Rise of Tiamat

[Angelalex242]

So, the group of PCs actually managed to get an adult silver dragon as a party member, more or less.

How much does the difficulty of encounters need to be ramped up to account for her?

One thing I did was change 'Old White Death' into an Ancient Dragon instead of merely an adult. The PCs are level 7 on the cusp of 8, but synergize well with the Silver so far.

[KorvinStarmast]

So, the group of PCs actually managed to get an adult silver dragon as a party member, more or less.

How much does the difficulty of encounters need to be ramped up to account for her?

One thing I did was change 'Old White Death' into an Ancient Dragon instead of merely an adult. The PCs are level 7 on the cusp of 8, but synergize well with the Silver so far. Would you say that this Silver Dragon is a DMPC (a PC under the DM's control) or has one of the players been given the role to play this adult silver dragon?

It occurs to me that the Rise of Tiamat might have started in a brewery, in a bakery, or due to a yeast infection. If she'd have stuck with a low carb diet it may not have happened at all.

[mephnick]

You need to tell the group that the dragon is an ally, not a party member. There is virtually no way to balance this without re-writing the entire campaign.

[Angelalex242]

It's mostly a DMPC, but the Paladin player takes her over when I've got monsters to run.

[A Fat Dragon]

Is it possible to just have the Silver Dragon sit on the side-lines, and only intervene when the PCs are getting wrecked?

[KorvinStarmast]

Is it possible to just have the Silver Dragon sit on the side-lines, and only intervene when the PCs are getting wrecked? Given the basic story line, that does not seem in character for a Silver Dragon.

[Angelalex242]

Given the basic story line, that does not seem in character for a Silver Dragon.

It isn't. One battle was only possible because of the silver dragon taking an active part. The PCs were fighting 6 young white dragons WAY the hell up in the sky on the silver's back, basically acting like an artillery platform. It was funny when the Paladin with sentinel hit one of the whites...who then became movement 0 and dropped like a rock, removing them from the fight for a couple rounds. The silver also hit a white with paralyzing breath...which hilariously resulted in Wily E Coyote jokes as it fell ALL THE WAY DOWN (And survived, 20d6 is survivable...)

[A Fat Dragon]

Given the basic story line, that does not seem in character for a Silver Dragon.

Realizing that now, yeah...

Then.. have the dragon act as a meat-shield? Only have it make basic attacks, and rarely use other abilities.

I have no clue, so I’m sorry.

[mephnick]

Given the basic story line, that does not seem in character for a Silver Dragon.

Sometimes story has to take a backseat to not destroy a campaign unfortunately.

The players and DM might think it's awesome at first, but then as the weeks go on either the DM burns out re-writing every encounter in the book or the players tune out because a dragon is stomping all the encounters by itself.

[Angelalex242]

Sometimes story has to take a backseat to not destroy a campaign unfortunately.

The players and DM might think it's awesome at first, but then as the weeks go on either the DM burns out re-writing every encounter in the book or the players tune out because a dragon is stomping all the encounters by itself.

So far, I'm not really rewriting things. I'm just adding age categories to enemy dragons. And a lot of battles are turning out to be aerial battles instead of the usual PCs try to make the dragon land battles. And some other battles that didn't have dragons now have one. It's the Cult of the DRAGON after all.