D&D 5E Is Neil Gaiman Wrong?

[Paul Farquhar]

Gaiman is right, you player is wrong. The whole point is that (metaphorical) dragons are extremely difficult to kill. But not impossible. D&D rules reflect that.

And if you need an army, then you go and get a goddamn army.

 

[Maxperson]

Can dragons be defeated?

Sure they can, but is it plausible? I know, I know, plausibility, is something subjective when we are talking about a magical fantasy world, so let me better explain where I am coming from and where am I going.

I have a player that totally despise the idea of beings from the size of a dragon's toe facing a Gargantuan Magical Intelligent beast. He can't concede on that. There is no argument, no magic weapon, no number of warriors, nothing. In his words "We would need an army, all fully equipped with very powerful weapons, and a lot of luck to get a small chance to survive. There is no such thing as a dragon hunt."

Neil Gaiman said that one of the reasons why he wrote Coraline was because he wanted to tell his kids that dragons could be defeated. He even quoted GK Chesterton on it.
So, how do you cope with that?
How do you make you dragon quests plausible and interesting?
Is my player right? Or Gaiman/Chesterton are ?
What do you think?

30 or 40 wasp stings can kill you. These beings the size of the dragon's toe have magic items and spells more potent against the dragon than a wasp sting is to a human.

 

[Mort]

The thing with D&D that you can trace all the way back (see Gods, Demigods & Heroes, Deities and Demigods) is that if you give something hit points, someone is going to want to kill it.

But no, an enemy that cannot be defeated (but may have to be tricked, bypassed, or merely survived) is not boring. Far from it.

What is boring to me is the idea that everything must be defeated, that every character must be the mythic hero, the Avenger slaying Thanos.

Some things are unwinnable; at the very least, sometimes you just have to change the victory conditions.

You'll note that that's actually exactly what I said in my post - overcoming something doesn't mean killing it - it means overcoming the challenge.

And what I said was boring was just rolling over and just saying "we can't prevail..." There are plenty of ways to prevail that aren't - kill the monster.

 

[Fenris-77]

Meh, this is one of those core fantasy things that depend so much on personal buy-in to various tropes that it's going to be impossible to really get a fix on in any general sense. Dragons are pretty much the Ur monster in the fantasy genre. The importance they play in the genre directly indexes the variety of depictions and twists we see. Orcs tend to be orcs in a far more stable way than dragons are 'dragons' in fantasy. As the Ur monster, dragons will also get defined, to a certain point anyway, in opposition to the genre niche a campaign inhabits. High fantasy, low fantasy, grim fantasy, four colour fantasy, etc etc etc.

This is maybe a little more obviously true when you examine dragons from game to game rather than from campaign to campaign within D&D, but I suspect dragons have a whole lotta variance even within D&D.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

And what I said was boring was just rolling over and just saying "we can't prevail..."

You failed to understand the principal lesson. Sometimes, an adventurer cannot cheat death.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

Can dragons be defeated?

Sure they can, but is it plausible? I know, I know, plausibility, is something subjective when we are talking about a magical fantasy world, so let me better explain where I am coming from and where am I going.

I have a player that totally despise the idea of beings from the size of a dragon's toe facing a Gargantuan Magical Intelligent beast. He can't concede on that. There is no argument, no magic weapon, no number of warriors, nothing. In his words "We would need an army, all fully equipped with very powerful weapons, and a lot of luck to get a small chance to survive. There is no such thing as a dragon hunt."

Neil Gaiman said that one of the reasons why he wrote Coraline was because he wanted to tell his kids that dragons could be defeated. He even quoted GK Chesterton on it.
So, how do you cope with that?
How do you make you dragon quests plausible and interesting?
Is my player right? Or Gaiman/Chesterton are ?
What do you think?

The biggest issue I see with your player is the size. In D&D dragons are not so big as to be un-killable. Many of the whales humans hunted historically were much larger. In 5e an ancient dragon is around 50-75 long. That is really big, but not so big that a sword or spear or even arrows couldn’t injure it. Heck, people hunt elephants and whales with spears and bows.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

The biggest issue I see with your player is the size. In D&D dragons are not so big as to be un-killable. Many of the whales humans hunted historically were much larger. In 5e an ancient dragon is around 50-75 long. That is really big, but not so big that a sword or spear or even arrows couldn’t injure it. Heck, people hunt elephants and whales with spears and bows.

We are, of course, discussing the genius-level pachyderms and whales that can polymorph, cast spells, fly, and breath voluminus amounts of fire on parties?

I kid. The main issue with dragons in D&D is that the majority of DMs play them as if they were elephants. Standing there, smacking the party with their trunk a time or two and waiting for the party to focus fire on them until they are D-E-D .... as opposed to hyper-intelligent and long-lived beasts that will sure as heck be using advanced tactics, henchmen, and all of their resources and never, ever allowing the party to corner them in a one-on-one or fair fight.

 

[bedir than]

Okay, Kirk.

What is this? The Kobayashi Maru of D&D scenarios?

If you fight you lose. The secret is to not fight

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

We are, of course, discussing the genius-level pachyderms and whales that can polymorph, cast spells, fly, and breath voluminus amounts of fire on parties?

I kid. The main issue with dragons in D&D is that the majority of DMs play them as if they were elephants. Standing there, smacking the party with their trunk a time or two and waiting for the party to focus fire on them until they are D-E-D .... as opposed to hyper-intelligent and long-lived beasts that will sure as heck be using advanced tactics, henchmen, and all of their resources and never, ever allowing the party to corner them in a one-on-one or fair fight.

Sure, but not all dragons are “hyper-intelligent” or spell casters. I don’t remember their 5e stats, but in 1e some were not much above beasts

 

[Mort]

You failed to understand the principal lesson. Sometimes, an adventurer cannot cheat death.

And Sometimes they can. Are you saying they shouldn't even try because sometimes they can't -because why even adventure then? Why not just get a trade/become an accountant?

What's more, how is this actually relevant to the question - can/should characters overcome a dragon in the game?

I, literally, have no idea what you're trying to say/proved here.