How old should a dragon villain be?

[Sabaron]

I'm running a PbP political game, with the players as dukes running a kingdom. Meanwhile, the kingdom to the south is getting stomped on by an ambitious black dragon and its army. Soon the southern kingdom will be overrun, and it will be up to the players to deal with this...

I'm trying to figure out how old this dragon should be. This is 3.5 if it matters. It's unlikely the dukes can stand up to the dragon personally; none of them are higher than 7th level. Most likely they'll have to face it on the field of battle (along with its assorted human, minotaur and half-dragon armies). Any suggestions as to how powerful it should be? Right now I'm thinking Adult or Mature Adult, to make it reasonably powerful without being overwhelming.

 

[Nifft]

I wouldn't worry about it being over-powered. In fact, I'd explicitly make the beast such that any frontal assault would be suicide. Very Old or Ancient isn't out of order.

This Dragon is destroying a whole kingdom, right? It's big, it's bad. It's got a big glowing sign over its head that reads, "Do Not Face In Fair Fight".

Your PCs should need some kind of artifact-level magic to deal with this kind of once-in-a-lifetime threat. That, or a bunch of one-time-only Divine Gifts that have to be earned from each of the Host of Seven in hard quests involving dungeons and so forth.

(Finally, if it's really a political game, why should the PCs think of fighting this Dragon? There are far more subtle ways of dealing with such a creature... especially if it has young. Or a younger mate. Or anything at all that it cares about, really.)

-- N

 

[Nightfall]

Some how I see either an Unholy Ravager of Tiamat or Dragon Ascendent of a god of Death for this Dragon. Cause honestly besides being great in age, he could just be one damn powerful little Pr-classed Dragon.

(God I love Draconomicion! )