Dragon Encounters

How to use

The dragon’s lair (exploring the various obstacles of the dragon’s lair, and how to use them.)

I’m going to split the lair into three parts. Reaching the lair, reaching the dragon, and fighting the dragon.

Reaching the Lair

The entrance to the dragon’s lair will be high up on a mountain. The side of the mountain will be too slick to climb, and the players will have to figure out a way to get up. For even greater difficulty, place a river or chasm at the bottom of the mountain, and have there be no level ground at the base of the mountain from which to start climbing.

The standard form of climbing is to have one climber take the lead, and let rope back for the others. This lets the most skilled climber help the others, or lets the climbers take turns so as not to exhaust any one climber too much. Also, this lets them use pitons (Metal pieces driven into the rock or ice to hold the ropes), which can’t support the weight of multiple people at once. I’m going to assume that they’re climbing in such a fashion below.

Difficulties faces while climbing include:

• Ice. This can be on the cliff face, or along a ledge that they need to stand on. (When climbing mountains, climbers sometimes need to find a place where they can pull up their ropes to use them for the next leg of the climb.)
• Winds. Have the winds pick up unexpectedly, pulling one of the PCs climbing away from the cliff face and forcing him to cling only to the ropes. PCs standing on ledges might be forced to grab on to protrusions not to be blown away, and they’ll have to move around while holding on to the sides to avoid being blown off the face of the rock.
• Frayed Rope. Have them notice, when they’re already strung out along the mountain, that one of the ropes is starting to fray. They have to make their way to each other without putting too much stress on that rope.
• Climber slips. This can happen naturally, via a bad roll while climbing, or you narrate that a rock underfoot breaks off if you prefer. Thanks to the ropes, the climber doesn’t fall all the way, but he is still left hanging, and they have to figure out how to rescue him.
• Fog. (Lair effect). Fog springs up, and they have to figure out how to continue forward without being able to see the area ahead, or even each other.
• Rain. (Lair effect). In addition to being unpleasant, this will make the rocks ahead slippery, and will freeze and make the ropes slippery as a result.
• Blizzard. (Lair effect). This should combine winds with no visibility. Frankly, this should make it impossible to climb. My only advice would be to find a place to shelter, even if this means quickly descending the mountain, and try again later. I suppose some high-level parties might think of a magical workaround.

Before the dragon

The outer layers of the lair will consist of network of caves. I would place no more than two caves before they reach the dragon, with perhaps 2-3 offshoots and possibly a second way in.

(The reason that they aren’t bigger is mostly to stop the players from getting bored. I’m assuming that all the obstacles are the terrain obstacles, though. If you’re going to use minions or traps, that would be different, but it doesn’t fit this dragon.)

Even once they reach the dragon’s cavern, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ve reached the dragon. The dragon’s cavern is going to be vast, and the dragon won’t necessarily feel like fighting them right away. Nor does he have to.

Two of the dragon’s lair actions make it all but impossible to fight the dragon without being close, and one of those also does damage while they’re in it. The dragon can choose to wait where he is where he is until they get close, while also hitting them with its lair action every round or two.

Obstacles include (you’ll want to combine these obstacles, and combine them in different ways and amounts in order to make each cavern unique.)

Icy floors: In addition to slowing movement, these increase the danger from chasms, make it hard to gain leverage to move obstacles, and can send PCs sliding into a different cavern by themselves, before their companions can get to then.

Chasms: These can be revealed or covered, these are obstacles that need to be crossed, and should be combined with enemies or a time limit of some sort. With covered, you can put a creature or freezing cold water at the bottom as a different time limit. Be aware that covered pits/chasms won’t work more than once.

Boulders: While frozen, these are obstacles. The players may be able to climb past, but they won’t be able to move without a lot of chiseling away at the pile. If thawed because of a spell, there is at least some chance that they might shift onto a PC trying to climb past, crushing the PC to the ground until and unless they get leveraged off.

Ice walls:  Commonly found blocking off parts of the dragon’s lair, these will need to be broken open if they don’t want to face the dragon via the front entrance.

Breaking an ice wall open physicaly means reaching the wall first, and it can be across a chasm past a pile of rubble, with no place to stand on the far side. Breaking the wall with magic might cause parts of the ceiling to become looser, more ready to fall on the PCs. Both forms risk the wall collapsing, possibly landing on them, and also possibly breaking apart and sending shards flying.

Fighting the Dragon

The tactics that the dragon will use once it decides to fight them directly are simple, but strong.

The dragon will be perched on an icicle, or perhaps a high-up ledge, giving it three-quarters cover so long as the PCs are on the far side of the cavern. When its breath weapon is available, it will use it, probably targeting ranged fighters and/or spellcasters (the white dragon, like many STR based beings, considers ranged attacks as unsporting, “Cheating”, the weapons of weaklings, and will want to punish them).

When it doesn’t have its breath weapon, it will land and take on the melee face to face. So long as the fight is fair, it will remain on the ground. Otherwise, it will use wing attack to fly back up, if possibly holding on to an icicle in such a way as to allow it to make tail attacks in between turns.

“Unfair” means if the dragon is attacked from two directions (“Flanked”), or by more than two enemies at once. In addition, ranged attacks and spellcasting are “Unfair”, and if it has its breath weapon, it will fly off to deal with them.  That said, it has two lair actions it can use against ranged, so it might not need to.

Stage 2: (Optional. You can also start off the fight this way, if you want a bigger challenge.)

As they start to do too much damage, the dragon flies off to the back of its lair, where there is a large pond, frozen over. To reach it, the players will have to follow it there. (You can put a large cluster of icicles blocking sight of its airspace, or put the pond around a corner, it needed.)

When the dragon’s lair action drops icicles that miss the PCs, they’ll hit the lake, sending cracks through the ice. The dragon can also throw boulders, or use its tail attacks to knock down more icicles. Soon, parts of the ice will begin breaking, and the more that is broken, the more easily the rest will break. (Pieces that have open water next to them on multiple sides will be especially vulnerable.)     

Falling into the water will be a danger in multiple ways.

1.  Immersion in cold water is lethal, and should do cold damage while the PC is inside.
2. Any PC wearing armor will have trouble swimming, with heavy armor making it completely impossible. Cloaks, robes, and capes will also mess up swimming.
3.  Even if they can swim, they would have to find the hole that they fell through in order to escape. If they think of it, they can use they weapons to make a new hole in the ice, but doing so will weaken it further.

When the dragon uses its breath weapon, that will have the interesting effect of making their footing more secure. The cold will strengthen the ice, and bind together the cracks.

Combat encounter: Floodwaters. (difficulty 16)

The setting: The players are anywhere near a river, but preferably in a village. The river has been running low recently, but suddenly there’s a roading noise, and massive floodwaters come racing down toward the valley. There is no time to escape, and the PCs are most likely picked up by the flood and washed along.

If using a village, there turns out to be a lot of debris, and they should manage to use a doorway or fallen wall as a raft. Then the dragon arrives.

It is possible that the dragon caused the flood. What he would have to do is pile up rubble, dump it into the river and use his breath to harden it in place and block any gaps. Then, after the water rises sufficiently, he’ll break the dam and release a flood, rendering the villagers’ easy pickings.

(Is the white dragon smart enough to do this? I suppose if he saw a dam burst once, it could give the dragon the idea. Honestly, I’m really pushing the envelope on this idea. It would make more sense if it was the ancient dragon instead of the adult, but I wanted an interesting idea for the adult. If you prefer, say it happened naturally, and that the dragon was in the right place at the right time.)

The dragon can swim, and is big enough and strong enough to ignore the debris.

Possible tactics include: Attacking and then swimming down where they can’t see it, attacking their craft to knock them into the water where they’ll have a hard time fighting (see underwater combat in the Players Handbook), and where they might be swept apart from each other, pulling them down when and if they’re in the water, attacking them from a distance via reach, breath weapon, or thrown object, and attacking the villagers.

If the players enter the water, they’ll suffer the disadvantages of underwater combat (see in the Player’s Handbook), they’ll need to make athletics saves to avoid being pulled underwater by the current, they may be separated as the current moves unevenly, at they might take bludgeoning damage from being knocked into object or be restrained from getting tangled on in ropes, sheets, etc.

They might try to reach the shore. However, that is where the largest amount of debris will pile up, greatly increasing chances that they’ll get tangled in it.

In addition, if they aren’t on the same craft at the time, this almost guarantees that they’ll end up nowhere near each other, as the current is moving so fast that even a small delay results in considerable distance.

Finally, the shore might not be level, making it hard for them to get out, and making it hard to move toward each other even after they got out.

Minions

The white dragon does not have minions. If it does, the only decision needed to be made is whether the dragon will avoid hurting them with its ice breath, or whether it won’t.

The ice dragon is intelligent enough to know which minions are immune to cold damage, but it won’t distinguish between resistant to not resistant, nor will it distinguish based on how much damage it stands to do to the PCs, or how much HP its minions have left.

The only calculation it will do is that if it’s losing the fight, and below 50% health, it might stop worrying about its minions. This decision is another one that I would recommend deciding before the game.

(The only real reason this section is here at all is because I have it for the other dragons.)

Summary: 6 Ways to Use

1. Have the dragon’s lair be a vast cavern, the floor of which has a nice number of chasms, frozen boulders, and other obstacles. The dragon will use its fog lair action to hurt them and protect itself from range, and they have to get close to fight back.
2. The dragon can cling to icicles. Its basic strategy, therefore, would be to end its turns close enough for its tail to reach them, but far enough that they can’t reach it. It can use its fog cloud and ice wall to prevent attacks from PCs who won’t come close.
3. Wing attack is much more deadly when parts of the floor are slippery ice, especially if you dot the ice with chasms.
4. Have the dragon fly away, and the players pursue it out over a frozen pond. As the dragon uses its icicle to drop icicles down onto the PCs, with any that miss damaging the ice or making holes. Eventually the ice will be weakened, and the PCs won’t have footing.
5. If a PC falls into the water, the dragon can use a grapple to pull the PC down under the water, where the PC can’t breathe, and where the other PCs can’t help this one out.
6. The white dragon will sometimes cause floods by damming up a river, then releasing it all at once. When the players try to use boats to ride it out, the dragon will flip them, and then attack the PCs.