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Dragons or giant lizards? Or in other words why can they fly?
vadimt83
Member Posts: 259 Arc User
This is probably the only fantasy game where dragons just crawl on the ground instead of flying. Yes I know, melee classes cant attack things that fly. But this is just ridiculous.
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Several dragons do fly around as part of their encounter. Compromises do have to be made in the name of playability - which is why a majority of encounters with dragons are land-based.
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the dungeon dragons (can't remember the names), Green is just there, but red flys in, flys out, flys back in.
long story short, did you want them to fly more, or were you just not realizing that they do, in fact, fly.
do you want to fight them in the air?
And yes I know playability. But dragon age had real dragons, and TES series, and more games.
Oh well, a man can dream.
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So what you want is an encounter where only 50% of the classes can be useful?
This is of course not even counting the number of Cleric and Wizard spells that only work as close range, centered on the caster. Or the fact that ranger can only really play if they spec into one out of the three possible trees. So, that 50% is pretty shaky to begin with, meaning it would be an encounter where less then half the player base could be useful.
Why would they do that? Why would anyone want it? and lastly why would anyone play it? The most epic encounters made, are useless if no one wants to be bothered with it. Because sitting around waiting for the lizard to get back into to range again, while everyone else fights, isn't fun. Nor is not even having the option to try because your class is seen as dead weight, and wont even get invited.
From a D&D viewpoint (and remember, this IS a D&D game) why would a dragon want to just sit there on the ground and let people whomp on it, when it can and should fly above and rain down death? If your foe is silly enough to go after you with a weapon that can't reach you, why would you give up that advantage? For that matter, if the puny creatures you're fighting are actually winning, why would you hang around instead of flying away (unless they found you in your lair, and you have no way out)?
Sure, the answers are game mechanical in nature, but since other games have figured out ways around this, I have to assume that the reasons they could not figure out a way around it here involve mostly lazy or hasty coding, perhaps limited by unreasonably short development time.
As to the question "why can't WE fly", the answer is because if we got off the ground we'd see all of the holes in the architecture, that are there because they didn't put in anything that we can't see anyway. Go into Foundry and load one of the Neverwinter maps, then enter free camera mode an fly up. You'll see what I mean pretty quickly.
...but in order to take off they need a long stretch, or a cliff. And landing often enough contains somersaults and forward rolls.
IMHO this is the same thing with dragons. Their sheer size should, even with magic, make it difficult for them to take off and land at the spur of the moment. They can take a short hop, and flap their wings - which they do in actual encounters, but in order to take off they'd have to have a bigger area and/or more time.
This then leads to the question "Why are dragons stupid enough to land when faced with overwhelming odds?"
Arrogance is written into their monster manual entries.
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Fulminorax and karrundax have little space to take off and they manage just fine.
Ah, Skyrim, this game where you can tame a dragon into a flying mount. And a flying weapon.
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Smaller drakes and juvenile dragons however wouldn't cause such an issue with wind force but would still be quite draining on the dragon's or drake's stamina.
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They do. Just go along with the switch to the second instance :^)
Also, any "melee unusability" HAMSTER talk is pointless as for example the potions against dragons could simply have double effect for fighters, or every class should be able to use a bow/xbow/sling. I cant c a reason a dragon could not fly for a while, maybe burning the land before landing when there is a nice crowd rdy to be burned.
When i am at it, Tiamat could as well use more than one head the moment one is zerged, partially using her wings to knock back the crowd as well (and push from the ledges).
But rly, with a few very rare exceptions, this game is populated with a simple critter armada, no matter what costume or name particular mob has or whats its attack color. Only challenge is to remain calm when being put into tiamat instance with a bunch of random friendly mobs.
Here's the meta about hit points though.
The dragon doesn't see his health bar, nor are all those attacks that are depleting his health lethal attacks. Most of them are bouncing off his thick scales, being deflected or dodged. Most of the spells are simply ineffective or resisted.
It's not until the very last bits of what we see as his "health bar" that swords are finally penetrating his scales and those magic spells are rocking his bones. By the time a dragon realizes it might actually be killed by creatures, it's sometimes too late to retreat.
Imagine if you were having a picnic, and some ants wandered on to your blanket. You don't care that much, maybe you swap at a few or squish a couple. But then they start crawling on your arms and legs, and you're just brushing them off...not that worried about it. Then you start to feel them burrow into your skin, climb in your ears and for a split second you're terrified...they might actually kill you. But by then it's too late, and they're carrying your body down the ant-hole to make magic human skinned armor out of you
That's what happens to dragons.
Double damage is still useless if you cant reach your target.
That would require a fundamental change in game design. And that is the problem, everyone agrees that the combat system here is rather fun. The down side of that is, our powers a limited and their range is set by the power, not by the weapon. We don't have the ability to give everyone viable ranged and melee skills. Without altering the entire way powers are handled. And honestly, I don't think its needed.
The very heart of the game was designed to be an "in your face" action romp. Even ranged classes, still fight very close and almost always end up in melee range. Everything about the game is designed to prevent you from being able to snipe at range. They want the player to be in danger, they want to player to have to dodge and move, its what gives the game its action feel. And as such, this will always be a close combat focused game with a few ranged powers. Flying combatants just isn't in the cards, it is simply precluded by too many fundamental design choices.
As a frequent PnP player, I've had experience with a number of dragon encounters. What I can say about are what others have largely already stated in the gameplay mechanics. If the dragon has its full mobility then melee focused classes are out of luck. It is doubly worse for 4e based classes because the powers are largely stacked along only certain very limited combat techniques (magic ranged, martial melee, martial thrown, martial ranged, etc.). In other editions, one could at least pull out a bow or crossbow and try and help out.
Dragon fights in tabletop require planning, strategy, and huge preparation. It is rare for a random encounter, somewhere that a dragon has full mobility, to go very well for players. I can't say that I've ever had an instance to battle a dragon from flight in any world other than Dragonlance's Krynn. Most flying mounts are heavily susceptible to the fear a dragon produces, so griffons, hippogriffs, pegasi, and such are generally unstable. Flying carpets are really flammable, having your own natural wings was a huge (+3) ECL hit, broomsticks are difficult to use one's hands effectively. Dirigibles and magical flying ships have their own inherent weaknesses. Now in Rifts, I've fought dragons while using power armor and self powered flight, but that doesn't count. Neither does my half-maiar Vanyar elf's (MERP is weird that way) single combat against a dragon (cold drake).
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This is pretty much it in a nutshell.
Dragons even in the novels tend to fight close up. They tend to revel in their supremacy believing other creatures can't hurt them or preferring to make those who can suffer more intimately than blasting them with a breath attack from the sky.
In PnP and novels dragon breath is far more intimidating than in any video game but they actually tend to only use it when in dire need or if they want to damage large groups or structures.
Forgotten Realms dragons are actually described as having cat-like grace and this is also how they behave personality-wise. Think of a cat playing with a mouse instead of simply killing it as it is akin to what dragons do.
Normally it works out fine for them. As we play the mice, though, it's easy to think their arrogance is stupid but understand dragons live for hundreds to thousands of years playing with their food.
As Zaknafein said, you can win a thousand fights but you can only lose one. Dragons win thousands of fights akin to a cat playing with a mouse. It is incredibly rare for those dragons to meet a mouse that actually can hurt it.
The dragons here have No VI (AI) and No Power.
I definitely agree with the "arrogance" of such being, thats why they face everyone, but i do not agree with making such being (lore wise) a helpless tard.
edit:
PS: good point anyway OP
Zeb and I are community members (players) talking about the lore as it is defined by the source and not developers making up excuses.
Dragons in D&D do not tend to fly around throwing breath attacks. They can and do but they typically don't.
Could the dragons be a bit more mobile? Certainly it would be nice to them do a lot less spinning in place but dragons do not tend to rely on flight to kill their adversaries.
Another thing to remember is that dragons also tend to be in caves and other confined places when in combat which is yet another reason why they do not rely on aerial attacks even though this is not the case in Neverwinter. As Zeb said they tend to use their wings to distrust combat and not to fly while in combat.
A grounded ship, cant be sunk.
Especially with the chromatics which are the ones you're facing.
Now the metallics... :wings flap under cloak once: even the half-metallics, or gems...
Nothing like a good wing buffet smack on landing!
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Based on their size, they're probably adult dragons, but on the younger side. Take a peak at one of the comparison charts from an older D&D guide (I don't have the 5th Edition ones, unfortunately) for monster sizes:
Based on that comparison, I would same most of these dragons are between large and huge. So they're adults, but far from being close to the most powerful of dragons. And even to that, most classic D&D stories talk about small groups of heroes, maybe 4 or 5 attacking dragons, not 30+. If you were to assemble 30 powerful heroes from across the Sword Coast to fight a dragon, that dragon would be in for a very bad day...which is essentially what happens to these guys every hour in the Well of Dragons...they come in to proclaim the arrival of Tiamat, only to be met with dozens of heroes, armed to the teeth and ready to ambush them.
It would probably be a different story if you and a couple of your friends were casually running through Rothe or Blackdagger and one of these dragons landed in front of you.