D&D 5E How did you fare against Venomfang the Young Green Dragon Lost Mine of Phandelver?

Been meaning to post this for a little while. We had a near TPK (my PC got really lucky). We were stupid 3rd level PCs...well the rest of the party was stupid. My PC had an escape plan.

Session 13 – Green Death – Venom Fang

After resting, Rasputin re-disguised himself as one of the Dragon Cultists we had defeated earlier. He scouted to the west near the tower and ruined castle. Heinrick, Brace, Gerald and I followed at a distance and kept to the trees. I used the message cantrip to communicate with Rasputin. Apparently, he saw two dead, shriveled and puckered, giant spiders that seemed to be dragged near the front door of the stone building. Then, suddenly, the sun was blocked momentarily and a young green dragon flew above and landed near Rasputin. I could not make out what Rasputin said as he was speaking some strange language (I can only assume it was Draconic because the dragon seemed to understand him), but soon after he did say something to the dragon, the dragon turned toward Heinrick and approached our advancing Dwarf Paladin.

Gerald blessed Brace, Heinrick and I, and then Rasputin fired an Eldritch blast at the dragon but missed so even though I didn’t want to fight the creature, we had committed to battle. Heinrick took a claw that opened a gash across his chest. The creature spoke in strange tongue we could not understand, but we could hear his name – Venom Fang. Brace angled for a shot, and connected with Venom Fang, which caught the dragon’s attention. The dragon flew off toward Brace, who had ducked behind a statue in the road. Heinrick took a swing at Venom Fang with his blade, but his blade bounced harmlessly off the dragon’s hide. I moved toward the northern copse of bushes and a tree and tried to inflict Venom Fang with frostbite, but his constitution was too high for my spell power to work against him. Then Venom Fang clawed and bit at Brace, knocking him down, unconscious. Then, a final claw dug into Brace and we could tell Brace was nearly dead.

Venom Fang turned back to face the others as Gerald’s sacred flame scorched the dragon for some minor damage. I created a rope trick hidden in the bushes under the tree where I was and then I moved out to get a shot at Venom Fang with my short bow, before firing the bow I yelled out to my friends, “run to the tree – meet there and I can teleport us away.”

Rasputin hexed the creature and fired another Eldritch blast. This time he did some damage, but before Venom Fang could get to him, he had to fight Heinrick who had tried to climb up his back and tail to attack him from the topside. Unfortunately, Heinrick slipped and fell so Venom Fang attacked, missing with claws, but biting for tremendous damage. Heinrick was down, unconscious but not dead.

Rasputin ran to where I had created the rope trick and tried to all out, grab the rope and climb, but he misgrabbed the rope after climbing 20’ up, and he fell, hitting the ground with a resounding thump, perhaps breaking a rib or two. Then, Venom Fang turned on Rasputin and struck him down. The dragon picked up Rasputin, the unconscious warlock, and flew up to the tower. We had no idea what had become of our companion.

Gerald seeing an opportunity, ran over to Heinrick and casted cure wounds. Heinrick told him to “run” and he proceeded to crawl toward Brace, the nearly dead rogue. Heinrick touched Brace and imbued him with a small portion of life (1 hp).

Brace, Heinrick and Gerald all started to move closer to the rope trick, but before they could get there, Rasputin’s body fell from the tower. He was dead. Then Venom Fang landed but 10’ away from us and he breathed a cloud of noxious gas. The poison engulfed at least Gerald and I. I can’t believe it didn’t kill me. Unfortunately, Gerald was not so lucky. I watched as his body contorted in painful spasms, and his skin blistered and turned green and sickly. He dropped to the ground, a quivering mass of disfigured flesh. Brace panicked and ran to the south. I ran to the rope trick. Heinrick ran with me.

I was able to get up into the extradimensional space, but when Heinrick got to the rope, he climbed up and swung himself toward the dragon rather than enter the space with me. He tried to jump on to the dragon with his sword drawn, but he was unsuccessful. Venom Fang seized the opportunity to finally down the Dwarf paladin, and in the next few seconds, the dragon swallowed the Dwarf entirely.

I pulled up the rope and hid inside the rope trick space, hoping that the dragon would not stay around when the spell ended. It seemed as if Brace ran off to the south so I was unsure where he had gone or what fate had visited him.

While I waited, I rested and bandaged my wounds as best I could. My lungs burned, but I started to fell a little better.

When the rope trick ended, I climbed down and tried to quietly make my way to the east so I could retrace our steps back to the side of the town and down to the road we came in on. I made too much noise and the dragon flew down toward me. I ran to the barracks building to the east and dove for the door. The dragon flew by and clawed me once, tearing into my flesh, nearly knocking me unconscious (1hp). I managed to open the door and dive in and hide myself in the middle of the barracks. As I was in there, I could hear the dragon landing on top of the building. It was tearing at the roof trying to get at me. I casted another rope trick and hid myself in the extradimensional space once more.

When the spell ended, I made my way down and saw that the top of the roof had been ripped open, but a portion of the south rooms seemed to still have a roof. I hid myself in the enclosed area and spent the night without sleeping. I was badly wounded and low on energy. Eating rations and drinking some water kept me from being overly fatigued, but I was in bad condition. After a few more hours, I snuck out of a window on the east side and snuck my way to the edge of town. I was lucky not to encounter the dragon or any other hostile creatures, but I was at least 20 miles from Waterdeep, and a few days through the woods to Phandalin.

I started my way toward Waterdeep, and saw some farm lands. Some of the farm hands saw me and rushed to my aid. They took me in and tended to my wounds. That’s were I am now. Three of my comrades are dead, and I don’t know what happened to Brace. When I’m stronger, I’ll make my way back to Phandalin. Perhaps Brace made it back. In any event, I’ll need to join up with some new adventurers and get my life back on track.


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Here is the rest of the campaign - It started as Phandelver and then morphed into Strahd. http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ournal-for-Our-Phandelver-Campaign&highlight=

Venomfang Experience

My party tricked the cultists into thinking we were members that had already met with Venomfang, the cultists went into speak with him, then all of them were killed by his breath attack. Then a coin flip decided whether we lived or died since we angered him. The coin said we died, so Venomfang began attacking. The session ended at the beginning of combat. The next session was a 6 hour long fight against Venomfang. The Wizard distracted him by monologuing, and the Barbarian got on top of him. The druid living in the town restrained the dragon and we all began attacking. We got him down to half health and he began flying away, but the Barbarian was still on top of him. The barbarian ended up killing Venomfang because ne never fell off.

Fire Brand said:

What’s happened to your party (or as a DM, the party) when you (they) encountered Venomfang the Young Green Dragon in Part 3: The Spider’s Web 7. Dragon’s Tower encounter (pp 32-33)?

Did you talk to him to avoid combat?

Avoid him undetected? (does a DM give any XP for that?)

Fight and somehow take him to down half HP to make him fly away per the adventure notes?

TPK?

Run away!?

Other tactics and resolution?

Side notes: I haven’t checked to see if his XP value makes a difference in leveling-up throughout the entire adventure ie. do you have to deal with him somehow to get at least a certain amount of XP?

[minor spoiler] ‘Hew’ the Dwarven +1 Battleaxe in his treasure that he doesn’t know about helps role play because it was used in a Dwarf's feud with dryads. So it makes the wielder feel uneasy in a forest. Was anyone able to get it from his lair maybe by distracting him (like telling him his mom told him he had to go home for dinner that tastes much better than what’s in front of him)?

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So.... we were using the pregen characters, at level 3. The druid warned us about the dragon, and we saw him fly off. Our wizard's familiar scouted the tower while the dragon was out. He noted outloud that there was a chest of gold. Our rouge runs in and loots the place. Our scent is all over the place and a fight is all but certain. We also had previously fought and killed a few of the cult before realizing they were chicken naughty word nobodies. So, we managed to get a full night sleep before he came back (thank god) and set up his horde in the town square with the dead cultists. So when he comes to the square, the npc druid caste faerie fire, failed dex save. The wizard casts lightning from the scroll in the dragons lair, failed save (36 damage?) And our two ranged fighters shot their arrows, with one nat 20. Then we rolled initiative, dragon was second. He got another arrow, which brought all the damage before his first turn to 82. He was below 50% and ran away. We got the drop on him and didn't get a single point of damage before he ran away... I had cast protection from poison on me (dwarf cleric) and the other tank, and drank the potion of flying. Never used any of it. Ended up putting the halfling on my back and hunting spiders so I wouldn't waste the flying potion.

We actually managed to talk him into going away.
We defeated the cultists, gave Venomfang the gems and the cultist leader's head. After he decided to talk with us, we suggested he moved to the cave where we found Sildar Hallwinter, saying a grand dragon like him shouldn't live in such a small tower.
We told him we wiped the cave clean and for him to believe us, we showed him the only goblin that came out of there alive. A goblin we called "onahole", as we had cut his arms and legs off. Venomfang seemed amused and he agreed to check the cave out as we waited for him. (we had 3 people that spoke draconic, including a dragonborn and a bard with silver tongue, so communicating with him was pretty smooth).
However our Bard tried stealing some gold from his lair while he was away and the dragon, of course, figured it out. We gave a bunch of our coins to him to forgive us and he kicked us away. It ended quite well nonetheless. It was pretty fun.

My balanced party of 6 had a pretty intense overall experience, and the closest thing to a TPK I've ever run (sort of an "effective TPK"). The PCs were a tiefling eldritch knight fighter, a human open hand monk, a human life domain cleric, a dragonborn arcane trickster rogue, a human wild mage sorcerer, and a drow transmuter wizard.

First, I was upfront with the party about how I deal with dragons. I love dragons, including D&D dragons. I like all monsters to get their due and be more than just sword fodder, but I explained that when I'm DMing I role-play dragons as if they were my personal PCs. They are going to plan smart, fight to survive, and make good use of all of their resources.

Before the party met the dragon, I brushed up on the typical personality traits of green dragons by reading material about them in the MM, and I probably referenced some older edition material just for good measure. So I had an idea of how green dragons in particular operate and her basic history, motives, etc. Everything she did involved me planning out exactly what she would do between sessions and sticking with it. None of this was arbitrary last minute adaptation.

They initially met Venomfang by walking into her tower as 4th-level characters. She wasn't sure whether she could take them or that wanted to get beat up unnecessarily, so she pretended to be a nice dragon. Since dragons aren't always true to their species preferred alignment (just the vast majority of the time), this was plausible. I interpreted her "young" age category as being equivalent to a youngish teenager. She put on a show of being kind of a nice, quirky girl and the party mostly bought it (the players enjoyed the show too). They left on amicable terms and went about their business. (She may have given them some area info (which may or may not have been true) but I can't recall the details.)

Either that night or the next, as they were camped out in the grasslands, she swooped in (beating the Wisdom (Perception) of the character taking that watch) and surprise attacked them at night (she wanted to add their treasure to her hoard!), waking them up with a nice blast of poison gas from above. They scrambled into action immediately. While it started out looking grim, they managed to drive her off, with the eldritch knight using his wand of magic missiles to do some serious damage as she was fleeing. Had she stayed around for another round, she probably would have died. As it turned out, even though she surprised them, and even though some of the party were down and making death saves, it was a pretty solid and epic win for the party.

But that wasn't enough for them. One of my players felt strongly that we should accept our win and move on, but the party vote came down to getting enough XP to hit level 5 and then taking the fight back to her at her lair.

Venomfang was not idle for those next few weeks. After her humiliating defeat, she expected these adventurers who knew where she lived to come after her. She went into the forest and used some of her treasure to hire hobgoblins to work for her (there might have been a green hag involved too, but I can't recall). She had them fortify and man her tower, and she planned how to deal with returning adventurers.

When the party came back, they immediately noticed the changes to the tower, and soon realized that the arrow slits that kept disgorging arrows at them had internal metal covers that regularly snapped over them while the archers reloaded (I took advantage of 5e action economy and a simple plate and pulley mechanism so that the window covers opened for the archer when they stood on the weight-triggered plate in front of them, but closed as soon as they stepped off and away (at the end of their turn). That wasn't really too much of a problem for the party, but it did prevent them from lobbing a fireball in through an arrow slit.

When they got close, they had to deal with a fog cloud forcing them fight the various hidden hobgoblins without knowing their numbers or location to start. Stacks of rocks and newly build rooftop battlements were taken advantage of by the hobgoblin defenders. Still, the party persevered and made it into the tower alcove.

The tower annex building was filled with flammable wood, which a hobgoblins set on fire. At least the fog cloud's area only extended partway into the building. Now the party had no way into the tower proper but to pass through the flaming rubble and smoke in silence.

Or rather, in silence, because that's the spell that was covering the whole bottom of the tower and most of the annex building area. (If they moved over to a corner they could get a few feet to cast a spell.) At least the party made it through easy enough. They had been beaten up some, but there were still plenty of hit points and spell slots to work with.

Once they entered the cylindrical tower proper (still in silence) they still faced visibility issues. I can't remember the exact mechanism (like all my dragons, the dragon had spellcasting as per the MM variant rule, and there was a hobgoblin caster amongst the hired mercenaries), but there were visibility issues in the tower as well. The dragon was up at the top (which now had a metal roof, but had a dragon sized door in the top side), and hobgoblin mercenaries (including the caster) manned the spiraling staircase. This was not going to be pretty.

I don't remember all the details of this fight (I strictly tracked everything on a virtual tabletop battlemap), but I know that eventually the silence was removed and the drow used faerie fire to counter visibility issues. The party lost a lot of resources trying to fight their way up the stairs dealing with silence part of the time and the other issues. Eventually someone got near the top, Venomfang breathed poison down at them, and then things really got desparate.

I don't remember all the details, but the way this ended was with some of the party dead inside the tower, at least one member slain by Venomfang outside the tower, and the badly injured drow wizard barely sneaking away amidst the last of the carnage (she wasn't abandoning her allies, they were all dead and there was nothing she could do).

Naturally, the players (particularly the one who had voted against going after the dragon in the first place) didn't find this to be the most satisfying end of the campaign, though we had already finished the main plot elements of LMoP, but I added a couple of epilogues to give it a better after taste. The first one was scenes of the deceased characters in their respective afterlives (based on alignment, deities, and inclinations), getting the "So and so is attempting to resurrect you, do you accept?" treatment (with a bit more flair). They basically all said yes, and that was the end of the campaign.

The other epilogue was actually a follow up one-shot adventure (took 2 or 3 session). This one had a party of 20th-level characters facing a kraken off the Sword Coast. I gave each player the option for reprise the roles of their original PC (now resurrected and 20th-level), but I believe only one of them took me up on it, with the rest of them opting to try out new characters for the one-shot. That one (the tiefling fighter) was enough for the follow up aspect though. This adventure started with the 20th-level tiefling clearly wearing a green dragon-tooth dagger on his belt.

It was pretty intense, but overall a pretty cool experience. The only regret I have was the slight friction between the one of our friends who wasn't on board with going after the dragon but went along with the party anyway, and still found the experience unsatisfying. I suppose that's a relatively minor thing--no friendships were lost or gamers rage-quit, I just like to have a more general sense of satisfaction for all participants.

And that, is why one does not simply kill a dragon.

Horwath said:

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It's a good thing.

We got lucky. We had two people casting entangle. I was tempest cleric and cast gust of wind.

there were some newbs with us and I might not have engaged A DRAGON myself but we did.

we wrecked house. We n person was close to death but we had enough entangles to trap him and could pet dm blow his chlorine away with gust of wind.

how did I know he could blow chlorine gas? I suspect I made some janky knowledge roll or the Druids did.

anyway, my cleric ended up getting enough hide for a mantle of green scales (just for looks, no armor bonus).

I also ended up with a +1 mace and gauntlets or ogre power! And stopped playing him after the module. May have to dig him out!!

Resurrecting this thread reminds me to tell this story (this may or may not be a good thing, of course).

So, I took a group of coworkers through LMoP. I ended up adding quite a few details and changes, particularly an NPC hag who was unhappy that her favourite pub had been overrun by some nasties, and became something of an ally when the party cleaned out the pub, slaughtered the vampire spawn that was behind it and retrieved the deeds to the building for her. Yes, this is relevant.

So they finally decided to deal with the dragon after the resolution of the main plot. Most of the party were a bit wary of actually fighting a dragon, but they latched on to "it's intelligent" and decided to... challenge it to a card game. While trying to take advantage of it with strong drink. Specifically, they contacted the hag (who now runs the inn they gave her the deeds to) and asked for some beer that could knock a dragon out. There was some negotiation involving the party barbarian offering the hag free choice of his ... eye collection (I don't know why the barbarian has an eye collection. I do know that it is quite extensive at this point. And lo, the hag did indeed take one of his eyes... but it's okay, she replaced it with one from his collection).

So, the party ride in to the ruins on a custom wagon that consists mainly of a huge barrel of "special" beer, two smaller kegs of normal beer and a collection of custom beer mugs, one of which they had commissioned for the dragon. They blunder through the town and finally get its attention, where they flatter it and offer to work for it if it will play cards with them. Things resolve to a few rounds of cards where they agree that if they win, the dragon leaves and if the dragon wins, they get eaten. I ended up improvising something where they could try cheating (sleight of hand), playing honestly (Intelligence (proficiency in cards)), or playing randomly (untyped skill check), with drunkenness (particularly from the two party members who ended up drinking the special beer) granting levels of exhaustion.

It finally came down to a two round clutch, where the players won a round that kept them alive, then the dragon finally failed its last CON save against the beer and fell asleep.

And then they sold the dragon to the hag. For "parts".

Warpiglet-7 said:

how did I know he could blow chlorine gas? I suspect I made some janky knowledge roll or the Druids did.

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I am confused, are you talking about the dragon's poison breath? It hasn't been chlorine gas in a long time and there is no way to disperse it with wind. RAW it doesn't last past the dragon using it and there is nothing to disperse anyway.