A member of my party wants to befriend a red dragon wyrmling, could use advice

[280zfan]

So I'm a very new DM. I'm still working through a lot of the basics, and I'm trying to allow my players the freedom to pursue strange courses of action if they want to.

In the last session, they came across a red wyrmling at war with a goblin horde. They spoke with her and struck a bargain to help her defeat the goblins and leave all of their treasure/loot with her in exchange for their lives.

Now our sorcerer is convinced that he can befriend her eventually by sending her treasure. I'm not going to say "no, that could never happen" but she's chaotic evil, and they are a good/neutral party. I can't imagine a scenario where she actually becomes a dependable ally of the party. I'm trying to figure out how to appropriately DM this situation.

My stance is that dragons view other creatures as inferiors, and would be happy to accept gifts, but are unlikely to reciprocate in any way, or at least not in any way that is inconvenient for them. His stance is that the dragon is still young (<5 years) and he may be able to guide and manipulate her into behaving differently than an adult dragon would.


Should I give it a chance to be successful at some point?
How should I determine when/if she decides they are "friends" and how much she is willing to do for them?
Should I be dropping some hints to him that this is really unlikely to work and probably a waste of resources, and how should I work that in?



Thanks for your help.

[Grim Portent]

It is certainly possible that the dragon could be taught to be neutral or even good, it's an established part of D&D, but I doubt the equivalent of a pen pal sending presents would really be enough to do something like that.

That said, the dragon is likely to view them as allies, or at the very least people too powerful too consider enemies. Dragons do form bonds and attachments, and often have a perverse sense of honour and obligation, twisted as it may be. It is not outside the realm of plausibility that it would see the player as someone worthy of considering a friend, or at least think it worth pretending to be their friend. I could see it doing little things while the party are in it's territory, passing on gossip, mentioning potential threats and the like, but it's young and would not be able or willing to travel far to help them.

Unless the party live to be hundreds of years old, and the game lasts into that kind of timescale, I can't see what is essentially a baby being a real ally of theirs at any point.

If they meet it again it should probably be friendly, and greet them with a veneer of civility as is customary for dragons when dealing with mortals, but it won't do anything it would consider dangerous or demeening for them. Directions and tips about local events, sure, maybe even setting something non-threatening on fire. Fighting anything more deadly than a bear or giving them stuff? Certainly not.

[fbelanger]

Don't hope for a CE sorcerer to make a red dragon LG.
The wyrmling will recognize the CE as someone who thinks like me. A CE characters that show kindness should roll a bluff check almost all the time.
It should finish in a blood bath.

[Kane0]

D&D has a long history of alternating stances on the Nature vs Nurture thing.

Luckily alignment isn't nearly as central to 5e as other editions and can be completely dropped if you so wish.
There is also the possibility that he is avoiding metagaming. Does his character know the chances of this being successful?
Last question: Which one will be more fun for the table? Do the one that provides the most entertainment value.

Edit: Also, evil can have friends too, and neither PCs nor dragons have a reliable means of determining alignment in game (pixies do though). It's purely a personality thing, which may or may not be mutable.

[280zfan]

Don't hope for a CE sorcerer to make a red dragon LG.
The wyrmling will recognize the CE as someone who thinks like me. A CE characters that show kindness should roll a bluff check almost all the time.
It should finish in a blood bath.


Oops, my writing was unclear, the male sorcerer is chaotic good, the wyrmling is the one who is chaotic evil (by nature)

[280zfan]

It is certainly possible that the dragon could be taught to be neutral or even good, it's an established part of D&D, but I doubt the equivalent of a pen pal sending presents would really be enough to do something like that.

That said, the dragon is likely to view them as allies, or at the very least people too powerful too consider enemies. Dragons do form bonds and attachments, and often have a perverse sense of honour and obligation, twisted as it may be. It is not outside the realm of plausibility that it would see the player as someone worthy of considering a friend, or at least think it worth pretending to be their friend. I could see it doing little things while the party are in it's territory, passing on gossip, mentioning potential threats and the like, but it's young and would not be able or willing to travel far to help them.

Unless the party live to be hundreds of years old, and the game lasts into that kind of timescale, I can't see what is essentially a baby being a real ally of theirs at any point.

If they meet it again it should probably be friendly, and greet them with a veneer of civility as is customary for dragons when dealing with mortals, but it won't do anything it would consider dangerous or demeening for them. Directions and tips about local events, sure, maybe even setting something non-threatening on fire. Fighting anything more deadly than a bear or giving them stuff? Certainly not.

I like your take on this. I mentioned to the player (not the character) that even if he was successful she's not going to be some ice-giant defeating trump card, because realistically by the time she's befriended she'll probably be less powerful than any individual member of the party, and still wouldn't be willing to put herself at any real risk in my opinion.

Now when they left, he tried to make overtures of friendship and she clarified that she would kill them on sight if she saw them again, so they aren't exactly allies at this point. She wasn't in need of rescuing when they showed up, she could have dispatched the goblins without them, but not without taking significant damage, which is why she demanded all of their treasure in addition to their help. The entire exchange surprised me, because I assumed they would take advantage of the goblin distraction to either kill the wyrmling or steal some of her treasure, but players rarely make the choices I assume they will. He's hopeful that he can win her over, but I'm not sure how he plans to do it, other than by sending her presents.

Thanks for helping me to flesh out my options.

[Mellack]

Some of the lore (from during previous editions) have dragons born with a substantial amount of inherited knowledge. This is opposed to the idea that wyrmlings are some sort of blank slate that can be nurtured to any alignment. If you go with that concept, even a wrymling red knows its place in the world (on top except for possibly other dragons), and is not going to be swayed to support good creatures without a very significant investment of time, effort, and treasure.

[Finback]

I would think even if initially, the dragon's behaviour was swayed with gifts, as it matures, it will develop an inherent sense of superiority - this is true for even metallics, who can appreciate non-dragons, but wouldn't put them anywhere near as important as any dragon on a heierarchy. So even if the wyrmling is initially accepting, soon enough, it will start seeing the party as lesser beings - at best, a cheap source of expendable labour to bring treasure, at worst, an insult to think they could even compare themselves with its majesty.

Gamewise, you can totally start setting up the dragon as what they think is an acquaintance, but will ultimately become a threat/danger.

[fbelanger]

Oops, my writing was unclear, the male sorcerer is chaotic good, the wyrmling is the one who is chaotic evil (by nature)

But the whole story is up to you.
The wyrmling need, anger, hunger, flaw can be the link to many adventures. Consider also that the dragon is intelligent, and a free will character. If they try to make him a pet, he will most likely stay CE and rebel.
The obvious warning is the pc must remain the heroes, and the wyrmling should not overshine them.

[MrMcBobb]

Now our sorcerer is convinced that he can befriend her eventually by sending her treasure.

One of my favourite parts of the Red Dragon's bio is that they believe that treasure is their's by right and people offering it to them are insulting them. How would you feel if someone came into your house and offered you your own TV as a present? So the player attempting to curry favour by sending presents may actually enrage the Dragon and cause it to strike out against them. Perhaps it believes that the party is withholding all the best loot from it and sending it scraps as a deliberate slight?

How you play it is up to you though, I'm often not too pleased at the assumed alignment of Dragons in D&D. Dragons are intelligent creatures but can't form their own opinions and personalities outside of their colour's traditional tropes? Yuk. Someone above pointed out they have a certain degree of inherited knowledge though, so that could point to their fairly rigid alignment, imagine how ****ed up it would be if people inherited their parents' political ideology through their genetics and not just their upbringing? Yeesh.

I like the idea of the world reacting to a player's actions in an unexpected but rational and predictable way. So a certain degree of knowledge about Red Dragons could stop this from happening but the PCs don't have that knowledge. Like people on holiday accidentally insulting the locals by making some faux pas that is against custom, best of intentions but ignorance causes insult.

[StoicLeaf]

I think a different avenue of thought is this:
what's your take on taking a stereotype and subverting it?
good aligned drow or orcs.
evil unicorns or floomphs.
vampires that run kindergartens and charity stations.

For me, personally, I don't mind doing it rarely. When I do, however, I don't take alignment into consideration (or use it as it very, very rough measurement) and generally won't deviate much from what the world proposes. Example: Hobgoblins are warriors and warlords. Them being declared evil by everyone else and "lawful evil" by the rule book is irrelevant. For all we know, that hobgoblin that's splitting your mom's skull might be thinking he's doing her a favour by giving her a death by combat. On a socio-political scale, however, hobgoblin behaviour is a problem that can sadly only be addressed by violence.

If I were to make a hobgoblin a "good" individual .. have you by any chance played dragon age inquisition? Do you recall the dialogue between Solas and Iron Bull regarding the Talvashoth? Paraphrasing:
"Even as they rebel against your system they still adhere to it, for they have known nothing else."
I think that's the best way of handling it. So back to the "good" hobgoblin. Perhaps his take on the world is "we shouldn't fight weaker opponents. It dishonours us", an opinion that his clan didn't share. But he's likely to still end up evil. He's going to pick fights with whoever looks big and tough. The party will have to spend time and resources on "leashing" the hobgoblin. Similarly, drow are used to getting things via violence and intimidation. You're not going to hear one say "please". You'd probably have to sit the drow down and explain the word.

Moving on to your situation:
ultimately, you need to decide on whether the wyrmling is "good" or "evil" and how dragons work in your setting.

In faerun, dragons are:

- born with an innate understanding of the world and where dragons fit into it (i.e. at the top. they are the apex predators)
- reared by parents for a few years (metallics rear longer)

My take on it:
You have a red wyrmling that's all on it's own despite being younger than 5 years of age. It had, in all likelyhood, chromatic parents. It's already, in all likelyhood, "evil". The "evil" red wyrmling will tolerate the PCs presence and presents (which are probably being interpreted as condescending and insulting) only for as long as it must. Once it's big enough that sorcerer is on the menu.

I think the more interesting discussion here is:
that red dragon is going to be someone's headache. The "when" and therefore maginitude of that headache is down to your party. If you kill it now you spare countless people a horrible death but will have to live with having killed something that hadn't done anything wrong (yet) and wasn't a match for you. If you wait, kingdoms might burn.

edit:

Sorry, forgot to answer your questions directly.

Should I give it a chance to be successful at some point?
No.

How should I determine when/if she decides they are "friends" and how much she is willing to do for them?
They'll never be friends. A wyrmling is already smarter than the average human. At best the dragon is manipulating the party into doing things it needs done.

Should I be dropping some hints to him that this is really unlikely to work and probably a waste of resources, and how should I work that in?
Depends on the kind of campaign you're running. How "hard" do you want it to be? I think a fair and balanced approach would be to let the sorcerer roll history/arcana and regardless of what he rolls inform him that good chromatics or evil metallics are rarely, if ever, heard of, and no cases have ever been officially recorded.

[Theodoxus]

A helm of opposite alignment would do the trick...

[Morphic tide]

Chaotic Evil can have loved ones, and is the alignment of absolute self-interest to the detriment of othersor absolute spontaneous cruelty. A species that is "always" Chaotic Evil has a natural/instinctive psychology best defined as either "Screw everyone else" or "For the Evulz." Decide whether you want the Red Dragon's instinctive alignment to be about wanton cruelty without reason or screwing over others for their personal benefit.

Absolute self-interest is more likely for Red dragons, given what few canon descriptions of their behavior I can remember. Now, you'll never get rid of that self interest, because it's so utterly fundamental to the psychology that it's responsible for an "always" alignment, but it can be redirected. Lawful from Chaotic is considerably easier than Good from Evil, as some varieties of Chaotic philosophy lend themselves to getting into a system to exploit it. Once someone is in a system, they can be shaped by the system into having different views.

If you want it to be successful, have the path to success involve getting the dragon into a position where going Lawful Neutral, in the form of being Lawful and not-on-extremes-of-Good-vs-Evil, in behavior is the best way to express their self interested desires. Then, they will be able to be befriended. And be a living testament to unconventional redemption through exploiting the root of Chaos and Evil.

[Spore]

I say the sending of gifts keeps the door open (until a certain time window, say a year or two) but otherwise doesn't improve their relationsship. The dragon feels revered, but she doesn't think she owes them anything. Other than that, a CE dragon can be friends with a CG character. But the CG character has to step in and DO something against the dragon being evil or either the CG character becomes neutral.

Teaching someone morality goes WAY beyond being friends. Ethics are not absorbed via osmosis they have to be shown and taught. Making a dragon good can be the premise for an entire character arc, it should not be cut short for immediate player reward. The character should have to risk their friend or their alignment on several difficult (pseudo)dilemmata that have to be solved.

Should the wrymling eat the freshly killed humanoid corpse or starve? Can the player character resist the temptation of gold and rare items offered by the red one as reward for murder? Do you defend the creature's lair against the (lawful) order of the king trying to kill the dragon on his land? Do you force poor farmers to feed the wyrmling by tributing their livestock to the lair?

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Dragons are no outsiders, so in most settings their alignment is not set in stone. They're closer to a person, but with a deep seated tendency to choose for evil. Now, a person would probably not be swayed to change their ways by a person never really visiting them but bringing them money every now and then. You'd need to spend time with a person, get to know them, be open to their point of view. Since humans are easier to de-evilfy than "usually chaotic evil" creatures like orcs or dragons, that would semi-realistically be the lowest bar for this case. And if he roleplays that well, if he talks to her, if he helps her with her problems, if he eventually, ones he won het trust, starts bringing her on trips, looking out for her in battle, staying up to care for her when she's sick or wounded, let him have it. Because he's role playing. Just hope he won't try to sire a half dragon heir with his draconic sort of stepdaughter for in their next campaign. That might be a little too much.