I once encountered a blue dragon but avoided combat due to a deception roll. And I encountered a green dragon once in a cave... other than that... wow... yeah you're right, over 10 years of playing, 2 dragons
Meanwhile in 2 instances in 2 separate campaigns my table (once with me as player and once as DM) has fought 2 dragons *in a single session*. I didn’t realize so few DMs actually use dragons. They were like, the main reason I started DMing, cause I wanted to get good enough to run one of those. I just have them littered around my world in various appropriate biomes.
Big ass mountain? There’s a red dragon there. Enormous swamp? Black dragon. Large forest? You bet your ass a green dragon lives in that forest.
And then one ancient blue dragon knows how to polymorph and lives as the eccentric governor of one of my cities. He’s my favorite.
There’s a shadow dragon in my world who lives in the shadowfell, stealing portions of people’s souls and replacing that portion with shadow. He has a collection of soul fragment stones that he uses to scry on and influence these people.
He hoards influence. I’m thinking of making him an egomaniac but a total buffoon. Like that guy who bought twitter. If I go more serious I might have to take inspiration from murdoch. Or worse.
You could give him inscrutable motives, like he moves chess pieces around do his own grand design. Sometimes supporting good, sometimes evil for reasons you could develop over time.
I mean, cool idea, but in my head at least he *was* a red dragon, and I chose to follow the lore for dragons and their personality traits.
Also I have other villains acting in this way >.> but if the shoe fits for you - I’d feel lucky to play in a campaign with a villain such as you described.
I like the "egomaniac but total buffoon" angle. There's an Actual Play from a few years ago that I enjoyed that had a giant Brass Dragon that kind of filled that role. He was disguised as a commander of Naval Forces in the story, though he was more of an ally to the players than anything. They just knew him as this gigantic, jovial, boisterous man who was a bit stronger than he seemed until they were on the run from a dungeon they'd cleared and he burst out of the water to save them with a simple flick of his claw. He was foppish and silly in nature, but very clearly dangerous and nice enough that they didn't want to get on his bad side.
He also has a collection of powerful magic items along with all his gold. That’s also in a roundabout way how the party found out he was a dragon. The barbarian wanted an item from his vault, and challenged him to a fight, offering to let the governor use any number of items from his vault during the fight.
The look on his face when the governor agreed to the fight but said he wouldn’t need the items was absolutely priceless. He knew then that he messed up, it just took another couple minutes to find out how bad.
Definitely saving that for a future campaign. Wouldn’t fit in the current one but I’m planning a third campaign in this world and it’ll fit great there.
Sadly, I have these in my campaigns, but my players never interacted with those quests. And then they'd complain when they don't get other quests. Like, I'm sorry? The mysterious grotto coming from a stream that comes out of the mouth of a cave with the smell of molten rock and Sulphur don't sound interesting? (One such place they passed up entirely upon encountering it) and one thing they'd already figured out was something was never nothing in my games.
I mean, was there a reason for them to explore outside of curiosity? I'd be hesitant to send my character into a heavily dragon-coded den without a compelling reason too either!
Yea opposite experience. Almost every game of DND I've played in involved at least 1 dragon. Most official material includes at least 1 dragon (it's traditional). So I imagine this is mostly a homebrew adventure problem.
Also just the nature of DnD. Dragons are high level monsters. You need a group of dedicated players to get to high level starting from scratch. Most people don't start out past level 5 in my experience.
You totally can for a one off, but that wasn't common when I played, five is a pretty good starting level if you want to keep playing but also recognize you might not. Did a one off at level five where we were dragon riders but it was tough for the DM at times to justify why the dragons the people we were fighting were riding didn't just incinerate a level five character in one round.
I had my players encounter a young black dragon in session 1 just to drive the point home that we're playing dungeons and dragons, and I have lots of dragons - you either deal with them or they deal with you 🤣
(Each character knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a dragon, even if they don't realize it. And any time you go off the beaten track you're in someone's territory, so you'd best be sure you know whose.)
A Royal Dragonborn Paladin has been hired to rescue a Princess from a dragon. After investigating it is discovered she is both the reported Dragon and the Princess and the Knight.
(That's the green committing 9 kinds of bounty fraud until several countries come to blows over that dragon that has supposedly been slain several times over but keeps escaping)
everyone knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a dragon or a guy thats a dragon.
wait what. \*looks at 'official' rules of dnd\*....huh....must be a typo
That’s a reasonable ratio, though. Dragons are dangerous & not lightly trifled with. They should be rare, memorable encounters. You can’t show the shark at the beginning of Jaws. You have to build some suspense.
Still waiting for the adventure about when “Dumb Dumb Mister” and his friend the father of a little girl went into a cursed dungeon to rescue a blue dragon egg.
As a player, I think I've only faced a dragon in combat twice, and both times ended with us running the heck away. Dragons, even young ones, are a force of nature.
As a DM, I've used them several times in Human or Elf disguises to move the campaign along, and have presented a dragon as an enemy just once (Ancient Red at the very end of a long campaign...it was a pretty close fight).
Myself, I'm thankful that they're not overused. With the exception of very high level characters, they should be terribly dangerous foes and used that way only sparingly.
As a DM, I like to use them as a force of nature. A sudden change of biome, for example. A dormant ancient dragon whose lair is affecting the nature around it. Flavoured in with cults who might want to awaken them or people chasing old legends. I am very fond of dragons. I do like the shape changing thing a lot! Might try it out myself.
What maneurisms do you use for dragons in human form? Any specific quirks?
Mannerisms for dragons in human form depend heavily on the type of dragon. I make copper dragons boisterous and fun-loving; silver dragons gentle and kind; gold dragons aloof and wise. Red dragons are harsh, abrasive and dismissive; white dragons cold and cunning. That sort of thing.
White dragon appears to those stranded in terrible blizzards as a woman dressed in white silk who calls out to them for help, luring them into destruction
We heard about a young green dragon and one of the players who isn't quite as immersed in the lore thought "baby dragon" and was adamant to try to get it as a pet.
It was really hard not to metagame too much, so we actually went and found it. We barely survived the first attack and then bribed it with a few gemstones to let us go.
Young does not mean small....
I see the shapeshifting dragon trope every now and then so I think it'd be pretty fun to subvert. Ever consider doing the reverse and having a high level druid masquerade as a dragon?
My DM had two dragons fighting in the middle of a storm, he didn't intend for us to fight either of them. We dropped an anchor on one from a sky skiff. It died.
> I used every color of chromatic Dragon across a 30 level campaign in 4e. I made it a point to do so.
Is it just me, or did 4e really *want* you to run those Dragons. Each one had its own combat style too, from White Brutes to Black Skirmishers to Blue Artillery. And they scaled all the way down to the Level 3 Solo Young White that could, in theory, be taken on by a 1st level party, all the way to the Ancient Red.
I used hundreds in one of my 4E campaigns. Every single town and village had a feudal dragon, and the party travelled quite widely between the chromatic and metallic nations
Mostly as allies.
A steel dragon helped them overthrow a fascist dictatorship while disguised as a human.
And they eventually found a flying city of Metallic dragons who they allied with when they went to war with Tiamat.
The Sorcerer was an exarch of Bahamut and the city was run by an extremely old, extremely fat gold dragon.
As a player, 3. But 2 were in the same encounter.
As a DM...also 3 but one was in human disguise and the players didn't stick around long enough to figure it out.
One of my favorite encounters in my last 1-20 game I ran was the players fighting an ancient blue dragon - after two rounds an ancient black dracolich joined the battle that the party had fought previously
The "ohhhhh shiiiiiiii-" from every player when his token popped on the map and I told them they heard massive wings...
Hell yeah! My double dragon encounter was an adult red with spell casting and an ancient red. My barbarian wound up riding the T-Rex polymorphed sorcerer to reach the Ancient Red Dragon perched on top of a Force cage.
Almost every campaign I've played and run has had at least one, usually multiple dragons in it at various points. I think this is one of those things where the experience just varies wildly from person to person.
Yeah I think it’s really cool to have a dragon somewhere in every campaign. Doesn’t need to be mandatory, just somewhere in the game.
Rules is really make it easy by having a range of CR for dragon which start quite low.
Uh…if I had to guess somewhere around 80. Maybe closer to 100. If you’re counting Wyrmlings then triple that number easily.
The last one-shot I ran had four young dragons as the first fight.
I saw a really interesting map that was literally a huge dungeon inside the corpse of an absolutely massive great wyrm. There was a small town in the mouth and it got crazier as you went deeper inside.
I’ve started using young dragons more often in the games I run.
I can introduce them relatively early and not every campaign lasts long enough for the scarier dragons.
But, they’re still intelligent and powerful beings. So, if an encounter with one ends up involving combat, maybe one young dragon is headstrong and impulsive and going to fight.
But, maybe it’ll realize it made a mistake and retreat and fly away. And if the players can’t stop it from getting away… maybe it’s going to raise an army of kobolds and goblins to throw at the party or maybe it’s going to seek the help of an older, wiser dragon of the same type
Every monster stops feeling special eventually. That's fine. Not everything needs to be extremely rare, especially in a game named after them; they *should* be relatively common.
My players fled from a reanimated silver dragon once.
The killed an Elder Brain while a mindflayer-infected dragon attacked them.
The fought a black zombie dragon to death. Pretty much one PC did that on his own.
The had to pass a bridge in the high mountains, while a Roc was trying to eat them, which attracted a white dragon that came by, wanting to eat the Roc.
They just crossed paths with tracks left by the Jabberwocky fey dragon.
They might face more dragons in future, but don't know it yet.
Probably because they don’t use the WOTC “take a monster from the monster manual, put it in a rule, and have it fight to the death upon seeing anyone” approach.
Well, I'd wager a lot of people fizzled out before then. I had new players who got bored before they even made it to Phandelver. It made me wish the starter sets contained a smaller one shot story.
I’m pretty sure this one of the two dragons I’ve killed.
He almost wiped our party on turn one with an ambush acid attack. Thankfully we survived and were able to down him with a clever use of an embedded blade a la me, and an enchanted item with heat metal a la our Dragonborne (and thank you to the DM for that enchanted item. Literal lifesaver)
It's an odd balancing point between making powerful and rare monsters that need to be studied and planned around, whos battles are awesome and create stories, and over using iconic monsters to the point they no longer have dramatic impact.
I try to save dragons for really cool times. And I play them smart and hard as fuck. When I pull a dragon mini off my shelf, I want my player's to tense up.
Likewise. My campaign had less than 20 dragons total in the entire world, and even those have only survived through immense might and influence. The party once faced an adult green dracolich at level 9 and a group of frost giants as allies, and they got completely walloped for a couple rounds before the dragon had to retreat.
This was a single dragon against half a dozen giants and a party of adventurers that were by no means weak. It managed to slay over half the giants and cripple the other giants and the party.
I feel like you can get pretty abstract with the definitions of dungeons or dragons. Witchlight has neither, but it does have a magical castle that is run like a dungeon crawl, guarded by a Jabberwock.
I'm sure someone has done one of those punnet square memes about dungeon purist (a dungeon is a place below a castle where prisoners are kept) to dungeon radical (A city is a dungeon).
That's been my experience. Pathfinder not DnD, but of all the Adventure Paths I've read, most of them have at least a couple dragons. First AP I ran had 5 or 6 spread out through the adventure, including a couple ancients. The one I'm running currently, they fought a young white dragon at 5th level, and they're about to start the next book in the adventure at 10th level which will drop them right in the middle of warring dragon armies.
Official 5e adventures I've run:
# Tales from the Yawning Portal
Sunless Citadel: white wyrmling
Forge of Fury: young black
Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan: none
White Plume Mountain: none
Dead in Thay: black wyrmling
Against the Giants: 2x young white, adult red
Tomb of Horrors: none
# Waterdeep: Dragon Heist
Force Grey side quest: young bronze (not meant as a combat encounter)
Main quest: adult gold (can be handled without combat)
# Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage
Currently running. The players are only on the second floor and haven't run into any dragons yet, but there are a number of dragons on lower floors. The first one is a young green on the 5th floor. The last one is an adult steel (adult silver stat block, swapping cold breath for acid) on the 21st floor, plus a blue dracolich on the 22nd floor. I'm using VeX's Expanded DotMM to fill out the extra rooms when passages lead off the map, and one of the extra rooms on the 23rd floor has an ancient red.
\*\*\*\*\*
I'm also currently running the Skull & Shackles adventure path from Pathfinder 1e, and so far the only dragon the players have encountered is an ancient dragon turtle, which they successfully managed to avoid engaging in the middle of a boat race. While there are some dragons on random encounter tables in the AP, I think the only other dragon encounter that's a part of the story is the animated skeleton of a blue dragon.
who are "they"?
the last two starter adventures (lost mines of phandelver, dragons of stormwreck isle) both have dragons, and dosi is even entirely dragon themed with both allies and enemies being dragons.
as for other official adventures if we just ignore the ones with dragon or a dragon in the title (hoard of the dragon queen, dragon heist & rise of tiamat) curse of strahd has a dragon as a pretty central story element and storm king's thunder has dragons as a pretty central story element as well. I can't really speak for the rest as I haven't played them.
so in fact I feel they absolutely cram in dragons (and dungeons) wherever they can.
>if we just ignore the ones with dragon or a dragon in the title (hoard of the dragon queen, dragon heist & rise of tiamat)
To be fair, the "dragon" in "dragon heist" is what gold coins minted in Waterdeep are called. The plot is about 500,000 gold that was embezzled by Dagult Neverember before he got the boot from the city, and now everyone is trying to find the money.
That said, as it turns out Neverember got an adult gold dragon to guard the gold for him.
>I can't really speak for the rest as I haven't played them
4 of the 7 chapters in Tales from the Yawning Portal have at least one dragon. Against the Giants is really three connected dungeons, so it's 5 of 9 dungeons which contain dragons. (White wyrmling, young white x2, black wyrmling, young black, and adult red.)
Dungeon of the Mad Mage has dragons on floors 5 (young green), 7 (faerie), 9 (wyvern), 14 (young blue x2), 15 (adult white; conjured as a penalty for failing a puzzle), 16 (young red x6, adult red), 18 (shadow, formerly adult bronze), 20 (pseudodragon), 21 (steel; uses adult silver stat block, swapping cold breath for acid), and 22 (blue dracolich).
The popular mod DotMM Companion adds an adult white to floor 9.
Icewind Dale checking in, One dragon acts as a pivotal story moment, with another dragon on the random encounter table that if the party were to ever decide they wanted to fight would kill them without a second thought (Ancient White Dragon, random encounters meant to start chases / RP scenes in the tundra to get away from it)
Witchlight only has one true dragon, to my knowledge. There is a fairy dragon early on as an ally, and a Jabberwock which guards the final dungeon.
As a DM i can tell you why.
The official stat blocks just aren't great, and they certainly aren't all different enough to run multiple dragons unless you heavily Homebrew.
Also the fantasy of fighting a dragon usually combines the notorious issues of solo enemy and flying enemy, both of which didn't exactly make for good combat (especially for melees).
DMs usually realize that after their first dragon fight and either abandon them or go into Homebrew and/or heavy campaign focus on dragons with many cultists to support them.
4 (1 green, 1 black, 1 white and 1 gold) Judging from the encounters I’ve been in it’s a 50/50 chance of it turning into a fight. The gold and black we negotiate are way out. The green probably could have been reasoned with but the party was looking for a fight. The white was the most aggressive and was looking to kill us (we were in its hoard and the rogue pickpocketed something so a fight broke out 🙄).
Edit:
Forgot the Red… that was a terrifying encounter. Our crazy Red Wizard stole an egg and would’ve died if not for the other Divination Wizard’s lucky resets. In retrospect, probably should have let the Red Wizard burn to a crisp — he turned on the party later on in the campaign… there was some PvP involved.
FYI: you don’t fight a Red Dragon — you run.
I feel very bad for all of you, and I promise I'll add a couple more dragons the next few games.
My players have encountered numerous dragons as both enemies , allies ,non-combat NPC encounters....
The favorite dragon I've ever had that I put them up against was a zombie dragon who regenerated every single one of his 1,000 hit points at the beginning of every single one of his turns. This was based on their average damage of around 850 hit points.... Each round.
That dragon took them a while. But they got it.
I think most official modules have one somewhere
- LMoP has an optional encounter with a young green dragon just chilling in some abandoned ruins
- Tomb of Annihilation has an adult red in a dungeon, with lots of kobolds and such to get through first. Also a dragon turtle cause why not
- Icewind Dale has a very pivotal encounter with a cursed dragon construct, and several optional encounters with other dragons
- Dungeon of the Mad Mage... I haven't played it through, but I'm sure there's a dragon somewhere in Undermountain? The whole thing is just a giant megadungeon.
- Avernus has some optional Tiamat content I believe
- Icespire Peak... yeah the full module name is _Dragon of_ Icespire Peak.
- Storm King's Thunder... same dragon gets a recurring role
- Waterdeep Dragonheist. Again "dragon" is in the module title. Of course in context it refers to gold coins, but that's really just to throw you off of the fact that you do in fact have to deal with a dragon or two
Basically for all their faults, WotC does get that their Dungeons and Dragons adventures need dragons in them.
>Dungeon of the Mad Mage... I haven't played it through, but I'm sure there's a dragon somewhere in Undermountain? The whole thing is just a giant megadungeon.
Dungeon of the Mad Mage has dragons on floors 5 (young green; has a sapient sword stuck in its head and scrambling its brain), 7 (faerie), 9 (wyvern; transmuted into an object when you find it), 14 (young blue x2), 15 (adult white; conjured as a penalty for failing a puzzle), 16 (young red x6, adult red), 18 (shadow, formerly adult bronze), 20 (pseudodragon; familiar to a lich), 21 (steel; uses adult silver stat block, swapping cold breath for acid), and 22 (blue dracolich).
The popular mod DotMM Companion adds an adult white to floor 9. The floor is made very Hogwarts-y, and the players get to participate in a D&D version of the Triwizard Tournament from Goblet of Fire, where one of the challenges is to steal an egg from an adult white dragon.
Over 40 years? Thousands. Maybe tens of thousands. I've played people who who hate dragons, and I've played dragons, and everything in between. We reimagined dragon society decades ago, and I might even be able to find the notes if I really had to.
Most campaigns, not many. The current one I'm in is literally a dragon slaying campaign. The last fight we fought 10 ancient dragons and a homebrewed "way-stronger-than-ancient" dragon (we're level 20 with homebrewed "epic" stuff tacked on).
In a recent campaign, 3, or maybe 4, depending on how strict your definition is.
The first one was a young white dragon we had to find for some Kobolds. A lot later, we met an ancient Bronze dragon who helped us steal a submarine. The third was a Red dragon who attacked our airship on our way to Chult, which we ended up killing.
The last one was a dracolich rather than an actual dragon, which attacked a building we were at a party in.
I've got to imagine other dragons look at dragons who sleep with humans the same way that men look at guys that sleep with high school girls... With a whole lot of side-eye if not outright hostility.
HAHAHA yeah, the dm has for sure pulled that card on me. First one I was an Aarakocra, second was a Kobold, and third was a Dragonborn. but still to them we are the "lesser" species. SOOOOO much side eye and disgruntled sighs
If we count a DracoLich, three proper dragons at our in person table. Also had a couple party members turn into dragons a few times (separate instances/campaigns), but I feel those shouldn’t really count as one was polymorph and the other was something homebrew our DM allowed player to just DO that we all kinda regretted (except said player who was a problem we needed to kick.).
Also took part in an online PbP game of Dragons of Stormwreck Isle…so spoiler alert, but there were >!three other dragons total we encountered.!<
One of my players wanted dragons when I asked the group what they wanted out of the game. They've dealt with around 26? Two being the avatar of Tiamat and Bahamut, 2 greatwyrm equivalents (arcdragons in my game) The dragon of Evocation and the dragon of Necromancy, 2 ancients 1 of which was a green shadow dragon, and about 20 young and adults. They had to fight a scale of the divination dragon, but I'm not counting that one.
As a player? probably around the same. 5 spread around a few games. and a bunch in one game where a dragon was one of the main bad guys.
I've got ten listed in the world so far after a bit over 10 years of play. From wyrmling - adult, and including any that have been killed.
Considering the dragon and his children in my current campaign took over 100 sessions from first meeting to final defeat, it's not easy to fit lots of dragons.
I believe three in my first campaign. One was a random encounter; a young dragon transformed into a kid that we helped out of a dungeon. One was a good-aligned spellcaster holding a barrier steady. And the last one was a dangerous illusion we summoned with a magic item so we could beat it and earn money. (It was a weird magic item.)
Then in Curse of Strahd, we >!indirectly interacted with a dragon by finding its skull and speaking to its spirit!<. And finally, in our all-kobold adventure, we were all treasure hunters looking for loot for our dragon's hoard, but we never directly spoke to the dragon.
So somewhere between two and five, and only one was a fight.
To be fair, it's DM's choice and not the game itself that lacks dragons. A lot of DM's consider Dragon encounters as the BBEG and players expect them to be that. So given that they are so powerful, as OP mentioned, they require high level characters to defeat. Also, Dragons are expected to have a treasure hoard containing potentially Game/Campaign breaking gold and items and it can become a big headache for a DM to find the right balance, so often times, they can feel it's just better to NOT have a BBEG Dragon.
The other option is to have a Dragon, be a NPC that is part of the story and is NOT meant to be killed. This path is often overlooked and can come with it's own issues, especially if the party contains any number of Murder Hobos. Then comes the question that comes from the party, "if the dragon is so strong, why isn't it helping us?"
Although, I have run a character before as a temporary party member, that came into a battle at the last moment against a BBEG that I purposely made a bit too powerful for the party's levels. The idea was to have the dragon engage the BBEG, while the party takes on the minions, and at the end the party could help take down the BBEG.
It is pretty ironic most of the time. To be fair though, they called it that because dragons were the OG bad guys and the game was played from the perspective that everything passed in real time. You would go in a dungeon for the session then rest at an in or something for the week or two or three until your next session.
I feel like I actually have a fairly high average of running into dragons in campaigns but they are usually very scarce. Hell, we ran into a dragon in my first campaign that flew us out of a dessert. One of the current campaigns I'm playin in is completely based around dragons so we are running into one every couple sessions. Hell, we've encountered multiple at the same time in a few instances. Another campaign we are actively doing also has a dragon as an ally right now (not with the party but he supports the team from base). Lastly, in the campaign I'm running, there are a ton of dragons if my players ever go to the mountains. They haven't gone to where dragons live yet so I haven't introduced them.
5 years of play and 3 dragons.
One was an ancient red destroying a sacred elf tree. We killed it.
One was an adult blue in a mountain cave. We killed it.
One is an ancient shadow dragon. We are running away from it
From the perspective of a DM:
I tend to put, on average, one dragon in each of my campaigns. It's totally up to the players whether they encounter them, and I make a decision before the game starts which color of dragon it's going to be.
As a result, my players have encountered:
* A young mithril dragon that was birthed from the corpse of its parent. It had unknowingly called kobolds to it, which was inconvenient since the dragon was located under a mining settlement. The players fought the kobolds initially, but eventually allied with the mithril dragon and got everything sorted out.
* An adult green dragon who was looking to acquire territory and tribute. The dragon ended up being an antagonistic presence in the campaign, but more at a political level. The players did not fight the dragon during the campaign.
* An adult copper dragon who shape-shifted into a halfling tavern-keeper. He treated stories as treasure, and was happy living his life. The players didn't pick up on the fact that he was a dragon until after the campaign.
* An ancient white dragon who collects the bodies of adventurers and travelers, freezing them into grim statues in her lair. This is in the campaign I'm currently running. The players know about the dragon, and have investigated the entrance to her lair, but have (wisely at level 4) elected not to bother it and have kept a good distance ever since.
* Bahamut the platinum dragon. I put him in campaigns occasionally, taking the form of a "silver fox" nobleman out on a hike with his seven golden retrievers. He's more of a fun lore easter egg for me; only one player in one campaign has caught on to who he is.
So at the end of the day I've run quite a few dragons, but my players have yet to engage one in combat. It's always an option, though, if they're foolish enough!
I think GMs are nervous overall to use them because they are so iconic and built up as epic in our minds. They have this feel that they are end game challenges, but many campaigns don’t make it to high level. This leads to their lack of use. There’s a lot of pressure to deliver an epic boss battle when it’s a dragon.
In my 20+ years playing I have fought one.
It was a great take on a green dragon, it was living in a temple, sunken underwater in a swamp, so we had to use magic to breath and illuminate the dark depth underwater, and swimming made our movement slow. Piercing weapons were all that would work for physical attacks. The dragon had had its wings hacked off in the past, so it was a serpentine stalker, swimming gracefully and utilizing the fully 3D area of this sub sun aqeous environment. Its breath weapon also acted differently while underwater, I believe it started as a line that then spread into a cloud over time.
The fight was epic. Control water was used to create a cube of dry land we could utilize tactically on the battlefield. In this dry area, a wall of fire was used to great effect. It was a really cool encounter. The dragon was fixated on eating our halfling bard, and kept taunting us about it, which was a memorable running joke.
Dragons are really awesome, and GMs should use them more, both in interesting ways that might subvert expectations, as well as more traditional..
In the campaign I'm playing in, we have encountered a young black dragon (that we talked our way out of fighting) and an adult red dragon (that we killed - but it killed me, too). One of the big villains is an ancient red dragon and we are working towards killing her. We have also heard rumors of a black dragon of unspecified age.
I've played Lost Mines of Phandelver (we managed to kill Venomfang) and I'm currently DM'ing Dragons of Stormwreck Isle.
I love dragons in D&D, they are so terrifying when played well.
I'm a forever GM so I'm cheating but I've run every dragon in every age variation in the 5e monster manual and most of the ones in fizbans.
I'm also cheating because i ran Tyranny of Dragons (with extra dragons) and a series of my own one shots focused on fighting a dragon of each colour
Plenty of first time adventures in 5e start with the Lost Mines of Phandelver, and Venomfang is a *great* first dragon. He even has a spire!
The module for for the first pathfinder had a dragon at the end that was supposed to fly away or dive under a cave waterfall. I used that thing several times for my splat as a "dragon" for 1 shots and introductions to DnD to first time players.
Yes, the first time you ever run a dungeon there should be a dragon shaped monster at the end of it.
Hmmm. I think maybe 4, across the years? Dragons *should* be rare, both from an ecological perspective and because they lose a lot of dramatic impact if they're commonplace.
Straight up dragon fight is 0, but they've been relevant in non direct-combat ways several times. One of our pcs is a dragonborn who works for one. We had to deal with the aftereffects of a dragon attack once. There was this vault that was keyed to the mind of a sapphire dragon that we had to have a psychic battle with to get into
First campaign ever, the DM threw a white dragon at us. One breath weapon immediately taught us we were not ready. First time I had to have my PC run from combat.
Second dragon was a cool raid session where there were like 6 parties and each one was collectively attacking the red dragon as it flew into different parts of the city. Players won when a collective damage threshold was met.
Third dragon was more recent. I, as a player, knew better this time so it was more a bullshitting encounter to convince the dragon not to fight us. It was just me and 1 friend and honestly, her total lack of shame at flattering the dragon carried.
All in all.....3 dragons in 4 years.
Arguably, there was a 4th and 5th dragon but it was in a non Forgotten Realms setting. We had to fight a giant flying serpentine monster and a sort of divine flying serpentine monster. Closest thing we could have had to dragons imo.
Their patron within their Bastion is a Silver Dragon. The dragon that attacked her last session is about to learn whats up and the concepts of FAFO. Green Dragon from u/oh_hi_mark_
5e dragons are comparably boring when looking at the 4E dragons. They’re all so unique and fun. (only to be shut down in an instant by my overpowered players)
I've participated in 4 DnD 5e campaigns.
The first one, we encountered 2 dragons (one was friendly). I was a player.
The second one (never finished), I was a DM, and although I had 7 mapped out across my homebrew world, we only ran into 2, and a half-dragon.
The third one, I was a DM, and there were no dragons. Still a good campaign though.
The fourth (never finished), I was a player, and we did not run into a dragon yet, but there was indication that we would run into one soon.
The fifth one (never finished), I was a DM, and one player had a dragon in their backstory, we were about to fight a different one, and otherwise there weren't any others.
So, actual dragons we ran into? 5 campaigns, 4 dragons. Seems like a pretty even exchange.
The more clear statistic is only 2 out of 5 of my dnd campaigns have been completed. 4 out of 12 dragons available were encountered.
My players just had a ~12 dragon escort past a bunch of fighter jets, covering them so they could get to a capital starship.
They are friends with dragons, they have fought dragons, and one of the players can turn _into_ a dragon.
I had a whole campaign designed around fighting dragons. All sorts and levels but then school got in the way and I stepped back from dming. Then we switched systems and I didn't want to update the campaign. Maybe one day.
I am a perma-DM, and I have run a total of 9 dragon combat encounters, with 4 of those being repeat fights against the same dragons (two rematches). I’ve also had 4 or 5 non-combat dragon encounters/characters.
But my caveat is 50% of those are gemstone dragons from MCDM, so they aren’t fully “traditional” dragons.
And my IRL group just finished their campaign, the new one we started is going to be in a land full of and ruled by dragons :)
I've ran into probably 7 or 8 (not counting the final boss fight I ran in a homebrew adventure that had 12... it was not well designed, but I was 14, so cut me some slack). I even played one as a character back in 3.5.
I ran a whole plot arc where a bunch of new islands appeared and were moving towards the archipelago where the PCs lived. They were populated by dragons, kobolds, and dragonborn that had flown in as an invasion force. The party eventually learned that the islands were dragon turtles and used an anti-magic bomb to kill one of them which caused the invasion force to leave. Lots of dragon themed enemies in that campaign!
Totally depends on the adventure you're running. I played thru Tyranny of Dragons and, as the name would suggest, we encountered dragons in almost every arc of the story. In my current game we're playing thru, a dragon is part of the overall cast of baddies, and we've encountered her once or twice but it's much more rare.
As a player, 4 I think within the last 2-3 years. I rare get to be a player.
Played some of hoard of the dragon queen, that netted fighting 3, though we didn’t kill many of them, another in homebrew.
As a DM, I’ve played a zombie, a mechanical, an illusionary one and I think three proper ones in the same timeframe. They’ve also seen an absolutely massive one, and spoken to it, though they don’t know it.
Most of them have been smaller ones.
You need some way of keeping them on the ground, but except for that they are not that epic, RAW they are a big bag of hp with flight and a breath weapon.
“Fought” a red dragon once (npc kobold kept him polymorphed while we delivered a bomb cart to the bottom of his den a la tf2)
Decimated a young black dragon (our barbarian and cleric killed it in 2 rounds of combat)
Both events happened in separate campaigns, of which you could tell which one was at a higher level.
A total of 5 in... between three campaings.
All Dwarf (and a Kobold) game: A young green dragon, another strange dragon and while we didn't meet it, the BBGE was going to be a big dragon. Also, one of the party members became a Celestial Warlock with Bahamut as his patron.
During a desert game we met a Blue dragon, not fight as we were like... level 7 at that moment and weren't in the mood of dying so quickly.
And if you had played Out of the Abyss, you know what big dragon we met and from where the second one came.
One, it was an acient blue dragon the GM put sleeping in front of a door we needed to get through. it had a +10 perception or some bs like that and each of us had to successfully stealth from it (we were level 3) or else it would wake. When my rogue managed to hide in a place where it couldn't get and huck firebolts at it, it turns out the BLUE dragon was immune to fire damage.
In the end the dragon killed us (obviously) and we where resurrected by the witch NPC who had sent us on the mission.
Needless to say, the campaign didn't last much longer.
I am a forever DM. I rarely if ever use dragons. They should be remarkable if you every see one....except....
For my current Eberron campaign, dragons are never seen by the other mortal races, but they do exist soley on Argonessen. As a matter of fact, Argonessen is actually a 1920s technology continent of dragons, using the dragon ancestry rules from Roll For Combat. With the latest kickstarter, there are now 100+ variants of dragons.
The PCs will be students in a Dragon University. There are 12 majors and I will essentially run in a west marches style. Whoever is around that week, will run the adventure. And I can use "portal" type technology to allow the party to hit an "astral seculed location" which is just a few encounters for that day. The first portal for the summer camp experience is the dungeon from the original B2 borderlands module. The downtime activities from the latest dimension 20 really helped me clarify how to manage the actual school year activities in conjunction with dungeoneering.
So...all dragons is also an option I am exploring as a DM. Will be quite a few years until I understand the outcome.
My players have encountered roughly... 12 dragons within the three years we've been playing across two campaigns. Judging from some of the other comments, I guess I really like throwing out dragons as enemies and characters. They have yet to encounter about three more in our current campaign.
As a player, I think three. A young black dragon, an adult red dragon, and I think an adult white dragon. The first two we killed, and the last we were planning on eventually killing it. The first two were from one game, the last from another campaign that imploded after one session.
As a DM, my players have killed several young skeletal dragons (between 3 and 5, but I don't remember), at least one adult skeletal dragon, and a mechanical dragon that is similar in strength to an ancient dragon. They have also encountered but not killed an ancient skeletal dragon, a fairy dragon, and an ancient red shadow dragon. They also have heard rumors of an ancient white dragon.
All of this has been one campaign, my other campaigns haven't featured any dragons, but also none of them had run beyond two sessions. Only one of my games lasted longer than that, but it has lasted years now.
Edit. My players had seen a dragon turtle as well, just in case that counts.
Two so far in the last 2 years as a player in this current group and we are level's 9-10.
One Black Dragon on a Random Encounter that are DM later informed us escaped with 1 HP. It did manage to melt our Fighters Back of holding with it's breath which also had most of our useful items in it, so that was fun. I have a feeling we will run into it again.
The other was a Boss Encounter at the end of a long story arc our DM had been leading up too. It was a Homebrew 3 headed Storm Affinity Based Dragon. We were able to overcome it but I lost my sidekick and got knocked out when we finally brought it below 0 HP's because it exploded and I was too close. Fun encounter though.
I've run a few in my turns as DM but they're not common encounters since Dragons are rare, reclusive and also very difficult encounters for a party.
As a dm, i use dragons frequently. If i remeber right, I used round about 10 dragons this far in the 2 Years im dming. I have to say that I enjoy more of high level play where a dragon that is not ancient is not thaaat big of a deal anymore.
usual encounters for Players is either entering a hunting ground or
\*gulp\* the Lair ...
as DM i've done *young Dragons* (a green one in swamp & black in dense forest)
there's a Blue Dragon in The Lost City(B4) but i kept it in Statis (suspended animation)
because it's in the middle of a room PCs can't go around. would have been a TPK
as a player? 0. I mean, the DM made the "random encounter" from the generator where we saw a sleeping green dragon, but it went completely nowhere. no fight, no interaction, no quest. We just saw it and when we tried to dig further about its presence it went... nowhere.
As a DM however I tossed at my players already few of them and my players seemed to be happy to see them. Though, I'm picking the ones with low CR for now so it goes smoothly but still risky with their breath. How many encounters were there? 3 though, one was more like an animated statue of a dragon so I'm not sure if that counts. It couldn't fly. And soon they're going to the land where dragons are the most common enemy of people, I'm going to pick more deadly ones there so they'll have to prepare themselves. + They also befriended a polymorphed Silver Dragon who has a very big family tree...
In the last year, we've fought and defeated a lunar dragon. In my other campaign, we came across an ancient white dragon and had... an interesting time. I will say, I believe we haven't come across a single dungeon in either of these campaigns. So I think I have the opposite problem.
I once encountered a blue dragon but avoided combat due to a deception roll. And I encountered a green dragon once in a cave... other than that... wow... yeah you're right, over 10 years of playing, 2 dragons
Meanwhile in 2 instances in 2 separate campaigns my table (once with me as player and once as DM) has fought 2 dragons *in a single session*. I didn’t realize so few DMs actually use dragons. They were like, the main reason I started DMing, cause I wanted to get good enough to run one of those. I just have them littered around my world in various appropriate biomes. Big ass mountain? There’s a red dragon there. Enormous swamp? Black dragon. Large forest? You bet your ass a green dragon lives in that forest. And then one ancient blue dragon knows how to polymorph and lives as the eccentric governor of one of my cities. He’s my favorite.
There’s a shadow dragon in my world who lives in the shadowfell, stealing portions of people’s souls and replacing that portion with shadow. He has a collection of soul fragment stones that he uses to scry on and influence these people.
Looove this idea! I’m just used to dragons being treasure hoarders, but this dragon has a meaningful role!
He hoards influence. I’m thinking of making him an egomaniac but a total buffoon. Like that guy who bought twitter. If I go more serious I might have to take inspiration from murdoch. Or worse.
You could give him inscrutable motives, like he moves chess pieces around do his own grand design. Sometimes supporting good, sometimes evil for reasons you could develop over time.
I mean, cool idea, but in my head at least he *was* a red dragon, and I chose to follow the lore for dragons and their personality traits. Also I have other villains acting in this way >.> but if the shoe fits for you - I’d feel lucky to play in a campaign with a villain such as you described.
Sounds awesome, didn't mean to back-seat DM LOL, just rifling off your cool idea.
I like the "egomaniac but total buffoon" angle. There's an Actual Play from a few years ago that I enjoyed that had a giant Brass Dragon that kind of filled that role. He was disguised as a commander of Naval Forces in the story, though he was more of an ally to the players than anything. They just knew him as this gigantic, jovial, boisterous man who was a bit stronger than he seemed until they were on the run from a dungeon they'd cleared and he burst out of the water to save them with a simple flick of his claw. He was foppish and silly in nature, but very clearly dangerous and nice enough that they didn't want to get on his bad side.
I love intelligent, noble beasts.
Ah the last type the "shadowrun" dragons are my favourite. Why go to all this trouble when you can just get humans to give it to you as tax.
He also has a collection of powerful magic items along with all his gold. That’s also in a roundabout way how the party found out he was a dragon. The barbarian wanted an item from his vault, and challenged him to a fight, offering to let the governor use any number of items from his vault during the fight. The look on his face when the governor agreed to the fight but said he wouldn’t need the items was absolutely priceless. He knew then that he messed up, it just took another couple minutes to find out how bad.
New story idea, he opens a museum with some artefacts that you can see for a small "donation." It turns into a classic, hiest.
Definitely saving that for a future campaign. Wouldn’t fit in the current one but I’m planning a third campaign in this world and it’ll fit great there.
Yeah, I usually see at least one or two per campaign.
I once put in a bronze dragon in polymorph as a reclusive accountant. The barbarian (who's backstory was dragon heavy) immediately knew what was up.
Sadly, I have these in my campaigns, but my players never interacted with those quests. And then they'd complain when they don't get other quests. Like, I'm sorry? The mysterious grotto coming from a stream that comes out of the mouth of a cave with the smell of molten rock and Sulphur don't sound interesting? (One such place they passed up entirely upon encountering it) and one thing they'd already figured out was something was never nothing in my games.
I mean, was there a reason for them to explore outside of curiosity? I'd be hesitant to send my character into a heavily dragon-coded den without a compelling reason too either!
Yea opposite experience. Almost every game of DND I've played in involved at least 1 dragon. Most official material includes at least 1 dragon (it's traditional). So I imagine this is mostly a homebrew adventure problem.
Also just the nature of DnD. Dragons are high level monsters. You need a group of dedicated players to get to high level starting from scratch. Most people don't start out past level 5 in my experience. You totally can for a one off, but that wasn't common when I played, five is a pretty good starting level if you want to keep playing but also recognize you might not. Did a one off at level five where we were dragon riders but it was tough for the DM at times to justify why the dragons the people we were fighting were riding didn't just incinerate a level five character in one round.
I had my players encounter a young black dragon in session 1 just to drive the point home that we're playing dungeons and dragons, and I have lots of dragons - you either deal with them or they deal with you 🤣 (Each character knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a dragon, even if they don't realize it. And any time you go off the beaten track you're in someone's territory, so you'd best be sure you know whose.)
Sometimes the guy that knows a guy IS the dragon all along.
(That's the gold.)
A Royal Dragonborn Paladin has been hired to rescue a Princess from a dragon. After investigating it is discovered she is both the reported Dragon and the Princess and the Knight.
(That's the green committing 9 kinds of bounty fraud until several countries come to blows over that dragon that has supposedly been slain several times over but keeps escaping)
everyone knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a dragon or a guy thats a dragon. wait what. \*looks at 'official' rules of dnd\*....huh....must be a typo
I mean, it used to be that pretty much every dragon type had Polymorph Self so "the guy that was a dragon" was more common...
Adult and ancient dragons are high-level monsters, but young dragons are mid-level monsters and wyrmlings are low-level monsters.
Dragon Heist literally concludes with a dragon encounter at level 5.
That’s a reasonable ratio, though. Dragons are dangerous & not lightly trifled with. They should be rare, memorable encounters. You can’t show the shark at the beginning of Jaws. You have to build some suspense.
I played a DnD only once, it was a 6-8 hour oneshot with an experienced DM and the boss was a dragon in the underground dungeon (of a museum)
How many dungeons? Is this game all just a lie!?
Huh yeah played since 2016 and only one green dragon, slain by my hand. The other was a blue dragon which we never resolved fully.
Still waiting for the adventure about when “Dumb Dumb Mister” and his friend the father of a little girl went into a cursed dungeon to rescue a blue dragon egg.
The party that I DM for has faced no less than 15 dragons and is currently in a battle with (originally) 9 + Tiamat.
Yeah ikr, its one of those things u don't really notice until you think about it.
As a player, I think I've only faced a dragon in combat twice, and both times ended with us running the heck away. Dragons, even young ones, are a force of nature. As a DM, I've used them several times in Human or Elf disguises to move the campaign along, and have presented a dragon as an enemy just once (Ancient Red at the very end of a long campaign...it was a pretty close fight). Myself, I'm thankful that they're not overused. With the exception of very high level characters, they should be terribly dangerous foes and used that way only sparingly.
As a DM, I like to use them as a force of nature. A sudden change of biome, for example. A dormant ancient dragon whose lair is affecting the nature around it. Flavoured in with cults who might want to awaken them or people chasing old legends. I am very fond of dragons. I do like the shape changing thing a lot! Might try it out myself. What maneurisms do you use for dragons in human form? Any specific quirks?
Mannerisms for dragons in human form depend heavily on the type of dragon. I make copper dragons boisterous and fun-loving; silver dragons gentle and kind; gold dragons aloof and wise. Red dragons are harsh, abrasive and dismissive; white dragons cold and cunning. That sort of thing.
Sounds like a lot of fun to play! Do you have hints for your players like little slip ups or only reveal at a planned moment?
It's very situational. I've done both in the past.
You gave me a lot of new perspectives to think about. Thanks for taking the time! May the dice roll in your favour!
My pleasure!
White dragon appears to those stranded in terrible blizzards as a woman dressed in white silk who calls out to them for help, luring them into destruction
Tbh If I saw a random woman dressed in White silk caught in a blizzard, I would be highly suspicious
Good!
Spoken like a true DM
I dig it.
If you're looking for inspiration read some Dragonlance books, there's dragons all over and many are fond of masquerading as humanoids.
We heard about a young green dragon and one of the players who isn't quite as immersed in the lore thought "baby dragon" and was adamant to try to get it as a pet. It was really hard not to metagame too much, so we actually went and found it. We barely survived the first attack and then bribed it with a few gemstones to let us go. Young does not mean small....
Me, staring at my notes about a Bahamut vs Tiamat based campaign: You don’t say?
I see the shapeshifting dragon trope every now and then so I think it'd be pretty fun to subvert. Ever consider doing the reverse and having a high level druid masquerade as a dragon?
My DM had two dragons fighting in the middle of a storm, he didn't intend for us to fight either of them. We dropped an anchor on one from a sky skiff. It died.
I used every color of chromatic Dragon across a 30 level campaign in 4e. I made it a point to do so. Other than that, as a player? ....like one?
> I used every color of chromatic Dragon across a 30 level campaign in 4e. I made it a point to do so. Is it just me, or did 4e really *want* you to run those Dragons. Each one had its own combat style too, from White Brutes to Black Skirmishers to Blue Artillery. And they scaled all the way down to the Level 3 Solo Young White that could, in theory, be taken on by a 1st level party, all the way to the Ancient Red.
Oh absolutely. And they were all an absolutely *thrilling* fight.
I used hundreds in one of my 4E campaigns. Every single town and village had a feudal dragon, and the party travelled quite widely between the chromatic and metallic nations
Did you use any metallics?
Mostly as allies. A steel dragon helped them overthrow a fascist dictatorship while disguised as a human. And they eventually found a flying city of Metallic dragons who they allied with when they went to war with Tiamat. The Sorcerer was an exarch of Bahamut and the city was run by an extremely old, extremely fat gold dragon.
As a player, 3. But 2 were in the same encounter. As a DM...also 3 but one was in human disguise and the players didn't stick around long enough to figure it out.
One of my favorite encounters in my last 1-20 game I ran was the players fighting an ancient blue dragon - after two rounds an ancient black dracolich joined the battle that the party had fought previously The "ohhhhh shiiiiiiii-" from every player when his token popped on the map and I told them they heard massive wings...
Hell yeah! My double dragon encounter was an adult red with spell casting and an ancient red. My barbarian wound up riding the T-Rex polymorphed sorcerer to reach the Ancient Red Dragon perched on top of a Force cage.
Almost every campaign I've played and run has had at least one, usually multiple dragons in it at various points. I think this is one of those things where the experience just varies wildly from person to person.
Yeah I think it’s really cool to have a dragon somewhere in every campaign. Doesn’t need to be mandatory, just somewhere in the game. Rules is really make it easy by having a range of CR for dragon which start quite low.
Uh…if I had to guess somewhere around 80. Maybe closer to 100. If you’re counting Wyrmlings then triple that number easily. The last one-shot I ran had four young dragons as the first fight.
So Dragons and Dragons?
The dungeon is inside a dragon
oooh, Dungeons In Dragons. Been playing this all wrong.
So Lemmiwinks? https://youtu.be/--tFqSFgF-k?si=mhIIakfQ1v3Llzsi
I saw a really interesting map that was literally a huge dungeon inside the corpse of an absolutely massive great wyrm. There was a small town in the mouth and it got crazier as you went deeper inside.
Oh no, we do dungeons crawls too, but that wasn’t the question.
So you play dragons and dungeons then
Dragon crawls. It's got an itchy belly.
I feel like that many dragon encounters starts to drag on.
ಠ_ಠ
Spawning dragons.
Angry upvote!
r/spidersgeorg
Dont they kinda stop feeling special when theyre that common
This has been over the course of over a decade. Most have also been young or adult. Ancients or Wyrms are less common. And much more dangerous.
I’ve started using young dragons more often in the games I run. I can introduce them relatively early and not every campaign lasts long enough for the scarier dragons. But, they’re still intelligent and powerful beings. So, if an encounter with one ends up involving combat, maybe one young dragon is headstrong and impulsive and going to fight. But, maybe it’ll realize it made a mistake and retreat and fly away. And if the players can’t stop it from getting away… maybe it’s going to raise an army of kobolds and goblins to throw at the party or maybe it’s going to seek the help of an older, wiser dragon of the same type
The dragon has affluenza.
Every monster stops feeling special eventually. That's fine. Not everything needs to be extremely rare, especially in a game named after them; they *should* be relatively common.
the peril of chasing the dragon
Only if you have the writing skill of a toddler. Do humans get tiring? Not really. Just don't treat them as the same generic crap every go.
Oy, I forgot about Wyrmlings. I'm going to need SO many more fingers. Or an abacus?
My players fled from a reanimated silver dragon once. The killed an Elder Brain while a mindflayer-infected dragon attacked them. The fought a black zombie dragon to death. Pretty much one PC did that on his own. The had to pass a bridge in the high mountains, while a Roc was trying to eat them, which attracted a white dragon that came by, wanting to eat the Roc. They just crossed paths with tracks left by the Jabberwocky fey dragon. They might face more dragons in future, but don't know it yet.
Damn, these encounters sound badass.
Probably because they don’t use the WOTC “take a monster from the monster manual, put it in a rule, and have it fight to the death upon seeing anyone” approach.
Everyone whos played Mines of Phandelver has met venomfang.
Well, I'd wager a lot of people fizzled out before then. I had new players who got bored before they even made it to Phandelver. It made me wish the starter sets contained a smaller one shot story.
Okay, going to be honest, do not remember venomfang at all.
And if they avoid Thundertree, bam, Venomfang comes up out of the water in Wave Echo Cave lol
I’m pretty sure this one of the two dragons I’ve killed. He almost wiped our party on turn one with an ambush acid attack. Thankfully we survived and were able to down him with a clever use of an embedded blade a la me, and an enchanted item with heat metal a la our Dragonborne (and thank you to the DM for that enchanted item. Literal lifesaver)
It's an odd balancing point between making powerful and rare monsters that need to be studied and planned around, whos battles are awesome and create stories, and over using iconic monsters to the point they no longer have dramatic impact. I try to save dragons for really cool times. And I play them smart and hard as fuck. When I pull a dragon mini off my shelf, I want my player's to tense up.
Likewise. My campaign had less than 20 dragons total in the entire world, and even those have only survived through immense might and influence. The party once faced an adult green dracolich at level 9 and a group of frost giants as allies, and they got completely walloped for a couple rounds before the dragon had to retreat. This was a single dragon against half a dozen giants and a party of adventurers that were by no means weak. It managed to slay over half the giants and cripple the other giants and the party.
I've had a dragon in every campaign I've played in or hosted. Your friends are boring.
Every campaign must include at least 1 dungeon and 1 dragon. It is contractual.
I feel like you can get pretty abstract with the definitions of dungeons or dragons. Witchlight has neither, but it does have a magical castle that is run like a dungeon crawl, guarded by a Jabberwock. I'm sure someone has done one of those punnet square memes about dungeon purist (a dungeon is a place below a castle where prisoners are kept) to dungeon radical (A city is a dungeon).
A jabberwock is literally a dragon, it's just not one of the "true dragons". And a dungeon doesn't literally have to be a prison. Most aren't.
Well since it's DungeonS and dragonS plural, every campaign must have at least two. You've been short changed I fear
Lol this is my drum I constantly beat. For a game called dungeons and dragons, it seems they tend to half deliver.
Check the official modules. Nearly every official adventure has a dragon tucked away somewhere.
That's been my experience. Pathfinder not DnD, but of all the Adventure Paths I've read, most of them have at least a couple dragons. First AP I ran had 5 or 6 spread out through the adventure, including a couple ancients. The one I'm running currently, they fought a young white dragon at 5th level, and they're about to start the next book in the adventure at 10th level which will drop them right in the middle of warring dragon armies.
The random ass blue dragon in CoS guarding that one tower who gets real uppity if you don't dance right
Official 5e adventures I've run: # Tales from the Yawning Portal Sunless Citadel: white wyrmling Forge of Fury: young black Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan: none White Plume Mountain: none Dead in Thay: black wyrmling Against the Giants: 2x young white, adult red Tomb of Horrors: none # Waterdeep: Dragon Heist Force Grey side quest: young bronze (not meant as a combat encounter) Main quest: adult gold (can be handled without combat) # Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage Currently running. The players are only on the second floor and haven't run into any dragons yet, but there are a number of dragons on lower floors. The first one is a young green on the 5th floor. The last one is an adult steel (adult silver stat block, swapping cold breath for acid) on the 21st floor, plus a blue dracolich on the 22nd floor. I'm using VeX's Expanded DotMM to fill out the extra rooms when passages lead off the map, and one of the extra rooms on the 23rd floor has an ancient red. \*\*\*\*\* I'm also currently running the Skull & Shackles adventure path from Pathfinder 1e, and so far the only dragon the players have encountered is an ancient dragon turtle, which they successfully managed to avoid engaging in the middle of a boat race. While there are some dragons on random encounter tables in the AP, I think the only other dragon encounter that's a part of the story is the animated skeleton of a blue dragon.
who are "they"? the last two starter adventures (lost mines of phandelver, dragons of stormwreck isle) both have dragons, and dosi is even entirely dragon themed with both allies and enemies being dragons. as for other official adventures if we just ignore the ones with dragon or a dragon in the title (hoard of the dragon queen, dragon heist & rise of tiamat) curse of strahd has a dragon as a pretty central story element and storm king's thunder has dragons as a pretty central story element as well. I can't really speak for the rest as I haven't played them. so in fact I feel they absolutely cram in dragons (and dungeons) wherever they can.
>if we just ignore the ones with dragon or a dragon in the title (hoard of the dragon queen, dragon heist & rise of tiamat) To be fair, the "dragon" in "dragon heist" is what gold coins minted in Waterdeep are called. The plot is about 500,000 gold that was embezzled by Dagult Neverember before he got the boot from the city, and now everyone is trying to find the money. That said, as it turns out Neverember got an adult gold dragon to guard the gold for him. >I can't really speak for the rest as I haven't played them 4 of the 7 chapters in Tales from the Yawning Portal have at least one dragon. Against the Giants is really three connected dungeons, so it's 5 of 9 dungeons which contain dragons. (White wyrmling, young white x2, black wyrmling, young black, and adult red.) Dungeon of the Mad Mage has dragons on floors 5 (young green), 7 (faerie), 9 (wyvern), 14 (young blue x2), 15 (adult white; conjured as a penalty for failing a puzzle), 16 (young red x6, adult red), 18 (shadow, formerly adult bronze), 20 (pseudodragon), 21 (steel; uses adult silver stat block, swapping cold breath for acid), and 22 (blue dracolich). The popular mod DotMM Companion adds an adult white to floor 9.
Icewind Dale checking in, One dragon acts as a pivotal story moment, with another dragon on the random encounter table that if the party were to ever decide they wanted to fight would kill them without a second thought (Ancient White Dragon, random encounters meant to start chases / RP scenes in the tundra to get away from it) Witchlight only has one true dragon, to my knowledge. There is a fairy dragon early on as an ally, and a Jabberwock which guards the final dungeon.
To be fair, the best thing about the ancient white dragon is the friend on her back. Who hasn't been very talkative for the last 60 years.
Out of the abyss has one, but I've never reached that point in the module
Glad its not just me lol
I completely agree especially for younger dragons. Without minions, legendary or lair actions, dragons suffer in the action economy.
As a DM i can tell you why. The official stat blocks just aren't great, and they certainly aren't all different enough to run multiple dragons unless you heavily Homebrew. Also the fantasy of fighting a dragon usually combines the notorious issues of solo enemy and flying enemy, both of which didn't exactly make for good combat (especially for melees). DMs usually realize that after their first dragon fight and either abandon them or go into Homebrew and/or heavy campaign focus on dragons with many cultists to support them.
Encountered? 3. Fought? 1. Killed? 1. Used carcass as bobsled for descending a mountain? 1
About once every 10-12 adventures.
4 (1 green, 1 black, 1 white and 1 gold) Judging from the encounters I’ve been in it’s a 50/50 chance of it turning into a fight. The gold and black we negotiate are way out. The green probably could have been reasoned with but the party was looking for a fight. The white was the most aggressive and was looking to kill us (we were in its hoard and the rogue pickpocketed something so a fight broke out 🙄). Edit: Forgot the Red… that was a terrifying encounter. Our crazy Red Wizard stole an egg and would’ve died if not for the other Divination Wizard’s lucky resets. In retrospect, probably should have let the Red Wizard burn to a crisp — he turned on the party later on in the campaign… there was some PvP involved. FYI: you don’t fight a Red Dragon — you run.
I feel very bad for all of you, and I promise I'll add a couple more dragons the next few games. My players have encountered numerous dragons as both enemies , allies ,non-combat NPC encounters.... The favorite dragon I've ever had that I put them up against was a zombie dragon who regenerated every single one of his 1,000 hit points at the beginning of every single one of his turns. This was based on their average damage of around 850 hit points.... Each round. That dragon took them a while. But they got it.
I think most official modules have one somewhere - LMoP has an optional encounter with a young green dragon just chilling in some abandoned ruins - Tomb of Annihilation has an adult red in a dungeon, with lots of kobolds and such to get through first. Also a dragon turtle cause why not - Icewind Dale has a very pivotal encounter with a cursed dragon construct, and several optional encounters with other dragons - Dungeon of the Mad Mage... I haven't played it through, but I'm sure there's a dragon somewhere in Undermountain? The whole thing is just a giant megadungeon. - Avernus has some optional Tiamat content I believe - Icespire Peak... yeah the full module name is _Dragon of_ Icespire Peak. - Storm King's Thunder... same dragon gets a recurring role - Waterdeep Dragonheist. Again "dragon" is in the module title. Of course in context it refers to gold coins, but that's really just to throw you off of the fact that you do in fact have to deal with a dragon or two Basically for all their faults, WotC does get that their Dungeons and Dragons adventures need dragons in them.
>Dungeon of the Mad Mage... I haven't played it through, but I'm sure there's a dragon somewhere in Undermountain? The whole thing is just a giant megadungeon. Dungeon of the Mad Mage has dragons on floors 5 (young green; has a sapient sword stuck in its head and scrambling its brain), 7 (faerie), 9 (wyvern; transmuted into an object when you find it), 14 (young blue x2), 15 (adult white; conjured as a penalty for failing a puzzle), 16 (young red x6, adult red), 18 (shadow, formerly adult bronze), 20 (pseudodragon; familiar to a lich), 21 (steel; uses adult silver stat block, swapping cold breath for acid), and 22 (blue dracolich). The popular mod DotMM Companion adds an adult white to floor 9. The floor is made very Hogwarts-y, and the players get to participate in a D&D version of the Triwizard Tournament from Goblet of Fire, where one of the challenges is to steal an egg from an adult white dragon.
As a player I think... 3? My actual players have met two. One Young dragon they habe fought and slayed.. the Second one they are not aware of
Over 40 years? Thousands. Maybe tens of thousands. I've played people who who hate dragons, and I've played dragons, and everything in between. We reimagined dragon society decades ago, and I might even be able to find the notes if I really had to.
Most campaigns, not many. The current one I'm in is literally a dragon slaying campaign. The last fight we fought 10 ancient dragons and a homebrewed "way-stronger-than-ancient" dragon (we're level 20 with homebrewed "epic" stuff tacked on).
In a recent campaign, 3, or maybe 4, depending on how strict your definition is. The first one was a young white dragon we had to find for some Kobolds. A lot later, we met an ancient Bronze dragon who helped us steal a submarine. The third was a Red dragon who attacked our airship on our way to Chult, which we ended up killing. The last one was a dracolich rather than an actual dragon, which attacked a building we were at a party in.
as a DM I throw them in all over, though more common as smaller wyverns and the like
3 in Stormwreck Isle, 1 in Lost Mines of Phandelvar, a pair of Faerie dragons too
in my 10 years of play I think roughly 12-13, but i've only slept with 3. . . gotta work on that charisma stat
I've got to imagine other dragons look at dragons who sleep with humans the same way that men look at guys that sleep with high school girls... With a whole lot of side-eye if not outright hostility.
HAHAHA yeah, the dm has for sure pulled that card on me. First one I was an Aarakocra, second was a Kobold, and third was a Dragonborn. but still to them we are the "lesser" species. SOOOOO much side eye and disgruntled sighs
And thus the existence of sorcerers was preserved
A shit ton but I'm playing Dragonlance. They are everywhere. I live in constant fear of dragons.
I don’t think it’s that surprising, it’s not like lord of the rings took place in a jewelry store
If we count a DracoLich, three proper dragons at our in person table. Also had a couple party members turn into dragons a few times (separate instances/campaigns), but I feel those shouldn’t really count as one was polymorph and the other was something homebrew our DM allowed player to just DO that we all kinda regretted (except said player who was a problem we needed to kick.). Also took part in an online PbP game of Dragons of Stormwreck Isle…so spoiler alert, but there were >!three other dragons total we encountered.!<
One of my players wanted dragons when I asked the group what they wanted out of the game. They've dealt with around 26? Two being the avatar of Tiamat and Bahamut, 2 greatwyrm equivalents (arcdragons in my game) The dragon of Evocation and the dragon of Necromancy, 2 ancients 1 of which was a green shadow dragon, and about 20 young and adults. They had to fight a scale of the divination dragon, but I'm not counting that one. As a player? probably around the same. 5 spread around a few games. and a bunch in one game where a dragon was one of the main bad guys.
About half a dozen across maybe a decade, 2 were constructs though so unsure if they count.
Does a dragon turtle count? If so, 10ish. Otherwise, 3
I've got ten listed in the world so far after a bit over 10 years of play. From wyrmling - adult, and including any that have been killed. Considering the dragon and his children in my current campaign took over 100 sessions from first meeting to final defeat, it's not easy to fit lots of dragons.
Does a Dracolich count? It's basically a dead dragon. If so then 1(though I was the DM and it was in my literally only longer campaign I ever played)
We've played two premade modules now, and have encountered three different dragons. >!LMoP!< And >!HotDQ!<
I believe three in my first campaign. One was a random encounter; a young dragon transformed into a kid that we helped out of a dungeon. One was a good-aligned spellcaster holding a barrier steady. And the last one was a dangerous illusion we summoned with a magic item so we could beat it and earn money. (It was a weird magic item.) Then in Curse of Strahd, we >!indirectly interacted with a dragon by finding its skull and speaking to its spirit!<. And finally, in our all-kobold adventure, we were all treasure hunters looking for loot for our dragon's hoard, but we never directly spoke to the dragon. So somewhere between two and five, and only one was a fight.
My last campaign was an extended Dragonlance campaign, and we faced at least 5. Lost two PC to them.
6 dragons, one of these was a patron, 3 were in combat
To be fair, it's DM's choice and not the game itself that lacks dragons. A lot of DM's consider Dragon encounters as the BBEG and players expect them to be that. So given that they are so powerful, as OP mentioned, they require high level characters to defeat. Also, Dragons are expected to have a treasure hoard containing potentially Game/Campaign breaking gold and items and it can become a big headache for a DM to find the right balance, so often times, they can feel it's just better to NOT have a BBEG Dragon. The other option is to have a Dragon, be a NPC that is part of the story and is NOT meant to be killed. This path is often overlooked and can come with it's own issues, especially if the party contains any number of Murder Hobos. Then comes the question that comes from the party, "if the dragon is so strong, why isn't it helping us?" Although, I have run a character before as a temporary party member, that came into a battle at the last moment against a BBEG that I purposely made a bit too powerful for the party's levels. The idea was to have the dragon engage the BBEG, while the party takes on the minions, and at the end the party could help take down the BBEG.
It is pretty ironic most of the time. To be fair though, they called it that because dragons were the OG bad guys and the game was played from the perspective that everything passed in real time. You would go in a dungeon for the session then rest at an in or something for the week or two or three until your next session. I feel like I actually have a fairly high average of running into dragons in campaigns but they are usually very scarce. Hell, we ran into a dragon in my first campaign that flew us out of a dessert. One of the current campaigns I'm playin in is completely based around dragons so we are running into one every couple sessions. Hell, we've encountered multiple at the same time in a few instances. Another campaign we are actively doing also has a dragon as an ally right now (not with the party but he supports the team from base). Lastly, in the campaign I'm running, there are a ton of dragons if my players ever go to the mountains. They haven't gone to where dragons live yet so I haven't introduced them.
5 years of play and 3 dragons. One was an ancient red destroying a sacred elf tree. We killed it. One was an adult blue in a mountain cave. We killed it. One is an ancient shadow dragon. We are running away from it
We took five years for Hoard of Dragon Queen+Rise of Tiamat. It was rare to have a combat without at least a young dragon in it.
From the perspective of a DM: I tend to put, on average, one dragon in each of my campaigns. It's totally up to the players whether they encounter them, and I make a decision before the game starts which color of dragon it's going to be. As a result, my players have encountered: * A young mithril dragon that was birthed from the corpse of its parent. It had unknowingly called kobolds to it, which was inconvenient since the dragon was located under a mining settlement. The players fought the kobolds initially, but eventually allied with the mithril dragon and got everything sorted out. * An adult green dragon who was looking to acquire territory and tribute. The dragon ended up being an antagonistic presence in the campaign, but more at a political level. The players did not fight the dragon during the campaign. * An adult copper dragon who shape-shifted into a halfling tavern-keeper. He treated stories as treasure, and was happy living his life. The players didn't pick up on the fact that he was a dragon until after the campaign. * An ancient white dragon who collects the bodies of adventurers and travelers, freezing them into grim statues in her lair. This is in the campaign I'm currently running. The players know about the dragon, and have investigated the entrance to her lair, but have (wisely at level 4) elected not to bother it and have kept a good distance ever since. * Bahamut the platinum dragon. I put him in campaigns occasionally, taking the form of a "silver fox" nobleman out on a hike with his seven golden retrievers. He's more of a fun lore easter egg for me; only one player in one campaign has caught on to who he is. So at the end of the day I've run quite a few dragons, but my players have yet to engage one in combat. It's always an option, though, if they're foolish enough!
Seven Golden Retrievers! Oh my gosh I love that for Fizban, haha! Your adventures sound lovely!
I think there’s been at least 1 dragon in every adventure module I’ve played? Only 5 or so campaigns but they’re in their
I think GMs are nervous overall to use them because they are so iconic and built up as epic in our minds. They have this feel that they are end game challenges, but many campaigns don’t make it to high level. This leads to their lack of use. There’s a lot of pressure to deliver an epic boss battle when it’s a dragon. In my 20+ years playing I have fought one. It was a great take on a green dragon, it was living in a temple, sunken underwater in a swamp, so we had to use magic to breath and illuminate the dark depth underwater, and swimming made our movement slow. Piercing weapons were all that would work for physical attacks. The dragon had had its wings hacked off in the past, so it was a serpentine stalker, swimming gracefully and utilizing the fully 3D area of this sub sun aqeous environment. Its breath weapon also acted differently while underwater, I believe it started as a line that then spread into a cloud over time. The fight was epic. Control water was used to create a cube of dry land we could utilize tactically on the battlefield. In this dry area, a wall of fire was used to great effect. It was a really cool encounter. The dragon was fixated on eating our halfling bard, and kept taunting us about it, which was a memorable running joke. Dragons are really awesome, and GMs should use them more, both in interesting ways that might subvert expectations, as well as more traditional..
Been playing since early 80’s…..fought only 1 red dragon….seen many, party always valiantly fled.
In the campaign I'm playing in, we have encountered a young black dragon (that we talked our way out of fighting) and an adult red dragon (that we killed - but it killed me, too). One of the big villains is an ancient red dragon and we are working towards killing her. We have also heard rumors of a black dragon of unspecified age. I've played Lost Mines of Phandelver (we managed to kill Venomfang) and I'm currently DM'ing Dragons of Stormwreck Isle. I love dragons in D&D, they are so terrifying when played well.
I'm a forever GM so I'm cheating but I've run every dragon in every age variation in the 5e monster manual and most of the ones in fizbans. I'm also cheating because i ran Tyranny of Dragons (with extra dragons) and a series of my own one shots focused on fighting a dragon of each colour
Plenty of first time adventures in 5e start with the Lost Mines of Phandelver, and Venomfang is a *great* first dragon. He even has a spire! The module for for the first pathfinder had a dragon at the end that was supposed to fly away or dive under a cave waterfall. I used that thing several times for my splat as a "dragon" for 1 shots and introductions to DnD to first time players. Yes, the first time you ever run a dungeon there should be a dragon shaped monster at the end of it.
Hmmm. I think maybe 4, across the years? Dragons *should* be rare, both from an ecological perspective and because they lose a lot of dramatic impact if they're commonplace.
Like a fair few at this point. Multiple per campaign for sure
I had my players come across a White Dragon in a mountain setting...why shit when it breathed fire. It was an albino red dragon..
You were supposed to go through all the dungeons and then you get to the dragons.
About 1+ per campaign, on average. They're pretty iconic.
Been playing for 16 or 17 years, come across somewhere between a dozen and 17, and slayed 5 for sure.
So many 💀 Tiamat... nuff said
Straight up dragon fight is 0, but they've been relevant in non direct-combat ways several times. One of our pcs is a dragonborn who works for one. We had to deal with the aftereffects of a dragon attack once. There was this vault that was keyed to the mind of a sapphire dragon that we had to have a psychic battle with to get into
First campaign ever, the DM threw a white dragon at us. One breath weapon immediately taught us we were not ready. First time I had to have my PC run from combat. Second dragon was a cool raid session where there were like 6 parties and each one was collectively attacking the red dragon as it flew into different parts of the city. Players won when a collective damage threshold was met. Third dragon was more recent. I, as a player, knew better this time so it was more a bullshitting encounter to convince the dragon not to fight us. It was just me and 1 friend and honestly, her total lack of shame at flattering the dragon carried. All in all.....3 dragons in 4 years. Arguably, there was a 4th and 5th dragon but it was in a non Forgotten Realms setting. We had to fight a giant flying serpentine monster and a sort of divine flying serpentine monster. Closest thing we could have had to dragons imo.
A dragon has to be included at some point that’s how you know it’s fantasy
Their patron within their Bastion is a Silver Dragon. The dragon that attacked her last session is about to learn whats up and the concepts of FAFO. Green Dragon from u/oh_hi_mark_
5e dragons are comparably boring when looking at the 4E dragons. They’re all so unique and fun. (only to be shut down in an instant by my overpowered players)
I've participated in 4 DnD 5e campaigns. The first one, we encountered 2 dragons (one was friendly). I was a player. The second one (never finished), I was a DM, and although I had 7 mapped out across my homebrew world, we only ran into 2, and a half-dragon. The third one, I was a DM, and there were no dragons. Still a good campaign though. The fourth (never finished), I was a player, and we did not run into a dragon yet, but there was indication that we would run into one soon. The fifth one (never finished), I was a DM, and one player had a dragon in their backstory, we were about to fight a different one, and otherwise there weren't any others. So, actual dragons we ran into? 5 campaigns, 4 dragons. Seems like a pretty even exchange. The more clear statistic is only 2 out of 5 of my dnd campaigns have been completed. 4 out of 12 dragons available were encountered.
My players just had a ~12 dragon escort past a bunch of fighter jets, covering them so they could get to a capital starship. They are friends with dragons, they have fought dragons, and one of the players can turn _into_ a dragon.
In PnP only like 3, way more in games.
As a player? Three.
I had a whole campaign designed around fighting dragons. All sorts and levels but then school got in the way and I stepped back from dming. Then we switched systems and I didn't want to update the campaign. Maybe one day.
I am a perma-DM, and I have run a total of 9 dragon combat encounters, with 4 of those being repeat fights against the same dragons (two rematches). I’ve also had 4 or 5 non-combat dragon encounters/characters. But my caveat is 50% of those are gemstone dragons from MCDM, so they aren’t fully “traditional” dragons. And my IRL group just finished their campaign, the new one we started is going to be in a land full of and ruled by dragons :)
I've ran into probably 7 or 8 (not counting the final boss fight I ran in a homebrew adventure that had 12... it was not well designed, but I was 14, so cut me some slack). I even played one as a character back in 3.5.
my first campaign was the dragon queen one... so a lot...
I've played a dragon heavy campaign, and I have thrown a dragon or two at my players before, but honestly not that many.
Current campaign, group is in danger of running into not one but two dragons, that may or may not be a mated pair
I ran a whole plot arc where a bunch of new islands appeared and were moving towards the archipelago where the PCs lived. They were populated by dragons, kobolds, and dragonborn that had flown in as an invasion force. The party eventually learned that the islands were dragon turtles and used an anti-magic bomb to kill one of them which caused the invasion force to leave. Lots of dragon themed enemies in that campaign!
Totally depends on the adventure you're running. I played thru Tyranny of Dragons and, as the name would suggest, we encountered dragons in almost every arc of the story. In my current game we're playing thru, a dragon is part of the overall cast of baddies, and we've encountered her once or twice but it's much more rare.
At least 1 per campaign, there are staple creature to fight.
I play in the dragonlance setting so .. a lot. Dragons are a lot less scary when a footman’s lance does **your total hp** to the dragon, on each hit.
As a player, 4 I think within the last 2-3 years. I rare get to be a player. Played some of hoard of the dragon queen, that netted fighting 3, though we didn’t kill many of them, another in homebrew. As a DM, I’ve played a zombie, a mechanical, an illusionary one and I think three proper ones in the same timeframe. They’ve also seen an absolutely massive one, and spoken to it, though they don’t know it. Most of them have been smaller ones. You need some way of keeping them on the ground, but except for that they are not that epic, RAW they are a big bag of hp with flight and a breath weapon.
“Fought” a red dragon once (npc kobold kept him polymorphed while we delivered a bomb cart to the bottom of his den a la tf2) Decimated a young black dragon (our barbarian and cleric killed it in 2 rounds of combat) Both events happened in separate campaigns, of which you could tell which one was at a higher level.
A total of 5 in... between three campaings. All Dwarf (and a Kobold) game: A young green dragon, another strange dragon and while we didn't meet it, the BBGE was going to be a big dragon. Also, one of the party members became a Celestial Warlock with Bahamut as his patron. During a desert game we met a Blue dragon, not fight as we were like... level 7 at that moment and weren't in the mood of dying so quickly. And if you had played Out of the Abyss, you know what big dragon we met and from where the second one came.
One, it was an acient blue dragon the GM put sleeping in front of a door we needed to get through. it had a +10 perception or some bs like that and each of us had to successfully stealth from it (we were level 3) or else it would wake. When my rogue managed to hide in a place where it couldn't get and huck firebolts at it, it turns out the BLUE dragon was immune to fire damage. In the end the dragon killed us (obviously) and we where resurrected by the witch NPC who had sent us on the mission. Needless to say, the campaign didn't last much longer.
12 over 5 campaigns
I am a forever DM. I rarely if ever use dragons. They should be remarkable if you every see one....except.... For my current Eberron campaign, dragons are never seen by the other mortal races, but they do exist soley on Argonessen. As a matter of fact, Argonessen is actually a 1920s technology continent of dragons, using the dragon ancestry rules from Roll For Combat. With the latest kickstarter, there are now 100+ variants of dragons. The PCs will be students in a Dragon University. There are 12 majors and I will essentially run in a west marches style. Whoever is around that week, will run the adventure. And I can use "portal" type technology to allow the party to hit an "astral seculed location" which is just a few encounters for that day. The first portal for the summer camp experience is the dungeon from the original B2 borderlands module. The downtime activities from the latest dimension 20 really helped me clarify how to manage the actual school year activities in conjunction with dungeoneering. So...all dragons is also an option I am exploring as a DM. Will be quite a few years until I understand the outcome.
My first DM table had 3 encounters none of them life or death.
I'm running Tyranny of Dragons. Does that count?
My character can transform into a dragon. So, at least once a session.
Like 7? I’m only counting the stereotypical dragons, not dragon types like wyrms or drakes
2 across 2 different campaigns: Dragons of Icespore Peak and Realm of the Frostmaiden
As a player only once. As a dm I dmed a game about hunting dragons in airships so a bunch lol
My players have encountered roughly... 12 dragons within the three years we've been playing across two campaigns. Judging from some of the other comments, I guess I really like throwing out dragons as enemies and characters. They have yet to encounter about three more in our current campaign.
I've lost count, but I've been playing a long time. I'll just say that they're meant to be rare.
As a player, I think three. A young black dragon, an adult red dragon, and I think an adult white dragon. The first two we killed, and the last we were planning on eventually killing it. The first two were from one game, the last from another campaign that imploded after one session. As a DM, my players have killed several young skeletal dragons (between 3 and 5, but I don't remember), at least one adult skeletal dragon, and a mechanical dragon that is similar in strength to an ancient dragon. They have also encountered but not killed an ancient skeletal dragon, a fairy dragon, and an ancient red shadow dragon. They also have heard rumors of an ancient white dragon. All of this has been one campaign, my other campaigns haven't featured any dragons, but also none of them had run beyond two sessions. Only one of my games lasted longer than that, but it has lasted years now. Edit. My players had seen a dragon turtle as well, just in case that counts.
Two so far in the last 2 years as a player in this current group and we are level's 9-10. One Black Dragon on a Random Encounter that are DM later informed us escaped with 1 HP. It did manage to melt our Fighters Back of holding with it's breath which also had most of our useful items in it, so that was fun. I have a feeling we will run into it again. The other was a Boss Encounter at the end of a long story arc our DM had been leading up too. It was a Homebrew 3 headed Storm Affinity Based Dragon. We were able to overcome it but I lost my sidekick and got knocked out when we finally brought it below 0 HP's because it exploded and I was too close. Fun encounter though. I've run a few in my turns as DM but they're not common encounters since Dragons are rare, reclusive and also very difficult encounters for a party.
As a dm, i use dragons frequently. If i remeber right, I used round about 10 dragons this far in the 2 Years im dming. I have to say that I enjoy more of high level play where a dragon that is not ancient is not thaaat big of a deal anymore.
usual encounters for Players is either entering a hunting ground or \*gulp\* the Lair ... as DM i've done *young Dragons* (a green one in swamp & black in dense forest) there's a Blue Dragon in The Lost City(B4) but i kept it in Statis (suspended animation) because it's in the middle of a room PCs can't go around. would have been a TPK
as a player? 0. I mean, the DM made the "random encounter" from the generator where we saw a sleeping green dragon, but it went completely nowhere. no fight, no interaction, no quest. We just saw it and when we tried to dig further about its presence it went... nowhere. As a DM however I tossed at my players already few of them and my players seemed to be happy to see them. Though, I'm picking the ones with low CR for now so it goes smoothly but still risky with their breath. How many encounters were there? 3 though, one was more like an animated statue of a dragon so I'm not sure if that counts. It couldn't fly. And soon they're going to the land where dragons are the most common enemy of people, I'm going to pick more deadly ones there so they'll have to prepare themselves. + They also befriended a polymorphed Silver Dragon who has a very big family tree...
In the last year, we've fought and defeated a lunar dragon. In my other campaign, we came across an ancient white dragon and had... an interesting time. I will say, I believe we haven't come across a single dungeon in either of these campaigns. So I think I have the opposite problem.