Fellowship

Like many of you, I’ve been burned by high expectations of fantasy & sci-fi movies more than once. Beyond the continuing disappointment that is the Star Wars franchise, even most one-shot “cool concept” flicks fail to live up to their hype. I’m still embarrassed that I talked several co-workers into seeing Jet Li’s execrable The One on opening night, and while Men in Black II wasn’t a truly bad film, it certainly wasn’t worth the gajillion dollars of marketing behind it.

But then again, there have been some pleasant surprises of late. X-Men gave hope to comic book fans everywhere, and Spider-Man kept the string alive. And of course, Fellowship of the Ring was simply a masterful film.

So when I saw the first preview for Reign of Fire, the new post-apocalyptic dragon flick, I was cautiously optimistic. Looked like good effects, sure. Some middling star power, OK. Nifty idea, certainly. The weeks ticked by, and I became more and more anxious. Would it be another Jurassic Park, a fun romp with huge monsters eating hapless humans, or another Jurassic Park III, a tedious slogging bore with huge monsters eating stupid humans?

Well, I’m happy to say that I found Reign of Fire to be an exciting, enjoyable popcorn flick, a bit short on story (and with an ending that comes about 15 minutes too soon), but great fun for fans of D&D (especially of the second “D”). The action scenes were intense, the visuals fantastic, and the dragons just plain cool. Watching this movie makes me look forward to upcoming games such as D20 Modern and Jonathan Tweet’s Omega World (to be published in an upcoming Polyhedron magazine).

Since Reign of Fire isn’t really a true medieval fantasy (castles and crossbows aside), not everything in it is fit for a typical D&D game. But that said, a couple of scenes inspired thoughts of game mechanics. As always, beware of spoilers…

The first idea came from watching the effect of the dragons’ fiery breath. Unlike the familiar red dragon’s fire, which comes and goes in an instant, this breath weapon tended to burn even after the dragon flew past (yes, that’s what Flyby Attack looks like). The characters described the breath as working like napalm, and that’s a terrifying thought. I give you the Igniting Breath feat.

Igniting Breath

Your fiery breath weapon burns targets for a full round.

Prerequisites: Breath weapon that deals fire damage.

Benefit:

On the round after a target suffers damage from your fiery breath weapon, it takes additional damage equal to one-half the initial damage dealt to it by the breath weapon. The target can take a full-round action to attempt to extinguish the flames before taking this additional damage. It takes a successful Reflex saving throw (DC = your breath weapon’s DC, or 10 + 1/2 your HD + your Con bonus, if your breath weapon doesn’t allow a save) to extinguish the flames. Rolling on the ground allows the character a +2 bonus. Leaping into a body of water or magically extinguishing the flames automatically smothers the flames.

Example: An adult red dragon with the Igniting Breath feat breathes fire on a party of adventurers. Thomas and Adarrial make successful Reflex saves, but Thorgrimm and Duran do not. Rolling 12d10 for damage, the DM determines that Thorgrimm and Duran each suffer 70 points of damage, and will suffer an additional 35 points of damage next round if they don’t extinguish the flames. Adarrial suffers half this amount because of his successful save: 35 points this round, and another 17 next round barring successful smothering of the flames. Thomas takes no initial damage (thanks to his evasion), and thus suffers no secondary damage one round later.

The skydiving bait trick seems initially like something fit only for modern-day games, but if you replace the helicopter with a flying carpet (or similar transport) and the parachutes with potions of feather fall, the concept works just fine. At terminal velocity, a character moves at a speed of about 120 miles per hour, which works out to a speed of roughly 1,000 ft. per round. That’s faster than most dragons in D&D can fly, even in a dive (a dragon’s flight speed is 150 to 250 ft., doubled for a dive is 300 to 500 ft., which means 600 to 1,000 ft. with a double move). Only the very largest dragons can keep up with a free-falling character, but if you wanted to re-enact this scene by bumping the dragon's flight up by a notch, I say go for it.