My son turns 14 next week, and although he seemed to want to completely ignore his birthday, he suddenly decided he wants me to run a level 12 D&D session for him and his friends. His D&D friends who've been starting half a dozen D&D campaigns over the past few months since they discovered D&D.
I'm not that big of a D&D fan though, so I first proposed Call of Cthulhu, WFRP, or maybe something in space, but he says he doesn't want to learn a new system (well, what about me?) and he wants something with spells. Spells in space might be okay.
So I guess it's going to be D&D. So I need to familiarise myself with it enough to blow them all our of the water, because I don't want to do something average for a birthday one-shot. But what?
My idea so far: A dragon is terrorising the land. The land is in panic and sends its biggest and most legendary heroes to kill it, but they don't return, and the dragon continues. So they send the B Team: the PCs. Approaching the lair, they have to go through a bunch of tunnels or caves, where they find the remains of the previous expedition. Some dead, some trapped, some enslaved perhaps? And they should give some clues about what they can expect. Clues that they absolutely need to take on the dragon.
So I need ideas for that! What makes this dragon too hard for a 12th level party, and what weaknesses does it have that might help them overcome it? I also feel inspired by The Hobbit with the arrow shot at Smaug's one vulnerable spot; how do they find out? I'm also inspired by the 16HP dragon idea from OSR: once they've figured out how to hurt it, it shouldn't take too long to kill it. Of course I have no idea how to balance an encounter in D&D5...
Of course it still has to fit in a single session. It has to be short but awesome.
And I suppose I need a map. Does anyone know if @Dʏsᴏɴ Lᴏɢᴏs has a suitable map for a dragon lair that's accessed through some tunnels? (His map style would contribute a lot more to the awesomeness than if I made it myself, I'm afraid.)
If anyone has helpful advice for me, I could really use some.
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Shachihoko
in reply to Martijn Vos • • •Hmmmmmmmm. Have you had any thoughts on why the legendary heroes failed but the PCs will stand a chance? That's one thing I would wonder in a scenario like this.
How much do you know about your son's and his friends' playstyle? You may need to plan parts of the scenario around that, e.g. not laying a field of brain-teasers if they're going to just charge in with axes swinging and fireballs flying.
Martijn Vos
in reply to Shachihoko • • •@Shachihoko The PCs are still level 12 (maybe more if necessary?), so they're not nobodies. But the main reason they should succeed is that they're not the first to go against this dragon, but can learn from the mistakes of the first group.
I'm thinking about having them find the remains of the first group piece by piece. Perhaps the first is just dead, but carries a diary with the approach of the first group. Later they come across two who are dead but have been raised as undead, and they can talk. One is completely loyal to the dragon, the other only his body; his mouth can talk freely because of some magic item that protects him from domination, so he tells the PCs everything he knows, while his body is fighting against them. So the PCs need to figure out how to keep him talking without killing him, but also without him killing them. And he can tell them about all the stuff they tried that didn't work.
They're 14 and have been playing for a few months, so their play style might well be axes swinging and fireballs flying, but I want to give them an interesting challenge that will make them think more creatively. I suspect they usually play with a battlemap, but this is going to me more theatre of the mind.
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Shachihoko
in reply to Martijn Vos • • •Sounds like you've got things set up pretty well! And maybe more creatively than I'd have come up with at this point. 😅
Which books do you have access to at the moment? And which edition will they be playing? (I'm assuming 5th Edition; that's the most recent to come out physically.) I do have the core 5th Edition D&D books, so I might be able to advise a bit - if you can put up with the turnaround time on my checking Mastodon - but you should leaf through the books yourself.
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Martijn Vos
in reply to Shachihoko • • •@Shachihoko 5th edition. I've got the PHB, DMG and MM.
But it's looking like I'm going to seriously customise that dragon and some magic items.
My big problems at the moment are that by-the-book dragons are kinda boring and mostly a big pile of HP and damage. I'd like less HP, more AC some DR (though that doesn't seem to exist in 5e anymore), and a pile of protective spells that can be dispelled once the PCs find the anti-magic orb. But you can't stack protective spells because almost all of them require concentration.
This is my main obstacle at the moment. Of course I can just ignore the rules and do what I like, but I'd prefer to play as close to the rules as possible.
And having a dragon that's hard to hurt encourages more creative solutions, whereas a dragon that simply has a big pile of HP encourages piling on more damage.
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Seamus Quigley
in reply to Martijn Vos • • •Could the A-Team be enslaved rather than dead? The clues along the way could be keys to release them from bondage. Each 'key' not found means one of the A-Team fighting alongside the dragon.
PCs vs. Dragon - difficult but achievable
PCs vs. Dragon and another party - possibly not achievable.
Whether freed A-Team members are allies in the final fight or not? Maybe base that upon some other optional objective?
Martijn Vos
in reply to Seamus Quigley • • •@Seamus Quigley
Yes! Absolutely. I was planning on a mix of dead, enslaved and locked up. I was thinking about making that separate encounters, but having them fight alongside the dragon is also a cool idea. I need to figure out how they're enslaved and how they can be freed, though.
I like the idea, but my command of D&D5 is not yet enough figure out the mechanics for this. Although I'm always open to just make it a unique plot device.
Seamus Quigley
in reply to Martijn Vos • • •I can't help you with the mechanical part, sorry. I've never played 5E, my thoughts were purely narrative.
There may be mechanical justification for the control; some spell/ability you can confer on the dragon. Personally, I'd probably just MacGuffin it; there's some objects/rituals that, if not acquired/destroyed, leaves the A-Team in the dragon's thrall.
Difficulty now becomes, how to signal the control problem to the PCs?
silverwizard
in reply to Martijn Vos • •@Martijn Vos
1) single enemies work badly in D&D and often lead to anticlimaxes
2) use your legendary and lair actions to spice up the fight more than hurt
3) let them be 14 and do some Hit Thing With Axe, it's fun!
4) Listen to them make characters and see which subsystems they like, be familiar and make them have cool things hidden inside (someone likes hiding and sneakattacking, clump of stalagmites that they can hide in, someone likes fireball, group of like 10 kobolds doing a ritual that will become a big problem if not for a fireball)
And ya know, D&D's best adjective is *rollicking* not challenge.
Martijn Vos
in reply to silverwizard • • •@silverwizard
In what way? Too easy to defeat, even if by the book their threat rating is too high?
My idea for this fight (as it's in my head right now at least) is that it won't be simply be a matter of hitting each other and grinding down the hit points. At first, the dragon should be way too powerful for them, and they need to figure out how to even fight it. Once they figure that out, it shouldn't be too hard to kill it.
I think the dragon will have a ton of protective magic that will make it hard to hurt, so they will have to figure out a way around that. Or to dispel it. And for that, I'm thinking about an anti-magic orb, perhaps with a slightly larger radius than normal, that covers some of the tunnels into his lair that the dragon has trouble entering, so anyone entering through there will have all their magic deactivated. This will initially be a problem to the PCs, but one they find the orb, they can use it against the dragon.
Yes! Look at the stats for 5e dragons, I was mostly disappointed because they're kinda boring compared to the Shadowrun dragons I'm used to, but those legendary and lair actions are cool, and I will definitely use them.
Considering the CR of the dragon, I'm definitely considering letting them be a bit higher level. But why level 14 specifically?
Also, once they've employed the anti-magic orb, I guess hitting it with their axe will be the only way to hurt it.
Of course they also still need a way to tie it to the ground, or it will just fly off. I've been thinking of making the lair a crater and dropping a big ship in there. To show off how big and strong the dragon is, but also to give them access to plenty of ropes and chains.
I'm not entirely sure yet how they're going to make characters, but I think they'll make them in advance. Otherwise it will cut into play time. I do know they love abusing sneak attacks; one player plays a bugbear with ridiculous amounts of sneak attack damage in one of their campaigns.
silverwizard
in reply to Martijn Vos • •@Martijn Vos They need to be 14 because that's their age! (I wasn't talking about level)
D&D's core Combat Thing is the Action Economy. So if you have a Dragon, it can hit 1 person for 1 hit per around (modulo some things), and the players can do more. If the Dragon spends its turn healing, then it's likely to do less healing than the players can dish out in a round, so the dragon just wasted a round.
If the dragon focuses on PC, that's gonna suck because that person is likely to go down, and, whittling through their HP is gonna make the dragon run out of HP, but now you have 1 PC having a bad time, and everyone else an anticlimax. D&D fights with single enemies are basically *entirely* anticlimax.
And - yeah - listening in is hard - but I recommend trying.
Martijn Vos
in reply to silverwizard • • •@silverwizard
Good point. Still, could be a reason to let them play at level 14.
That's true. Well, if I understand correctly, a dragon has a couple of attacks: I think they can claw/claw/bite in melee, or do a big breath weapon attack, possibly on multiple targets. It also gets the free tail slap as a legendary action.
But my goal here is not to have everybody hack away at the dragon while the dragon just sits there and attacks them back; I want something more dynamic than that. I want at the start, to have most of their attacks be useless against the dragon, until they figure out how to hurt it.
Of course that also means they need to survive until they figure that out; they may need plenty of access to healing. I'm also seeing this as a fight with multiple rounds, where either they or the dragon breaks off and regroups to figure out a better way to fight.
Well, my son, who already knows about my dragon idea, seems to want to climb on top of the dragon. First he was planning to do it as a monk and then grapple it to the ground, now he's thinking teleporting to the back of the dragon as a wizard.
So having someone on the dragon's back is certainly something I'm going to take into account.
silverwizard
in reply to Martijn Vos • •@Martijn Vos YEAH! Grappling a dragon as a 14th level monk sounds amazing!
So - mobility is pretty bad in D&D - the Dragon can move real fast - and most of the party will have a basic ranged set. There's a lot of like, web, dimensional anchor, and other tools to make it slow down.
D&D's combat is really designed to make what you want hard is what I'm saying
Martijn Vos
in reply to silverwizard • • •@silverwizard Hard isn't bad. But D&D does offer a lot of the tools of what I want. Plenty of systems don't have half of this stuff.
Also an issue I've been thinking about. If he's losing, can't the dragon just fly away?
Web is an interesting idea. Though wouldn't the Web be too small to capture an entire dragon? And wouldn't the dragon be too strong and easily break loose? But it's exactly the sort of thing that, if they try it at the right time, will probably work.
silverwizard
in reply to Martijn Vos • •@Martijn Vos I was specifically discussing spells
I mean, the dragon being unable to fly away because it's slower than a Fly spell
Martijn Vos
in reply to silverwizard • • •silverwizard
in reply to Martijn Vos • •Martijn Vos
in reply to silverwizard • • •@silverwizard Turns out I'm way out of my league on the creativity front. My son's idea with flying/teleporting a wizard on the dragon's back was to paste 10 stickers to the dragon and then cast Animate Object on them, making them attack the dragon that they're stuck to.
That is just hilarious. I need to up my game.
Perhaps I shouldn't come up with my own solutions to the problems I'm creating, because they'll come up with better ones anyway.
One problem I discovered with my plan to make the dragon nearly invulnerable at the start, is that by the rules I can't. There's no such thing as DR anymore, so something like Stoneskin won't make it stop damage completely. Similarly, resistances only half the damage he takes, which just means grinding HP for longer, instead of having a dragon that you need to figure out how to hurt it at all.
On top of that, all those spells are require Concentration, which means you can have only one of them active at a time. And I don't think I want to bend the rules that far to change that.
I could still give the dragon a magical item (a collar perhaps?) that gives him all these protections (maybe a gemstone in the collar for each), and the anti-magic field would suppress that, but the protection would return if they remove the anti-magic field.
Stacking spells has been seriously nerfed in this edition.
Alan Zabaro
in reply to Martijn Vos • • •Martijn Vos
Unknown parent • • •@Chip Unicorn
Interesting idea. I was thinking about making the dragon itself fly or teleport away, but teleporting others is also interesting. One problem: the former party wouldn't be around anymore to leave clues for the PCs. So what's going to stop the dragon from doing the same to the PCs?
Or even for the dragon, as @Seamus Quigley suggested. The big question is: how can they be released again?
A dragon with a magic item. Would be a pretty big challenge to get it off him.
I've been thinking about making the dragon a powerful spellcaster (I'm not very impressed by the abilities of dragons in D&D5; they mostly do a lot of damage and have a lot of HP, which are the least interesting things a monster can have.) Tying it to an object is an interesting alternative.
I've also been thinking about using some sort of anti-magic field to cancel the dragon's magic, though of course that would also cancel the party's magic. I don't know if this exists in 5e, but I recall an epic dragon encounter in Order Of The Stick that I think involved something like that.
Martijn Vos
Unknown parent • • •@Chip Unicorn @Seamus Quigley
Could be very frustrating, but it is something to consider. Although I imagine eventually the dragon runs out of teleport spells. Or does he have unlimited teleportation?
That's certainly a good point.
I'm considering changing the anti-magic field a bit. According to the rules I've seen, it suppresses spell effects, but the spells themselves aren't dispelled. But what if they are? Use the orb to remove all spell effects, put the orb away, and then the dragon would have to recast all his protective spells one at a time, while the PCs have an opportunity to hurt it.
Chiasm
in reply to Martijn Vos • • •sim
in reply to Martijn Vos • • •Martijn Vos
in reply to sim • • •sim
in reply to Martijn Vos • • •That's true. I think it shouldn't be too hard to decide that the other team failed because they were bad at team work. The fun comes in seeing if the B Team decides to work as a team and how to implement that. Maybe come up with a few puzzles more than you need that you can choose from depending on what they decide to become. Perhaps some that require rolling dice or suggest they discover a hidden skill one of them has if that can be done and they haven't gotten it. Or maybe an NPC has it. Have to admit, it sounds fun and challenging to come up with a storyline for this when you have no idea who they will choose to play.
Another thought is that the dragon could be actively hunting them too, lurking in the shadows and waiting for them to be separated from each other before picking them off. Dice rolls determine what happens, whether a really perceptive character hears something.
sim
in reply to sim • • •Martijn Vos
in reply to sim • • •@sim About the previous team, I'm leaning now towards this:
Their Wizard was killed in a fairly central room (probably covered by the anti-magic field), probably the first hero the PCs encounter. He probably has a diary and a useful magic item (Staff of Healing?)
Two people (Fighter and Rogue or Ranger?) have been killed and raised as undead, they're in a side chamber. Both are controlled by the dragon, but one of them can still talk and think for himself, due to some magic item that protects him from being controlled. This will hopefully be funny: both talk, one of them threatening and clearly siding with the dragon, the other warning them and trying to give helpful advice while at the same time fighting against the PCs, while the first one is berating him for it. The Fighter carries a shield that offers some protection against breath weapons and a magic weapon. Or maybe the Rogue/Ranger has the magic weapon.
Their healer has been captured and charmed by the dragon, and is dedicated to healing the dragon whenever it gets hurt. He's still alive and if the players dispel the charm, he can help the PCs.
ghostdancer
in reply to Martijn Vos • • •watabou
itch.ioMartijn Vos
in reply to ghostdancer • • •ghostdancer
in reply to Martijn Vos • • •Dungeon Scrawl | Old-School Maps in Minutes
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