Making Your Own Fate (Or Why It's A Bad Idea For Chaotic Good Characters To Rear Black Dragons)

[Neal Litherland]

This week's story on the Table Talk feature for Improved Initiative is a bit of a doozy. If you've ever had a character do something so monumentally short-sighted that it resulted in a bigger threat than the DM's actual monster then you'll understand every feeling that comes with this story courtesy of Benjamin Colefliffe.

Why Chaotic Good Barbarians Really Shouldn't Try to Raise Black Dragons

[Blackbot]

...HOW? HOW did this dragon manage to free him from the bandits? How did it manage to enslave a bunch of kobolds when it was merely a day old? Though this might be attributed to kobolds being stupid little buggers...

Even if (and that's a big if) we consider a newly hatched dragon to immediatly be a Wyrmling it still is a really not that much of a threat to any slightly competent player character. 28 hp are not really much, the damage it deals is laughable (1d3 with his tiny paws, 1d4 with his littly mouth and frightning 2d6 with his acid breath) - okay, his armor class is 10 + 3 (natural) + 2 (tiny) + 3 (dex) = 18 and that's not too shabby at low level, but come on - if these bandits manage to overpower the barbarian they surely can manage his little buddy (which is about the size of a cat) there, right? Or was the party level really THAT low?

I mean, I got a chuckle out of the story because that's pretty much exactly what our ranger would do, but that dragon seems really powerful for a newborn...

(AND: Thank you. I finally had a good reason to read up on dragons!)

[GreyWolfLord]

Riiiiihgt.

Baby dragon less then a week old rules over kobolds and utilizes it's mother or whatever as it's slave...

And it wants live prey to boot, forgetting that a LOT of live prey would curbstomp the baby dragon at this point.

One can run their game however they want...but this is not how I'd run a baby dragon to tell the truth.

[Neal Litherland]

As I've said to all the other folks who've raised similar issues, this is for once NOT one of my own stories. So I just take the player who submitted it at his word. While I agree there were shenanigans, this is how the story played out.

So I just accept it and be amused.

[havoc xiii]

I thought the same things when I read it...I was asking my self if timetravel were involved somehow.

[LazarX]

GreyWolfLord wrote:

Riiiiihgt.

Baby dragon less then a week old rules over kobolds and utilizes it's mother or whatever as it's slave...

And it wants live prey to boot, forgetting that a LOT of live prey would curbstomp the baby dragon at this point.

One can run their game however they want...but this is not how I'd run a baby dragon to tell the truth.

You don't have any sense of humor, do you? You forgot that this is why the barbarian wound up buying a litter of puppies. What we have here is the case of a character who really was so dense that he didn't get the point, or a player too in love with the joke to quit until it was far too late.

[thejeff]

GreyWolfLord wrote:

Riiiiihgt.

Baby dragon less then a week old rules over kobolds and utilizes it's mother or whatever as it's slave...

And it wants live prey to boot, forgetting that a LOT of live prey would curbstomp the baby dragon at this point.

One can run their game however they want...but this is not how I'd run a baby dragon to tell the truth.

I like the idea of dragons hatching out and basically flying away to hunt as soon as they've dried out a little.

Sure, there's live prey out there that could curbstomp them, but that's true of nearly everything. The weakest wymrlings, white ones, are CR2. Adult wolves are CR1. No one complains about them going out and hunting.

This particular dragon got a bit of a head start, since he had a human to feed it from the beginning and got the idea of having servants right away.

IIRC, there have been published modules using wyrmling dragons as bosses of kobold tribes - at least back in D&D.

[Hama]

I don't even...

[Digitalelf]

thejeff wrote:

there have been published modules using wyrmling dragons... - at least back in D&D.

Yes, there were. here are a couple of examples:

3rd edition Module:

Scourge of the Howling Horde had a tribe of goblins ruled over by a wyrmling black dragon....

There was also a 2nd edition adventure:

From the "Council of Wyrms" (boxed set and hardbound book) where the PCs start off as hatchling dragons, literally right out of the shell, and have to immediately fight to keep a group of humanoids from stealing their clutch-mates that have yet to hatch...

[Blackbot]

I too read up on dragons and figured out that back in D&D times, dragons that hatched were not able to fly. It took them a day to do it.

I obviously underestimated dragons in assuming they were helpless the first few days. Even a one week old dragon can seriously f+~& up a wolf. Four of them can destroy a level one party.

I still doubt he'd be able to overpower a bunch of bandits, but I guess he could drive them away - hell, if I woke up by a flying cat breathing acid into my face I'd run away, too.