Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Reynard" data-source="post: 7998862" data-attributes="member: 467"><p>I think dragons as adversaries in D&amp;D games tend to fall in one of two categories: either they are &quot;just monsters&quot; in that they can fill the same roles as any other powerful creature, from sack of XP and treasure to BBEG's mount to random encounter; or, they are SPecial because they are dragons. In the latter case, the MM dragon needs A LOT of work by the DM for it to be Special for its given CR. Even Ancient dragons are not especially difficult to defeat for a prepared party, unless the DM goes to a lot of effort to define the dragon's lair and minions and unique powers and attributes. And this is perfectly reasonable. I think if you want the dragon to be Special you should spend a few hours working on it. And you should feel free to make it extremely difficult to harm (Immunity: all damage from non artifact weapons; Immunity: all mortal magic) or extremely versatile (Unlimited Shapeshifting; 20th level caster) or anything in between. This is especially true if the dragon sits at the pinnacle of the campaign. I made a terrible mistake and made a dragon the central villain in a game and did not modify it from the MM and it was the worst, most frustratingly anticlimactic even in 30 plus years of DMing for me.</p></blockquote><p></p>

[QUOTE="Reynard, post: 7998862, member: 467"] I think dragons as adversaries in D&D games tend to fall in one of two categories: either they are "just monsters" in that they can fill the same roles as any other powerful creature, from sack of XP and treasure to BBEG's mount to random encounter; or, they are SPecial because they are dragons. In the latter case, the MM dragon needs A LOT of work by the DM for it to be Special for its given CR. Even Ancient dragons are not especially difficult to defeat for a prepared party, unless the DM goes to a lot of effort to define the dragon's lair and minions and unique powers and attributes. And this is perfectly reasonable. I think if you want the dragon to be Special you should spend a few hours working on it. And you should feel free to make it extremely difficult to harm (Immunity: all damage from non artifact weapons; Immunity: all mortal magic) or extremely versatile (Unlimited Shapeshifting; 20th level caster) or anything in between. This is especially true if the dragon sits at the pinnacle of the campaign. I made a terrible mistake and made a dragon the central villain in a game and did not modify it from the MM and it was the worst, most frustratingly anticlimactic even in 30 plus years of DMing for me. [/QUOTE]

Verification