Dragon Encounters

How to Use: Aiming the Cataclysm’s Rage

The elemental cataclysm is a problem. Properly, it should kite your players, hitting them with its attacks and then burrowing underground before they can retaliate. It has the intelligence and charisma (for self-preservation) to do so, and I doubt even a level 20 party can fight that.

Worse, one of its attacks covers an area and often provides cover. If the PCs stay together, they’ll get walloped. If they don’t, it might be able to fight one while staying away from the others. It even has a legendary action to flee if it makes a mistake.

My solution is to avoid having it focus on the players. The cataclysm is a destructive force that wants to tear down civilization. Individual PCs are obstacles, not targets.

I will note that the elemental cataclysm seems like a personification of rage, and might not be cautious enough. Even so, this is an easier concept to realize when its attacking buildings, not your players. If it’s whaling away at your players while ignoring damage it will come across as foolish and boring.

Combat Encounter 1: Inside a Torn Apart City (difficulty 14)

(Recommended party level: 10-13)

The Monster Manual tells us that elemental cataclysms can come about either by being summoned by cultists, or by freak accidents.

The second doesn’t work at the levels that would expect to fight them. At these levels, everything the players are fighting is at roughly this level (individually or in combination), and saying that such a foe just happened to manifest where the players are makes no sense. That isn’t bad luck, that’s completely ludicrous.

(Unless they’re the equivalent of superheroes, going to wherever they’re needed. This seems like a recipe for a list of unrelated random encounters, though, and not interesting.)

What you can do with such a situation is throw it against lower level characters. They aren’t running into such dangers routinely, so it will seem realistic. They can’t take down the cataclysm, but they can battle its effects.

The Quest: Reaching the City’s High Weapon

The Scenario: The players are traveling to a city, arriving just as an elemental cataclysm breaks loose. Ideally they have something they need in the city, or some other personal goal. A guard captain or fleeing noble tells them of a weapon of great power, kept precisely for a threat like this, but that they didn’t have a chance to get to. The players will have to do it for them.

City Obstacles: Buildings

Traveling across the city won’t be easy. Many streets will be blocked by rubble, fire, water, or mud (medieval streets were rarely paved). Sometimes they’ll have to travel –

• Through or over buildings. To make it harder, the buildings entrance is blocked. They’ll have to climb.
• Over the street, going from roof to roof, or for an even harder challenge, window to window.
• Out of a building that they were in. The elemental cataclysm is attacking the city, and it has no reason to spare the building they’re in. They have to push away rubble to reach a window without collapsing the ceiling, or escape without collapsing the floor.

City Obstacles: Streets

They won’t always be able to avoid the streets either. Sometimes, the streets are the fastest way forward. That doesn’t mean they’ll be easy to travel. Problems include –

• Water. Storm. Mud.
• Panicking animals. (Animal driven economy, remember. Horses, donkeys, mules, and oxen pull carts, dogs provide security, other animals are raised for food.)
• People panicking, in theory, provided your players aren’t going to murder their way through. If they get stuck, be prepared to provide a suggestion or an alternate route. (Ways to deal with a mob are hiding until they’re past, distracting them [perhaps via illusion], or giving them another way to go.)
• The elemental cataclysm. Have it be fighting a group of guards, or other city defenders, right in the way the players need to go. They’ll have to find a way to distract or sneak past it.

City Obstacles: Enemies

In addition to obstacles, it’s worth having some type of enemy for the players to fight against. Even a few low CR enemies can be a problem if they’re –

• On a roof the players need to enter. They’ll have to find a way to climb up while being assaulted with stones or arrows.
• Holding a narrow point with good cover. The players will have to find a way to force them out, with elemental themed chaos unfolding at their back.
• Coming out of a nearby building or alley to take them by surprise. Combine this with any of the street problems, above.

Sources of enemies can be –

• Villains seeking an opportunity. If they have any ongoing questlines, it’s entirely possible that the villains of that quest will see a chance to take them down. Remains of a shattered organization returning for revenge also work, or you could have criminals who want their possessions.
• Guards or other city authorities who don’t trust the players. If your players are suspected or wanted for any crime, justly or unjustly, this is a good time to use it. They might even suspect the players of bringing the elemental cataclysm.
• If seems logical, and thematic, that the elemental cataclysm should bring a number of lesser elementals with it as it emerges into the material plane.
• If you do go with a cultist summoning the elemental cataclysm, you have your supporting villains right there.

City Obstacles: Elemental Cataclysm

I would also suggest the elemental catalyst attack them one or two times as it happens to pass by their location. Its area attacks should be a significant problem, whichever choice ends up rolling, but also something they should be able to overcome. Its elemental strike won’t kill them, not with only one blow, and it will demonstrate how powerful the catalyst is.

(For anyone new to my blog, I do not recommend using all of my ideas in one combat. I write out a lot of ideas so you have what to choose from, and possibly you can even use them to give the players a choice between two paths with different obstacles, but any given encounter should have no more than 2-3, maybe 4. It’s important to keep the story moving.)

Finale: Wielding the Ultimate Weapon

At last, the players reach the weapon’s location. I would not place a puzzle or trap guarding the weapon, as that will distract from the climax. If you do, keep it short. Don’t let it last more than twenty minutes, out of game.

If you like, you weapon can have a long range, perhaps a disrupter spell to send the catalyst back where it came from. They aim it at the catalyst, you provide a suitably dramatic description, and the encounter is over. If your players have HP left, however, a close-range weapon can be a more satisfying climax.

Delivering the Death Blow

Let the weapon be something that will only work if they can wield it up close. Perhaps it has to be wielded in melee, perhaps it just has a very short range.

Hopefully, you will have the cataclysm’s overwhelming strength firmly established by now, whether by description and/or through the 1-2 times the cataclysm ended up attacking a PC. They [should] know that they can’t attack it head on. Instead, they’ll have to sneak close, distract it, lure it in, or whatever else they come up with.

How they do this is up to them to figure out. I urge you not to dismiss their ideas if they’re at all rational, and to try to give them the conditions/materials needed to carry it out. (As in, when they look around to see if they can find whatever, the answer should be yes, logic permitting) Do not let your ideas get in the way of theirs. This is their time to be creative.

I will note that the elemental cataclysm is highly chaotic, and is probably engaged in an ongoing battle with the city defenders. As such, if they roll badly or get into trouble, you have the means to let them get lucky. If they’re doing too well, you could use “luck” to make their lives a little more difficult, but I urge you to be careful not to shoot down any of their plans completely.

For another crossing and fighting in a city under attack encounter, see Adult Red Dragon

Epilogue

The Monster Manual suggests that an elemental cataclysm leaves behind massive change in its wake, whether in the form of an open portal, a rapidly growing rainforest, a new river, or other. This sounds like the start of a brand-new adventure to me.

Combat Encounter 2: Protecting the Spell from the Storm (difficulty 24)

In the last encounter idea, the players had to travel across a city that was being torn apart. In this encounter, again aimed at not letting them become the principal targets, they have to defend a location from being torn apart.

The Target

The first thing needed is to give some value to the location. A spell diagram that will be hard to reproduce comes to mind.

• Perhaps the spell can only be cast when certain, extremely rare conditions come to pass.
• Perhaps it can only be attempted once, has high costs.
• Perhaps the elemental cataclysm appeared because of the spell, in which case they might not have any better luck next time.

The elemental cataclysm will attack the building, attempting to bring it down and thus destroy the spell. (I suggest keeping as vague as possible about what exactly constitutes enough damage to destroy the spell, to give yourself wiggle room. Also, it can’t attack the spell directly or victory will be too difficult.)

The Repair Corps

Provide NPCs whose job it will be to shore up the building while the players focus on defending them and doing what they can to reduce the damage. Perhaps they can spend a round or two between the elemental’s attacks on doing a particularly difficult piece of lifting, fetching, or other repair work, but the main part shouldn’t fall on them.

In terms of NPCs, modrons are ideal for this. They’re numerous, so the elemental can’t kill them all; they’re weak, so you can explain why they don’t fight; and they’re not individual personalities, so you don’t have to worry about them getting killed. Plus, saying that the elemental cataclysm hates metal and clockwork is practically the same as saying that it’s an enemy of Mechanus/modrons.

If you don’t want to use modrons, you could use a large collection of constructs. This is basically equilivant to using modrons, but without working in Mechanus. Failing that, you’ll need a large collection minor spellcasters with knowledge of Mend, or some very dedicated soldiers.

Three Ways to Run the Encounter

There are three different ways to encounter can play out. Choose your favorite:

• The players aren’t involved in the repair work at all. Perhaps you’ll give brief descriptions every round or so, but the encounter is about a monster that can appear from anywhere, will hang around and attack for a round or two, and then retreat to reenter from a new angle.
• The players have spots to defend, and when one takes damage they’ll have to divert attention to help fixing it. The NPCs are there to help shore up the pillar after the PC lifts it into place, to extinguish the rest of the fire after the players take out the main blaze, etc. They can also bail out the players a limited number of times, if necessary.
• The players have a map of the location and they direct the NPCs. Perhaps they even get to set up defenses and decide where to place repair materials before the combat starts. I suggest the NPCs all take their turn on initiative 20 (initiative 10 & 20?) to prevent the annoyance of switching focus all the time.

Ending the Encounter

The encounter ends when the elemental cataclysm runs out of HP, at which point the ritual completes successfully. Try to have it do something good.

Summary: Six Ideas for Using an Elemental Cataclyst

1. If you have an elemental cataclysm targeting the players directly, it should kite them, hitting them with range attacks and then burrowing to safety. This isn’t defeatable. I suggest having it targeting a city or such instead, and the players have to stop it.
2. Just getting through a city being attacked by an elemental cataclysm is a challenge. The streets will be filled of mud, fire, rubble, buildings might collapse around them, and criminals will be taking advantage of the chaos.
3. Pad out an elemental cataclysm encounter by setting it up so that they can’t fight it on the spot. The collateral damage will level the city. They have to sneak past instead, and lure it to a different location.
4. With high level adventures, have them need to deal with its effects before dealing with it. A sinking ship, a wildfire burning the farmland, or a building full of people sinking into the earth can’t wait until the elemental cataclysm is dead for rescue.
5. Have the elemental cataclysm summoned to disrupt a powerful spell the players set up. They have to defend the location before it’s overwhelmed and the runes they set up are destroyed. I suggest giving them assistants to help make repairs.
6. After an elemental cataclysm leaves, or is defeated, it will leave behind huge transformation in its wake. This can be a new rainforest, or portal to another plane, or much more. This sounds like the start of a new adventure to me.