How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

[Wyrm Ouroboros]

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

 

*grins* Hey, dragons are a favorite topic of mine -- as if you couldn't tell. I could wax philosophic on them for quite some time.

 

I think the hardest and most realistic dragon-takedowns I've participated in were an old gold (in an evil AD&D campaign), and a multi-headed chaos-touched dragon in WFRP.

 

In the first one, we lost four out of our five, and only really survived because #5 was a shadow-jumper who wisely kept to shadows and cracked a stalagtite off to punch into the dragon's back, basically immobilizing it -- and, of course, breaking its spine and causing massive bleeding. It still nearly killed HIM, though, and took all the rest of the afternoon to bleed out, during which he salvaged our corpses and spent a good several hours smoking cigars outside its entrance, checking every now and then to see whether it was dead or not. Damn, I enjoyed that character.

 

In the second one, we again lost (to unconsciousness and near-death -- no resurrection in WFRP) all but one character -- who was fortunately something of a healer. Ten bloody heads, all spitting sticky webby globules containing a narcotic sleep drug. God damn but we hated that thing. Fortunately it wasn't of the 'chop one head off, two more grow to take its place' style.

 

Though I've fought for/beside/against more dragons in AD&D, I was always most impressed by the dragons portrayed in Warhammer. We actually encountered ... hm. The GROUP actually only encountered two, a 250'-long 'young' one only 1500 years old or so, who'd been trapped in a cavern for the last several hundred years, and the aforementioned chaos-taint. I met a third.

 

The first one was VERY eager to get (read: be let) out. We, ahh, agreed. Of course, when everyone else was accepting the honor of fighting at the side of the dwarven prince in the great battle coming up, I actually stated that while I was honored, I'd have to use my judgement and go where I would be most needed. Everyone was sorta pissed at me for that, but when the orc general showed up on the back of a huge war wyvern, I knew I'd done right. Got some potions of endurance for the long run up to the top of the mountain, and asked the dragon to help us. He did, too.

 

The third one was an old one, where that same character met his wife -- a blind girl who was playing a harp for the dragon, not unlike the Robin Wood print seen here. The dragon was underneath this HUGE mountain in the middle of a wasteland, was itself over a mile long, and was something in the realm of 8-10,000 years old -- the mountain had collected around it, and around the tomb it was guarding. (Bad guy in the tomb; good dragon.) I was actually there only to get a sample of its breath, captured in a box that would sustain a flame -- any flame -- in its original form. This, returned to the dwarves, enabled them to make incredibly hot fires and rather powerful magic items again ...

 

God, that was a great box. Guy who sold it to us was a New York Yid. "Oh, this is great. Okay, watch, poof, fire in the box, right, ya close the box, fire's gone out, eh? HA! *opens the box, flame pops up again* Poof!! An' you can do it as often as ya want. Poof!! Oh, that's a great trick, ain't it? That just kills me. Poof!!" He had some of the weirdest stuff...

 

... Damn GM had the wife die in her second childbirth, too. Dammit.

[Manic Typist]

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

 

Damnit Wyrm! Shut up! I'm wearing out the rep button trying to give you rep! I swear, I'm gonna break it, and then I'll have to put in a matienance request....

 

 

 

... and by shut up I mean tell me more!

[Wyrm Ouroboros]

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

 

What can I say? Dragons are just my style.

 

When it comes down to it, you -- or rather, the group -- has to decide WHY they're going out to do this. Is it because the thing is eating the populace, or a specific segment thereof? Laying waste to huuuuuge tracts of land? Turning a frequently-used pass into a 'toll road'? Disrupting the magical workings of the religion, seizing a sacred site?

 

In short, why does the dragon have to be killed? Can it be bribed? "We understand that you are unable to fly. The High Priest will send his best healers to see to your wounds, and your appetite will be assuaged, but for 60 days and no longer." Which gives you time to set up all around him mine the roof so it'll collapse, all the ugly fun stuff -- for if it tries to renege on the deal.

 

Can it be co-opted? "The King will concede the tolls in this pass, so long as you make certain that no armies but his are permitted to pass."

 

Can it be otherwise bargained with? "You may retain access to the site, but we require that our priests have access to it as well."

 

What the dragon wants can sometimes be given to the dragon, so long as you make it aware that back at base, you've got a big-assed thunderbolt riding on its sticking to the agreement. If your problem is that the dragon you previously cut a deal with is no longer sticking to it, then yeah, you have a problem -- but you should also know a lot more. 'His wing was injured, and likely to be the weak side.' 'His lair is here, there are approaches along these three paths, and this wide ledge here has a straight shot down his lair's entrance.'

 

In short, if you just intend to walk in and kill the thing, well, you deserve what you get -- which SHOULD be considered cruel and unusual punishment in 49 out of 50 states.

[Wyrm Ouroboros]

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

 

The background for my character in a Champions campaign:

 

Many, many thousands of years ago, in great experiments on local life forms, a man was tinkered with and transformed into the greatest of legendary beings -- a dragon. Though he was crude in comparison to many 'later models', forged from fallable human flesh and still with flickers of human thoughts, the ancients made a few ... errors ... that they corrected later on. Errors like an inability to die.

 

The dragon lived, first as a greater example of his kind, then as an equal -- and eventually as a lesser. Though gifted even as a man with the ability to perceive mystic energies, he was never able to harness them, while his greater, younger bretheren soon did so, and far outstripped him in power. Still, despite their centuries, even millenia of life, they all eventually fell to the great leveller, Time. All but him.

 

Due to the actions of a powerful Atlantean, he was reduced (for a time) to the form of his origin -- that of a man. Having to learn to adapt to such 'low' station brought out his human side once again, as he came to enjoy the niceties of society, of life. Though he became friends with the woman, his distrust in the mystic arts remained, and when the mage died after some several hundred years, the 'curse' was lifted, and he returned to the draconic form he was so long denied.

 

But his magesight showed him the path of how to do it: how to reduce his size to a less threatening status, and even -- eventually -- how to regain his original form. Just in time, for even as the Age of Reason grew and the few remaining dragons sought centuries of suspended hibernation deep within their lairs, he lived amongst the Greeks, and then the Romans. It is the Romans, in fact, that gave him his name -- Eater of Death. Edimors.

 

The two millenia that have since passed have been as good (or bad) to him as any; his wealth waxes, despite occasional decades' worth of setbacks, but he has long known the techniques of 'dying' here and returning to a new life elsewhere.

 

And then the heroes returned.

 

Simon Eduards is a man caught on a cusp, torn between the comfortable life and vast wealth he has acquired, and the lure of the form he has so long kept off. The concept of 'noblesse oblige' -- that with rank comes duty, that wealth is meant to be used for the betterment of all, that 'with great power comes great responsibility' -- is one that has been ingrained in him from his earliest days as a tribal hunter; what one kills, all eat. But in this new day, his hidden might and wealth may better serve tens of millions of others ...

 

... if he dares to bring it out and use it.

 

... puts him at 150,000 years old. Or thereabouts, you know, give or take two or three thousand years...

[Wyrm Ouroboros]

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

 

Interestingly enough, since this thread was used last (sue me, I subscribed to it, and it's one of my faves) I started running a 3.5e AD&D campaign. Dragons are virtually legendary; among the PCs' cultures, only the oldest of the elves (400+ years) remember there being dragons living and active in the world.

 

The PCs are 3/2/2/2 level, and are scouting ahead for a caravan. They've basically been running into the lead elements of an invasion force, but these are somewhat separated. The next adventure is going to lead them into 'a dungeon' -- actually an abandoned dwarven outpost, but what are dungeons otherwise?? -- and they'll get their first look at a dragon...

 

The dragons, as I said to the one player with AD&D experience, ' are not colour-coded for your convenience'. The dragon's colouration and breath-weapon develops in reaction to its primary environment; the current environment is moderate to heavy woods with frequent bodies of water (i.e. lakes and rivers), so I'm waffling between 'black' and 'green' to use as the base. Being fairly recently (1-2 years) hatched, it's going to be a bloody small critter -- size of a large cat or small dog.

 

Hm. Size of a Jack Russel, I think.

 

Anyhow. The tough little critter is going to be sneaking in behind them to watch, exactly, what these Big Two-Leggers are doing. Not entirely certain how things are going to work from there, but we'll see how the PCs react.

[tancred]

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

 

Wyrm, your perspective on dragons is truly memorable; must remember it for my own use.

 

I can only remember encountering a dragon twice, in all the years I've gamed.

 

The first was an ancient red, in 2nd edition D&D. My paladin and party had to take him down to reclaim the 2nd of 3 pieces of my heirloom sword. (NOT killing him wasn't an option, as he'd been charged by a demon to guard it.)

We killed him fairly quickly, because my friend playing a half-elven ranger had gone to your school of dragon-slaying.

He had multiple potions, saved over real-time months of gaming, that in combination allowed us to handle his attacks and deal enough damage quickly enough to do the job.

 

The multiple potions ticked off the GM so bad that he made up a rule on the spot that you had to make a CON save when taking multiple potions. Naturally, my friend failed his (with like a 97% chance!).

Not all bad, though, because my paladin got to argue with a Valkyrie to keep the ranger from being hauled off to paradise.

Best speech I've ever made.

 

The 2nd one was actually a dracolich, in 5th Edition Fantasy Hero.

We had a secret weapon that (we found out later) cancelled his massive Regeneration. Had we not had that, we'd have been handed our backsides by the end of the first Turn.

 

With that, and timely use of a Hero point (our other GM gives out Hero points that can do basically ANYTHING; essentially a limited Wish) that allowed me to do max damage with my first spell which actually Stunned the thing, we took it out.

It was a hard fight, and he played it smart, but we finally prevailed.

 

Both were pretty memorable battles, though not up to your standard.

 

In my old campaign world, dragons had been extinct for almost a thousand years. (In that magic system, a dragon's heart was a component in a longevity potion, and they'd been hunted to extinction.)

 

Since I'm starting a Turakian Age game, where dragons are still around, my players may get a chance to fight one. If so, I will be applying your advice on how it should go.

[Manic Typist]

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

 

Interestingly enough, since this thread was used last (sue me, I subscribed to it, and it's one of my faves) I started running a 3.5e AD&D campaign. Dragons are virtually legendary; among the PCs' cultures, only the oldest of the elves (400+ years) remember there being dragons living and active in the world.

 

The PCs are 3/2/2/2 level, and are scouting ahead for a caravan. They've basically been running into the lead elements of an invasion force, but these are somewhat separated. The next adventure is going to lead them into 'a dungeon' -- actually an abandoned dwarven outpost, but what are dungeons otherwise?? -- and they'll get their first look at a dragon...

 

The dragons, as I said to the one player with AD&D experience, ' are not colour-coded for your convenience'. The dragon's colouration and breath-weapon develops in reaction to its primary environment; the current environment is moderate to heavy woods with frequent bodies of water (i.e. lakes and rivers), so I'm waffling between 'black' and 'green' to use as the base. Being fairly recently (1-2 years) hatched, it's going to be a bloody small critter -- size of a large cat or small dog.

 

Hm. Size of a Jack Russel, I think.

 

Anyhow. The tough little critter is going to be sneaking in behind them to watch, exactly, what these Big Two-Leggers are doing. Not entirely certain how things are going to work from there, but we'll see how the PCs react.

 

 

 

How'd it go?

[teh bunneh]

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

 

A dragon the size of a terrier? My group would've adopted it so fast...

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

 

A dragon the size of a terrier? My group would've adopted it so fast...

Heck, my group has adopted a full-grown one, mainly because she looked like a harmless twelve-year-old girl the first time they met her.

 

Wyrm, there's a story coming out within the next year you might find interesting: I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons, and Peter S. Beagle is writing it. He's not finished with it, but he read some of it at Dragon*Con. In that world, dragons are regarded as pests, and Our Hero is a dragon exterminator, who keeps several of them as pets, but doesn't want anyone finding out. The part he read is funny and cute; the dragons seem sort of ferret-like.

[Wyrm Ouroboros]

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

 

How'd it go?

 

Haven't run it yet. Technically, we're due to play tomorrow, but unfortunately we likely won't be doing so -- my son has camp, so the game'll be on hold.

 

A dragon the size of a terrier? My group would've adopted it so fast...

 

Just remember, though, that the creature they might want to adopt is a carnivore by preference, is not naturally inclined to look at them as 'something I can't eat', is likely to have a natural Intelligence between (AD&D) 8 and 14, half again as many HP as most members of your party, moves like slick lightning, hits better and harder than any of your PCs, flies, swims, breathes underwater, and is still developing its personality -- which is to say, it's likely to be in the 'I want this, and you're not tough enough to spank me' stage.

 

What'd be far more dangerous is if the dragon adopted them ...

[Maur]

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

 

Sounds like my Great Horned Dragon from Rifts. Party found it a few hours after it had hatched and it was already strong enough to crush most things. Only MD armor could stop its claws. Needless to say the party got a small surprise when it clamped down on one of them, but eventually it figured out that while they are soft and squishy, they are also full of stories of otherwheres and otherthings.

[Enforcer84]

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

 

Why do you enter my lair humans?

 

It is what heroes do!

Die?

 

er....Parlay?

 

 

and thus began my first encounter with a dragon

[Wyrm Ouroboros]

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

 

"P.. p... parsnip, parcheesi, parlour ..."

"Parlay?"

"Parlay, that's the word."

"Damn them who first thought up parlay!!"

"That'd be the French."

[Drhoz]

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

 

You know, I don't think any of my characters have ever met one...

 

I know Vitus hasn't, since as far as he is aware dragons are purely religious myth on his world.

 

That said, fun with genre conventions is always amusing. Take the party that were dispatched to deal with a white dragon. They kitted out appropriately - protection against cold spells and so on, etc... and learnt to their horror that it wasn't a White.

 

It was an albino Red.

 

But any intelligent dragon would take advantage of the local's instincts for self preservation. Turn up to swing the result of a major battle by dropping a few thermobaric breath weapons on one army, say, then demand a perpetual deed to a large swathe of prime real estate from the winner.

 

Then rent it out (payment in the form of livestock acceptable)

 

For one thing, altho deeds might not be as tactilely satisfying to sleep on, they're a hell of a lot easier to conceal.

 

An intelligent dragon, as well as hiring mercenaries, spies, etc, and making itself indespensible in border protection, dealing with roving brigands, and enforcing toll collection, would probably be wise enough to retain a few lawyers, too.

[Zeropoint]

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

 

It's a long, long way from being fleshed out, but in my home-brew fantasy setting, I have a kingdom ruled by a dragon. I figure the dragon moved in during the chaos of the succession wars, and now collects food and gold from the kingdom in exchange for a relatively fair government and strong defense.

[Comic]

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

 

Never stat your dragons.

 

If you stat them, someone will come up with a way of beating them.

 

And do you really want dragons that can be beaten?

 

Oh.. Er.. You said you did. Sort of. I guess.

 

Uhm. Just take Dr. Destroyer, add a tail and scales, and you're pretty much done?

[Wyrm Ouroboros]

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

 

Never stat your dragons. If you stat them' date=' someone will come up with a way of beating them. And do you really want dragons that can be beaten?[/quote']

 

The only thing you should NOT stat are your deities; everything else should be theoretically beatable. Not easily, necessarily, but beatable nonetheless. (This is one reason why I despise the Tarrasque.)

 

Uhm. Just take Dr. Destroyer' date=' add a tail and scales, and you're pretty much done?[/quote']

 

... *snork* I hate to say it, but Dr. Destroyer -- as I recall -- is frightfully incompetent. Drachenfels, on the other hand, I admire as a true villain. A being so malevolent he felt the Chaos Gods were amateurs when it came to the service of Evil ...

[Wyrm Ouroboros]

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

 

That said' date=' fun with genre conventions is always amusing. Take the party that were dispatched to deal with a white dragon. They kitted out appropriately - [i']protection against cold[/i] spells and so on, etc... and learnt to their horror that it wasn't a White.

 

It was an albino Red.

 

My warning to players in my AD&D campaign: "The dragons are not color-coded for your convenience."

[Mindscape]

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

 

The last time my group fought a dragon, well lets just say that I am thankful that our GM was extremely realistic about it. We fought two almost back to back. The first one that we fought was a Black Dragon, we only just beat it because our Paladin (me) was a Dragon-born (D&D Races of the Dragon) and knew a little something about dragons. I was on horseback with my lance and while the Rogue distracted it, I charged and impaled the organ that gives it the acid breath ( no more sizzling green death). The second one was a Green and we beat it because our Barbarian climbed on top of it's lair and when it came out he leapt off and drove a stone-shaped man-sized boulder into it's back and made it impossible for the thing to fly.

[Drhoz]

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

 

we beat it because our Barbarian climbed on top of it's lair and when it came out he leapt off and drove a stone-shaped man-sized boulder into it's back and made it impossible for the thing to fly.

 

I was about to say "Stone-shaped boulder? As opposed to, for example, Cheeseburger-shaped boulder?"

 

But I realised you probably mean the spell, yes?

[Mindscape]

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

 

Yeah, sorry about being unclear.

[Flute]

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

 

If you want to have your party actually defeat a dragon, make it "a young one". That way if with hindsight it was too easy you can say it was the runt of the litter and must have been cast out of it's natural habitat for being so inept. If it proved too hard ... well, that's just fine too.

 

I would never rail-road characters into fighting a dragon, it's so much more fun when they walk past all the GM signs that say "danger, here be dragons" and they choose to charge in of their own free will. Obviously that approach works much better with very experienced players, as newer players will naturally tend to assume if you mentioned something it's because you intend for them to interact with it in the storyline.

 

My current GM took that approach in our D&D story before he converted the campaign over to HERO system. He didn't bother with the challenge rating system: if we felt like charging off into the forest, finding and attacking an orc warcamp far above our ability and that had nothing in particular to do with the story, rather than just moving discretely past to actually do our mission, well that was our call. He did use the classic GM flags to warn us, but well, you know how players can be ...

 

So I suppose a simple thing is that if you want to have the party go up against a *real* dragon, plan for what you are intending to happen if the dragon wins hands down. New characters? New campaign? Personally I don't like any kind of "cheat death" option with dragons - you go into their lair uninvited and lose, well ... they're carnivores

[Corven_Ren]

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

 

Personally I have only ever had one character encounter a dragon. I was playing a Kensai in a AD&D solo campaign years ago. Here I am 1st level and on a quest to go find what is written on the wall of an ancient temple. The entrance to the temple is underneath in a series of caves. well lo and behold as I enter the largest cavern is a very large and very old gold dragon. He tells me I must answer his riddle or do the honorable thing should I fail. My dm hit me with a riddle out of The Hobbit, which I had not read at this time. Luckily I figured it out and got into the temple found the inscription. Which read simply 'Know Thyself'.

 

This is perhaps one of my greatest role-playing memories

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

 

The first Fantasy Hero campaign I ran in the late '80s, I used the world maps from some D&D supplement-or-other. The heroes were to be courageous explorer-adventurers. I had planned to introduce them to a "lost world" inhabited by "dragons" (dinosaurs), and let them discover the REAL dragons who actually acted as caretakers for the place. Unfortunately, my father's ill health (cancer) neccessitated a humanitarian reassignment before they got to the "Lost World". Pity.

[hfergus]

Re: How many Dragon's teeth adorn YOUR shield?

 

The last dragon seen in any campaign I was in was an evil ice breather in Champions, of all places. (The mage from another dimension, Olorin, chased him through a portal to the Champions dimension, and now he is stuck.) They knocked it out, but it got away while they were trying to deal with some summoners from Demon, who were trying to summon something, but not a dragon. It's still out there, waiting for someone to convince it to come out of hiding.

 

The last before that was a very young D&D black dragon (in D&D of course). Not many hit points or large attack, but it was still a memorable fight in which quite a few people were badly hurt. Of course, as a very young one, it had very little treasure.