Combat Rating 18
1 Adult bronze dragon (CR 15)
4 Revenants (CR 5)
Combat Rating 20
1 Adult bronze dragon (CR 15)
2 Githzerai zerths (CR 6)
3 Shield Guardians (CR 7)
Combat Rating 23
1 Adult bronze dragon (CR 15)
3 Water elementals (CR 5)
2 Marids (CR 11)
2 Giant sharks (CR 5)
Combat Rating 25
1 Adult bronze dragon (CR 15)
2 Planetars (CR 16)
2 Young bronze dragons (CR 8)
How to Avoid Using
As always, we’ll start an article about a good-alignment monster with a list of ideas as to how to avoid using. I.E. if there’s a good dragon in your campaign world, why isn’t it out there fighting the villain instead of the PCs?
- The Dragon is Injured: This isn’t the first enemy to threaten the area, and the dragon is still recovering from taking down the previous one. Or, the current villain was proactive, and managed to ambush or poison the dragon enough to limit its ability to fight in the near future.
- The dragon is restrained by a treaty: Given the dragon’s fighting potential, it makes sense that many foes would make treaties rather than fight to the death, and those treaties will limit where the dragon can be active. As a result, the dragon will be unable to help the players with their enemy without triggering a major war.
- I already suggested in the last article that if your enemy is active on a large scale, it could be that the dragon is fighting in other areas. The dragon is probably able to take down most forts by itself, so it would make sense that the players are better involved fighting elsewhere than wasting their strength just supporting the dragon.
- If you need to, you could always use the trope where the commanding officers (in this case, the dragon) feel that the best course of action is direct assault, while the players have reason to believe that a more subtle strategy is called for. Personally, I’d rather say that the dragon isn’t well equipped for the subtle method, so they’ve agreed that the PCs will go first, with the dragon ready in the wings as backup.
How to Use
Having your players team up with a powerful NPC is one of those ideas that seem thrilling in theory, but generally don’t work out so well. The players are supposed to be the heroes of their adventurers, and a powerful NPC will overshadow them, reducing them to playing support and making their contributions seem small.
That doesn’t make it less tempting. We each have our favorite movie scenes where mentor personality accompanied the hero, and everything was wonderful. (If the movie was any good, those scenes didn’t last all that long, and were probably there to introduce plot elements.) Let’s say we want to do it anyhow. How can we make such a scene fun?
Rule 1: Keep such scenes brief, and infrequent. If the battle is going to be any fun, it will be based on the fact that it’s a novelty. Do it more than once in a very long time, and it isn’t fun anymore.
Rule 2: Work at keeping the spotlight on your players. Below, I’ll discuss scenarios aimed at doing that, but outside of specific scenarios, that also means that you should minimize their descriptions, and the amount of [out-of-game] time it takes them to carry out their actions as much as possible.
In the interest of speeding this part of the game up, I personally don’t roll damage when an NPC attacks an NPC. I prefer to use the average. Rolling exists to make the game more fun for your players, and this part of the game doesn’t involve your players.
I also don’t give the dragon legendary actions. Instead, I have him make the extra attacks as part of his base action, or I give the dragon two turns (let’s say initiative 20 & 10), one for his base turn and one for his legendary actions. You want to minimize the amount of time you spend on rolling against yourself.
(If one of your players is controlling the dragon, that’s different, as the dragon became a PC. That said, a powerful PC isn’t better than a powerful NPC ally. It will make the players running it be vastly more powerful than the other players, and there’s an excellent chance that he’ll show off, making it worse. If you give them all powerful NPCs to run, you’ve made their characters utterly irrelevant.)
Scenario 1:
(Note: This scenario was already used in the article Allies of an [Evil] Dragon. This is the only repeat scenario in this article. As is my style with a repeat scenario, I’m putting it is spoilers, allowing it to be available to people who want it without forcing people who already read it there to read it again.)
The dragon arrives in the courtyard, or breaks open the wall and lands at the side of a great hall, or similarly massive room. The players are being carried along by it.
As a dragon attack isn’t remotely subtle, the arrival triggers the guards, who arrive in large numbers and attack the dragon. While the players will have to fight their way through the area, the bulk of the enemies will be occupied fighting the dragon.
This is a fight that will require a map, just in order to keep track of the large number of enemies, but should be run more in theater of mind. The main reason is that dragons have too many actions, as do the enemy guards, given their numbers. If you try to run the fight according to the rules the fight will go from exciting to boring, as more than half the time is run with you throwing the dice against yourself.
An additional reason is that dragon fights are built to be over fast, with the dragon capable of dishing out vast amounts of damage, but having few HP [relative to other monsters of their level.)
The players will be mostly concentrating on defeating the enemies between them and a nearby door, or getting past them without defeating them (their choice). If they try to interfere in the larger fight, have the dragon object and order them away.
Below are a number of ways that the dragon’s fight can affect the fight to get out through the door. You’ll probably want to use at least one or two of these to make the players’ fight seem like part of the main fight. You don’t want to use one of every time that the dragon’s fight comes up in initiative order, as that will make the fight way too chaotic.
The dragon uses frightful presence. This will affect both the PCs as well as the enemies that they’re fighting against. The dragon will probably do this toward the beginning of the fight, which is why it’s mentioned first.
1-2 enemies move from the dragon’s fight to join the enemies fighting the players, or vice versa.
The dragon uses wing attack, affecting both PCs and their enemies. If fighting in a great hall, you can have the dragon stomp, sending tremors through the room, and causing many people on both sides to lost their balance. (Same effects as wing attack, different visuals.)
The destruction the dragon is doing causes stones to fall, hitting PCs and/or their enemies to take damage, and perhaps to be knocked prone. In an extreme scenario, they can get pinned to the ground and need either a STR check or assistance to escape.
The tremors mess up the ground, turning areas into difficult terrain. (Can be combined with the last two.)
A spell aimed at the dragon catches some or all of the PCs inside its area-of-effect.
An enemy spellcaster or ranged fighter catches sight of the PCs from elsewhere in the room and starts to target them. This can be one time (targeting them with a single attack), or
repeatedly, in which case the players can either ignore it, respond with their own ranged attacks, or you can have the dragon take out this enemy later in the fight, (vibe wise, taking it out as part of a breath weapon attack, and without
noticing that it was important to the players would be best.)
Once the PCs get through the door, it will become more or less like a normal dungeon. To keep the vibe going, I would suggest occasional mentions of the distant sounds of the fight. I would also keep the dungeon short, and make it easy for them to know where they’re supposed to go. This is to give the vibe that it’s all part of the same raid/battle.
Recommended encounters would be having them blunder into a group of enemies running to or from the dragon’s fight, or running from the same. Since most of the fighting forces are presumably busy fighting the dragon, they won’t meet many other enemies, but you could still have a fight
against some type of guardian that was assigned to guard the players’ objective, and wasn’t reassigned, and/or a clever mini-boss (lieutenant) who realized what the players were up to.
Traps, obstacles, and puzzles will also be still in place, although I wouldn’t use anything too complex. Again, keeping the dungeon short (which means short as the players perceive time, not just as the NPCs perceive time), would be best. They aren’t coming to conquer the place, but to raid it, and that means getting in and out quickly.
Scenario 2:
The dragon has been taken captive, and the players have to rescue it. Even once they do so, the dragon is weakened, and can’t utilize its full strength.
If you don’t want the enemy to be more powerful than the dragon, you can say that it was taken captive through trickery.
Obviously, for the first part of the fight, the dragon’s abilities are irrelevant, as they aren’t available. Once the dragon has been freed, it still won’t be able to utilize its full strength, as its captivity has rendered it extremely weak.
This does not mean that the dragon shouldn’t participate at all. I have seen books and movies where the captive is so weakened that they play no part after having been rescued, and my general feeling to that is feel that the heroes wasted their time rescuing them. (Especially when they turn out not to have any real advice to give, either.)
In this case, you can definitely let the dragon use its breath attack, whenever available. (The fact that it’s a line is very useful. Otherwise, you’d possibly have to restrict its uses.) In addition, there is no reason not to let it make at least one melee attack a turn, and possibly two, which can be played up so as to sound very powerful.
What a weakened creature won’t be able to do is take damage. This will greatly undercut its ability to interfere in the combat, as it will have to stay in a fairly defensible location. In addition, the annoyance of having to tank the damage make the dragon’s contributions seem only fair, not overpowering. That said, don’t make the dragon a main target. Defending an NPC isn’t something considered fun.
(You will have to decide what happens if the enemies do manage to attack the dragon. Letting them kill it is only an option if it gave them something important (information or item) as soon as they rescued it, and even then, shouldn’t be done unless it’s absolutely their fault. A better option is that the dragon stops being able to assist in combat, either because it goes unconscious or because it’s too busy parrying attacks.)
Scenario 3:
The dragon takes an a [single] powerful opponent.
This is a scene that needs to be played out in theater of mind. In particular, you can’t use the normal damage rules, as then the dragon will do too much of the damage, and as it will make the combat boring, with the players not having anything to do but bash away at it.
What you want is a fight that is mostly happening via descriptions, not via counting HP. The players contribution will be finding a way to slow down, distract, or otherwise disrupt the enemy enough to let the dragon get in a killing blow.
This can be done by having magic gems around the battlefield giving the enemy some kind of force-field (or other effect), and the players have to break them. Of course, they’re protected by obstacles and/or minions. In addition, the main enemy will move around and try to block and/or attack them, with as much as its attention as it can spare while fighting the dragon.
With a huge or gargantuan enemy, it could be that the items in question are on its body somewhere. The difficulty of getting near will provide some drama, or the players can climb the creature on one side while the dragon attacks the other.
If your players like to come up with original ideas [as opposed to play by the book players], you can use descriptions of the dragon slowly losing the battle, and challenge them to come up with ideas to throw the battle in the right direction. This will force you to come up with description and new rules on the spot, so that they won’t accomplish their idea[s] too easily.
A note of warning: This type of play can cause a fight to be over extremely fast. If you aren’t very sure of your ability to create complications, you might want to use both this idea and the magic gems idea from above, or make it clear that it will require them to throw the fight numerous times in order to win.
Once they win, remember to have the end of battle description focus on the players’ accomplishment[s], not the dragon’s.
(Example from a point and click computer game, where you stab the giant villain with a poison quill to weaken him so the powerful ally can win: “Of course, the amount of poison in the quill is almost negligible to a creature of that size. But it moves into his veins, causing him to slow by a barely perceptible second. And that second – [dramatic pause] – is enough!”)
Scenario 4:
The dragon is fighting the main enemy, and the players have to keep the lesser enemies off him.
This has the major negative of making the players less important than the dragon. As mentioned above, the players should always be heroes, not the side characters.
To make this scenario a valid option, you’ll need to make dragon’s fight fairly boring [it and the monster should just be flailing away at each other, without clever moves], and the players should be fighting off several different moves by the villains, with them coming up with a new form of attack each time one is defeated.
(This will not be the final battle to defeat the head villain, except in a very short campaign. Rather, the villain managed to summon or create a powerful entity, which the dragon will, with the players’ help, be fighting against. After its defeated, they still have to stop the villain from summoning/creating more of them, or from doing something even worse.)
I have also seen this scenario used in the context of a duel, with the champion [the dragon] fighting the duel, and the players having to thwart attempts to cheat. The advantage is that it makes the villains seem even more evil, given that they’re trying to cheat. The disadvantage is that you have to make the interference more subtle. You also might have to come up with more ideas, as the setting will limit how many minions you can have attacking the players.
Scenario 5:
In which the dragon’s attack leaves it vulnerable, and the players have to save it.
Like in scenario 1, the scenario starts with the players and the dragon teaming up to take on an enemy base. In this scenario, the intention is to defeat the enemies, not to split off and raid them. (See scenario 1 for ideas on running a large and confusing battle.)
After about two rounds, the players see that the villains were ready for the possibility of the dragon attacking them. Perhaps they’re readying a large siege crossbow armed with an arrow of dragon slaying. Perhaps several mages are casting a ritual that the PCs recognize as something that will trap, kill, or otherwise defeat the dragon.
The dragon is too far away from them, and too caught up in the thrill of battle, to listen to their warning. They’ll have to fight their way over there, or find a different way to save the dragon.
A different possibility is to let them succeed before the players notice them. In this case, you won’t make it be a lethal defeat, but rather a trap that leaves the dragon helpless. This could be a giant, enchanted net that falls on the dragon from above, or a magic circle that once the dragon enters in can’t leave, unless the runes or destroyed.
You can also have the dragon get struck by the arrow or the magic, leaving it weakened. This will turn the scenario into something like scenario 2, except that the dragon is in the middle of the enemies, which means that the players will have to come to the rescue pretty quick.
Hostile Dragon Combat Scenario (Difficulty 17)
If you’re going to send your players against a bronze dragon, a possible lair idea would be a network of caves. The caves are plain, although a few show signs of the dragon. None of them contain any of the dragon’s treasure. The secret of the lair is a pool that lies at the side of one of the caverns.
The bronze dragon is aquatic. It enjoys swimming. The pool conceals a second group of tunnels, or possibly just a single large cave, which is the dragon’s actual lair.
Even once your players figure it out, getting at the dragon in the inner cave(s) will not be easy. The dragon has a massive advantage underwater, and may even have some type of aggressive fish (which have been taught better than to attack the dragon itself.
Once they reach the other side, they’ll still be inside the water, letting the dragon’s lightning do spread damage instead of just line damage. In addition, the dragon can use its repulsing breath to knock them back toward the water, and possibly even trigger a falling net or cage with the same use of its breath, which will help make escaping all the harder.
Finally, if you need something more, the area on the far side of the pool doesn’t have to be flat. A cliff would be almost insignificant to the dragon, and will be a major obstacle to the players. The dragon can hurl boulders, fly down on its turn and retreat, or just ready an action to attack if they come close and wait for its breath to recharge.
Summary – 6 Ways to Use
- When using an adult bronze dragon (or other OP NPC) as a combat ally, make sure that the main focus is on the players. One way is to have the dragon be keeping back the enemies, so that the players have a chance to slip away and capture the prize.
- Have the dragon be taken captive, and the players have to rescues it. When they do so, the dragon is weakened, and therefore limited in how it can fight, but it shouldn’t be completely useless either.
- Combat encounter with a dragon as an ally: The dragon’s fighting a powerful monster. The players have to handicap a monster that can smash them flat. Make sure to have the descriptions focus on the players. They are the main characters.
- When using a dragon ally (or other powerful creature), keep the description of the dragon’s fight minimal, and the players’ interesting. Even if the dragon’s fighting the biggest monster, keep the interesting moves for the mooks the players are fighting.
- When using a dragon, or other ally more powerful than the players, make sure the players are the ones who shine. For example, the dragon might be powerful, but the villains know this, and have a giant crossbow ready that the players will have to stop.
- A bronze dragon’s lair. The dragon is at home in water. Have a large lake inside the caves that the dragon calls home. You can only reach its real home by entering the lake and swimming under the wall into another set of caves.
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