NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 6627253" data-attributes="member: 97077">My 1st-level fighter drove away an adult blue dragon in Hoard of the Dragon Queen with a critical hit from a ballista. So it's doable! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />With reasonable notice given to the PCs prior to their encountering the blue dragon, I think the party will do okay, provided they prepare themselves accordingly. There is likely to be at least one PC death though. A cleric in the party is well-advised to have the components necessary to cast revivify and stay the heck out of the way as much as possible.What you can also do is have the adult blue dragon be the foe, but give it goals other than "Kill all PCs." During the encounter, the dragon sets about pursuing its goal, attacking from time to time when it is unable to make forward progress on said goal. If the PCs can prevent the dragon from achieving its goals, it is effectively defeated.Here's an example: Rather than have the dragon encounter in its lair (which gives it additional abilities), consider having the encounter occur in the desert. An armed caravan is heading from one city to another, carrying priceless gems to pay as a dowry. One of the caravan's outriders is secretly a cultist that worships dragons and has tipped off the blue dragon to the fact that hidden somewhere in this caravan is the legendary Sapphire of Qurratul-Ayn. Blue dragons are known hoarders of gems, so all it wants is to find this gem and take it back to its lair. The caravan consists of a dozen wagons or other conveyances that the dragon must Search (Basic Rules, page 72) in order to find the sapphire. (Choose one caravan that has it, then roll randomly to see which caravan the dragon targets.) If it finds it, it leaves and the PCs have effectively been defeated. If it cannot get the gem before it takes 175 hp damage or if the gem is effectively hidden with magic or the like, it flees - the PCs have defeated it.Now imagine this cool, cinematic scene of the dragon burrowing through the sand, smashing wagons to bits, camels, horses, and caravan riders scattering like mad, while the PCs try to play keep-away with the sapphire.</blockquote>

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