Dragon Encounters

Combat scenarios for every monster, allowing them to utilize their combat potential to the fullest for the first time ever.


ANCIENT BRASS DRAGON: The Hidden King and His Deadly Domain

minions/allies

Combat rating 23

 

1 Ancient brass dragon (CR 20)

1 Behir* (CR 11)

4 Weretigers (CR 4)

 

* captured and tamed/enslaved

 

Combat rating 25

 

1 Ancient brass dragon (CR 20)

3 Air elementals (CR 5)

3 Djinn (CR 11)

 

Combat rating 27

 

1 Ancient brass dragon (CR 20)

2 Clay golems (CR 9)

1 Iron golem (CR 16)

2 Guardian naga (CR 10)

2 Gladiators (CR 5)

 

Combat rating 28

 

1 Ancient brass dragon (CR 20)

2 Purple worms (CR 15)

1 Androsphinx (CR 17)

 

How to Use

By the time a brass dragon is ancient, it’s established its reputation enough to be a king, or at least to be on the highest tier of society that it cares for.

In some genres of fantasy, it has become accepted that the ideal king is someone who is friendly with even the most common of his citizens. Half the time, the king even dresses like them when he isn’t sitting in ceremony.

In actual fact, there is a good reason for a king to dress and act the part, aside from ego. The king represents the people, and the power of his country, and it’s a source of pride and respect to the country as a whole when the king inspires respect. In addition, the king needs to be trusted to make decisions and pass judgement, and that requires that the king has a strong presence.

In a D&D game, while it might be cool in chat and joke around with the king initially, it quickly removes all the gravitas for his position. It can’t remain cool, because the character no longer feels like a king, and so there is nothing left to be novel about it. In addition, as the king’s authority erodes, the players no longer feel any inclination to treat what he says at all seriously.

D&D players are well-known for joking around and poking fun at everything. Given that the reason most people play D&D is to relax with friends, they can hardly be blamed for it. It leaves you with no good way to make a king seem impressive, however.

The one thing you might want to do is to restrict access to the king. After all, kings aren’t exactly people that you can just walk in and see when you want, even if you’re already a level 20 wizard.  Provide various political hoops that they have to navigate through, and don’t give them access to the king until they’ve already proven themselves through multiple quests.

That said, if you want to bring in the brass dragon earlier, Arabian fairy tales have a tradition of a caliph [king] who goes out in the guise of a commoner to make certain that his citizens are happy and to solve their problems. The ancient brass dragon, like all metallic dragons who reach a certain age, can turn into a human.

The only pointers I can give to making it work is to never agree or deny any theories that your players come up with out of game, until you’re ready to reveal it in game. This includes if they figure out the real answer, as not knowing if they’re right will add to the excitement.

I would also suggest not planting clues, false or otherwise, as your players will probably guess the correct answer without clues, and false clues are difficult to make both fair and convincing.

The other place for the dragon to use his shapechanging ability is when fighting in a city, where fighting as a dragon will put bystanders at risk. Even then, it will only fight in human form if it’s almost certain of success. For the brass dragon, this means together with a crowd of allies, and wielding several powerful magical items.

I’m afraid I can’t tell you how to build this encounter. I will note that most spellcasters in D&D books have low HP, whereas the dragon will have the full HP that he has in dragon form, which isn’t a small advantage.

Combat Encounters (difficulty 23)

Even if the brass dragon spends a large amount of time in the city, he will have a lair outside where he displays his wealth as suits him, and be comfortable without worrying about hurting any people.

Before any enemies can even face the lair, they will have to find it. While not difficult if you can fly, dessert scenery can be confusing to anyone unaccustomed to it, and it is easy to get lost.

In this case, the dragon has the power to distract via illusions of monsters. (Concentrating on your path is doubly difficult if you’re forced to split your attention.) If they choose to ignore the various monsters, they risk getting taken by surprise if one turns out not to be an illusion.

In addition, if they send a party member to scout by air, the scout can be prevented from rejoining the main party due to a carefully chosen monster that seems to be in the way (especially if they don’t know about the dragon’s illusion power), and once out of sight won’t be able to find them via tracks, given the dragon’s other illusion power (illusionary tracks.)

The outcome is that finding the dragon’s lair will require an incredibly high survival roll, or multiple rolls, possibly with disadvantage.

Outside Defenses

Even before they reach the lair, the dragon has several levels of defense on the way.

One defense the dragon might use would be a small maze of pits, covered with wooden tops and buried in sand, some of them will be strong enough to support a human’s weight, some might even support the weight of multiple humans, others will give immediately. (The dragon can set up the trap area, and trust in his lair area effect to prevent animals or innocents from wandering into it and breaking the covers or getting hurt.)

Once the players have entered the area, preferably by crossing a pit with durable covering, the dragon will target the cover with its breath weapon from the air. In doing so, it will destroy their retreat, and set the stage for the next part.

There are several ways to run the next stage: The dragon will fly around, bombing them from the air. It can drop boulders, which may weaken the covers of other pits as well as hurting the players (directly or via shrapnel).

The dragon can drop cauldrons of burning coals, which in addition to doing damage will create areas of dangerous terrain, and might set other pit covers on fire (although being buried will protect them somewhat).

The dragon can use its fire breath when active, doing damage to any one of them or destroying a pit cover. Note that fire breath has pros and cons. The pro is that bombing can’t reasonably happen more than once every 3-4 turns. The con is that it forces the dragon into closer range than bombing.

For extra challenge, some of the pits could have explosives placed in them. When the fire reaches them, they’ll explode, potentially causing some of the area around the pit to slide into the pit. This might also weaken the covers of nearby pits.

If you don’t want explosives, you could place flammables inside the pits, with narrow tunnels connecting the pits. This means that once one pit catches fire, other pits to catch fire unexpectedly. (You probably want the area with the pits to be a raised plateau, at least on one side, so that small tunnels connecting the pits with the outside can provide the fire with air.)

To finish it off, you could also have mages or archers attacking the dragon’s enemies from the distance. The dragon can create illusions, which will make it hard to shoot back, as they won’t know which of the dragon’s allies are real.

A different, simpler, method that the dragon could use is to have archers or mages make hit-and-run attacks against them, with the dragon’s illusions helping them escape. (You can’t pursue when they run in two directions at once, and the dragon’s illusions even cover the tracks.)

Illusions can also be used to lure them into traps, such as cliffs that can be collapsed on them.

The dragon’s area effects include letting it know of any creatures that come near oases within six miles of the lair. This means that any allies of the dragon trusted enough to be allowed into its lair should always go there by means of a route that comes near an oasis, so as to make following them without the dragon’s knowledge almost impossible. The entrance to the lair should be near a hidden oasis, making it almost impossible to take the dragon by surprise.

Inside the Lair

For a worthwhile defense inside the dragon’s lair, have a section of the floor be a pit covered with long, flat metal bars. For the dragon, these bars can be easily be walked on, as the opening between the bars is too small for the dragon’s foot to fit through. That size hole is big enough that a person who steps wrong will have his foot go through the bars, and maybe he’ll even fall completely.

To make matters worse, fill the pit under the bars with coals. The dragon will have an easy time walking on hot metal, thanks to fire immunity. Everyone else will not.

This trap was designed to be combined with the dragon’s lair actions. The first lair action will push people back, which could knock them into a hole quite easily. The second will blind them, making jumping the bars extremely difficult.

(Logically, the coals would make the entire room extremely hot, if allowed to burn for any amount of time. The dragon would enjoy the heat, while anyone else would not. [In fact, you could even say that the dragon enjoys lying on top of the fire when it feels like relaxing, or when it was cold out.] Effects like these are often ignored in D&D, so you can decide if you want to do this.)

Summary – Six Ways to Use

  1. Make the dragon feel like a greater deal by not giving them access to the dragon right away. Make them deal with the dragon via intermediary until they’re judged worthy.
  2. When fighting inside a city, to reduce the chances of hurting bystanders, the dragon will use human form, bring allies, and have several powerful magical items. Per the rules, the dragon will also have the same HP that it has in dragon form.
  3. Between confusing them with illusion tracks, distracting them with illusion monsters, and keeping them split up with illusions if they send a PC ahead to scout from the air, finding the dragon’s lair will be almost impossible, even with directions.
  4. Have a section of dessert by hidden pits, covered by wooden covers. The dragon can lure them in, then light them on fire and start dropping rocks and fire from the air. They can’t stay still, and they don’t know which ways are safe in order to leave.
  5. The fact that the dragon can create illusionary creatures means that if the dragon has even a few allies, they won’t know which are real until they take damage. They also can’t follow, effectively if the allies hit and run. Finally, following illusions will lead them into traps and avalanches.
  6. Inside the lair, have a pit filled with coals, lined by metal bars. The bars are close enough together that the dragon can step across easily, and the players can’t. The dragon’s lair actions can blind the players, making it hard to jump across.


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About Me

I’ve been a DM since I was about 10 years old. (Not of D&D, admittedly, but still.) After growing bored of fights that were all the same, dungeons heavily populated by one monster type, and a general shortage of ideas, I figured I’d embark on my own trip through the Monster Manual, one monster at a time. Feel free to join the quest.

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