castle ravenloft dungeons and catacombs map

Give the players foreknowledge of exactly how deadly the breath attack can be, and the terror of a dragon in open skies. Piss her off and you might find yourselves slandered as brigands and a bounty posted.Īs for the combat, you can run them as written with some precautions. A juvenile green dragon has a few amateur schemes and plots and some woodland beasts-giant spiders, scraggly kobolds-as minions, but an older one might have their fingers in local power structures and the service of a dragon cult. Whatever you decide, have their personality and circumstances inform their tactics and resources.

Or you could run them as a near-adult, arrogant and certain of their superiority. To me this suggests an adolescent in a tenuous phase-sharp but inexperienced, proud but insecure, desperate to make a name for themselves but also secretly afraid. She’s cunning and charming, but not especially wise, and not as smart as your average 5th level wizard. Venomfang is a young dragon she could be anywhere between 6 to 100. I don’t have any magic solution but a couple of suggestions, first of all is to treat every dragon as an individual rather than a block of stats. They’ll fly out of reach and strafe with breath attacks on cooldown. Again, not very fun.Īnd the obvious tactic this suggests to the dragon is SUPER not fun, because any dragon with a brain (and Venomfang has 16 ac) is gonna simply refuse to fight. A dragon in combat without its breath weapon and without minions is a wet noodle. And 5th level is when PCs really hit their stride: they have the ability bonus from 4th level and now they’re multi attacking and throwing out fireballs. Now you have 5 5th level PCs unloading into a 18ac 136hp creature. The players went first and scattered, or planned around terrain to break up any breath attacks, or nailed the save with luck/buffs/inspiration, or the dragon just rolled 5 1s for damage. However, let’s say Venomfang doesn’t get a good breath off. A bad roll-VF goes high on initiative, the party rolls bad on the save, the damage is significantly above average-and you might have a near-certain TPK before most players even got a turn. Venomfang should open every fight with a blast of poison that will be likely to knock half the party out round 1, and leave the survivors badly injured. If we assume an average 5th level PC has a D8 HD and +2 con, then they have exactly 42 HP and a 55% chance to fail the save and go down. Venomfang’s breath attack does an average of 42 damage on a failed save and 21 on a success, DC12 Con save. So much of their power is tied up in their breath attack that it makes combat extremely swingy.

Dragons as written in 5e can be frustrating and difficult to run a satisfactory encounter for.

Castle ravenloft dungeons and catacombs map