Creative Dragonslaying

[Cealocanth]

Just for reference, we're playing the Savage Worlds fantasy setting Hellfrost, but this question applies to like 90% of fantasy settings.

For my current campaign the main plotline is about as classic as it gets. There's a massive dragon of godlike power that's threatening to destroy the world. The party's quest is to go uncover a legendary artifact that can supposedly slay the dragon and travel to the ends of the earth to slay the great beast, thus preventing the end of the world and saving the day.

The issue is, as the party will soon realize, is that this weapon of power is not what it used to be and has been slowly fading in strength over the centuries, and will shatter against the dragon's hide. (This is the sort of thing that is kind of expected in this setting, as the whole campaign is about fighting back against the growing forces of evil even as the forces of good wane away from this world.) Now, left without an easy magical solution to the problem, the party is left with a much bigger puzzle than they had ever had before: to slay a dragon that is dramatically more powerful than themselves without a magical crutch weapon, and save the world from eternal winter.

It's around the time for me as the GM to plant the appropriate seeds as options the party can take in order to try to face the problem when their magical crutch fails from underneath them. I'm just at a loss for some options to plant that don't involve going and finding another magical crutch. So, Playground, in your vast creativity, how would you go about trying to defeat such a beast?

Here are the parameters:

• The party has a full array of spellcasters, with the exception of necromancers, warlocks and similar 'dark magic' types. In specific, they have a Druid, a Solar Mage (lots of light and fire spells), a Paladin of Tiw (war priest), a Priest of Eira (classic healer priest-type), and a Skald (bard).
• The dragon is powerful enough that it's capable of destroying entire cities on its turn. Direct confrontation without a plan is pretty much suicide.
• Magical artifacts are extremely rare and the art to create them has been lost for centuries. There's no crafting weapons going on unless the party goes to some magical ancient forge or something.
• The party is the equivalent of a relatively low level in D&D. They are at the beginning of Seasoned tier, which puts them in the same territory of level 5 characters in 5e.
• Gods are real, but may not interfere directly with mortals with the exception of sending 'avatars' or 'aspects' alongside their clerics and paladins.
• Dragons and most other giant monsters are irredemably evil. There are no good dragons to pit against the world destroyer, although there may be evil dragons that may want to take down the world destroyer for their own reasons.

[DeTess]

I think you're writing yourself in a corner by having the being that needs to be given a creative end be a physical god. A 'normal' CR20 dragon could be dealt with in a number of ways by a creative party, but the monster you've described would be able to shatter any trap, rip apart any dwarven-make weighted net and could dig his way out of an exploding volcano with ease.

This means that the players either need to set an equivalent creature up against it, or they need some macguffin to give them a fighting chance. Now, you've mentioned several solutions of this type already, but one that struck me based on your description of the gods is that maybe the players could go through some kind of gauntlet of tests and challenges to prove their worth, after which the gods would grant them the strength needed to be able to go toe to toe with the dragon.

[VoxRationis]

They could feed the weapon to it (like a pill in a dog treat) and use that to bypass the dragon's hide, so it won't shatter. If you want to emphasize the theme of sacrifice, you could have the dragon only eat living prey... If mucosal membranes are as hard as the dragon's hide, you could just go for poison or disease. Infect a city with the plague shortly before the dragon comes for a snack. Alternatively, I don't know how difficult it is to get an avatar or several, but rallying those might be useful.

[Fable Wright]

So, the question is how the party would ever get close enough to use the sword in the first place. And given the weakness of the party relative to the dragon, they can't win without items or an NPC doing the work. And neither are a thing, so... your pretty is doomed unless you let them find another item.

Some ideas:
*Bag of Holding + Portable hole. Dragon is stuck where it can't kill us.
*Sphere of Annihilation. Place in path of angry dragon, disguised as a cloud. Dragon flies through, bisecting itself in doing so.
*An item of infinite anything. Get dragon to eat it. Then have it produce whatever it makes until the dragon dies from internal pressure.

[War_lord]

I don't really see the point of this setup, you're going to send them on the quest of a macguffin, with a twist that the macguffin is actually broken. And the twist is that they need another, non-magical, macguffin?

[rs2excelsior]

If you can't kill it, you could lure it away. Get its attention and lead it to a place where you can trap it. The power level will depend on the trap. You could find an unstable Dwarven mine, lead it in, and drop the mountain on it. Or on the other end you could find an ancient magical prison designed for a critter in old times, or a weak spot in the fabric of reality and shove the dragon through it. It'll still depend on finding a macguffin of sorts, but make it a location macguffin rather than an item macguffin. Then the challenge is not so much beating the dragon as staying alive long enough to kite it into whatever thing you've found for it.

I also like the idea of getting someone relatively alive past the dragon's jaws with the sword to kill it from the inside, if you want to make this a gritty, self-sacrificing kind of game.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Smash a meteor into it.

[SirBellias]

Dragonslaying isn't in a magic sword. It's a state of mind.

They need to go on a spiritual journey to know what it means to actually slay a creature like this.

A man who strikes without thought of his action can cut God.

[Cealocanth]

Thanks for your advice, all. I think I'm going to go with a combination of Bellias's suggestion and the "release another monster on it" suggestion.