I'm running a campaign with 5 ancient chromatic dragons, and I'm wondering if there are any experienced DM's who have ran ancient dragons as main antagonists who can give me some advice on how to roleplay a red, blue, white, black and green dragon properly. I have a basic idea on their behavior, but I would like to make the final confrontations memorable. Are there any suggestions on how I should aproach this roleplaying, such as how I should make the voices sound, and/or their overall behavior towards the party.
The books have suggested personalities, but fundamentally, this is half the question of "how do I play an NPC properly?" writ large, and half "how do I make the fights cool?"
Give them individual personalities. Broad strokes are fine. Is this dragon cruel? Contemptuous? Friendly and solicitous until crossed? Cool and collected? Overconfident? Cowardly? Etc, etc.
What do they want from life? How does this shape their lairs and any interactions with the PCs?
Will the PCs get to interact with the dragons beforehand, or is the dragon just a big fight? I suggest the former, but it's your call. (Possibly way beforehand. Perhaps shapeshifted.)
As for the actual fights:
They'll know the terrain. Give them good lair actions.
Make the environments different. Let them fight outside to use their mobility. Give them environments they can use against the players.
If they're fighting solo, they will absolutely need advantages beyond their base stats; high level parties can do absurd amounts of damage very quickly. Especially if they're fresh. Don't let them get to fight the dragons right after a long rest.
Give them allies. Traditional dragons live far away from people, but they don't have to. Maybe there's a cowed group of lizard men or Dragonborn. Maybe the dragon reigns over an entire city.
I was going to give them the innate spellcasting trait in order to upgrade them from a fire breatheing lizard with treasure. I'll look into Fizban's Treasury of Dragons some day, I do like the Gem Dragon concept. Of course the white dragon will be quite feral and probably won't have that much spells at his disposal because of his relatively low intelligence score, though he is the base intelligence of a human.
I'd probably give them an ancient silver dragon ally, is that too much? They probably will have an army and a few lycanthropes and mages at their disposal as well.
The lair actions will be quite dangerous indeed, I may increase the damage for a lava eruption.
One thing to consider here is what has brought this group together; going by the core lore, dragons are generally solitary creatures and chromatics in particular don't play nice with other dragons. They're all ancient, so none of them have the kind of clear edge it would take to force the others into line. Consider what's got them working together, and how each dragon views the alliance and what their personal endgame is.
The dragons haven't formed a "Chroma Conclave", they are just ruling specific continents within the realm, however, the red is trying to overthrow the other 4 so he can expand his territory. In terms of what brought the party together, the dragons are slowly aproaching their city. The red definitly won't want to ally with the party to fight the rest. He just wants to kill everything until they submit to his rule. Except he isn't super powerful like Thordak with elemental energy, though he will have some fire magic in the form of some wizard spells. Oh yeah, they'll be starting on a reasonable level, some where between levels 10-15.
Thank you all for your advice, I'll take it into consideration.
Hey community.
I'm running a campaign with 5 ancient chromatic dragons, and I'm wondering if there are any experienced DM's who have ran ancient dragons as main antagonists who can give me some advice on how to roleplay a red, blue, white, black and green dragon properly. I have a basic idea on their behavior, but I would like to make the final confrontations memorable. Are there any suggestions on how I should aproach this roleplaying, such as how I should make the voices sound, and/or their overall behavior towards the party.
The books have suggested personalities, but fundamentally, this is half the question of "how do I play an NPC properly?" writ large, and half "how do I make the fights cool?"
Give them individual personalities. Broad strokes are fine. Is this dragon cruel? Contemptuous? Friendly and solicitous until crossed? Cool and collected? Overconfident? Cowardly? Etc, etc.
What do they want from life? How does this shape their lairs and any interactions with the PCs?
Will the PCs get to interact with the dragons beforehand, or is the dragon just a big fight? I suggest the former, but it's your call. (Possibly way beforehand. Perhaps shapeshifted.)
As for the actual fights:
They'll know the terrain. Give them good lair actions.
Make the environments different. Let them fight outside to use their mobility. Give them environments they can use against the players.
If they're fighting solo, they will absolutely need advantages beyond their base stats; high level parties can do absurd amounts of damage very quickly. Especially if they're fresh. Don't let them get to fight the dragons right after a long rest.
Give them allies. Traditional dragons live far away from people, but they don't have to. Maybe there's a cowed group of lizard men or Dragonborn. Maybe the dragon reigns over an entire city.
Fizban’s has a lot of advice for dragon personalities. And lair designs specific to dragon type. I’d highly recommend it for this.
I was going to give them the innate spellcasting trait in order to upgrade them from a fire breatheing lizard with treasure. I'll look into Fizban's Treasury of Dragons some day, I do like the Gem Dragon concept. Of course the white dragon will be quite feral and probably won't have that much spells at his disposal because of his relatively low intelligence score, though he is the base intelligence of a human.
I'd probably give them an ancient silver dragon ally, is that too much? They probably will have an army and a few lycanthropes and mages at their disposal as well.
The lair actions will be quite dangerous indeed, I may increase the damage for a lava eruption.
One thing to consider here is what has brought this group together; going by the core lore, dragons are generally solitary creatures and chromatics in particular don't play nice with other dragons. They're all ancient, so none of them have the kind of clear edge it would take to force the others into line. Consider what's got them working together, and how each dragon views the alliance and what their personal endgame is.
The dragons haven't formed a "Chroma Conclave", they are just ruling specific continents within the realm, however, the red is trying to overthrow the other 4 so he can expand his territory. In terms of what brought the party together, the dragons are slowly aproaching their city. The red definitly won't want to ally with the party to fight the rest. He just wants to kill everything until they submit to his rule. Except he isn't super powerful like Thordak with elemental energy, though he will have some fire magic in the form of some wizard spells. Oh yeah, they'll be starting on a reasonable level, some where between levels 10-15.
Thank you all for your advice, I'll take it into consideration.
My ideal RP for dragon is the one in from that LoTR franchise.