Dragon Encounters

In the last post, I mentioned that shadow dragons keep their presence hidden, and enjoy spreading a dark unknown fear instead of announcing their strength the way every other dragon does.

Before going into the details of how it does that, I felt the need to discuss how to use horror in D&D. Now is the time to give specific ideas as to how the shadow dragon might arose horror.

(If you haven’t read my previous article yet, I would suggest you do so before you try to use the ideas of this article. Running horror is its own particular skill, and using these scenerios to their fullest potential requires some proficency at the skill.)

How to Use – Shadow Dragon

Before the first fight, you might want to let them see the shadow dragon in the form of a dark shadow flying past the moon, or have them hear its roar. They won’t know that this is one of their main opponents, but it should give at least a bit more foreshadowing.

Combat Encounter 1: (difficulty 12)

The players are running down a canyon, when something [the shadow dragon] swoops down and attacks them. They have to make it to the end of the canyon, where the terrain becomes too narrow for them to be attacked from the air.

To provide challenge, give them a river or chasm that they have to cross before they can make it to safety, and of course they have to do so while defending themselves from the air. Otherwise, this will just be you narrating story while they take damage, which they won’t appreciate.  (Placing them in a difficulty situation where they have choices is good DM-ing. Forcing them to absorb damage for the sake of story is generally seen as railroading.)

This scenario would be best used when they are running from a different enemy, one they already know that they can’t defeat there and then. Otherwise, they will very likely stand and fight, and even if they can’t beat it, they’ll lose a lot of HP, spell slots, and similar resources, and they’ll get frustrated with you for providing an unfair fight.

The main purpose for this fight would be to introduce the shadow dragon in a way that shows that it’s a major threat.

Combat Encounter 2: (difficulty 10)

The players have climbed a small hill. As they’re taking a breath, a pile of rocks that seemed to be part of the hill opens its eyes, then suddenly sneak attacks them.

In order to catch them by surprise, it would be worth both providing a reason why they needed to climb the hill, and some small difficulty that they’ll encounter while doing so.

The reason for the first is so that you don’t have to railroad them into climbing it. Do this by giving them something to escape (by definition, something they can’t choose to fight instead), an objective to obtain, or just place it where they need to get past the hill to travel onward. Ideally, you’ll give them another option besides climbing the hill, while not doing anything to make the other way seem attractive.

The reason to make them have difficulty climbing the hill is, again, to make it seem like their own choice and not something they’re forced into. Loose rubble, a smooth rock face that they have to climb, thick thorns, or the like should be able to be crossed quickly, but will make it climbing the hill seem like their decision. Springing the ambush on them right away will make them regret their decision, and question why they made it.

Neither the reason nor the difficulty are absolutely necessary, just recommended.

Once they reach the top of the hill, let them see the view, notice and/or pick something up if applicable (for the sake of a dramatic pause), and then have what was described to them as a pile of rocks open its eyes and, before they can react, attack.

You could make it something of an interesting attack just by the fact that it’s among them, it caught them by surprise, and they can’t be certain of what it is. (I would also suggest pushing them to take their action reasonably quickly, not letting them take their time out of game to strategize carefully. There are times to allow this, but not mid-combat.)

If this isn’t meant as the final fight, as I in fact intend here, have it use 1-2 of its attacks to collapse the ground under them. If it was hiding among the rubble, it could tilt it onto them, or it could have dug away at the ground before they came up so that it would collapse faster. Either way, they’ll slide it different directions without having a chance to coordinate, and there will be a dragon between them. Plus, it can inflict the fear condition.

If you’re willing to make matters even worse, have them all make a DEX save. The ones who fail the worst will get pinned under rubble, or slide a larger way down the hill, possibly landing in water, or tangled in thorns. Ideally, you should limit how much information they share with each other.

(At most, hand them notes saying what happened to them and asking them not to deliberately talk to each other out of game. If they pick up clues by listening to what they say to you during their turn, let it slide. Similarly, if they talk to each other in spite of your instructions, let it slide. An argument will also ruin the game.)

Finally, you could have a few other monsters slip out of the nearby woods and move toward some of them. If you do this, go with low-level monsters, and don’t use very many. 

Their priority should be getting together, not fighting individual battles.

When it looks like they’re close to getting together, have the dragon let out a mocking roar and leave them. It still wants to intimidate them more than to finish them off, and by leaving a round early you can make it feel like it was just toying with them. Wait until they’re properly together, and it will seem like the dragon is running.

Combat Encounter 3: (difficulty 8)

The players run into NPCs they met earlier. In order to prevent them from feeling sympathetic, the NPCs can accuse them of abandoning them, or trying to steal the treasure from them. Then they’ll insist that the players escort them to safety. Or perhaps they’ll announce that they’re taking charge, and claim that they’re the ones escorting the players to safety.

What is actually going on is that they’ve gotten lost, been attacked/chased by the shadow dragon and/or other monsters, and are desperate to escape. However, it has to be framed in such a way that they don’t arouse sympathy, to make sure your players don’t try to help them. It will derail the plot a lot to have your players turn around and make for safety now.

After a round or so of combat (the NPCs attack when the players refuse them), the shadow dragon emerges, and hits both sides with its breath weapon. In addition to doing damage to the PCs, this will kill all the NPCs that it hits (they’re on their last legs), and create that many shadows from their corpses. After that, the NPCs will scatter, and the dragon will go after them to hunt them down, leaving the players facing the shadows.

While the players should have a huge amount of trouble fighting shadows, the darkness of nighttime, together with the fact that the terrain should have a number of obstacles / hiding places, should make it not such a simple fight.

Ideally, they’ll also realize that they can’t afford to risk getting hit, as the shadows touch will drain their STR, and they won’t be able to get it back so quickly. If you don’t think that would be enough, you can have there be some other enemy who was pursuing and who might catch up if they don’t move fast.

Final Encounter Ideas

This section will contain two different ways to climax a series of shadow dragon encounters. I like the second idea better, but it is a lot less suitable for horror, which is why I’m leading with the first.

(The ideas above, with the exception of the first, could also be made into a final battle, if you aren’t using the shadow dragon as a significant, repeating villain. These are a few more ideas, aimed at making the final fight more of a dramatic finale.)

Introduction: When looking at the shadow dragon’s statblock, it’s jarring how big a difference darkness makes for it. Being in darkness gives it resistance to all damage types [I.E. double HP], and allows it to hide once each turn. Given that it can fly, it blends into the darkness, and most PCs only have 30 feet of darkvision, or half its movement, this is basically equivalent to invisibility.

Conversely, when it leaves darkness it starts suffering disadvantage on every attack, crippling it.

With a previous monster [shadow demon], I argued that giving the players a chance to get it out of darkness could add another strategy to the monster, making it more interesting. Here, it you take it out of darkness, it effectively loses about 5 levels of CR. If it weren’t for the breath weapon, which isn’t affected by light or darkness, I’d say it lost even more.

The outcome is that leaving it in darkness gives you an extremely lethal foe, but taking it out of darkness gives you a huge letdown. How to deal with this?

Combat Encounter 4: (difficulty 12)

The players finally reach the center of the darkness, where the power of light (choose a good-aligned creature or magic of your choice] lie bound, and are slowly being consumed by the darkness. The players need to free it, but doing so won’t be easy, as the shadow dragon is waiting for them. The encounter has two stages.

Stage 1: In which they have to get past the shadow dragon, and use an item they’ve already acquired to free the light. The item can be a weapon with which they’ll cut away the bindings, a crystal that will strengthen it, or a potion, spell scroll, or something else that will somehow free it if they can just reach the light and use it.

By this stage, they probably know about the shadow dragon. While you could have to shadow dragon spring out to block them as they approach, you’ll most likely be better served by letting them see or sense the shadow dragon ahead of them, and giving them time to plan. If it isn’t understood already, have the power of light let them know that it will help them if they can free it first.

While they should know that the shadow dragon is ahead of them, you probably shouldn’t give them its exact location. There are too many spells that can take out an enemy for a couple of rounds, and if they cast one of them too easily, the fight goes down the drain.

If your players seem capable, and have sufficient HP and other resources, you might consider placing an “unexpected” obstacle in the way. This can be a chasm, a boulder or pile of rubble blocking the passage, or some type of trap, such as a trapdoor, to capture the first PC reaching it. I wouldn’t recommend multiple obstacles, however., as that will send the message that they’d be better off fighting the dragon.

How to release the light should be mostly self-explanatory, and should not take more than one turn. Nobody wants to give up multiple turns to something like this, and for them to fail because they didn’t figure out what to do fast enough would just plain stink. Keep it simple.

Stage 2: Once they release the light, it will swell outwards, and fill up a large part of the cavern, but the darkness also has a presence, and it can’t immediately banish it completely.

You should have the size of the light’s area change at least once a round, and likely twice (initiative 10 & 20).

The best way to decide where the light reaches until each time would be DM fiat, to give yourself the most control, but you could also roll for it, decide it based on where the PCs are and where the shadow dragon is standing, (with both of them strengthening their element and helping it move further), or combine the two, so that it moves based on positioning but also changes a bit at random to keep it unpredictable.

The shadow dragon will mostly stay in its area, readying an action on the turns it can’t attack (wing attack lets it move outside of its turn, thereby making it unlikely that it will end up having wasted the action.)

It is possible that the players can stop it from retreating, it is also possible that they’ll feign weakness to draw it out, or will take advantage of its hesitation to enter the light to protect the spellcasters (although its breath weapon gives it a ranged attack). You’ll have to play it as you think best. (In regard faking weakness, I could see requiring a deception skill roll.)

Finally, if they seem to be losing, you could always have the dragon become overconfident, if you really need to throw them an advantage.

Combat Encounter 5: (difficulty 14)

The players arrive at a cave system during the day. There is something that they need inside the cave, but there is a shadow dragon inside the cave, and the cave is dark enough to count as darkness and give the shadow dragon all the advantages. Unlike in the last encounter, the object they are after is hard to get, possibly requiring several hours of digging or the equivalent, making sneaking past the shadow dragon not really an option.

If they don’t figure out a way to deal with the shadow dragon by nightfall, it will be able to come after them. Also, there are several different spots in the cave where the dragon might be hiding, preventing them from sniping it while staying out of range.

A few ways for them to go about taking it down are: (Listed here so that you can give them the resources necessary to do so.)

Tricking the dragon into coming out: The most obvious way to do this is by going inside, running after taking damage so that the dragon will give chase, then blocking the retreating. This is more likely to work if they put up an illusion spell to make the dragon not realize that it’s leaving the cave, or to make it think that darkness already fell. Enchantments might also lure it out, or simply skill at deception.

Waiting until the dragon leaves at nightfall, then blocking off the cave. Ideally, they should block the cave at the end of the night, so that the dragon won’t have time to dig it back open. This will require them having a place that the dragon can’t enter to hide in at night. To make it harder, have the dragon be in the area when they want to cover it, and they’ll have to figure out how to cover it despite that.

If they covered the entrance too early, the dragon might uncover it, and then they’ll have to cover it the hard way, regardless.

If you provide them with large shields, perhaps by placing the corpses of a number of dead soldiers near the lair, they can use them to reflect light from outside into the cave. The area which the light effects will probably not be so wide, but it will mean that the shadow dragon will suffer disadvantage attacking them while they’re in the light.

Of course, the ideal would be to place the mirrors while the sun is briefly clouded over, then enter the cave and lure the dragon into the area of effect. (They might try using the Daylight spell. According to sage advice, that will restrict the shadow dragon’s ability to hide resistance to all damage types, but it won’t give the disadvantage of sunlight sensitivity.

Most probably, they won’t think of any of these ways. Instead, they’ll think of something else, and you’ll adapt to it. Either way, it should be fun.

Summary… 6 ways to use

1. The shadow dragon will strike out of hiding, disappear, then strike again and again. It means they can only rest if they can find a spot out of the dragon’s reach, and that they’ll have to race to reach an objective before it finishes them.
2. To introduce the shadow dragon, have them hear a roar and then see a dark shape diving toward them. They can’t fight where they are [because enemies are pursuing, they’re low on resources, or other time pressure] so they have to race to find shelter.
3. They’re fighting a large group of enemies when the shadow dragon arrives, hitting them with its breath and turning several enemies into shadows. Use darkness, provide places for the shadows to hide, and give a time-sensitive task for tension.
4. They climb a hill, and suddenly the dragon rises from where it was resting and sends them tumbling in different directions. They have to regroup, but they’ll be hampered by the dragon’s fear.
5. Have the dragon be hiding inside a cave that they have to go through/into. Since the dragon is extremely powerful in darkness, they’ll have to figure out if there is any way to get in out. If they don’t manage it by nightfall, it will come after them.
6. You could set a climax by having magical light moving back and forth in a cavern. The shadow dragon will try to stay in the darkness, and the players will want to stay with the light.