Stat an icrpg dragon


#1

I was wondering how tough a dragon should be in my game, like how many hearts is too many in your opinions? 6?
I have been looking at the monster tiers in MASTER EDITION on p145 but i thought it would be more fun to ask how you would stat an adult dragon in your games (hearts, abilities etc)?

Not that we’re aiming for balance but incase it is important to you, just say that you have 4 players each with a heart stone and few pieces of loot and a milestone.


#2

I came up with this, tried to do it as quick as possible to just see what my gut said.
Adult Red dragon:
:heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart:
+6 stats
+3 effort
2 actions
D6
1: claws: magic effort
2: teeth: magic effort and DEX to avoid being stuck in jaws (take d6 damage at end of every turn until STR to break free)
3: tail slam: hits all near, magic effort. DEF to take half.
4:mighty roar: all within FAR roll CHA or next turn any action is HARD due to fear.
5:Fly: if possible fly into sky for a round and heal magic effort
6:Fire breath: huge cone of flames engulfs the area, take ULTIMATE damage, DEX to take half.


#3

Looks good!

For boss fights with a single enemy I personally like to give the boss 1 action but it gets a turn after each of the PC’s turns

PC1 > Dragon > PC2 > Dragon > PC3 > Dragon > PC4 > Dragon > PC1

Still do timers on the GM’s turn


#4

Oooo that’s very nice


#5

So the boss gets the opportunity to act after every single player, with its single action? Pretty cool, I think you’ve just made the simplest fix to make boss battles more dynamic!

What about legendary or lair actions, however? And what if the boss has multiple actions?


#6

My 2 cents – it’s a dragon! Players are what? A pebble in comparison to its front claw? I just bought an adventure on the DMsGuild for like $2

I recommend it because the final fight is a great example on how to run a beast of legend. Don’t stat pad health or damage. Make it play like a freakin DRAGON!

I really like the creator’s work. Spoiler alert – the adventure ends with a giant. He writes “If Bonecrusher decides to attack… make an attack roll but don’t deal damage; assume the PC immediately drops to 0 health and begin death saves.”

He fills the encounter with other NPC options to support the players but to also allow the DM awe-inspiring destruction that doesn’t actually hurt the players. There are farmers with spears, hunters with bows, and a possible recruited hero of legend to help the party. All of them are expendable to increase the fear over facing such a huge enemy.

In your concept I picture a side kick NPC the players have come to love walking up to the mouth of a cave and saying, “Is that a…” And then SPLAT! Dragon. Instantly dead. Players have dropped jaws.

“Roll initiative.”

The Dragon hits for 1 HEART of effort and instantly destroys all your worn armor
Its breath EVAPORATES whatever is dumb enough to get in its path
The target number is an 18 but the dragon’s scales are so thick it only takes 1 damage when hit

Now add the TREAT – a BALLISTA with a dwarven forged dragon killing spear
Kills if it hits on a NAT 20; otherwise does 2 HEARTS
Takes D4 rounds to reload and there are only 3 ARROWS

Players have to actually bait the dragon away from the ballista to keep it from being destroyed
And yes – it’s like the Hobbit; but so what?
That movie rocked and people want to play that scene

Durathrax in ICRPG MAGIC is also a great example of a dragon: there is a D12 roll chart describing what she does on her turn and most of them produce straight death to a party :slight_smile:


#7

And I’ll tell you what – I faced off against Durathrax with B at the helm during the magic play testing. Not a single one of us dared to raise a hand against her. I escaped by portal jumping between different planes of existence to bring word to the next group who had to fight her which were the ‘A team’ of power leveled mages cranked up to 11 with everything they could grab from the MAGIC book to really test out the system mechanics.

But I knew my dwarf was not that person; I knew when you see a dragon, you do your best to play nice and then skedaddle before she changes her mind. As a player it wasn’t the combat that stuck with me – it was the fear of something that could devour me and the fact that I managed to survive.

Make them fear your dragon. Don’t make it a future mantle on their wall…


#8

Um, what’s the goal?!?!?

There is an aspect of ICRPG that I found was really important. The GM is playing a different game than the players are playing.

So for you… is this an ending? A beginning of the next chapter? The ultimate triumph? A 50/50 battle?

In my view a dragon should be the ultimate existential threat!!! All you are, all you value, all you hope for is at risk.

I will propose a concept. If you search the forum for 2 heart dragon you might find something a bit more explanatory.

But new concept: 2 hearts: more than 4 damage does 0, but forces retreat.
Breath attack is D12.
Claw/bite attack is D12
Breath is only available if even HP.
Breath attack is d12 cone/ball AoE until Party brings down.
D4 recoup health if not damaged this round.

If dragon is not restrained, it can rain death on anyone. It recoups d4 every round it is not damaged.
Breath attack can only hit 2 characters at a time…do not explain unless required then stick to explanation. Nearness, tail and claw, bite and claw, random cover.

You might say, oh my characters do d20 a round…it’s armor ignores that…this is at least a 5 attack kill….but any attack effort over 4…heals an older wound, knocks out a tooth, scale, wing point. Might lessen D12 to d8…decide if that is claw, tale, breath…all.

In reality you have a 5+ hit creature that damages 2+ characters per round for a lot conceptually.

But ultimately has only 20 hit points. You get to go wild on the why,…larger scales grow to fill the wound area, it reflects off, a scale cracks…but cognitively it’s only 20 HP that you are tracking. And +d4 every round.

This is truly a GM playing a different game than the Players. Even if the TN ( Target Number) is 12….with 18 defensive to changes.
So polymorph is only effective at 18….4 damage is key.

As GM your description is at the center of this, and your dragon may seem to have 2000 HP…it only has 20HP, max damage to it per attack is 4 HP, max recoup is D4 per round. It can go down in 1 round with 5 players, or last 1000 rounds….it’s an effing DRAGON!!!


#9

That’s really interesting, I will go and have a look at that.
I don’t really have a need in my game for one right now I just wondered.

The closest thing I did was my son and his friend wanted to play so I ran a quick session where they had to get to a black dragons lair and retrieve something. I used timers to make them :poop: themselves and they ran out with just the one thing they needed and didn’t want to risk anything else. Afterwards I wondered what I would of done if the dragon came home and they had to “fight”(more likely die) it.

I am so glad I asked because some of these ideas are gold!


#10

I suppose its like Smaug isn’t it. He just turns up to a Dwarf stronghold/city/fortress whatever you call it. And just evicts them pronto. No fuss, no challenge. I want, I take. Get in the way? Die.


#11

It is super cool that you brought it up since I am literally in the middle of looking at the adventure I shared and thought it was really unique how the creator decided to go all “Stats? Who needs stats!” And uses more of an action economy which I became a fan of after ICRPG Vigilante City came out. The way villains have multiple options on what they do is super slick.

The author of Giantslayer does reference the monster manual page number for the giant but mechanically it plays like a smashing massive giant. I agree with Paxx as well – often the bigger monsters do best when you pair them with an environment or a ‘room’ since they are the last thing in the quest line.

Unless they aren’t – I like in Icespire Peek how the adventure includes random sightings of the white dragon and can possibly include the dragon being where the player’s decide to go next.


#12

A 16 HP Dragon, a blog article by Sage LaTorra

A 16 HP Dragon | LaTorra.org

We’ve all played ages of video games and ‘classic’ RPGs (with the classic fantasy tropes) where we’re taught that fighting the monster is a matter of just doing enough papercuts that it falls down while living long enough to do so (the WoW or Final Fantasy model).

But in Tolkien Smaug wasted a village, killed thousands, but was killed by a single arrow placed correctly in a missing scale.

Think of these fights more in terms of literature and pacing instead of the classic ‘they have X hp and we have to swing Y times with Q hits to drop it’. The problem in this context is that there is no accounting for fiction, this is a mechanical solution (a simulation) of a sword doing consistent damage, and scaling monster HP to allow for the same tool (swing) to be applied to every problem (monster).

I had this problem. I did a quadruple take when I read that a DRAGON has 16 hit points (a level 1 ranger can do that on a max damage roll). However let me describe a fight to you and maybe this will give you the ‘inkling’ of what’s happening.

So the party needed a magic item, and they researched and found that a hero wielding said item was slain by a dragon. They get some info from a different dragon’s drake-in-human-form servant, and go and steal said item. Remember, magic in this world doesn’t mean ‘magic’ in the +’s sense, but this spear can pierce souls and is thus necessary to defeat a sorcerer king. Ok, so we have a very angry dragon about to attack something. 16 hp again - ready?

The party is riding back into town ready for a nice hot bath, some resupplies (their rations were running low), and a re-focus on hunting down the sorcerer king. The moon goes out for a second, they feel the wind shift, and then something lands on city hall with a massive crack. They have a few seconds to blink before they see a serpentine head snake down and shred a guardsman in mail in a single hit (announce future badness, this is the ‘messy’ tag). They kick up the speed and head towards town. I plop down paper, and quickly draw some snaking streets, sketch out some boxy houses, plop down a big die to represent the dragon. As they’re about to walk in, I pick up a handful of red tokens, and describe the inhalation they feel from this far, and the words in dragon-speech, and basically drop a pile of red on town and explain it’s on fire and how the flames themselves are being shaped and commanded by the dragon.

Their horses freak. They manage to get off (a few taking some damage from a panicked horse running and one being hit by a branch). They start advancing through this hellish landscape, where an inconsistent shadow would swoop down and split someone in half, and people burning to death beg for mercy and help while holding swaddled children turning to ash in their arms.

The group starts to help the townsfolk (this is not a magical node, so the wizard can’t just ritual up some rain) when a building shatters with the landing of a 4-5 ton creature, and it opens up its pipes, it’s golden eyes burning and it’s metal hide resonates with a roar (terrifying).

Their charges scatter, the PC’s have to defy their own terror to attack the thing. They do negligible damage (yay 4 armor) for those that DO anything, and realize that the only person who has a shot at killing this is the armor-penetrating wizard spells. Unfortunately, so does the dragon.

What ensues is horrific. One fighter takes up defensive position, when the dragon strikes it doesn’t just do 1d10+5 damage, it rips off his arm (messy remember?) and shreds mail like tissue paper. It does breath weapon attacks that cause ALL of them to defy danger or burn.

The party breaks and runs. The dragon laughs and settles to ash the village and eat any survivors.

The Dragon had 16 hit points. The party did 9 to it before they left. And when I said left, I mean they ran like rabbits into the night with few provisions, no easy means of recovering them, and no thoughts in their heads other than survival.

The moral of the story is it’s not about the hitpoints. In my 4e game the party had a dozen dragon kills under their belt. The dragons were mechanically threatening, they were tricksy, they were tactical, but their claws and teeth didn’t do damage, they did numbers. After this session they explained that they had never been so scared of a monster.

Make the fights epic. Use the fiction. Describe their skin curling black from fire. The bones shattering from the unyielding stone grasp of the earth elemental. Most fights clean up the fiction by saying you take 5 damage. Make it stick, make it hard to heal, make them scarred and battle hardened having earned every mark, and every wound a story.

You don’t need 2500 hp to make a fight scary or hard.
~Sage Latorra

Game On! ~ Ezzerharden


#13

Give the dragon 4 HP, but any hit that does below 12 damage is ignored, and any damaging attack inflicts 1 HP of damage maximum. Then every attack it lands automatically reduces the PC to 0 HP, and destroys 1 random item.

The interesting thing about battling a giant creature like a dragon isn’t in grinding through its many, many hit points; it’s figuring out how to harm it at all.