D&D General Dragons: What role do they play in your campaigns?

[Ruin Explorer]

I normally don't use dragons all that often, but my previous campaign centered around a dragon that was pretending to be the returned king of a large region that had been prophesied. So the dragon had badgered/threatened some lesser dragons into helping him, but for the most part he was just the power behind the distant throne. He was also using his own mother (she was not a willing participant) to magically create half-dragons of various forms.

Funny thing is for various reasons they never actually fought the dragon (although they did fight a few others). They managed to find and free mommy dearest and she chased off her imposter son.

As a general rule the older the dragon, the more tactical and less likely they are to ever get into a direct confrontation. Young or even some adult dragons are more likely to engage directly, but that tends to weed out the stupid or unwise ones. The ancient ones? They're far more likely to use others as cannon fodder and to have schemes that unfold over decades and centuries.

In battle, all but the youngest are never going to get into melee with PCs if they can at all avoid it. They'll use hit-and-run tactics using either breath weapon or bombarding from on high. They'll also do everything in their power to set up unfair fights; if absolutely necessary they'll flee to plot revenge and fight another day. It also depends on the type of dragon we're talking about of course. White dragons tend to be brutes, black dragons are schemers and so on.

In my current campaign the group is in the teens and have yet to face a single dragon. Not sure they ever will. On the other hand I do have a dragon war (led by mommy dearest and her now subservient son from the previous campaign) that's kind of rattling around. Maybe next campaign, with part of the campaign enlisting the help of the good dragons of the world.

This isn't anything that's happened in my campaign and I haven't used dragons much lately, but this is like, the sort of thing which would happen. So yeah like this. My current party are in their teens also and have never killed an actual dragon. They killed a sort of low-grade dracolich but that was another story. They've driven off a couple of dragons but they weren't dumb enough to die and by the time they were in position to consider any kind of revenge they'd long since lost track of the party.

 

[Shiroiken]

Dragons are rare, but considered the stuff of nightmares. They are the alpha in the world, with all others just lesser beings. Good dragons may consider intelligent other creatures more than simply food, but that doesn't mean they won't kill them for little reason, the same way a humanoid might kill an animal. People fear them, giving them a wide berth, except for reckless treasure hunters and "heroes" that usually die in their lairs.

 

[Tonguez]

I‘ve used fairy dragons and sea dragons as well as wyverns (animals not dragons), but true Dragons are legendary elemental creatures, inscrutible threats and virtually god-like beings ie Dragons should be epic and terrifying bosses that define a campaign and a heroes whole career.

Because of that I’ve only used one battle against a true dragon which I constructed as a battle across a whole lair with the actual dragon needing to be targeted in four zones (wings, claws, body/tail, head) - flight, lair actions and spells, fire and poison should all be used to get a TPK.

I do have other Dragon NPCs in the setting eg The largest city in my world Bishnagar is named for the dragon living under it who controls the Bishnagar Merchant Bank.

Celestial Dragons dwell in the Astral Realms of Ti’an (I merged Silvers/Golds with Radiant/Celestial dragons and gave them the form of Oriental dragons)

The Grand Heirophant of the Celestial Hierarchy in Al-Qahira is a Song Dragon attended by Song dragons in human form. There are also Rainbow (Prismatic) Dragons in the Mountains of the Moon, home of the Rain Queen.

 

[The Green Hermit]

The game is called Dungeons & Dragons. We see a lot of dungeons but dragons can be far and few. Are they just another monster in your campaigns or do they play a central or unique role?

We are playing Hoard of the Dragon Queen, so they are pretty important. Lol!

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Dragons are kind of weird for me personally in D&D because I wasn't exposed to much media featuring intelligent ones while growing up. I mostly read a bunch of legends and myths and folktales that primarily treated dragons as animals. Finding out what dragons were like in D&D was kind of a shock.

I also personally have a hard time believing that D&D-style dragons wouldn't have significantly greater impact on the settings they exist in than they are usually depicted as having. It feels like their influence should be a major part of the setting. I think Returned Abeir with is draconic overlords is more along the lines of what I'd expect.

As a result, I haven't featured dragons at all in my campaigns so far because I don't know how to integrate them. If I did feature dragons they would probably be more like the catastrophic dragons from 4E, which are much more focused on rampaging and destruction than the standard variety of dragons seem to be.

 

[steeldragons]

Well now, that depends on which dragons we're tawkin' about.

There are the "elder wyrm" dragons who exist in a [not-so] hidden corner of the world. They are the dragons who have existed (or are direct descendants of) the "Children of Zho" -a primordial creator entity of my setting. They are gathered in a "council" of dragonkind, overseeing the good/evil and magical/mundanity well-being of the world...training and empowering their scion in the realms of Men and Elves, the Dragonmage. There are...thus far in setting lore... three such dragon entities that have been imprisoned or exiled from the setting's Prime Material for Crimes Against Creation. The return/awakening of any of these entities would be nothing short of catastrophic. The broods of Elder Wyrms (who very rarely breed, at all, anymore) are always entirely "True" dragons of their parental type(s).

"True" dragons (our typical catalogue of Chromatics and Metallics, plus Steel -natch-, Iron, and Tungsten. and Yellow, Brown and Purple on the other side) exist but are few and far between. [Centuries old] Adults are true forces of nature to be reckoned with... Significantly fewer, but just as -if not more- powerful, and considered 'true" dragons, are the Gemstone (rumored to be only singular entities of each type) and "Astral" a.k.a. "Planar" (including multiple types of fae and shadow) dragons. However, there are becoming fewer "true" dragons all of the time, as the bulk of their offspring are not "true" in recent centuries. More and more, to the despair of all true dragons, the majority of any given clutch fall into the next category...

"Dragonkin" or "Drakonin" are those..."mutant" offspring of dragons, some of whom breed true themselves, that did not "fully" form or had some kind of [magical?] alteration occur during their incubation. The best known of those that can breed among themselves are the Wyverns, Hydrae, and "Lapdrakes" (my world's pseudodragons). Drakes (four-legged but no wings, roughly great dane to lion-sized) and Linnorms ("serpentine" dragons with only two forelegs, no or useless vestigial wings, but still a minor breath weapon). But also include such bizarre creatures as Dragonnes (called something different in my setting), some Chimerae, Dracolisks, Behir (Beithir), and other "partially dragon" creatures that generally do not rise above "cunning animals" as far as intelligence or capacity.

So, they could be the typical treasure-filled lair pinnacle "end boss," the mastermind of schemes malevolent or benevolent, mounts, monsters, and even "pets." Dragons are, for sure, a part of my game setting and will never NOT be, regardless of the name of the system we're playing.

 

[thom_likes_gaming]

Well, I'm currently DM'ing Tyranny of Dragons, so....

 

[Richards]

In my current campaign, all true dragons can take on the form of a specific humanoid, so while the PCs haven't yet met up with what they recognize as a true dragon (not surprisingly, as they're only second level), they have in fact met up with one - they just met up with him while he was in a humanoid form and didn't recognize him for what he truly is.

By the end of the campaign, they'll know the truth - including the fact that every member of a specific race is a dragon in altered form, as there are no longer any members of that race left alive. That should be quite an eye-opener, once they learn about it!

Johnathan

 

[Mecheon]

In my stuff, dragons are affected by their enviroment and affect their enviroment in turn. There's no alignment rules and dragons will and can just spontaniously mutate to new enviroments, in order to explain why there are so many different versions of them.

Likewise though the influence of powerful enough dragons can mutate and warp the enviroment, causing various dragon-themed monsters to just, spontaiously pop up. There aren't many of these super powerful dragons still around capable of unconciously doing this, but, that's where all of those dragon-like critters popped up from.

There's also two completely seperate dragon-themed civilisations, one a primarily Elf/Dragon one (its. its just ishgard but flipping the 'dislike dragons' switch to 'likes dragons') and another a primarily Dragonborn one

 

[DammitVictor]

I tend to treat Dragons a lot like Outsiders, and high-level Dragons like high-level Outsiders-- except, dragons are native to their plane of existence and more easily coexist with that plane and its inhabitants. An Ancient True Dragon is like an archangel that can summon you.

At low levels, they are potential patrons in the Cleric/Warlock sense; at middle levels they are potential patrons in the Liege and Vassal sense; at higher levels they are political allies and rivals in shaping the World and/or the Cosmos.