The Red Dragon is the quintessential monster
at the end of the dungeon. It is the benchmark
for how strong your party is. Defeating a
red dragon is the truest test of how well
your party works together and the reward for
killing it are fame and fortune.
Hello, I'm Jonathan Pruitt and this is Jim
Davis and today on Web DM we're gonna take
flight with the Red Dragon. So let's burn
it down.
The D&D Red Dragon's origins come from European
mythology and for many players is the epitome
of the evil monster. Red Dragons play on two
of mankind's greatest fears: fire and snakes.
There's something terrifying and wrong about
a Red Dragon. They are as big as a house.
They are fast and they hit hard. They are
miserly arsonists that delight in the destruction
of others and in some versions of D&D can
be master accountants, shrewd financiers,
and powerful telepaths. And because of all
that they can be amazing to control as a DM,
but if you're not careful, a capable party
can make quick work of a Red Dragon and all
that potential for a challenging encounter
will go up in smoke.
So, Jim, in 5th edition a lot of monsters
have gone through some changes. How did the
Red Dragon fare?
They lost a lot of their traditional protections
that they has but they also gained a lot in
terms of the number of actions that they can
take. DM's used to dragons that have a lot
of spell protection, damage resistance, innate
spell casting, not really gonna find that
anymore. There's a variant for spellcasting
that dragons get but there's not anymore of
the they can all cast this kind of thing and
they all also cast spells as a wizard or sorcerer.
So, a lot of the versatility of dragons has
been taken away and a lot of their protections,
but what they gain in that are 'Lair actions'
and 'Legendary actions', and the fact that their
breath weapon hits really hard now. Yes.
It used to be maybe that the breath weapon was,
you know it was enough to strip away some
of the protections that the players might
bring to the table or cause some minor annoyance,
but now it can actually do a lot of harm to
the party. You know what the dragons lost
and what they're getting more than balances
out. Most dragons now can take actions outside
of their turn. It allows them to manage large
groups of party members better. And so it's
less likely that they're gonna get ganged
up on and die in the second round of combat
because of the action economy. That's an important
part of it. Yeah. Now that's for like once
initiative is rolled, what make's it fun to
role-play a dragon? Oh man, so you get a monster
that's designed to be arrogant, sort of self
important. They live a long time. They tend
to have a lot of schemes and plots going on.
So, you know, one of the things that I would
encourage DM's to do in their campaigns is
to make the dragon the focal point of an entire
campaign. What kind of minions do they have
working out in the world taking control? It's
not just a tribe of kobold's that worships
them as a god. Maybe they've got, you know
humans, elves, dwarves, halflings doing their
bidding for them. Maybe take a different twist
on the matter and they're using their horde
as kind of a bank or a financial leverage
against the kingdom kind of thing. There's
a lot of interesting things you can do with
a dragons horde because it's so much money
and if you kind of work through the logical
conclusions of what it would be like to interject
that much coinage into a local economy, you
really mess things up. There's a lot of fun
things you can do with that. Yeah, and what
if you have, I mean I'm sorry but the thought
of a 'loan shark' Red Dragon.... Like I don't
want to miss that payment, you know? Maybe
he has people that owe him money do things?
Like oh, you can't pay me that 10,000 gold
back? There's a guy over here, he owed me
20,000. You can go fetch me that magic item.
Yeah. This is the value of exploring the older
editions of the game and particularly if you
can get your hands on a used monster manual
or even just some articles somewhere. You
can find those ecology sections in the monster
manual where it talks about, "Red Dragons
know how many copper pieces there are in their
lair." So how do you extrapolate from that?
They can also use suggestion and Minor Telepathy
and Mind Control abilities. Those all make
for a much more interesting encounter and
sort of build up the monster as threat outside
of combat, so that when they get down to it
and have to fight this thing it's been built
up over a long series of sessions and it's
more than just a big reptile that they go
and fight. After the initiative roll, what
is your, what's your favorite tactic as a
DM controlling a Red Dragon? You've got a
party, let's say you're not in your lair.
Right. You got a party there, 5-6 people there.
What's your favorite tactic? So, I think probably
my favorite tactic is gonna be just staying
out of range of all there spells and swooping
in for a breath weapon. Failing that, snatching
and grabbing one party member and carrying
them off somewhere to be fought with individually.
You gotta figure that a dragon, they're a
centerpiece of a campaign and you want that
encounter to be memorable. Right. So you should
have a lot of tricks up their sleeve. Chances
are the dragon's not going to fight to the
death. They're probably gonna bolt out as
soon as they get say below half their hit
points or two-thirds their hit points or something.
It should be only as a last resort that a
dragon lands on the ground and engages the
entire party at once. Right. So maybe young
dragons do that cause they're rash and stupid.
Yeah, impertinent. Impertinent. Maybe dragons
that have a particular with the party. Maybe
they let their emotions get in the way of
their tactical sense. There's also a lot of
things that the party can do to defeat a Red
Dragon, actions they could take. Why don't
you tell us about some of those. Well, if
you can close ranks, obviously you need to
be able to hit it, so that's the hardest thing.
Whether you can somehow get it on the ground
and trap it with nets, you know, if you have
a bunch of NPC's with you. Maybe you can do
that, probably not. Dragons are pretty strong
and whats to stop them from breathing on everybody
and burning them out. So if can fly, that's
a bonus. Um, if you have anybody who has an
ability to call the dragon out, you know.
So it has to attack them. Right. You can maybe
trap in down on the ground doing that. One
of the big things is waiting for your moment.
Don't blow your spell on.on..on on a maybe
shot because you wanna make sure you hit with
that because that dragon wants you to waste
your big attacks and your big spells. And
also you want to try, whereas maybe with other
animals or beasts whatever, you don't want
to attack them in their lair. Your best bet
with dragon is probably to attack it in its
lair, because like you said they're not going
to fight to the death. But they will for their
gold and their items. Right. So if you're
already in the lair, chances are there's not
going to be a big place for them to fly around
and take advantage of their mobility. Maybe
there's caves so you can start stone shaping
and trap the dragon in there. We had a dragon
fight one time where somebody earthbound it
and then stuck an earthspike into it and just
locked him down on the ground so he couldn't
fly away. So that, that was another edition
but there are spells similar to that where
you can maybe get him and keep him on the
ground in his lair. And you know i mean you
just gotta do damage. And if we're talking
straight Red Dragon here obviously you wanna
go in with some kind of fire resistance. Right.
Cause like you said they, a lot of they're
spell casting abilities got taken away so
you have to worry less about him casting Dispel
Magic or anything like that, unless your DM
wants to do the spellcasting variant. Having
that fire protection is a big deal. We had
one encounter with a Red Dragon in the 'Rise
of Tiamat' game. Yeah. And, I mean that was
a fun fight. I mean all building were burned
down. Yeah. Our barbarian dropped. Yeah. But
a bunch of 7th level characters took out a
young adult. Yeah, with its minions there.
With its minions there, you know it was good
teamwork. Uh, we had the paladin, uh what's
that ability that allows you to make him attack
you? Well there's the Paladin has the Compelled Duel
Compelled Duel, that's it. Which makes it favor attacking.
Favor attacking. So you know, but he's young
and impertinent and you do enough damage to
him and he's gonna be angry and that's the
way it played out. We trapped him in a barn.
He thought he was gonna take the paladin out
but we turned the tables on him. He's all
in one spot and you wait for your moment.
There you go. We dropped him, you know. Yeah.
So it was alot of fun, uh, you know our first...
our first dragon in fifth edition. It was
really cool. But yeah, it was good times.
So what about that legendary resistance? Automatically
passing three saving throws. It makes getting
through, that sort of replaces its spell resistance.
Exactly what it does, it just auto passes.
So, I mean, you know in a metagame sense...yeah
throw a couple of spells at it that aren't
really anything. It's just a saving throw
that maybe he'll want to pass. Right. You
know, um, but again that's where you start
blurring the line between player knowledge
and PC knowledge. Right. From now on knowing
that dragons have that ability, is that gonna
be in the back of my mind? Probably. Probably,
as it should be. I'm not gonna unload my big
spell that I think can damage him, if he doesn't
pass his save. I'm gonna wait for the 3rd
or 4th spell that gets cast at him because
he can just autosave. Yeah. You know and you
gotta whittle that down. Now you're having
to coordinate amongst all the spellcasters
in the group. Who's gonna hit him with things
to try and get rid of the legendary saves,
so that you can get him with the big stuff.
Exactly. It kind of adds a different rhythm
to the combat, apart from hit points. Exactly.
Where you're trying to hit with enough, can
I force this dragon to use it's legendary
resistance? Maybe, alright I'm gonna throw
a faerie fire at him. He might use a legendary
resistance to get that, if not we'll get advantage
against him. Exactly. Then you work your way
up I guess to the bigger stuff. Exactly.
I can't remember a single time that, you know,
you get done with the combat, you take out
most of them but of course you wanna question
(Sure, yeah.) one or two. And if you have
a DM worth his salt, you know, that loves
to kind of play it up it's usually a pretty
comical encounter. Like interrogating the
last goblin, sitting there surrounded by this
party of adventurers whose blood stained in
there comrades leftovers or whatever. And
they're asking you, "Where's the big bad guy?"
Right. Who has you know obviously threatened
to kill you already. You know, you're master.
Obviously. "Oooh, What do I do?" Who are you
more afraid of? You know. Voices. Yes. I love
the post combat interrogation. Um hmm.
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