D&D 5E How many (ancient) dragons would it take to destroy a (dwarven) city?

[KarinsDad]

Why have the dwarves built a convenient cliff edge into their underground city, why are they sending their golems to fight next to it, and why does the room it's in have enough space for an ancient dragon to get airborne?

So, it's your assumption that the dwarves totally control any battle?

The dragon should be picking and choosing it's fight locations, not the other way around. Granted, the dwarves do have murder holes, traps, and other such defenses, but it takes a lot of effort to kill the dragon, it takes little effort to kill hundreds of dwarves.

From every fantasy novel, movie, and RPG that I have ever seen, underground dwarven kingdoms have large open areas, magnificent cathedrals, overhead bridges and pathways. Dwarves also build their cities in mountains.

So from outdoors, all defenders (golems and hero dwarves alike) can be grabbed and dropped. It's outdoors in the mountains.

From indoors, the dragon can use these tactics wherever there is a larger height or indoor cliff or whatever.

If you design your dwarven holds such that it is mostly a warren of small passageways, then sure, it makes it difficult for the dragon to move easily. But for such occurrences, the dragon should just cave in and demolish the entrance ways, trapping or at least hindering the dwarves in them from attacking. He can always starve them out and/or send in his own minions later on to search.

But golems? Against an ancient dragon with an Int of 18? No contest.

 

[steeldragons]

All of our available data to date re: ancient dragons invading dwarven strongholds suggests the correct answer is 1.

 

[Dausuul]

So, it's your assumption that the dwarves totally control any battle?

The dwarves are not coming out to fight the dragon; they are happy to live and let live. It's the dragon that's going in to fight the dwarves. The whole point of fortifications is to force the enemy to fight on ground that favors you. The underground city will certainly have heavily defended choke points; the dragon has to pass through those choke points if it wants to get inside, and that's where the golems will be waiting.

Now, I do agree that the dragon can win by using siege tactics and starving the dwarves out. Or it can use magic to bypass the defenses and slip inside. Or it can use minions of its own to sabotage the defenses. In that case it doesn't matter what color the dragon is. But taking the city by storm is a tall order.

But golems? Against an ancient dragon with an Int of 18? No contest.

The golems are directed by dwarf artificers, and likely supported by dwarven warriors and spellcasters. They aren't just dumbly shambling forward.

 

[KarinsDad]

The golems are directed by dwarf artificers, and likely supported by dwarven warriors and spellcasters. They aren't just dumbly shambling forward.

Of course they are. But they are a minor impedance at best. Easily thwarted by picking them up and removing them from the field of battle in one of a half dozen ways. Why would an ancient dragon be stupid enough to fight golems in melee?

This is like when game designers (like the ones for LMoP) have a dragon supposed to fight PCs. The PC fighter has Heavy Armor Mastery? Fine. The Dragon grabs the fighter, flies 40 feet into the air and drops the fighter as part of its move action.

Alternatively, the dragon flies off, grabs a big rock and comes back and drops it on the party from 300 feet in the air. Sure, it might not hit, but who cares? This (typically) forces the PCs indoors for cover where the dragon can breath weapon all of them in an enclosed space.

When running NPCs with an Int of 16+, DMs should be creative and smart about it.


And it's not like the dwarven artificers and spellcasters are going to be fighting anywhere near the golems out in the open. Sure, hang out with the golems for a dose of frightful presence and breath weapon. No, they will be split up, hiding / firing from cover. So the dragon can just move away and avoid/ignore the golems completely. Dragons have huge fly speeds and it doesn't take too much to stay out of reach of a golem.

I just don't buy it that golems are going to present a serious challenge to an ancient dragon. Think three dimensional, not two dimensional. Why would a dragon head down a tunnel only 10 feet tall? No need to trap itself like that. Collapse the entrance to any such tunnel and move on.

 

[Derren]

Of course they are. But they are a minor impedance at best. Easily thwarted by picking them up and removing them from the field of battle in one of a half dozen ways. Why would an ancient dragon be stupid enough to fight golems in melee?

Because the rules do not support anything else.

 

[Dausuul]

I just don't buy it that golems are going to present a serious challenge to an ancient dragon. Think three dimensional, not two dimensional. Why would a dragon head down a tunnel only 10 feet tall? No need to trap itself like that. Collapse the entrance to any such tunnel and move on.

So, the dragon collapses all the entrances. Great! The dwarves all starve to death. Now how does the dragon get into the dead city to enjoy its plunder?

I've already agreed that siege tactics would work, and the dragon has other options, but the point is that Whizbang's strategy of "Fill a confined space with Frightful Presence and breath weapons. Repeat until the dwarves are dead or routed" isn't an instant win. It's how the dragon deals with one component of the dwarven defenses. It still has to deal with the others, and the golems--wisely used in a narrow choke point, not stupidly marched out into the open field--are a tough nut to crack.

I might add that we're all giving the dwarves less credit for brains than we probably should. Dwarves are, after all, the kings of siege warfare. Blockading their city could pose a major challenge--they probably have multiple supply tunnels running many miles underground, and the locations of the exit points would be a closely guarded secret. How is the dragon going to find them all? Dragons have very keen senses, but they can't see through rock. The dwarves have high-level spellcasters with access to illusion, teleportation, and other such tricks. They won't just sit there quietly and starve.

But then, that's where the treachery angle comes in. If some high-placed dwarven official betrays the locations of the outlet tunnels... perhaps one of them is big enough for the dragon to come in through it, allowing it to emerge in the very heart of the city.

 

[Beleriphon]

But then, that's where the treachery angle comes in. If some high-placed dwarven official betrays the locations of the outlet tunnels... perhaps one of them is big enough for the dragon to come in through it, allowing it to emerge in the very heart of the city.

Lets not forget that dragons can change shape. What's to stop a dragon from changing shape into a dwarf, run screaming into the citadel when the blue attacks the countryside with the rest of the farmer, traders, or whomever and then changing shape again into a dragon once its inside. That bypasses all of the exterior defenses.

 

[Dausuul]

Lets not forget that dragons can change shape. What's to stop a dragon from changing shape into a dwarf, run screaming into the citadel when the blue attacks the countryside with the rest of the farmer, traders, or whomever and then changing shape again into a dragon once its inside. That bypasses all of the exterior defenses.

Some dragons can change shape. It depends on if it has the right spells. But if shapechanging is a common trait of dragons, are the dwarves going to just let any old refugee inside the gates? At the very least, they would surely put them in some kind of holding area until they could get a wizard to check them out.

 

[KarinsDad]

Some dragons can change shape. It depends on if it has the right spells. But if shapechanging is a common trait of dragons, are the dwarves going to just let any old refugee inside the gates? At the very least, they would surely put them in some kind of holding area until they could get a wizard to check them out.

Depends on how much knowledge Dwarves have about Dragons?

 

[Derren]

Depends on how much knowledge Dwarves have about Dragons?

Why would you assume that a big metropolis like this one does not know about them?
By the rules dragons are not all that though in 5E and can't take on larger cities because they lack defenses, spells and bounded accuracy favors quantity over quality.

Everyone talks about the dragon collapsing tunnels on the dwarfs, but people forget that the dwarfs build the tunnels and it is as likely, if not more so, that they collapse tunnels on the dragon or trap it in the tunnels.