tyler
Journeyman Douchebag
Posts: 226
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Post by tyler on Jul 7, 2017 9:39:48 GMT -8
Looking for some more wizard advice!
In one of the games I currently play in (20th level 5e game) we've been fighting mind-flayer variants, and I guess...void dragons. It's something that the GM has tinkered with, and they've been pretty easily handled so far. We, as characters, have learned that the older dragons explode when they die. They'll deal a ton of psychic and cold damage. The cold damage these dragons deal is "the chill of the void" and as such, is unaffected by cold resistance or immunity.
We are going to be facing the biggest, oldest dragon yet in our next session, and I'm looking for some suggestions on how to make sure this thing doesn't TPK us when it dies.
The psychic damage will be handled with Mind Blank.
Any ideas? I've got access to all of the existing wizard spells (except any teleport spell that has a range greater than 500' the GM put the nix on those as he wanted travel to matter), and can cast a spell from ANY list once per day.
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tyler
Journeyman Douchebag
Posts: 226
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Post by tyler on Jul 7, 2017 9:57:16 GMT -8
I'm thinking Etherealness, once it looks really close to death. That way I can avoid the damage, then pop back in and use wish, or my loremaster ability to save the cleric or the druid.
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Post by ilina on Jul 7, 2017 10:21:22 GMT -8
if it operates by lowering your body temperature, cold resistance and cold immunity should always apply to that circumstance, and if this "chill of the void" isn't lowering your body temperature, it should not be cold damage and should probably be necrotic or something.
but it irks me to hear stories of "it is like this specific damage type in every way, but completely ignores the resistance and immunities to the damage type it resembles, despite it working on the exact same principle"
ask your GM what principle this "Chill of the Void" Operates on.
does it really lower your body temperature? (Cold Damage) if so, cold resistance and immunity should apply
is it a life sapping almost bone chilling kind of chill? (Necrotic Damage) if so, it should be necrotic and necrotic resistance and immunity should apply.
either way, this sounds like a bullshit excuse for a GM to ignore an energy resistance possessed by one of thier players' characters because they don't want to mix up encounters for the sake of their precious "Story"
i'm going to laugh if that GM finds a bullshit excuse to make mind blank not work either.
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tyler
Journeyman Douchebag
Posts: 226
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Post by tyler on Jul 7, 2017 10:32:09 GMT -8
if it operates by lowering your body temperature, cold resistance and cold immunity should always apply to that circumstance, and if this "chill of the void" isn't lowering your body temperature, it should not be cold damage and should probably be necrotic or something. but it irks me to hear stories of "it is like this specific damage type in every way, but completely ignores the resistance and immunities to the damage type it resembles, despite it working on the exact same principle" ask your GM what principle this "Chill of the Void" Operates on. does it really lower your body temperature? (Cold Damage) if so, cold resistance and immunity should apply is it a life sapping almost bone chilling kind of chill? (Necrotic Damage) if so, it should be necrotic and necrotic resistance and immunity should apply. either way, this sounds like a bullshit excuse for a GM to ignore an energy resistance possessed by one of thier players' characters because they don't want to mix up encounters for the sake of their precious "Story" i'm going to laugh if that GM finds a bullshit excuse to make mind blank not work either. Shit like this is why I rarely post.
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Post by vyrrk on Jul 7, 2017 11:02:47 GMT -8
I'm thinking Etherealness, once it looks really close to death. That way I can avoid the damage, then pop back in and use wish, or my loremaster ability to save the cleric or the druid. First I want to say I'm very jealous you are in a group that got to lvl 20. So freaking cool. Yeah I think your idea would work. I would ask your GM first though if the "Void Dragon" lives between planes or something like that. If it does it might be able to still hit you in Etherealness. There is also the "Globe of Invulnerability" that might work as well. Good luck and tell us what happens!
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tyler
Journeyman Douchebag
Posts: 226
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Post by tyler on Jul 7, 2017 11:09:17 GMT -8
I'm thinking Etherealness, once it looks really close to death. That way I can avoid the damage, then pop back in and use wish, or my loremaster ability to save the cleric or the druid. First I want to say I'm very jealous you are in a group that got to lvl 20. So freaking cool. Yeah I think your idea would work. I would ask your GM first though if the "Void Dragon" lives between planes or something like that. If it does it might be able to still hit you in Etherealness. There is also the "Globe of Invulnerability" that might work as well. Good luck and tell us what happens! It seems that it lives on its own plane, so Etherealness should work. However, sbloyd suggested True Polymorph, which I hadn't considered because it doesn't work on shapechangers. I then learned that Dragons, per their statblocks, aren't considered shapechangers. So that's another option as well. TP it into something small, and deal with it that way. Use walls or a forcecage at that point. True Polymorph is a little less reliable though, since pretty much everything that's a threat to us now has legendary resistance, and it would still get a save on the polymorph, even if we exhausted its free saves. A globe would probably protect me, and maybe a couple other party members, though. I need to ask the GM some more questions about the damage. See if there's more that we know in game.
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Post by ilina on Jul 7, 2017 11:11:01 GMT -8
i use to defend a bullshit GM as well. but now i can smell GM Bullshit from the other side of the country because i have to say. having to hide rolls behind a screen to hide them from your players and take away a defensive perk they invested character resources into like a racial ability is complete bullshit.
but any advice that could help your survive these void dragons is likely to be fudged away by the GM.
GMs like that have a habit of not making perfectly normal staple spells work and create bullshit homebrew monsters that ignore core rules.
if the Void dragons are between planes because void, Etherealness will likely fail.
and if you tried diplomancing it, the GM would probably fuck you over for it.
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Post by RudeAlert on Jul 7, 2017 11:16:16 GMT -8
if it operates by lowering your body temperature, cold resistance and cold immunity should always apply to that circumstance, and if this "chill of the void" isn't lowering your body temperature, it should not be cold damage and should probably be necrotic or something. but it irks me to hear stories of "it is like this specific damage type in every way, but completely ignores the resistance and immunities to the damage type it resembles, despite it working on the exact same principle" ask your GM what principle this "Chill of the Void" Operates on. does it really lower your body temperature? (Cold Damage) if so, cold resistance and immunity should apply is it a life sapping almost bone chilling kind of chill? (Necrotic Damage) if so, it should be necrotic and necrotic resistance and immunity should apply. either way, this sounds like a bullshit excuse for a GM to ignore an energy resistance possessed by one of thier players' characters because they don't want to mix up encounters for the sake of their precious "Story" i'm going to laugh if that GM finds a bullshit excuse to make mind blank not work either. Definitely this ^ That kind of bullshit would be a red flag for me when dealing with such a GM. On the other hand, this could have the making of a great Horror Story, it's got the classic setup just right. Wait! Do the void dragons also cause wandering damage? Now THAT'S a story we need to hear about! Edit: At the risk of ruining a perfectly good horror story, the one thing that came to my mind is to put up a Wall of Force right next to the dragon to intercept the explosion just before it dies (if it's at all possible to time it right).
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tyler
Journeyman Douchebag
Posts: 226
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Post by tyler on Jul 7, 2017 11:19:17 GMT -8
You guys need to lighten the fuck up.
"Hey, any advice for handling this unique situation?"
"Nothing you do will work because your GM is an asshole! RAWR RAWR RAWR!"
If you don't have anything constructive to add, maybe just don't say anything at all.
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tyler
Journeyman Douchebag
Posts: 226
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Post by tyler on Jul 7, 2017 11:35:05 GMT -8
Edit: At the risk of ruining a perfectly good horror story, the one thing that came to my mind is to put up a Wall of Force right next to the dragon to intercept the explosion just before it dies (if it's at all possible to time it right). It won't become a horror story. This GM has been running this particular game for almost a decade, and this particular monster makes perfect sense. It's dealing a type of damage we haven't seen on our world before, because the dragons aren;t from our world. He's calling it cold to better describe what we're feeling when it affects us, and it's ignoring resistances because it is entirely alien to us. It's a rarity, it's making us have to think outside the box, and every player in the game is cool with it. Wall of Force is definitely on the list of things to try. I don't think I'm going to find any solution that isn't going to require some excellent timing, either because it will give the dragon time to circumvent it, or it will handicap me (someone in another group has suggested antimagic field). We'll probably end up stacking multiple defenses, wall of force, prismatic wall, globe of invulnerability, to reduce as much of the damage as possible. Though, with as much thought and planning as we're putting into this, the DM will end up rolling minimum damage and it won't be an issue for us >.<
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Post by RudeAlert on Jul 7, 2017 11:39:52 GMT -8
Another thought I had is just to see if your character can do research in ancient lore and shit like that to see if you can learn something about those dragons that would point the way towards which spells might protect you from this "cold but not really cold" explosion thing. Maybe ancient sages dealt with them in the past and there's records somewhere that mention how they defeated and survived them.
I still call bullshit on cold protection not working, it's specifically meant to protect you from cold... it literally has ONE JOB! It would feel more honest for your GM to simply create a new form of damage, maybe "Void Damage." Then you could maybe research some sort of void damage protection spell, and this could be related to what I wrote above.
Other than that it seems kind pointless to try to find ways to resolve the problem using the rules of the game given that the GM already introduced an element that specifically breaks one of those basic rules. So it's hard to know what else might have been changed or possibly change in the moment.
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tyler
Journeyman Douchebag
Posts: 226
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Post by tyler on Jul 7, 2017 11:54:41 GMT -8
Spell casters can get a feat at level 1 (if you're using feats and the variant human feature) that lets them ignore resistance with specific elements. Is that bullshit too?
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Post by Probie Tim on Jul 7, 2017 12:01:23 GMT -8
So we're looking at an alien energy damage that the character's minds interpret as cold for lack of any other reference to frame it, because it's never been encountered before? Yeah, I think describing it as cold under those circumstances is fine. The brain naturally tries to associate new things with known things, which is why so many new things wind up tasting like chicken.
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Post by RudeAlert on Jul 7, 2017 12:18:17 GMT -8
Spell casters can get a feat at level 1 (if you're using feats and the variant human feature) that lets them ignore resistance with specific elements. Is that bullshit too? No because that's straight up in the rules, everyone can know about it just by looking at the rules so there's no mystery or switcheroo about it. Also it doesn't state that the type of energy is somehow what it is, except not. It's just that the spellcaster is really good at this type of energy magic so they can make it more potent, but it is still "cold" or "fire" or whatever damage. See that's fine with me, my issue was with the fact that the way Tyler presented it made it sound specifically like the GM said "It's 'Cold Damage' except it's sort of not, so you can't protect yourselves from it using Cold Protection, even though it kind of is Cold damage... except NOT." And that sounds like lazy GMing. Now if that terminology was meant specifically as an in-game description then that's different because it's not actually Cold damage, it just "feels" like Cold damage and is essentially just a new type of damage, maybe "Void damage" as I mentioned in my previous post. As for further suggestions, since it sort of sounds like the blast saps the lifeforce our of you and also makes you feel cold, but is neither Necrotic nor Cold based... could using BOTH Necrotic and Cold protection work??? Sort of like by targeting the effects rather than the blast itself? Would the characters have time to do research and experimentation before fighting these dragons to see if that might be a viable approach?
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sbloyd
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Post by sbloyd on Jul 7, 2017 12:22:04 GMT -8
Imprisonment spell. Slap that bitch in a gemstone prison for eternity.
(Bonus: it doesn't die when you do this. No nuke.)
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