(Hi,l have only played 1 session ever(so far) ,but in that one session,l was the dm,so hopefully that counts for me to post here,lf not,sorry)
l am posting this to ask "my fellow dms" what levels/session number you recommend giving the party their first dragon fight. obviously it is up to the dm when to do it,but l want to be fair and not give them something that will give a 100% TPK chance,and am makeing this for help. thanks in advance.
My party fought a baby dragon at level 3. I tuned the dragon to be powerful but not a tpk moment. They killed it.
At level 7 they killed an adult dragon. Tuned to what it had going on as it was being drained of power for some years.
Players can fight a dragon at any level. But in my eyes it has to make sense to why they could kill it.
Players can fight anything in the monster manual or a home brew monster. Up to the DM on how to tune the creature properly. At level 5 my players had a fight with a beholder. They should have died in a full no holds barred fight. But I tuned it to be winnable but not a push over. Hell I had most of the players charmed and then the rolls went bad for the beholder and great for the players and the tides turned in the players favor.
Depending on the number of people, level, and skill, this really varies. While the mosnter itself is irrelevant, I've had a player 1v1 an aboleth, which is CR 10, and a level 5 paladin. While I think paladins are OP in the first place, this says either something about balancing with CR or classes. He wasn't even doing much other than using divine smite, I double checked to make sure what they were doing was ok by the rules to.
You could tailor the dragon to the party to. Maybe they all got some poison resistance, so you could put in a black dragon. Something like that.
Honestly though, I think CR is a system that doesn't work well as is.
True, the CR system is hit-or-miss. BUT, there's a reason the monster manual has four different "age" levels of dragons. Wyrmling, Young, Adult, and Ancient.
So, for a wyrmling? A party of four or five PCs at level 2 or 3 can probably take it out. Especially if they have a big raging barbarian to soak up damage while a rogue sneak-attacks from range - they're going to kill it fast.
A young dragon? Same thing, but the PCs should probably be level 5 or 6. Even then, if they can avoid the breath weapon and get it somewhere alone that it doesn't have any lair actions, it's going to be toast pretty easily. If they get the drop on it? A level 5 party can probably take out a young dragon in a single round if they get some good rolls. If the dragon has friends? That's a whole different fight.
I currently have a party of four, one of which is level two, and they killed a cult fanatic before the fanatic had his second turn, thats CR 2, same as most wyrmlings, but I would play it safe and have a party with multiple level 2 characters before fighting a dragon wyrmling
Long answer: Dragons are cool and all, but one big enemy is never as big a challenge as a swarm. Basically, give the players a really big looking enemy when you want them to feel like real heroes. So a good example here is that I have groups of level five players in a couple of games. They've gotten to a point where I usually throw a mid-size settlement of goblins at them. The struggled more with the goblins than they did a single young green dragon. This is mainly because their attention is divided. Yet, to them it wasn't as big a story moment as taking down a young dragon...because it was a dragon. Fact is though, a party of four at level four could extremely easily and quickly dispatch a young dragon with very little difficulty if they act as a solid team. Give that same party a horde of twenty skeletons and someone's getting seriously injured...if not killed, especially if each skeleton has their own place in initiative order. So when telling your story and in need of a win for the party, or for them to feel like real heroes, throw a single big enemy at them like a young dragon (from sort of level four really). If you want them to bleed and hurt...throw loads of little enemies at them.
The earlier you introduce dragons that can be successfully defeated, the less special they'll typically be.
My suggestion would be that the first exposure to a dragon (maybe even the beginning of the campaign at L1) should be more like an environmental threat, something that's survived, not fought. Maybe an ancient black dragon that's spraying acid across a city, never landing to give people a decent chance to attack it, so the low-level party is making survival checks to navigate, perception checks to determine where the dragon will strafe next, and athletics/acrobatics checks to bypass obstacles until they can get into a sewer or maybe jump straight into s stream that will carry them out of the city as the dragon obliterates the people flooding out of the gates on the main road. (elder dragon encounter that's not really a combat because there is no fighting back)
After that, I'd wait several levels, then give them a quest to deal with kobolds that have recently become much more aggressive in an area, digging into people's cellars, and coming up into the houses to steal valuables. The party could then track the kobolds back to their den, where they'll ultimately discover that past the many deadly traps of the kobolds (use Tucker's Kobolds as inspiration) just before they started aggressively looting precious metals and gemstones, they acquired a dragon egg, which hatched not too long ago, so once the party gets past the Kobolds (having their resources depleted in the process) they have to fight the dragon wyrmling with the kobolds assigned to personally be its guards (this should be an extremely difficult encounter), and upon defeating them, the party finds the treasure stolen from the surrounding communities. (Kobolds are the main threat, the dragon wyrmling is an instant-end for the combat, resulting in the kobolds fleeing, and potentially collapsing the tunnels behind them creating another challenge for the party to get out.)
I would try to always give dragons plenty of minions (like kobolds on ballista or rolling flaming barrels down ramps at the party), and try to always have a significant battle the party has to get through the same day, before they get to the dragon fight, because those depleted resources will make it more difficult, which will make the victory feel more epic. I'd also try to make the dragon fight smart, which means typically staying in the air, and flying further away when waiting for its breath weapon to recharge, or swooping down, making a bite attack/grapple, then using the rest of its movement to fly high into the sky and drop the character for the additional fall damage. And if the party surprisingly deals a bucketload of damage on the first turn, the dragon is smart enough to flee, knowing it can't appreciate its hoard if it's dead, and it can come back to challenge the party at a later point. (dragon is the main threat, with kobolds participating to even out the action economy)
It depends on when you feel like introducing something cool that has the potential to reduce the party size.
Especially for new players, you want it to be memorable, not a pushover. Something that can scare the crap out of them!
On the flip side, who said the first time you see a dragon it has to be an enemy? It could very well be a boss quest giver that hires the party for tasks.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
The CR/Encounter builder would suggest it'll be a tough fight. As DM you have a few things that can help you out if you're not wanting this to be a TPK...
Have a location where cover is plentiful, and where players can take advantage of height/levels. That's going to help the party AC...a lot!
The downside is that at level 3, the player characters have an average of just 30 max HP. That means that the Dragon's attacks do have the ability to one shot them. So, I'd actually be looking at Wyrmlings and Guard Drakes. In fact, two wormlings might make for a really cool challenge.
Well not gonna be TPK plus I have never been a dm before. I’m making a campaign but I wanted to make a story and my friend was gonna be the “technical dm” that tells the party what dice to roll and stuff. So I have no idea how to balance but I remember fighting a young black dragon in a campaign. There was five(?) of us and we were probably all about Lv 4. I remember because I was a ranger with a familiar so I had to be at least level 3. So yeah. :/
Wait never mind about the black dragon. So what if I wanted to have my party (of 5 Lv 4 characters) fight white dragon? Should it be a white wyrmling? 2 wyrmlings? 3!?
You might be able to avoid tpk with a young dragon or wyrmling but I would air on side of caution allot of module's s don't really blance encounters nor take into account experience lv of players I'm well aware that serval modules have dragons in lv1-5 dragon of icepirepeak has one I remember running mechanically dragons are very dangerous there designed to be .
You might want to have them be lv 5 before they fight it if your going to have it act like a dragon if your going to play the dragon as extremely young and stupid ie and not fly at all ect lv 4 would work.
Wait never mind about the black dragon. So what if I wanted to have my party (of 5 Lv 4 characters) fight white dragon? Should it be a white wyrmling? 2 wyrmlings? 3!?
Well, the main difference in colourings are the resistances and damage types that the party do. So, the same rule of thumb generally applies.
My big advice, you want to mix things up and make the fight really memorable and cool is to plant some useful magic items in advance.
For example, my party got access to beads of force prior to one dragon fight. The rogue go slippers of spider climbing. The cleric got a ring of spell storing. Someone else (I forget which got the Staff of the Python. These are items that have some cool utility to them but don't unbalance the game unnecessarily, better still they allow the party to turn the tide.
Other magic items I find really cool to hand out as loot here and there are:
Sentinel Shield (for a Cleric, Wizard, or other more squishy caster class)
Cloak of the Bat (great for allowing players to take limited advantage of height and very limited flight)
Javelin of Lightening
Insignia of Claws
Bow (or other weapon) of Warning
Personally, I favour items that allow players to take advantage of cool features rather than simply add extra damage.
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Much of the problems with CR (Challenge Rating) exist because a single magic item (like Staff of the Woodlands ) can literally turn the tide and change up how a fight goes. Likewise terrain makes all the difference. A ruin scattered with cover will afford entirely different opportunities than an enclosed and walled outpost village. Location can hugely make the difference. If trapped inside a cave with a dragon flight is going to be limited for the Dragon, throw in some stalactites and stalagmites or some rock pillars and there are places for the PCs to hide that the dragon can't get through. This all can render CR all but irrelevant.
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A little insight: it took me years before I felt I knew how to balance an encounter properly. A good encounter will have you as DM worried that your players won't survive. And that's good. I recently surveyed the players that I have played with over the last year. Every single one of them selected different encounters as their favourite and least favourite encounter. There aren't hard and fast rules out there. If it's a good encounter though you'll always worry it's going to be too tough. That's where you can always have the dragon fly off, giving PCs the chance to bug out and escape, or you can have the dragon make an offer because it's impressed by their courage. Both of these give you the opportunity to bring the fight to the end before lots of PC deaths.
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Finally, in all monster stat blocks, if you look at HP there's some interesting info. The Young Black Dragon for example is 127 (15d10 +45). As a DM this means that the Dragon;s HP can be anywhere from 60hp right the way up to 195hp. So if you're really unsure there are two options available for you.
Set the HP to the lowest possible value which suggests that this was a particularly squishy dragon.
Don't reveal HP to your players but adjust it on the fly. I will for example frequently set a HP value but be willing to add or remove a certain number during play if the party are finding it too easy or too difficult. In the Dragon example, I'd set HP value of 100, but be willing to add 25hp if the players are finding it easy...or remove 25hp if they are finding it difficult.
This variable HP is a mechanic I have a vague belief doesn't get utilised by many DMs out there. There have been too many times when a player with experience of the game (with other DMs) have turned round and gone 'oh that monster only has 35HP, we can take it'..****y to be surprised when the monster has just 10hp. This is more work for you as a DM, but having monsters with different HP values can really help eliminate any meta gaming that might happen.
(Hi,l have only played 1 session ever(so far) ,but in that one session,l was the dm,so hopefully that counts for me to post here,lf not,sorry)
l am posting this to ask "my fellow dms" what levels/session number you recommend giving the party their first dragon fight. obviously it is up to the dm when to do it,but l want to be fair and not give them something that will give a 100% TPK chance,and am makeing this for help. thanks in advance.
My party fought a baby dragon at level 3. I tuned the dragon to be powerful but not a tpk moment. They killed it.
At level 7 they killed an adult dragon. Tuned to what it had going on as it was being drained of power for some years.
Players can fight a dragon at any level. But in my eyes it has to make sense to why they could kill it.
Players can fight anything in the monster manual or a home brew monster. Up to the DM on how to tune the creature properly. At level 5 my players had a fight with a beholder. They should have died in a full no holds barred fight. But I tuned it to be winnable but not a push over. Hell I had most of the players charmed and then the rolls went bad for the beholder and great for the players and the tides turned in the players favor.
So anything is possible.
Depending on the number of people, level, and skill, this really varies. While the mosnter itself is irrelevant, I've had a player 1v1 an aboleth, which is CR 10, and a level 5 paladin. While I think paladins are OP in the first place, this says either something about balancing with CR or classes. He wasn't even doing much other than using divine smite, I double checked to make sure what they were doing was ok by the rules to.
You could tailor the dragon to the party to. Maybe they all got some poison resistance, so you could put in a black dragon. Something like that.
Honestly though, I think CR is a system that doesn't work well as is.
Also known as CrafterB and DankMemer.
Here, have some homebrew classes! Subclasses to? Why not races. Feats, feats as well. I have a lot of magic items. Lastly I got monsters, fun, fun times.
True, the CR system is hit-or-miss. BUT, there's a reason the monster manual has four different "age" levels of dragons. Wyrmling, Young, Adult, and Ancient.
So, for a wyrmling? A party of four or five PCs at level 2 or 3 can probably take it out. Especially if they have a big raging barbarian to soak up damage while a rogue sneak-attacks from range - they're going to kill it fast.
A young dragon? Same thing, but the PCs should probably be level 5 or 6. Even then, if they can avoid the breath weapon and get it somewhere alone that it doesn't have any lair actions, it's going to be toast pretty easily. If they get the drop on it? A level 5 party can probably take out a young dragon in a single round if they get some good rolls. If the dragon has friends? That's a whole different fight.
I currently have a party of four, one of which is level two, and they killed a cult fanatic before the fanatic had his second turn, thats CR 2, same as most wyrmlings, but I would play it safe and have a party with multiple level 2 characters before fighting a dragon wyrmling
BTW since they killed the CF so quickly, I'm going to make an encounter that may not end so well for them, three green dragon wyrmlings.
Short answer: When the story calls for it.
Long answer: Dragons are cool and all, but one big enemy is never as big a challenge as a swarm. Basically, give the players a really big looking enemy when you want them to feel like real heroes. So a good example here is that I have groups of level five players in a couple of games. They've gotten to a point where I usually throw a mid-size settlement of goblins at them. The struggled more with the goblins than they did a single young green dragon. This is mainly because their attention is divided. Yet, to them it wasn't as big a story moment as taking down a young dragon...because it was a dragon. Fact is though, a party of four at level four could extremely easily and quickly dispatch a young dragon with very little difficulty if they act as a solid team. Give that same party a horde of twenty skeletons and someone's getting seriously injured...if not killed, especially if each skeleton has their own place in initiative order. So when telling your story and in need of a win for the party, or for them to feel like real heroes, throw a single big enemy at them like a young dragon (from sort of level four really). If you want them to bleed and hurt...throw loads of little enemies at them.
[Edit because I mistyped a word]
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
The earlier you introduce dragons that can be successfully defeated, the less special they'll typically be.
My suggestion would be that the first exposure to a dragon (maybe even the beginning of the campaign at L1) should be more like an environmental threat, something that's survived, not fought. Maybe an ancient black dragon that's spraying acid across a city, never landing to give people a decent chance to attack it, so the low-level party is making survival checks to navigate, perception checks to determine where the dragon will strafe next, and athletics/acrobatics checks to bypass obstacles until they can get into a sewer or maybe jump straight into s stream that will carry them out of the city as the dragon obliterates the people flooding out of the gates on the main road. (elder dragon encounter that's not really a combat because there is no fighting back)
After that, I'd wait several levels, then give them a quest to deal with kobolds that have recently become much more aggressive in an area, digging into people's cellars, and coming up into the houses to steal valuables. The party could then track the kobolds back to their den, where they'll ultimately discover that past the many deadly traps of the kobolds (use Tucker's Kobolds as inspiration) just before they started aggressively looting precious metals and gemstones, they acquired a dragon egg, which hatched not too long ago, so once the party gets past the Kobolds (having their resources depleted in the process) they have to fight the dragon wyrmling with the kobolds assigned to personally be its guards (this should be an extremely difficult encounter), and upon defeating them, the party finds the treasure stolen from the surrounding communities. (Kobolds are the main threat, the dragon wyrmling is an instant-end for the combat, resulting in the kobolds fleeing, and potentially collapsing the tunnels behind them creating another challenge for the party to get out.)
I would try to always give dragons plenty of minions (like kobolds on ballista or rolling flaming barrels down ramps at the party), and try to always have a significant battle the party has to get through the same day, before they get to the dragon fight, because those depleted resources will make it more difficult, which will make the victory feel more epic. I'd also try to make the dragon fight smart, which means typically staying in the air, and flying further away when waiting for its breath weapon to recharge, or swooping down, making a bite attack/grapple, then using the rest of its movement to fly high into the sky and drop the character for the additional fall damage. And if the party surprisingly deals a bucketload of damage on the first turn, the dragon is smart enough to flee, knowing it can't appreciate its hoard if it's dead, and it can come back to challenge the party at a later point. (dragon is the main threat, with kobolds participating to even out the action economy)
how many people do you have in your party?
MURDERISTHEBESTOPTION
It depends on when you feel like introducing something cool that has the potential to reduce the party size.
Especially for new players, you want it to be memorable, not a pushover. Something that can scare the crap out of them!
On the flip side, who said the first time you see a dragon it has to be an enemy? It could very well be a boss quest giver that hires the party for tasks.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
So if I have a party of 5 level 3 characters could they beat a young black dragon?
The CR/Encounter builder would suggest it'll be a tough fight. As DM you have a few things that can help you out if you're not wanting this to be a TPK...
Have a location where cover is plentiful, and where players can take advantage of height/levels. That's going to help the party AC...a lot!
The downside is that at level 3, the player characters have an average of just 30 max HP. That means that the Dragon's attacks do have the ability to one shot them. So, I'd actually be looking at Wyrmlings and Guard Drakes. In fact, two wormlings might make for a really cool challenge.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
Depending on dragons age, lv of party &size of the party.
Well not gonna be TPK plus I have never been a dm before. I’m making a campaign but I wanted to make a story and my friend was gonna be the “technical dm” that tells the party what dice to roll and stuff. So I have no idea how to balance but I remember fighting a young black dragon in a campaign. There was five(?) of us and we were probably all about Lv 4. I remember because I was a ranger with a familiar so I had to be at least level 3. So yeah. :/
Wait never mind about the black dragon. So what if I wanted to have my party (of 5 Lv 4 characters) fight white dragon? Should it be a white wyrmling? 2 wyrmlings? 3!?
You might be able to avoid tpk with a young dragon or wyrmling but I would air on side of caution allot of module's s don't really blance encounters nor take into account experience lv of players I'm well aware that serval modules have dragons in lv1-5 dragon of icepirepeak has one I remember running mechanically dragons are very dangerous there designed to be .
You might want to have them be lv 5 before they fight it if your going to have it act like a dragon if your going to play the dragon as extremely young and stupid ie and not fly at all ect lv 4 would work.
Well, the main difference in colourings are the resistances and damage types that the party do. So, the same rule of thumb generally applies.
My big advice, you want to mix things up and make the fight really memorable and cool is to plant some useful magic items in advance.
For example, my party got access to beads of force prior to one dragon fight. The rogue go slippers of spider climbing. The cleric got a ring of spell storing. Someone else (I forget which got the Staff of the Python. These are items that have some cool utility to them but don't unbalance the game unnecessarily, better still they allow the party to turn the tide.
Other magic items I find really cool to hand out as loot here and there are:
Personally, I favour items that allow players to take advantage of cool features rather than simply add extra damage.
-
Much of the problems with CR (Challenge Rating) exist because a single magic item (like Staff of the Woodlands ) can literally turn the tide and change up how a fight goes. Likewise terrain makes all the difference. A ruin scattered with cover will afford entirely different opportunities than an enclosed and walled outpost village. Location can hugely make the difference. If trapped inside a cave with a dragon flight is going to be limited for the Dragon, throw in some stalactites and stalagmites or some rock pillars and there are places for the PCs to hide that the dragon can't get through. This all can render CR all but irrelevant.
-
A little insight: it took me years before I felt I knew how to balance an encounter properly. A good encounter will have you as DM worried that your players won't survive. And that's good. I recently surveyed the players that I have played with over the last year. Every single one of them selected different encounters as their favourite and least favourite encounter. There aren't hard and fast rules out there. If it's a good encounter though you'll always worry it's going to be too tough. That's where you can always have the dragon fly off, giving PCs the chance to bug out and escape, or you can have the dragon make an offer because it's impressed by their courage. Both of these give you the opportunity to bring the fight to the end before lots of PC deaths.
-
Finally, in all monster stat blocks, if you look at HP there's some interesting info. The Young Black Dragon for example is 127 (15d10 +45). As a DM this means that the Dragon;s HP can be anywhere from 60hp right the way up to 195hp. So if you're really unsure there are two options available for you.
This variable HP is a mechanic I have a vague belief doesn't get utilised by many DMs out there. There have been too many times when a player with experience of the game (with other DMs) have turned round and gone 'oh that monster only has 35HP, we can take it'..****y to be surprised when the monster has just 10hp. This is more work for you as a DM, but having monsters with different HP values can really help eliminate any meta gaming that might happen.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.