Dragon Encounters

Silver dragons are nearly unbeatable on their home turf—but what if one’s being controlled? In this D&D encounter, your players fight to break the spell.

How to Use – Battle Among The Mountain Peaks

Combat Encounter (difficulty 12)

Silver Dragon Mountain Tactics:

Of all possible terrains to fight an intelligent dragon in, mountain is definitely the worst. Among the many things the dragon can do:

Mountains have many peaks and ledges. Retreating out of sight is extremely easy, whereupon the dragon can remain safe until its breath weapon recharges, and even circle to attack from a different direction. The best they’ll be able to do in response is ready actions, and that is far weaker than making normal attacks. (And of course, the fact that the silver dragon will effectively be using its breath weapon every round will itself be lethal.)

Another thing the dragon can do cause send boulders falling down toward the PCs. If they’re on ledges traveling alongside or between mountain peaks, it will be easy for the dragon and fairly impossible to dodge. If they’re climbing up the slope of a gentler mountain, the silver dragon can still send boulders rolling down toward them. So long as they can’t retaliate, dodging some of the boulders just prolongs the inevitable.

If the players take refuge in a cave, boulders are definitely the weapon of choice. The dragon can’t fly into a cave after them without giving up all its advantages, so it will send boulders rolling forward to seal up the entrance, or smash the stone above the entrance until it caves in and traps the PCs inside.

Paralyze breath is the dragon’s trump card. Aside from knocking multiple PCs out of action, possibly for several turns, it makes defending themselves. There is nothing to prevent the dragon from looping back the following turn, grappling one of them with automatic success, and depositing the PC in an out of the way ledge, or just letting them fall.

Scenario Setting for a Mountain Scenario:

When an opponent is skilled at hit-and-run tactics, I recommend giving the players a goal besides taking out their opponent. Otherwise, it gets really frustrating for the players. In this case, especially given that the dragon is good (in fact, silver dragons are the nicest of the metallic dragons), I’m going to outline a mind-controlled scenario.

The dragon has been taking over by an opponent with mind-control powers (a mind flayer might work nicely here), and the controller is now using the dragon to prevent other enemies of itself from coming near. In other words, the PCs.

If you feel that the method of mind control could allow it, you could have the dragon regain enough control over its speech to let them know what’s going on.

The dragon fighting the mind control can also be used to make the encounter easier, either giving them a reprieve for a round here or there (caused by the dragon wresting back control for a moment), or by the dragon choosing to interpret its orders literally, if the form of control is similar to Command.

Scenario Conclusion: How to Free the Dragon

You will also need to decide the condition for ending the control. If the scenario starts with the villain in sight, and forces them to chase him down, I would favor having to knock out the enemy. Simply interrupting its concentration could cause the battle to come to an anti-climactically quick conclusion, depending on the dice roll.

Alternitavely, you could have the scenario be them trying to reach the place where the controller is standing, possibly by taking advantage of their superior numbers. In this case, you could have the entire battle be getting there, and maybe even provide a pentagram for them to destroy. Once that’s done, the dragon can help finish off the villain.

You will have to provide a way for them to know where the villain is. If the dragon can talk, they know where the controller is. Otherwise, you’ll have to find a way for them to know. Detect Magic would work, or simply spotting the villain ducking out of sight.

Note: If you do go with a mind flayer, you’ll have to decide if controlling the dragon counts as its one use per day of Dominate Monster. On the one hand, removing the spell from its arsenal greatly lowers the mind flayer’s combat capabilities, on the other, not removing it means at least three PCs have to reach the mind flayer, as the first may well end up becoming a victim.