Solo Skald vs Shadow Dragon

[Cerek]

WOO HOO!!! I FINALLY killed this beast!!! [img]graemlins/yippee.gif[/img]

My first few attempts were short and brutal. I would cast Pierce Magic or Breach to cancel his Spell Protections (depending on how many he had up) and then try to trap him in a Cloudkill. This worked a little bit and would sometimes cause some of the Shadow Dragon's spells to fail - provided he stayed inside the AOE of the Cloudkill. Needless to say, he wasn't very cooperative and would eventually leave the area. Then he would cast Haste, Heal, and Protection from Magic Weapons on himself. After that, it was all over for my poor bard.

I was using several summoned creatures to try to keep him within the AOE. I used the Staff of Air to summon an Air Elemental directly in front of him. I summoned Improved Kitthix to his left and used the Dryad's Acorns (Tactics Version) to summon the moose and dryads to his right. Then I went behind him and launched our attack.

Since he wouldn't stay in the Cloudkill area, I decided to try the following sequence....

1) Cloudkill
2) Breach (to cancel his Stoneskin)
3) Lower Resistance
4) Tenser's Transformation on my bard.

I have several good weapons and thought the physical approach might work instead of spell slinging. Arrows of Biting, Pitchwife (+5 and imbeds slivers that prevent spellcasting), Celestial Fury, Namarra (to cast Silence, 15' radius) among others. NONE of them worked. Even though Tenser's transformed me into a 20th level fighter and I had a +5 weapon, I still couldn't touch him. I even tried using the Tuigen Bow with Improved Haste, hoping to do a "Gaitlin Gun" attack on him. Didn't work.

So I finally went back to spells. I still opened with the previous sequence to remove his protections and Lower his Resistance. My BIGGEST concern was how to stop his spellcasting. Pitchwife and Arrows of Biting (which do continued poison damage) had no effect. But while looking through my scroll case, I found a scroll of Power Word:Silence. I honostly didn't think it would work, but I had tried so many other tactics, I figured I had nothing to lose.

Wonder of wonders, the Power Word worked and the dragon was silenced. I had used Lower Resistance before casting the Cloudkill this time, so the Shadow Dragon actually took a fair amount of damage before leaving the cloud to attack my summoned creatures. None of summoned creatures EVER did any damage to him, but they did keep him busy and prevented him from attacking me.

I had prepared a Minor Sequencer with 2 Magic Missile spells before entering the Shadow Dragons' lair. I hit him with those and that managed to bring him down to "injured". Since the Magic Missiles worked so well - and he was unable to Heal himself - I cast the other 3 copies of the spell I had memorized. This brought him down to "Badly Injured". I then cast my 1 memorized version of Chromatic Orb - hoping he would fail his save against the special effect. He didn't, but it did do 15 pts of damage to him.

That's when I decided to try my bard's favorite "high damage" spell - Skull Trap. One skull did 35pts of damage and took him down to "Near Death". I was giddy with excitement, but also very nervous. He had killed all of my summoned creatures (except for a wyvern I had summoned with a scroll) and was concentrating ALL of his attacks on me. I was worried he would disrupt my spell, but I tried my second (and last) Skull Trap). I managed to get it off with the dragon's jaws snapping all around my head - and the Shadow Dragon was finally nothing more than a very frightening memory.

[Dace De'Briago]

GG [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Leslie]

With PFMW active and something to protect from level drain (Amulet of Power) you can actually yawn while the dragon is attacking you. If he remembers to Wing Buffet you just come back and laugh at his face.

There is also a possibility that he uses Remove Magic so either you have SI:Abj on or just recast PFMW while running around. The second option is better IMO because SI:Abj also prevents you from casting PFMW.

You could have tried also the feeble drooling attack: Lower Resistance x2 (or 3x), Greater Malison, Feeblemind.

[Cerek]

Originally posted by Leslie: With PFMW active and something to protect from level drain (Amulet of Power) you can actually yawn while the dragon is attacking you. If he remembers to Wing Buffet you just come back and laugh at his face. There is also a possibility that he uses Remove Magic so either you have SI:Abj on or just recast PFMW while running around. The second option is better IMO because SI:Abj also prevents you from casting PFMW. You could have tried also the feeble drooling attack: Lower Resistance x2 (or 3x), Greater Malison, Feeblemind.

I actually considered Feeblemind and PFMW both - but I didn't have Feeblemind memorized and wasn't sure if PMFW would protect me against his claws or not.

Not that it matters. I managed to kill him anyway with pure damage spells. Once he was Silenced, the battle went much better for me. I'll have to pick up another scroll and actually write it into my spellbook. I really didn't think it would work, but figured I had nothing to lose by trying it.