Killing a Dragon, Let's drudge up this old gem... Options

[Sharaloth]

regular Adult Dragons? Killable, though difficult if you can't catch them by surprise. A team straight out of chargen could take one on and win (though their chances improve dramatically if they were expecting to take on a Dragon, and bought the appropriate gear and explosives with chargen cash). That dragon, following book rules, would be either an extraordinarily weak member of its species, or fresh off an epic battle for survival that had tested all its resources to the fullest (to account for the abysmal karma pool).

In my current (Extremely high powered) campaign, the players have directly fought against 1 Adult Dragon (which kicked their asses until they decided to deal with it instead of fight it), Ryumyo (who alternately kicked their asses or was distracted by other Dragons, though once they did manage to hurt him bad enough to make him flee), Celedyr (who they won against, but barely, and only after he had been driven completely insane and had been locked in mortal combat with another Great Dragon for a couple hours) and they are currenty directly fighting Alamais... things are not going well for them.

Their initial tactic against Alamais was fairly bright. They didn't get much choice of battleground, but they got there first and could set up a bit. The party includes 1 Drake Adept (whome life has treated very badly), 1 Bear Shapeshifter Adept (with a nifty Infusion focus that drives his init up to +6d6, also the most interesting personality on the team), 1 Harlequin, 1 Magician's Way Adept (who, through the contrivance of fate, has become rediculously powerful, yet is always on the cusp of total breakdown), 1 Free Spirit (who is a PC... did i mention this is a high-powered game?), and 3 Street-Sam types (one of whome is a freakish blend of magic and machine who has some incredible abilities with a pair of BIG pistols, another is a human automaton with MBW4 and more delta-grade ware than most Cyberzombies who can't technically die, and the last is a pretty run of the mill Ork Sammy with an irrational fear of cats)

They get to the roof of a moderately sized skyscraper, i arbitrarily assign it 33 meters a side (a good chunk of room to manouver, though the Dragon'll still take up most of it), some cover and a raised and lowered portion. They give two of the three sammies rocket launchers, while the human automaton (her name's Julie) gets a big ol' custom made Assault Cannon named 'Dragonslayer'. It's a 20D AV-only SOB, and she's the only one with the strength, body and skill to use it. The magical-types spread out, the Drake gets winged and prepares to launch himself bravely into the face of doom, the Bear waits patiently for his chance, the Spirit sticks in Astral and crosses his fingers, and the MW Adept (who, incidentally, has Lofwyr hiding inside him A-la 'Ragnarok', and is the entire reason this fight has to take place) sends out the challenge. The IE hangs back and gives people some of that Shielding lovin'.

Alamais appears through the gloom (there's a lot of ash in the air, explaining that would take some time) and the sammies start firing as many missiles as they can right at him. I determine they've got a good three turns to do this, so they do some careful aiming, and start pumping off the ordinance. As the hail of missiles start exploding, two things become apparant. 1) explosions in the air are pretty, and you can get a whole lot of successes if you are spend some time aiming your shots, and 2) Alamais eats AV missiles like they're cheerios. He's completely unscathed, and coming on fast. The Drake goes out to meet him, and get's nearly killed by the GD's tail for his efforts, and everyone finds out why Alamais was taking his own sweet time in getting to them, namely the swarm of spirits he was conjuring up. Half the people get struck by Confusion powers, the other half are desperately trying to help them, and the Free Spirit is throwing spell after drainless spell at the Dragon with aboslutely no effect. All the combat pool the Dragon's got is going in to dodging the shots from the Dragonslayer (which is intelligent, because at that moment it's pretty much the only weapon capable of hurting it). Alamais picks his targets wisely, and on his first real attack upon hitting the building, he goes after the IE (and basically puts him out of the fight with running away and dodging for the next three turns). The Sammies valiently strive to recover from the spirit attack and focus on the big red dragon, and the leader (the freakish magic-machine one) decides the old tried and true "shoot him in the eye!" will work here. So he starts shooting the thing in the eye, and with four shots a pass, at four passes a turn (REALLY high reaction and 8-point Ambidexterity) firing guns that do 11S with APDS bullets, he managed to give the dragon a moderate wound. meanwhile, the Drake is attacking again, and probably has the best melee chance against it, but is doing little more than annoy, the MW Adept is trying his best, but lacks the strength to really hurt the dragon. The Bear jumps on Alamais' head and starts vainly trying to hack through his thick, tough skull with a newly-aquired Weapon Focus. The Free Spirit, yet to be really attacked, spends his time trying really hard to remove some of the spells Alamais has in sustaining foci on him (including a force 10 Armor spell, a Force 12 Combat Sense spell, and a Force 6 Increase Reflexes +3 spell). Alamais gets annoyed at the sammies, so two of them get taken out with split manabolt spells (the automaton and the felinophobic Ork), and he powerbolts one of the last sammies prize hand cannons, the Drake gets the smack o' doom and is sent falling, and the entire mess of them are only given a few minutes reprieve by the IE finally doing something (which, since he's gotta follow drain rules too, is going to basically put him in a bad position for the rest of the fight).

Result after about 7 turns of combat (3 of which were just straight attacking the dragon before he attacked them): Alamais with one box over Moderate physical, and about 80 Karma pool left (out of the 200 he started with, these PC's are good). exactly ONE PC with ANY Karma pool left at all (all the PC's started the fight with more than 20 Karma pool in the bank, and the highest was over 40), and most of the good guys nursing wounds of one sort or another.

This is how a runner team fights a Dragon: as little as possible, and with a coherent plan, good organization and as many high explosives and powerful magics (mostly dedicated to sheilding) as it is possible to obtain, and then if and only if running, hiding, negotiation or surrender fail.

BTW any suggestions for my troubled team? The Dragon's gonna come back with it's wounds healed and it's spells back up, and they need all the friendly help they can get.

[tisoz]

[Sharaloth]

i did say extremely

[caramel frappucc...]

Heh. Who gives a fuck about the free spirit? With Harlequin and ole Golden Snout on your team, Alamais is deader than a Humanis supporter locked in a room with twenty angry trolls.

[Sharaloth]

[tisoz]

Because depending on the Force and Spirit energy of the spirit and what free spirit powers it knows, it could take out the GD.

My magic heavy group sent a swarm of bound free spirits at Perianwyr from Mercurial and possessed him in one pass. (Yes, the same ones that possessed Junior in Dreamchipper only this time they have a dragon by the tail.)

[fistandantilus4....]

other than not being there when he gets back...

the only thing I can think of is the mage sustaining a bunch of levitate spells and going for melee with everyone possible. See if the friends in melee bonus can save their tails. Have the mage throw out some lementals (then hide them ) to sustain some spells, and have tha mage put up armor spells and shielding/spell defense (and then hide too). Make someone can plant a few kilos of CXII while he's busy eating someone else?

[Sharaloth]

The Free Spirit is Force 13, but has no Spirit Energy and virtually no Karma Pool left after he had to escape from a nasty Horror-Corrupted Immortal Elf who knows his True Name.

They DO have a satchel of C12 at their disposal, and the Bear really wants to see if he can blow up Alamais' head by shoving it into his eye. Too many levitate spells are fairly out of the question, because Harley and the Spirit are the best effective spellcasters (though the MW Adept is powerful, he's very focused on the 'Adept' side of things). Armor spells are a good idea, but Elementals would take too long to create (they've only got a few minutes here). The team's already intending to use the Friends in Melee modifiers to combat the hellish GD reach.

[Critias]

Wow.

[hobgoblin]

i wonder why there is no rigger around with a custom t-bird packing some sort of naval scale missiles or similar, and a drone army on call.

hell, maybe even trow in a weapons platform on the ground with one task only, carrying a naval scale weapon ;)

[Drace]

To take out a dragon, in SR4, the best mundane way to do it would be either a group of men with elephant rifles loaded with either XX(DV12, AP-3 or APDS (DV10, AP-5). And a support team with Mitsubishi Yakusoku Missle launchers (since when did a car company make Bazookas??) loaded to the brim with missles (anti-vehicle) Operated by sammies with full inititave passes (4 turns of 2 missles, equals 8 missles each). Nothing, not even Ghostwalker himself would survive a Large group like that alone (unless he flew away or used improved invis).

[Grinder]

I would use a Thor Shot.

[Vaevictis]

Suggestion: Use the explosion bouncing rules to your advantage.

High-ish force physical barrier + AV missiles = mean.

Tactical situation -- have your mage hold an action until the sammy fires off the missile. As the missile reaches the target, shroud the dragon in a dome-shaped physical barrier. Hopefully, the dragon doesn't dodge. If he doesn't, watch happily as your missile damage gets multiplied by the spell.

Might work. Might not.

Bonus points if you have a custom hyperbolic dome physical barrier spell which will focus all of the blast on one point within the dome, and you center the dragon at that point. There are no direct rules for this, but you can be confident that if the dragon gets hit at all, you have chunky salsa.

Also, for the confusion power, just an abusive but IMO legal trick. On each character's action, all other characters get a free action. Any character that can take an action should remind all characters to "Pay attention!" Everyone gets to re-roll to see if they can take an action this round :) Takes some of the edge off of that power.

[toturi]

A Background Count 10 virtuso is much more reliable. You only need (maybe) Quick Strike to make sure you go first if you did not surprise the dragon. A Background Count of 10 ensures the dragon's magic drops by 12, the dragon takes 14D and the Background Count is aspected to the adept (therefore adds to his Magic). It doesn't matter if the dragon has a stable of elementals on call, it doesn't matter if it's got spells in double digits(chances are it's got problems casting them with the reduced Magic, in fact if it's got anchored spells, it's sooo going to take damage).

[Dawnshadow]

As the MWA and the weird blend of magic and machine..

We do have a few shamans at a distance that are about to send in spirits to help.. and so far, the actual damage people have taken is.. disjoint.


2 down with deadly wounds from a manabolt.
1 smacked drake-adept. He's in trouble -- overdamage
Harlequin's drain.
1 light stun wound on the MWA. He's got centering(melee).. he should be able to ignore it. And he's good enough that he should be able to win every time against Alamais anyway.. just not reliably hurt him.


What we've got access to large scale explosives wise is:
1 satchel of 5kg CXII.
2 IWS Launchers, 7 AV rockets

Magically:
Harlequin.
Force 13 free spirit PC
Lofwyr's spirit, who is known to ramp up the MWA's spell force for him. On the order of doubling it. Too bad most of the spells aren't meant for this level of fight .
MWA with magic power.. um.. 4, and a decently high number of dice if he wants to summon city spirits. Total of 5 focus points, and 2 from totem modifiers, for those.
Conjurer (remote), and a fox shaman (remote) who are sending in spirits as backup. Including (hopefully), a force 12 or so city spirit. Not great form.. bunch of force 6 great forms to help though. The relevent powers are: confusion. accident. Drain will be nasty on that one.. looking at likely 9 stun. (Trauma dampener, very helpful when combined with allies and obscenely high magic).

Melee:
Bear shapeshifter. 11 die dagger, 14 die club. Both weapon foci.
Drake adept. Elemental strike, strength around 11. Problem being "winning melee". Currently caught in a levitate spell having been knocked out of the sky.
MWA. Um... 21 die swords before combat pool, aptitude, and one of them attuned (so far -- didn't have time for the second). Needs more strength. Needs WAY more body (recently lost 2, in order to NOT be stuck in a nutriant bath when Alamais came to tear Lofwyr out of his head).

Ranged:
1 "Dragonslayer", 12 shots remaining (I think), 20D AV.
1 Hand Cannon, 8-10 shots remaining, 13S (EX-explosive), 1 clip of APDS, 1 additional clip of EX-explosive).
Whole bunch of throwing knives that really won't help much.
1 SMG with APDS.

We have no virtuoso adepts -- and wouldn't have rating 10 pieces even if we did.. I believe the ruling was "up to 5".. although it could have been "As high as you want -- I'll just match it".


Now.. theoretical questions..

If Alamais is confused by a force 12, swarmed by a bunch of force 6's on astral (such that he doesn't have hardened armour, just astral armour) that can't reliably hurt him considering his body score, having his foci being attacked (so no more IR+3, combat sense 12, flame aura 8, anchored "I blow you up with me"... (personal theory on a deactivated focus)).. is that enough to make him stop dodging and start burning a lot of karma to survive 13S called shots to the eye with multiple successes, 20D called shots to the same, and more AV rockets aimed for anywhere he's got less protection? Eye, down throat, up nose( it was tried. We never found out how well it would work.. he flamed the missile out of the air)

Would you apply "Chunky Salsa" to 5kg of CXII anywhere inside Alamais?

Is 7M physical with 4-5 successes enough to break foci, or does it need to ramp up with big increase strength spells?

[Critias]

Wow.

[Fuchs]

That reminds me of our first SR1/SR2 campaign. Slow Turtle, the Troll Samurai, did never raise his skills much, but hoarded karma for buying successes for exactly such occasions - "I shoot at the Thing with my Panther. 4 Successes. I buy 20 additional successes with good karma."
And everyone of the other runners had some karma reserve for emergencies too.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Hold on.

The party has more-or-less as members, Harlequin, and Loftwyr?

The IE I can't comment on, being uneducated on the magic aspects of the game...

But you have Loftwyr in the party.

Why not just leverage Saeder-Krupp Heavy Industries in the fight? You know, call for backup in the form of a couple of Thor Shots. And a crapload of SK fighters or whatever.

[Sharaloth]

They DO have an S-K strike force on call, but Lofwyr only just informed the PC's of this, and it will take a bit of time for them to get there, and isn't a guarantee of anything other than more distractions for Alamais. Thor shots and fighter planes are out of the question, as nothing can be targeted from orbit and jet engines would get clogged all to hell (due to all the volcanic ash in the air).

[ShadowDragon8685]

You're telling me with all their technology, they can't get an accurate orbital strike without a direct sight from orbit? I call BS on that... Your point about jet engines is well taken, though.

And remember, more distractions means less BLAM going the PC's way.

[Sharaloth]

They got plenty of tech, sure, but unless you're using magic (which they could very well do) the interference from a huge fracking lot of volcanic ash in the air WILL screw any targeting system you happen to use for your orbital bombardment EXCEPT straight geographic targeting (that is, you can hit a building easy, 'cause you know where it is and it's not going to move, but a rapidly and erratically moving target will be next to impossible), a Nuclear device would work, because it follows the horseshoes and handgrenades rules, but blowing up Seattle is NOT a good idea. If they're targeting with magic, they have to contend both with Alamais' spell defence defeating their detection spells and the problems of the rapidly and erratically moving target which at the moment is uncomfortably close to the guy who could order the orbital strike in the first place.

The only system with that kind of speed, accuracy and targeting is the AOBB system, and that's not on the agenda.

[ShadowDragon8685]

AOBB?

Personally, I was thinking of GPS laser targeting with multiple redundencies.

But can you hit a dragon in flight with a Thor shot? An orbital laser would diffuse with all the ash... Hmmmmmmm.

[Dawnshadow]

[Sharaloth]

Ares Orbital Bovine Bombardment. AKA the Cow from Space

/edit: damn, Dawnshadow beat me to it.

Yeah, any orbital targeting system that didn't rely on geography or magic can't properly target something that doesn't have a set speed or tragectory, especially with things like laser targeting out of the question. Even on a clear day, there would be problems with this. IF you got the dragon to sit still for long enough, it would work, but it's capable of moving in ways that a computer can't predict, and even if Thor shots are in-flight steerable, the reaction time at those velocities are nonexistant, the shot would hit empty (or not-so-empty) ground before the munition had even begun to make a correction for the various movements the target would be making. Orbital attacks are great against big, slow moving or stationary objects, but suck ass against quick, chaotic objects (with the exception of orbital lasers, but even then the targeting would be a problem.)

[tisoz]

Caltrops.

Caltrops and slip spray.