Here be dragons

[Kaare Berg]

Yep,

Its the ideas thief from the forge trying again to to pick your brains, just this time without being sneaky about it.

Some where in the future of my campaign the characters will, if heroic stupidity strikes them, confront a dragon. I am not one for arbitrarily killing characters so do any of you have any input on how to be backed up by numbers when inflicting greivous scorching pain on them?

Or as put in plain english: anyone made a dragon yet?

K

[eruditus]

After PhilCon I may be able to help you :) Oops. Did I let that slip?

[Kublai]

I created a firedrake once. I wanted a dragon-type monster but not as powerful as a BW dragon. I will post him as soon as I will myself to bring my notebook to work. :D

[BOBDOTCOMMIE]

hmmm .... herioc might be on the low end.BW dragons are white scale so ask yourself is the dragon a number thing or a plot device.your grey /heroic grade characters might as well take arms against the sea.we fooled around a bit with some heroic items and it ( a hammer, sword , and a suit of armor ) was quite and eye opening experience in terms of carefully letting that level of play mix into the mundane. so if your gonna scale that up to supernatural take a long slow look at what you want to accomplish.the sorta uber and uber items and critters don't mix with the norms.if you want to have them fight a dragon i think the scale should start in the grays ( sons of zeus / first age tolkien ) and have plenty of room to grow into white.starting black and trying to move up i think is a mistake unless the dragon is a plot device and not meant to be turned into hamburger helper ( or what would actually happen is chunky salsa party members : its a big jump from black to gray , let alone black to white ).

[Kaare Berg]

Thanks all,

I buy the dragon as a plot-device deal, however I feel that using dragons only as plot-device robs them of dramatic potential. I do not plan a dragon-slaying campaign with a D&D sliding scale of dragons (from hatchling to great wyrm).

The characert will not face a dragon for a long time yet. But we are playing something that will eventually evolve into something of an epic. The characters are being gently guided on a path that will lead them into an abandoned dwarven city (Ram Mithrén) to recover an ancient horn. It may strike them that killing the ancient dragon that now rules there (Gostiaur) may reunite the shattered dwarven people (a campaign goal).

Using this dragon only as a plot-device will them rob them of this.

And did not Bard of Dale fell the mighty Smaug with one arrow? (albeit a special one, but he killed the dragon).

In my world, the elven prince Feanor killed the dragon Nilfang with the sword Maeglin, avenging his people. (told you I steal)

I know my players will love the drama of such a battle, and who am I to deny them. Even though it may cost them greatly.

But I need some help in its stat and trait creation. Therefor this topic.

[Kublai]

I am sorry for not posting my drake yet, but it would make a fine hatchling!

As for making it possible to kill a BW dragon, the sword could shift to White Damage versus dragon-kin only. And just be a normal Black weapon versus mundanes. Or perhaps it adjusts its Shade to match the Shade of its opponent?

[Kaare Berg]

my plans exactly.

This will be a major turning point in my campaign and I expect Artha to fly high and thick.

Not to mention limbs and roasted dwarves, but them that is to be expected.

[BOBDOTCOMMIE]

i didn't want suggest that dragons are so far up there as to be off the board ..... i just wanted to stress that careful consideration ( maybe a little one off action to see what stuff would be like ) occur before you open pandoras box ( and your right if i were them i want to off the overglorified iguana too ). as for some traits ....... " guilded " : to reflect all those baubles and such grafted to the beast's mighty girth through all the long years of snoozing on the loot pile add a +1 d to conspicuous-command-intimidation, and it comes witha free fatal flaw ( see smaug for more reading )." each has its place " : needs a better name but this reflects the wyrm's intuition when a piece of his pie has just left the building in the burgler's hands."plays with its food": those winged terrors have seen it all in their old age and when a curiocomes along thats bold / unique / can't the forest through all the trees ... then our scaled friend is probably gonna sit down and have a chat whilst he preps the dip ( bilbo with smaug and lots of myth and fantasy fiction ).however this drake should be an old bastard to warrant this ..... he can't conceive of the fact he's about to get shoot outta the sky by some lake peasant. i went through the trait list real quick and found alot of others ( various auras, iron skin,forked tongued, etc. ) but those were some i thought would fit.

[Kaare Berg]

Thanks BOB,

This is what I was looking for.

As for old age and hatchlings. Well all the dragons in my world come from before the first age, and are the ancient enemies of the dwarves from the time before the elves came to the land. The few still alive were released by the mad druid Broona at the end of the second age.

Check out the Campaigns forum when I post world history (if anyone cares that is.)

K

[Drozdal]

starting black and trying to move up i think is a mistake unless the dragon is a plot device and not meant to be turned into hamburger helper
Depends how much of game-time (years) all players and GM are willing to devote to the task of leading characters from black to white. Of course we could speak about all-elven prince :roll: party, and theit gloriuos way from the top of the mundane level (they probably could afford some grey stats) into white area, but that do not sounds like fun to me (because i just do not like epic level campagins).

And Bob congrats on that dragon traits those are great :)


Dro