Modifying a White Dragon encounter (Minor SKT spoilers)

[Oramac]

Greeting GITP!

A little background: I'm running Storm King's Thunder for a group of 4-6 players (depending on who shows up), and have decided that instead of the "Quest for Giant Relics", in order to prove their Maug (honor) the characters are asked to kill a White Dragon roaming the area northwest of the Eye of the All-Father.

The characters are all 7th level.

Open Hand Monk
Moon Druid
Ancients Paladin
Illusion Wizard
Battlemaster Fighter
War Cleric

The druid and fighter are usually not there, but may show up the night of.

So here's the problem: Young White Dragons are CR6, and I know from experience they don't pose much, if any, threat to a party that's higher level than their CR. But Adult White Dragons are CR13 and would probably destroy this group.

How would you modify either the Young or Adult white dragon to pose a legit Hard-to-Deadly encounter for this group. No monsters other than the dragon are allowed.

[Unoriginal]

Greeting GITP!

A little background: I'm running Storm King's Thunder for a group of 4-6 players (depending on who shows up), and have decided that instead of the "Quest for Giant Relics", in order to prove their Maug (honor) the characters are asked to kill a White Dragon roaming the area northwest of the Eye of the All-Father.

The characters are all 7th level.

Open Hand Monk
Moon Druid
Ancients Paladin
Illusion Wizard
Battlemaster Fighter
War Cleric

The druid and fighter are usually not there, but may show up the night of.

So here's the problem: Young White Dragons are CR6, and I know from experience they don't pose much, if any, threat to a party that's higher level than their CR. But Adult White Dragons are CR13 and would probably destroy this group.

How would you modify either the Young or Adult white dragon to pose a legit Hard-to-Deadly encounter for this group. No monsters other than the dragon are allowed.

Dunno, assuming they're spending all their ressources, PCs can punch way above their weight classes, and if they're all here I'm pretty sure a single CR 13 is well within their XP budgets.

Are giants nearby to make sure the PCs aren't cheating?

[Elistan]

I agree with Unoriginal. Especially if the players know what they will be facing, have time to prepare, and it's the first encounter of the day, allowing for nova tactics, they should be able to crush the CR13 Adult.

[JackPhoenix]

Math-wise, 1 CR 13 enemy should be a medium encounter for 6 level 7 characters, deadly encounter for 4-5 characters.

[AureusFulgens]

Based on previous answers, I think you're probably looking at making the adult dragon harder, then. Since even the adult isn't necessarily a serious challenge to a large party of mid-level characters.

Probably my favorite solution for making dragons more interesting is to look back to 3.5e. Dragons then had all kinds of nasty tricks up their sleeves. The white dragon, for example, got a bunch of per-day castings of snow and wind spells - ranging from fog cloud and gust of wind (not terribly important) to freezing fog (basically a wide-area grease with the effects of an old spell called solid fog that cuts down movement to a crawl - more interesting) to control weather.

Plus all dragons were sorcerers! You can beef up your huge-bag-o'-hit-points white dragon with some tastefully-chosen arcane spells. Mind you, they're also kinda dumb, but even a dumb creature can use some magic to screw with your players.

Ice knife, and maybe tweak it to let it be a flurry of such blades that hit everyone in range.
Hold person or even earthbind to screw with their mobility - if they try to take it in the air, nail them to the ground, or straight-up paralyze them. Maybe even fluff hold person as the player suddenly freezing when the dragon looks at them, and make the save Con or Str instead of Wis.
Area effects like sleet storm or warding wind around the dragon to make the players' lives THAT much more difficult. Now you slip or have to push through a windstorm to even walk up to the beast.

There are tons of options, and a lot of Elemental Evil things are nice for an ice-and-wind-themed dragon. Make it the force of nature a dragon really SHOULD be. Strike the fear of the cold into your players.

That's how I'd approach it, anyway.

[Doorhandle]

Greeting GITP!

A little background: I'm running Storm King's Thunder for a group of 4-6 players (depending on who shows up), and have decided that instead of the "Quest for Giant Relics", in order to prove their Maug (honor) the characters are asked to kill a White Dragon roaming the area northwest of the Eye of the All-Father.

The characters are all 7th level.

Open Hand Monk
Moon Druid
Ancients Paladin
Illusion Wizard
Battlemaster Fighter
War Cleric

The druid and fighter are usually not there, but may show up the night of.

So here's the problem: Young White Dragons are CR6, and I know from experience they don't pose much, if any, threat to a party that's higher level than their CR. But Adult White Dragons are CR13 and would probably destroy this group.

How would you modify either the Young or Adult white dragon to pose a legit Hard-to-Deadly encounter for this group. No monsters other than the dragon are allowed.

Multiple young dragons. A clutch may have banded together for protection against the giants and other assorted predators that can take out a dragon that isn't fully grown.

[kraitmarais]

^^ I agree with everyone above. Your party will absolutely wreck a solo CR 13 dragon, unless it manages a brilliant ambush (unlikely for a “roaming” white dragon and its mediocre ain’t) and they play horribly.

Give it some minions and some advantageous terrain and then things will get interesting.

Check p. 82 of the DMG for encounter xp budgeting.

[AureusFulgens]

^^ I agree with everyone above. Your party will absolutely wreck a solo CR 13 dragon, unless it manages a brilliant ambush (unlikely for a “roaming” white dragon and its mediocre ain’t) and they play horribly.

Give it some minions and some advantageous terrain and then things will get interesting.

Check p. 82 of the DMG for encounter xp budgeting.

I think the OP was opposed to using any additional monsters? It's worth asking why that is, though. OP: how attached are you to it being a single monster? As opposed to, say, a family of dragons?

I like the point about advantageous terrain. To up the ante on that a bit, having just finished a run of Breath of the Wild, how about environmental effects? The dragon's mere presence drops the temperature so drastically that the players make Con saves versus cold damage every turn, or something. Maybe hefty enough cold damage that they're on a timeline to kill the thing before they freeze to death, or else they have to chew through resources to stave off the cold.

And real-life animals dumber than a white dragon do manage ambushes and such. An adult (INT 8) is no dumber than a below-average human, and even a young one (INT 6) is much smarter than, say, a wolf. If they aren't careful, let it notice them coming and pounce on them from a cave. Or use camoflauge against a snow field.

[Unoriginal]

Personally, I would give the Dragon max HPs and a couple Legendary action.

[Finieous]

Personally, I would give the Dragon max HPs and a couple Legendary action.

Adult whites already get legendary actions. And I disagree with everyone else: If you play the dragon as a cunning apex predator, he'll feast well on the 7th-level scrubs, particularly if he's in his lair. His ability to burrow alone should screw them in an appropriate (i.e. "icy") environment; freezing fog heavily obscuring the lair combined with the dragon's blindsight is nice, too. Against, most 7th-level parties, the dragon doesn't need to do anything except breath weapon and burrow until it recharges...and there's no particular reason he would do anything else if he feels at all threatened.

The last campaign I ran, an adult white defeated my six-person party twice (only one permanent death -- the others were able to flee). The second time, the wizard used his Book of the Stilled Tongue to cast Leomund's Tiny Hut instantaneously and they managed to get off a teleport before the dragon burrowed into the dome from below...so that gives you an idea of their level at the time. Otherwise, would have been a TPK.


If you play the dragon like a dumb "bag of hit points" and have him squat in front of the party to duke it out, yeah, you don't need to put much thought into it. They'll be fine.

[Unoriginal]

Adult whites already get legendary actions. And I disagree with everyone else: If you play the dragon as a cunning apex predator, he'll feast well on the 7th-level scrubs, particularly if he's in his lair. His ability to burrow alone should screw them in an appropriate (i.e. "icy") environment; freezing fog heavily obscuring the lair combined with the dragon's blindsight is nice, too. Against, most 7th-level parties, the dragon doesn't need to do anything except breath weapon and burrow until it recharges...and there's no particular reason he would do anything else if he feels at all threatened.

The last campaign I ran, an adult white defeated my six-person party twice (only one permanent death -- the others were able to flee). The second time, the wizard used his Book of the Stilled Tongue to cast Leomund's Tiny Hut instantaneously and they managed to get off a teleport before the dragon burrowed into the dome from below...so that gives you an idea of their level at the time. Otherwise, would have been a TPK.


If you play the dragon like a dumb "bag of hit points" and have him squat in front of the party to duke it out, yeah, you don't need to put much thought into it. They'll be fine.

I had the impression the PCs were the one choosing where to attack the dragon and ambushing them. If not, it's true that the dragon will probably slaughter the PCs, but if the PCs are smart the dragon's best options is to fly around and swipe for a breath any time it recharges.


EDIT:

Having checked the dragon's stats, my advice is to have a Giant throw a boulder at the dragon and hit, as to justify why the dragon is pissed enough to stick around and exterminate the PCs (the boulder should put his HPs to around 170). Also remove its Wings legendary action.

[Finieous]

I had the impression the PCs were the one choosing where to attack the dragon and ambushing them.

If it's not in its lair, it's presumably flying (hunting) and has senses quite a bit better than a bird of prey (Passive Perception 21, in game mechanics terms). Kinda hard for 7th-levels to "ambush."

[Unoriginal]

If it's not in its lair, it's presumably flying (hunting) and has senses quite a bit better than a bird of prey (Passive Perception 21, in game mechanics terms). Kinda hard for 7th-levels to "ambush."

Not as in "surprising him, as in "picking the place of the fight".

[Finieous]

Not as in "surprising him, as in "picking the place of the fight".

I mean, I guess. They can try to locate his hunting grounds, post up in a spot they like and wait for him to come along, but I'm not sure how they force him to fight (beyond an indeterminate number of breath-weapon strafing runs to test them out or knocking an avalanche down on them, I mean).

Personally, I'd rather go dig up barrows. :smallbiggrin:

[Oramac]

Sorry for the delay everyone. Work has been crazy today. Lots of good thoughts here!

It seems like the general consensus is that the Adult dragon should be a sufficient challenge for the party. My wizard is doing a damn good job of being a "god wizard", though. He literally has one damaging spell (firebolt). Everything else is battlefield control. And he's super creative, which has been awesome to watch, but makes it tougher to plan an encounter.

I also have a good bit of terrain laid out. I think it's probable that the party will attack the dragon in its lair, so I have that mapped out with lots of elevation changes and a very high ceiling so the dragon can fly around.

As for it being a single-monster encounter, I want it to feel like they're fighting an epic bad guy instead of a horde. I am considering putting 2-3 white guard drakes (from VGtM) in there, but not sure yet.

On a side note, why do white guard drakes get a climb speed, but white dragons don't? I've already decided to give my dragon a climb speed. Just seems silly to me.

[Finieous]

On a side note, why do white guard drakes get a climb speed, but white dragons don't? I've already decided to give my dragon a climb speed. Just seems silly to me.

Check out Ice Walk. You really ought to put his lair in an iceberg or glacier so he can take advantage of his abilities, including Ice Walk and his burrow speed.

[Oramac]

Check out Ice Walk. You really ought to put his lair in an iceberg or glacier so he can take advantage of his abilities, including Ice Walk and his burrow speed.

Doh! Totally missed Ice Walk. /facepam.

And yea, the lair is in the middle of the Regheb Glacier (or however you say it).

[Unoriginal]

On a side note, why do white guard drakes get a climb speed, but white dragons don't? I've already decided to give my dragon a climb speed. Just seems silly to me.

You don't need a climb speed to climb, and the White Dragon can literally dig inside a solid rock cliff and get up on top faster than most things can climb.

Also what Finieous said.

IMO for this encounter I would definitively have a Giant hurt the Dragon a bit as a "now, the challenge as started" moment.

Battlefield control could actually be one of the things that remove the White Dragon's main advantage in that kind of encounter.

I also suggest to go for the solo encounter, but it's true the Adult White Dragon will probably kill them if at full health and with a clear head.

[Sigreid]

Have it fight them outside and take full advantage of the terrain, flying mobility and breath weapon. If it fights smart, the party should be in serious trouble.

[Finieous]

You don't need a climb speed to climb, and the White Dragon can literally dig inside a solid rock cliff and get up on top faster than most things can climb.


Make sure to check the burrow ability. Creatures with a burrow speed can move through sand, mud, earth or ice, but not through solid rock. That's why I keep harping on the icy lair, but sounds like we've got that covered. :smallbiggrin:

[Unoriginal]

Make sure to check the burrow ability. Creatures with a burrow speed can move through sand, mud, earth or ice, but not through solid rock. That's why I keep harping on the icy lair, but sounds like we've got that covered. :smallbiggrin:

My bad. Maybe I was thinking of the Xorn, who can move through solid rock.

Dragons don't need special climb capacities when they have wings, anyway.