Dorn the dragon slayer
RedWizard
Member Posts: 242
I hate dragons. As if they weren't powerful enough on vanilla, SCS makes them even more annoying, what with chaining instant cast stoneskins, having absurd THAC0/AC and damage and so forth.
Then I realized - they aren't immune to poison.
Basically all you have to do is give Dorn Firetooth and Vhailor's Helm, both easily available, at least by the time you are facing dragons.
Then you have a priest cast Champion's Strength and mage go with Improved Haste, while Dorn copies himself then poisons his weapon, copy does the same.
End result: 2 Dorns that melt dragons in seconds. No really, just try it. Your tank basically has to survive for about... 3-4 rounds. The other party members don't even need to do anything at all besides more thac0 buffing.
Then I realized - they aren't immune to poison.
Basically all you have to do is give Dorn Firetooth and Vhailor's Helm, both easily available, at least by the time you are facing dragons.
Then you have a priest cast Champion's Strength and mage go with Improved Haste, while Dorn copies himself then poisons his weapon, copy does the same.
End result: 2 Dorns that melt dragons in seconds. No really, just try it. Your tank basically has to survive for about... 3-4 rounds. The other party members don't even need to do anything at all besides more thac0 buffing.
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Comments
And I don't see why Dorn's poison should be designed to kill only humans, when he lives in a world where he meets giants and dragons and trolls and ettins and ogres and lots of other fun stuff to kill.
A lethal dosage for an insect would be harmless for a creature of our size.
In fact you can see countless cases in nature of large animals deliberately avoiding very small, venomous creatures precisely because they know 1 bite/sting and they are either dead, or too weak to forage/hunt, which equates to the same ending.
So basically size doesn't matter, and in this case you're talking about a Magical Poison gifted by a DEMON used against a Dragon, which bears absolutely no resemblance to whether or not a Venomous Insect can kill a Human...despite the fact that venomous insects kill THOUSANDS of humans every year.
Dorn isn't a venomous creature. He's a dude with some sort of venomous cream he slathers on his weapon. The ability of insects to regulate their venom discharge seems a little beside the point.
Edit: as far as it being demonic poison, it's worth remembering that his Poison Weapon ability is identical to the assassin's, so mundane poisons are just as effective.
Let's say, for a moment, that Dorn is capable of getting a dragon's dosage of poison into each wound.
The question then becomes why he doesn't do that all the time. That much poison would be catastrophic on a smaller creature, but he plays around doing his piddly 1 damage per second against hobbits.
In particular it does mean that it requires more hits (more poison) to feel a dragon than it would to fell a smaller creature.
Ultimately it's an abstract set of rules, sometimes they don't make complete sense but it's not really possible to legislate for every eventuality so some things end up being simplified to the point where you end up just accepting it's not perfect.
I get the impression that dragon shapeshifting is a bit more advanced than the polymorph spells the player has access to. They don't give up anything when they change their form like that.
Notably you can hit them with a Polymorph Other spell, and if they fail their save they will turn into a squirrel. In that case they really do end up with a squirrel's stat scores.
Also as a last note on poison i will point out that the BG rulings on Poison are actually simplified quite a lot over the original 2nd Ed rules, which had various forms of poison, all with different damage and effects and with a variety of saving throw modifiers. I actually like the way they implemented it in BG, the original rules were overly complicated.
and size actually does matter in this case.
Regarding the poison itself then it's only Assassins and Blackguards that can use poison weapons as an ability, and in both cases the poison potency increases as they get higher level, implying that knowledge leads to greater effectiveness and new recipes or Demonic Gifts.
Personally i see no reason why a Demon powerful enough to have it's own Blackguard cannot gift said Blackguard with Poison potent enough to damage even a Dragon, since the premise of Demons in AD&D is that they are in a never ending war against the Forces of Good and use all forms of dark magic and knowledge to try and gain the upper hand.
Assassins are likewise given access to the most virulent poisons by nature of the AD&D Thief Guild system/network that acts much like organised Crime does in the real world. In fact just recently in the UK an ex-Russian Spy was poisoned by what is presumed to be a Russian Assassin. High level assassins in game have access to the equivalent of the CDC labs, which explains their ability to lob a dart at Firkraag and have him twitching like mid-90's Rave dancer.
If you can't hurt a dragon with your sword, then the poison should stay outside as well.
Phrased like this, one could argue that Stoneskins (which OP was circumventing with his tactics) should offer immunity to weapon based poisons (so, not to the cleric spell).
Like i have stated, poison is poison, the most potent will kill ANYTHING regardless of size, why do you think the world has a treaty to ban the use of Biological and Chemical Weapons?
Minuscule concentrations of nerve agents will kill, standing in a hermetically sealed room with 100% nerve gas is just as deadly as being outside and having a cloud of the stuff (invisible to human eyes) waft over you.
Of course all poisons have a minimum deadly concentration, and yes all poisons require more to kill something larger, but you are talking micro-grams for a human and perhaps a gram for a huge creature like a Dragon, all perfectly plausible to be applied to a weapon. I will also point out that Venom and Poison are not the same thing, the assumption in game is that because it's called Poison and not Venom, it is in fact either man, or magically, made, rather than simply taken from a venomous creature. This means it can be created to affect a huge variety of targets including Dragons and could have potency far beyond even the most venomous creature.
Lastly i'll point out that, as i stated before, poison rules in 2nd ed were more complicated, you had multiple forms of poison, some contact poison, some ingested, some aerosol based, all with different effects and saving throws. Only the most potent would actually kill (was literally save at -4 or instantly drop dead, IF you save you take 20 damage).
it would have been better on say, a class with 1apr. even the old PW was fine then on the 1apr class.
Personally i see no problem with using a cloned Dorn to savagely ruin Firkraag via multiple poisonous hits, anyone who doesn't like it can simply not use the strategy, but i commend the OP for pointing out an extremely effective Dragon slaying scheme.
Well, remember there's only 2 classes in the game that can actually use poisoned weapons, 1 is a Blackguard, the other an Assassin, neither particularly known for attacking Dragons nor traditionally even travelling as part of a group. On top of that some Dragons can combat Poison, i believe Adalon will cure poison if she gets infected, but as you have no doubt noticed Dragons will usually have 1 immunity related to their colour.
Why can you poison Firkraag? He's immune to Fire as a Red dragon and if you looked in the source books for 2nd Edition Dragons it would actually state they gain increased abilities as they get older, this includes inate abilities plus spell casting, usually Wizard spells but some even gain Priest spells as well.
In 2nd Edition as a pen and paper game then a Red dragon as old as Firkraag *seems* to be at LEAST classified as "Adult", likely older than that, that would mean he has several advantages when it comes to fighting poison, 1st he can Polymorph self as an inate ability, meaning he'd just shift into something with natural poison immunity to negate it then shift back or into something else, but that assumes he considered the party a threat, which is probably unlikely given their immense pride.
He'd also have amassed a large hoard of treasure, there's a small chance he could have found something that gives poison immunity but unlikely, however it's something often overlooked by DM's. I always told my players when i DM'd they could have anything they wanted for items, BUT the drawback was they had to kill someone/thing who was using it against them 1st...Strangely enough they stopped asking for Vorpal Swords all the time after 4 out of 5 got their heads lopped off and the 5th had to empty the bag of holding to the local priest to get them back up again lol. Anyway i digress, short answer is yes, the game is simplified to make it work as a computer game and on top of that not every DM will deal with situations the same way, but ultimately a Dragons power is diminished quite substantially in the game because you simply cannot apply the full scope of an Older dragons experience and intellect given the coding restrictions.
Short version is yes i agree Firkraag *should* have at least 1 way to make himself immune to poison, but the only way they could do it in game would be via an immunity, which isn't really accurate. I would argue that it's feasible to explain it away by stating he simply had previously used his Polymorph Self abilities for the day, perhaps spying on the Party for his amusement, so when the fight happens his immense Ego has him convinced he's so powerful the party is no challenge and being rekt by a Cloned Dorn with poisoned weapons is so unexpected he fails to realise before it's too late.