At the end of last weekend's game session I matched my party (5 10th level 4E characters) against an adult black dragon. Here's my experience:

As promised, combat was very mobile. In particular, I could see why the dragon is a "lurker." The dragon was able to use its ability to create darkness to retreat and attack the party from a different direction and force them to ready actions.

Though the dragon had some great attacks (my favorite being frightful presence) none of them were capable of killing any of the party members outright. As far as I'm concerned, that's a good thing. Its nice to be able to evoke dread without resorting to "I hit you and you die."

Also as promised, individual rounds were quite zippy in their resolution and everyone including the dragon got to do "cool stuff."

But . . . there was a definite downside. After somewhere between 15 and 20 rounds of combat (I lost count) the dragon was not quite bloodied. Yep. Two hours of combat and we weren't yet halfway through the encounter. It was starting to feel vaguely reminiscent of the end of our Age of Worms game.

Now, there are some mitigating factors involved that could explain this and I'll list them below:

(1) Player unfamiliarity. For most of the players, they had between four and 8 hours of 4E under their belt. It's entirely possible that there's some crucial aspect of the game (figuring out how to syngerize damage is my guess) that they just haven't figured out yet.

(2) Non-optimized characters. By this I mean that the pregens they were using (crafted by yours truly) weren't put together with an eye to creating intracharacter or intercharacter synergy. I just picked powers that sounded interesting and were somewhat consistent with the 3.5E characters I was trying to replicate.

(3) Some of their daily powers had been used by this point. They had already fought two encounters before the dragon and all of the characters had used one or two of their daily attack powers by this point.

(4) No controller. The 3.5E party I was trying to replicate with the pre-gens didn't have a wizard so the 4E party didn't either. Not sure if this would've made a huge difference or not.

So, the considerations listed above can account for why combat eventually degenerated into a very cinematic and mobile, yet FRUSTRATINGLY BORING grindfest.

Like I said earlier, combat had already been going on for 15 to 20 rounds. As enjoyable as 4E combat is, at about that many rounds it just starts to SUCK. No amount of "cool powers" can make it fun.

The prior combat encounter was also decidedly on the long side. With three of the monsters (2 Flameskulls and a Helmed Horror, both monsters with regeneration.) essentially choosing to ignore their ability to flee and regenerate. If they had done that, combat would have lasted FOREVER, or at least until the party ran out of Healing Surges and died.

With the dragon, I'm pretty sure that smarter playing on the part of the party would have increased the "DPR" but doing so would have been tough. Here's why:

(1) Daily attack powers with ongoing damage suck against dragons. The black dragon got a +5 to all its saving throws, so any imparted condition that was ended by a save lasted one or two rounds at best.

(2) It's very difficult to provoke OA against a large creature (creatures in general, actually). It has Reach 2, so it doesn't usually have to move to get at a particular morsel. Besides, its breath weapon and cloud of darkness recharge frequently. Both of those could be used to deal damage or move around without provoking OA's.

(3) Extra damage from the Paladin's divine challenge was easy to avoid simply by using Twin Attack to attack the Paladin AND someone else. Or I could just breath on the paladin and anyone else in the area.

The one tactic that would be effective against the Dragon would be "create a damaging zone and push, pull or slide the dragon into it." The only problem is that this effectively counts as a maybe two characters doubling their DPR. By my estimate you'd need every character to do this to get that dragon killed in 20 rounds.

So, the ideal tactic in this situation would've been:

(1) Create several overlapping zones (preferably those that can be moved) that deal damage of different types to the dragon when it starts its turn in them.
(2) Use one or more forced movement powers to place the dragon squarely in the "Square Of Death" created by the overlapping zones.
(3) Always have a source of light present right next to the dragon so that it can't get much use out of its Zone of Darkness power.
(4) Get all your melee capable characters in close so that they can get all those sweet and juicy OA's when the dragon tries to move out of the "Square of Death." Besides, a successful OA interrupts and halts the dragon's move so it has to waste more actions on attempts to move.
(5) DO NOT use this tactic until the dragon has used its Frightful Presence and action points (with the Frightful Presence being more important). If it manages to wiggle free, all those wonderful (the immobile ones at least) zones are useless. You'll be hard pressed to get the dragon into the same tactical position a second time.

What's my point? Well, simply this. Is the average group of 4E players going to be able to pull this off? Are multiple characters going to be able to create damage dealing zones of different type and sustain them while also keeping the dragon from getting out of the "Square of Death?"

Frankly, I don't know. It seems do-able, but it also seems like a VERY specialized tactic. Something that a party would only have ready if they KNEW they were going up against a Solo Monster.

Anyone have any thoughts? Anyone else play out an encounter like this yet?

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