Community,
I am DMing my first dragon, a young adult red dragon. Any advice?
Question: Am I correct in assuming that he receives a -8 (Poor-4, Huge-4) to his Fly skill? That minus IS NOT incorporated in his Fly skill? I'm thinking maneuverability is going to cause trouble.
Thanks!
well with any dragon of size, they shouldnt fly like hummingbirds.
MOST dragons will fight on the ground unless given considerable room.
consider the scene with Smaug, attacking the city of dale.
Smaug had the entire sky, of course hes going to fly. However his poor maneuverability means hes going to take time to circle around (and likely let his breath weapon recharge) so hes no going to attack every round when he's flying.
Also with a flying dragon there should be plenty opportunity to take cover from his attacks. (like swimming under water when he comes in to breath)
Think of any WW2 movies you might have seen, with fighter planes attacking ground targets, they swoop down, rain death, then take time to circle around to make another "run".
compare that to say a helicopter of vietnam era (they cant hover too easily laden down with weapons but can make much quicker recovery on a "run" than a fighter)
now compare that to modern era helicopters than can just sit there and rain death.
that would be poor flight (fighters) , moderate flight (nam choppers) and perfect flight (modern choppers)
if you jump a dragon in a cave/lair his best bet is to bull rush past the pcs, and take to flight out of his cave, if he cant toast the Pcs in the first few rounds.
Sure they might be able to loot his treasure but how are they going to lug it out?
he can wait outside of them and hit them with more fire breath (and they are more likely to be grouped if they arent smart) he can keep flying away if need be, but they still have to cart all that loot around.
he can attack them at his leisure from the air.
IF they are too powerful, he may wait until they have taken the treasure to town, the dragon can wait until the Pc's have moved on, and then attack the town to reclaim his treasure or maybe even extort the town, in which the Pcs get blamed for bringing this horror upon them, PCs may find themselves "wanted" and even arrested, because before this the dragon never attacked the town, and in fact they "stole" treasure.
PCs could be forced to return treasure to the mountain or face life imprisonment (or appeasing sacrifice to dragon). Once the PCs are on the way to return the treasure, the dragon could attack them AGAIN.
In fact the source of the dragons treasure could even have come from the town to begin with, as protection money! Maybe several towns with in the dragons 'shadow' have paid in the protection money, so the PCs become wanted where ever they go locally, maybe no one will even TAKE the treausre and they get kicked out, no one will buy potions or scrolls from them for fear of the dragons wrath.
Whatever you do DO NOT just let the PCs hack the dragon with swords until its dead.
A beast this big that can fly has ALOT of choices. Roaring and biting until its dead would never be one of them.
Here's a cool combo that will tell the PCs that the dragon is unlike anything they've fought before:
It flies overhead, turning on frightful presence, and hits them with his flame breath. Then keeps flying. (I see he likely has cleave if you're using the example dragon from the bestiary. Remove this because that is depressing and give him Flyby Attack just so that he can do this.)
Next round? He casts pyrotechnics on the flame trails and burning shrubbery left by his flame breath (If this is his own lair, he could easily buy oil or other flammable materials and coat his entire lair, walls, floor and ceiling, in copious layers of it-- one breath lights the whole thing on fire, which he's immune to, which the party isn't). It makes a smoke cube-- 20ft radius smoke cloud, hopefully encompassing the party, choking them out and reducing visibility.
So he lands in it, immediately. And have him fight from there.
Smoke Vision (Ex) A very young red dragon can see perfectly
in smoky conditions (such as those created by pyrotechnics).
He has 15 or so rounds of smoke cloud, he can cast pyrotechnics at will, he has an infinite amount of breaths, he has a massive advantage in being able to take AoOs through the concealment, and if they leave, he can cast spells as a 5th level caster if they get out of his range. I wish you were running an Adult dragon so he could use suggestion to get them to come back into the smoke cloud. ("Look! I found a gold piece. *drops a gold piece out of the smoke cloud* ... Come and get the gold piece, mortal. Mortals love gold, don't they? Yesssss.")
If they begin to retreat he can just follow them and breathe on them again and repeat; if they try to fight him from range firing into the cloud he can breathe (50ft cone) and then cast pyrotechnics again and just move into his new smoke habitat.
I think if you want him to have even more of an advantage he could fight them on a mountain pass or side so he has the aerial advantage and they're all stuck on burros on narrow crevices. Then give him hover and he doesn't even need to land. (But that'd probably TPK them)
If you want to play him as brash and reckless he could abandon this tactic if he gets frustrated, but if he's one of those "I've been alive for this much" dragons, if his tactic doesn't work, he just leaves.
Awesome advice, thank you both!
