Dragon Encounters

How to Use

The red dragon, as noted in my last article, scorns tactics and stratagems as tools of the feeble. It feels the same way about defenses. Therefore, while you can use cliffs without traversable paths, open deserts with no cover, and the like, these are just a function of the dragon not needing travel access that others can use, and not wanting to be bothered by thieves.

 When it wants to take on PC enemies, it will do so directly, taking at most incidental advantage of any terrain features that happen to be nearby. To find interesting combats for the red dragon, we are going to need to look elsewhere.

(I will be providing a few lair defenses in my ancient red dragon article.)

Combat Encounter: The Burning City (difficulty 18)

Perhaps the most interesting place to put a red dragon is in the middle a city that it’s attacking. Fighting in the city forces the PCs to split their attention between the dragon, the fires, and any people that might need help. Let’s look at them individually.

The fires: Unlike other D&D damage types, fire spreads. Even before they get close to the dragon, they’re going to run into many different obstacles caused by the fire.

In the street, this will be narrow* streets rendered almost impassable because of the flames pouring out of the building on both sides. To make it even worse, medieval streets often aren’t straight, so the players might not know if the street is clear or not when they enter it. You can also add rubble, caused by the partial collapse of some buildings, and you have an impossible maze.

* (The streets of medieval cities were a lot narrower than what we’re used to. The main streets might be the size of a single lane street of today, but the side streets, not meant for anything but people, would be about the size of a single lane of a one-way street of today, and I mean without the sidewalks and parking spaces.)

In addition, as the fire spreads, it could jump around them, and they might find out that they’re cut off from behind, too.

If they try to cross on rooftops, narrow streets making jumping from roof to roof possible, they’ll risk a roof collapsing under them. Fire weakens the supports, and so a house that’s burning heavily will be at the most risk of collapse. Going through building will face the problem of not knowing which buildings have back doors. Also, opening entrances in burning buildings fans flames. This is true whether they open doors or break walls.

Animals: Another interesting feature of medieval cities is that they will have horses, donkeys, and mules around. Complicate any obstacle or encounter by having a spooked animal come charging at them. If they can’t get out of its way via STR or DEX save, one or more of them will be knocked prone, and possibly trampled or sent flying.

Alternatively, have a horse, attached to a cart that is now burning, come charging at them, with its burning cart attached. In the narrow streets, getting out of its way might not be possible, and shooting it down might not stop the cart from continuing to roll.

People: The standard way to use the people would be to have people in trouble, and needing to be rescued. Stuck of a top floor, or pinned by a fallen beam, are typical.

You can also use them to provide a side quest. Perhaps to knock down buildings to create a firebreak, perhaps to rescue a certain item, to help throw water on the granary to prevent it from burning down and leading to starvation for the entire town, or perhaps for something personal that isn’t as important as taking down the dragon, but the NPC is offering a tempting reward.

(The other quests are also morally grey, given the urgency of taking down the dragon, with the exception for rescuing lives, which should be treated as morally correct. This last one is meant to be completely unjustified.)

People can give them information, letting them make decisions about which roads to take. Ideally, have both be bad in different ways, and let them decide which is the lesser evil.

(Several general dangers were discussed above, [under “the fire”], one that didn’t fit there was if a store or warehouse has a large amount of something explosive or highly flammable. The flames aren’t there yet, but is it worth going past there when the building could erupt any moment.)

Another use of people is as villains, in the form of looters. There will always be some people to take advantage of any situation. Given the urgency of stopping the dragon, is it worth fighting them? (If the players decide no, it could be interesting to have another group of looters a bit later. The exact same situation, except that these looters are carrying a lot of money, or other stuff that the players are interested in.)

The Dragon: Once they finally reach the dragon, there is the matter of taking it down. Difficulties include:

• A narrow street, made narrower by the fact that the buildings on either side are burning. If they don’t want to take fire damage, they’ll only be able to face the dragon in single file. The dragon won’t have this problem, as it can walk right through the buildings and has immunity to fire damage. (It will be standing in a ruined building or at an intersection, because room.)
• The dragon moving in and out of houses can 1) keep it out of line-of-sight of ranged PCs (the smoke won’t help either.) 2) Cause rubble to crash down on the PCs, hurting and/or trapping them. The dragon won’t do this on purpose, as red dragons don’t see the need for “Tricks”, but it won’t avoid having this happen.
• The dragon may very well decide that the PCs aren’t worth it’s time mid-battle, and walk away through the flames. Following it will mean getting through at least one of the obstacles described in “The Fire”, above.
• There may easily be a cry for help from a person stuck in a burning building. Rescuing the person was hard before, doing it while holding off a red dragon is going to be much more so. Use any of the ideas from “animals”, or “people” for more distractions.
• The dragon’s wing attack will cause fires to flare all around, as it fans the flames, and it may knock already fragile building over, either on to the PCs or blocking them. On the downside, it won’t let the dragon fly, as the dragon won’t have enough space to fully spread its wings. It’s up to you to decide if it can substitute some walking movement instead. 

The big restriction on fighting in a city is that the dragon won’t be able to fly, as he won’t have room to spread his wings. If you want your dragon to take to the air, I would suggest that it climb its way to the top of a large building and take off from there.

(This is why, in The Hobbit [book version], Smaug attacked Dale from the air. He wanted to go in on the ground, but once the bridges were cut, he had no way to get in. The reason he couldn’t fly in was because the streets weren’t big enough for him to stand on them with his wings extended.)

The Dragon’s Minions

The red dragon does not fight alongside minions, or use them to help against anything he considers dangerous to himself, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have them. He wants some number of guards in order to protect his treasure against thieves, so that he doesn’t have to bother always standing guards.

In addition, any minions he keeps around for domestic purposes will have the ability to fight. They need that, or they would have long since been devoured by the dangerous creatures that live around a red dragon. (The dragon itself isn’t going to lift a claw to protect them).

While the dragon isn’t going to use them to weaken the PCs, it won’t care about giving the PCs time to recover either. Once it decides that it’s going to take on the PCs in person, it will attack immediately. In fact, having it arrive in the middle of a fight can give you be a good opportunity to showcase its disregard for its minions.

It will start the fight with its breath weapon, as is normal in most dragon battles. Notably, it won’t care about how many minions are caught in the blast. As soon as it arrives, its minions will immediately start scrambling away, as presuming to fight alongside it will be taken by the dragon as an insult. It doesn’t need allies.

As it enters, have one of its minions get in the way. That minion will get stomped on, shredding and crushing it, and demonstrating both the dragon’s power and its utter disregard for its minions.