Dragons, Dragons, Dragons

[Engilbrand]

I just picked up the Draconomicon. I think that I'll use a Gray Dragon or two against my players in the near future. They have a few artifacts that the bad guys want. I think that I'll have the Gray(s) attack and try to get them.
If not that, there was a point a while back where they walked in on a major villain standing atop a dead Black Dragon performing a ritual. While one of the players took a part of the Dragon, he left the rest. I might have the bad guys take the body and create one of the Undead Dragons. Maybe a Bone Mongrel. That would definitely fit with the theme of the game.

Derren: To be fair, a lot is possible within the rules. You just have to remember that NPCs don't follow PC rules. I'll admit that the Dragons don't have typical spellcasting within combat, but they can do plenty out-of-combat things. If you really want them to do stuff in combat, give them an extra couple of abilities or some weapons. Just make sure that, if you use XP, you increase the XP.

 

[taliesin15]

In the last campaign I ran I used one each of the evil color Dragons, and one really powerful Silver Dragon. Each had a very distinct and different role from the others. A Youngish Blue Dragon came from out of nowhere to attack the PCs from a storm cloud. OTOH, the PCs snuck up on a Green Dragon and dispatched her quickly. ETC.

In my next campaign, on the main inhabited continents there will be very few Dragons--since many are very selfish, I tend to see them as somewhat peripheral. However, I have an equatorial continent on the other side of the world similar to Land of the Lost chock full of Dinosaurs and Dragons.

 

[Rechan]

You could have your dragons act in this manner, but only at the cost of losing everything that makes dragons interesting, evocative and distinctive monsters.

What's the difference between having a hoard in your house, or a hoard in a bank vault?

Actually, now that I think about it. A compulsive hoarding behavior is not limited to RICHES. It's compulsive. To use a human example: used chop sticks, old magazines and newspapers, bottle caps, bullet casings, aquarium stones, bits of shiny junk, etc.

So, a dragon could have little use for riches (or use them) while getting its "Fix" on things that bring it pleasure, or are pretty. Wind chimes, blown glass bottles, musical instruments (or living, breathing musicians to play them), a gallery of petrified/frozen beautiful women, in addition to assorted junk like useless nicknacks (those "executive desk toys" that when you get them moving, they swing for minutes), teeth from everything it's killed, etc.

Wow. An OCD dragon. I love it.

 

[jensun]

I have never been a fan of Dragons as master manipulating shapechanging puppet masters.

I like my dragons large, obvious and highly dangerous. They lay waste to the regions around their home and occasionally come out to devour some foolish adventurers.

My current game does have 5 Draconic Demigods who gave birth to the Dragonborn but they are all asleep and either buried or generally mistaken for sections of landscape.

 

[avin]

As background.

In fact, all these years DMing and there's just two dragon fights at my campaigns... one of that ended on a Hold Monster spell... oh boy...

 

[GQuail]

In my current game we've got a Half-Orc barbarian who went a decidedly dragon-slaying path. As a throwaway hook I gave him the chance to win a legacy weapon that was his tribe's ancestral weapon, Tiamat's Bane, with the obligatory suite of dragon slaying powers - this was around level 8 or so, and until then the creatures had only really appeared in a specific Dragon Cult-themed adventure.

That player has since taken five levels in a dragon-slaying prestige class, elevated the weapon to 20th level, taken Leadership so his trusty sidekick can also have a few levels in the same PrC, given his sidekick a dragon-slaying greatsword and generlaly dedicated his life to the pursuit of a monster class I arbritrarilly picked for coolness.

So, um, I'm afraid I'm a bad roleplayer and I use dragons as boss monsters every so often, because my Half-Orc player loves mindlessly slaughtering them. Since getting the weapon the party have taken one two green, a fang, two white, two steel and a purple dragon - the latter being a Great Wyrm and the most pulse-pounding fight we'd had in quite some time!

The Dragon Cult are going to reappear soon, though, armed with a Dracolich - something that has been heavilly hinted for a while in-game. Hopefully this will be a super-smart dragon foe so that next time I can answer "yes!" to your question.... :>

 

[Serendipity]

"get off my lawn you &#*@ kids!"

In 16 years running the same homebrew I think dragons have come up perhaps four times. Only one of those was as a combat encounter.
Generally speaking, dragons IMC are part of the local culture and geography but not something you actually fight. (People, quite rightly, are SCARED of them.) As a general rule, dragons IMC are sleeping, as they have been for the most part for the last 50,000 years. Their time is long past.
Consequently however, they're MIGHTY irritable when something wakes them up.

 

[NilesB]

What's the difference between having a hoard in your house, or a hoard in a bank vault?

Not a Vault, an account; where it will be given away to strangers in exchange for worthless promises. Where it is vulnerable to overspeculation, or to seizure by kings or by marauders; where you cannot see it, touch it, smell it. What Dragon would be so foolish?

Actually, now that I think about it. A compulsive hoarding behavior is not limited to RICHES. It's compulsive. To use a human example: used chop sticks, old magazines and newspapers, bottle caps, bullet casings, aquarium stones, bits of shiny junk, etc.

So, a dragon could have little use for riches (or use them) while getting its "Fix" on things that bring it pleasure, or are pretty. Wind chimes, blown glass bottles, musical instruments (or living, breathing musicians to play them), a gallery of petrified/frozen beautiful women, in addition to assorted junk like useless nicknacks (those "executive desk toys" that when you get them moving, they swing for minutes), teeth from everything it's killed, etc.

Wow. An OCD dragon. I love it.

Now you get it. They hauled a hundred and three tons of crap out of the Collyer house. Your PCs will probably be annoyed if you don't sprinkle some actual valuables in there though.

 

[frankthedm]

Why should dragons be smart? Smarter than the average bear, yes, but dragons are supposed to marauding monsters, not masterminds. It is like folks forgot the smart dragon was supposed to be an anomaly.

 

[Rechan]

Why should dragons be smart? Smarter than the average bear, yes, but dragons are supposed to marauding monsters, not masterminds. It is like folks forgot the smart dragon was supposed to be an anomaly.

One could say the same about humans. Who cover their barbarism in niceties, categorizing who and what they can savage like a pack of baboons.

Besides, intelligent maurading monters are scary. See: the movie Jaws, tigers, etc. A predator with cunning is scary to man. A predator with a higher level of intelligence? Freaking frightening.

Even if the dragon does nothing but hunt and kill, it's still like a cat with a 200 IQ. The mice in their hole have no chance when the cat learns how to use tools.