No, I'm the only person here who's actually looking at the physics of a nuclear explosion and making an attempt to actually translate that into D&D terms. Saying it just does fire damage is closer in effect to a fuel-air bomb, not a nuclear weapon. A combination of radiant and necrotic damage is the closest thing the game has for what massive bursts of ionizing radiation do. But if you want to claim that it's impossible for nukes to have those damage types then fine, a nuclear bomb would deal nuclear damage, which nothing in D&D has resistance or immunity to. And yes, the bomb would deal both thunder and bludgeoning damage simultaneously because the detonation is so powerful that it's going to be hitting the target on multiple levels. And honestly, yes, I think that force damage is also justified- the PHB calls it magic only but then later books turn around and give us force effects that are only sorta magic or not really magic.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
People are looking at this the wrong way. Humans did not defeat lions, wolves, bears, etc. by having a better weapon.
We rule this world with a single ability - INTELLIGENCE. To misquote Jurassic Park "Intelligence Finds a Way." Life eats, Intelligence finds.
If the dragons are smarter than the humans they will. Perhaps by hiding, perhaps by making deals with humans. But they will win. If humans are smarter than dragons, the people will win.
Dragons can become literally any person they want to. They could try to emulate dopplegangers; befriend the president as a human to learn how he acts, then assassinate him and pretend to be him. Then order a bunch of stuff that would get the soldiers killed off, and then turn back into a dragon and let the dragons storm the world.
The dragons could also do something like this: join the army as a human, rise to power, learn how to use nuclear weapons, feign your death, go back to the dragons and instruct them on how to use nukes, and destroy the world.
People are looking at this the wrong way. Humans did not defeat lions, wolves, bears, etc. by having a better weapon.
We rule this world with a single ability - INTELLIGENCE. To misquote Jurassic Park "Intelligence Finds a Way." Life eats, Intelligence finds.
If the dragons are smarter than the humans they will. Perhaps by hiding, perhaps by making deals with humans. But they will win. If humans are smarter than dragons, the people will win.
This is the only reasonable argument on the side of dragons in the entire thread.
Brute force of dragons just being dragons, they would get decimated and it wouldn't even be close. But yeah, it's entirely plausible that they would outsmart us somehow. Hell, even start using tech themselves.
If ya think about it that intelligence level could really get you into trouble. If we say that they have the same time frame to develop as the humans then they could come as sci-fi wizard assasins. world leaders in bunkers while dragons use scrying to figure out where they are like a geoguesser so they can raid it by blasting holes with lasers and meteor swarm.
I don't believe Dragon's Intelligence is that far superior to humans. If it is, how do a handful of 4-6 humans take out a dragon?
The only way dragons beat humans is to subvert a great number of humans to join the dragon team. At that point, it ceases to be dragons against humans.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
I don't believe Dragon's Intelligence is that far superior to humans. If it is, how do a handful of 4-6 humans take out a dragon?
The only way dragons beat humans is to subvert a great number of humans to join the dragon team. At that point, it ceases to be dragons against humans.
These 4 - 6 humans are, assuming this dragon is, say, an adult red dragon (CR 17), these humans are going to be at least level 12, at which point they are "masters of the realm". Our everyday soldiers are probably something like level 5 at maximum. Also, adult red dragons have intelligence 16, while an average human has intelligence 10.
I don't believe Dragon's Intelligence is that far superior to humans. If it is, how do a handful of 4-6 humans take out a dragon?
The only way dragons beat humans is to subvert a great number of humans to join the dragon team. At that point, it ceases to be dragons against humans.
Also your 4-6 humans thing doesn't hold out to any DM who plays them to their strengths. Most level 20 parties won;t be able to handle constant flybys while trekking through regional effects to a dragons lair, fighting their minion hordes, and being bombarded by magic from things in the hoard. Then factor in that they'll probably start off by picking on the weak ones, carrying (and killing) that wizard far away while the party is helpless. It can become very not fun so thats why most DMs say that they are in a dungeon and are half blind so they don't pick on the poor wizard
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[roll]7d6[/roll]
Every post these dice roll increasing my chances of winning the yahtzee thread (I wish (wait not the twist the wish threa-!))
"Commoner" is the stat block for someone who's got no serious skills or training. A person who's working the cash register at a fast food joint is probably a commoner. Someone who's complete boot camp is no longer a commoner, they're a soldier, with new proficiencies, durability, and combat training.
Dragons, regardless of type, can be killed by a small group of individuals wielding what was the height of weapons technology during the Roman Empire. Bullets fired from assault rifles, or worse yet heavy machine guns, will absolutely shred a dragon. And at much greater ranges than what you can achieve with anything from the Player's Handbook.
In my list, I assumed everyone was a commoner because only a small fraction of the world population is trained for military combat.
The idea that most people are commoners is foolish.
At least a third, if not the majority of people in most countries would be considered "Expert Sidekicks". We have all trained EXTENSIVELY in skills that are basically worthless in combat. I know more computer languages than anyone should. I know how to drive a vehicle. I can dance. I can cook. I can blow glass. I can
(Assuming you were NOT willing to declare: Every engineer/machinist an Artificer, every musician a Bard, every priest a Cleric, every martial artist a Monk, and every criminal a Rogue.)
I don't believe Dragon's Intelligence is that far superior to humans. If it is, how do a handful of 4-6 humans take out a dragon?
The only way dragons beat humans is to subvert a great number of humans to join the dragon team. At that point, it ceases to be dragons against humans.
Also your 4-6 humans thing doesn't hold out to any DM who plays them to their strengths. Most level 20 parties won;t be able to handle constant flybys while trekking through regional effects to a dragons lair, fighting their minion hordes, and being bombarded by magic from things in the hoard. Then factor in that they'll probably start off by picking on the weak ones, carrying (and killing) that wizard far away while the party is helpless. It can become very not fun so thats why most DMs say that they are in a dungeon and are half blind so they don't pick on the poor wizard
You are correct that I've never fought a dragon as a focal point to the campaign arc. We just sort of blundered into them and only a few minions in advance of the main event. Fortunately as a spellcaster, I didn't consider the minions worth burning spell slots so I was still full strength when the scaly beast showed his scaly face.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
I don't believe Dragon's Intelligence is that far superior to humans. If it is, how do a handful of 4-6 humans take out a dragon?
The only way dragons beat humans is to subvert a great number of humans to join the dragon team. At that point, it ceases to be dragons against humans.
Also your 4-6 humans thing doesn't hold out to any DM who plays them to their strengths. Most level 20 parties won;t be able to handle constant flybys while trekking through regional effects to a dragons lair, fighting their minion hordes, and being bombarded by magic from things in the hoard. Then factor in that they'll probably start off by picking on the weak ones, carrying (and killing) that wizard far away while the party is helpless. It can become very not fun so thats why most DMs say that they are in a dungeon and are half blind so they don't pick on the poor wizard
You are correct that I've never fought a dragon as a focal point to the campaign arc. We just sort of blundered into them and only a few minions in advance of the main event. Fortunately as a spellcaster, I didn't consider the minions worth burning spell slots so I was still full strength when the scaly beast showed his scaly face.
Yes I am also very glad that a multi week or maybe month campaign ends with brutal guerilla slaughter while walking through treacherous territories.
Also this whole thread is very subjective depending on what each side does and more importantly HOW MANY COMABATANTS
(Assuming you were NOT willing to declare: Every engineer/machinist an Artificer, every musician a Bard, every priest a Cleric, every martial artist a Monk, and every criminal a Rogue.)
I'm not willing to declare every engineer and artificer, etc. because humans don't have magic, and literally every class in D&D has access to spellcasting somehow: Way of the Four Elements, Eldritch Knight, Totem Warrior...
Humans have no magic. And let me ask you all this: how many of you have fought a dragon and won without using magic? I understand that modern technology sort of makes up for that, but it's still not magic.
Also, we have to decide if we're including turtle dragons, faerie dragons, pseudodragons, dragonborn, half-dragons, dracoliches, kobolds, and all the other dragon-related monsters. I mean, a few billion kobolds would really tip the balance.
1) tank armour - Cobham and other modern armors are designed to create an effective 18” of steel plate around the tank. In terms of DnD armours this is more like AC 160 than AC 30 ((18”x8)+18) so you can forget about the dragon’s claws and teeth doing any significant damage. The armor is aimed primarily at stopping shaped charge rounds not kinetic - for a simple reason - you don’t stop a tungsten or depleted uranium penetrator moving at 3000+ft/s with anything less than 10S of inches of armour no matter what type. A 2 kg (5 lb) penetrator moving at 1000m/s (3000ft/s) carrys around 2,000,000,000 joules of energy applied at the point. Shaped charge jets can be disrupted and deflected in ways no solid penetrator can. Given that a modern tank with top grade optics can see and hit a dragon size target at 3000 meters (2 miles) 90+% of the time and can fire roughly 1 penetrator or shaped charge shell every round while maneuvering at speeds equal to or above human running speeds an AC 20 Dragon is toast if in the open field well before it is in range of tank. 2) burst fire damage (fire breath) - modern tanks have halon fire extinguishing systems designed to rapidly (seconds) put out any fires and cool the tank. Yes napalm and other long burning flammable (molotovs) can eventually cook off a tank but a 6 second burst isn’t. Similar arguments can be made for other breath weapons (CBE systems, faraday cages, etc). 3) 50 cal bullets - a armor piercing .50 cal round is designed to penetrate .875” that is 7/8 of an inch vs 1/8” for AC 18. So again roughly AC 25+. Further rounds shock zones can be split into an inner zone roughly 3 times the size of the projectile as the bullets expand from the shock of hitting flesh, and a shock zone about 10x the bullet’s diameter as the bullet’s energy passes into and thru the body. For a dragon a 1.5” hole might not be significant but a 5” smashed flesh zone should be significant. With a fire rate of 450-600rpm (45-60 rpm) and a damage that should be, by DnD standards, huge - not 1/2 dice but 5-20+ dice. ( personally I think .50 cal rnds should probably do something like 5-10 D20) 4) 20+mm rounds - these are, because of their construction, a very different type of round. 20mm and up rounds are (typically) explosive shrapnel rounds not penetrator rounds. This makes a huge difference as the burn speeds and projectile speeds are hugely different. Modern gunpowders are what are known as low explosives. They have burn rates of 3-4 thousand feet/second and therefore the projectiles can’t go faster than the burn speed. The explosive charges in these shells are high explosives with burn rates around 25,000 ft/s so the shrapnel is far more dangerous because it is moving far faster (KE=1/2 mass x velocity x velocity) so objects like the shrapnel carry around 3-4 times the energy and damage of a bullet of the same mass and therefore do about 3-4 times the damage. So if a .50 cal round does 5D20 then a 20mm round should be doing 15D20+ and larger rounds even more. Realistically a single 20 mm round to the head of a dragon should at least have a chance of stunning them if not outright killing them. 5) missiles - AIM 7 and AIM 9 missiles travel at mach 2+ and modern ones have internal lock on and guidance systems making them highly maneuverable so they have decent chances to hit the dragon once fired. Further, they carry large warheads of high explosive. The AIM 9 warhead is roughly 20lbs in weight, that is roughly the equivalent of 80 sticks of dynamite or a richter 0.5 earthquake. A 20-30mm shell has the equivalent of 1-2 sticks so this is 40x that for damage. The AIM 7 warhead is 80+ lbs so 4x more damaging than the AIM 9. Moving at 1500-2100 mph with ranges of 3-50 miles a single plane firing its load of missiles (6 AIM 7 + 2 AIM 9) from beyond the attack range of the dragon is basically a kill for the pilot.
D&D has seriously nerfed the effectiveness of modern weapons in its efforts to include them in the game as some of us want. Early firearms were not significantly more effective than bows an swords but between 1650 and 1850 firearms progressed to the point that swords and bows were so much less effective that they were simply dropped from all but limited sporting use. Modern firearms and weapons are at least as much more deadly than those of the 1800s and early 1900s. Against midevial warriors in limited numbers the dragon will typically win. Against modern weapons wielded by trained crews any single dragon is probably toast.
Nuclear Weapons - these weapons are so significant that we need to look closely at them. A single small nuke releases far more energy than any L9 spell including a wish. Let’s look at what happens during a nuclear explosion. All nuclear explosions start with a chain reaction that rapidly (a few ten thousandths of a second) releases enough energy to raise the temperature to above 10 million degrees F this is so far beyond even magical heats as to burn through any resistance or immunity and instantly vaporize any material including a red dragon. In a regular nuke this is the maximum temperature. In thermonuclear weapons this is only the start. In these weapons the regular nuke is only the “igniter” . It is only at these temperatures that hydrogen can be forced to fuse to make helium. This reaction raise the temperature even further to as much as 100 million degrees. These intense temperatures not only vaporize but ionize the remaining materials of the bomb as well as some of the surrounding matter. This super hot ionized vapor expands outward at speeds far in excess of what even high explosives can generate. This supersonic shockwave blasts out for anywhere from a few hundred meters to several miles in radius. If you are hit by the shockwave it is sufficient to smash down concrete and steel structures. This not thunder damage but pure force damage. This shock wave also picks up and Carrys any debris that survives the blast and plasma smashing it into anything it hits - bludgeoning damage. The heat generated is released as light in part - infrared , visible and ultraviolet- radiant damage. The nuclear reactions also release large amounts of alpha, beta and gamma radiation. Alpha and Beta are actually particles but gamma is pure radiation. All three are extremely damaging to the cells of the body and therefore qualify as necrotic damage. The light and radiation actually streams out ahead of the blast shock. Behind the shock the plasma ball expands and cools eventually becoming a cloud of incandescent gas - the fireball - that sets things aflame with (relatively) normal temperatures. While red, gold and bronze dragons could survive these temperatures most other dragons could not. Similarly the blast sphere expands slowing and eventually slows to the speed of sound expanding as a sonic boom - the thunder damage for those close enough. Eventually the volume of the sound drops to the point where it is no longer damaging. Even a single small nuke would be enough to kill any single dragon.
against standard low level DnD characters the dragon wins, against medium to high level characters it’s generally a toss up. Against high and epic level characters the characters start to have the edge.
Humans. The one thing we’re best at is finding ever better ways to kill. Ev—ver—ry—thing. I would pity the dragons, they wouldn’t stand a chance. That’s why there are none left IRL, despite evidence of their existence from every culture across the globe….
While it's clear that dragons would lose in an outright fight, we have to look at their intelligence - also the fact that two literal deities would fight with them.
Modern MBTs with AC 16? Nuclear weapons shrugged off as "just fire damage"? Math stats on how many commoners an ancient dragon can fry with its breath weapon? Like...what?
Dragons are a terrifying force of destruction. By all rights adventurers should need specialized gear simply to get to one, let alone damage it. A dragon's armor renders it proof to the small arms of its time - swords, daggers, axes, and the like - as much as a tank's armor renders it proof against modern small arms. A dude being able to hack a dragon to death with a halberd is only a thing because if D&D players couldn't kill dragons in Dungeons and Dragons, they would riot. A dragon's 5e stats do a very poor job of truly embodying the destructive power and supernatural resilience of a dragon.
People also have an extremely poor idea of the destructive power of modern military weapons.
Platemail, in the age of sword and spear, made a man all but invincible. You only got through platemail by putting everything you had behind a spike at the end of a huge lever - two-handed pollaxes and such existed specifically to try and beat armor, and they only generally did a middling job. Elsewise your option was to disable/incapacitate the armored man, pin him down long enough to get a blade through a gap in the armor and into the soft bits underneath. The armor defeated edged weapons for free, and even impact bludgeons designed to transmit force through the armor to the mushy bits were often blunted and significantly less effective.
And yet? The basic snubby service revolver that's more-or-less the bottom of the barrel for actual-for-real weapons of the modern era blows through platemail without issue. A combat rifle doesn't even acknowledge the armor's presence - modern 7.62 or 5.56 ammunition in common use throughout the world goes through even the toughest, best-forged platemail with precisely zero appreciable loss in lethality. Videos demonstrating this are all over the Internet. At the absolute best, the bullet comes in at an angle extreme enough to glance off the armor and simply leave a giant dent, one that would clearly deal heavy bludgeoning impact damage to the tissue underneath. And these are basic, ordinary small arms you can buy in any Wal-Mart in the United States for the cost of a day's day-job labor.
Heavy military ordinance is terrifying. D&D does not have damage types applicable to the damage dealt by strategic-scale weapons like nukes; the correct answer is 'Armageddon damage' because the nuclear weapon is more-or-less rewriting physics in its blast radius for a very brief moment in time. You do not get to be at ground zero of a nuclear strike and survive. Nothing survives unscathed at ground zero.
Even presuming that an ancient dragon's armor is equivalent to the best modern MBTs and combat aircraft and its breath weapon is every bit as destructive as an MBT's primary armament? The dragon has a mother of a time against modern military hardware. It's been established that military jet aircraft have an overwhelming speed advantage, and both the jets and the tanks have an equally overwhelming range advantage. Even presuming the dragon can focus its attacks and extended its breath weapon out beyond the Monster Manual ranges, the critter has a maximum effective range of a few hundred feet at best. Tanks and jets have effective ranges measured in miles/kilometers, not feet, and the dragon's armor is not shaped and contoured specifically to maximize the chance of a glancing impact. Taking even a single hit from an MBT's primary armament would be a critical issue for the dragon; even in the extremely unlikely case the dragon's armor can withstand the impact without penetration, the sheer kinetic force of the blow would be absolutely devastating. Missiles are less concentrated but also easier to hit with, and would absolutely ravage the soft, unarmored tissue of a dragon's wings. Once the dragon's wings are destroyed and it's forcibly grounded, tanks can pelt it with cannon fire from well beyond its effective range until either a shot gets through the critter's armor or sheer kinetic damage drops it.
And let us not forget - the U.S. military is a decade or two away at best from fielding naval railguns. I can't really explain to anyone with no grounding in basic physics how impossible it is to stop a railgun shot on the level of the prototypes the Navy is fiddling with. Even if a dragon's armor is somehow, impossibly, tough enough to stop the railgun shot? Its insides are going to end up turned to jam trying to absorb all the kinetic load of that shot. Just because the round doesn't penetrate doesn't mean it's not imparting force to the target. All that momentum needs to go somewhere, and once it hits a dragon that somewhere is "the dragon's body". One way or another.
And let us not forget - it takes eight hundred years to create an ancient dragon. We can build a new tank in less than a year (I think, haven't checked how long it takes to manufacture an Abrahms since I don't think we do anymore). We can build a new F-22 in two or three years, once the government gives the **** up on the godforsaken Lightning and stops throwing good money after bad at the dumb thing.. We can build older-generation hardware in a lot less time, if we discover a need to, and we can shorten the time it takes for the current-gen stuff significantly if we shift to a wartime footing. every ancient dragon that falls requires eight hundred years to replace. Tanks, jets, and the like are far less limited. Hell, the most difficult part of replacing those machines is replacing the trained operators who can use them. It takes a whole lot longer to make an ace fighter pilot than it takes to make an F-22, but it sure as shootin' takes less than eight hundred years to do it.
That and let's remember that dragonkind - or at least chromatic dragonkind - are not a united army. Each individual chromatic dragon thinks of itself as the epitome of draconic power and despises cooperating with other dragons. They can barely stand each other's presence long enough to breed and continue their bloodline - do you think they're going to be able to fight in tightly coordinated, well-practiced formations that can amplify their combat power? No. Metallics might do better, but metallics also aren't likely to try and genocide all humanity.
Even with the most generous possible assumptions for an organic creature that is technically still susceptible to a rogue poking it with a pissant 1d4 dagger, dragons do not do well against a modern military force. They just don't.
What Yurei👆Said. A standard Blackhawk will rip a dragon out of the sky in seconds and keep looking for more. A Warthog will wipe out whole nests on a flyby. A single shell from an Abrams will turn a dragon into giblets.
Modern MBTs with AC 16? Nuclear weapons shrugged off as "just fire damage"? Math stats on how many commoners an ancient dragon can fry with its breath weapon? Like...what?
Dragons are a terrifying force of destruction. By all rights adventurers should need specialized gear simply to get to one, let alone damage it. A dragon's armor renders it proof to the small arms of its time - swords, daggers, axes, and the like - as much as a tank's armor renders it proof against modern small arms. A dude being able to hack a dragon to death with a halberd is only a thing because if D&D players couldn't kill dragons in Dungeons and Dragons, they would riot. A dragon's 5e stats do a very poor job of truly embodying the destructive power and supernatural resilience of a dragon.
People also have an extremely poor idea of the destructive power of modern military weapons.
Platemail, in the age of sword and spear, made a man all but invincible. You only got through platemail by putting everything you had behind a spike at the end of a huge lever - two-handed pollaxes and such existed specifically to try and beat armor, and they only generally did a middling job. Elsewise your option was to disable/incapacitate the armored man, pin him down long enough to get a blade through a gap in the armor and into the soft bits underneath. The armor defeated edged weapons for free, and even impact bludgeons designed to transmit force through the armor to the mushy bits were often blunted and significantly less effective.
And yet? The basic snubby service revolver that's more-or-less the bottom of the barrel for actual-for-real weapons of the modern era blows through platemail without issue. A combat rifle doesn't even acknowledge the armor's presence - modern 7.62 or 5.56 ammunition in common use throughout the world goes through even the toughest, best-forged platemail with precisely zero appreciable loss in lethality. Videos demonstrating this are all over the Internet. At the absolute best, the bullet comes in at an angle extreme enough to glance off the armor and simply leave a giant dent, one that would clearly deal heavy bludgeoning impact damage to the tissue underneath. And these are basic, ordinary small arms you can buy in any Wal-Mart in the United States for the cost of a day's day-job labor.
Heavy military ordinance is terrifying. D&D does not have damage types applicable to the damage dealt by strategic-scale weapons like nukes; the correct answer is 'Armageddon damage' because the nuclear weapon is more-or-less rewriting physics in its blast radius for a very brief moment in time. You do not get to be at ground zero of a nuclear strike and survive. Nothing survives unscathed at ground zero.
Even presuming that an ancient dragon's armor is equivalent to the best modern MBTs and combat aircraft and its breath weapon is every bit as destructive as an MBT's primary armament? The dragon has a mother of a time against modern military hardware. It's been established that military jet aircraft have an overwhelming speed advantage, and both the jets and the tanks have an equally overwhelming range advantage. Even presuming the dragon can focus its attacks and extended its breath weapon out beyond the Monster Manual ranges, the critter has a maximum effective range of a few hundred feet at best. Tanks and jets have effective ranges measured in miles/kilometers, not feet, and the dragon's armor is not shaped and contoured specifically to maximize the chance of a glancing impact. Taking even a single hit from an MBT's primary armament would be a critical issue for the dragon; even in the extremely unlikely case the dragon's armor can withstand the impact without penetration, the sheer kinetic force of the blow would be absolutely devastating. Missiles are less concentrated but also easier to hit with, and would absolutely ravage the soft, unarmored tissue of a dragon's wings. Once the dragon's wings are destroyed and it's forcibly grounded, tanks can pelt it with cannon fire from well beyond its effective range until either a shot gets through the critter's armor or sheer kinetic damage drops it.
And let us not forget - the U.S. military is a decade or two away at best from fielding naval railguns. I can't really explain to anyone with no grounding in basic physics how impossible it is to stop a railgun shot on the level of the prototypes the Navy is fiddling with. Even if a dragon's armor is somehow, impossibly, tough enough to stop the railgun shot? Its insides are going to end up turned to jam trying to absorb all the kinetic load of that shot. Just because the round doesn't penetrate doesn't mean it's not imparting force to the target. All that momentum needs to go somewhere, and once it hits a dragon that somewhere is "the dragon's body". One way or another.
And let us not forget - it takes eight hundred years to create an ancient dragon. We can build a new tank in less than a year (I think, haven't checked how long it takes to manufacture an Abrahms since I don't think we do anymore). We can build a new F-22 in two or three years, once the government gives the **** up on the godforsaken Lightning and stops throwing good money after bad at the dumb thing.. We can build older-generation hardware in a lot less time, if we discover a need to, and we can shorten the time it takes for the current-gen stuff significantly if we shift to a wartime footing. every ancient dragon that falls requires eight hundred years to replace. Tanks, jets, and the like are far less limited. Hell, the most difficult part of replacing those machines is replacing the trained operators who can use them. It takes a whole lot longer to make an ace fighter pilot than it takes to make an F-22, but it sure as shootin' takes less than eight hundred years to do it.
That and let's remember that dragonkind - or at least chromatic dragonkind - are not a united army. Each individual chromatic dragon thinks of itself as the epitome of draconic power and despises cooperating with other dragons. They can barely stand each other's presence long enough to breed and continue their bloodline - do you think they're going to be able to fight in tightly coordinated, well-practiced formations that can amplify their combat power? No. Metallics might do better, but metallics also aren't likely to try and genocide all humanity.
Even with the most generous possible assumptions for an organic creature that is technically still susceptible to a rogue poking it with a pissant 1d4 dagger, dragons do not do well against a modern military force. They just don't.
I think humans have finally won; I may have to surrender the argument here.
I think humans have finally won; I may have to surrender the argument here.
This is of course assuming that Dragons, who throughout the various editions have been show to be able to master all manner of magics and item crafting at the same level if not greater then even the most brilliant of humankind, wouldn't decide in a modern setting to use their mastery of magic to learn all of the secrets to human's modern technology and use it against the humans themselves and possibly even improve upon said technology. Heck, considering how easy it is to get humans to go at each other's throats and destroy themselves (we are destructive like that), I find that it would probably be easy for Dragons to just use their magic in secret to help guide our kind to our own self-destruction.
I mean, this definitely sounds like something right up the alley of the Dragons of Eberron at least, who have quite the reach throughout the plane and have actual organizations that work together to accomplish goals.
I'm not saying humans would automatically lose (that would be foolish), but many young dragons have human intelligence and older dragons are typically even smarter. They don't need to wait hundreds of years to be able to match wits with humans.
Honestly, its hard to really say one would win over the other because of how many assumptions you need to make about how a fictional creature would behave in a modern setting and how their powers and lore would translate to our modern, real world.
It's an interesting thought at least.
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"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
No, I'm the only person here who's actually looking at the physics of a nuclear explosion and making an attempt to actually translate that into D&D terms. Saying it just does fire damage is closer in effect to a fuel-air bomb, not a nuclear weapon. A combination of radiant and necrotic damage is the closest thing the game has for what massive bursts of ionizing radiation do. But if you want to claim that it's impossible for nukes to have those damage types then fine, a nuclear bomb would deal nuclear damage, which nothing in D&D has resistance or immunity to. And yes, the bomb would deal both thunder and bludgeoning damage simultaneously because the detonation is so powerful that it's going to be hitting the target on multiple levels. And honestly, yes, I think that force damage is also justified- the PHB calls it magic only but then later books turn around and give us force effects that are only sorta magic or not really magic.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
People are looking at this the wrong way. Humans did not defeat lions, wolves, bears, etc. by having a better weapon.
We rule this world with a single ability - INTELLIGENCE. To misquote Jurassic Park "Intelligence Finds a Way." Life eats, Intelligence finds.
If the dragons are smarter than the humans they will. Perhaps by hiding, perhaps by making deals with humans. But they will win. If humans are smarter than dragons, the people will win.
Agreed.
Dragons can become literally any person they want to. They could try to emulate dopplegangers; befriend the president as a human to learn how he acts, then assassinate him and pretend to be him. Then order a bunch of stuff that would get the soldiers killed off, and then turn back into a dragon and let the dragons storm the world.
The dragons could also do something like this: join the army as a human, rise to power, learn how to use nuclear weapons, feign your death, go back to the dragons and instruct them on how to use nukes, and destroy the world.
pm me the word "tomato"
she/her
This is the only reasonable argument on the side of dragons in the entire thread.
Brute force of dragons just being dragons, they would get decimated and it wouldn't even be close. But yeah, it's entirely plausible that they would outsmart us somehow. Hell, even start using tech themselves.
If ya think about it that intelligence level could really get you into trouble. If we say that they have the same time frame to develop as the humans then they could come as sci-fi wizard assasins. world leaders in bunkers while dragons use scrying to figure out where they are like a geoguesser so they can raid it by blasting holes with lasers and meteor swarm.
Or nuke the world from a shared demiplane
[roll]7d6[/roll]
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After having been invited to include both here, I now combine the "PM me CHEESE 🧀 and tomato into PM me "PIZZA🍕"
I don't believe Dragon's Intelligence is that far superior to humans. If it is, how do a handful of 4-6 humans take out a dragon?
The only way dragons beat humans is to subvert a great number of humans to join the dragon team. At that point, it ceases to be dragons against humans.
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These 4 - 6 humans are, assuming this dragon is, say, an adult red dragon (CR 17), these humans are going to be at least level 12, at which point they are "masters of the realm". Our everyday soldiers are probably something like level 5 at maximum. Also, adult red dragons have intelligence 16, while an average human has intelligence 10.
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Also your 4-6 humans thing doesn't hold out to any DM who plays them to their strengths. Most level 20 parties won;t be able to handle constant flybys while trekking through regional effects to a dragons lair, fighting their minion hordes, and being bombarded by magic from things in the hoard. Then factor in that they'll probably start off by picking on the weak ones, carrying (and killing) that wizard far away while the party is helpless. It can become very not fun so thats why most DMs say that they are in a dungeon and are half blind so they don't pick on the poor wizard
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Every post these dice roll increasing my chances of winning the yahtzee thread (I wish (wait not the twist the wish threa-!))
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After having been invited to include both here, I now combine the "PM me CHEESE 🧀 and tomato into PM me "PIZZA🍕"
In my list, I assumed everyone was a commoner because only a small fraction of the world population is trained for military combat.
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The idea that most people are commoners is foolish.
At least a third, if not the majority of people in most countries would be considered "Expert Sidekicks". We have all trained EXTENSIVELY in skills that are basically worthless in combat. I know more computer languages than anyone should. I know how to drive a vehicle. I can dance. I can cook. I can blow glass. I can
(Assuming you were NOT willing to declare: Every engineer/machinist an Artificer, every musician a Bard, every priest a Cleric, every martial artist a Monk, and every criminal a Rogue.)
You are correct that I've never fought a dragon as a focal point to the campaign arc. We just sort of blundered into them and only a few minions in advance of the main event. Fortunately as a spellcaster, I didn't consider the minions worth burning spell slots so I was still full strength when the scaly beast showed his scaly face.
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Yes I am also very glad that a multi week or maybe month campaign ends with brutal guerilla slaughter while walking through treacherous territories.
Also this whole thread is very subjective depending on what each side does and more importantly HOW MANY COMABATANTS
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After having been invited to include both here, I now combine the "PM me CHEESE 🧀 and tomato into PM me "PIZZA🍕"
I'm not willing to declare every engineer and artificer, etc. because humans don't have magic, and literally every class in D&D has access to spellcasting somehow: Way of the Four Elements, Eldritch Knight, Totem Warrior...
Humans have no magic. And let me ask you all this: how many of you have fought a dragon and won without using magic? I understand that modern technology sort of makes up for that, but it's still not magic.
Also, we have to decide if we're including turtle dragons, faerie dragons, pseudodragons, dragonborn, half-dragons, dracoliches, kobolds, and all the other dragon-related monsters. I mean, a few billion kobolds would really tip the balance.
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I probably shouldn’t join but …..
1) tank armour - Cobham and other modern armors are designed to create an effective 18” of steel plate around the tank. In terms of DnD armours this is more like AC 160 than AC 30 ((18”x8)+18) so you can forget about the dragon’s claws and teeth doing any significant damage. The armor is aimed primarily at stopping shaped charge rounds not kinetic - for a simple reason - you don’t stop a tungsten or depleted uranium penetrator moving at 3000+ft/s with anything less than 10S of inches of armour no matter what type. A 2 kg (5 lb) penetrator moving at 1000m/s (3000ft/s) carrys around 2,000,000,000 joules of energy applied at the point. Shaped charge jets can be disrupted and deflected in ways no solid penetrator can. Given that a modern tank with top grade optics can see and hit a dragon size target at 3000 meters (2 miles) 90+% of the time and can fire roughly 1 penetrator or shaped charge shell every round while maneuvering at speeds equal to or above human running speeds an AC 20 Dragon is toast if in the open field well before it is in range of tank.
2) burst fire damage (fire breath) - modern tanks have halon fire extinguishing systems designed to rapidly (seconds) put out any fires and cool the tank. Yes napalm and other long burning flammable (molotovs) can eventually cook off a tank but a 6 second burst isn’t. Similar arguments can be made for other breath weapons (CBE systems, faraday cages, etc).
3) 50 cal bullets - a armor piercing .50 cal round is designed to penetrate .875” that is 7/8 of an inch vs 1/8” for AC 18. So again roughly AC 25+. Further rounds shock zones can be split into an inner zone roughly 3 times the size of the projectile as the bullets expand from the shock of hitting flesh, and a shock zone about 10x the bullet’s diameter as the bullet’s energy passes into and thru the body. For a dragon a 1.5” hole might not be significant but a 5” smashed flesh zone should be significant. With a fire rate of 450-600rpm (45-60 rpm) and a damage that should be, by DnD standards, huge - not 1/2 dice but 5-20+ dice. ( personally I think .50 cal rnds should probably do something like 5-10 D20)
4) 20+mm rounds - these are, because of their construction, a very different type of round. 20mm and up rounds are (typically) explosive shrapnel rounds not penetrator rounds. This makes a huge difference as the burn speeds and projectile speeds are hugely different. Modern gunpowders are what are known as low explosives. They have burn rates of 3-4 thousand feet/second and therefore the projectiles can’t go faster than the burn speed. The explosive charges in these shells are high explosives with burn rates around 25,000 ft/s so the shrapnel is far more dangerous because it is moving far faster (KE=1/2 mass x velocity x velocity) so objects like the shrapnel carry around 3-4 times the energy and damage of a bullet of the same mass and therefore do about 3-4 times the damage. So if a .50 cal round does 5D20 then a 20mm round should be doing 15D20+ and larger rounds even more. Realistically a single 20 mm round to the head of a dragon should at least have a chance of stunning them if not outright killing them.
5) missiles - AIM 7 and AIM 9 missiles travel at mach 2+ and modern ones have internal lock on and guidance systems making them highly maneuverable so they have decent chances to hit the dragon once fired. Further, they carry large warheads of high explosive. The AIM 9 warhead is roughly 20lbs in weight, that is roughly the equivalent of 80 sticks of dynamite or a richter 0.5 earthquake. A 20-30mm shell has the equivalent of 1-2 sticks so this is 40x that for damage. The AIM 7 warhead is 80+ lbs so 4x more damaging than the AIM 9. Moving at 1500-2100 mph with ranges of 3-50 miles a single plane firing its load of missiles (6 AIM 7 + 2 AIM 9) from beyond the attack range of the dragon is basically a kill for the pilot.
D&D has seriously nerfed the effectiveness of modern weapons in its efforts to include them in the game as some of us want. Early firearms were not significantly more effective than bows an swords but between 1650 and 1850 firearms progressed to the point that swords and bows were so much less effective that they were simply dropped from all but limited sporting use. Modern firearms and weapons are at least as much more deadly than those of the 1800s and early 1900s.
Against midevial warriors in limited numbers the dragon will typically win. Against modern weapons wielded by trained crews any single dragon is probably toast.
Nuclear Weapons - these weapons are so significant that we need to look closely at them. A single small nuke releases far more energy than any L9 spell including a wish. Let’s look at what happens during a nuclear explosion. All nuclear explosions start with a chain reaction that rapidly (a few ten thousandths of a second) releases enough energy to raise the temperature to above 10 million degrees F this is so far beyond even magical heats as to burn through any resistance or immunity and instantly vaporize any material including a red dragon. In a regular nuke this is the maximum temperature. In thermonuclear weapons this is only the start. In these weapons the regular nuke is only the “igniter” . It is only at these temperatures that hydrogen can be forced to fuse to make helium. This reaction raise the temperature even further to as much as 100 million degrees. These intense temperatures not only vaporize but ionize the remaining materials of the bomb as well as some of the surrounding matter. This super hot ionized vapor expands outward at speeds far in excess of what even high explosives can generate. This supersonic shockwave blasts out for anywhere from a few hundred meters to several miles in radius. If you are hit by the shockwave it is sufficient to smash down concrete and steel structures. This not thunder damage but pure force damage. This shock wave also picks up and Carrys any debris that survives the blast and plasma smashing it into anything it hits - bludgeoning damage. The heat generated is released as light in part - infrared , visible and ultraviolet- radiant damage. The nuclear reactions also release large amounts of alpha, beta and gamma radiation. Alpha and Beta are actually particles but gamma is pure radiation. All three are extremely damaging to the cells of the body and therefore qualify as necrotic damage. The light and radiation actually streams out ahead of the blast shock. Behind the shock the plasma ball expands and cools eventually becoming a cloud of incandescent gas - the fireball - that sets things aflame with (relatively) normal temperatures. While red, gold and bronze dragons could survive these temperatures most other dragons could not. Similarly the blast sphere expands slowing and eventually slows to the speed of sound expanding as a sonic boom - the thunder damage for those close enough. Eventually the volume of the sound drops to the point where it is no longer damaging. Even a single small nuke would be enough to kill any single dragon.
against standard low level DnD characters the dragon wins, against medium to high level characters it’s generally a toss up. Against high and epic level characters the characters start to have the edge.
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Humans. The one thing we’re best at is finding ever better ways to kill. Ev—ver—ry—thing. I would pity the dragons, they wouldn’t stand a chance. That’s why there are none left IRL, despite evidence of their existence from every culture across the globe….
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While it's clear that dragons would lose in an outright fight, we have to look at their intelligence - also the fact that two literal deities would fight with them.
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This is such a bizarre thread @_@
Modern MBTs with AC 16? Nuclear weapons shrugged off as "just fire damage"? Math stats on how many commoners an ancient dragon can fry with its breath weapon? Like...what?
Dragons are a terrifying force of destruction. By all rights adventurers should need specialized gear simply to get to one, let alone damage it. A dragon's armor renders it proof to the small arms of its time - swords, daggers, axes, and the like - as much as a tank's armor renders it proof against modern small arms. A dude being able to hack a dragon to death with a halberd is only a thing because if D&D players couldn't kill dragons in Dungeons and Dragons, they would riot. A dragon's 5e stats do a very poor job of truly embodying the destructive power and supernatural resilience of a dragon.
People also have an extremely poor idea of the destructive power of modern military weapons.
Platemail, in the age of sword and spear, made a man all but invincible. You only got through platemail by putting everything you had behind a spike at the end of a huge lever - two-handed pollaxes and such existed specifically to try and beat armor, and they only generally did a middling job. Elsewise your option was to disable/incapacitate the armored man, pin him down long enough to get a blade through a gap in the armor and into the soft bits underneath. The armor defeated edged weapons for free, and even impact bludgeons designed to transmit force through the armor to the mushy bits were often blunted and significantly less effective.
And yet? The basic snubby service revolver that's more-or-less the bottom of the barrel for actual-for-real weapons of the modern era blows through platemail without issue. A combat rifle doesn't even acknowledge the armor's presence - modern 7.62 or 5.56 ammunition in common use throughout the world goes through even the toughest, best-forged platemail with precisely zero appreciable loss in lethality. Videos demonstrating this are all over the Internet. At the absolute best, the bullet comes in at an angle extreme enough to glance off the armor and simply leave a giant dent, one that would clearly deal heavy bludgeoning impact damage to the tissue underneath. And these are basic, ordinary small arms you can buy in any Wal-Mart in the United States for the cost of a day's day-job labor.
Heavy military ordinance is terrifying. D&D does not have damage types applicable to the damage dealt by strategic-scale weapons like nukes; the correct answer is 'Armageddon damage' because the nuclear weapon is more-or-less rewriting physics in its blast radius for a very brief moment in time. You do not get to be at ground zero of a nuclear strike and survive. Nothing survives unscathed at ground zero.
Even presuming that an ancient dragon's armor is equivalent to the best modern MBTs and combat aircraft and its breath weapon is every bit as destructive as an MBT's primary armament? The dragon has a mother of a time against modern military hardware. It's been established that military jet aircraft have an overwhelming speed advantage, and both the jets and the tanks have an equally overwhelming range advantage. Even presuming the dragon can focus its attacks and extended its breath weapon out beyond the Monster Manual ranges, the critter has a maximum effective range of a few hundred feet at best. Tanks and jets have effective ranges measured in miles/kilometers, not feet, and the dragon's armor is not shaped and contoured specifically to maximize the chance of a glancing impact. Taking even a single hit from an MBT's primary armament would be a critical issue for the dragon; even in the extremely unlikely case the dragon's armor can withstand the impact without penetration, the sheer kinetic force of the blow would be absolutely devastating. Missiles are less concentrated but also easier to hit with, and would absolutely ravage the soft, unarmored tissue of a dragon's wings. Once the dragon's wings are destroyed and it's forcibly grounded, tanks can pelt it with cannon fire from well beyond its effective range until either a shot gets through the critter's armor or sheer kinetic damage drops it.
And let us not forget - the U.S. military is a decade or two away at best from fielding naval railguns. I can't really explain to anyone with no grounding in basic physics how impossible it is to stop a railgun shot on the level of the prototypes the Navy is fiddling with. Even if a dragon's armor is somehow, impossibly, tough enough to stop the railgun shot? Its insides are going to end up turned to jam trying to absorb all the kinetic load of that shot. Just because the round doesn't penetrate doesn't mean it's not imparting force to the target. All that momentum needs to go somewhere, and once it hits a dragon that somewhere is "the dragon's body". One way or another.
And let us not forget - it takes eight hundred years to create an ancient dragon. We can build a new tank in less than a year (I think, haven't checked how long it takes to manufacture an Abrahms since I don't think we do anymore). We can build a new F-22 in two or three years, once the government gives the **** up on the godforsaken Lightning and stops throwing good money after bad at the dumb thing.. We can build older-generation hardware in a lot less time, if we discover a need to, and we can shorten the time it takes for the current-gen stuff significantly if we shift to a wartime footing. every ancient dragon that falls requires eight hundred years to replace. Tanks, jets, and the like are far less limited. Hell, the most difficult part of replacing those machines is replacing the trained operators who can use them. It takes a whole lot longer to make an ace fighter pilot than it takes to make an F-22, but it sure as shootin' takes less than eight hundred years to do it.
That and let's remember that dragonkind - or at least chromatic dragonkind - are not a united army. Each individual chromatic dragon thinks of itself as the epitome of draconic power and despises cooperating with other dragons. They can barely stand each other's presence long enough to breed and continue their bloodline - do you think they're going to be able to fight in tightly coordinated, well-practiced formations that can amplify their combat power? No. Metallics might do better, but metallics also aren't likely to try and genocide all humanity.
Even with the most generous possible assumptions for an organic creature that is technically still susceptible to a rogue poking it with a pissant 1d4 dagger, dragons do not do well against a modern military force. They just don't.
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What Yurei👆Said. A standard Blackhawk will rip a dragon out of the sky in seconds and keep looking for more. A Warthog will wipe out whole nests on a flyby. A single shell from an Abrams will turn a dragon into giblets.
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I think humans have finally won; I may have to surrender the argument here.
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This is of course assuming that Dragons, who throughout the various editions have been show to be able to master all manner of magics and item crafting at the same level if not greater then even the most brilliant of humankind, wouldn't decide in a modern setting to use their mastery of magic to learn all of the secrets to human's modern technology and use it against the humans themselves and possibly even improve upon said technology. Heck, considering how easy it is to get humans to go at each other's throats and destroy themselves (we are destructive like that), I find that it would probably be easy for Dragons to just use their magic in secret to help guide our kind to our own self-destruction.
I mean, this definitely sounds like something right up the alley of the Dragons of Eberron at least, who have quite the reach throughout the plane and have actual organizations that work together to accomplish goals.
I'm not saying humans would automatically lose (that would be foolish), but many young dragons have human intelligence and older dragons are typically even smarter. They don't need to wait hundreds of years to be able to match wits with humans.
Honestly, its hard to really say one would win over the other because of how many assumptions you need to make about how a fictional creature would behave in a modern setting and how their powers and lore would translate to our modern, real world.
It's an interesting thought at least.
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