The breath weapon of a shadow dragon makes you lose 3/4 of your levels or 1/2 on a save.
The breath weapon of a shadow dragon makes you lose 3/4 of your levels or 1/2 on a save. They come back, but probably too late. My players are going to hate me.
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i love the bad grammar on Intelligence.
ReplyDeleteHow much does the dragon have?
Very.
Very intelligence.
That's old 1e, IIRC. "Very" meant 14-15 or something. Casey, is this that Rahab shadow dragon? I thought that was a unique monster!
ReplyDeletethis might be something from MMII that I just don't recall. Sigh. Age.
ReplyDeleteThis is the plain old Shadow Dragon from MMII. I'm going to change the stats to the ACKS equivalent, but I'm keeping the breath weapon.
ReplyDeleteAnd the rest of the intelligence descriptors work, but "very" is weird.
yeah they are things like "good" and "exceptional"
ReplyDeleteAnd since the majority of the party is 6th level and you always round down, a failed save means you've now got the HP, attacks, and spells of a 1st level character. The best they'll be is 3rd level. Delicious.
ReplyDeleteFuck level damage. Right in da ear.
ReplyDeleteI hear ya. I've kept it very rare because it is a dick move. They ran into some wights a couple times. Once they quickly killed them from range. The other, they fucking ran.
ReplyDeleteThis comes back in a few turns, but they won't know that. I'll just need to be aware of the slowdown caused by recalculation of rolls.
Losing levels is the worst thing ever. That's just instant character retirement for me. Just shred the sheet. It puts my character at such a disadvantage related to the rest of the party that it's not worth playing anymore.
ReplyDeleteIt makes me so happy this is still a divisive topic! Give in to your hate! This is what gamers should really be arguing about!
ReplyDeleteI do rather love the sandboxy thing of having to actually consider the risks and rewards of a fight.
ReplyDeleteWhen I ran 13th Age, it was so carefully balanced against current party level that they always just shrugged and dove into the dogpile. After the third time it was just ... dumb not to my taste.
This is a sandbox encounter. The players decided to enter this forest on the map and check out this elven city. There happens to be a shadow dragon dwelling there. They could have gone many other directions. And there won’t be anything keeping them there. If they want to run, they can. Of course, the nature of the leakage from the Plane of Shadow might make that hard, but them’s the OSR breaks.
ReplyDeletePlaying this OSR type stuff has really made me look again at any D&D game that pushes having “balanced” encounters.
As much as I adored wandering around inside Skyrim for a few hundred hours, the perpetual balance of the game always struck me as weird and unsatisfying. The art changes but the threat stays the same. Eh.
ReplyDeleteOh, I'm not disputing the idea that they get what they deserve if they go up against the creature knowing the risks. D&D style gaming is far too often played by charging headlong with no regard for risk.
ReplyDeleteSome players probably love the challenge of level damage! They can have mine.
I'd say that temporary level drain is kind of the best of both worlds - the terror of "oh shit I just lost X, Y, and Z" with the knowledge that you don't have to cross out all the stuff on your character sheet quite just yet.
ReplyDeleteBookkeeping hassle, though.
as long as the dragon's going to be smart enough to negotiate with.
ReplyDeletei get frustrated when people make dragons stupid beasts.
If they offer, she'll think about it. But she's sneaky, so she'll probably be trying to pick them off.
ReplyDeleteI should add the other monsters in this location are strength draining Shadows. Who are not undead, and therefore cannot be turned.
ReplyDeleteThis place will be an exercise in confict avoidance.
My group always hated permanent level drain, so it was rare, and resulting in a lot of whining when it happened. I am totally good with balanced encounters and balanced groups, but under such circumstances, permanent level drain is REALLY SUCKY.
ReplyDeleteIt always struck me as odd that in 3e (and beyond? no idea), the developers took great pains to ensure that characters level at the same time. Then they threw it out the window by making the creation of magic stuff that had only temporary utility cost XP. Sigh!
ALSO, I feel like once you have bought into a "play balance" paradigm, it is shitty to then throw it out the window based on your whim. I was in a 3.5e game wherein the GM admitted he made no effort to balance encounters. Sadly, many of them were unavoidable unless we wanted to NOT try to save the world. That sucked.
Oh, yeah. If the rules describe balanced encounters, for the DM to not use them will quickly make things to easy, or result in a TPK. Especially if, as Paul Beakley said, the players feel they should be able to deal with the any challenge put in front of them.
ReplyDeleteIf your players are still your friends at the end of the game, you're GMing wrong.
ReplyDeleteGMs don't have friends.