Be sure to keep this within reason by installing a cap, or don’t.
If you want stronger breath weapons, you can allow the dragon to exceed their initial damage dice when they recharge. That will never happen with the dice pool, since the recharge rate is governed.
#Dmg red dragon full
The traditional rule gives an 11% chance that you’ll get the full breath weapon the first three turns. The average damage stays the same, but it’s lot less swingy. So we take 1/3 of the total breath weapon dice and just add it back turn-by-turn. Since all dragons recharge their breath weapon on a roll of a 5 or a 6, we know they recharge 1/3 of the time. The mechanic is elegant because the power level stays exactly the same. You can also throw off a few weaker breath weapons while biding time for a full recharge. If you wait, the next round you have the breath weapon back at full strength. Now, you have options: another 12d6 breath weapon the next round, fire a weaker breath weapon, or wait to recharge more. The next turn, you get 6 of those dice back as the recharge. You spend 12 of the 18 d6s to dial down the average damage from 63 (108 max) to 42 (72 max). On turn 1, you make a breath weapon attack to show the party you mean business. Your Adult Red Dragon has a breath weapon that does 18d6 fire damage. Here’s a handy chart for rounding the 1/3 recharge damage: You recharge a number of dice every turn equal to 1/3 of the total dice pool. You can spend any number of damage dice when making a breath weapon attack. The breath weapon’s damage dice become the breath weapon damage dice pool. The best solution is an elegant little tweak so you don’t throw off the balance elsewhere. I know what you’re thinking: here comes a crazy mechanic that you’re going to need an entire splatbook to understand. Nothing breaks immersion like quizzing the party on the last rounds of combat. This is a worthy sacrifice to get away from the accounting of how long it’s been since the breath weapon last went off. I want the recharge to have a more natural progression, as the dragon builds back up the power. It feels weird when the breath weapon doesn’t proc for a few rounds and then goes off twice. While not a huge deal, randomness can cause narrative dissonance. After all, dragons aren’t too good at keeping company. That’s because the chart is based on the guidelines in the Dungeon Master’s Guide for a single creature against a party of four adventurers, which you can find handily summarized in the Encounter Building Unearthed Arcana. You might also note that the levels for the breath weapons don’t line up with the CRs of the dragons. The red boxes cover the range of damage, with the red dots representing average damage. You can see the assumptions made for Constitution along the x-axis. The blue bars represent player HP at each level, with darker being bigger hit dice. I have seldom rolled out a dragon that doesn’t drop at least one party member with the breath weapon on turn 1.Ĭheck out this comparison of red dragon breath weapon damage vs. You want the dragon to be fearsome (beyond the frightful presence).
Whether you’ve played with or against a dragon, you know the breath weapon is brutal. There’s give-and-take with any design mechanic.
I hesitate to call these “issues” because I don’t think there’s anything broken about the breath weapon. This mechanic is good, but I’m a tinkerer.
0 kommentar(er)
