Vassal of Bahamut

[Kelb_Panthera]

So here's the deal: I want to get into vassal of bahamut (BoED) on-time. The catch is that one of the requirements is to solo a juvenile red dragon (CR10). How can this be done on a melee chassis with minimal/no cheese. No flaws, bonus points for paladin entry.

Here's the full requirements:

Requirements

Base Attack Bonus: +7

Alignment: Lawful good

Skills: Craft (armorsmithing) 5 ranks , Diplomacy 5 ranks

Feats: Sacred Vow , Vow of Obedience

Special: The character must have single-handedly slain a juvenile (or older) red dragon


Edit: Include race and gear per WBL. I'm reasonably confident it can't be done by class alone.

[Troacctid]

What about the old standby, shivering touch? Juvenile red dragons only have 10 Dexterity and 9 touch AC, with no spell resistance.

[Thurbane]

^ Shivering Touch is a decent option. Problem is, VoB isn't a great PrC to enter as a caster. So maybe try to get it as an SLA, or in a spell-storing weapon?

As I mentioned in the IC thread, Arrows of Slaying? If you don't want to be an archer, you can stab with arrows at a -4 penalty. Pretty risky though.

[Troacctid]

^ Shivering Touch is a decent option. Problem is, VoB isn't a great PrC to enter as a caster. So maybe try to get it as an SLA, or in a spell-storing weapon?

I'd be inclined to use a wand. Arcane Schooling feat lets you bypass the UMD check.

[Nifft]

I'd be inclined to use a wand. Arcane Schooling feat lets you bypass the UMD check.

Yeah, I'd do this with UMD and a wand or three.

The other thing is that you need to stay full-BAB to get into VoB "on time" at BAB +7.

From the Alternative Ways to Get Class Skills thread, I see:

Academy Graduate feat (Savage Tide Player's Guide, p10) lets you have any 3 cha or int-based skills

UMD is Cha-based, so grab that and two more Cha skills.

[Kelb_Panthera]

What about the old standby, shivering touch? Juvenile red dragons only have 10 Dexterity and 9 touch AC, with no spell resistance.

That spell is already an adjudication nightmare just cast normally. Trying to figure out how it interacts with becoming an item makes my head hurt just thinking about it. Then there's activating the item.

Got anything else?

[Venger]

What about the old standby, shivering touch? Juvenile red dragons only have 10 Dexterity and 9 touch AC, with no spell resistance.

Shivering touch is always the right answer.

While arcane schooling is a good trick, you've now spent all your feats assuming nonhuman and on-time entry, so that'll be kind of a pain in the butt for later on once you're in the class. You don't have any power attack or anything, and even if you've got another slot left open for human, the taxes for this class really hurt.

You might dip some arrows in dex damaging ravages, since your gm may hold you to an exalted code of conduct and disallow poisons not called ravages. If not, then any dex poison will work too, under the same principle that like with arrows of slaying, he'll roll a 1 eventually. I hope your character is also good at hiding/kiting.

Yeah, I'd do this with UMD and a wand or three.

The other thing is that you need to stay full-BAB to get into VoB "on time" at BAB +7.

From the Alternative Ways to Get Class Skills thread, I see:


UMD is Cha-based, so grab that and two more Cha skills.

Good suggestion, but unfortunately this is for iron chef, so no pathfinder.

That spell is already an adjudication nightmare just cast normally. Trying to figure out how it interacts with becoming an item makes my head hurt just thinking about it. Then there's activating the item.

Got anything else?

What are you talking about? You use the normal item creation rules.

[Troacctid]

Shivering touch is always the right answer.

While arcane schooling is a good trick, you've now spent all your feats assuming nonhuman and on-time entry, so that'll be kind of a pain in the butt for later on once you're in the class. You don't have any power attack or anything, and even if you've got another slot left open for human, the taxes for this class really hurt.

Eh, if you're trying to stick to full BAB for the first 7 levels, you might as well dip Fighter anyway. Not like you're getting much out of Paladin 7.

[Venger]

Eh, if you're trying to stick to full BAB for the first 7 levels, you might as well dip Fighter anyway. Not like you're getting much out of Paladin 7.

I assumed A-game, but you're right.

[Thurbane]

I'd be inclined to use a wand. Arcane Schooling feat lets you bypass the UMD check.

Huh, I was unaware of that feat. That's definitely a good one to keep in mind for a number of builds. Although I do find regional feats a bit irksome.

[Zaq]

Trying to think of ways to do this defensively rather than in a save-or-die nova (or an equivalent like Shivering Touch). Assuming that for some reason you can just go toe-to-toe with it for long enough to punch it to death, which is an incredibly stupid assumption to make for a whole lot of reasons. Like, a whole lot. But let's just play with the numbers.

You'll want immunity to fire and/or a buttload of fire resist, since the breath weapon deals 8d10, average 44. Not impossible to get by ECL 7, but not trivial, either. On non-breath rounds, you're looking at five attacks varying from (I think) 2d6 + 12 (bite gets 1.5 STR, right?) at + 24ish to hit down to 1d4 + 4 (wings get 0.5 STR, right?) at like +19ish to hit? I think? The numbers are not as straightforward as I'd like.

Interestingly enough, juvenile red dragons can't break DR/magic, unless there's something in the incredibly-obnoxiously-spread-out dragon section of MM1 saying that dragons' natural weapons always count as magical.

We're only allowed to use full BAB classes? That's all kinds of awful, because I actually think a properly built Incarnate can do a lot towards making themselves highly resistant to everything a juvenile red has access to (yes, yes, Incarnates can't be LG and therefore can't get into Vassal of Bahamut, but I'm brainstorming here). Astral Vambraces + Flame Cincture would do an awful lot towards blunting the effectiveness of the weapons if you've got enough essentia somehow, though there's no such thing as enough essentia.

How much of that can we fake with a Soulborn? Two flaws and azurin (or, if necessary, silverbrow human) seems like a necessary starting point. I mean, yes, Soulborn really is just that awful (at ECL 7, you naturally have one single meld and one single essentia, plus maybe two more from your class-granted bonus incarnum feats, which is beyond terrible). Hmm. Spend two flaws getting the Vassal feat taxes out of the way, and that leaves a total of three or four feats with which to gain extra melds, extra essentia, and actual offensive power. The essentia is the killer part. Oh, and Soulborns have lower essentia caps than Incarnates do, and we probably don't have the feat space for fixing that. I don't think we can fake this without cheese.

Is there a reliable method for a full-BAB character like this to get nontrivial DR, even DR/magic, by ECL 7? That'll really take the edge off if we're trying to do something other than one-shot it with a slaying arrow or with Shivering Touch.

What other save-or-lose effects can we cook up? Can we get a cower loop with Imperious Command and the Fearsome Armor (and whatever else is needed) set up by ECL 7? Dragons aren't actually immune to fear that isn't called Frightful Presence, right? That might work.

Red dragons have the [Fire] keyword. How much weapons-grade cheese would it take to get a Paladin to have access to the Fire domain and then to have enough juice to succeed at rebuking or commanding it? Once it's commanded, it's 100% at your mercy and can be CdG'd, I believe. Paladins are starting behind the 8-ball when it comes to turning, but as I said, I'm really just brainstorming.

How hard would it be for a Duskblade to get enough cold damage to statistically kill the dragon in fewer rounds than it would take the dragon to kill the Duskblade?

[Zaq]

Hmm. Hope this isn't a double post, but I think that this post is meaty enough to warrant not being a simple edit. What if we just throw a straight Crusader at the problem? You can have a 4th level maneuver at level 7. If you can get the dragon to fail a Fort save (read: you cannot do this), Overwhelming Mountain Strike will prevent it from full attacking, or Divine Surge is just pretty respectable +numbers, plus you've got your lower-level maneuvers as well. Crusader recovery mechanic means never taking a round off from using something cool, even if it's not likely to be the same cool thing every turn (let's leave the Idiot Crusader by the wayside). How much to-hit can we afford to toss into Stone Power each round? Gaining 10 THP a round and having Steely Resolve will make the healing strikes go a long way, especially if we can throw in a moderate amount of actual DR as well (azurin, Shape Soulmeld for the Astral Vambraces, and get one or two more essentia from a feat, perhaps?). Leave the fire resist to an item, I suppose, though I'm not sure how taxing that is on our budget. And I admit that getting enough bonus to hit every round with assorted nickel-and-dime penalties might be nontrivial when working alone.

As stated previously, assuming that you can just stand-and-bang with a juvenile red and wear it down through attrition is a problematic assumption in the first place (if for no other reason than that it can fly), but once again, it's kind of interesting to play with the numbers anyway.

Going in an entirely different direction, how many PA multipliers can we stack up by level 7 on, say, a Hood build? We may need to posit that we can engineer a way to jump down on the dragon (it's Large, which is very difficult for a Hood build to jump down on from ground level by just ECL 7, especially if we aren't allowed to lose a single point of BAB), but once you start stacking multipliers, the numbers do get pretty crazy. I'm not sure if Pounce can be on the table while staying LG the whole time, but still.

[Venger]

Trying to think of ways to do this defensively rather than in a save-or-die nova (or an equivalent like Shivering Touch). Assuming that for some reason you can just go toe-to-toe with it for long enough to punch it to death, which is an incredibly stupid assumption to make for a whole lot of reasons. Like, a whole lot. But let's just play with the numbers.

You'll want immunity to fire and/or a buttload of fire resist, since the breath weapon deals 8d10, average 44. Not impossible to get by ECL 7, but not trivial, either. On non-breath rounds, you're looking at five attacks varying from (I think) 2d6 + 12 (bite gets 1.5 STR, right?) at + 24ish to hit down to 1d4 + 4 (wings get 0.5 STR, right?) at like +19ish to hit? I think? The numbers are not as straightforward as I'd like.

I mean, sure you can weather his attacks, but that doesn't do anything to actually kill the dragon, which is a pretty serious issue.

I don't hate anything as much as dragons in this game.
Yes, bite gets 1.5 str like always. It's the primary for dragons, all the rest are secondary, so get 0.5.

juvenile red dragon has
1 bite +24 (2d6+13) avg 20
2 claws +19 (1d8+9) avg 27
2 wings +19 (1d8+9) avg 27
1 tail slap +19 (1d8+9) avg 13.5

so you get 6 attacks, dealing on average 87.5, which will straight up kill you at lvl 7, no matter what you are, and at +19 at worst, he's going to hit you.

Interestingly enough, juvenile red dragons can't break DR/magic, unless there's something in the incredibly-obnoxiously-spread-out dragon section of MM1 saying that dragons' natural weapons always count as magical.

There's not, but his str is so high, putting a dent even of 5 or 10 in there won't help that much.

Is there a reliable method for a full-BAB character like this to get nontrivial DR, even DR/magic, by ECL 7? That'll really take the edge off if we're trying to do something other than one-shot it with a slaying arrow or with Shivering Touch.

There's templates that give powers like that, but that's its own issue.

What other save-or-lose effects can we cook up? Can we get a cower loop with Imperious Command and the Fearsome Armor (and whatever else is needed) set up by ECL 7? Dragons aren't actually immune to fear that isn't called Frightful Presence, right? That might work.

Now we're a brute who's got to have a cha of 15? Juvenile red has no special resistance to fear.

Red dragons have the [Fire] keyword. How much weapons-grade cheese would it take to get a Paladin to have access to the Fire domain and then to have enough juice to succeed at rebuking or commanding it? Once it's commanded, it's 100% at your mercy and can be CdG'd, I believe. Paladins are starting behind the 8-ball when it comes to turning, but as I said, I'm really just brainstorming.

You need an effective rebuking level of 32 to command him, and since he's not undead, bagpipes of the damned don't work. I don't know if it's possible to get your bonus that high by level

How hard would it be for a Duskblade to get enough cold damage to statistically kill the dragon in fewer rounds than it would take the dragon to kill the Duskblade?

A level 7 duskblade only has access to 2s. We'll assume he uses one feat on arcane strike to boost damage (so he also needs versatile spellcaster, this build will need at least 1 flaw, even as a human) or he can ignore those and take power attack instead in addition to his taxes. The only thing you've really got dealing cold is chill touch, which isn't going to be able to handle the dragon before he kills you.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Anything that has DR/magic bypasses DR/magic per the special abilities entry in the MM.

I explicitly said no flaws. You get 1 feat for most non-humans; 2 for humans, azurins, and strongheart halflings; and maybe a couple extras for a fighter dip once the VoB prereq's are taken out.

I don't think anything that keys on HD in any way or allows a fort save has any real chance here. Even stuff on ref and will saves are near enough to a coin toss.

Personally, I'd been looking at an azurin pally with sapphire smite and a mighty smiting weapon for damage.

[Zaq]

Anything that has DR/magic bypasses DR/magic per the special abilities entry in the MM.

I explicitly said no flaws. You get 1 feat for most non-humans; 2 for humans, azurins, and strongheart halflings; and maybe a couple extras for a fighter dip once the VoB prereq's are taken out.

I don't think anything that keys on HD in any way or allows a fort save has any real chance here. Even stuff on ref and will saves are near enough to a coin toss.

Personally, I'd been looking at an azurin pally with sapphire smite and a mighty smiting weapon for damage.

My bad on missing "no flaws." Regarding DR, though, reds don't get DR/magic until they're young adults, which is one step past our goal of juvenile.

[Venger]

Hmm. Hope this isn't a double post, but I think that this post is meaty enough to warrant not being a simple edit. What if we just throw a straight Crusader at the problem? You can have a 4th level maneuver at level 7. If you can get the dragon to fail a Fort save (read: you cannot do this), Overwhelming Mountain Strike will prevent it from full attacking, or Divine Surge is just pretty respectable +numbers, plus you've got your lower-level maneuvers as well. Crusader recovery mechanic means never taking a round off from using something cool, even if it's not likely to be the same cool thing every turn (let's leave the Idiot Crusader by the wayside). How much to-hit can we afford to toss into Stone Power each round? Gaining 10 THP a round and having Steely Resolve will make the healing strikes go a long way, especially if we can throw in a moderate amount of actual DR as well (azurin, Shape Soulmeld for the Astral Vambraces, and get one or two more essentia from a feat, perhaps?). Leave the fire resist to an item, I suppose, though I'm not sure how taxing that is on our budget. And I admit that getting enough bonus to hit every round with assorted nickel-and-dime penalties might be nontrivial when working alone.

As stated previously, assuming that you can just stand-and-bang with a juvenile red and wear it down through attrition is a problematic assumption in the first place (if for no other reason than that it can fly), but once again, it's kind of interesting to play with the numbers anyway.

Going in an entirely different direction, how many PA multipliers can we stack up by level 7 on, say, a Hood build? We may need to posit that we can engineer a way to jump down on the dragon (it's Large, which is very difficult for a Hood build to jump down on from ground level by just ECL 7, especially if we aren't allowed to lose a single point of BAB), but once you start stacking multipliers, the numbers do get pretty crazy. I'm not sure if Pounce can be on the table while staying LG the whole time, but still.

crusader 7 is ok, but even assuming favorable initiative because the dragon was busy playing tiddywinks, you using wrt, and either starting your turn next to him or having travel devotion/pounce/etc, you will still have a hard time dealing 168 damage by yourself since bahamut's taxes retard your progression in the shock trooper line

it's not necessarily that you're not allowed to enter late, we'll just assume that you must enter by lvl 11 so you can finish the class, so there's not much wiggle room, or I'd suggest feral or something.

let's assume fullbab xx7, human, 18 starting str, put lvl 4 bonus into str, +4 item of str for 23, mod 6, medium greatsword, assume +1 weapon (+7 ba +6 str +1 magic +2 charging) so you'd be hitting for (+16/+11) for 2d6+10, avg 17.

assume you're pa-ing for full (so your one free feat is pa), which shores up your damage to 31 or 62/round. Assuming you hit with both attacks and can get 2 full attacks, you'll deal 124 damage that round, say you use your human feat for leap attack to get you to 138, still short by 30.

Without more feats, it'll be pretty hard to improve your damage by very much. You might get a str bonus from race, but then you lose your human feat, which makes things a little tighter.

[Fizban]

A charging lance crit might do it, not reliable but the only way it should actually happen and if the sidebar in Rules Compendium is any indication, somebody thought charging lance crits against dragons was awesome. x3 spirited charge+ x2 rhino's rush +x3 crit= x6 without stacking anything else. Get a dragonbane lance, use a scroll of Find the Gap to get a touch attack, Bless Weapon to ignore the crit confirm, now all you need is 28 points before multiplying and the natural 20, ha. Pal 7, Mounted Combat, Spirited Charge, Sacred Vow, Vow of Obedience.

Just on the spirited rush lance you can get x4. Rhino Hide armor, Blade of Blood, and Divine Sacrifice together can get you 10d6 for ~35, not counting the possibility of metamagic (note your 3 round durations at Pal7), ~42 after Bane. Use a scroll of Righteous Fury to pad your hp and get some more strength , even a human can hit 22 easy (or just a potion of Bull's Strength, and you need human to hit Spirited Charge and both bad prereqs without losing Pal casting). +1 dragonbane lance would be 1d8+9 str+3 enhance+7 smite, ~23. 23x4+42= 134, only 34 short as long as you don't roll below average.

Brute Gauntlets are worth another +16 and burn your swift action (edit: which was already occupied by Rhino's Rush, but a scroll of Extended Rhino's Rush ought to work). An oil of Greater Magic Weapon, Holy Sword, or Weapon Bless from OA is worth another +8. If you can Empowered Spellshard Divine Sacrifice, that's another 2.5d6. Enlarge Person would make you too big for your mount, except potions include the usual "user is the caster" line, so you can share that with your mount, and get the +2.5 from size increase, multiplied by x4 to +10. Lesser Energy Assault (Cold) for 1.5d6 since it can't cast Resist Energy yet, another 5 per hit.

If you make the run just before 8th level, your official WBL should be close to 27,000, more than enough for lot.

Obviously this plan depends entirely on the arrogance of the (not yet fully grown) dragon and its lack of knowledge about the rules, while you are allowed full player knowledge, because that's the only way it should ever work. You fly out from a safe harbor over the dragon's territory (on your Pegasus courtesy of the DMG) every day, until it gets fed up with you. When it is at the appropriate distance you begin casting your buffs, then make the charge. Is stacking all of that together cheesy? Well I didn't even use Valorous or everyone's favorite Power Attack, so . . . ?

Things would be a *lot* easier if you could just Ride by Attack to avoid getting full attacked, then make even a single follow up blow (even at range, since Find the Gap and Divine Sacrifice both work with ranged attacks). Fighter 1/Pal 6 can manage it, but you have to make do with a Hippogriff instead. Not much of a change.

A Ranger could also combine Guided Shot and Hunter's Mercy (and that Find the Gap scroll again) to land at least two auto-crits (or more if you don't give the dragon perfect info on the location, remember that -1 per 10', while the dragon's out in the open). With +1 Bane composite^6 longbow, you've got 13x3+7= 46 per hit. Plus anywhere from 6 to 27 depending on favored enemy bonus (+2, +4, Improved Favored Enemy, Enemy Spirit Pouch). Ranger/Pal gets the best of both worlds, adding +4 to the base damage from Favored Enemy 1+Enemy Spirit Pouch with no effort, and access to both lists of tricks, able to launch crit arrows and then finish with a charge. The ranger of course needs more scrolls/wands/pearls to pull this off.

The secret tech for dealing with an approaching melee foe in the open field, is the readied move action. With a fly speed of 150' it can charge from at most 600' with a dive. If it's coming straight at you horizontally, it can only charge from 300'. If you're above it, no charges, just circling to ascend at most 150' per round (unless it has Power Climb), while you also ascend at half your speed. You and your mount have your own move actions, of quite comparable speed with a Hipp or Peg. Depending on how specific you need to be: you (or your mount) ready to move sideways or diagonally back when it's in charge range, then to move straight back if it holds off on charging and tries to reach single move+attack range (or possibly forward if it can't switch from flying to walking/you can outrange if they turn the standard into ground move). Of course once you start actually using this, the DM ought to be using it too, and now you've both got to deal with the full complexity of aerial maneuverability and finding the perfect position to maintain your advantage- something which would probably be quite natural to the animal, but is rather more annoying for us.

I'd say, Ranger 1/Pal 6, wand chambered +1 Bane heavy composite bow with Guided Shot, a few scrolls of Hunter's Mercy, two scrolls of Find the Gap, Enemy Spirit Pouch, potions of Bull's Strength and maybe Cat's Grace, and a Hippogriff, with Mounted Combat and Spirited Charge for your open feats, a lance, and some Brute Gauntlets. You start by flying some distance above the target, say 500' (or maybe just 200' up and 500' horizontal), drink your potions, pop Find the Gap, hit the Guided Shot button, and decide how savvy the DM thinks they can play the dragon. Leading with Hunter's Mercy is the obvious plan, but if you think it will run then lead with a volley of normal arrows: the first should hit and establish you as a threat, then the rest miss, and the dragon knows they need to deal with you or flee, but the first arrow didn't do *that* much damage and you're only so far away. You then backpedal while launching volleys or cycling Hunter's Mercy (it only has AC 22 base). Once it's softened up enough and the distance is right, you drop the bow and spirited Rhino Rush lance charge with Brute Gauntlets at max, which should be worth about 70 points (+1 dragonbane lance would push that above 80, so you might hit it all the way from half hp). Or if it decides to break away, you pursue at full speed.

Really the main trick is setting things up so that the dragon takes damage at just the right rate, such that by the time it hits half hp (usually recognized as the point of retreat), it's close enough it won't be able to get away. With 7 rounds of Find the Gap and a wand of Guided Shot, you've got 6 shots (thanks to spell duration problems), but each high str dragonbane favored enemy+pouch frost crystal shot shot is an easy 29 damage. Heck, you'd probably have to start out moving *towards* the dragon to make it think it could catch you in time.

So the real question is weather or not wand chambers of Guided Shot are cheesy, and while I've never seen anyone complain about it, all you gotta do is use it to realize yeah it pretty much is. The best part is that even if you drill down and toss the wand chambers, ban the spell from wands entirely, you can find the original spell in Minatures Handbook, where is was Ranger 1-only and did nothing but cover negation (SpC calls Guided Shot out specifically as being renamed from Guided Arrow). Ah, SpC, the spell borker.

[Saintheart]

Two thoughts:

(1) How much of a sense of humour and/or does your DM like twisting wishes?

Mainly because the RAW of the qualification for Vassal of Bahamut doesn't specify whether you have to kill a dragon, or a creature of the dragon type. Dragonwrought kobold type changes from dragonblood type to dragon, and the dragonwrought kobold's scales take on the tint of its dragon ancestor. Find a red dragonwrought kobold (which will invariably have been cheesed to venerable), kill it, done.

(2) When it comes to delivering something like Shivering Touch, there are simple magic options for doing that. If Forgotten Realms material is permitted, go find yourself a runecaster and ask him for a single-use (or multiple-use) rune of Shivering Touch on a piece of paper, and have the runecaster craft it so it triggers when passed or read. At the most confined reading, you glue that rune to the entrance to the dragon's cave, call out some appropriate speculation on the dragon's parentage, and the moment it gets within 30 feet of the rune, the spell explicitly triggers against "whoever triggers the rune", i.e. it's a simple magic trap, which is what runes were meant to function as.

A single-use rune would set you back about 50 x level x CL x 2, thus, about 50 x 3 x 5 x 2 = 1,500 gp to create.

[Fizban]

If all you want is to deliver a trap, you don't even need a fancy prestige class: A Glyph Seal/Greater Glyph Seal will do the trick. There's also Gem Magic from Magic of Faerun, a massively abusable type of magic item I've never heard anyone really mention- how about we make a potion, but instead of drinking, it activates automatically on touch, or after a timer, or like a magic trap than can be distinguish between races and alignment and appearance and so on? For say, less than a +50% increase in cost? (Sure it works out to about the same thing as the rune's abusability, and it costs more, but you don't need to assume a PrC, just a crafting feat).

[ExLibrisMortis]

Good rundown, Fizban. Lance charging does look promising. I think the UA variant paladin with Favoured Enemy instead of Turn Undead might work nicely, though I'm guessing it trips the cheese warning. Gets you that extra FI bonus against dragons (should stack with ranger).

Oh, and Vow of Poverty technically lets you qualify with feats to spare. Human paladin 7 with Sacred Vow, Vow of Poverty (human bonus), and Vow of Obedience (VoP 1 bonus) has level 3 and 6 feats as well as VoP 2, 4, 6 free. Yes, it's a stupid idea, but Touch of Golden Ice does let you deal Dexterity damage (5% of the time). Celestial Mount isn't bad either.

[WhamBamSam]

Good rundown, Fizban. Lance charging does look promising. I think the UA variant paladin with Favoured Enemy instead of Turn Undead might work nicely, though I'm guessing it trips the cheese warning. Gets you that extra FI bonus against dragons (should stack with ranger).

Using a mount might violate the 'single combat' requirement.

I don't see why the Favored Enemy variant should be considered cheesy by an even marginally reasonable DM. It's a generally inferior trade-off that happens to focus the character toward its design goal of slaying dragons.

Shivering Touch is probably the best option.

A non-dedicated archer might be able to take a pot shot with arrows of dragonslaying then run away, and keep doing that until the dragon fails a save. Of course, the dragon might start taking precautions before you get the number of shots you need to get lucky.

You could kill the dragon as a higher level character, then celebrate by high fiving a Wight until you're back at ECL 7.

[Venger]

Using a mount might violate the 'single combat' requirement.

I don't see why the Favored Enemy variant should be considered cheesy by an even marginally reasonable DM. It's a generally inferior trade-off that happens to focus the character toward its design goal of slaying dragons.

Shivering Touch is probably the best option.

A non-dedicated archer might be able to take a pot shot with arrows of dragonslaying then run away, and keep doing that until the dragon fails a save. Of course, the dragon might start taking precautions before you get the number of shots you need to get lucky.

You could kill the dragon as a higher level character, then celebrate by high fiving a Wight until you're back at ECL 7.

Mounts are part of your character's offensive abilities. If you were a conjurer, it wouldn't forbid you from using summons.

But if you do try to kite, how will you
A) outrun him
B) hide from him since he's faster than you

[WhamBamSam]

Mounts are part of your character's offensive abilities. If you were a conjurer, it wouldn't forbid you from using summons.

But if you do try to kite, how will you
A) outrun him
B) hide from him since he's faster than you

Point. Best thing I can think of with relatively low-level magic is to Alter Self with a wand and burrow to safety and/or Benign Transpositon with a series of unconscious rats that I've left hidden at maximum range increments.

[Venger]

Point. Best thing I can think of with relatively low-level magic is to Alter Self with a wand and burrow to safety and/or Benign Transpositon with a series of unconscious rats that I've left hidden at maximum range increments.

arcane schooling or similar's looking like a must. if your burrowing leaves a tunnel, won't his breath weapon kill you? or will you immediately make a 90 degree turn, so you're not targetable, or something else?

good call on the rats. the ever-useful bag of rats.

[WhamBamSam]

arcane schooling or similar's looking like a must. if your burrowing leaves a tunnel, won't his breath weapon kill you? or will you immediately make a 90 degree turn, so you're not targetable, or something else?

good call on the rats. the ever-useful bag of rats.

Hopefully my form will burrow without leaving a tunnel, but if not then yeah. Probably that or else just getting some fire resistance or something and tanking the blast. 8d10 is rough at level 7, but any full BAB entry will have at least 7d8+7*Con so, and the dragon can't breathe for another 1d4 rounds, so as long as it can't do anything else to hurt you, you should be able to deal. If we're committed to the rats, then the tunnels could be set up ahead of time with rats already in them.

[Venger]

Hopefully my form will burrow without leaving a tunnel, but if not then yeah. Probably that or else just getting some fire resistance or something and tanking the blast. 8d10 is rough at level 7, but any full BAB entry will have at least 7d8+7*Con so, and the dragon can't breathe for another 1d4 rounds, so as long as it can't do anything else to hurt you, you should be able to deal. If we're committed to the rats, then the tunnels could be set up ahead of time with rats already in them.

Roll neraph and turn into a xorn to get earth glide style burrow, though this does cost you a feat, which makes everything else harder.

While the breath weapon alone may not kill you, he's still got all that melee. Xorn movement does not require a tunnel, so no prep work in that regard is necessary.

If you wanted to mundanely tunnel and fill the whole tunnel with regularly spaced rats, then that way you'd only need a small number of rats on the surface, so the dragon would be less likely to figure out what you were doing and/or upset your breadcrumb trail by accident by clipping your rats with his breath weapon.

[Fouredged Sword]

168HP to remove in one shot...

Have you considered the iconic mounted charge? You will ether need to draw the dragon down or use a flying mount (of have your intelligent horse down a potion of fly)

The you two hand a lance and spirited charge.

Cross class UMD gives you 5 ranks and +3 charisma mod. Get an item of + UMD so you have a good shot at reading a scroll of wraithstrike.

Have the party cleric magic weapon your dragonbane lance.

A normal hit will deal (1d8 + 1.5 str+ 2x power attack +2 charge + 3 enhancement + 2 dragonbane+7 smite).

With power attacking for +7 (you are hitting a 9 AC). (4+6 (18 str) + 14 + 2 + 3 + 2+7) 38 damage times 3, so 114 damage

Two charges will kill the dragon. The trick is avoiding the full attack to get the second charge.

So do not stop next to the dragon. Use ride by attack to move out of it's reach. It now cannot full attack you.

Then you tank the flame breath OR single melee attack. You can prebuff for fire resistance and have the HP to tank the single bite.

Then have your mount retrain one of it's starting feats to travel devotion so it can move away from the dragon and let you charge again.

You stand a better than 50% chance to win the fight if you win initiative.

[Venger]

168HP to remove in one shot...

Have you considered the iconic mounted charge? You will ether need to draw the dragon down or use a flying mount (of have your intelligent horse down a potion of fly)

The you two hand a lance and spirited charge.

Cross class UMD gives you 5 ranks and +3 charisma mod. Get an item of + UMD so you have a good shot at reading a scroll of wraithstrike.

Have the party cleric magic weapon your dragonbane lance.

A normal hit will deal (1d8 + 1.5 str+ 2x power attack +2 charge + 3 enhancement + 2 dragonbane+7 smite).

With power attacking for +7 (you are hitting a 9 AC). (4+6 (18 str) + 14 + 2 + 3 + 2+7) 38 damage times 3, so 114 damage

Two charges will kill the dragon. The trick is avoiding the full attack to get the second charge.

So do not stop next to the dragon. Use ride by attack to move out of it's reach. It now cannot full attack you.

Then you tank the flame breath OR single melee attack. You can prebuff for fire resistance and have the HP to tank the single bite.

Then have your mount retrain one of it's starting feats to travel devotion so it can move away from the dragon and let you charge again.

You stand a better than 50% chance to win the fight if you win initiative.

use reins of ascension on the horse if your mount can't fly. it's limited duration, but you'll only need it for a short time.

having another character cast buffs on you so you can kill the dragon may be straying a little from killing the dragon yourself. you're already using cc umd for scrolls, so you can just cast it yourself.

everything else looks pretty good.

[Fouredged Sword]

use reins of ascension on the horse if your mount can't fly. it's limited duration, but you'll only need it for a short time.

having another character cast buffs on you so you can kill the dragon may be straying a little from killing the dragon yourself. you're already using cc umd for scrolls, so you can just cast it yourself.

everything else looks pretty good.

The problem with my plan is what a smart red dragon does the turn after a crazy fricken paladin smashes it with a lance for 3/5th's it's HP.

It turns around and flies away at 450ft per round as flying run actions. No way a paladin can keep up unassisted.

No way it hangs around to see if the paladin can swing a second charge.

We need a way to ether hit 56 base damage on the attack or UMD surge of fortune to auto crit the charge...

AH! UMD (ot have a friendly cleric cast) a scroll of guidance of the avatar and use THAT to UMD a scroll of Surge of Fortune rather than wraithstrike.

Now you have 10 or so rounds to charge the dragon and autocrit to boost the ×3 damage multiplier into x5.

Now so long as you have 34 flat damage you kill the dragon on the first charge.

[Venger]

The problem with my plan is what a smart red dragon does the turn after a crazy fricken paladin smashes it with a lance for 3/5th's it's HP.

It turns around and flies away at 450ft per round as flying run actions. No way a paladin can keep up unassisted.

No way it hangs around to see if the paladin can swing a second charge.

We need a way to ether hit 56 base damage on the attack or UMD surge of fortune to auto crit the charge...

AH! UMD (ot have a friendly cleric cast) a scroll of guidance of the avatar and use THAT to UMD a scroll of Surge of Fortune rather than wraithstrike.

Now you have 10 or so rounds to charge the dragon and autocrit to boost the ×3 damage multiplier into x5.

Now so long as you have 34 flat damage you kill the dragon on the first charge.

Well, that goes without saying. That's why personally, I think you must do it in one turn. You could just have your guy buy 2 novice crowns of the white raven, do everything you've outlined twice, and kill the thing