D&D 5E Dragon Dilemma - Opinions? Advice? All are welcome!

[Sword of Spirit]

Sounds tricky! I think your assessment of the situation is sound.

The question you are going to get is whether the PCs went after the dragon "stupidly" or whether it was just bad luck. Ie, did they know what they were getting into and risk bad odds, or was it a random wilderness encounter roll when they had no particular reason to believe such dragons were likely to show up?

In the first case, the general assumption is that reasonable players will respond to the TPK with, "Well, yeah, we had that coming." In the second case, while I think it can be fun, most people respond much more poorly.

So what I'd be doing in the mean time is planning for the TPK. What are the options for afterwards? Let's assume everyone really wants to keep playing this campaign with these characters, since that's the most common modern assumption.

Here are some suggestions:

-You could have them play through a scenario in the Outer Planes to be able to get returned to life if you want to go really fun.

Or, if there isn't any major time constraint that signals campaign failure conditions, you could advance the timeline and have an NPC resurrect their characters, with some complications. Lots of options here:
-The NPC could be friendly and helpful, but only able to do so much. Maybe they got resurrected in an inconvenient location or time.
-The NPC could be insist on some sort of payment, so they basically have to take time out of their life to pay them back with a quest of the NPC's choosing.
-The NPC could be unfriendly and resurrect them with magical strings attached. The Azure Bonds novel (or Curse of the Azure Bonds computer game) is an example.
-The timeline could be advanced a very long time. Whether that means decades, centuries, or millennia is for you to decide. Whatever was going on in the world has long since past, but now these adventurers/heroes/mercenaries/scoundrels (whatever) from the past has popped into this new world. What comes next?

The important thing is to make the consequences feel like a real deal, so it's not just a DM Deus Ex Machina, but feels like something that would be possible or likely to happen in the setting. So instead of having the resurrecting NPC randomly stumble across their corpses, come up with a whole story around it. Someone might have intentionally gone searching for them for some reason, or they might have stumbled upon them somehow with a fun explanation. (A little humor could be good here, unless your group doesn't like humor, and then I would be sad for you all.)

And, there's still that 1 in 3 chance that they pull off the escape, so you don't have to totally plot it out ahead of time. Just having some ideas to noodle around can help you deal with the fallout if they do all die though. "Don't worry, the campaign isn't over...this is D&D."

 

[Deset Gled]

What if the dragon simply didn't attack the PCs again? Seriously, there are major reasons the dragon could simply go away without pulling any punches.

First, why does the dragon even care about the PCs? You've haven't given a background, so maybe this is something that requires more info. But if there's no compelling reason, then, well, there's no compelling reason. The dragon got hurt, he goes away. End of story.

Second, you calculated the odds that the party has a 33% chance at success if they face the dragon again. Any intelligent dragon should not want those odds. A smart dragon that plans to grow up to gargantuan would never take those odds. They want darn near 100% odds of success. They live for millennia. They bide their time. The do not recklessly attack, or they wouldn't have grown up to be an adult dragon. Have the familiar find the party, assess the situation, and accurately report back to the dragon. The dragon then disappears. Oh, that dragon will be back. You can make sure the party knows that. But when it comes back, it will have more than 33% odds of winning.

Edit: I realized I read the odds wrong. Oops.

I think the point still stands, though. The dragon won't attack unless they know they'll win. So, all the party has to do is fake it a little. Enough illusion magic to make the familiar report that there's a chance the dragon could lose, and it will wait for a better attack option.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

First, that underwater plan is really clever and unless the dragon knows they have such magic, I wouldn't assume it would automatically realise what is happening. Even if it managed to track the character to the river, it might just assume the characters crossed the river or swam a bit to some direction and then got on the shore. So it might waste a lot of time searching around the river but not in the river.

And the quasit having int 7 and passive perception of 10 won't find anything even if it was there, so the dragon really cannot rely on it, so it might need to again waste time checking several directions.

Also are there any other intelligent creatures in the area? People who the characters could convince to help them, if not in fighting the dragon, then by healing or distracting the dragon so that the characters could escape.

And the legendary resistances do not reset right? Do the character have anything left for which that would matter? And if things do not work out, being killed by a dragon is among the coolest ways to go.

Though whilst you said the dragon would not leave any of them alive if it won, nor would accept surrender, are you absolutely sure of that? Could it perhaps kill the others, and leave one character alive, and tell them to run and tell everyone to not to mess with this dragon. Dragons are vain, it might be appealing to its ego to have its terrible reputation to spread.

Then you could have a cool connective narrative of the lone survivor recruiting a new party to take revenge on the dragon.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

The new Planescape adventure has them waking up at 3rd level. Gotta roll with the 5e times, not those mean 2e ones!

I have actually read the opening chapter but forgot what level they were supposed to be. But yeah, I come from those olden time and tend to default to the mean side. I am trying to do better.

 

[CreamCloud0]

So, here is the situation:

Last session the PCs (four 7th levels) encountered an Adult Black Dragon (CR 14) and its Quasit familiar. I won't bore you with the details of the encounter, but summarize the conclusion.

One PC dead. Our "healer" has max HP, but a single 1st-level slot left. Our "sniper/scout" is fine--no damage and still has full (albeit minor) spells available. Our "tank" was at 1 hp (went down but Relentless Endurance kicked in) but the healer bumped him up to about 20ish IIRC. We have a Giant Constrictor Snake as well via Staff of the Python at our disposal.

The dragon was down to under 10 hp when it managed to fly away and out of the PCs' range. It has no Legendary Resistance left and its familiar was killed in the fight. Its only spell remaining is find familiar.

We ended the session just at the end of the battle.

The PCs have a good plan. Used the water breathing they have remaining (nearly a full 24 hours) to "walk" down stream under the river to help escape detection. Find a decent place to hide out, get in a short rest, and move on, hopefully avoiding detection. The short rest will replenish hit points well enough and the fighter's features, but the "healer" won't regain any spells, and they are still down in number.

The dragon has flown away to "lick his wounds". He will cast find familiar again (since he hasn't used it today) and have his familar begin the search for the PCs. Then the dragon will also short rest, recovering nearly all his HP for round 2.

I've already done "all the calculations" concerning the time the familiar will take searching and backtracking (having not found the PCs) and meet its master. When the dragon continues the hunt, the PCs have only about a 1 in 3 chance of evading discovery.

Here's the dilemma: down one PC, and barely successful at defeating the dragon the first time, I see little chance of the PCs escaping a TPK if it comes to another fight. Talking their way out of it is most likely too far gone at this point and the one PC who stood a decent chance is the one dead. Fleeing will probably result in them being hunted down one at a time. Surrender just isn't in the nature of the dragon to accept IMO, especially after suffering the humilation of the first defeat.

So, as I currently see it... if the PCs manage to evade the dragon, all is well. However, if not, I see this coming to another battle and round two will nearly certainly be a TPK unless (as DM) I decide to intervine--which personally I am loathe to do.

Any thoughts? I will feel badly if there is a TPK, but as impartial referee I don't feel good about making it "so the players survive" (even if not somehow "winning").

EDIT: the PCs are moving at slow pace to allow them to Stealth all the time.

Get the party to make a few group stealth checks, to determine how long it takes for the familiar to track them down, better checks means more time, then give them a perception check to notice it when it finds them to initiate a battle to kill it before it flies off (they always notice it the check is just to see if they can initiate combat in time), let it drop a few taunts while in battle or fleeing about how the dragon will seek them out to finish the job, if it escapes or dies (similar to the stealth checks killing it gives them some extra time before the dragon narrows in on them) either way the party now knows the dragon is hunting them down and this initiates some urgency to either drop the half-speed stealth to haul buttock or find somewhere to hole up and hide better while they can recover more.

 

[ezo]

under water I'd skip that, but then the water resistance is probably slowing me down anyway... my question was more whether the dragoon has enough room to swim in it, because if he does not, he might well miss them altogether. Sounds like in many places he would not be able to

Correct, he won't be able to swim most of the time, but will simply walk upstream while searching for them. Since he can breath underwater, he can put his head under the water, etc. With his senses and affinity for water, I can't easily justify granting him disadvantage to find them, but even so his passive Perception is still 16. That will help the odds, certainly... so I'll have to give that more thought.

The question you are going to get is whether the PCs went after the dragon "stupidly" or whether it was just bad luck. Ie, did they know what they were getting into and risk bad odds, or was it a random wilderness encounter roll when they had no particular reason to believe such dragons were likely to show up?

First, why does the dragon even care about the PCs? You've haven't given a background, so maybe this is something that requires more info. But if there's no compelling reason, then, well, there's no compelling reason. The dragon got hurt, he goes away. End of story.

BACKGROUND:

The PCs killed a pair of Hydras in a swamp which the dragon was reluctant to tangle with head on, and then later cleared an underwater cave system which contained some magical crystals sahuagin were using to open a portal to the Elemental Plane of Water, flooding the swamp region and towns downriver.

After defeating the sahuagin and closing the portal, the PCs took the magical crystals with them. The dragon's quasit discovered this and has been trailing the PCs for a few weeks since with the dragon lurking further back. The dragon found a deep section of river to launch its attack from, using control water to create a vortex, capturing the keelboat the party was on. I "dropped a hint" from the quasit about "master getting the magic shards" but the players didn't understand that the dragon's main concern was acquiring the magic crystals.

So, battle ensued.

Second, you calculated the odds that the party has a 33% chance at success if they face the dragon again. Any intelligent dragon should not want those odds. A smart dragon that plans to grow up to gargantuan would never take those odds. They want darn near 100% odds of success. They live for millennia. They bide their time. The do not recklessly attack, or they wouldn't have grown up to be an adult dragon. Have the familiar find the party, assess the situation, and accurately report back to the dragon. The dragon then disappears. Oh, that dragon will be back. You can make sure the party knows that. But when it comes back, it will have more than 33% odds of winning.

No, you mis-read the odds. The 33% chance is the PCs will successfully stealth past the dragon given the resources they have. The odds the dragon will TPK the remaining 3 PCs?? Oh, I would guess 95% or so...

First, that underwater plan is really clever and unless the dragon knows they have such magic, I wouldn't assume it would automatically realise what is happening. Even if it managed to track the character to the river, it might just assume the characters crossed the river or swam a bit to some direction and then got on the shore. So it might waste a lot of time searching around the river but not in the river.

The dragon saw the healer cast water breathing from a scroll during the first round of combat, so while it might not recognize the spell immediately (I will roll an Intelligence check during the session) it might figure it out later on. While not brilliant by any means, INT 14 is hardly stupid...

And the quasit having int 7 and passive perception of 10 won't find anything even if it was there, so the dragon really cannot rely on it, so it might need to again waste time checking several directions.

This has been accounted for in the time calculations setting up the "will stealth work or will there be battle" encounter time and such.

Also are there any other intelligent creatures in the area? People who the characters could convince to help them, if not in fighting the dragon, then by healing or distracting the dragon so that the characters could escape.

No, it is fairly remote. Since the PCs are actively trying to avoid attention, it is not as likely anyone will just happen upon them.

And the legendary resistances do not reset right? Do the character have anything left for which that would matter? And if things do not work out, being killed by a dragon is among the coolest ways to go.

The Rune Knight fighter has a couple runes which are their best bet at this point should it come down to combat. Otherwise, no, there really isn't anything. Getting the giant constrictor snake into the fight also will help a bit, but not much in my estimation.

Though whilst you said the dragon would not leave any of them alive if it won, nor would accept surrender, are you absolutely sure of that? Could it perhaps kill the others, and leave one character alive, and tell them to run and tell everyone to not to mess with this dragon. Dragons are vain, it might be appealing to its ego to have its terrible reputation to spread.

It's possible. It depends on the dragon's reaction roll to any attempt to surrender at the time. There is a -10 penalty since it is hostile and feels affronted by the defeat it suffered.

Though whilst you said the dragon would not leave any of them alive if it won, nor would accept surrender, are you absolutely sure of that? Could it perhaps kill the others, and leave one character alive, and tell them to run and tell everyone to not to mess with this dragon. Dragons are vain, it might be appealing to its ego to have its terrible reputation to spread.

The rogue has both invisibility AND a potion of gaseous form, and with his stealth capabilities in general will likely be the lone survivor if he flees. Thanks to his evasion, it avoided damage by the breath weapon twice already... very lucky, too.

 

[ezo]

Get the party to make a few group stealth checks, to determine how long it takes for the familiar to track them down, better checks means more time, then give them a perception check to notice it when it finds them to initiate a battle to kill it before it flies off, let it drop a few taunts while in battle or fleeing about how the dragon will seek them out to finish the job, if it escapes or dies (similar to the stealth checks killing it gives them some extra time before the dragon narrows in on them) either way the party now knows the dragon is hunting them down and this initiates some urgency to either drop the half-speed stealth to haul buttock or find somewhere to hole up and hide better while they can recover more.

We'll see how some of that plays out Wednesday night.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

find somewhere to hole up and hide better while they can recover more.

Yeah, any cave system entrances too small for the dragon around? That's how in my game the characters evaded a dragon that outclassed them.

 

[Umbran]

What if the dragon simply didn't attack the PCs again? Seriously, there are major reasons the dragon could simply go away without pulling any punches.

Alternatively... what does the dragon want?

I mean, I understand that the PCs had the temerity, the unmitigated gall to assault it's person. So the PCs' deaths are among the things it wants, but...

There's always a but...

But, is there anything else it wants? While brutal and cruel, black dragons aren't stupid. These adventurers were potent enough to give the dragon a run for its money, send it off observing the better part of valor, and all. Adventures that potent can be useful.

So, perhaps the dragon can allow them to bargain for their lives. Even if it does become a TPK, the PCs can then wake up at 1 HP with a dragon staring them down, "I can eat you one by one, each of you watching as I take relish in rending your compatriots with my magnificent jaws, or you may <perform some task I don't want to get my claws dirty on>."

 

[ezo]

Yeah, any cave system entrances too small for the dragon around? That's how in my game the characters evaded a dragon that outclassed them.

LOL unless it is an extensive system with another way out, it reminds me of this...

Which at best would maybe allow them a long rest and definitely help their chances.