Best Dragon Battle you've ever experienced.

[RangerWickett]

I'm curious what is the best fight against a dragon you have ever witnessed, played in, run, or heard about. I personally have had only fair and modest dragon battles, and I know that BADD would be a little displeased with me for it, but I'm hoping some of you have epic stories of grand battles with the most impressive of all monsters.

In my experience, the best fight I've run against a dragon was actually a bit comical. A gnome wizard who looked a lot like Yugi from Yu-Gi-Oh! commanded a white dragon with blue eyes to attack the party. The dragon wasn't much of a terror, since the party was smart and scattered to avoid its breath weapon. It was fairly small, just 'large' size. One PC actually readied an action to jump onto it when it came in close enough to attack him, and an NPC ally with a whip managed to 'trip' it by grabbing its wing, causing it to stall. It was able to tear through the NPC and cleave into the guy who jumped onto it, so it was more of a brawl than I ever expected a dragon fight to be.

Finally, the dragon got airborne again and just started strafing with its breath weapon. One of the PCs (a fighter/sorcerer) had devised a spell that let him burn points of constitution to deal extra damage, and combined with spirited charge, a heavy lance, and a horse that jumps very well, he dealt over one hundred points of damage to the dragon in one hit. It died.

 

[Simplicity]

One of the funnier encounters was when an Elven Rothe hunt was interrupted by a green dragon, who had come out of its lair looking for some easy buffalo meat. The PCs quickly flanked the young dragon trying to keep the creature from getting too many of them with a breath weapon... only to have another green dragon pounce out the trees behind them... and now they were all clustered for the second dragon's breath weapon.

After a large battle, the two dragons were killed, and the players just continued with the hunt... Later that day, the PCs began to notice that the elves around them seemed to have a whole lot of nice equipment and jewels. It didn't occur to them to search for a lair...

 

[megamania]

Low level PC party ventured into a dark cave with swampy black water. Inside was a very young black dragon. The trick- water was two-three feet. If the party waded through they were bitten. If they tried to climb along the shore they were spit on. It was a game of Marco Polo in many ways. The real fun was when a PC found first the "treasure" of the dragon then a deep pit under the water...he was wearing scale mail with a bastard sword. Sunk like a rock and was quickly targeted by the dragon.

I know they finally beat it but was a drawn out process.

 

[Epametheus]

A battle with an Ancient Green (I think that's the age category) -- this dragon had a bit of a grudge against us, and had taken some hostages. After a long and merry chase across a kingdom, we were lead to a small island.

On a pedestal on the shore, was a case full of Potions of Water Breathing and instructions to dive.

And so, we wound up having to fight a green dragon and its human allies 200 ft underwater.

The sorcerer died, but that was a regular occurence. And I was playing a bard, so my character was totally useless.

But everyone else got to be pretty damn cool. Our cleric and an enemy wizard had a battle of water elementals, our dragon knight got into some weird absurdities of mounted combat (his juvenile dragon cohort polymorphed herself into a large shark, and he pretty much just held on for dear life), our melee bruiser went toe-to-claw with the dragon and somehow lived (he actually beat its grapple check whenever it tried to Snatch him), our fighter/rogue flanked the dragon with the fighter (and was holding the spot where the sorcerer targetted his area spells, since her reflex save was so high that he could never actually hurt her), and my paladin cohort suceeded in disarming the fighters that were accompaning the dragon (getting disarmed when you're 200 ft underwater is pretty damn inconvenient; it put those people right out of the fight).

Our best moment? When we nailed the dragon for so much damage that the cleric who was soaking damage for it through Shield Other (he had a Staff of Healing) about 100 miles away simply keeled over dead. Our cleric suceeded in dimensionally anchoring it that round, and so that was pretty much the end of Grandma.

It was quite possibly the coolest battle we've ever had.

 

[Kai Lord]

The sorcerer died, but that was a regular occurence. And I was playing a bard, so my character was totally useless.

LMAO. Sounds like an awesome fight, too.

 

[RangerWickett]

Our best moment? When we nailed the dragon for so much damage that the cleric who was soaking damage for it through Shield Other (he had a Staff of Healing) about 100 miles away simply keeled over dead. Our cleric suceeded in dimensionally anchoring it that round, and so that was pretty much the end of Grandma.

It was quite possibly the coolest battle we've ever had.

It sounds very cool and dynamic. Not to be a sourpuss, but shield other has a range of like 50 ft. If you leave the area, you get hit hard. *grin*

 

[Epametheus]

It sounds very cool and dynamic. Not to be a sourpuss, but shield other has a range of like 50 ft. If you leave the area, you get hit hard. *grin*

I know; I pointed that out to the DM after the battle (we didn't even know about the cleric until we found the corpse in the dragon's lair).

 

[ph34r]

I don't know if this is the best battle but it sure is the most memorable encounter with a dragon...

To make a long story short, the party was walking through the forst near a town and they saw a great wyrm red dragon (with the half fire elemental template) fly over head. Halfling decides he's gonna throw a dagger at it...chaos ensues...near TPK. It would have been a TPK if my character wouldn't have been in a different area at the time.

 

[BASHMAN]

Black Dragon

In OD&D I was playing a halfling master. They have a spell called assume animal shape, which is basically similar to polymorph self, but much cooler (a 7th level priest spell). Anywho, when the party was attacked by a black dragon, my first action was to cast this spell and turn into a Black Dragon (the spell description says you can turn into dragons, but you don't gain their breath weapon).

I then acted as a shield for the rest of the party, as the dragon's acid breath did nothing to me! It was forced to use bites and claws on me. I managed to parry one of its attacks so well (I rolled a crit, then another crit, then another crit in a row) that I actually damaged it while parrying.

I had been planning on using this spell to turn into a dragon for a while. In fact, when I learned it, I devoted a weapon proficiency slot to "Unarmed combat in dragon form!" That is why I was actually able to block his attacks. The dragon was very surprised that I actually knew what I was doing and started striking him for damage with claws and tail slaps, and again, rolling a crit!

Anyway, ever since then, whenever we encounter a dragon, I turn into one of the same color to block its breath weapons and force it to fight with its natural weaponry, while the party pelts it with magic and missile weapons from a safe distance.

 

[Bloodstone Press]

The first dragon battle that comes to my mind is one that happened with a group I didn't play with very often. It was back in 2e. They were using a lot of house rules and taking actions that were inspired by various video games. However, I caught on pretty quick and thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to do some unusual but entertaining things in combat.

My favorite part was after we sneaked into its layer and awakened it. The dragon was looking around, trying to spot us. My drow archer lurking in the access tunnel boldly stepped into view, threw his hood back and, after striking a dramatic and intimidating pose, made two called shots, one at each eye. I rolled two 20s in a row and the dragon was blinded. After that, it was easy for the fighters to chop up.