Sugestion for B.A.D.D. Coloring Dragons...

[Rashak Mani]

How about making the Dragon use magic to change his appearance to that of a opposite kind of dragon ?

So the party is getting close to the Red Dragons lair... the Dragons casts a spell (change self?) and overflies (not to close of course) them as a White Dragon. Party gets ready with loads of Fireballs and Firebolts... Fire Storm... Protection from Cold, etc.. next day the Red Dragon as a White Dragon proceeds to destroy hapless group.

Good suggestion ? How could this be done ? Change Self ? Illusion ? Paint ?

 

[CRGreathouse]

Change self would do, but I think the party would have done their homework.

For a similar (though moe devious) idea, see the links section of the BADD page. "Wight".

 

[Rashak Mani]

hehe... Wight is better white for sure

 

[Imperialus]

any party that doesn't know what kind of dragon they are dealing with before attacking it deserves to be stomped. I mean unless dragons are a dime a dozen in your campaign there should be a cirtan amount of lore surounding what kind of dragon has been terrorizeing the villages and what not. Not only that but if I encountered a white dragon in a tropical swamp I would start to really wonder if it was actually a white that I was dealing with. I'd definatly go and prep myself for dealing with a black, or at least split my spells to deal with both.

 

[Madfox]

A truely devious dragon would go to some measures to keep his true colours hidden from the general public or to at least make sure the public is not sure about his colours. An intelligent dragon hunter would never trust on any information he gains, because he might actually get the information directly from the dragon he is hunting. A wizard that only learns ice magic because he is expacting a red dragon deserves what he gets, especially when facing older dragons. Even if the dragon is a red one, the dragon would have taken measures against it's cold weakness.

On a side note, I remember reading in a novel about a white in a sub-tropical forrest. Granted, the white was as irritated as hell, but he had been chased from the high mountains by a stronger dragon and lacked the courage to go to other areas covered by ice. The story sounded logical. So never trust to find only blacks in swamp, reds in mountains, green in forrests, blue in deserts and white in glaciers.

 

[smetzger]

Thats exactly what is done in A Frigid Demise, a WOTC Free Original adventure.

 

[Simon Magalis]

In one game I played in my party was going to raid a dragon's tomb in the Vast Swamp (FR version) in Cormyr. It was a black dragon's lair and there were rumors that a red dragon had taken it over and killed the black dragon. When we fight our way through to the deep cave where the treasure was, we see a black dragon lying on the treasure (it hasn't noticed us yet). We cast all the appropriate spells, read off a few prot. from acid scrolls, etc. Then we attack. Turns out the dragon isnt really there. We have attacked a very high level illusion (spectral force maybe?). Anyway, the real black dragon is invisible and appears just as he breathes a big gout of flame on us. FLAME? Oh yeah, the fake dragon was black, but not the red one that wiped out my whole party.

 

[wolff96]

Re: Coloring Dragons

I had a wily old (Very Old, technically) blue dragon do something similar in a campaign I was running...

He altered himself to look like a bronze dragon. Whenever he needed to actually ACT like a bronze dragon, he could use his lighting blast or simulate (most of) its abilities with his sorcerous abilities.

He loved the high sea cliffs near this human city, but didn't want to be constantly bothered by people trying to hunt him down and kill him. So by pretending to be Bronze, he gained acceptance from the humans and even wealth -- he worked a deal with the town that he would protect their shipping from pirates if he got to keep anything he found on the pirate ships or anything he could salvage from ships that wrecked or ran aground. The humans were happy -- he really helped their shipping. The dragon was happy, since he got to keep whatever he found on the pirate ships, and he could often delay just a bit and let the pirates get the stolen goods aboard their ships before he would swoop down and save the day... or use his hallucinatory terrain abilities to make ships run aground. (Hide the real rocks and create an image of them elsewhere.)

Time passed and the city became more and more prosperous -- a harbor protected by a dragon! What could be better? And the dragon's coffers grew fatter and fatter as the increased trade brought more and more criminals in to try and tap the wealth flowing through this city...

Of course, when actual pirate attacks would get rare he would occasionally destroy a few legitimate ships to keep the cash flow going -- and founded the legend of an uncatchable, nearly invincible fleet of pirates that later brought the PCs into the area. (After all, if a DRAGON couldn't defeat, or even find, these pirates, they must be INCREDIBLE, right? )

That was one of my favorite story arcs. They never did figure it out.

Just because you're evil doesn't mean you're stupid.

 

[Rashak Mani]

I agree with that last statement... maybe we should start the BADEG - Bothered about Disposable Evil Guys.

 

[Sodalis]

Everyone knows that fire is the most used element in the game, and so a sorc leveling up will naturally choose the fire spells- it is also very cool to say "firestorm," where icestorm is a little weak (vocally)

A smart dragon (and they all are) will just polymorph. It has teh HD requirment and also the size and everytihng. A red dragon can just fly around the day before, making the PCs prepare for it, and then the morning of teh battle (it has scry) PM into a wight dragon. The PCs will have a helluva time if they did not prepare for this contingency...

would a PM dragon get the elemental resistance of its subtype? I would think so...

But of course the dragon has to fight outside its own den because a wight dragon in a volcano will not fare as well...

One final thing- I don't know why a dragon has never used antimagic field in its own den? A dragon's str will more than overpower a legion of fighters (their belts of str, glove of dex, magic weapons... all useless) and the mage and cleric will be cannon fodder.

All it needs to do is cast a couple of antimagic fields at the entrance (10 ft radius- 20 ft diameter- cast four times at the entrance can almost encompass a 40 ft circle (with the middle miossing) and then meet the PC before they are able to pass by the area. Before they are able to realise it, the dragon would have gotten a couple of shots in and at least taken out one or two PCs...
and if the PCs retreat to outside, then the dragon can retreat inside and so the PC cannot have a clear line of sight to cast any spells...