Dragon Encounters

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


GOLD DRAGON WYRMLING: A Garden of Beautiful Traps

How to Use – Combat Encounter (difficulty 4)

Gold dragons live in splendor, with the outer part of their lair scenic gardens, with gently flowing streams and rows upon rows of fragrant flowers. This doesn’t mean that the area is safe for their enemies, though. Gold dragons know evil well enough that they would never be so careless as to leave themselves exposed, much less their young.

Below are a few of the more subtle surprises waiting for anyone foolish enough to risk their wrath.

The stream: The way in to the dragon’s lair will consist of gently flowing streams, small ponds dotted with collections of lily pads, and stepping stones and small decorative bridges with dragonflies hovering around them. They seem like areas you can just walk through, but you’ll regret it deeply if you try.

To start with, the bottom of much of the streams and lakes are mud. Even when the bottom seems to be stone, the stone is just lying unsecured on top of the mud, with perhaps a few thin strings holding it up. Stepping on the stones will cause the stone, and the foot that stepped on it, to sink deep into the mud.

The struggle to get free will stir up a good amount of the mud, and obscure visibility inside the water. Even without the mud, the shallow water might let the dragon sneak around underwater and escape detection. To escape, the PC will have to pull themselves out of the mud. Remember, the gold dragon’s breath gives disadvantage on STR checks.

If you want to get nastier, put sharp stakes hidden in the mud. If you want to get even nastier, have the stakes be barbed.

Another thing you can do is put dangerous fish in the water, such as a swarm of quippers. They’ll have already learned better than to attack the dragon.

Stepping stones can have a few stepping stones precariously balanced on the ones below them, so that as soon as someone steps on them, they give way. (The dragon knows which stones to avoid.) Bridges are flammable.

Hedge Mazes: These are an incredible defense against most other creatures. If they follow the dragon into the hedges, the dragon can set the whole maze on fire, and also either smash through the hedge or fly over so as to be on the right side to prevent the players leaving.

If they don’t go in, the dragon can spend whatever time it wants to recharge its breath weapon, and/or wait for the perfect time to take them by surprise. The dragon’s sense of smell and hearing is probably a lot better than the PCs’, so it knows where they are and they don’t know where it is.

If you don’t want to assume better sensing abilities, you can have it slip out from a different direction and spy on them from inside the water.

Flower Beds: There are some flowers that will release scents when burning that can make people drowsy, hallucinate, dizzy, or other symptoms. This can be combined with the hedge maze, to make it harder to escape, or used separately.



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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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