How frequent are dragon encounters in your game?

[vectner]

Often. I am one of the three I guess that voted that way. The campaign I am running the players have fought 5 dragons so far and met another silver and befreinded her. Their very first adventure at first level they fought a hatchling white and destroyed the rest of the eggs from the clutch. 6 levels later their mother showed up for revenge. That was a great fight the monk decided to use his +24 jump skill and leap onto her face, that ended badly, hehe(evil DM laugh).

They are level 10 now, close to 11, and just defeated a mated pair of black dragons. They only expected to be fighting one, and the mate showed up and surprised them. They all survided the fight just fine, they were well prepared, but decided to venture around the cave network after words and split up. Death toll - one dead rogue, one dead ranger. There were other swamp critters living down there.

I decided in this curent campaign that dragons should be a pretty constant part of the story. Two of the players have dragons in their backstory, the mother white and half that mated black dragon pair, were from the backstories and had killed loved ones of the players. The ranger and the silver they met are developing a relationship. They found a stray bronze dragon egg in the black dragon's lair. There are ancient dragons dotted all over my campaign map. The party may start up actively dragon hunting, it is an open option for them.

As a player back in my 1E days, I fought only two dragons, one blue, nearly a TPK, and one red, cube of force saved us that time.

I think dragons in 3rd are toughter than in 1st. They have higher damage output, but their breath weapons could be better. As a DM I use there crappy spells as all defense. Add Shield and Mage armor to a dragons already high AC and it will frustrate the players until they can dispell it.

 

[timbannock]

It used to be rarely: most dragons were sort of like the plot hammers; movers and shakers, but almost never direct enemies or allies.

That's changed a lot recently. I started running more premade adventures, and they happen to have dragons in them...and I liked it. Then, I picked up 4E and made an "out-of-the" box campaign to playtest it from levels 1 - 30. Basically, 3 or 4 encounters at each level. The whole idea was based around the PCs being in a very desolate land fighting monsters to find out why they were there and what happened to their homeworld. The main antagonists were dragons, so they had a LOT of solo dragon fights.

It proved that solo encounters were difficult to run well, and going above the PCs level by more than 2 was VERY swingy for solo fights. On the other hand, the ones that were run well were TOTALLY FRAKKIN AWESOME.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Dragon *non-combat* encounters have been somewhat common through my last few campaigns. The PCs are often working for/with some dragon (they typically are polymorphed to humanoids, with or without the PCs knowing their real identity).

I can recall only two dragon batlles during my ten years or so since I started DMing. One youngish red dragon the PCs killed a while back when I just started DMing, and Gray Dragon in an epic game (for which the player achieved dero-deity status). I mention occasionally that there are only two or three dragonslayers alive in the whole multiverse, and they are generally ascendant deities. Thus, I answered "rarely".

I don't run dragon battles much because I'm at a loss to see how the PCs could ever beat them if they're played right, and because of the place of dragons in my campaign world (descendants of the creators).

 

[Evilhalfling]

Occasionally:
In 3.5 I designed a setting called the Green Isles where an overpopulation of dragons had driven humans and demi-humans below ground. In two short campaigns there were encounters with a many dragons, just going adventuring on the surface was risking a dragon encounter. The win-loss ratio was 7 dragons encountered. 4 slain, 3 PC deaths.

In a long game that went ran 3rd-20th level, there were ongoing conflicts with white and emerald dragons. The dragons were encountered several to a lair, including adults, children, one polymorphed sorcerer and a simulacrum I think the final score was 2 PC deaths and about 6 dragons killed.

I just don’t like 4e dragons, the fights would seem to go on forever, and the PCs have an even smaller chance of killing one then they did in 3e.
The 3e dragons had to fight dirty, using strafing runs, and avoiding melee at all costs. If PCs could come to grips, the fight was short. If the dragon got the upper hand, vs an isolated or unprepared PC, the PC frequently died. In 4e dragons can just bull right in, but the fight is going to take forever, and if played like a 3.5 dragon, it will always end in stalemate. So far I have used no dragon encounters in 4e, although I will use one in H2, the set piece encounter is just too interesting not to. I’m fighting one in an online game and it brutally hung out 10 squares up while its allies pounded the party. On round nine, with half the party bloodied, and running low on healing powers, it finally came down to play.

 

[Wootz]

Too many and they get boring, so naturally I don't place too many. I think they could have a good place in a campaign, but can make a storyline cheesy SO fast.

 

[Hussar]

I'm like a lot here. I hadn't run dragon encounters in years. Then I ran three in the World's Largest Dungeon and they were all a complete blast. Loved the heck out of them, particularly the black dragon section that I ran for lower levels.

The next homebrew campaign I do is going to focus on dragon slaying.

 

[chaotix42]

In 3e I used plenty of dragons - I played a lot of Eberron and Paizo adventures/adventure paths. Age of Worms had almost an entire adventure full of dragons!

In 4e I've used 2 dragons - a young black vs a 3rd level party and an advanced young green vs a 5th level party. They both made for tremendous fights, but in the end both dragons tried to flee and were cut down with ranged attacks as they took wing! They waited till they had too few HP I think - chalk it up to youthful ego.

The PCs are going to be dealing with the faithful of Tiamat, so I suspect that I'll be using a lot more dragons in the future.

I've used a dragonborn NPC in my 4e game, but none as enemies for the party yet. I've just started to ponder dragonborn as antagonists and I think they have potential.

 

[der_kluge]

I'm running an E8 game which presents a few interesting challenges. In a world where (apparently) the highest level spell is a 4th level spell, dragons who can cast 9th level spells presents a real, and obnoxious problem.

Solution, I revised all of them down in scale (all the evil ones, at least). I'll do good dragons next, just for the he11 of it. I think in my new re-imagining, the highest CR dragon only has something like a CR 16 (great wyrm red) - amazingly approachable, even for a large group of 8th level characters.

As to the question, the party has seen evidence of a dragon near some caves they've frequented. They know he's around there somewhere.

There's another dragon in a cave they have a treasure map to. That's a red.

There's also a brass dragon behind the scenes that they've only superficially encountered.

 

[Jhaelen]

In 3E I've been using them more often than in earlier editions of the game. Since young dragons aren't terribly dangerous they can be used easily even against low-level parties.

In a 5 year campaign covering level 1 to 12, there's been about six encounters with dragons:
- the black dragon in Forge of Fury (a very fun fight, dangerous but never overwhelming)
- a party of three green dragon youngsters (demanding a toll, which they got - no fight)
- a red dragon (well, actually it was a polymorphed wizard - using that form only to escape)
- a pair of ssvaklor (okay, so they're not true dragons, but still...)
- three young white dragons (random encounter, one of them fleed, s.b.)
- a crystal dragon (leading the party to a white dragon lair (s.a.) to retrieve eggs, encountering the white dragon mom)

My ninth player is pretty crazy about dragons. She's playing a draconic aasimar paladin.

Dragons make for nice, varied encounters since they're available at all power levels and can serve pretty much every role, from dangerous brutes to devious masterminds.

 

[The Green Adam]

So let me get this straight...

The vast majority of players and GMs rarely use Dragons and one of the first 4E hardcovers to come out is the Draconomicon. We're barely using the classics and we need new ones and options before we need, say, more spells, classes and races, etc.? This seems strange to me. I know it sounds like I'm picking on 4E but in truth I'm simply finding the thought process of the line's development curious.

For myself I said rarely, though there have been very dragon heavy plots and campaigns that I've run. In one of my oldest campaign worlds I mentioned that except for maybe a dozen or less, all the dragons of the world are dead and gone. Beware those 12 though! All were ancient, extremely powerful and very different from each other or the traditional chromatic variety. D&D dragons are conveniently color coded for easy defeat and disposal. Mine tend to be based on myths, legends and themes. One was of the St. George variety, about the size of a Great Dane but stronger then an elephant. It's skin and blood were poisonous and its breath was Foul, a homebrew power that combines poison and heat/fire/acid. Another dragon was so large that its eye towered over the PCs. It destroyed towns by flapping its wings and/or stomping its foot.
Only 3 of the 12 were ever encountered in the 2 year long campaign and only 1 of those three was actually fought by the PCs.

In my most commonly used campaign universe, the good natured metallic dragons retired from the world to sleep sometime after the arrival of the Elves and the first alliances of Elves and Humans. The chromatic dragons hung around, pissed that lesser species had inherited their world.

AD
"That was a hell of a thing."