>I'm pretty sure I'm right in thinking nobody has killed
>Tiamat yet, so:

As far as I know, that's correct.

>When you two devised and wrote the new dragons stuff, did you
>imagine this much time (~2 years?) would pass without the big
>girl going down?

I really didn't. I expected it to be tough, but I also expected more attempts to be made.

>Has it played out like you thought it would?

In the sense of the above, no.

In the sense of what happens when people screw it up, yes -- that looks much as I expected.

In the sense of what it looks like when a group's doing it right, also yes. I'm puzzled because I've seen multiple groups (some big-ish, some only about 4 PCs) start doing everything right only to have it all come apart when people start to make big, big mistakes.

And here I'm talking about scenarios like: group's doing everything right to successfully kill Tiamat, she's down to writhing, and the group makes a small retreat to regroup and maybe pop a couple healing sleeps. Then, inexplicably, the group starts charging Tiamat one by one horror movie style until they're all dead. It almost couldn't be worse if the perkiest one of them decided to spontaneously go shower alone at Camp Crystal Lake.

I swear I've seen some close variation of that scenario at least three times.

I'm still at a point where I like that there's a really tough PvE fight you can get into that's not deep in an area explore -- you could get a group together in Galadon and be fighting Tiamat in five minutes easy, and I'm reluctant to make it easier until I see a group with the teamwork (if not necessarily size) of the kind of group I'd expect to beat an Archdevil go at it.

Just as my own commentary having fought all the ancients (though never Tiamat)....the Ancient Blue is a little rough from the sheer size and number of nasty things in it's lair.

I know D&D style, Blues and Reds tend to be the nastiest, but while the other four were relatively doable with a decent group together, I must have tried and failed a half-dozen times (at least once with a huge Fortress group w/ Una and Padwei, etc), mostly from the sheer fact of getting repop'd and mowed down by a huge number of angry mobs.

Anyways, just thought I'd mention it.

LEROY JENKINS!!!!