Dragons: Monster Tactics in Dungeons and Dragons 5e

as your party ventures forth into the volcanic rifts of the white plume mountains searching for the lost treasure of the first emperor that's been missing for a thousand years they pass by rivers of lava bubbling and sweltering the smell of sulphur fills the air the party hears something in the distance could it be another group of cobalt no this sounds much worse it's like beating drums at first but then the sound is clearer is the beating of massive wings flying forth bearing a massive reptilian creature with glittering scales as hard as adamantium and fangs and claws sharper than any steel and a face of teeth brimming with brimstone and smoke from its ears and fire in its eyes as the dragon hovers before your party it speaks in a bellowing voice foolish mortals you trespass on my domain roll for initiative greetings my name is Monte Martin and I'm Kelly McLaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes welcome to our channel where we cover everything Dungeons & Dragons including advice for Dungeon Master's and guides for players we upload new videos every Thursday so please subscribe so that you never miss an episode in this week's monster tactics we are taking on the great granddaddy of all monsters and Dungeons & Dragons the single most iconic creature it's in the name itself the dragon these terrors have haunted the skies and deep depths of caverns for adventurers for years and years since the beginning of the role-playing game itself they're one of the most iconic creatures in all of fantasy lore more than just being one of the most memorable creatures in Dungeons & Dragons dragons are one of the most ubiquitous and compelling monsters in human mythology symbolizing everything that we imagine when we think of encountering a great monster or the great obstacles we face in life and also capturing the essence of what it means to be a hero scan beforethe monster and slay the Dragons every Dungeons & Dragons player lives for the moment that you can first battle and slay a dragon and today we're gonna talk about how to deliver on those awesome expectations that players and Dungeon Master's have for these legendary creatures we're gonna talk about the core features traits abilities tactics and role-playing ideas so that your dragons can live up to the legend there's a lot to discuss so let's get rolling why is the dragon such a great adversary I mean it's a dragon come on what is it about them that makes them so magical and so amazing they are gigantic flying fire-breathing lizards they are intelligent they are greedy they have treasure everything about a dragon screams Dungeons & Dragons you know even if we separate Dungeons & Dragons from this I remember being a little kid reading stories about knights in shining armor going to slay dragons and find their treasure and things like that that was something that was iconic even outside of Dungeons and Dragons and it's something that is instilled as me is is that if you're playing a fantasy game dragons are one of the things that you almost expect to exist in that world and that you want to see powerful heroes fighting for me the exchanges between Bilbo Baggins and in The Hobbit and Sparrowhawk in the wizard of Earthsea and their respective dragons that they faced captured my imagination as a young child and have stayed with me for so long something about dragons the way that they've been presented in fantasy literature is not only are they these massive elemental titans dragons feel like a force of nature they feel something primal but then at the same time the greatest Dragons that we encounter in fiction like in The Hobbit and like in The Wizard of Earthsea are also these cerebral entities as well they like to talk with their prey they make bargains they make deals they make threats and so you get this such this intimidating and imposing creature that really gives you the opportunities for a fantastic fight but a fantastic repartee between the adventurers they're intimidating both in the way that they present themselves in combat but also in the way that they present themselves in social situations at the same time what makes a dragon so wonderful to roleplay as a dungeon master and what's so great to face them as an adversary is that dragons are creatures of greed avarice and lust turned up to 11 dragons hunger for treasure they hunger to eat they want to capture that princess and hold them as a treasure they want to control and dominate and so in this respect as intelligent as they are dragons are flawed creatures that are really laid low by their arrogance and appetites and that makes them fantastic villains to roleplay dragons are instantly scary the moment that they show up in your game no adventuring party is calm going into a dragon's lair and dragons do have the beautiful layer feature that really just builds its own encounter and own adventure around it as soon as you hear that you're going into the territory that a dragons been spotted in the mood changes and I think it's palpable amongst the entire table when a dragon is being set onto the board all you need to do to have a memorable adventure even a campaign with a dragon is say the dragon has shown up at the village and demands tribute you have one week that's all it takes to make an amazing and memorable D and Adventure happen as we zero in on the stat blocks of the various chromatic dragons in the monster manual because we're gonna focus on the chromatics because they tend to be the adversaries as opposed to the good aligned metallic dragons what are the big strengths and weaknesses of dragons as they are in D and e5e first thing that comes to mind is that dragons are flying creatures which immediately poses a threat to any party that doesn't have a lot of ranged combat or things of that nature you immediately nullified melee combatants when you bring in a winged beast like this yes dragons have pretty good flying speeds they can't cover but they have supreme aerial mobility dragons also tend to have a lot of hit points for their challenge rating and pretty universally had armor class of 18 or higher in many cases even the even the young dragons had armor classes this high with wurmlinger a see even for their challenge ratings not only that but they all come with a boatload of resistances as well as each of them having an immunity that aligns with the color dragon that you have so they are hard to take down all dragons have some form of dark vision and blind sense and in addition to their flight and mobility many dragons have an additional movement type such as a climb speed a swim speed or even a burrowing speed so black dragons swim Red Dragons have climb speeds and blue dragons can burrow and so they have both advantages on the ground underneath the ground and in the air regardless of their dragon types some of them in the water as well another major strength of the Dragon is their lair in my opinion which is part of the dragon package when you're looking at the Dragons stat block you should also pay close attention to their lair actions because this really helps build that fear and terror that a party is going to have if they have to enter that dragon's lair speaking of fear and terror few things are more fearsome in Dungeons and Dragons that a Dragon's Breath weapon which very consistently can deal as much damage on a failed saving throw to take player characters out a battle that are facing a dragon of equal challenge rating breath weapons deal a lot of damage they're very scary and often times the saving throw DC's of them are very high for their challenge rating as well and they have frightful presence once they become adult dragons which can just have the adventurers running for their lives not to mention that the adult and legendary iterations of the dragon all have legendary actions which just gives you even more options in combat and makes one dragon standing up to a whole party a vicious fight on the flipside dragons do have a couple of key and glaring weaknesses that need to be addressed so dragons have great saving throws and great abilities but they don't have magic resistance which means that they are susceptible to control spells yes it's very easy for a dragon to get stunned paralyzed or otherwise incapacitated by a well-placed spell and while many dragons do have legendary resistance to compensate for this they don't have any magic resistance and are relying on their the strength of their own saving throws to protect them against these things this is paired with the fact that dragons are often built in encounters where they are the primary threat a dragon fighting a bunch of player characters even with a horde of minions has a massive target painted on it and the player characters will naturally attack the dragon with their most powerful abilities and attacks and so even a dragon that is well equipped with lots of minions and lots of support still has to endure the fact that it is the number one target on the battlefield and that's kind of the problem with being the most famous monster and all of Dungeons & Dragons is that no party is going to walk calmly into that battle they're going to use everything that they have to take that dragon out and they can get hit pretty hard by a well equipped party second of all despite the dragon's supreme ability through flight they are very vulnerable when nine disadvantage or when they are facing enemies that have very potent ranged attacks because aside from the dragon's breath weapon most dragons do not have a ranged attack of their own and thus they can be flying in the air getting peppered with arrows or even worse a battle master maneuvers javelins that can knock them prone out of the sky it only takes one good tripping attack to knock a dragon out of the sky and now it takes a boatload of falling damage and is prone in front of the Barbarian who will carve that dragon up you do kind of have a problem with a dragon and the fact that they are so famous that everybody's heard of dragons everybody knows what to expect from dragons it's not like you're surprised when they unleash their breath weapon you're not sitting there going I didn't see that coming no as soon as you hear that a dragon is coming for you you know what to expect you know what you're going to do to counter that dragon so their fame does kind of act as a weakness but that's why a dragon that is smart and vicious has to show the player characters how everything they thought they knew is not enough and we got to pull out some surprises so let's talk about the strategies and tactics for leveraging all these fantastic abilities that Dragons have their breath weapon their frightful presence there are legendary actions and their role-playing into creating some awesome combat strategies for using our dragons when we look at the dragon the first thing that I mentioned as a strength is their ability to fly and I think that's your first thing that you should bring into combat if you're unleashing a dragon on your party they will stay in the air as long as possible and if they don't have a breath weapon to use they still might stay in the air just to avoid attacks from the party I think that this is one of the key tactics is a dragon landing in front of the party is always a bad decision if you get them a chance to run up and just start whaling on whenever I hear about a DM who struggled with a dragon encounter and was like my dragon encounter really sucked it got destroyed so quickly my first question is did your dragon end a turn in melee with one of the player characters by its own village and if the answer to that question is yes you've already set the dragon up for failure a dragon does not have much of a reason to land and for me the most important thing to remember with a dragon is that it knows it can easily avoid the melee combatants that it sees in front of us and knows innately that the biggest threats the dragon are spellcasters and archers a dragon will swoop down if it means making a full attack against that squishy wizard or the archer a dragon goes for the backline it attacks the weakest party members and it kills them if it can dragons especially adult dragons and definitely ancient dragons have been living hundreds of years and surviving fighting against would-be dragon slayers a dragon that as an adult does not make it to adulthood and not fight adventurers at some point in its life so every dragon to me has the experience to know oh that's a ranger that's a cleric that's a wizard they have an innate understanding of adventurers and I have an innate understanding through their own experience of the strategies and tactics that get employed against them and they will always go for the squishy ones they will always recognize which party member is the healer and they will find that vulnerable core and rip it out of the party and they will make a show of it one thing that I always imagine dragons being great at is scooping adventurers off the ground and flying up high into the air and then dropping them this doesn't seem immediately apparent when you look at their stat block but you can exchange any of their attacks for a grapple and being able to grab an enemy and just fly up at their maximum flight speed that becomes a very deadly situation rather than them stopping and getting into a melee combat with a fighter or a barbarian they're gonna pick up that Ranger or wizard or sorcerer and just start flying away with them just to drop them somewhere else yeah typically my strategy here is I find the weakest party member the one with the lowest strength score the dragon uses its breath weapon to strafe the party from the air when well it's breath weapon is recharging the dragon picks the weakest party member scoops them up into a grapple and holds them in the air on subsequent turns that the dragon will then continually use its legendary actions to make tail attacks against that target or use its legendary actions to wing attack to get more distance away from the party members its goal once it's grabbed somebody is to bring them as high up into the air as it possibly can continue to attack them and then as soon as that person lands unconscious they drop them and then you get the two-for-one thing of that the dragon is going to be taking this party member up in the air laying all their melee attacks into them and then when that party member is out of range of all the other parties other abilities and facts the dragon just drops them and that party member Falls however many feet and immediately fails to death saving throws because they're on the ground and that ends up being pretty lethal and that is definitely a strategy a dragon is going to take you don't have to be a little bit careful because only the bigger dragons can do this they need the strength score to be able to do it because if a dragon does pick somebody up and is flying up with them it can lower their speed and their ability to get away that's why you want to use their flying speed and use things like wing attack to lift them up as high as you can as quickly as possible and really put that party into a difficult situation because even if the party takes the dragon out and uses one of their attacks or abilities that's gonna knock the dragon prone or incapacitate it now their party member is going to fall with the dragon the other thing to keep in mind is despite how massive they are in size and their frightful presence that they have on the battlefield they can be really sneaky and really stealthy they can hide they have different modes of mobility that they can use and they can actually do a really good job of sneaking up on the party or disappearing I think now this is where we leverage the Dragons mobility dragons intelligence and its knowledge with the environment or particularly its lair even if the dragon isn't fighting in its lair itself it will likely be fighting in it territory and the dragon will choose its lair in a territory that compliments its own abilities Red Dragons dwelling in volcanic areas black dragons dwelling in swamps and blue dragons dwelling in deserts and so on and so forth and that's where the terrain is always gonna give the dragon an advantage dragons are actually quite lazy creatures and they don't venture very far from their lair they do all of their hunting and gathering and all of that in and around the area that they know and that they feel safe in they also don't like to stray too far from their treasure horde they're greedy creatures and they're gonna protect that so luring the adventurers to their lair is actually more beneficial for that dragon they may not want the party coming close to their treasure but they know that if those adventurers step into their lair they're going to have the drop on them and this is where we need to look at the Dragons preferred environments it's mobility but also its senses dragons in addition to having dark vision also have blind sense which means that they can see and perceive threats in environments that the player characters might not be able to a great example of this is a black dragon or a green dragon might dwell in an area of thick toxic mist and me and that means that that dragon can still see and perceive its surroundings thanks to its blind sight but adventurers cannot because they cannot see through these myths and these clouds so any kind of misty more land or the haze and blizzard of a snowstorm for a white dragon dragons use this sense of the environment of mist of rain of snow of smoke of water of dust storms combined with their blind sense to deny archers and spellcasters the ability to see them in hell it is too late and a dragon is smart enough that they are probably not going to go into combat unless they have the upper hand and if they are losing a combat they're gonna get out of there they're gonna look for an advantageous position they're gonna look for a way to use the environment that they know so well because they've probably lived there for hundreds of years they know the nooks and Frannie's they know the mountain ranges the forests the swamp wherever it is that they are residing they know that place badder than the adventures have spots for them to hide have spots for them to go and retreat to they will lure the adventurers into a trap more likely where they can use their breath weapon and attack that party when they least expect it when you are fighting a dragon you should be feel like you are fighting the world itself and that's part of the metaphorical power of the Dragon as well because dragons represent the hardship and the threats and the monstrous nature of the world - and that's why their lair actions are so important and often if you look at the lair actions offered by many dragons they actually support this the black dragon has a lair action that causes the water in its lair to rise and move and try to pull people in an undertow so looking for things in its lair actions enhances its combat capability manifold a smart adventuring party will do everything in their power to lure a dragon out of their lair because going into one just gives you a whole world of problems a dragon should have a way of getting out of its lair that only it can access through flight a dragon could have another exit from its lair that relies on it using its swim speed or burrow speed or climb speed to navigate through a dangerous environment where it has an easy time getting out but anyone that was trying to pursue it would not have a very easy time in fact I think that more advanced dragons would simply cover the entrances to their lairs in whatever environmental type that they are most in an ancient black dragon there's probably no way into its lair that doesn't involve swimming an ancient white dragon there's no way that doesn't involve ice or free areas of freezing cold and an ancient red Dragon's Lair is probably just completely choked in sulfur in smoke because for the dragon hey that's a cozy sauna but for an adventurer it's a hostile environment so dragons aren't stupid they're gonna know when it's time to run away but what conditions would need to be to make a dragon feel like they need to run okay so a dragon is really protective of its treasure but a dragon also understands that it has so much treasure that any group of Avengers that claimed its lair it's going to take them so long to transport all that treasure that the dragon is gonna have enough time to come back and attack them again on its home turf and probably attack them at the most advantageous moment when they're hauling all that treasure so dragon understands that problem and so they know that if they're getting damaged if they're if they're losing this fight a dragon runs away I like to think of my dragons kind of like bullies in that respect like they are lazy they're greedy they kind of want to intimidate people into not fighting them and just giving up their lunch money but if things are going badly for the dragon if it's wounded if it's under half hit points it's gonna get out of there I think dragons need to have the self preservation the bully is gonna come in there and ask for your lunch money but then if it wants to it can throw a sucker punch at you to try to scare you with its breath weapon yeah but then if you start fighting back that bully might be like whoa whoa whoa I'm gonna come back when I'm better prepared for this but we'll get you next time speaking of bullies another important thing that bullies always have is a posse and Dragon should be no exception dragons love being worshipped safety horse they're going to have Cobalts or cultists that are just around their lair helping them out yeah and of course the lair has to be survivable for these cultists so I like to imagine that a dragon's lair probably incorporates a bit of a dungeon or living quarters that it has its own inner sanctum that is totally hostile to its minions and then this outer part of the lair that its minions can live in comfortably or come to bring its offerings and such and so forth I love that cobol's had this connection between trap building and burrowing and so I often like to modify my Cobalts to have the same energy resistance to associate with the dragon that they're worshiping and then they kind of take up this elemental feature in the dragon's lair and depending on how far you wanted to go with this even the the kobolds might have resistances or unique ways of getting past the dragon's own defenses because not only are the Cobalts its minions but they're kind of part of its brood they really are like the posse yeah like every good bully the minions are gonna hold you down well the bully just punches you yeah yes not a fair fight but that's how its kind of work never should be it should always feel insurmountable we've talked about some pretty dastardly tactics for our dragons and I think that if you follow this playbook of using the environment of using minions and of taking full advantage of a dragons movement capabilities both in the air and its other movement modes and its senses you're gonna have a pretty good dragon fight but if that's not enough if we got to add some spice if we got to kick it up a notch how are you gonna modify a dragon there innately magical beings yes and there's no harm in imagining a dragon who was smart enough to learn to cast spells or can innately cast spells indeed the monster manual gives us a set of rules of how to give an eight spell casting to our dragons and it's really really simple you give them a number of spells equal to their charisma modifier up to one third their challenge rating if you have the guild masters guide to Ravnica there is the stat Blachford a kniv misset which is a ancient dragon that casts 9th level spells that you can use as a template to work from I also think that when you're looking at spells any spell that benefits that kind of natural lair action to environmental sort of thing that's gonna work really well I imagine that since they have their senses they could use darkness really well just passing darkness on the party and then jumping in there and devouring them I think the biggest things that you want to give to a dragon spell caster are going to be spells that they can cast as a bonus action because dragons as written have nothing to do with their bonus action spells that they can use as a reaction because again dragons don't have much to do with their reactions they have their legendary actions they don't have anything to do with the reaction and a good concentration spell because that gives them another capacity if you really want to get nasty you can give your dragon absorb elements shield or even her spell that's so mean that's yeah I think for concentration spells obvious choices wall of fire for a red dragon yeah cloud kill for a green dragon yeah you could do fog cloud or storms fear for a blue dragon and there and I would even go as far as Big B's hand does cold damage so imagine fighting a white dragon that cast Big B's hand kind of fun it's it's key I think that if you are going to be adding spells your dragon to look for ones that speak to the element that they represent it's going to just feel more appropriate it's not gonna feel like you just tacked it on it's gonna feel like it's part of it when I think of other ways that we could build on a dragon and change them a little keep in mind that dragon's hoard treasure so there's no reason that you can't equip your dragon with a few magic items absolutely put that treasure to work make your money work for you I've heard of dragons using rings for different abilities or necklaces or things that they could like slip onto various of them they may not be able to equip a magic sword or carry a shield or a set of armor but rings and amulets and crowns and things like that they might adorn themselves with their treasure it has things that would be human sized than it wears in a completely different way on its own body like maybe a dragon wears a suit of plate armor that was meant to be a human full plate but can only wear it as like cuts on their hands of some kind just cool things like that for really augmenting the dragon and I think that you got to be careful about just giving a dragon magic items like rings of protection or Mantle's of spell resistance that just beefed up it up at stats I always would want to give a dragon a magic item does something really cool on the subject of a dragon's treasure I think a dragon needs to have like the prize of its collection and I always like to think about how the dragon organizes its collection and what that says about it like is a dragon like a hoarder is it just piles of treasure or does it have like display cases for all of its most prized treasure maybe the dragon is a super historian and is going out and collecting all of the treasures from a specific bloodline of humans it's like oh yeah this noble house the great red house of the old Empire I want to make sure that I always have the sword that it was that was used to kill the last King I can also imagine a highly intelligent dragon who instead of a hoard of gold and treasure has a library yeah of spell books and various history books and some of the most famous and sought-after books in the world and it just hoards them all I think that all dragons had this dual nature they are intelligent beasts and don't forget that they're beasts at the same time their motivations are not the same as people they want to eat and hoard and their ambitions are not generally about power I think that they're about collection and greed rather than you know this dragon doesn't necessarily want to rule a kingdom it doesn't care about that but it would care about having the crown that was worn by every King that ruled that kingdom and so that makes them kind of weirdly possessive and weirdly territorial and animals that are possessive and territorial make great inspiration for the flaws of a dragon and I do think if we're talking about the flaws of a dragon something very important is that the the dragon that we've presented in this episode can be a really menacing threat to a group of adventurers but also a group of adventurers who understands that a dragon has a flaw and plays into that flaw should be rewarded yeah I think that if adventurers understand that a dragon is greedy they might be able to trick a dragon with a bad deal they might be able to say oh we can get you this great treasure as long as you do this for us and they negotiate that and then the dragon doesn't see a double-cross coming I think the Dragons should be highly susceptible to bribes because they love getting treasure and they're late see they sleep for hundreds of years they're greedy and lazy creatures and if you can promise a dragon an easy meal if you will promise it a little bit of what it wants but it doesn't have to fight to get it it might just take it if you look at dragons and literature so often they are insurmountable physical threats but they are tricked so often in literature and I think that making dragons are actually really susceptible to those sort of things is really rewarding for players and you shouldn't shy away from that they can be awesome combat technicians but there's something about fooling the dragon that is so satisfying at the end of the day to summarize all of this dragons are such a remarkable creature in the D&D mythos they're so well known and everybody wants to face a dragon at some point don't shy away from having a dragon in your D&D campaign a lot of Dungeon Master's are so caught up in the legends and myths of dragons as these insurmountable monsters that they don't get used in D&D campaigns at all they get relegated to the high level threats that only appear when the characters are 15th level and strong enough to actually fight one but fighting a dragon battling a dragon matching your wits with one is one of the most satisfying memorable and truly magical encounters that we can have in the game of Dungeons and Dragons and every time I presented that scenario to a group of players the results have always been completely unique try it out this has been a look at dragons in D&D 5e if you've had any amazing encounters with dragons in your game tell us about them in the comments below if you enjoy our show and find our Tips & Tricks helpful consider supporting us on patreon you can find out how by following the links in the description below don't forget to check out our live play dungeons of dragon hime which airs Tuesday nights at 6 p.m. Eastern on Twitch you can find all the previous episodes on a playlist right up over here and we have plenty more monster tactics for Dungeon Master's in our playlist over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 121,316

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book, monster, dragon, tactics, legendary, boss, battle, encounter, lair

Id: ZQ_nWVK8yEA

Length: 33min 20sec (2000 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 22 2019