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Message: <blockquote data-quote="knasser" data-source="post: 7000574" data-attributes="member: 65151">Obviously the green dragon doesn't live in a cavern, no! It lives in the thick, semi-interwoven canopy at the densest and oldest part of the great forest. The PCs can wander around for ages looking for it, certain that they're at the right point on the map until they finally realise the lair is UP. So they climb, wending their way along giant tree branches and scrabbling for purchase against thick vines. And snakes. Of course there are the ever-present snakes winding their way through the thick creepers, almost invisible in their mottled green and brown scales. Finally the PCs break through to the upper reaches. The blue sky opens up before them. As do the jaws of the great dragon.They battle it across an uneven sea of green, never sure when they might misplace a foot and vanish downwards into the dark to cling fearfully at some branch and from there to hurry back to their comrades following the moving sounds of battle above. And even if they don't fall through the canopy, he dragon does - time and again vanishing down into the shadowed depths, becoming a moving cacophony of snapping branches and terrified birds taking flight only to burst up wings unfurling where the heroes least expect it or reach through the very branches on which they stand and yank them down inside to see it twined around the giant trunks, finding easy purchase with its claws. The plate armour the fighter wore in expectation of it being a blessing, instead makes it harder to prevent herself from falling. The firespells of the wizard ignite parts of the terrain and produce great clouds of black smoke from the green foliage burning. And the PCs learn what true terror is, facing the dragon between forest and sky.----So in game terms, all you really need is an amorphous area for the canopy, an upper layer for the very tops (somewhere for archer PCs to climb and shoot from Legolas-style) and a lower layer and some weak areas for PCs to fall through and the dragon to erupt from. You could even just handle it abstractedly with rolls by players to avoid falling through and placing perilous wholes in the map where the dragon has erupted from. If a player plunges down a level or two, well they're going to have make some athletics rolls to get back up there. They might even get the odd spell off as the battle moves in and out of view above them but they'd best not stay down there too long lest they end up facing the dragon alone (or her minions).Bonus points if during this battle the impossibly ancient treant titan they are fighting in the top of is roused from a few hundred years of sleep by the battle and sets off walking whilst they fight, causing everything to sway even more alarmingly than before.</blockquote>

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