Designing and Using Dragons [Fantasy]

[Rupert]

Back when I was running D&D3 my players met a couple of dragons. A youngish green that was flying off with farmers' cattle was the first. They killed that one by finding its lair and attacking it when it came home after a night's 'hunting'.

The next was a much larger blue that they tricked into landing by setting up an apparently distressed caravan that concealed their melee people right by the most sensible landing spot, and their ranged and casters in cover. It nearly didn't work, and their medical and resurrection bill was substantial. As they never found the thing's lair, they took a loss on that adventure.

They saw but did not actually meet another, but it looked big enough that they chose to avoid it.

That setting, which I've used for a number of campaigns and several systems, includes great dragons that sleep for millennia at a time, and if they waken and leave their lairs tend to rearrange decent sized hills in doing so. Their presence slowly warps the land and man around their sleeping places, making them wild and fey places best avoided by normal folk. The exact weirdness depends on the individual dragon. I've never felt the need to stat these creatures out, because nobody's ever been dumb/brave/curious enough to wake one.

In my current ex-Traveller and now dimension-hopping game the PCs fought a dragon. They lacked most of their ultra-tech goodies at the time, and it was a fairly large one from DF Monsters 4 that used sonic-themed attacks. It would've been a lot more climatic if one character hadn't landed a critical hit to one of its eyes almost immediately. After that it spent the rest of the fight attempting to leave while they tried to get ropes and nets over it and hold it on the ground (it got away).

Where they are now, if they meet any dragons they'll be ones big enough to wreck ocean-going ships easily, and to attack heavily armed trade caravans and kill or run off everyone in them and take the loot routinely.

[Jinumon]

When sapient, I like to imagine that dragons are the sophisticated end of the Dinosauria evolutionary line, as we are to primates. Extremely alien creatures that are tens of millions of years more advanced than us.

When animalistic, I imagine them sort of as Kaiju: massive apex predators that do as they please and cause problems when they stray to close to settlements or certain ecosystems.

Jinumon

[AlexanderHowl]

In many settings, they could potentially be both, with elder dragons being the Kaiju. If a dragon starts at SM+0 and adds +1 SM per age category, then great wyrms would be kaiju (though they would likely be quite delicate). They can also manifest unusual abilities, like Insubstantiality and Invisibility, making them quite stealthy kaiju.

[RyanW]

I've played as a dragon and I've played as a holy warrior of a dragon worshipping religion.

The only time I can recall fighting a dragon, it was actually a wizard who had killed a dragon and transferred his own mind into it's body. That was while playing the holy warrior mentioned above, at the request of the Green Dragon Queen (who dared not confront dragon!wizard directly, as it would not be wise to risk him taking a goddess as a minion).

[Mister Negative]

In my upcoming setting and game, dragons are just magical apex predators. No spells, no human-plus intelligence, no complex personalities. I wanted dragon-slaying to be a valuable (and theoretically noble) profession, not murdering other sapients.

It may make dragons sound less threatening, but if you had flying, firebreathing, man-eating tigers the size of T-Rexes, you'd want to kill them when they were only little too!

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Originally Posted by Mister Negative

It may make dragons sound less threatening, but if you had flying, firebreathing, man-eating tigers the size of T-Rexes, you'd want to kill them when they were only little too!

I think a lot of people these days underestimate how terrifying hunting certain creatures used to be. And some still are.

[LoneWolf23k]

My approach to Dragons is informed by four separate sources. One is the How to Tame your Dragons series of movies and tv shows, the second is the Monster Hunter series of games, the third are the two main Dracopedia artbooks, and finally there's the Witcher series.

Basically, there's no one Dragon species; there are multiple varieties, with varying abilities, morphologies, and levels of intelligence. And would-be Dragonslayers must study their quarry and create a plan of attack before even thinking of attacking them.

and with the rules from Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 4: Dragons, it's easy to custom design unique Dragon subspecies, suited to different environments, with different builds and abilities.

As such, every Dragon would have a core elemental theme, which associated resistances and vulnerabilities. They would also have lures, specific things that they are attracted to, allowing a Dragonslayer to coax them into a trap. And on top of that, add special tricks to fighting them. Maybe a Swamp-dwelling Blackscale Venomspitter is easily blinded by bright lights. Or chewing on Ilthrod Roots protects you from the paralytic gaze of a Desertcrawler Dracolisk.

What this does is maintain the "Implacable Force of Nature" aspect of a dragon, while still giving Adventurers a chance to fight and slay them, as long as they plan ahead and think strategically.

[Refplace]

In my latest fantasy setting I set up Dragons as powerful sapient races tied to elemental powers. They have Realm magic so are versatile and powerful casters and their hordes count as Power Objects plus they are often on a ley line or node so they have plenty of energy to work with as well.

However most dragons are part of civilization and not monsters to attack. In fact dragons are typically powerful bankers that guard a towns treasurer along with their own and they make loans. Adventurers are more likely to interact with a dragon to get a loan, purchase magical equipment, learn magic or act as debt collectors for the dragon.
Dragons act as knights and feudal lords in protecting the territory around them. In return for this protection (direct or indirect through guardsmen) they charge a tax to grow their horde and livestock for food.

[RyanW]

In my setting, dragons are non-sapient flying reptiles (walking-wings and two legs, like a bat or pterosaur). But they have one unique trait:

Feature: Can purchase increased IQ with "Requires regular examination of precious objects."

Everything else dragony is a part of their sorcery traditions.

[kirbwarrior]

Most of the time (as in I can't recall a time I didn't do this) I have dragons be inconceivably powerful. They've often been SM+12, massive enough that 'seeing humans' requires a Per-2 roll. In the words of one of my players; "I can't accurately describe the difference between dragons and gods". Dragons are so powerful that the Leviathan Rule* doesn't apply to them!

Now, there are other creatures that tend to exist that are, categorically speaking, 'dragon'. These range from small drakes that can be small enough to perch on your shoulder to dragon-humanoids to the 'sandbeasts' that live in desert and are basically 'land sharks' that swim through the sand.

As for how they are used in stories, it often is more how you'd see a demigod or world spirit used; they may ask for a favor or might substantially change the land around them just be deciding to live there. Quests for rare items might revolve around things that just fall off the dragon (scales have come up a few times). One dragon in particular was so massive and so completely asleep that the party mistook it for a dungeon... because the villain also did. In my most recent setting, airships fell out of favor specifically because it made you big enough for dragons to take notice.

I'm also pretty loose with what dragons are like, letting basically any version of dragon throughout history show up in campaigns. It wouldn't be out of place to see a fat european dragon and the more ethereal eastern dragon in the same country.

*The Leviathan Rule is that the bigger and scarier the creature is, the more likely it is it will die before it gets a single turn in combat. It's named such because leviathans are the biggest creatures that come up (sometimes bigger than dragons) and have not once ever gotten a turn in any fight. If you're wondering how that works, so am I.