After going through many articles and videos about Venomfang, as well as reading through the Phandelver adventure and the Monster's Manual part on Dragons, I've come up with a few ideas about Venomfang. This is just my take on it for my group, and this assumes players are new to D&D.
First and foremost, Venomfang is not supposed to be a combat encounter. If it does go that way, then it will be a lesson in humility for the players, showing them that it's sometimes necessary to run or avoid conflict. The characters will not surprise Venomfang and they'll hear her talking as they approach the tower before they even see her, as she'll be hiding on top of the tower. Yes, Venomfang (VF) is female. :P
If the players insist on attacking VF during their first meeting with her, then VF will go for a TPK. After losing 1 or more characters, if the players run, VF will allow them to get a way because she wants to control the remaining members at a later point. If they actually manage to get VF to half hit points, then she flies away, although may return later in the adventure...
VF will do everything in her power to talk and parley with the players - asking what they need, why they're there, offering them promises of treasure and magic items, etc. - ideally playing off of the player's responses.
VF's motivations are:
1) Getting the treasure from Wave Echo Cave (WEC). I've seen many come up with intricate stories for why VF is at Thundertree, and while I admire them, I felt many were over-complicated. VF doesn't need more reason to be there other than to collect what's in the WEC, albeit from a safe distance. VF is a young dragon and WEC is a proportionately sized challenge for her. Phandelver is a relatively new town which means that it's ripe for her influence. Dominating WEC is a surmountable task for her, however she needs medium sized lackey's to do the dirty work for her (WEC is a bit cramped for her size), which she prefers anyways because green dragons LOVE to manipulate.
She learned of WEC through some cultists, who have been giving her information in return for having the honor of being in her physical presence from time to time. She knows that there are no other dragons or powerful creatures in the area that know about WEC, so her only real threats are Sildar, Reidoth, the dwarf brothers and the players. She knows that Nezznar will negotiate with her. So VF's purpose for being in the area is to find lackeys to loot WEC for her, at which point she will store the treasure in her temporary lair in the ruins of Thundertree, which leads to her next motivation:
2) Get rid of the druid and secure Thundertree for herself. VF isn't sure if she can kill the Reidoth, so she wants the players to drive him off or kill him. She then wants the entire Thundertree ruins cleared out and repopulated with her slaves, which will probably be a mix of cultists, evil NPCs, goblins, etc. She'll have the slaves build it in to a fortress which will be her lair until she can build out WEC as her permanent lair (see 4 below).
3) Control Phandelver. VF wants complete dominance over Phandelver. She will allow a populace there as long as they are her indirect subjects - she'll have someone else rule the town for her, and would prefer to have her existence be known as a myth or bed-time story. Meanwhile she intends to reside inside Thundertree and collect her hoard while she matures into an adult, all the while increasing her sphere of influence in the region.
She's aware of the Redbrands, Black Spider, Glass Staff, etc., and she's letting all of that play out because the instability works in her favor. Having different factions maneuver for control of the town is acceptable for her, so long as no single faction gets too powerful. If one does, she will bring it down a few notches either by force, or more likely, persuasion. Eventually she wants to control whichever faction controls the town. She believes that Nezznar may have been sent to WEC, and that he actually answers to someone higher (plot hook for another adventure?) - she's curious to find this other being and hopes it will be suitable as the ruler of Phandelin, because Nezznar is too weak for the job in her opinion.
Her current strategy is to control the cultists outright, then have them strike a deal with the Redbrands whereby the cultists will help secure the Redbrand's dominance of the town, in exchange for use of the trails near Phandalin as well as unbothered access to WEC. The Redbrands are content with control of Phandalin and have no desire to risk getting killed at WEC. She knows that she'll eventually have to parlay with, or kill Nezznar, as well as replace or control the Redbrands. She's open to having the players take control of the town, so long as she believes she can control the players (which the players might be able to trick her in to thinking...) She's not yet fully aware of Halia's or Zhentarims' plans...
4) After control of the town is established, she wants to acquire a slave force to build a lower level to WEC as her permanent lair. This will likely take many years while she grows in to adulthood. She intends to use the WEC's magical properties as a bargaining tool in the region, and a source of income for her slaves or possible army at some point. She's already sourcing potential slaves for this - kobolds, dark gnomes, beholders etc. She suspects that WEC's magical properties could be used as a foundation for some kind of "magical item factory" of sorts.
5) After she's established in her adult lair in WEC, she plans to control the entire region including Neverwinter Wood and Neverwinter itself. She doesn't plan to mess with Icespire Peak or the mountains because of the cold climate, even if there wasn't a dragon already there, which she's aware of...
Dialogue: VF is quite eloquent, and is usually respectful (fake) unless she loses her temper, although even when being polite, she will constantly make back-handed insults towards the players. She'll say things like "oh, an elf - we love elves, they make the best servants", if there's a half-elf she'll say "we love half-elves too, although half as much of course... hahaha) (condescending chuckle). To a dwarf she'd say "Dwarves make such fine weapons for us" ("us" being her and dragons in general). While these insults are sometimes over the top - I want to telegraph to newer players how evil VF is, even though she's seemingly being nice. Otherwise, new players might actually think that VF can be trusted simply because they're unfamiliar with how chromatic dragons work in D&D.
She'll also refer to WEC's treasure as "hers" or "ours", because "naturally all gold and magic items belong to dragons by birthright", which she actually believes - again showing the players her arrogance, elitism and evil. If the players argue with her on this point, she'll eventually pretend to concede that maybe whoever finds the treasure is the rightful owner. Her overt sense of entitlement should be a common theme throughout any interactions with her.
VF will try to make the following deals with the players (not necessarily in this order, feel free to change it up of course):
- Give them the location of WEC in exchange for all the magic items and gold, although she'll settle for half because she knows she can take it by force later if need be. She also says she'll send the cultists along with the players as help, although the cultists are really her spies. Make it obvious to the players that the cultists can't be trusted though (maybe the cultists openly talk about sacrificing people in Phandelver as tribute to Venomfang, for example).
- If the players don't take the deal, then VF will offer the location of WEC in return for driving off Reidoth. She plans to parlay with the players again later after they've looted WEC to get the treasure from them, or destroy them and take it if need be.
- VF will always offer control of the town as a bargaining chip, because she knows she can later subvert the players or kill them, but ideally in the long term, they would run the town for her under her control (remember that VF doesn't automatically know the players alignments, and in her arrogance she thinks she can turn any Good clerics or paladins to evil over time).
- VF will also offer things that she doesn't have, or make up things such as the location of "buried treasure" for example, as long as she thinks she can get her part of the deal first.
- VF will actually help the players defeat some adversaries to try and build a false sense of trust. It's presumable that she's been tracking the players since they left Neverwinter, so any encounter would be an opportunity for her to "swoop in and save the day". Or you could even arrange an encounter near Thundertree where the players are attacked and then VF flies in and fights on their side. VF will also gladly help kill the Redbrands, so long as they're outside of town - she doesn't want her presence widely known just yet...
If the players absolutely don't trust VF, as they shouldn't, and VF thinks she can't make a deal, she will have cultists track them and spy on them, and/or she could use a doppleganger or Droop as a double agent. The goal would be to ambush the players as they leave WEC after defeating Nezznar, hopefully when the players have all the treasure and are lower on Hit Points. At that point she will try one last chance at parleying, but if it fails she will attack them.
The player's best choice might be to hand over the treasure (including all their magic items, not just the ones found in WEC) and escape to fight another day. VF will take the treasure and let the party go, and will keep everything at the Thundertree lair. The players could go back to VF's lair later as another quest to retrieve their treasure(and more), although they will either have to level up sufficiently or team up with others such as the dwarf brothers, and/or Sildar and members of the Lord's Alliance or something like that.
If they decide to fight VF at this point, then go for the TPK to teach them a lesson OR have someone or something appear and save them - maybe an angel (was sister Garaele an angel in disguise the whole time?), maybe friends of the dwarf brothers, etc. VF will still fly away if down to half HPs.
In summary - Venomfang is at the very early stages in her career as a want-to-be ruler, and as such things are in a very fluid state. The players could actually use her for their own benefit if they can outsmart her. Hopefully with the above info. you'll have the foundation necessary to handle whatever the players throw at you.
EDIT: I'm going to do a short write-up on Reidoth that directly ties in with Venomfang on a separate post.
To be honest, this would have been a lot more fun than the version of this that I got to play through. I won't say there was no dialogue, but it was very very minimal. It was definitely one of the toughest fights we had in the entire campaign... resulting in one death (my character) and the rest of the party was able to finish off the dragon and rush back down the tower... as my timer expired on revivify (scroll version so it was going to be dicey anyway). So they threw me in a bag of holding and off to Neverwinter we went. But yeah, our DM fully expected it to be a fight scene... and I think we were of the mindset that we may die, but we're killing a dragon. The final crossbow shot at long range was epic... kind of like that old "The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat." moment.
We never did learn to run away from danger. More talking points probably would have helped foster that fear and have given us a chance to realize we were outmatched.
My players decided to grovel and present Venomfang with gifts, and told her about the location of Wave Echo Cave (which they had learned the location of by rescuing Gundren Rockseeker) in the hopes that she would fly off and have a fight with Nezznar, killing one and weakening the other. Strictly speaking, a Green Dragon probably wouldn't care about having a mountain cave as a lair, but it was so much fun I rolled with it - it involved a terrified illusion wizard accidentally bluffing his way through some high deception checks, and the Elf Druid in the party wild shaping into an animal and pretending to be another player's pet so that Venomfang wouldn't realise they were an Elf.
Maybe you're right but I think Wave Echo Cave is a great lair for Venomfang, although currently too small for her in size - it's fairly close to some forests and offers her some protection. She's very exposed at Thundertree IMO.
Quote from Jamrill>> First and foremost, Venomfang is not supposed to be a combat encounter. If it does go that way, then it will be a lesson in humility for the players, showing them that it's sometimes necessary to run or avoid conflict. The characters will not surprise Venomfang and they'll hear her talking as they approach the tower before they even see her, as she'll be hiding on top of the tower. Yes, Venomfang (VF) is female. :P
Idk about that...I thought that the fight was quite fun. A few well-placed lethal encounters can be exciting; the fight let my character really stretch her wings (no, she wasn't an Aarakocra).
This is my take on Venomfang as well. I've run them as the actual BBEG in play - wanting to dominate the region. The player characters make good pawns. I had one group so afraid of the dragon and fight that they did what they were told while trying to find the moment to strike. It still resulted in a good fight when that time came - but was even more powerful as there was a good story behind it.
They worked for a potential tyrant until they could turn on Venomfang and prevent it. I feel like this (what you listed) is a very rational set of motivations and options for the dragon to take.
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After going through many articles and videos about Venomfang, as well as reading through the Phandelver adventure and the Monster's Manual part on Dragons, I've come up with a few ideas about Venomfang. This is just my take on it for my group, and this assumes players are new to D&D.
First and foremost, Venomfang is not supposed to be a combat encounter. If it does go that way, then it will be a lesson in humility for the players, showing them that it's sometimes necessary to run or avoid conflict. The characters will not surprise Venomfang and they'll hear her talking as they approach the tower before they even see her, as she'll be hiding on top of the tower. Yes, Venomfang (VF) is female. :P
If the players insist on attacking VF during their first meeting with her, then VF will go for a TPK. After losing 1 or more characters, if the players run, VF will allow them to get a way because she wants to control the remaining members at a later point. If they actually manage to get VF to half hit points, then she flies away, although may return later in the adventure...
VF will do everything in her power to talk and parley with the players - asking what they need, why they're there, offering them promises of treasure and magic items, etc. - ideally playing off of the player's responses.
VF's motivations are:
1) Getting the treasure from Wave Echo Cave (WEC). I've seen many come up with intricate stories for why VF is at Thundertree, and while I admire them, I felt many were over-complicated. VF doesn't need more reason to be there other than to collect what's in the WEC, albeit from a safe distance. VF is a young dragon and WEC is a proportionately sized challenge for her. Phandelver is a relatively new town which means that it's ripe for her influence. Dominating WEC is a surmountable task for her, however she needs medium sized lackey's to do the dirty work for her (WEC is a bit cramped for her size), which she prefers anyways because green dragons LOVE to manipulate.
She learned of WEC through some cultists, who have been giving her information in return for having the honor of being in her physical presence from time to time. She knows that there are no other dragons or powerful creatures in the area that know about WEC, so her only real threats are Sildar, Reidoth, the dwarf brothers and the players. She knows that Nezznar will negotiate with her. So VF's purpose for being in the area is to find lackeys to loot WEC for her, at which point she will store the treasure in her temporary lair in the ruins of Thundertree, which leads to her next motivation:
2) Get rid of the druid and secure Thundertree for herself. VF isn't sure if she can kill the Reidoth, so she wants the players to drive him off or kill him. She then wants the entire Thundertree ruins cleared out and repopulated with her slaves, which will probably be a mix of cultists, evil NPCs, goblins, etc. She'll have the slaves build it in to a fortress which will be her lair until she can build out WEC as her permanent lair (see 4 below).
3) Control Phandelver. VF wants complete dominance over Phandelver. She will allow a populace there as long as they are her indirect subjects - she'll have someone else rule the town for her, and would prefer to have her existence be known as a myth or bed-time story. Meanwhile she intends to reside inside Thundertree and collect her hoard while she matures into an adult, all the while increasing her sphere of influence in the region.
She's aware of the Redbrands, Black Spider, Glass Staff, etc., and she's letting all of that play out because the instability works in her favor. Having different factions maneuver for control of the town is acceptable for her, so long as no single faction gets too powerful. If one does, she will bring it down a few notches either by force, or more likely, persuasion. Eventually she wants to control whichever faction controls the town. She believes that Nezznar may have been sent to WEC, and that he actually answers to someone higher (plot hook for another adventure?) - she's curious to find this other being and hopes it will be suitable as the ruler of Phandelin, because Nezznar is too weak for the job in her opinion.
Her current strategy is to control the cultists outright, then have them strike a deal with the Redbrands whereby the cultists will help secure the Redbrand's dominance of the town, in exchange for use of the trails near Phandalin as well as unbothered access to WEC. The Redbrands are content with control of Phandalin and have no desire to risk getting killed at WEC. She knows that she'll eventually have to parlay with, or kill Nezznar, as well as replace or control the Redbrands. She's open to having the players take control of the town, so long as she believes she can control the players (which the players might be able to trick her in to thinking...) She's not yet fully aware of Halia's or Zhentarims' plans...
4) After control of the town is established, she wants to acquire a slave force to build a lower level to WEC as her permanent lair. This will likely take many years while she grows in to adulthood. She intends to use the WEC's magical properties as a bargaining tool in the region, and a source of income for her slaves or possible army at some point. She's already sourcing potential slaves for this - kobolds, dark gnomes, beholders etc. She suspects that WEC's magical properties could be used as a foundation for some kind of "magical item factory" of sorts.
5) After she's established in her adult lair in WEC, she plans to control the entire region including Neverwinter Wood and Neverwinter itself. She doesn't plan to mess with Icespire Peak or the mountains because of the cold climate, even if there wasn't a dragon already there, which she's aware of...
Dialogue: VF is quite eloquent, and is usually respectful (fake) unless she loses her temper, although even when being polite, she will constantly make back-handed insults towards the players. She'll say things like "oh, an elf - we love elves, they make the best servants", if there's a half-elf she'll say "we love half-elves too, although half as much of course... hahaha) (condescending chuckle). To a dwarf she'd say "Dwarves make such fine weapons for us" ("us" being her and dragons in general). While these insults are sometimes over the top - I want to telegraph to newer players how evil VF is, even though she's seemingly being nice. Otherwise, new players might actually think that VF can be trusted simply because they're unfamiliar with how chromatic dragons work in D&D.
She'll also refer to WEC's treasure as "hers" or "ours", because "naturally all gold and magic items belong to dragons by birthright", which she actually believes - again showing the players her arrogance, elitism and evil. If the players argue with her on this point, she'll eventually pretend to concede that maybe whoever finds the treasure is the rightful owner. Her overt sense of entitlement should be a common theme throughout any interactions with her.
VF will try to make the following deals with the players (not necessarily in this order, feel free to change it up of course):
- Give them the location of WEC in exchange for all the magic items and gold, although she'll settle for half because she knows she can take it by force later if need be. She also says she'll send the cultists along with the players as help, although the cultists are really her spies. Make it obvious to the players that the cultists can't be trusted though (maybe the cultists openly talk about sacrificing people in Phandelver as tribute to Venomfang, for example).
- If the players don't take the deal, then VF will offer the location of WEC in return for driving off Reidoth. She plans to parlay with the players again later after they've looted WEC to get the treasure from them, or destroy them and take it if need be.
- VF will always offer control of the town as a bargaining chip, because she knows she can later subvert the players or kill them, but ideally in the long term, they would run the town for her under her control (remember that VF doesn't automatically know the players alignments, and in her arrogance she thinks she can turn any Good clerics or paladins to evil over time).
- VF will also offer things that she doesn't have, or make up things such as the location of "buried treasure" for example, as long as she thinks she can get her part of the deal first.
- VF will actually help the players defeat some adversaries to try and build a false sense of trust. It's presumable that she's been tracking the players since they left Neverwinter, so any encounter would be an opportunity for her to "swoop in and save the day". Or you could even arrange an encounter near Thundertree where the players are attacked and then VF flies in and fights on their side. VF will also gladly help kill the Redbrands, so long as they're outside of town - she doesn't want her presence widely known just yet...
If the players absolutely don't trust VF, as they shouldn't, and VF thinks she can't make a deal, she will have cultists track them and spy on them, and/or she could use a doppleganger or Droop as a double agent. The goal would be to ambush the players as they leave WEC after defeating Nezznar, hopefully when the players have all the treasure and are lower on Hit Points. At that point she will try one last chance at parleying, but if it fails she will attack them.
The player's best choice might be to hand over the treasure (including all their magic items, not just the ones found in WEC) and escape to fight another day. VF will take the treasure and let the party go, and will keep everything at the Thundertree lair. The players could go back to VF's lair later as another quest to retrieve their treasure(and more), although they will either have to level up sufficiently or team up with others such as the dwarf brothers, and/or Sildar and members of the Lord's Alliance or something like that.
If they decide to fight VF at this point, then go for the TPK to teach them a lesson OR have someone or something appear and save them - maybe an angel (was sister Garaele an angel in disguise the whole time?), maybe friends of the dwarf brothers, etc. VF will still fly away if down to half HPs.
In summary - Venomfang is at the very early stages in her career as a want-to-be ruler, and as such things are in a very fluid state. The players could actually use her for their own benefit if they can outsmart her. Hopefully with the above info. you'll have the foundation necessary to handle whatever the players throw at you.
EDIT: I'm going to do a short write-up on Reidoth that directly ties in with Venomfang on a separate post.
Happy DMing
To be honest, this would have been a lot more fun than the version of this that I got to play through. I won't say there was no dialogue, but it was very very minimal. It was definitely one of the toughest fights we had in the entire campaign... resulting in one death (my character) and the rest of the party was able to finish off the dragon and rush back down the tower... as my timer expired on revivify (scroll version so it was going to be dicey anyway). So they threw me in a bag of holding and off to Neverwinter we went. But yeah, our DM fully expected it to be a fight scene... and I think we were of the mindset that we may die, but we're killing a dragon. The final crossbow shot at long range was epic... kind of like that old "The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat." moment.
We never did learn to run away from danger. More talking points probably would have helped foster that fear and have given us a chance to realize we were outmatched.
Much appreciated - I figured it's a friggin dragon, it should be an epic encounter.
My players decided to grovel and present Venomfang with gifts, and told her about the location of Wave Echo Cave (which they had learned the location of by rescuing Gundren Rockseeker) in the hopes that she would fly off and have a fight with Nezznar, killing one and weakening the other. Strictly speaking, a Green Dragon probably wouldn't care about having a mountain cave as a lair, but it was so much fun I rolled with it - it involved a terrified illusion wizard accidentally bluffing his way through some high deception checks, and the Elf Druid in the party wild shaping into an animal and pretending to be another player's pet so that Venomfang wouldn't realise they were an Elf.
Haha, that's awesome!
Maybe you're right but I think Wave Echo Cave is a great lair for Venomfang, although currently too small for her in size - it's fairly close to some forests and offers her some protection. She's very exposed at Thundertree IMO.
Idk about that...I thought that the fight was quite fun. A few well-placed lethal encounters can be exciting; the fight let my character really stretch her wings (no, she wasn't an Aarakocra).
This is my take on Venomfang as well. I've run them as the actual BBEG in play - wanting to dominate the region. The player characters make good pawns. I had one group so afraid of the dragon and fight that they did what they were told while trying to find the moment to strike. It still resulted in a good fight when that time came - but was even more powerful as there was a good story behind it.
They worked for a potential tyrant until they could turn on Venomfang and prevent it. I feel like this (what you listed) is a very rational set of motivations and options for the dragon to take.