Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Riastlin" data-source="post: 5588511" data-attributes="member: 94022">[MENTION=97538]Nullzone[/MENTION]:  Those are some great ideas.  Doing seemingly "little" things like this when designing the lair of a red dragon for instance, can go a long way toward making an encounter that much more memorable and challenging.   This is actually the type of thing that can make Cal a really dangerous recurring villain.  The first encounter may well be out in the open or some other relatively neutral ground.  The PC's batter her around until she sprouts a new head and then flies off.   Next time, she chooses the terrain, finding a nice place to ambush the party.  Maybe there's lots of difficult terrain to make it more difficult for them to move around and avoid her attacks.  Still though, she gets battered again.  Now, she's really worried about the PCs.  They've proven that the first encounter was no fluke.  They are powerful, and they are generally well prepared.   She retreats and now spends a great deal of time and resources learning as much about the PCs as she can.  Learning their strengths and their weaknesses.  Perhaps she decides that they are not worth the trouble of searching out and getting revenge -- after all, they have made her more powerful as she now has five heads.  So she decides to hole up in her lair, making small forays only when needing to feed -- or perhaps just has some of her followers bring her food.  She's worried about the PCs though so she makes sure her lair has as much synergy with her attacks as possible.  If the PCs want her treasure -- and her heads -- they'll have a heck of a fight on their hands.  The entire battlefield will be against them to an extent.  Sure, there'll be places they can walk -- after all her worshippers need to come in to bring her food, treasure, etc., but by and large, this is her playground.  When the PCs are defending their homes, they'll make the battlefield as friendly to them as they can, so its only natural someone like Cal would do the same. Then if you're truly a rat bastard DM, give her an exit route through a lava stream or somesuch.  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devil.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":devil:" title="Devil    :devil:" data-shortname=":devil:" /></blockquote>

Verification