D&D 5E Is Neil Gaiman Wrong?
MarkB
Legend
And sometimes, in order to get there, you have to take on and defeat an epic giant spider-queen.
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Tonguez
A suffusion of yellow
Really it depends on the dragon
St Georges Dragon was smaller than his horse and though it posioned the waters and spewed venom, it was essentially an animal.
other dragons especially those of gargantuan size are far more magical even god-like and thus should be treated as immortal deific beings. Even moreso Gargantuan creatures (not just Dragons) should be treated as Skill challenges rather than straight fights, PCs might just be targetting one wing to reduce its mobility but will then need to move on to other body parts before even trying to slay the beast.
(St George only slayed the beast AFTER it had been Injured, subdued by the girdle of the local virgin Princess and then paraded before the people of Silene, Libya)
St Georges Dragon was smaller than his horse and though it posioned the waters and spewed venom, it was essentially an animal.
other dragons especially those of gargantuan size are far more magical even god-like and thus should be treated as immortal deific beings. Even moreso Gargantuan creatures (not just Dragons) should be treated as Skill challenges rather than straight fights, PCs might just be targetting one wing to reduce its mobility but will then need to move on to other body parts before even trying to slay the beast.
(St George only slayed the beast AFTER it had been Injured, subdued by the girdle of the local virgin Princess and then paraded before the people of Silene, Libya)
doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
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Obviously George had a dragonlance!
Greenstone.Walker
Adventurer
Normal people have been fighting crocodile- and elephant-sized creatures for thousands of years. Granted, they couldn't fly or breathe fire, but mammoths and rhinos were all pretty monstrous to pre-industrial peoples. Those peoples still hunted them.
As usual in such cases, your player is wrong, not because his assessment of the situation at hand is wrong, but because of a failure of imagination.
He is right about a classic D&D dragon fight where Ye Olde Adventures hack the beast to death with swords. This makes zero sense for a really big dragon. It's like five mice killing an adult human by stabbing him to death with pins. If the human makes even a modest effort to fight back, the mice are never going to get near the few spots where a pinprick can cause real injury.
However, human beings are really, really good at inventing nasty tricks. Take whales, which are on a similar scale as dragons, and which would seem to have all the advantages in their natural environment. Yet humans have been whaling since prehistoric times in our rickety wooden ships. Dragons are flyers; weigh them down. They are predators; feed them poisoned bait. They sleep in caves; block the entrance and force the dragon to batter its way out, then swarm it as it emerges. Or something else. Dragon hunts would be difficult and dangerous as hell, but they would certainly be a thing.
And then, of course, human magic comes into it, and all bets are off, since magic can do whatever the game designers say it can do. That human with a sword may be a mouse with a pin, but if the pin is coated in cyanide and one scratch can cripple or kill, the odds rebalance sharply toward the mouse.
(If all else fails, just get a fleet of invisible ships with giant crossbows and shoot it out of the sky right before decloaking. What? Bitter? I'm not bitter at all.)
He is right about a classic D&D dragon fight where Ye Olde Adventures hack the beast to death with swords. This makes zero sense for a really big dragon. It's like five mice killing an adult human by stabbing him to death with pins. If the human makes even a modest effort to fight back, the mice are never going to get near the few spots where a pinprick can cause real injury.
However, human beings are really, really good at inventing nasty tricks. Take whales, which are on a similar scale as dragons, and which would seem to have all the advantages in their natural environment. Yet humans have been whaling since prehistoric times in our rickety wooden ships. Dragons are flyers; weigh them down. They are predators; feed them poisoned bait. They sleep in caves; block the entrance and force the dragon to batter its way out, then swarm it as it emerges. Or something else. Dragon hunts would be difficult and dangerous as hell, but they would certainly be a thing.
And then, of course, human magic comes into it, and all bets are off, since magic can do whatever the game designers say it can do. That human with a sword may be a mouse with a pin, but if the pin is coated in cyanide and one scratch can cripple or kill, the odds rebalance sharply toward the mouse.
(If all else fails, just get a fleet of invisible ships with giant crossbows and shoot it out of the sky right before decloaking. What? Bitter? I'm not bitter at all.)
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Flamestrike
Legend
DnD is a game of Mythic heroes. The rules (and expectations of the game, as evidenced in all settings and adventures) reflect this.
If you dont agree with that premise, cap your campaigns at 3rd level, or use different rules.
In DnD, from mid to high level onwards the characters are expected to fight (and defeat) T-Rexes, creatures that can fire disintegration rays, psionic creatures that can control thoughts and eat brains, armies of Giants, fire breathing dragons, undead reality altering near immortal Liches, literal demi-gods and demon princes. They travel the planes of existence, alter reality with a word, teleport to other continents, call on divine intervention, can be doused in magma or fall from a 30 story skyscraper and survive. They raise the dead, load and fire a crossbow 8 times in 6 seconds, slap great white sharks to death, get so angry they can fly, consort with elder powers, use magic, create AI, grow wings, etc etc etc etc
They are the X-Men or the Avengers.
Aragorn runs away from a Balrog. DnD characters stab it to death with pointy things and take its boots.
LuisCarlos17f
Legend
In the fantasy wargames dragons are ones of the most powerful creatures, but they still can fall in the battlefield.
If we talk about fighters from wuxia fiction (for example "Tiger and Dragon") the little grasshopper could defeat a dragon.
If we talk about fighters from wuxia fiction (for example "Tiger and Dragon") the little grasshopper could defeat a dragon.
