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Combat with a dragon


steph

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No one in any of my fantasy campaigns has ever killed a dragon. Not in D&D, Pathfinder, Hero, or Rolemaster. There have been maybe 10 dragons encountered over the course of my 40 years of game mastering. Dragons in my game are forces of nature strong enough to wipe out entire cities over the course of a week.

 

I know this didn't answer your question, but I thought I would share.

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Yeah Steph.  It is a how long is a piece of string question.  The length of the combat will depend on how tough your dragons are compared to how tough your players are.

 

In runequest the PCs find it difficult to combat the dreams of dragons.  There is also an article in Dragon magazine I think that talks about dragons and how there has evolved an attitude that adventurers will pack up and find that dragon to kill in a way they will not tackle equivalent big baddies like vampires and lich.

 

It also depends on how you play your dragon.  Most dragons in my games are highly intelligent and magic using.  It would take an adventuring group a lot of work to bring one to the point of a stand up combat and the dragon would be unlikely to participate in a combat it could not win...

 

However, some of the smaller dragon types are simple cunning beasts of the forest and mountains and they are a difficult fight.  they fly and strafe and grab and drop and use all kinds of tactics that have made them the most feared of magical beasts.  Of course if you do kill one, the pay-off should be immense (and, as Thorin found out) very difficult to hold onto....

 

Doc

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Doc's right.

Define the term "Dragon" and in what system?

 

I remember in my AD&D days a lot articles in Dragon Magazine with the purpose to beef up dragons and their combat.

I particularly remember hacks to breathe damage and wing buffets, tail smashes, and foot stomps being added to the repertoire.

 

Never had a chance to throw one in hero to players. But the hero system stats for Shadow World Dragons looked awesome.

But that depends on the power level of your hero's now doesn't. How many points are they built on?

50? 75? 100? or more?

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I remember in my AD&D days a lot articles in Dragon Magazine with the purpose to beef up dragons and their combat.

I particularly remember hacks to breathe damage and wing buffets, tail smashes, and foot stomps being added to the repertoire.

 

Yep, I loved that article.  Using wing beats to kick up dust, etc.  My dragons have all that stuff.  Dragons in my game are freaking terrifying to face, but a group of well equipped, smart, and capable heroes can survive a battle and beat them.  Its fun because they're basically the master villain.  All that stuff you had to fight to get to them were just minions, now its all of you against this one nearly invulnerable killing machine.  Its tough not to kill party members with that 4d6+ killing attack bite plus the tail lash, and breathing 10d6 flames once a turn.  But its a very memorable battle.  And that wasn't even an ancient one with magic and tougher scales.

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I remember in my AD&D days a lot articles in Dragon Magazine with the purpose to beef up dragons and their combat.

I particularly remember hacks to breathe damage and wing buffets, tail smashes, and foot stomps being added to the repertoire.

I remember those articles too. They had become necessary because by the time 1st ed. AD&D had reached the end of its product lifecycle, dragons had been reduced to just another pile of hit points for 50th level characters to go beat up on.

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The dragon combats I remember fall into two categories:

 

1) The PCs flee immediately.

 

2) The PCs wade in and bring the dragon down on phase 12. (Seriously, this happened twice--one in a fairly advanced campaign with a lucky stunning hit, and once in a campaign that started out with versions of the players as PCs... one of the PCs still had a few rounds left in his 9mm handgun, and the GM foolishly allowed it to count as AP against the poor lizard.)

 

 

Anyway, I feel that I don't have a great sample size of data to draw conclusions from.

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A dragon fight with hero (fantasy). With the great fantasy classic dragon like Smaug. Great intelligence, Huge, fire breath, Spell caster.

 

Steph

 

Then I would say that this fight should last as long as it takes the players to find the solution to killing the dragon while staying alive amid the wholesale destruction being wrought by this force of nature.

 

The actual fight should be over in an instant because the heroes have found the instant kill solution....

 

 

Doc

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I remember those articles too. They had become necessary because by the time 1st ed. AD&D had reached the end of its product lifecycle, dragons had been reduced to just another pile of hit points for 50th level characters to go beat up on.

 

Sadly enough I ran a campaign using that system +35 years ago and the players successfully killed 4 red dragons.  Surprise helped.  Great planning helped.  Damn lucky dice rolls helped.

 

In my current campaign dragons have their own civilization, tend to live in small communities/family groups, and have subservient races that provide for food, entertainment, 'hands', etc.  Some of the players would like to 'visit' the dragons domain.  The rest are like "Are you nuts.  The last time humans got involved with dragons it started 1000 year dark age because someone pissed one of them off.  We stay here and they stay there."

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You might find this interesting.
http://www.herogames.com/forums/store/product/161-the-book-of-dragons-bookpdf/
 
Oh here is a video of Aronra doing the Taxonomy of Dragons for grins and giggles at Dragon con.
 
Draxonomy
"My main presentation at DragonCon was about the Taxonomy of Dragons. A silly and seemingly impossible task, I know. But I had some fun with it." AronRa

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