I don't like the "MC died, reload last save" mechanic in general, but this one encounter that I've been repeating for a couple of hours especially pissed me off, because a Dragon killed my MC with a Breath Attack, with all the other 5 Party Members alive, while I had an Oracle with "Raise Dead" available to cast and a couple of Diamonds in the Inventory, who was very much still alive and could've just brought my MC back in a minute. The most infuriating part is that the Dragon was so close to death it would've been killed literally by the next action in the current turn, i.e. by Lann who would've rolled a guaranteed natural 20 on his next attack because of True Strike and shaved off that last few HP. But no, MC died, so you have to reload the last save and do it all over again because f*ck you, that's why.
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The angry ramblings:
So I'm in Act 3 and hunting that Red Dragon, whatever her name is and finally got her cornered on top of that tower, ready to do one final battle. Now, it's entirely possible I'm doing something wrong and suck at the game, but expecting a level 10 Party, even with Tier-3 Mythic Abilities and Feats to actually beat that thing "fairly" even on Core seems a bit ridiculous to me. Her stats are simply insane for that level. No matter which gear loadout I went with, no matter what I buffed myself with, no matter anything, the only one I could get from my Party to beat her AC without rolling a natural 20 was Seelah, and that's only because of the -4 AC penalty from Evil Eye Camellia was spamming every round and Seelah's +5 Attack Bonus from Smite Evil. And even so she needed to roll 15 or thereabouts to hit on her highest BAB attack + another one from Haste (the second natural attack also needed a 20). My MC has got all the Spell Pen Feats, including the Mythic one, but he still needed some sky-high dice rolls to be able to beat her Spell Resistance (and I could pretty much forget about ever beating her Saves, because LOL). Meanwhile, that bitch has a trillion attacks per round and her AB is so high that it makes virtually no difference whether I have 35 AC or 0. Putting Displacement, Stoneskin and Protective Luck on Seelah (who in addition to being the only semi-reliable damage dealer was also the tank) did help somewhat, but the f*cking overgrown lizard has just so many attacks per round that she manages to go through those defenses much faster than I can heal Seelah, even with a 100% dedicated Heal-bot Daeran in the party, plus her own heals.
After a couple of wipeouts and reloads, I figured the honorable way of fighting just isn't gonna work and said "Well, if you're gonna spew bullsh*t at me, Owlcat, I'll spew it back at you". My MC is a Sorc Lich with a merged Spellbook, so he has the Exsanguienate Spell. It's a single-target damage nuke that does Caster Level d6 worth of damage, and does 1d6 worth of STR damage and some Bleed damage on a failed Fort Saving Throw, but even on a successful one, it still does the full CL/d6 damage which I think is Negative Energy, but I'm not sure (the Dragon was not resistant to it, anyway). The kicker is that it requires no roll to hit and ignores Spell Resistance entirely, so on anything that's not Undead or a Construct, you're 100% guaranteed to land a not-too-shabby chunk of damage. But, given the Dragon's massive HP pool and my relatively low Caster Level (low compared to a lvl 25 Red Dragon, I mean), I would need a lot of casts to bring it down with it. So how do you survive long enough? Welp, My buddy Daeran had 11 uses of Animate Dead at Spell Level 3 and another 6 at Spell Level 4 because of Extend Spell.
The idea was to summon wave after wave of of those Bony Bois to block the Dragon's movement towards the party. The Bois have only 11 HP and like negative AC, so the dragon can wipe out an entire wave in a single Full Attack, but that's exactly the point: as long as she was using a Full Attack each round, my MC was able to safely cast Exsanguienate every round for about 40-50 guaranteed damage a pop. The Dragon's Breath Attack was the problem, because it's AoE was large enough to wipe out the skellies and hit p. much my entire Party because of how small the fighting area is, but I stocked up on Communal Protection From Energy. One Breath Attack is enough to almost always burn through the entire 100 points worth of protection from that Spell, but only a tiny bit of damage gets through to the Party.
Anyway, after about 11-12 Rounds of my MC casting that cheesy Spell and Daeran summoning skeletons each round, while Camellia was casting Communal Protection From Energy after each Breath Attack and Lann was occasionally using his Monk abilities to activate True Strike for a guaranteed roll of 20 on his first attack for some extra damage, I managed to bring the damn f*cking thing down to like 10 HP or something. So how does any of this have anything to do with what I said in the first part of the post?
Well, after so much time spent on something that can be best described as literally "anti-fun", as luck would have it, the Dragon had already burned through the last Protection of Energy I had prepared and the party was exposed. At its last couple of HP, the motherf*cking thing decided to use its Breath Attack one last time. The whole party got f*cked up pretty bad, but they all survived (some just barely, though). The only fatality? My squishy MC Sorc, of course. And he wasn't knocked out, he was dead dead. Instant game over, reload previous save. And the best part is, Lann was supposed to act next in the current turn and he had True Strike active, so it would've been a 100% guaranteed Dragon kill like 3 seconds after my MC died (well not literally a kill, because there's a scripted event, but I would've won the fight). But nope, instant game over, do it all over again. I brought her down this way eventually, during one bout in which the dice were unusually kind to me, but my god, like I said, anti-fun.
Not only is it super frustrating gameplay-wise, but again, it doesn't even make sense in game-world logic. Why would the entire shindig be over if the MC takes a short dirt nap when he has a perfectly alive Daeran with several casts of "Raise Dead" available right there next to him? I wasn't killed by something that prohibits revival, like Disintegration or Finger of Death, I just got burned up pretty badly. If you were really autistic you could argue that the in-game justification is that Daeran doesn't like being a part of the Crusade, and with you dead the Crusade is p. much over, so he doesn't want to revive you. But it would be exactly the same with Sosiel there instead. And even before your Party members get "Raise Dead", why exactly can't they just take your body to a Cleric that can revive you? It doesn't make sense to advance story elements with a dead MC, that I understand, but getting killed in some random dungeon by a stray Critical Hit arrow while your Party is still alive really shouldn't spell an instant "game over" when there are realistic means of bringing you back. I hated that in Baldur's Gate as well, but at least there it made sense, story-wise (i.e. your soul instantly becomes fuel for Bhaal), which I don't think is the case here.
Semi-coherent rant over. I will say, though, I really hope this kind of an encounter is a one-off or at least very rare. Cheesing fights this way is just not fun. Maybe other players built their MCs and Parties differently so that they can actually go toe-to-toe with a level 25 Dragon at level 10, but with my current setup, I really don't see how I can boost my numbers to match such an opponent. Just for example, how exactly do you build a character at that point in the game that has an AC high enough to withstand her for more than a couple of rounds even with stuff like Displacement, Stoneskin, Barkskin, Reduce Person etc? I remember certain Alchemist and Sword Saint builds being nigh-unkillable in Kingmaker, but even there in order to reach that point they needed more levels and much better equipment than what I have available now.
