even with a "swift, fly" for the flying tiger trick.
Shieldhart91 12-19-06, 03:22 PM	Four undead dragons at once at Level 2. But after running it, I realized why it wasn't that hard to kill them :P