this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
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I like [email protected] explanation, but he neglected to explain why Bahamut does this and what exactly the canaries are
Each of the canaries is a dragon cleric, one for each color of the metallic dragons. So they not only are high-level monsters, they also can each throw high-level spells at you. Here's the important thing for DM use: its only tradition that they are canaries. I usually have then be pidgeons or chickadees.
Bahamut essentially does this because he is bored. You see, he is a God of dragons, but dragons don't actually worship their God in the way mortals do, so he doesn't have a lot of duties. So, when he is bored and wants something to do, he goes to the mortal plane in the guise of a pathetic old man, and whenever someone helps him he returns the favor by giving them a blessing.
The problem with using Bahamut as a stick for your munchkins is that he really doesn't need to defend himself. The dragons, of course, will be revealed if their polymorphed form is destroyed, but do you really think some random adventurers can even slightly harm the God of Metallic Dragons? Think about what could happen. Imagine some little kid stepping up to defend the old man, a bunch of other little kids back him up, the party kills them, and then Bahamut brings them all back and offers to make them clerics or paladins so they can actually do something about all the evil people in the world.
Practically speaking, yes, 99.99999% of creatures wouldn't last a literal second against Bahamut, but gods in the Faerun pantheon are not omnipotent, or invincible. He could be harmed or even killed, but there are very few creatures who could do it. A large party of level 20 adventurers could possibly pull it off, but at that level they're effectively demigods in their own right.
Or Ao could just decide to replace him or give his portfolio to another lawful good god, snap his fingers, and even Bahamut would instantly pop out of existence.
No, they could kill an avatar of Bahamut, but not Bahamut itself.
They'd also probably need to prep for it, including some sort of method for pinning Bahamut down so they can actually force the fight. Otherwise it's a fight that Bahamut chooses.
Honestly, this right here is why I don't believe a party of murderhobos could take down bahamut in this situation.
The party is probably only mid-level
Sure, they could take down a god with prep time. My character in my D&D campaign is slowly working on just that. Do they have prep time, though? Do they even know what they are fighting?
I was in a campaign some years back where the ultimate goal was to defeat a god. To "warm us up" the DM arranged partway through the campaign for us to get into a vendetta with a lesser demon, and it proved rather illuminating. When we went to fight it in its lair it creamed us because it had been preparing specifically to fight us, we barely teleported out with our lives. Then when we sat down together and started planning how to make another attempt, it teleported into our lair (a mansion owned by an NPC ally) and attacked us. We were like, "how dare it scry-and-fry us while we were preparing to scry-and-fry it!?"
Many high-level monsters have high intelligence scores, if the DM actually accounts for that then they can be almost arbitrarily powerful.
When we eventually went to fight the final boss god we came loaded for bear, we had something like 8 different supernatural armies on our side and we dropped an artifact superweapon on the god's domain as the opening salvo. It was still a mighty slog, though, and at that point in the campaign Balors were essentially considered just "footsoldiers" against our party.
Not even high level. Everyone's heard of Tucker's Kobolds.
Not necessarily. Bahamut himself was known to spar with his followers in his true dragon form to prove their worth. While it's highly unlikely, it's entirely possible to destroy him on his home plane. No god in the Faerunian pantheon is completely immortal or invincible, in fact a fair number are mortals ascended to godhood. Bhaal, Bane, and Myrkul were mortals who l killed a primordial god, then traveled to the domain of Jergal, the original god of death, to kill him. He instead offered his three portfolios to them, ascending them to godhood. Bhaal was later slain by the mortal Cyric who then took over his portfolios and ascended to godhood. Gods in Faerunian pantheon are not omnipotent or omniscient.