War On Dragons

[braveheart]

I am currently designing a setting where a group of the oldest Dragons in the world figured out how to lock away magic for all non draconic races on the physical plane, and now have turned their attention to the pantheon of gods in an attempt to take their place. before they attacked the gods, the group of dragons organized all other draconic races into an organized military force and instructed them to conquer the world. The party will be trying to protect humanoid settlements until they can gain enough power to challenge the epic dragons who are at war with the gods.

I was just looking for some input as to what an organized draconic military force would look like, obviously different aged dragons would be officers and lead groups of smaller drakes, kobolds and the like. but any thoughts are welcome.

[Honest Tiefling]

You can't ever go wrong with fire. Your dragons probably either breathe or can cast fire magic. Depending on the building material of cities, many can be destroyed with a large enough fire, letting the dragons just fly away instead of engaging further. And even if the cities are stone, that doesn't mean crops or villages are. If the cities are too dangerous to set on fire, burn down the crops and people will starve to death. That's when you break out the food creation spells in return for tribute...

On a similar vein, disease. Just start dropping infected or bloated bodies into population centers. Use of smaller dragonkin or invisibility can get disease ridden corpses or filth into water supplies. In many settings, dragons live a long time, so no point in wasting valuable troops when you can burn everything and infect the water and return in a few months to a broken population.

...Also, can the dragons in your setting shape shift? I would imagine infiltration would be a fun tactic to use.

[braveheart]

You can't ever go wrong with fire. Your dragons probably either breathe or can cast fire magic. Depending on the building material of cities, many can be destroyed with a large enough fire, letting the dragons just fly away instead of engaging further. And even if the cities are stone, that doesn't mean crops or villages are. If the cities are too dangerous to set on fire, burn down the crops and people will starve to death. That's when you break out the food creation spells in return for tribute...

On a similar vein, disease. Just start dropping infected or bloated bodies into population centers. Use of smaller dragonkin or invisibility can get disease ridden corpses or filth into water supplies. In many settings, dragons live a long time, so no point in wasting valuable troops when you can burn everything and infect the water and return in a few months to a broken population.

...Also, can the dragons in your setting shape shift? I would imagine infiltration would be a fun tactic to use.


Most small villages have already been burned or overrun, and mostly just a handful of stone cities remain, however countless refugees are fleeing to dwarven domains for protection from the skies.

As for disease, I may use it as a plot point in certain locations, but I wouldn't want to have it be a common practice, because of the pride of the dragons finding these methods beneath them.

There is most definitely shape shifting going on, both infiltration, and any good dragons that disagree with the war, trying to help the humanoids survive, but those are few and far between.

[GalacticAxekick]

Most small villages have already been burned or overrun, and mostly just a handful of stone cities remain, however countless refugees are fleeing to dwarven domains for protection from the skies. Realistically? The dragons already won. Large cities (until recently) are populated by a steady influx of small town traders and labourers. Disease, crime and competition mean city folk die fast and don't have a lot of kids.

What's more, cities are fed by small rural towns. Their textiles and fuels come from small rural towns. A city's chief export is bureaucracy. If small villages have been burnt crisp, cities are cold and starving.

[Steel Mirror]

Another question is what the dragons mean by "conquer the world". Is it to decapitate the leadership of the mortal races, killing the kings and maybe laying waste to the cities but keeping the countryside mostly intact? Would the dragon armies accept the surrender of a town or a nation? Or is it total war of extermination, with the dragons killing any intelligent being that isn't draconic that they come across?

Depending on what the endgame for the dragons is, the war will look very different.

As for the military structure itself, you're definitely going to want some sorting algorithm of evil going on there. Have a couple generals who are below the power level of the epic dragons themselves, but are members of the same group who have been entrusted by the epic dragons to handle this war. For added fun, have those dragon generals dislike each other. Maybe they are competing against each other to see who can conquer the most territory, as the one who pleases the epics will be elevated to their ranks once the gods are defeated. Or maybe one of the dragons is even more prideful and honorable than the others, and he refuses to commit the kinds of atrocities that the others are engaging in because he believes it is beneath the dignity of the dragons. Maybe one of the dragons is so sadistic and insane that the others avoid him. Giving a bit of politics going on up at the top there makes it more interesting when the PCs finally get powerful enough to start challenging them to fights, plus in the meantime it helps explain why the dragon armies are separate enough from each other that they don't respond quickly once the PCs start making waves.

Below them you could have individual dragon commanders who are powerful enough to be big bosses of the mid-tier levels (or standard enemies of the high tier levels). Taking a page from the division of modern armed forces into a Navy, an Air Force, and so on, maybe each dragon gets an army which focuses on a particular strategy or technique. So you'd have the dragon army made up of a all flying dragons, or a dragon army which is full of creatures who can swim and live in the sea for naval battles, or a dragon army which specializes in burrowing and tunneling, and so on. Just like with the generals, commanders of these armies prefer not to have to cooperate with commanders from another army. Dragon's are such proud creatures, after all. And that gives the PCs a chance to take on armies with a similar theme one by one.

Then all you have to do is subtly make sure that the PCs challenge their first couple of armies in order of how challenging they are (hey, the gods have good reason to help them have good luck!). As they start winning victories and challenging more and more powerful armies and commanders, they attract humanoid followers who see a hope for victory in this war, and that frees the PCs up to challenge the commanders and eventually generals directly while their followers keep the armies busy. After that, it's time to slay some epic dragons!

[Lleban]

Without magic why haven't the reaming dragons annihilated the last resistance cities. unless those cities are so unimportant weak dragons were assigned to destroy them.

A dragon army would probably have grunts that are relatively young with the superior officer being older or having a special template. Promotion in a dragon army would probably rely on strenght alone, be it physical mental or magical.

[Forum Explorer]

I say have it vary between your different dragon generals.

A proud Blue dragon might have a strict regimented system that disdains magic to make it a 'fair' fight. They have kobolds organized into armies, with winged kobolds as sargents, and then dragonborn/half-dragons as higher ranked officers, and then young dragons as 'mini-generals'. They'll accept the surrender of their foes, if they surrender before the fight, they'll enslave survivors, and in general try to maximize the profit of their conquest.

A Red Dragon could be the classic horde. The Dragons fly above, burning and shattering defenses, before allowing their army to rampage inside, killing any further resistance, and looting anything shiny. Then they demand tribute from the other cities, destroying whoever can't pay their increasingly unreasonable demands.

A Black Dragon might prefer terror tactics, attacking in the night, plucking people from the streets and torturing them in the skies, teleporting in squads of hydras and chimeras to rampage, before teleporting them out once meaningful resistance forms. Smashing important structures and statues. Creating a magical miasma over the cities so the people have to walk through a thick chocking mist, unable to see if the person approaching them is their next door neighbor, or a draconic assassin.

A Green Dragon might disdain conventional armies alltogether, preferring an army of mindless undead to ravage the country side, while they personally shapeshift and enter the cities, leading heroes astray, foiling resistance plans, spying on everything, and slowly corrupting things from within, and using magic and their wits to conquer their territories.

A White Dragon might be a patient hunter, starving out cities with the bitter cold, and claiming all of the countryside. They carefully watch each city for a sign of weakness, before sending in a horde of monsters to smash the city open, slaying all the inhabitants, and wrecking everything. After reducing the city to a frozen ruin, they carefully pick through it for valuables, all while waiting for the next city to crumble under the pressure.

The 'Good' Dragons would be even more fun to work as conquerors.

[braveheart]

So to address the question of why the dragon's haven't won yet, it is because the war is just starting, even with superior forces a siege takes time, and that time has not yet passed at the relevant point. this war is just ramping up, and neither organized force has taken serious casualties. the small villages are taken only because they had no/flammable defenses.

I like the idea of separating the armies of each epic dragon, probably by element/color and having each one follow a different policy of attack. especially having one that is so prideful as to not use magic.

Infighting makes perfect sense as well, dragon pride may be downplayed in the setting, but it certainly isn't gone.

as for endgame, the dragons want to enslave or eradicate all nondraconic races, the epic dragons want to reshape the world in their image, so even slavery is not a long term goal.

[DoomHat]

If dragons have a monopoly on magic then it really just doesn't matter, the dragons have already won. In most game systems, and hell, in most myths and legends, mortals can't meaningfully oppose full grown dragons without at least some access to magic. Considering that it takes some amount of magic to match or counter a full sized dragon's inherent physical qualities, it makes the fight twice over impossible when the damned beast is also a wizard.

That said, Dragons Vs The World is a pretty boss idea. And the loss of most of the world's access to magic does seem like a probable starting gun for them to mobilize under. But the loss of all magic by one side in a high fantasy conflict is roughly equivalent to the loss of all petroleum and gun powder by one side of a conflict in the real modern world. The side without is less then a lost cause, they're just victims.

There's a variety of interesting options on precisely what (and how much) the dragon's have seized. Perhaps the dragons have made it so the only remaining source of magic is dragon blood? That way there may be a number of errant sorcerers from draconic bloodlines on the non-dragon side. Perhaps the forces of mortal kind have a chance of winning by snowballing, hunting down and harvesting heart's blood from kobalds and dragon-whelps to power enough magic to take down elder drakes, then in turn harvesting those, and so on.

Or perhaps it's the famous greed of dragons that do them in? It was agreed among them that when they inevitably won they'd want elves, dwarfs, and men to continue fashioning wonderful things for them. So it was that mortals can still harness magic by way of crafting it into items. Wizards are no long capable of direct casting, so the only remaining practitioners are those who are also blacksmiths, carpenters, and tailors.