Ben Stovall Blog

Tag: ttrpg

  • D&D: Running Dragons

    D&D: Running Dragons

    When I first started running D&D, I managed to learn how to construct a dungeon with success fairly quickly. My players were quick to engage with these delves and I had no trouble discerning what was working and what wasn’t. But, there in the name lies something I felt was equally essential to the experience: dragons.

    It took me much longer to parse out a successful dragon encounter, given their relative rarity to the near ubiquitous dungeon. My first attempts were beasts that did not display the intelligence present by the stat arrays, going toe-to-toe with the warrior clad in plate armor instead of taking to the skies and raining fire or acid or lightning down upon them. My encounters were in barren, mostly circular caves not shaped in the least by the dragon’s whims or needs.

    I hope to save you some time and failures. Learn from my mistakes. Become the dragon your players will fear to engage.

    Fight and Flight

    Dragons have a natural tactical advantage over most playable character lineages in D&D – their natural ability to fly. There is no greater disservice you can do to your dragons and your players than to have their foe linger thereupon the ground, its wings forgotten. A calculating dragon might only ever choose to land when it believes its claws and teeth can prove the end of its target. Instead allow the dragon to focus on finding a position for its breath attack to cause the most damage, and landing only afterward to tear apart the foe most damaged by the discharge.

    In 5th edition, dragons were given the option of using their wings at the end of a foe’s turn, potentially knocking their assailants prone and taking to the skies once more. I prefer to allow the movement granted by this legendary action to supersede any movement speed reductions, like those from the sentinel feat. This allows the dragon to escape from a tight spot when needed, without entirely stripping the feature of sentinel should the dragon be choosing to shift away from such foes without using this action.

    Stay out of reach of the heaviest hitters, pick your targets to put them on the ground, and don’t linger beyond what’s necessary for the dragon to accomplish its goals. If the dragon is amused by the party, allow them the chance to recover. If its beginning to feel threatened, show the party no mercy.

    Minions

    The true threat any boss encounter in D&D fears is something outside of the scope of dice and decisions: the action economy. The number of creatures on either side of a battle influences the outcome like a finger on the scale. A dragon fighting alone, unless its of a much higher difficulty than the party can handle, has already accepted its death.

    To preserve the difficulty of such an encounter, grant your dragon minions and allies to help keep the fight in its favor – at least until those creatures have been slain. In my setting, dragons are supported by armies of soldiers – kobolds, lizardfolk, and dragonborn. A powerful martial fighter sworn to the dragon’s personal safety could be included in the fight. There are also the abishai, presented as fiendish creations of Tiamat in the hells that are sent to support her servants. Additionally, in my setting, many of the eggs in a dragon’s clutch hatch into offspring that are not full dragons. This is where guard drakes and other reptile-adjacent creatures come from. Your dragon could call to its young in such battles.

    Lairs and Arenas

    One of the most important pieces of any dragon encounter is the arena. Has the dragon flown out from the heart of its domain to a place it believes it can weaken the intruders challenging its claim? Does it lie in wait at the heart of its lair, resting upon a hoard that would make the richest kings blush?

    Each type of dragon is different, and would prefer different lairs to operate in. A black dragon with its amphibious nature would want a locale it can puts its enemies at a disadvantage by submerging itself in the murky depths of the waters. A white dragon would wish for a forbidding mountaintop cavern with icy stretches of floor that put any who would assail it at odds with unsure footing. A green dragon may wish to battle in an enclosed space that slowly fills with the poisonous gas it exhales with its breath attacks.

    A font of inspiration I’ve visited time and again for dragon arenas is the game Dragon Age: Inquisition. Every zone with a dragon battle managed to create a unique locale to encounter the creatures, with an excellent AI that uses the terrain around it to allow for a incredible and dynamic fight. Each of those lairs were immensely helpful when it came to designing my own encounter spaces for D&D.

    Expectations can be at an all-time high when it comes to a battle with a dragon in your D&D game. With these tips, I hope you’ll be able to create encounters that will be the talk of your table for years. Thank you for reading.

  • D&D: Level One Characters Are Still Heroes

    D&D: Level One Characters Are Still Heroes

    In the past, I’ve seen the sentiment that in 5th edition D&D, a level one adventurer can’t accomplish much. I recall even having a sympathetic read of this idea. I know of many whose games begin after skipping level one, or structure the game in such a way that a single encounter or session might give additional experience to bump them beyond to level two. I’ve run games like this.

    I have entirely and utterly been shown the error of this idea.

    I started running my current game via Discord (and Talespire once it released) back in November of 2020. My group is mostly people I’ve known via online video games for a few years, with the single exception of my cousin. Two of them had never played a tabletop RPG before.

    It’s one of those two, so grateful for the fun he was having in the game I ran, who decided to begin running his own game, and invited me to play. There’s another two people in our little community he invites, as well as the other player who is green-as-grass to D&D from my game.

    Our brand new GM decides to run a published adventure to ease him into everything – he reads online a bit and chooses Rime of the Frost Maiden, which is pretty new and it’s been well received. (So far for me? It’s been a blast.)

    I’m playing a rogue named Cole. I’m joined by another rogue, Aero; a wizard, Lady Hemlock; and a cleric, Ajani (who is indeed named for the MTG character). And this team shattered any preconceived notion I had about level one being unmeaningful. Long D&D story following below.

    We arrived in Brynshander on the eve of a New Moon. In the module, these are auspicious nights, with the towns each offering a sacrifice to their angry goddess who has plunged them into an unending winter. But, it’s lucky for our characters, because the innkeeper we speak to is kind enough to offer travelers free rooms for the night to keep them off the streets.

    Over time, we each arrive at the Northlook. Our GM has me enter first, and after the party is each introduced and given a few moments to interact with one another and the innkeeper, and a dwarven woman we learn to be named Hilm scatters the regulars out of the bar with her own entry leaving only us.

    She’s looking for someone to find and apprehend one “Sephek Kaltro.” She claims to have witnessed him killing someone – a murderer, with at least three victims attributed to him by her. She tells us there’s information that these killings are linked by these village lotteries – intended sacrifices that were not made, for one reason or another. This is the first time our characters learn of the New Moon sacrifices.

    “So, you want us to track down one murderer when this town is full of them, committing one this very night?” Cole asked.

    Hilm was stumped by that. Whether she condoned the lotteries, we never found out. We debated long, but uselessly, as Hilm was not actually anyone with authority in Brynshander and couldn’t have stopped the lottery regardless. The town’s mood in general wouldn’t prove much different. These people had been battered by two years of winter. No one had been able to break it. They believed the Frost Maiden implacable, her power absolute. Ultimately, we agreed to find Sephek, but none of us were happy with the town’s decision to sacrifice and murder their own. In time, we all found our way to our rooms. Our GM described the procession of people marching down the road toward the gates very near the inn. Cole watched them from the window. I didn’t think he’d be able to stop it alone. He was only level one, after all.

    But I knew he’d try.

    Ajani was the first to leave his room and return to the inn downstairs. I followed, then Aero and Hemlock. Our innkeeper sat at the bar, weeping. The choice for the lottery had been one of his workers – Maleena, who’d served our food and drinks.

    We stepped out into the crowd. Aero and I edged around and into the alleyways branching from the overrun road. Ajani and Hemlock navigated through the crowd to the opening, where they walked Maleena toward the gate. Cole and Aero found the wall, scaled it quick and quiet. Ajani and Hemlock stopped the procession and spoke with Maleena. She tried to reassure them that it would be okay, that they didn’t need to do anything on her account. She says she’s sick, that she doesn’t have much time left anyway.

    Ajani asked the people who’d led her to the gate if he could go with them, and they agreed. They withdrew, leaving Ajani, Hemlock, and Maleena as the gates began to open.

    I reached the top of the wall, and discovered a blizzard just beyond its stones. It encircled the town entirely, a pure wall of whirling white and ice. (The GM was playing some ambient music, and a Bloodborne track hit just then. It was incredible.) I looked at it with wide eyes, stunned for a moment, then set to work. I knotted a rope around the crenellations and tied my crowbar into the loose end to weigh the rope down. GM has me roll survival, and I get a middling result, around 12-15. The crowbar is torn from the rope as I toss it over the side, and the end is dancing restlessly in the wind, but the loop around the crenellation is secure.

    Aero, who is an aarakocra, noticed that the two guards on our side of the gate looked over toward us, but one of them grabbed the back of the other’s head and twisted it back down. He sees the rope below, grabs it from the top, and begins to fly down.

    The wind of the blizzard throws him to the ground and nearly kills him then and there (it took about 7 or so of his eleven hitpoints).

    The gates close behind Ajani, Hemlock, and Maleena, leaving them in the blizzard. The cold is shear and unrelenting, and Ajani holds Maleena close, though his own warmth is fading. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the end of the rope flailing in the air. He begins marching them toward it. He snags hold of it and keeps it still so that Maleena and Hemlock may climb. He finds Aero and gets him up, before climbing himself.

    As Maleena is brought to the top, I throw my own cloak onto her, pick her up, and run to the nearest tower where I deduced a fire would be kept burning through the night for the guards to use. It didn’t matter if anyone saw us – we needed to get her warm. The others filtered in quickly.

    Then the guards came.

    They were her brothers.

    We finessed a story, the younger of the two having gone out after his sister in the night to die beside her, the older as the witness. We took them back to the Northlook, and the innkeeper used his own contacts to get them on a carriage southward and away before the next day’s over, closing the Northlook to customers the following day “in grief” so they have a place to stay.

    It had all gone so perfectly, I honestly thought it was part of the module.

    Our new GM revealed that it wasn’t. He’d decided in the last hours leading to the game to make the night a New Moon, just so that one of our players whose character’s chosen background didn’t come with gold could stay at the inn that night. That everything we’d done, he’d not had anything to go off of.

    His first game as a GM.

    Experience isn’t the only thing valuable in this hobby. Level one characters can be just as heroic as they are at level ten, or twenty; the only real difference is the scale. And a first-time GM can create one of the most incredible scenarios in a game I’ve ever had the privilege to join in entirely by accident. If you’ve wanted to start running a game but been hesitant, I recommend you take the plunge.

    Damn I love D&D.