D&D: How to Properly TPK With Dragons
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- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
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So basically the main takeaway is: if you want to be nice have them fight dragons from skyrim, and if you want to hurt them have them fight dragons for dark souls
B)
That's exactly right.
Gaping Dragon in DnD, anyone?
And if you really want to screw with the party, make the dragon pick up the weakest member of the party, dash UP next turn, then drop hitchhiker at 100,000 feet up.
@@sidecharacter7165 can physics crit you with fall damage? Or would it be an opposite effect, since you're basically rag-dolling?
Well i mean *caugh caugh* one hit kill drop attack *caugh caugh*
So basically I had the dragon scorch the town the party had just arrived at, stealing a massive gem that was the magifun of the game. The party then followed it into a volcano where the barbarian died burning in lava and everyone else but the rouge died from repeated breath weapon uses. The dragon was killed in the end, but it went from a party of 6 to just a very scorched rouge.
rasengan knight at least the rogue has a new edgy story to tell now!
Not surprised, rogues are impossible to kill
*macguffin
sorry, I had to
Psychomaniac14 You corrected magifun, but not “rouge”
Gotta love those finesse rogues. Improved evasion means you take no damage from area of effect attacks if you succeed on the save. Which you should succeed on, if you've been stacking dexterity properly. I once dodged a fireball in a space the size of the fireball. Evasion: It just works.
A perfect guide on how to loose my friends and never be allowed as DM again.
Thanks!
Dude, our ginger friend forgot about the faster path: dragons have acess to spells, so you can yeet a finger of death at em at watch as they turn on eachother
Sadly when you do this Niko, you only have
*Oneshot*
@@alfredwinchesterjr Not if you find new friends to play with,
and ultimately loose them when you pull this shit.
@@alfredwinchesterjr Nice!
@@alfredwinchesterjr LMAO NICE
One of my friends homebrewed his own type of Dragon - an Orange dragon with no breath weapon that could instead turn invisible whenever it wanted. It also didn't have wings, but had a burrowing speed equivalent to a Red's flying speed. That dodgy little rat killed my Paladin and our Barbarian before our Druid and Rogue could finally take it down. Later on we found out that he'd essentially pit us against an Adult dragon when we *might* be able to handle a Young one. Good times.
Stealin' this.
@@IrvingIV I'll let my friend know somebody liked his death dragon.
@lisa morris I do not know Monster Hunter, but given the hell we went through in one encounter with the *nerfed* version of that I will take your word on it.
Well, the invisibility thing is kind of a given, with greater invisibility being a spell elder dragons can indeed use.
@@svenbrede6151 That's if you choose to give them the innate spellcaster variant feature though, at least in 5th Edition. The base Dragons, even the Ancient ones, do not have Invisibility innately as a base model. Now, I personally love that feature and use it prolifically when I DM, but we were way too low level to be dealing with a Dragon of that caliber. Probably why the DM didn't give this one a breathe weapon, but the invisibility hurt us way more in the long run lol
I played an ancient blue dragon in her lair recently.
The dragon would, on each of her turns, erupt from the earth on one side of the players, usually targeting the players that stood out at the back. She'd wail on that player for her turn, and many of the others had to waste their turns, trying to catch up to her. She'd then use her legendary actions and lair action to disrupt the party, before burrowing back on down into the earth on her turn after attacking again. She repeated this tactic of hit the outliers one by one until the party all grouped up, at which point, she erupted from the earth again, lightning breath and then attempted to make the ceiling collapse upon them all, attempting to herd them into a corner, before again, burrowing into the earth to gain full cover and escape.
She seemed to vanish after a while and a bit of damage and the players attempted a short rest, at which point, she ambushed them again and the fight continued. The players quickly realized she was chipping away at them all and doing hit and runs. They eventually managed to bait her out and after causing several insults to her and damages to things she cherished, the dragon started losing her cool and getting reckless, at which point they were finally, *barely* able to take her down.
Was quite the thrilling fight!
that's how you do it. make dragons fight dirty until the things they value most are directly threatened, their pride but more importantly their hoard. though on the other hand they should have a decoy hoard.
Hmm, they probably could have used some Storm Giant aid
@@pohatunuva3771
A giant helping a dragon? How?
They hate each other, they fought to the point of almost destroing both of their colture and both side Lost becouse of internal conflict
That Is how a Blue Dragon fights.
Either fly over the party heads for days and shit lighting 24/5 or make their house/Castle collaps in their sleep.
Of they reach the hoard fight dirty until they leave or die, don't let them rest.
For massive troll potential make a fake lair and ruin their week.
@@EvelynNdenial
This works mostly for Blue dragons, other cromatic dragons don't fight like that.
Long comment on how to fight a cromatic dragon.
Fighting a green? Better bring poison for the plants or burn the forest. Maybe Ask some Hill Giants of they want free eggs, once they know the green Is there they are going inside in groops ti steal the eggs (delicacy in their culture).
Fighting a Red? DO NOT TRY TO CLIMB TO HIS MONTAIN, he Will pick up the tank a drop It far away, then come back for the rest of the party. Use spells to reach the top and to navigate his dungeon.
Fighting a black? I Hope those tasty healing potions are somewere save. Since you can't burn down the swamp the fight Will consist of him Flying while you are Stuck in the mud, drying the Place might be faster.
Fighting a White? Set up some food in a trap and kill It, weak as hell. Overwer take care to not be close to other creatures Who live in the ICE, most of them are almost as dangerous as the dragons (and frost giant live in cities, so if they find out Someone Is doing stuff close by they Will call a full war band and bully the party and the dragon, probably making the Mission 10x harder).
Fighting a blue? Everything Lee said, + they like to destroy potions and call other Blue if they are part of a group. Make sure they aren't part of a "family", wich Is pretty Much Blue dragons living close that help each other from time to time.
I can't believe you didn't even mention the magical items that a dragon would probably have
Hell, a copper dragon would probably just get a collection of masterful craftsmen in place of his horde, and the main thing aside from kidnapping legendary smiths, weavers, tinkers and jewelers is formulas, blueprints and recipes to allow them to create whatever the fuck he wants.
People forget that dragons can use some of the stuff in their hoard.
Yes I too think a dragon can wield a giant flaming sword with it's tail
@@TheDisorganizedNerd I mean, magical weapons have been known to resize to fit the wielder, and dragons are masters of the arcane, so maybe!
A gray/fang dragon with claws full of magical swords = rape.
I really want to run a high level campaign where there's such a dragon going around and it's been targeting the local metallic dragon citizenry. After a lot of detective work, the party gets to fight it, and it's just the most terrifying murdery thing in existence.
For those of you unfamiliar with fang/gray dragons, they are chromatic dragons, so evil, only they don't have a breath weapon. Okay, fine, the gray dragon has a breath weapon, but it's a copy-paste of the black dragon's, and it kinda ruins the uniqueness of the fang dragon, so I don't like them as much. Here on out, it's all written for a fang.
Fang dragons are covered in fuck you and die powerful melee weapons. Claws, teeth, spikes, horns, and even a bladed tail. It has insane armor. Worst, it is also very intelligent and can imitate speech perfectly, so it can do all kinds of shenanagins to manipulate, deceive, and ambush the party. I lied, the worst is that its bites: rend armor, damage constitution by 1D4 points permanently without greater restoration or wish, and inflict 1 level of exhaustion, all vs a DC21 CON save! It is also resistant to magic. So the longer you fight it, the tighter you get pulled into a death spiral. Give it some more magic items, like immoveable rods, to pin knocked prone enemies with, and you have something that can wipe a level 20 party in 2 turns under ideal conditions with a sneak attack against a smaller party.
Vs party of 3: starts with a sneak attack. Knocks spellcaster prone. Grapples. Uses attacks to kill. Bites tank to give exhaustion. Turn 1: Bites tank. Tank now has lvl 2 exhaustion. Knock tank prone. Pins with immoveable rod so tank can't intervene. Turn 2: Goes ham on archer. Archer is boned. TPK.
The average party caps at 5, but by the time it's finished with pinning the tank, the whole thing is in a death spiral.
This is on lvl 20's.
I plan on making it wyrm/ancient and giving it the marilith's ability to attack multiple times per turn. 1 bite, 1 stomp, 2 claws, 1 horn, 1 tail, 2 kicks = 8 attacks per round minimum. And with a bonus action if it succeedes in a knockdown, it gets a free grapple and attack. This thing has been murdering adult gold, silver, bronze, copper, steel, mercury dragons one after another. The party will understand the what and the why, but won't get the how until it's murdalizing them.
This thing is going to be absolutely horrifying.
I love it already!
The dragon capture megumin
Me: OH NO
Megumin: cast explosion in the dragons cave and everyone dies.
Dragon: *Casts Crown of Stars*
lol
Megumin: cast explosion on the dragon´s cave
Cave: Quakes and falls on top of the players
DM: "Rocks fall, everyone dies"
Three days later a new dragon comes along, digs up the treasure, and becomes immensely self-satisfied with its brilliant tactic ;P
@@Alexander-vg5qf Me: *finally i can say that*
How to properly TPK the party
Just make a shambling mound dragon...god is now a dragon
Overclocked 2020 GOD NO. IM HAVING FLASHBACKS.
My party recently defeated a shambling mound at 1st level because our dwarf fighter managed to roll some really good grapple checks and the thing could hardly move to defend itself. I don't know if our DM was playing that monster right or not, but he sure seemed exasperated.
@@justinmccurdy9319 It shouldn't really care, it wants to attack the same target with all its attacks so the dwarf is as good a target as any and its low int would have it keep attacking the closest target anyway (at least if I was running it - it doesn't know that the paladin is harder to hit than the wizard for example).
It's also so slow that if there's wide open space a party of 30 speed characters (poor dwarf again) can dash away for one round, move and attack the next, rinse and repeat - the party is moving 90 feet in two rounds with one attack action, the mound can only move 80 feet in two rounds if all it does is dash. If they scatter then some of them will be outside it's blindsight radius can attack with advantage while it slowly chases someone else...
But the DM would have had to have made some bad rolls to not have killed and eaten the dwarf before the mound died. And not have arranged for their to be a thunderstorm raining down lightning strikes for the combat :)
@@samholden5758 Well, for a start, this was all underground, so no freak thunderstorms would be able to heal the mound. Second, the DM rolled several natural ones. Third, the dwarf's player rolled stupidly high on his stats and had a strength score of 18. Fourth, the DM had let us all take a feat at the beginning of the game and the dwarf took the grappler feat. The dwarf's player was so smug after that fight, lol!
@@justinmccurdy9319 I guess I don't get why it would care about being grappled - it wants to stay in close melee anyway and wouldn't want to move away from whomever is first attacks anyway. Advantage for the dwarf is good due to the feat.. If the DM gives every character the equivalent of an ASI at level 1 then unsurprisingly all the CR stuff in the books will be miles off since the characters are *way* above par at low levels.
And yes if the DM rolls poorly the players have a great time :)
I'm late to story time, but my funniest dragon story is also my silliest party victory story (from Pathfinder 1E): They'd made it to 11th level (hey, the specialist wizard gets an extra prep of a 6th level transmutation spell! Sweet!) and were hunting an adult blue dragon through the desert. It burst out of the sand and grabbed the fighter in its mouth, failing to grab but chewing the everloving hell out of him (crit fail for grapple via the Snatch feat, but crit success for bite damage -- fighter had to roll a massive damage save before initiative was even rolled)
A player I brought into DnD, on his first character ever (a transmutation specialist wizard, because he's a masochistic genius apparently) won initiative and started the fight with a Disintegrate spell. He beat the dragon's spell resistance and it got a 2 on the die for its Fortitude save, so he got a solid 102(!!) damage in the first round (the first part of a disgusting act of luck that his dice have never repeated since).
The dragon took to the air and hit him directly with its line of lightning (my thought being that a dragon, a proud and vain creature, would want the last word before running away) but he made the Reflex save *and then* threw another successful Disintegrate in the second round for 89 damage (3 on the die for the dragon's second Fort save) which, since the rest of the team had managed to hit the dragon for ~60 in the meantime, turned a whole Huge sized dragon into dust mid-air. A whole dragon, which had succeeded in ambushing the enemy, was dropped before round 3 of combat.
That’s crazy man.
@@kevinbarber2795 it is right
good ol' one-two disintegration
Dragon Story Time! [Please read i promise its worth it]
"The tale of Sergeoth OathBreaker"
Somethings to know before i tell my tale.
1:Our dnd sessions are heavily and i mean heavily customized/homebrewed so if your wondering why theres a bunch of stuff that isnt in a normal dnd session thats why.
2: This battle has been building up for 4 full day sessions. But it has been forshadowed for about 6 months . And at this point in the campaign it was easily the strongest thing the party had ever battled. For an easy comparison on the difficulty level think about the avengers first fight with thanos yeah it was brutal.
3: The players have been nagging the dm (my best friend) to give it her all. And to show that they meant it. They min maxed,exploited and grinded to where they had the power to face a literal army and emerge victorious. So the dm complied and made one hell of a boss battle i hope you all enjoy. [Btw while editing this i never mentioned my involvement i was actually the dms assistant]
*But before this story starts i would like to mention our sponsor RAID SHADOW LEGENDS on to the story*
Prologue:
Long ago in a distant kingdom far away from most of the civilized world. There stayed a Golden Dragon by the name of Sergeoth. You see Sergeoth in return for saving his life offered the king of that kingdom and all his heirs his loyalty until his last breathe. Sergeoth respected and loved the king and its people helping them grow as a nation for decades. However things changed when the king died and his legitimate son inherited the throne. The heir was cruel and didnt care for the kingdom and its people. Instead he only wasted his time whoring away the kingdoms wealth and resources to indulge his extravagant lifestyle. He was hated both by the common folk and the nobility. But not Sergeoth no instead he used his time to try and mentor the heir to no avail. As the discontent rose it was discovered that the previous king had a bastard daughter. She was known to be kind and intelligent and was instantly well loved by the people including Sergeoth who saw her as the kingdoms best chance for survival. However the heir knew his reign was in serious danger. So he decided to quickly forge an alliance with another prominent and powerful nation by marrying their princess essentially creating a new superpower. As word of his marriage spread the people realized now was the only time to properly fight against the heir so the magority of the nobles and the common folk staged a rebellion with the bastard girl as their leader with Sergeoth as her champion. The rebellion raged on for 2 bloody decades. In the end the rebels lost most of their numbers and influence. While the kingdom endlessly poured its diminishing resources to ending the rebellion. Eventually the bastard girl was killed by a stray arrow during combat and the rebellion was all but lost. The surviving nobility either fled in exile or rejoined the kingdom the same went with the commoners as well. Sergeoth on the other hand knew the kingdom was never truly safe as long as the heir sat on the throne. Sergeoth knew his oath was to serve the king and the kingdom but he contemplated on which was of greater value. In the end Sergeoth decided the kingdom which he helped bloomed along side the previous king was clearly the greatest of importance to which he will gladly die for in order to save it. So he flew to the palace on the oath that he shall serve the heir once again. But as soon as he arrived he blasted the king and the queen to ashes. In the aftermath of his attack Sergeoth gained the infamous title OathBreaker. And as retaliation to the death of their queen to which they blamed on the other kingdom the nobility of the allied nation decided to exterminate the entirety of the other nation. This caused Sergeoth to devote his remaining life to end the kingdom. So for decades he trained to fully master his draconic body meanwhile collecting a legendary set of equipment to make him practically invincible in battle unless you were like a god or something similar.
The story you've been waiting for....
So after decades of waiting Sergeoth decides to take the royal capital as a hostage by encircling the area with fire by using a legendary item. At this point the kingdoms army and a cluster ton of adventurers (including the guild which comprises of the players and their custom npcs) gathers to free the capital now this army numbered somewhere in the 50,000 mark with high level adventurers accompanying them. What happened that faithful day was genocide. The army rushed in to the fire barrier which let them in with no damage soon the entirety of the army is inside of the capital rescuing citizens and alike. However everyone soon realized that the barrier wouldn't allow them to leave unless they wanted to turn into ashes. Soon Sergeoth slowly chipped away at the people. Indiscriminately killing thousands including some of the players and npcs. It got to the point where people just willingly walked into the fire barrier as the fate of having acid burn their skin off or having buildings crush dozens was worse. After days of nonending attacks stopped a mighty voice boomed from the heavens "asking for mercy are you? well why does this sound familiar to me?" Afterwhich he just laughed a spine curdling laugh. One of pure joy and extacy. It was at this point where the remaining players and npcs after all their best efforts to try and slay the monster failed. Gathered the bodies of their fallen commrades and assembled a small group of around 30 or so citizens and headed to the sewer system where fumes from the toxic air from the surface accumulated. The party desperately tried to navigate the sewers to freedom. The party lost a good 80% of its members trying to escape the sewers. In the end less than a hundred of the original 60,000 or so life forms within the city escaped with their lives. And the guild essentially had fo start from scratch to regain all that they lost. Sergeoth later converted the capital to a tomb/lair of sorts to honor his fallen king and kingdom. Even after multiple crusades/inquisitions to free the capital it wouldn't be free until around 20 years later when the guild rechallenged Sergeoth and emerged victorious finally laying the dragon to rest.
I hope you enjoyed this story it was so nostalgic to relive this epic tale once more also i hope that you forgive my english skills as it isnt my first language and pls if you do like this story pls give it a like because believe it or not theres an even more devastating sequel to this so pls like if interested. Also feel free to ask questions because i had to cut a lot of details out of the story thanks again for reading.
Thats clearly something
Sergeoth had a good run
@@gamecavalier3230 it was i hope you enjoyed my tale
@lisa morris they had to make a deal with a titan for a dragon slaying sword after which they created a golem to weild it
@lisa morris yup only a golem made out of pure ademantite can get close enough to deliver the killing blow with the sword
Tick off all the bits about the volcanic lair and wordswap "Red Dragon" with "Doomslayer" and this seems like a pretty accurate representation of Doom Eternal.
Cough cough, nearly killed my party with a young green dragon even though I hinted that it was supposed to be an extremely hard task, cough cough
They basically survived because I didn't want to commit tpk on their first mission, but they still had a challenge and went down multiple times
Temmie Games I struggle with this too, my party does stupid stuff but I don’t want to kill them.
Ah, Lost Mines of Phandelver feels like it was so long ago. My party of 8 level 1s almost took it out. Then it finished gassing them. It was really close, too!
Same thing happened to me with a red dragon
Wait.... are you my GM? Our Bard, Paladin, and Monk got instakilled by the first breath weapon attack.
@@lebanemcarl68 I can't see the "but" part very well, it constantly gets replaced by "whenever".
Man reminds me of encountering a white dragon. I was a dragon born paladin. Basically talked to him and almost got him to leave us alone until some idiot in our party threw something at him because I had a decent relationship with the dragon (Really good char rolls) I survived and wasn't attacked during combat. So during combat I was shouting for everyone to run the ones that didnt listen got eaten myself and the wizard got away because we simply didn't fight it. The Dragon showed up later in the story as an important character and was surprised we replaced our party members quickly and wondered if they might share the same fate as the last two. luckily the person learned not to throw things at dragons.
Lol, nice!
How to fuck around and find out
Also, the monster manual offers rules on spell casting for dragons: silence, counter spell, and freedom of movement are all really good, and if the dragon is powerful enough, power word stun into breath attack is BRUTAL
Ironically, he chose one of the only dragons that doesn’t like to fly when it fights.
Most dragons don't since they can't be dexterious
@@lorekeeper685blue dragons (the best dragons) do
@@TheHornedKing_27 I mean dominatrix dragons are still not dexterous but would make sense since they can hide at the sky
I love throwing young dragon and 1-5 level party. The fear in player's eye's and they actually got to plan ahead, how to fight it! But I prefer making every dragon fight different. For example, green dragon usually fight in the forest, surrounding my difficult terrain and traps, while black dragon is a dushbag, and fights dirty with hit and ran, constantly flying. And every time sh*t hits the fan, they try to run away...but not red dragon. If its going down, it will make sure to take as many players as possible, so they will remember its wrath and might
Every party has at least one reason to die, all the DMs out there agree with me, right?
in my case, it's because the characters WANT to die.
Yes
Mine is because i had to nerf my monsters for the new players so much....MUST BOOST
It’s the barbarian
It's just fun especially when it's your own family.
You see, the way to win is to hold the dragon hostage
No, you just need a very persuasive bard that can speak dragonic and have them face the dragon alone. No need for magic or anything just a good roll with a bard.
The only encounter I've had with a dragon was when it was sealed away in a dungeon... It was a young black dragon but the party had some dragon lovers... So uhh we ended up trying to tame the dragon (it did not work) we then proceded to set it free on the town (after we had taken the quest to kill it before it broke out) in hind sight I wish I did more to talk the party out of freeing the evil dragon but it did only kill a few people and fly off (the dungeon was under a town) so it wasn't a complete loss...
Tame a creature with an intelligence higher than the average human? The best you can do is brainwashing, but even for that your chances are slim. Most likely its gonna act tamed so it can acid breath you in your sleep later.
you that would only have worked on a metallic dragon and black dragon really they will die before following anyone
And now I'm reminded of the "All Things DnD" video where someone did exactly that.
@@AschaVovina
Yeah, it's totally possible, but you need some ridiculously good rolls.
@@IrvingIV If the person doing it was basically a demigod and the dragon in question got some nice things out of it, the deal might work, but it would be more of a forced partnership than having a pet.
I’d recommend using a dragon that doesn’t have a fire or poison breath weapon. Sure, gold and red dragons are statistically the biggest and most powerful dragons, but fire is the second most common resistance after poison. Having something like lightning, acid, or cold. Not to mention, red and gold dragons are very on the nose, it will be more subtle that you plan to kill the party if you use a less iconic dragon
Red Dragons are probably also the easiest to charm, since they're so proud. They're also the least likely to use equipment due to their pride.
Sven Brede not exactly true, white dragons are the most simple minded of the chromatic dragons and you can appease them with food
You see that’s what the purple dragon is for, force damage and a lust for power
What about a tarrasque? I thought they were supposed to be the TPKer since they destroy the world in addition to just the party?
@@meganb.2249 oh, that's not THAT bad. It can't fly and has trouble attacking aerial opponents. It's just extremely hard to kill.
I used a red dragon once. My party’s rogue summoned a silver dragon and then walked away.
I now regret giving him that power.
Did you give them a 100 percent control guarantee with the spell? If not you could have made the victorious dragon fight the cohort or make them team up. Try doing that next time it happens.
Did you give them a 100 percent control guarantee with the spell? If not you could have made the victorious dragon fight the cohort or make them team up. Try doing that next time it happens.
@@dylanmacdonald7444 just putting my 2 cents, there’s no way a silver dragon would help a red dragon
@@peanutpeanutpeanutpeanut dragons are smart, if somone just somon a dragon, both would team up and kill him because they are terrified that it would append to them both anther time.
@@nivbarshem2674 even then, a silver dragon? They are like one of the nicest kinds of dragons. I doubt they would resort to killing someone, much less team up with a red dragon as well. And on the red dragons side, there is no way it would help a silver, it would most likely fight the summoner alone.
Drakolich - they conviniently forgot to check the casting time and used magic cirlcle to trap him in place and killed with arrows and cantrips...
bards with high charisma that speak draconic...
that is all you need to know
You kill the bard first. Ideally you just eat them.
Warlock: you know bard isn't the only charisma caster around.
@@charles1890 the bard might be into that...
@@TheArtistKnownAsNooblet Sorcerer: true dat
I saw this on my DM’s RUclips history.
I am scared
Finally someone who get that "beeing Intelligent" is actually a big powerup.
I never sent a grownup Dragon to a Party and expect the Party to win. Normally its an "evade that encounter at all cost" scenario if my party gets there.
I only made 2 real enounters so far one with an very small Dragon which would´ve been oneshot if i stayed true to a broken houserule we had back in the Day. I changed that since it also didnt made much sense at that point. And we had an good fight. Dragon nearly escaped at the end.
And the second one was against a wyvern who decided to attack when they were balancing and climbing. Statwise he was equil to one of the Heroes but using the Terrain and his Brain he killed one and the Party had to run.
Was DSA not DnD. People react to descriptions here and not to a floorplan.
If the party sees a small dragon, they should back away slowly before it sees them, then make a run for it before one of the parents shows up.
@@1Maklak Well it all depends on circumstances. But in most cases thats an good Idea. Yust remembered one Time someone met an actual Dragon, Hero sneaked in his seemingly dragonless lair to loot his gold, while the Dragon was amused watching him from behind an illusionary Wall.
Hero got an very exiting experiance and a Quest from the Dragon. (Im not evil, if they´re behaving in the right way and use their head in most cases they will survive even sticky siturations. But if they do mistakes or act simply stupid, their Chance of Survival drops quickly.
"Okay everyone, for this encounter, the floor is lava, and your exit is now also lava."
Ah yes.
Dragons.
Natures version of the ideal husband.
ALSO WHY YOU GOTTA ABUSE MEGUMIN LIKE THAT-
:D
uwu
Yes. owo
"You've decided that your party needs to die." Well I decided that the moment we started playing, hahaha.
So we ended up having a dragon as our ally. I (Druid) saved her wyrmling and the dragon was in captivity in an enemy camp so I healed up the baby dragon and gave it back to the mom. I then released the mom while my party was trying to take down the guards and eventually once the dragon got out she made quick work of the entire camp
I DMed my first game a few weeks ago and my characters "accidentally" "stumbled" upon an adult red dragon. They were all first level except for the barbarian who killed 4 zombies in an abandoned house. So all the first level people were like "Hell yeah, a dragon." or "I LoOK fOr EgGs" and the barbarian is just like "I attack its eyes with my battle axe." Short story shorter, I had my first ever TPK.
Can you please tell me what happened
Pretty sure 18d6 fire Damage in a sixty foot cone happened.
rules of nature except raiden loses lol
Had a level 20 group, who decided to fight a Gold dragon. One polymorphed into a dragon to engage. The Creature used it's ability to shift the parties big boy barbarian into a demi plane and went feral on the polymorphed player. They were well above CR but they definitely felt the hurt.
Grabbing this so I can make a dragon BBEG’s final fight as hard as possible.
Dragons are natural Sorcerers, so they can use spells when their Breath Weapon is recharging.
A dragon could also pre-emptively attack any adventurers making their way into it's territory and circle-strafe them to keep out of range most of the time, and repeatedly roast them when ready.
Blue Dragons especially love doing preemptive strikes
Once had a party sneak into red dragon's lair it seemed to be empty then they were surprised when the red dragon leaped out of pool of lava they are immune to fire and taking a bath in lava sounds like something they would do.
One takeaway I got with one of my GMs was that dragons are potent spellcasters in their own right. They cast smart - go invisible, conjure black tentacles, and make the terrain *even more* difficult to traverse.
Multiple ways I’m going about doing my Dragon encounter (it’s a white dragon). Making it an innate caster just makes sense if players can be a spellcaster due to being related to one. So. The white dragon has access to fog cloud with blindsight which should scare your players a decent amount. Next white dragons also have a burrow speed so make use of it! In some scenarios it should be able to ambush the players from beneath the ground. My last tactic is to do with the fact that dragons typically have a good athletics check. The dragon can grapple a player, fly them up into the air, then drop them. This could be a tactic if one of your players has sentinel and they’re stopping the dragon from moving.
0:03-0:07 that sounds familiar
Where going to need gun lots and of guns
Why are so many dnd players pyromaniac's.
@@dannysangree6304
Probably to do with repeated damage over multiple rounds due to leftover heat or the ignition process.
I know one of the best strategies for fighting heavily armored foes is Zee Bashews "Cook and Book" Casting the bard spell "Heat Metal" and running both fast and far.
Blaine: "I'm only going to be focusing on the red types for now, as they're usually the most dominating breed."
My homebrewed two-headed blue dragon that is secretly leading an empire as its two figureheads whilst in the middle of an ongoing territorial war with giants: "Sure."
Brandon Galvan I need this in my life
Fighting that Will be really a bad time for the party.
2 heads Means 2 breath weapons?
If I Remember correctly every dragon has a legendary attribuite, I'm not talking about legendary resustences and legendary actions, a legendary attribute Is something specific to that type of dragon.
Green are super manipulative, White Remember everything, Red are huge muscular Beast and black are sadistic over any reason (they like to live in ancient castles becouse they like to think people died in there, and the worse the death the better).
Blue are the only one I would never ever want to fight.
Why you ask? Becouse their legendary attribute Is long Flight. They can fly for 5 days, and use their lighting breath weapon while doing it.
They can litterally siege a castle from 200 meters in the hair and Just keep spamming breath weapon until they destroy the whole castle.
If 2 heads Means 2 breathweapon then I don't see the party wanting to deal with that thing. That things Is going to break their souls more than seeing Atropous the world Born death coming for their world.
I want to know their reaction when they find out Who the big bad Is.
Normally Blue live in the desert in groups, if they don't come for me I would keep avoiding them.
O_O gonna steal the dual transforming two headed dragon
1:05
**Cries in white dragon**
I once had an encounter with what I like to call a distorted blood dragon. So the blood god could transform into a dragon and when they aggravated him. His power was based on the amount of followers he could sacrifice. He only had 2 followers and as such he was not correctly transformed. When they fought him they did actually get some damage in before they decided to jump on his back. As they were trying to climb on the dragon began trying to fly. They did actually grab on and crashed through the temple roof towards a mountain range. They flew vertically for a bit before taking a nose dive. The players then had a disabled dragon when the dragon failed its save to crash land properly. They then simultaneously stabbed the dragon in the head before a bright beacon of light burst from the dragon, only to dissipate soon after. They won the battle, almost died, and got coated in blood. So win win win
I never considered taking a party member hostage! thank you for the idea, my players will hate you for it!!
Hate him for giving you the idea and hate you for doing it.
what about immovable rods.
Lol DM here, recently had my party encounter a Green Dragon. They are 5 lvl 8 players. They were very overconfident but luckily brought backup with 4 dwarf veterans.
The Green Dragon was a young one but she was in her lair.
She had amassed thousands of poisonous snakes and 4 brown bears. Also between her and the party was a pool full of swarms of quippers.
Fun battle. One player went down, 4 dwarves in the brink of death and dragon escaped with most of its hard in her mouth.
They were surprised how a Young Dragon and a lair full of low CR monsters kicked their butts.
Action economy is your friend in order to keep the battle interesting.
I didn't personally run this but my friend did. So my party was at the dragon's cave, our party was the rogue who is going to be important in the story, a Warlock of hex blade (me), and a barbarian. Before this dragon fight we battled a tarasque We ended up surviving and getting away, but not without taking some of the acid from the tarasque and after we got some magic items from a item shop I can't remember what I or the barbarian got but the rogue got this homebrew magic item that made it so that when you hit with an attack it counts as a crit. Okay back to the dragon fight we walked into the dragons cave and Got hit by its breath weapon. We rolled for initiative, first was the rogue's turn He attacked twice with his daggers ( Action, bonus action) These daggers had the tarasque Acid on them and were the crit magic items, So I rolled attack against the creature Natural 20 We calculate the damage but 1st attack 425 damage in total killed the ancient black dragon in one strike.
Lol! Cool story! This should be a lesson to the DM for giving to Op magic items
DMs fault for making broken homebrew magic items, or letting the players collect Tarasque acid.
I used info from this video to help my campaign and let's just say.... That campaign has finished with a BOOM of massive scale
In college we were going toe to toe with a dragon. It was fairly early in the fight and we were pretty evenly matched. We were taking damage but our healer was on point and keeping the party healthy. Then the dragon lines up a perfect breath attack and manages to get everybody in the cone. Every single party member failed their reflex save and took full damage and the dragon happened to roll well on their damage. TPK...or it would have been had our DM not fudged the saving throws to let us pass them so the session didn't end early.
oh god.
Don't forget that some of their treasure rating isn't coins, it should be battle equipment that the dragon is wearing to make them even MORE dangerous.
So I ran a fight against a young Blue Dragon, party was a fighter, ranger, and wizard. In short, the party got rekt. Not even stealing from a Puffin Forest video, but our wizard decided to cast Darkness on the dragon! Who has blindsight btw, so the party has no idea where it is. The ranger's arrows mostly all miss. The wizard basically get gored and the fighter got annihilated by the breath weapon. But they were still only like level 5 so I didn't want to have em all just die. So the level 8 Dwarf Druid npc came in with a tidal wave to save them. This all took place in a forest btw, and the Ranger if memory serves actually almost drowned in a pool of alcohol created by our fighter who has this homebrew ability called Booze Magic.
he almost drowned in drunkedness
>Discusses dragon weaknesses
>Shows bed
BAAAAAARRRRRRRD! You're up!
I do want to note this, if you're roleplaying as a red dragon, they usually tend to avoid using breath weapons if the players have any valuable items or a lot of gold
"See that blackened skeleton with the intricate gold, silver, and platinum lace detail work on the iron stand. That was one the last humans that tried to steal from me. I was feeling generous that night and gave them a lesson on the melting points for metals."
So you went all crown for a king on them. Except you know all over there body
Survival is survival. Dragons can ALWAYS get more hoard. Dead is dead. They SHOULD use every trick to win and almost EVERY party should flee and or die.
The best dragon encounter I created started off with the dragon creating an illusion of its sleeping self, giving the party the opportunity to waste their biggest and best attacks on the wrong target while the real dragon simply watched from the cover of invisibility to learn exactly which characters were the biggest threats. I don't remember exactly how the fight played out round by round, but I do remember that the paladin sacrificed himself to ensure that it didn't escape, insulting it to draw its fire, while giving the rest of the party the time they needed to kill it. I remember getting a particularly productive last round of attacks, reducing the paladin to about -80hp in the process.
BTW, this was in 2nd-ed when hit-points still meant something and 70hp was a pretty tough fighter or a really bad-ass monster. Since 3rd-ed, hit-points are a much smaller currency where it is quite possible to have a sorcerer with 200+hp.
Ahh memories....
So my players were delving a dungeon and getting all kinds of magical loot which made them essentially invincible. They were starting to get a big head and were basically declaring themselves the new lords of everything they could survey. The dungeon boss, a powerful demon lord, contacted a Great Wyrm Red Dragon to help him remove these players, and this was during the time where dragons could cast spells.
The dragon approached the PCs town, wings stirring up a hurricane wind, roar shaking the earth, fire crackling over its scales as it streaked like a meteorite across the night sky. My players gathered together, certain all their magical buffs and equipment would see them through another easy fight, when the dragon landed... and cast antimagic sphere.
What followed was a few glorious minutes of the players screaming in panic, the dragon wrecking them like it was its job, and the player's town being burned to the ground. The players did escape (barely) and hunted down the dragon for revenge, but I will always treasure the moment my players learned true fear for the draconic might of a Great Wyrm Dragon!
"You are as skilled as my information indicates. I must admit, I too have a passion for the arcane arts... even moreso than others of my kind. I am curious however... what would happen if we turned the magic off?
"Fascinating. It appears you cease to be a mighty wizard and become a fragile pointy-eared monkey. While I? I am still a dragon."
The Mother Black Dragon from Order of the Stick
@@gameygeemer4142 Ya know, now that I think about it, I may have subconsciously stole from that epic wencomic...🤔
Dm tips:
grab, fly up, drop. If they are being too aggressive and rushing the dragon with melees.
Throw boulders, improvise a wingclap thunder wave and make the dragon use heat metal on melee attacks hit vs armor.
Gases and fumes can turn any party into dazy meatsticks but smoke can quickly turn on the terror.
the first time I used a dragon was with a newbie group that didn't unterstand that you have to understand at least the basic rules of the game after 10 or so sessions and they didn't uderstand bc they weren't passionate enough towards the game. so I used a young white dragon (as boss for them to become lv4) against 4 lv3 players and to my suprise I played it well enough to make the get into the game,start searching and learning the rules (while the compat was still going on) so they could win bc I was pretty much playing around with them with that dragon so that I could frustrate them and get them to get good. And ik that with most players this wouldn't work but with that group ik it would work bc whatever frustrates them in games, they learn how to beat the shit out of it and that's how I got my rn main group to develop passion for the game. (sorry for how awfully I wrote this but for me it's 1 am in the morning)
So there was a shadow dragon summoned in all its glory by Nyogtha the patron of this warlock in the party who betrayed it for Zoth'Ommog. This fight took place on an island that the ship sunk to underwater. They had climbed a mountain(yes a mountain on an island under the ocean) and at the peak they had made camp. This had occurred during the night making it even more terrifying for them. The fight started off by the dragon muffling the one who was awake to keep them from waking the rest of the party however they broke free with a good roll and instead of waking the party they just blew up the cliffside with a level 7 fireball to wake the party up(It hit the wizard in the process as well as the dragon). Skipping to later in the fight the wizard had cast enlarge on the barbarian multiple times somehow being able to concentrate on each spell easily, but what makes this amusing is that the shadow dragon had downed 3 of the party members by then and what he decided was a good idea was to jump off the cliffside with the downed members to run away until daylight, he did not think it through however because by the time he hit the ground the shadow dragon had focused all attacks on the wizard who was left behind canceling the enlarge spell and increasing the damage taken by the fall. It was a full party wipe due to that too.
Why is everyone T posing.
Also I love you for including Naofumi and Megumin
5:50 also worth noting that you need a full body for resurrection magic to work (90% of the time), so giving the hostage a big ol' burn nullifies the idea of magic restoration.
Yeah when I said 'higher level party' I was referring to that 10% of the time, when auto resurrection is finally possible with 9'th level spells lol
Pleas do re zero in d&d. We all know you want to. The life after death Subaru has can be replaced with clone spell.
not really, because he's sent to a previous point in time
@@Psychomaniac14 if you can think of anything that is exactly like that I would love to hear it.
@@dannysangree6304 homebrew
@@dannysangree6304 maybe some kind of power granted by ilmater and mystra that uses both of their powers?
@@Psychomaniac14 seeing as the person that gives Subaru his power seems a bit evil what if it's an evil god instead of a Neutral one?
So I ran a mated pair Blue Dragon encounter. Loved using the borrowing to pop up in the sand and fire lighting then dive back down and circle the party with total cover. Watching the shifting sands swim around them like sharks was really unnerving for them.
Yeah my level 3 party was fighting a teen green dragon and almost died but we fought it off just to run into it again I a swamp at level 6 at witch point we made a deal with it and are now working affectively as it’s servants to get it sparkling things and it come to our aid sometimes
I just recently used a wish scroll to turn my level 8 wizard/necromancer into an Ancient Gold Dragon, so this video was very useful. And yes, I did say 'Ancient' Gold Dragon. Keep up the good vids man :)
Basically: Just read "The Monsters Know" it's really cool and useful.
Ran a green dragon, that was obsessed with alchemy. I wrote the encounter as such that if they offered him extra alchemy supplies or even to collect something he would let them go. Instead they tried to fight her. Lets just say they all found out that a vat of acid is rough terrain.
Love your vids and would love if you posted more (not complaining)
honestly making a few pieces of cover that double as any form of chokepoint are absolutely lethal
The campain I am in exaly just had its first TPK and it was exaly a red dragon who did it.
I personaly wasn't there this session, but I have heard that the now dead party member was eaten a live by the red dragon because of a Nat 1. And than died inside the dragon afther a few rounds of stabing it from the inside.
The rest of the party was fine and the managed to kill it.
(I wish i was there)
dude... a TPK is a total party kill. that's just a PC death..
I've only ever done one dragon encounter with my party, and it was almost a tpk. It was an encounter with 3 blue dragon wyrmlings. These little guys were bullying around a gnoll tribe that the party had agreed to help in exchange for stopping the raids on a nearby village. Now, the party at this point consisted of 4 level 5s, a hexblade warlock, a battlemaster fighter, a college of swords bard, and a rogue of the arcane trickster archetype so they weren't under level, still they had no idea what horrors awaited them in those sand dunes.
When these guys came they brought javelins, rope, chains, crossbows and all manner of nasty surprises to take these little guys out of the air. However, unlike most dragons, blue dragons have a burrowing speed, and blind sight. When they got there they found no dragons, only pit traps and slaughtered animals.
The sound of rumbling under the sand and an eruption of lightning from below introduced the wyrmlings. The fight was long and it consisted of the wyrmlings popping in and out the ground like graboids and using their lightning on an unprepared party. The party managed to slay two of the wyrmlings but not without the cost of the warlock and the bard who were dragged below the sand after being felled by a strong blast of lightning. The final dragon seemingly outnumbered feigned fear and tried to bargain with two that remained. The fighter, however was having none of it after seeing his friends devoured by the sand. He and the rogue charged the dragon, knowing it's breath weapon had been recently used. The dragons however had been burrowing beneath the party's feet the entire fight, and the heroic charge ended abruptly as the ground beneath gave way to a massive sand trap, only the rogue made the save, and was able to escape by leaving the fighter behind to be devoured by the remaining wyrmling.
The rogue has since been adventuring with some new friends, but he refuses to go back to the deserts for any reason. Meanwhile the wyrmling has grown up, she is now known as Mayak Terror of the Sand Wastes and she uses her plundered wealth to hire bounty hunters and assassins to track down the rogue, hoping to claim vengeance for her brother and sister.
The phrase "War Gamer DM" is like a whisper from the lips of god floated down on clouds carried by angels and gently, lovingly nestled into my ear canals by the mystical sirens themselves.
If you wanted "sToRy" so bad, you shouldn't have handed me a Math Textbook. Now roll your save or these boulders are going to kill you.
The one dragon encounter I ever ran was this humongous multi-session dungeon crawl through the depths of a monster-infested volcanic mine that saw several PCs knock on death's door before barely pulling through with severe burns and trauma, lava monsters, tar pits, and trapped rooms abound. Finally, when they reached the dragon's lair room, the bard went first, cast Banishment, the dragon completely failed his saving throw, and the party yoinked all the loot they came for before bolting, never even damaging the stupid thing.
that moment when it says 3 views but there's 5 likes
I had one dragon encounter where most of the party had the ability to fly, so the blue dragon picked up the only one who couldn't fly, flew up about 500 feet, and dropped them. Someone else in the party had to use 2 whole turns to stop the fall, and ended up only passing the strength check enough to reduce the falling damage, which still knocked the falling character unconscious. Meanwhile, the dragon was using its lightning breath to try to knock the other airborne characters unconscious so they would fall 500 feet as well.
I would also like to see cautious hero in d&d.
I'm so happy I'll be able to say I was subscribed before 6 million.
I'm waiting for that day, it won't be to long away!
So let me set the stage.
Me: A rogue-ranger-fighter wood elf. I basically just frankensteined those classes together sloppily and can do a crap ton of damage.
Our mission was to kill a dragon that had been holding some of the town's girls hostage. Holding them for ransom and such to get as much gold as it could from the lord before killing them and leaving.
So since we were the only adventurers around, they told us to go and do it. Yay.
So we arrive at the cave it had dug out. It was pretty big, so we knew the first round of combat before the dragon can fly out of our reach was going to be crucial.
The party arrives to find the dragon making dinner from some sheep he had found, with little goblins and kobold servants scuttling around and helping him. The cleric casts a few defensive spells on me and the tank, and the sorcerer cast a few debuff spells on the dragon to lower its resistances. The bard walks right up to the dragon and starts taunting it. It notices and charges right for it, just for me to step out of cover (invisible in darkness baybeee!) and action surge to launch 8 sharpshooter, elven accuracy, poisoned tipped, arrows into the back of its head. Which amounted to over 800 damage!
The DM slowly reached for the dragon mini and took it off the table...
tl;dr We go fight a dragon and I one-shot the poor guy.
I imagine a dragon would be smarter that just charge... So that was the DMs fault.
@@thatdieguy5310 Well it was just one person (so it seemed) and the bard got a twenty-something on his deception roll because bards.
What level was your party?
@@NamelessAidan I believe we were level 18, but it was a long time ago so my memory isn't that clear. I do remember that it was a TPK module, (a module created to kill a party) so that's why my build was minmaxed so much.
witch slice of the level pie did the 3 classes your wood elf devided? what were the sub-classes? what feats and I feel like I'm asking too many questions now.
Saw a similar guide on how to handle dragons as fearsome and truly dangerous encounters. It really leaned hard into the flight ability. Saying that the dragon's ability to fly and its size are things that it would use to its advantage as an apex hunter. A dragon as an intelligent creature would identify its targets at prey at first chance, ideally before engaging, and singles out healers to attack first and then ranged attackers next with ranged spellcasters having the higher priority there. When the attack began the dragon would fly in and use its breath weapon on the party to force the targets to scatter out of the way. Once the prey is scattered it would circle back around and grab someone while everyone is isolated after getting out the way of the breaths area of effect. Once it has grabbed someone it then goes straight up. The target it grabbed gets one chance to get out of the grapple and fall a short distance. If it fails then the dragon dashes its full flight speed straight up on its next turn once its movement it expended free action to let go of whomever it grabbed. It then rinses and repeats, and if the party starts to refuse to spread out it'll either start circling the party in the air as it waits for breath recharges so it can just keep hammering them with breath weapon attacks or leaves.
Have a dragon as a war gamer DM. No, I make my own OP bosses and wreck the whole party *evil DM laughing*
Man, my one party had a fight with a Young Black Dragon in a cave. They were all 4th level, and they had a White Dragon Wyrmling with them. There was a lot of strategy, I was impressed: they used the wyrmling's frost breath to freeze the water and try to trap the black dragon underneath, but it was actually clinging to the ceiling! It kept trying to get party members away from each other, and the whole fight boiled down to the Cleric vs. the Dragon. The only way the Cleric could survive this was to crit on a Guiding Bolt, otherwise the Dragon would've finished her off next turn. Her player rolls, and it's a crit! Everyone was super excited about it, we all let out a collective sigh of relief, and I think that was one of my favorite moments as a DM.
My dragon ran away cuz it’s mom came up and told him not to yell at other kids his age
Even if it isnt true, its a cool story. Woudnt it be cool to for some low level adventurers to walk into a lair and only have a couple or 1 hatchling defend it. Then its mom shows up and grabs the party by the shirt and YEET them out of the cave!
Z.O.M.G well the dm wanted that to be able to happen so we made a rock fall and the mom heard
Ran a dragon hunt one shot. 5 players.
Adult white dragon was being more or less bullied by an older female so he wasn't eating well (since she was eating almost everything preparing for laying eggs)
As such he had begun attacking the countryside off the mountain they lived on while the dragoness was away (they lair'd in some old ice caves that held ruins with a portal to a plane overcome with frost. Think an ice age but magical)
So people started dying, kingdom gathered prospective dragon hunters with promises of wealth and titles for the slayers and such is the hunt.
Literally as soon as combat starts one of them tries to walk over and hold out rations in her hand like it's a dog. Then gets surprised when the barely eating, chaotic evil adult white dragon eats HER.
Long story short two of them survived barely, killing him. And barely knocking the portal keys deeper in the lair loose to prevent the incoming dragoness from reaching them.
Man, this takes me back
The party planed the Dragon raid in advance they had a lookout and went in when the dragon left it's lair. To be fair to them for planing all this out at every stage of the lair I rolled initiative against the players for the dragon if it returned. The lair was not ungraded they had to fight some drgonborn and fire elementals. They had incredible luck the dragon didn't show up at any stage inside the lair.
On the way back tho the town the dragon appeared and spotted them in an open field, I even gave them a stealth check. The dragon kept flying outside their strike rage and hitting them with fire breath and falling rocks. Only the sorcerer and the cleric cold do anything the barbarian started flinging stones back whit improvised attack. Once the Sorcerer died they were finished.
Dude spelling
I was a Goliath fighter champion and I tried to fight the dragon before we were high enough level, so I ran up it’s back to try and get to its head and i got thrown at a wall and brutally murdered cause my party didn’t help in fear of a tpk
The fight started like this they were in the woods when they heard a scream. they ran to the scream when they arrived they see four people. holding spears they yelled leave now and never come back they killed them with fireball a lot of fireball. they went in a cave I describe how the Cave is hot And the deeper they went the hotter it was. They heard somebody say hello and a loud crunching sound. they turned a corner and scene A body snapped in half and burnt to a crisp. there was lava flowing and the wind was blowing! they were confused the wind they were in a Cave they looked up And seen a full grown red dragon! adult they ran they fell in lava. one of them survived the rest died he managed to get out. of the cave he went to the town elder. and said I need all of your men to help me kill a dragon he bargained. and told the elder that he would let The people have any loot that they found. they agreed they went into the cave and they never came out.
dot points. use them.
Okok
I gave up on your story. I rolled a nat 20 with a +5 advantage and got out of there. seriously though punctuation's are your friend. Make your comment the next boss battle for a group because its hard to read.
Ok sorry
at the very least I understood that
Nice.
I really love DingoDoodles Dragon fight, where they just took a Mech-Dragon the same size and killed a green dragon with that Mechs Laser Beam
Hello Blaine.
@Giraffe Elbows yes i can see. But i didn't want to be an asshole.
2:04 i watched this masterpiece a lot of times now, its really funny
Every dragon encounter I have had in 5e so far has been ending in their death, but I the last one was close and hard... though it was a 1v1 against an adult blue dragon, and I was level 5. IT almost got bad, but I killed it. Now I am level 7.
My favorite time running a dragon fight was with an Ancient White Dragon (AWD for short). The AWD had been hunting the party for a long time, as the entire campaign was based in a snowy, mountainous region (based on Russia). The AWD attacked when the party was taking a long rest in a tavern. The entire village was laid to waste, as the very existence of the AWD nearby was enough to turn the regular snowfall into a cat 5 hurricane, with hail instead of rain. Everything was frozen over, and the AWD went in on the party in a weakened state, since they had just finished protecting the village from an attack by a group of Ice Giants. The AWD targeted their healer first, a Divine Soul Sorcerer, because it knew that the caster only had a small amount of spells and, more importantly, health left. One cone of it's breath weapon, and the party no longer had their healer.
Afterwards it attacked their backup support, the Bard, who tried to cast dominate monster. Legendary Resistance. A Wing Attack and multicrit later, the Bard was never gonna seduce anything ever again.
The last one standing was the party monk, who had run out of Ki points by constantly failing to stun the AWD, whether by it succeeding the saves or legendarily resisting. The AWD gave the monk a choice. Abandon her journey and serve it, or be frozen to death. She chose to run. The AWD has yet to make good on his promise.
Murderhobos wont be murdering anymore
Amen Preach Players dumb enough to fight a dragon get whats coming they deserve it.
So, when I ran a dragon encounter, I made it kidnap a pet NPC thing the party had with them, forcing them into its lair. It was a series of raised platforms within a volcano, connected by wooden bridges. It also helped that it had spellcasting abillities as well, using telekinesis to throw party members down to the solid rock 60~70 ft below (sometimes into the lava pool). It had Greater Invisibility in its spell list, but I decided not to use it (It'd be a TPK if I did, I'm sure". We had a really fun and intense 2~3 hour fight, and it was amazing.
I think one thing about dragons is that while theyre extremely smart theyre also extremely arrogant, the dragon should only employ complex strategies when low on health.
But woudnt it make it easier for it to survive if it employs it strategies at the start of the encounter, but it would work at the start, becouse the dragon was thinking that the intruders were weaker
@@Z.O.M.G Well, thats roleplaying for you, also I think the defenses of a dragons lair should be more to protect the treasure (and eggs) while the dragon is away instead of protecting the dragon.
Minions. The egg forgot about minions. The gosh darn egg forgot about the squishy meatbag kobolds that dig the lair and build traps far more dangerous than the dragon itself.
Also if ya gonna kill em, might as well make it interesting and use the innate spellcasting variant that can cast stuff like finger of death for infinity zombies or tsunami for elemental coverage or feeblemind to cripple spellcasters, maze that cripples the low int barbarian or something else
I love designing dragon encounters. I've only been able to play young dragons, because most of my parties are between 1-5, but here's the dragons I've done that I'm really proud of:
Faestral, young green dragon.
The party was lvl 5 when they entered her territory. I hinted at her being in the area with pastures of slaughtered sheep and roadside carriages in which all inhabitants died mysteriously. (grayed skin, pink eyes from popped blood vessels). I was working with the cannon of Green Dragon poison being chlorine gas, and was trying to implement that with creativity.
The party finds out that their supplies have been routinely raided by kobolds, so they captured one and forced him to escort them to their lair, so he does, enter the dragon. The party get super spooked because they were really not expecting a dragon. They manage to get away in exchange for completing 3 tasks for the dragon, given in riddle form because I was reading Tolkien that week. But just before they left the lair I had one of the dragon's servants secretly inscribe a rune of listening into the fighter's shield, so she could spy on them throughout their quests. No big surprise as soon as they're out of earshot they unanimously decide to betray the dragon as soon as they think they're strong enough to slay her...
They don't find out about that spy rune on the shield until about a level later, when they're getting some loot identified by the local wizard. When he points out the fighter's starter shield is enchanted they get excited, expecting some sort of extra special rune. Then they look at the rune, and guess what the Fighter knows Draconic. I will never forget the moment it dawns on him that the dragon was spying this whole time. The rogue actually ran away from the table and hid behind my couch. It was awesome.
They did eventually fight Faestral, after a long arduous trek to her lair, through forests of vines treated with the dragon's poison, they manage to find the back entrance and avoid most of her kobold minions and their traps, but Faestral still had some tricks up her scaly sleeves. Her inner sanctum of her lair was a sunken grotto of clear spring water surrounded by spiraling overgrown cliffs. So the ground was difficult terrain due to deep water and occasional stepping stones and my dragon also had lots of room to fly, there was even a large oculus window for her to escape out of.
Remember when I said this dragon's breath weapon was Chlorine gas? Chlorine gas mixed with water makes hydrochloride acid. Everywhere her breath weapon hit became a deadly zone of acidic water. This freaked everyone out at the table. They learned to hop on those little stepping stones and stay put for the battle. It was a hard fight for them and the most entertaining dragon battle I've ever hosted.
Severis, Young Black Dragon
In another campaign I used a black dragon to hit and run the party's boat as they were venturing a flooded woodland. The dragon stalked them for hours until near dusk. The water was deep and dark enough to disguise him. The dragon used his surprise round to bite a hole into the boat and then swam away. No one even knew what hit them. While everyone was racing to repair the damage down below he resurfaced and used his breath weapon to kill the NPC manning the ship's wheel, pulled the body overboard and was off again. He came back two more times, attacking the boat or picking off crew members before darting away. Eventually the party got wise to his tactics and really buzzed him with four readied actions, and he slunk away for good.
My dragon encounter played out with the party killing it with homemade thermite bombs before it could take a turn. Wonder where they got that idea, eh Blaine >:(
I have many dragon tales, I always try to place at least one in all the adventures I run. One of my favorites comes from Storm Kong’s Thunder.
A possible random encounter is a young dragon (the mod suggests green but you can use really any color), I chose a green. The party fought him while on an Airship/blimp. After driving him off the first time he came back for revenge. They had some pretty lucky shots and a wand of fireballs this time so rather then be taken as a trophy he, in a fit of rage, destroyed the balloon.
Now because I’m not a total ass, I ruled that the Captain (who was a Cult of the Dragon member) understood what was happening and dove her ship towards the Sea of Swords so the sled part of the airship wasn’t completely destroyed during the fall. Ultimately the party was able to get back to Waterdeep and continue the adventure.
They did eventually square off against Imyrith, it wasn’t even close, she annihilated the party. Only the Rouge survived by running away. In the two adventures I’m currently running I’m planning a Dracolich for each.
Basically, a dragon was threatening the town, for the right amounts of money it wouldn't burn them down but they were running low on gold and fast.
My party was asked to slay the dragon and we all knew how hard it was to slay a dragon so we were all like;
'OH FRICK NO'
....so naturally we did it anyway.
We get there and my friend who we will call FB (stands for FRICKING BOSS) asked;
"hey can I try and seduce the dragon?"
My DM says;
"Sure but you will have to roll a 40"
FB rolls...
She got a 40.
Everyone is dieing of laughter while the DM regrets there decision.
Long story short FB had a dragon GF and we have a new NPC, very useful :3
I remember a dragon encounter with an ice dragon in its lair. It stood on top of its dragon pile using its wings to knock down all the melee people but especially me as a glaive lock while our mystic had antman powers to go toe to toe with it in a grapple. On top of that there were 4 cave tunnels that we could use for teleporting around the room with younger dragons being summoned everytime we killed a wave of them. They even tried using the breath attacks in the tunnels to hit us from the other side. I can't believe we escaped with treasure and all our lives.
Hiii
Then you realized your party went for the whole fire resistance build.
The elder red dragon tried to flee, got killed by a single snowball
also I wanted to learn this because my character has an ancient dragon form and I want to know how to shrek everything
You left out one thing - if a dragon knows it is losing the fight and taking a hostage fails, it is smart enough to know when to retreat and with 120 flight speed and multiple exits to the lair the chances of escape are pretty good. Yes, this means abandoning its lair and hoard, but a dragon is above all a survivor. A dragon that has been defeated by a party once will gather minions, make plans, and watch the party for a moment when they are either separated or vulnerable and then strike to try to obliterate them.
The only thing you really need for a high level red dragon encounter is for the red dragon to make it's home in a volcano. It then grapples party members and yeets em into the lava. Usually by practicing various lucha libre maneuvers with them. GGs
This is a cool and useful video. I haven't played 5e yet (currently working on character and a good time for friends and dm) but if by some odd chance I do play as a dm in the future, this will be useful to keep in mind for a dragon's den. Because while looking up metallic dragons ended up brainstorming an idea for an encounter (not necessarily a fight unless provoked) with a silver dragon that could disguise as a human or other common race.
IDK like either party notice an entrance and if players decide not to go in and go on to next destination, they notice the dragon flying over head toward direction of den they passed, or they go into cave where after going too far meet the dragon which intimidates party to stop trespassing and leave or else.
Just a fun idea I recently came up with.