Eep! We're fighting a dragon for my first time. Advice needed...

[samcifer]

So we just reached lv. 8 and I'm playing a firbolg light cleric with max Wisdom and 20 AC thanks to half-plate and a shield as well as 16 DEX and the medium armor master feat. My other stats: STR 18, CON 16, INT 12 and CHA 14 (along with the 16 DEX and 20 WIS). As for the type of draon, it's described as circling the peak of a snowy and stormy mountain in the Japanese version of the underworld, but I'm not sure what type of dragon it is.

The rest of the party consists of a minotaur war cleric, a half-orc barb/fighter, a college of whispers bard (not sure what race), a lycan sub-class blood hunter (again, not sure of race), a warforged artificer (who summons turrets), and a moon druid (yet again I don't know the race).

As this will be my first time ever fighting a dragon, what advice would anyone give on fighting it (the bard will try to seduce it first, but I'm doubtful it'll work). I'm not sure how to approach this fight and would appreciate advice on how to handle this battle if it happens.

[Urukubarr]

breath weapons are strong in 5e, don't stay close together and see about having appropriate resistances based on color (red = fire, etc)

after that dragons mostly rely on various melee attacks (claws, tail, bite, etc.)

but also varies based on DM, I tend to give my high level dragons some magic as they in my mind need a few more options other then beat stick with a breath weapon. also careful in lairs, aside from lair actions some DM's (I tend to at least) design the layout of the lair to favor the dragons ability to move around it, for instance making everything icy in a white dragon lair, or having acid filled pools connected beneath the surface in a black dragon lair, etc.

[Sigreid]

First, find out if it's hostile as not all dragons are. Second, try to pick a place to fight where you can spread out and people can have cover. Make sure you have plenty of ranged attacks. Keep an eye out for a warped landscape. This will tell you if it's an old or a young dragon and give you a hint to what type it is.

Also, unless you have to fight it (or want to) you may be able to offer it tribute to leave you alone.

[Hobbo Jim]

If you can find a way you should to force it to land, or at least force it to be in range. Attacking it in its lair while it's sleeping could be good. While it knows its lair best, it's probably better than it flying around out of reach using its breath, and then just leaving once it's significantly injured (if your DM ever retreats)

[LordEntrails]

Enjoy it. Win or lose, have fun. Don't try to metagame it. Don't read up on the weakenesses of dragons. Don't build a strategy that your character wouldn't know.

There is only ever one first time, and a large part of the enjoyment is that newness. Don't ruin that by figuring out "what you should do" before you do it.

[Arkhios]

Enjoy it. Win or lose, have fun. Don't try to metagame it. Don't read up on the weakenesses of dragons. Don't build a strategy that your character wouldn't know.

There is only ever one first time, and a large part of the enjoyment is that newness. Don't ruin that by figuring out "what you should do" before you do it.

This. Play it as it goes. Imagine it was you facing a dragon the very first time in your life. What would you do in a situation like that? (assuming, of course, you didn't value your life and decided to fight instead of running away as any wise person would do :smalltongue:)

[Fable Wright]

There is a reason most myths of dragonslaying involve the hero sneaking up when the dragon is least expecting it and stabbing it in its weak spot. Therefore, my best recommendation is Pass Without Trace from the Moon Druid to sneak into position, and then both Clerics cast a fourth level Spirit Guardians on opposite sides of the creature. If you cut its speed in half twice, it will have severe issues with circle-strafe tactics.

Also, anything that can trip the dragon is very highly recommended. Prone knocks it out of the sky, prevents it from swooping off with Wing Attacks, provides Advantage on all melee attacks against it, and essentially halves speed again next turn.

Or, if you don't have to fight the dragon... don't. Sneak past it entirely with PWT. Let the bard talk to it while the rest of the party sneaks off with PWT. Dragons are scary, breath weapon or no breath weapon.

[Bjarkmundur]

There's nothing that will help.

Wanna try single-tanking it? Well, it has up to 3 attacks.
Wanna try to flank it to distribute the damage between players? Well, it has an 10 feet AoE.
Want to try stealth, well it has Detect (legendary action), a ridiculous perception score and darkvision.
Want to try reasoning with it? Well, it is lawful evil with an intelligence of 16! There's no way you'll outsmart it!

Your only hope is to find out what it wants and pay tribute. Dragons are proud and vain, and addressing one as a god-like entity might discourage it to eat you as breakfast. Starting a cult or a religion focused around worshiping the dragon, perhaps with a weekly spectacle, might work.

Whatever you do, do not overestimate your abilities, and do not underestimate the dragon or your DMs cruelty. The game has 'dragon' in the name, your DM will not be pulling his punches on this one. It is the iconic monster of DnD, and making one look weak would be disrespectful to the game as a whole. Remember that the first encounter with Smaug was just "hide, don't die, and keep the damn thing talking". This is especially true for adult and ancient dragons; they have a life-time's experience of not dying, and getting what they want.

[Contrast]

Others have mentioned the breath weapon - spread out.

You need a plan for how you're going to deal with flight. How will you stop it just hanging around at 500ft and then swooping down when its breath weapon recharges? How will you stop it just leaving?

Depending on the specifics of why you're fighting it just making it leave might be a win though of course.

Its likely going to have legendary resistances/actions/lair actions and a good AC. Non-save based stuff like bless can be surprisingly effective in increasing your damage output as I've found your best bet is just straight trying to kill them as fast as possible.

[Spacehamster]

So we just reached lv. 8 and I'm playing a firbolg light cleric with max Wisdom and 20 AC thanks to half-plate and a shield as well as 16 DEX and the medium armor master feat. My other stats: STR 18, CON 16, INT 12 and CHA 14 (along with the 16 DEX and 20 WIS). As for the type of draon, it's described as circling the peak of a snowy and stormy mountain in the Japanese version of the underworld, but I'm not sure what type of dragon it is.

The rest of the party consists of a minotaur war cleric, a half-orc barb/fighter, a college of whispers bard (not sure what race), a lycan sub-class blood hunter (again, not sure of race), a warforged artificer (who summons turrets), and a moon druid (yet again I don't know the race).

As this will be my first time ever fighting a dragon, what advice would anyone give on fighting it (the bard will try to seduce it first, but I'm doubtful it'll work). I'm not sure how to approach this fight and would appreciate advice on how to handle this battle if it happens.

First of all, grats on the god stats you rolled. :)
Second, don’t stay clustered up, be buffed before the the fight if possible and that everyone is topped off to full hp. :)

[Guy Lombard-O]

So we just reached lv. 8 and I'm playing a firbolg light cleric with max Wisdom and 20 AC thanks to half-plate and a shield as well as 16 DEX and the medium armor master feat. My other stats: STR 18, CON 16, INT 12 and CHA 14 (along with the 16 DEX and 20 WIS). As for the type of draon, it's described as circling the peak of a snowy and stormy mountain in the Japanese version of the underworld, but I'm not sure what type of dragon it is.

The rest of the party consists of a minotaur war cleric, a half-orc barb/fighter, a college of whispers bard (not sure what race), a lycan sub-class blood hunter (again, not sure of race), a warforged artificer (who summons turrets), and a moon druid (yet again I don't know the race).

As this will be my first time ever fighting a dragon, what advice would anyone give on fighting it (the bard will try to seduce it first, but I'm doubtful it'll work). I'm not sure how to approach this fight and would appreciate advice on how to handle this battle if it happens.

My party just recently tackled an adult dragon for the first time. It was definitely scary for five 9th level PCs! But we did prevail because we took it slow (the DM later told us he was pretty sure of a TPK if we'd just blundered in).

The first thing we did when we found out the invading kobolds served a dragon was capture one and strenuously question it. The kobold gave up the dragon's name. We then retreated and began preparing for an assault.

Using the dragon's name, we did some basic research on it. We performed Legend Lore and some lesser divination spells and learned the type, age, general disposition, and location of the dragon and its lair. We were then able to obtain some potions which granted us resistance to the elemental type of its breath weapon.

The tactics we employed were for the paladin to run upcast bless, the cleric to use Aid and Beacon of Hope (mainly to overcome the dragon fear and keep everyone in the fight instead of fleeing), and the wizard to run upcast fly to help us spread out and hopefully melee with the beast.

Even with those preparations, it was a really close thing fighting that dragon in its lair (it was way too fast to try blue-sky combat). Although I appreciate the "just go for it" attitude of the other posters, I'd have felt bad if we all TPK'd because we had the time and opportunity, but failed to plan and prepare for a known, deadly encounter. I'd rather accept my character's glorious death if we all put our best foot forward, but simply got overpowered.

[ImproperJustice]

Yeah.
Fighting Dragons in their lair is extra difficult.
Most mold the terrain to favor them.

Case in point:
A black dragon lair over a lake with narrow bridges that force PCs into lines or the water.

A Green Dragon lair that was a venomous hedge maze, impeding the players but allowing it’s breath weapon to pass through unhindered.

A Red Dragon Lair with Molten Lava pools, for it to Grapple and toss PCs in, or to take cover in.


Im our experience, you either want to try and blitz / nova the dragon to death as fast as possible or have a long term attrition strategy of some kind.

I think the former is better to try and minimize the number of incoming breath attacks.

[Teaguethebean]

Have fun dragons are cool as hell just try to avoid the breath weapon and you'll probably be ok.

[samcifer]

I suppose that I could try Divination after asking the rest of the party if we want to try to fight it or if we want to try non-violent means against it before divining possible useful info on the dragon. That'll be after we fight a six-armed demon ho's also trying to defeat it, but we recently got +1 magical swords for all of us that if we roll 18 or higher on the d20 when making an attack roll, we can sever one of the demon's arms.

I'd forgot to mention that part of next Wednesday's session as I was too worried about the dragon to remember the demon we need to fight first.

[Trickery]

It depends on your DM. In my most recent dragon encounter (Tuesday night), having full cover against its breath attack (being completely inside of something) didn't help. It's up to the DM whether cover means anything against that effect because the dragon stat block doesn't say.

Breath weapon is the hard thing to deal with. It's otherwise a standard encounter. Defeat its flight by hitting it with a dexterity saving throw.

Alternatively, if you have a high Athletics character and access to the spell Enlarge, just grapple it and shove it prone. an adult dragon is only huge and thus can be grappled by a large character according to RAW. Period. And the dragon will lose because most dragons have no bonus to athletics (from what I've seen). This will prevent it from flying and give it disadvantage on all of its attacks. If your DM is permissive, the grappler may be able to grab hold of its head and keep it pointed away from the party.

[samcifer]

It depends on your DM. In my most recent dragon encounter (Tuesday night), having full cover against its breath attack (being completely inside of something) didn't help. It's up to the DM whether cover means anything against that effect because the dragon stat block doesn't say.

Breath weapon is the hard thing to deal with. It's otherwise a standard encounter. Defeat its flight by hitting it with a dexterity saving throw.

Alternatively, if you have a high Athletics character and access to the spell Enlarge, just grapple it and shove it prone. an adult dragon is only huge and thus can be grappled by a large character according to RAW. Period. And the dragon will lose because most dragons have no bonus to athletics (from what I've seen). This will prevent it from flying and give it disadvantage on all of its attacks. If your DM is permissive, the grappler may be able to grab hold of its head and keep it pointed away from the party.

Sadly we have no sorc or wizard in the party, so no enlarge/reduce.

[NNescio]

Sadly we have no sorc or wizard in the party, so no enlarge/reduce.

Moon Druid has access to large and bigger forms. Some have Str-Save-go-Prone riders on their attacks, some autograpple (and sometimes also restrain) when they hit, and you can always manually convert an attack into a shove (but strictly speaking by RAW Multiattack doesn't allow grappling/shoving, so you can only make one grapple/shove this way).

Edit: Also Druid has Tidal Wave and Sleet Storm, both of which can knock a dragon out of the sky if it fails its save and is forced prone. That said by RAW Sleet Storm can only go up to 20 ft. above the ground, due to how cylinder AoEs work.

[Guy Lombard-O]

Yeah.
Fighting Dragons in their lair is extra difficult.
Most mold the terrain to favor them.

Case in point:
A black dragon lair over a lake with narrow bridges that force PCs into lines or the water.

A Green Dragon lair that was a venomous hedge maze, impeding the players but allowing it’s breath weapon to pass through unhindered.

A Red Dragon Lair with Molten Lava pools, for it to Grapple and toss PCs in, or to take cover in.


Im our experience, you either want to try and blitz / nova the dragon to death as fast as possible or have a long term attrition strategy of some kind.

I think the former is better to try and minimize the number of incoming breath attacks.

Yeah, we found that out the hard way.

It was a white dragon. The whole cave complex was icy, difficult terrain with a Dex save not to fall when you walked. The dragon could throw up at-will fog clouds or walls of (thankfully non-damaging) ice with its lair action.

The plan to nova the dragon didn't go well. It proved too fast most of the time, and had fog clouds and ice barriers that made hitting it hard and really prolonged the fight. We barely eked out a victory.

The problem which led to a lair assault was we were basically on defense. The invaders (including dragon) were slaughtering the citizens we were tasked with protecting. If we'd tried to engage the dragon outside its lair, it would have fought only as long as it wanted, and then flew off. Our party's ranged damage wasn't strong. And we were pretty concerned about a Dragonslayer or Smaug type of reprisal upon our home base if we botched it. We figured that cornering it in its home was the only way to win.

The reason we prepared so much was that the DM gave plenty of signs that we were facing a powerful adversary. Generally, when the DM is making a point of something like that, it's best to pay attention. Especially when he's not forcing the fight upon you immediately. Don't know if that's metagaming, or just being smart, but we took the warnings to heart and played it safe.

I bring that up because it sounds like Samcifer's DM is doing the same. Sometimes it's okay to rush in and enjoy the combat. But sometimes the DM wants you to fear the enemy, and know you're not all-powerful.

Dragons are scary. We were afraid. It was good.

[NNescio]

The tactics we employed were for the paladin to run upcast bless, the cleric to use Aid and Beacon of Hope (mainly to overcome the dragon fear and keep everyone in the fight instead of fleeing), and the wizard to run upcast fly to help us spread out and hopefully melee with the beast.

Should have Wall of Forced'd the dragon (trap it against walls with ceilings and floors). Deliberately leave a gap it can't pass through, then kill it with indirect fire (e.g. Spiritual Weapon) and/or potshots (walk out of cover → ranged fire → walk back into cover).

Slightly liberal readings of Wall of Force may allow the spherical mode of the spell to trap a Huge dragon (Huge creatures technically can't fit within a 20-ft diameter sphere without squeezing, because of the curved geometry of the sphere not allowing contiguous 3x3[x3] squares[cubes], but just barely. DM can rule forced squeezing or fudge the dimensions slightly). This allows trapping the dragon even in a wide open space (provided it comes within range, but you can use a Readied WoF for that). Killing it this way is harder, but a precast Spiritual Weapon along with some other damaging effect set up beforehand can weaken it substantially (or might even kill it). Paladins can also attempt to go mano a mano if they have Misty Step as insurance (you can teleport through cover, provided you can see where you are teleporting).

More liberal readings of Wall of Force might even allow no-save crushing the dragon into a tiny sphere, but that opens a major can of worms with all forms of forced movement. And is clearly not an intended use of the spell (i.e. definitely against RAI).

[Sigreid]

By the way, revel in that feeling of dire uncertainty of survival. It's a great part of the game.

[GlenSmash!]

If you can get it to the ground or catch it on the ground have the Moon Druid restrain it with Giant Constrictor Snake form. The druid-snake need only hit with an attack and it's target will be restrained. So granting a bonus to the Druids attack like advantage (like wolf totem barbarian) or the war cleric's Guided Strike would be helpful.

If anybody has Hex, you can give disadvantage to strength checks which will help the Dragon stay Restrained.

If you lock down it's movement like this the dragon is much easier to defeat, then you just spread everybody else out to avoid getting wiped out together by a breath weapon.

[Misterwhisper]

7 level 8 characters with probably great stats, this should be pretty easy.

The issue is that 6 of your 7 players are melee focused.

If you can get it to the ground just beat it to death.

Cause a major problem in the caves of the mountain and make it come to you.

Try to taunt out the breath weapon with starting the fight with a turret.

If it breaths on it you have time to kill it before it breathes again.

If it doesn’t, it will probably have to come down into range to kill it.

If your dm wants you to die and just plays it smart, none of you have a chance.

If he plays it fair and rps it, you can pull it off.

Sounds like some kind of home spun plot based off some anime and the dm has a pet he won’t let you win easily against anyway.

[FabulousFizban]

have the druid summon pixies, pixies polymorph party into t-rexes, jump the dragon.

but seriously, a lot will depend on the DM. if your DM plays monsters like a collection of mechanics, the fight wont be too hard. If, however, a dragon is played like a thinking self-preserving creature, then it is almost unbeatable.

it may seem counter-intuitive, but you actually want to fight it in its lair. you need to keep the dragon grounded, you DO NOT want that thing flying around.

avoid clustering so you don’t all get hit with the breath weapon, focus on ranged attacks and try to control its positioning with things like wall of fire; you don’t want to be eating 5 attacks a round from melee. watch out for frightful presence!

Play it smart, hit hard and fast, then pace yourself for the final blows. Don’t hesitate to try and talk it into surrender once you’ve shown you can hurt it, a dragon is an ancient and highly intelligent creature. it would rather part with a little treasure than die. Don’t ask for the whole hoard though, that is a sure way to get it to fight to the death.

that it flies around snowy mountains is probably a clue that it is a white dragon. ask NPCs who live in the region what they’ve seen. they might be able to tell you the color outright.

[samcifer]

Actually, for whatever reason, I realize that I was mistaken on the stats. INT is 14 and CHA is 12. If that's the case and seeing as we haven't officially locked in our level increases, I'm considering taking a level in wizard instead of going up to cleric 8, which would only grant me 1 more cleric spell prepared. If I go wizard, I could take some spells that don't require having a high INT such as Shield, Absorb Elements and Magic Missile as well as some utility ritual spells. Since I always keep both Healing Word and Mass Healing Word prepared, I could have higher defenses to improve survivability so I can focus on healing and an occasional Fireball to had a bit of hurt to the dragon. I'd still have that second lv. 4 spell slot as well this way and gain a few more casting options.

[Razgriez]

So we just reached lv. 8 and I'm playing a firbolg light cleric with max Wisdom and 20 AC thanks to half-plate and a shield as well as 16 DEX and the medium armor master feat. My other stats: STR 18, CON 16, INT 12 and CHA 14 (along with the 16 DEX and 20 WIS). As for the type of draon, it's described as circling the peak of a snowy and stormy mountain in the Japanese version of the underworld, but I'm not sure what type of dragon it is.

The rest of the party consists of a minotaur war cleric, a half-orc barb/fighter, a college of whispers bard (not sure what race), a lycan sub-class blood hunter (again, not sure of race), a warforged artificer (who summons turrets), and a moon druid (yet again I don't know the race).

As this will be my first time ever fighting a dragon, what advice would anyone give on fighting it (the bard will try to seduce it first, but I'm doubtful it'll work). I'm not sure how to approach this fight and would appreciate advice on how to handle this battle if it happens.

Step one: Ignore every post here saying "Well you do XYZ to defeat the dragon". Because here's the thing. Your character does not know. If its not within your character's nature to have dealt with dragon's personally before, then don't suddenly make them an expert at the "perfect strategy" because you the player read a guide (or had a dragon fight before in another campaign). They might know a few common knowledge/myths about dragons ("They can breath fire!", even if that's not entirely accurate for all of them, is ok. "They tend to breath fire in a 30'ft cone!" is not), but they're not going to know every little nuance or strategy. Instead, if a fight does occur, think how *your character* would react

There is an answer though, if you want to know if your character possibly had read anything or heard anything else at all about dragons: Knowledge based Skill checks (Arcana, History, Nature, Religion, etc) or specifically doing research before hand when appropriate in the campaign. This will help let you know more about the dragon and how to face it, and if your DM might then start relaying tips and advice about certain characteristics or lore based on the type of check and how well you rolled or what you sought in your research

Also, as other said, don't just go charging at a dragon presuming you must fight it (unless you know that you must fight it for some reason)

[NNescio]

Step one: Ignore every post here saying "Well you do XYZ to defeat the dragon". Because here's the thing. Your character does not know. If its not within your character's nature to have dealt with dragon's personally before, then don't suddenly make them an expert at the "perfect strategy" because you the player read a guide (or had a dragon fight before in another campaign). They might know a few common knowledge/myths about dragons ("They can breath fire!", even if that's not entirely accurate for all of them, is ok. "They tend to breath fire in a 30'ft cone!" is not), but they're not going to know every little nuance or strategy. Instead, if a fight does occur, think how *your character* would react

There is an answer though, if you want to know if your character possibly had read anything or heard anything else at all about dragons: Knowledge based Skill checks (Arcana, History, Nature, Religion, etc) or specifically doing research before hand when appropriate in the campaign. This will help let you know more about the dragon and how to face it, and if your DM might then start relaying tips and advice about certain characteristics or lore based on the type of check and how well you rolled or what you sought in your research

Also, as other said, don't just go charging at a dragon presuming you must fight it (unless you know that you must fight it for some reason)

Wall of Force is the go-to Wizard CC option at Level 9 for strong, single enemies (or for dividing groups of lesser ones) that justify the spell slot. It's a universal tactic (for any Wizard with WoF), not a dragon-specific one.

Grappling/Shoving/Prone effects are standard ways to ground a flying enemy, or knock an aerial enemy (without hover) out of the sky. Again, not dragon-specific.

Conjure Woodland Beings for eight Pixies is just... an abnormally strong tactic that works on almost everything. Also not dragon-specific (but confirmed by Sage to be against RAI).

Though yes, the characters may not necessarily be aware of these 'general-purpose' tactics (especially if they haven't used them such in previous similar encounters), and them suddenly acting out a far more optimal strategy than their usual MO may stink of "player read a guide/DMG or asked someone online for help", so I agree that in that case some kind of moderation might be needed as well as in-character roleplaying finding out the solution (but they don't necessarily have to only research dragon-specific tactics; they can ask say, mentors on how to more effectively use their spells, or just general pointers on anti-air tactics).

[Razgriez]

Wall of Force is the go-to Wizard CC option at Level 9 for strong, single enemies (or for dividing groups of lesser ones) that justify the spell slot. It's a universal tactic (for any Wizard with WoF), not a dragon-specific one.

Grappling/Shoving/Prone effects are standard ways to ground a flying enemy, or knock an aerial enemy (without hover) out of the sky. Again, not dragon-specific.

Conjure Woodland Beings for eight Pixies is just... an abnormally strong tactic that works on almost everything. Also not dragon-specific (but confirmed by Sage to be against RAI).

Though yes, the characters may not necessarily be aware of these 'general-purpose' tactics (especially if they haven't used them such in previous similar encounters), and them suddenly acting out a far more optimal strategy than their usual MO may stink of "player read a guide/DMG or asked someone online for help", so I agree that in that case some kind of moderation might be needed as well as in-character roleplaying finding out the solution (but they don't necessarily have to only research dragon-specific tactics; they can ask say, mentors on how to more effectively use their spells, or just general pointers on anti-air tactics).

Right in those cases, its fine. Knowing that a spell is designed to trap or keep out a creature, or prevent a creature from flying, or knowing the effects of one of your Wild Shapes, are all perfectly alright.

But as we're both stating, its when the meta-gaming creeps in. Its the "Showing up to the battle suddenly perfectly prepared with spells you haven't been using". the "Knowing all the actions and spells a Dragon can use, as though reading from the Monster manual, even though your character has never encountered a dragon before" that annoys me.

[samcifer]

Welp, no need to fight the dragon after all as the bard successfully seduced him thanks to my Guidance and having advantage to his rolls. He even managed to get a success on his performance check afterwards, then again on lifting a dragon scale as well as the amulet the dragon had which was part of a set we need to collect for our main objective.

Before that encounter, however, we had to fight a 6-armed oni who had action surge and the ability to use a Blur effect as a bonus action, as well as having a legendary save once per round as well as Evasion, so my fireball was wasted. The objective was to use the special swords we had been loaned earlier that if any of us rolled 18 or higher on the d20 when making an attack roll, we got to sever one of his arms. My only useful actions were using healing word when the blood hunter was downed as well as peppering the oni with magic missiles (thanks to the 1 level of Wizard I took and am glad I did so).

And yes, the DM admitted that he had given the oni a few player-class abilities. He also had a 1 time wind stream that had an aoe like a lightning bolt that we all had to make a dex save or get flung 20 feet to the side and be knocked prone as well as take force damage, 6 one-shot elemental ranged attacks of a random element, and a 1 time move where he leapt into the air, spun around, came down and all pcs within 10 feet took force damage while the rest of us within 15 to 30 feet had to make a dex save vs force damage that was half-damage on a save. He could also make 1 melee sword attack with reach for each arm he had per turn (if he didn't use a special attack move listed above. Oh, and he once knocked the barbarian player prone with a reach attack.

It was a long and tough battle that used up a lot of our resources, but no one ended up making death saves (thanks to me :) ) and we were able to take a long rest before facing the dragon the bard seduced, which his player said he'd been waiting 2 campaigns for the chance to do. I told him after the session to go home, sit in the shower and think about what he had done, (the) pervert. :D

[MrConsideration]

Dragons can be extremely dangerous so the faster it dies the better. My party once ambushed a dragon that rolled so poorly in initiative they killed it in two rounds. Left free to assail your party, a dragon can quickly drop characters.

Be very careful with the environment in which you fight - all Dragons can fly and fly fast, so you can get into serious trouble on cliff edges, mountainsides or exposed areas. The peak you mentioned sounds like both somewhere where the Dragon would have a serious advantage and potentially the 'lair' of the creature where it will be even more powerful.

Single-target debuffs will be very powerful, especially once you've burned through Legendary Resistance. Faerie Fire, Tasha's Hideous Laughter, Blindness/Deafness - these are all very useful. Earthbind will also be very useful for pinning the dragon somewhere you can all surround and fight it - you have a number of powerful melee fighters so this may be ideal, especially if you have also used Faerie Fire to give your bruisers advantage. A dragons' weakest save tends to be Dexterity.

Defensively, once you've identified the dragon a spell like Absorb Elements or Protection from Energy can be really helpful for surviving the breath weapon. Adding extra creatures to the fight with Conjure Animals or Conjure Elemental will be invaluable, especially if they can also fly.

Seduction seems unlikely but a diplomatic approach could bear fruit depending on the nature of dragons used in your DM's setting. Stealth and theft of the hoard might also be valid if that's your intention.

[Trickery]

Welp, no need to fight the dragon after all as the bard successfully seduced him thanks to my Guidance and having advantage to his rolls.

OH...you're a girl dragon! Why of course you're a girl dragon. You're just reeking of feminine beauty...

Seriously, you never can predict how these things are gonna go. It pays to have a diverse party.

[samcifer]

OH...you're a girl dragon! Why of course you're a girl dragon. You're just reeking of feminine beauty...

Seriously, you never can predict how these things are gonna go. It pays to have a diverse party.

No, it was not a female dragon and the bard is male as well... Also, it wasn't the dragon who ended up pregnant. My Lesser Restoration could only get rid of the STD that was contracted, but not the pregnancy. I think our DM has a problem involving odd choices he makes regarding player characters...