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I'm sure that if she can't find the Grimmtooth Subterranean Engineering & Consulting Company in the phonebook one of her new relatives can get her into contact with them. They are still the best in the business after all.
 
in 3.5 at least, Dragons could use their breath weapon every 1d4 rounds (less if they took the Recover Breath feat, and more if they used a Metabreath Feat). Speaking of Metabreath, how about effectively turning your breath weapon into an Fireball spell at range, with different effects based on what breath you're using, by adding in Extend Spreading Breath? Or having it deal half damage, but freeze / scortch / whatever to attach your foes to the floor with Entangling Breath? or literally blow your foes away with Tempest Breath?

So many options, and that's not including the fact that most (all?) of the core dragons in 3.5 have spellcasting levels too, giving them even -more- options. And they usually have plenty of feats to add -still more- options. I've spent -days- crafting up a specific dragon to be a threat to a specific set of PCs, and even given it in-character reasons to have those particular ability sets, just for flavor reasons.

Any DM that doesn't specifically build up a dragon to be a formidable foe needs to hand over his DMG and go back to being a player.
 
None of the dragon entries for the major dragon types have pre-selected feats, spells, or skills. They're all DIY models, which plays into "all dragons are individuals" thing mentioned earlier.

It makes them hard to build (barring software for such), but it definitely makes them more interesting.
 
Under 3.5 OGL rules, using splat books, you can build a Great Wyrm with a CR of 1,046.

The character sheet is 19 pages long, not counting spell lists.

I'm using it as the basis for Verechelen.
 
Pathfinder 1e's Beginner Box has a baby black dragon as the endboss for it's level 1 adventure. It's been nerfed hard. Reduced HP, reduced AC, reduced saves, reduced Attack Bonus, reduced attributes, and reduced damage for it's breath weapon and other attacks. I'd have to check, but I think it gives damage of 1d3 for the claw attacks. Also reduced number of attacks and inability to do the "claw/claw/bite" multi-attack that makes dragons and many animals so forking dangerous. The adventure warns the GM that while the dragon is much weaker then a normal black dragon of that age category, it is still incredibly likely to TPK a party within 1 to 3 rounds.

The adventure has a Dragon Bane weapon as loot for one of the encounters. Think it's a dagger. The adventure says to have the dragon flee immediately if it's hit once with said dragon bane weapon or after 1 to 2 rounds of combat. I've ran that adventure a few times with various groups. And it is rather overwhelming unless you give the dragon the idiot ball. Unless the party all have dark vision, they are unlikely to see the dragon before it sees them. To approach the dragon they have to go down a flight of stairs (in view of the dragon), across a wide room, and through somewhat narrow passage which sets them up perfectly for a breath weapon attack. Only one party was not insta-killed or nearly killed just approaching the dragon. I've had one player throw the dragon bane dagger at the dragon, causing the dragon to flee with the dagger still embedded in it's leg. Whoops, there goes the dungeon's only magic item. And half the time parties don't even find the dagger because they don't go that way.

One party never even made it to the dragon. They all got poisoned by the giant spiders in an earlier encounter, and everyone kept failing their fort saves.

EDIT: No, seriously. DC 10 fort save, and everyone kept failing the save. It wasn't a con poison, instead damaging dex. But everyone still failed their saves to the point they all had a dex of 0 or less and fell unconscious. Yeah, I get it. Poisons and diseases are brutal. Especially if it damages your constitution score. But with a save DC of 10, you would think people would make the saves fairly easily. Instead nobody got a modified roll higher then 8 the entire time. And since it's a level 1 adventure, nobody can magically deal with poisons or diseases. Plus most players don't even consider buying Remove Disease and Remove Poison potions.
 
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sunless citadel had a small black dragon in it as well. as for Path 1e beginners, i used it as a dnd module as i'm not a registered path dm and my party was diet coke evil. they kept the dragon as a mascot and after a while it became neutral evil. half the adventures were to get gold to feed the darn thing or to hide it from the local militia. very Hogans heroes at the end.
 
Finsdale said:
sunless citadel had a small black dragon in it as well. as for Path 1e beginners, i used it as a dnd module as i'm not a registered path dm and my party was diet coke evil. they kept the dragon as a mascot and after a while it became neutral evil. half the adventures were to get gold to feed the darn thing or to hide it from the local militia. very Hogans heroes at the end.
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Which honestly sounds like a fun as hell game series
 
Rajvik_wolfboy said:
Which honestly sounds like a fun as hell game series
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Only lasted 4-5 months.
It was a rebound game after a 5 yr major campaign one of the others ran (gurps using 7th seas as reference if i remember right.)
It allowed the better GM of the group time to design the next great adventure, which was a starwars game that lasted 3 years. (why is that yt1300 gunning it?)
 
Finsdale said:
Only lasted 4-5 months.
It was a rebound game after a 5 yr major campaign one of the others ran (gurps using 7th seas as reference if i remember right.)
It allowed the better GM of the group time to design the next great adventure, which was a starwars game that lasted 3 years. (why is that yt1300 gunning it?)
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Sometimes the group wants an epic campaign with a single overarching story such as the Pathfinder adventure paths. Sometimes they want something more episodic where each adventure is self contained. And sometimes they want something silly, such as a Hogan's Heroes style campaign where the party is trying to feed and hide a dragon from local military forces who (justifiably) want to find and kill the dragon. And sometimes you, the GM, have no idea what direction the campaign is going to go until after your serious campaign has already veered well off the rails and into Odd territory.

Mind you, if you're starting a Superhero campaign and everyone is making food based heroes like Beef Man and Cheese Boy, along with their friend The Milkshake... it's not going to be a serious campaign. Similarly, if you're starting up a Ghostbusters campaign you should forget about it being serious.
 
There are three things I never put a group of first level characters against in a D&D style setting, and almost none of the DMs I've dealt with have either: Poison, Spellcasters, or Dragons.

Few starting characters can afford to just have antidotes to random poisons on-hand when starting out, so any poison will be far harder to deal with then for a more prepared group.

Magic creates Glass Cannons at even low levels; a single spell can ruin an adventurer's day, and the opposing force doesn't need to conserve it's one spell the way the invading adventurers do.

Once, and only once, did a group I was playing with insist on facing a Dragon in their starting adventure. The DM made a point of showing us just how bad an idea it was for first level characters with starting gear to face even the weakest of Dragons; we had the entire party, except for my Cleric (who told everyone else this was a Bad Idea) get wiped out by a White Dragon Hatchling..... before it could even finish getting out of it's damn egg shell.

Seriously, it poked a hole in the shell, unleashed it's first breath attack killing everyone except me (who held back) and a fighter (that got knocked down to one HP; there were a few encounters before this and none of us were at full strength) and then, when the moron charged the shell, the dragon stuck it's head out and killed the fighter with a bite attack.

At this point, I legged it out of there with the approximately 5 gold in mostly copper coins and salvaged items that made up my share of the loot from the day's adventure, and lived to tell the tale of just how bad an idea it is to meddle with even the youngest of Dragons....
 
Jacen1 said:
There are three things I never put a group of first level characters against in a D&D style setting, and almost none of the DMs I've dealt with have either: Poison, Spellcasters, or Dragons.
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I did quite regularly. But then, my groups generally knew the values of running away, diplomacy and outright groveling. Not everything they see on the map they could expect to take as-is and choosing their pickings was part of the game. Heck, on occasion they made more by selling information to higher level adventurers or clearing up after some of those came through than they could expect going into the wild by themselves.
 
Lycanthromancer said:
I've certainly never heard of a cannon that could kill a dragon.
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How about a hand cannon? In my group's last campaign my gunslinger ended up killing an adult dragon pretty much by himself after everyone else failed their will saves vs draconian presence. He did so using a muzzle loading black powder pistol. Granted, my dice were on fire. I also was using all my limited resource abilities that potentially improve your damage at once. Plus I rolled a couple crits.
 
Yea. I do not mind sending low DC poisons at parties during LVL 1 adventures. A lot of that is the fact that most of the groups I had played with had Con as the second highest stat on everyone. Having that DC 10 poison only need a 7/8+ roll does help a lot. Mind you I usually use Red or Str based dmg for those poisons. Although I have used Burnt Unther Fumes (spelling?) in a LVL 1 dungeon before. Mostly because I decided to roll randomly for the poison in the trap before deciding on the type of trap. But yes I did make it rather blatant that there was a trap there after I rolled that poison. Yay for placing a Troll Corpse there and having the people make the appropriate roll for identifying the fact that the troll died of something ... The rogue with that Nat 20 followed by a 19 though...

Yes they all booked it after the Rogue explained what happened.
 
I tend not to throw much poison at the party. Or diseases. That said, if someone in the party is playing their character as a man whore on par with Captain James T. Kirk... well, I do have a copy of Book of Erotic Fantasy. Yes, it's schlocky and entirely unneeded in most campaigns. However it's surprisingly tastefully written considering the book's topic. Most of the magic items, spells, feats, and classes listed in the book have no business in a campaign. A few of the races are interesting and can fit in any campaign easily. There's always however the rare time when rules on pregnancy or STDs do come into play.

Anyway, I try to avoid using poisons very often. Especially ones that damage con. The occasional poisonous critter, sure. But rarely do I have bad guys using a poisoned weapon or a trap have poisoned spikes. It's just not very fun for someone's character to die just because they got scratched and are rolling badly.
 
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