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[scriver]

It was a flying carpet.

But how would you tell

[Bohandas]

62.) A blue dragon offers to refill your water for an exorbitant fee. If the characters refuse the dragon magically dries up all their canteens and provisions.

[nullBolt]

63) A blue dragon claims to be building a great library and requests every text from every corner of the world, with great riches and magical rewards on offer for those who bring him rare enough texts. He is actually just doing it in the hopes that magical texts will be brought to him.
64) An efreeti requests that the party seal him in a bottle for five years so that he can escape a promise he made.
65) The party comes across an ancient and beautiful city in the sands. It is beyond any known human measure but devoid of life. The more astute of them may notice that their breath produces no moisture and they become parched much more quickly. Water seems to drain away in such speed as to be unbelievable. There is great treasure to be had here, though.

[Jimmy]

Our party has found its first dragon! We're all level 9-10, and this dragon's a CR 14 Adult Red Dragon.

We've found a small fissure leading into its lair at the mid level of a volcano. Attacking straight on would be suicide, so here's my plan:

1. My Wizard attacks the dragon just before resting for the day. I can throw out 6 Enervation spells, each with a 95% chance of hitting the dragon, and a 50% chance of penetrating its spell resistance. This should equal about 7 negative levels to the dragon on average, more if I'm lucky.

2. After resting, I repeat the same attack sequence, with a total of 5 Enervations for an average of 6 more negative levels. At this stage the Dragon's saves are at -13 on average. I then cast Magic Jar from the tunnel, using a gem from its horde as the Jar. From this position I attempt to suck the Dragon's soul out, and let my party coup-de-grace the Dragon.

Fingers crossed it works!

[SOLDIER First]

The dragon proceeds to close the fissure / come out and murder everyone once it realizes it's being Enervated.

[GiglameshDespair]

Basically:

The dragon proceeds to close the fissure / come out and murder everyone once it realizes it's being Enervated.

As an intelligent creature, it should also be able to respond intelligently to being casted on, and not just sit there and take it.

[TheBiggerFish]

How long does Enervate take to cast, though?

[Criptfeind]

It does seem that a plan that is relying on a dragon, a power sorcerer in addition to a very physically powerful creature not finding a way in eight hours to do anything to you is a bit suspect.

[TheBiggerFish]

It does seem that a plan that is relying on a dragon, a power sorcerer in addition to a very physically powerful creature not finding a way in eight hours to do anything to you is a bit suspect.

Maybe you can hit it while it's sleeping?

[Criptfeind]

Well. Maybe. I guess Enervation doesn't specify how it feels, but it seems a bit suspect that the dragon wouldn't wake up and understand what's going on. (Remember, dragons are highly intelligent and almost as magically powerful as his character).

[BlackFlyme]

Enervation is just a standard action.

I don't know about D&D, but in Pathfinder, developers have stated that you know when offensive magic has been cast on you, even if you make the save. It doesn't give you any specifics beyond feeling uneasy, though.

[GiglameshDespair]

Enervation is losing a vital part of your being to a 'crackling ray of black energy'.
That sounds like it'd be painful enough to wake something up, never mind the sound of the incantation and the spell itself.

[Rolan7]

I wish spells had an indicator for whether the target is automatically aware of being affected.  Or maybe there's some general rule?  Since it seems implied that Charm Person and other mind-effecting enchantments can be applied secretly.

But ray spells are probably obvious beams of energy (negative in this case), particularly since they're dodgeable.  Even if the dragon doesn't see the ray because it's asleep or something, it's probably a painful and obvious thing to get hit with.

Anyway it's a *dragon*, so it likely has a high spellcraft, spot and listen.  Good luck

Enervation is just a standard action.

I don't know about D&D, but in Pathfinder, developers have stated that you know when offensive magic has been cast on you, even if you make the save. It doesn't give you any specifics beyond feeling uneasy, though.

Oh cool, glad they clear that up.  You'd need Spellcraft (20+spell level) to identify the spell effect in 3.5e, and an easier roll for identifying the casting itself.

[Bohandas]

I wish spells had an indicator for whether the target is automatically aware of being affected.  Or maybe there's some general rule?  Since it seems implied that Charm Person and other mind-effecting enchantments can be applied secretly.

That's always bothered me as well.

2. After resting, I repeat the same attack sequence,

You've played too many videogames. If it works than so has your DM. Hell, even in videogames it bothers me that you can do this kind of stuff, though I understand that there are limitations to what can be done without slowing the program to a crawl.

[Jimmy]

So far the dragon appears to be happy to remain perched on its horde next to the large bottomless cavern inside the main volcano shaft. We've poked it a few times to test its responses, mainly to see if we could use a decoy or summoned creatures to lure it away from the horde while we go in and steal it. As far as I can see, the dragon doesn't have any method available to magically seal the fissure we're using, nor does it have any shapechanging magic to chase us down our 5 ft. by 5 ft. rat-hole. It could always drop a boulder on the entrance, but pushing it back out of the way shouldn't be too hard for our melee characters (it's not like they're contributing much else to the fight anyhow).

As for going toe to toe with a fully awake and angry adult red dragon, my Wizard's pretty well equipped to handle it. Obviously Resist Energy and Protection from Energy to negate the breath weapon, Blur and Mirror Image to avoid too many melee hits, and lots of teleportation SLAs from my Conjuration school specialization to get the hell away if I take too many hits. I have 100 hit points, so I should be fine even if I take a big hit with a Greater Vital Strike Power Attack. I'm just hoping it doesn't ready Dispel Magic to counterspell my Enervations, since that's the biggest risk to the strategy. I'm considering whether to summon a half dozen lantern archons to zap it with lasers while I tag it with enervations as a distraction too, just to add a little extra chaos.