Let us suppose that a dragon is after you. Perhaps because you killed its young, perhaps you made the mistake of taking something from its hoard. Either way, it’s after you, nothing you can say will possibly appease it, it wants you gone. Oh, and we’ll say that your about ten levels too weak to have a chance to actually fight it. What do you do?
In discussing this scenario, there are two parts that need to be discussed. The first is surviving the dragon’s attempts to kil you, the second will be turning around and getting rid of it.
Let’s look at ways in which the dragon will express its wrath (and in which you can build up the story of how the dragon is chasing them):
Pursuit:
This is the most basic, and probably the best way to start. As the dragon is faster than them, they’re survival will require terrain which favors them. This means a forest, or a city/village. We’ll handle them each separately below, but first less discuss reaching them.
The pursuit starts in one of two ways. The first is that they’re already in the forest/city when the dragon appears. The second is that they see the dragon in the sky, and it sees them. They have to get to the forest city before the dragon can get to them.
Before doing this, make sure that they’ll think to get to the forest/city. You’ll need to know that your players are capable enough to think of it. If you have an NPC along, they can shout “Dragon” in panic, and maybe point out the mistake of not seeking cover if the players think to do something else.
(Giving advice via NPC is extremely iffy, especially during an action scene. If you only do it only extremely infrequently, it should be okay, though still not ideal.)
You’ll also need to be sure that there is no better place for them to seek shelter. Mountain caves, or narrow crevices, where the dragon can’t reach being a much better choice (and discussed below).
Reaching Cover: Reaching the refuge of the forest or city should also be a challenge, as you need a way to describe the rush to reach the refuge.
(Visual descriptions don’t work in an RPG. Aside from the fact that players don’t like to listen to long descriptions, over here providing such a description requires you to usurp your players’ agency over their characters. [Even if your players are able and interested in providing such description, it will be beyond them, as any description would require control over the dragon, and over each other’s characters.] The other way of handling it, to have them roll to see how they move, won’t work, as it gives a chance for the dragon to win.)
A river blocking the path is one way, although this is also likely to stop them from aiming for the forest to begin with.* Most likely, you’ll be better off with an obstacle that the PCs can conceivably not notice until they’ve already committed, such as a pit or trench hidden by grass (which some of them might fall into before they notice it), or a burrowing monster like an ankheg (burrowing because no other monster would attack instead of fleeing itself.)
* (If they’re running for a better sanctuary than a forest, the river will be a smaller problem, but still some amount of problem. It will go from being a most probably bad idea to a maybe bad idea. It might also cause them to think of clinging to a log and hoping the current carries them to safety. Use at your own discretion.)
Forest: Once they’re in the forest, the dragon will be handicapped in its ability to pursue. The PCs are small enough to circle trees and small bushes. The dragon can’t do this, and will have to tear them down to make passage for itself.
As they’ll be going faster here, you can have them roll against it, with them pulling ahead on a good roll and the dragon catching up if it rolls well. Make certain to balance the rolls in their favor. In the first place, the dragon has a major disadvantage. In the second place, you need all of them to outrace the dragon, and if the dragon just needs to win one out of several rolls, it will have a major advantage.
I would also put minor obstacles ahead of them, and give them choices as to which way they want to go. (Either choosing between different types of obstacles, or a way that seems advantageous to them if they can get past a certain obstacle, with them getting to decide if they want to try it.)
(If the dragon does catch up, have it do an amount of damage, then either let the PC get ahead of have the dragon’s attack accidently send the PC rolling forward.)
The pursuit will end with the dragon realizing that it won’t catch them and doing what it can to set the forest on fire. You’ll probably run another round or two of pursuit, this time from the fire, before they find a place where they can survive the fire. Options include a stream, river, or pond, a patch of mud, a hollow in the ground, or just a place without vegetation where they can lie down and let the fire pass them by.
City: Taking refuge from a dragon pursuing them by running into a city is going to seem like the most logical option to them. It might be the biggest headache for the DM, though. The city option has to be broken down into two different options, hostile and friendly.
(Hostile): This is any city that isn’t willing to shelter them from the dragon. It will include many neutral cities, and very likely some good-aligned cities.
Getting into these cities is not the end of the story for the players. The guards will come after them to arrest them, and you have to be prepared to continue it into a new kind of pursuit, as they dodge through various neighborhoods, and look for places to hide. Getting out of the city will also be a challenge, as the guards will likely continue looking for them for some time after.
(Friendly): The city is willing to shelter them. I would suggest that the city have sufficient fortifications to make the dragon think twice about attacking it (probably a good idea for the hostile city also, as the city’s hostility is unlikely to be sufficient reason to rule that all the members deserve death.)
Unless you want the city to be a major city that the dragon doesn’t dare attack, the people in charge will very likely insist that the party leave within a short amount of time, and not return. They might provide the party with a secret way out, and perhaps provisions to take with them, but that will be the most they dare do. As they are taking quite a risk to help the players out this much, it would be reasonable for them to ask for some kind of compensation, generally in the form of a small quest they need done.
Ghost Town: A ghost town is a town or village where the residents abandoned it, leaving only empty buildings standing. This can be because the town’s industry shut down, such as a mining town where the residents left to find new work after the mine ran dry (empty), but a town could also empty if its farmland was destroyed, or perhaps after a really bad plague or monster attack wiped out so much of the town that the survivors lost heart, and decided not to rebuild.
A ghost town won’t be a challenge of outrunning the dragon, as there isn’t enough cover to get away once the dragon is right next to them. It will knock down houses, and can always take to the air in order to follow them. Rather, with a ghost town you’ll want to arrange for them to beat the dragon to the area, and then they’ll have to find a place to hide while the dragon flies around looking for them.
When it gives up, it will set fire to the town before flying away, and they’ll have to survive the flames. (It won’t search for them once it sets the town on fire, as the fire will obscure its view. You can also say that it’s out of patience at that point.)
I discussed a city on fire in greater length in my article on the adult red dragon.
Cities rarely become ghost towns, as their size generally ensures that there will always be at least some people who wish to remain, and some means for them to do so. In addition, the fact that grew to the size of a city means that the site had potential, most probably enough potential that it’s unlikely to just run dry. For a city to become a ghost town would require a nation shattering event, such as a war.
I should add that as buildings only last so long before falling apart, the major event would have to have happened in the last fifty years or so, and to be part of the campaign history. Unless your campaign involves something capable of creating a ghost city, I would suggest you don’t do it.
Mountains: Mountains are less a chase scene, and more a matter of surviving the dragon’s wrath. What will almost inevitably happen is that the players will take refuge in a cave or narrow crevice, somewhere that is too small for the dragon to reach them. At that point, the dragon has two options: Collapse the cave on top of them, or wait them out. Your job is to pick the one that they can survive.
Collapsing a cavern: Done entirely, this cuts off their retreat and forces them into a dungeon or into the underdark, to find another way out. This can also be used as a time limit, with them forced to race through narrow chasms in a hurry, as they have to outrun the dragon’s efforts to bring the mountain down on their heads. You can also provide occasional damage from rocks hitting them to put more pressure on them.
Finally, if they are in the open, at the bottom of a narrow chasm as opposed to inside a cave, this will raise a dust cloud, limiting the dragon’s ability to find them, but also stopping them from seeing obstacles ahead.
Waiting them out: The dragon waits at the side of the cave, remaining quiet and hoping they make the mistake of stepping out. Think of a cat waiting at a mousehole. The players have to decoy the dragon elsewhere, usually with some type of illusion, and then make a run for it. You can use the idea of having the dragon trying to bring the mountain down on them mentioned right above as the continuation of this idea.
A variation, to make sneaking out easier, is to have there be a second way out of the cavern that the dragon doesn’t know about and that they manage to discover. You’ll want to find a different reason that they need to decoy the dragon, perhaps their horses, equipment, or the way out of the mountains are in the dragon’s view, but this makes decoying the dragon out of the way somewhat easier, and allows more players to participate.
A final note: Always have a backup plan in case the players get stuck. Perhaps there is someone who can rescue them around, ready to help out and also to charge a high price for the privilege. Perhaps they have a single use, get-out-of-jail-free magic item that they can use for this if they need to. Just make sure they have something.
Other Problems:
There are many other problems that can arise from having a dragon after them, aside from the pursuit mentioned above. These include:
- Cities and other safe areas may be unwilling to let them in, not wanting to risk the dragon’s wrath if it finds out. This can mean that they’ll be unable to easily obtain healing potions, that they may have trouble getting new provisions (if you’re open to using such problems), or it might mean that they’ll have to pay high priced to smugglers, or sneak in and risk getting arrested.
- If and when they do sneak in, or get accepted in, you could have them come back to a city to find it smoking ruins, and the residents dead or homeless, after the dragon found out. While this idea is mostly a heart wrencher, it will also force them to travel to other areas to get what they need, shaking up the story somewhat, and make it more reasonable when other cities refuse them access. Finally, they’ll have to decide how much to help the refugees, and how much money to give them.
- When people find out that the dragon is after the PCs, it will inspire some people to try to capture them in order to deliver them to the dragon and get a reward. (I doubt a red dragon will give a reward, but people are stupid). Methods can include betrayal, or drugging their food, so that they wake up locked away in a cellar or tied up.
- Finally, there is the fact that the dragon will take find out where they are likely to be and wait for them in ambush. This will play out more or less like the chase scene, except that you’ll want to cut straight to the climax right away.
End of part 1:
(This was originally supposed to be one article. It became so long that I felt that there was no choice but to split it up. I hope to publish part 2 later this week.)
1)
The most basic way to run such pursuit is to have dragon spot them, in a place where they can possibly get away if they can cross some obstacle before the dragon catches them. Obstacles include rivers, trenches, pits, walls of thorns.
2)
If they escape a dragon into a forest, the dragon will try to set it ablaze. Give them a way to escape, such as a pond, and an amount of fire damage reaching that place.
3)
If they escape the dragon into a cave, the dragon will smash the entrance. They’ll need to tunnel, or to find a different way out. The dragon might try waiting them out, in which case they’ll need to sneak away or decoy the dragon elsewhere.
4)
They might try to take refuge in a city. A sensible city will try to give them up, so they’ll need to evade the guards.
5)
Another consequence of having a dragon after them is that most NPCs won’t want to do business with them, and the ones that do will charge extra.
6)
Having the dragon be after them means that some people will try to betray them, in order to get a reward. (That the dragon won’t give, but hope springs eternal.)
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