IMHO, if properly portrayed, Dragons are absolutely strongest D&D monsters in the Monster Manual(s). Even before characterising them in narrative terms, it is worth mentioning what they can do.

They can fly. While this should be Captain Obvious, I lost count of the times when the party saw an incoming dragon and made plans to attack it "when it landed." As a consequence, I lost count of the times that a party was plastered from the air by a dragon who had no intention to land.

They can cast spells. Another obvious thing sadly, and strangely, often overlooked.

One of the biggest carnages I ever saw in a game was during Dragonlance 8 "Dragons of War", in a "Battlesystem" battle. The armies of good were defending the Tower of High Clerist against the evil "Blue Wing". We are talking about Elite Knights vs. Blue Dragons. So, the blue dragons arrive, in a line, high in the sky and, on the first turn, they swoop down (shaking some units with their fear area in the process) and unleash a barrage of fireballs, lighting bolts and magic missiles (looking for the casters first; main rule of any battlefield: hit the enemy artillery first); then they fired their lightning breath weapons (three times for dragon); and then they landed and made short work of the survivors... The players were just stunned 

A dragon can "Fly". Yes, but clumsily, right? Well, no if the dragon can casts a "Fly" spell on himself. All of sudden his manoeuvrability is "good". This means that he can move and strike with the agility and fury of a AH-64D Apache "Longbow" helo. There is nothing like a hovering Red Dragon that rotates in place while unleashing his breath weapon. He can also do special numbers, like hovering in place while looking straight up or down - useful if he is hiding in the darkness under, let's say, a crumbling bridge. Or faking a "suspended animation - nothing to fear here..."

Dragons have acute senses all around. A thief "silently approaches the sleeping dragon". The dragon, of course, smells her, but does nothing. Once the thief moves past the dragon, he opens his eyes. There, nothing else is needed. The rest of the party, who was hiding behind some columns, instantaneously tries to warn the poor companion that the dragon is awake - usually by using desperate sign language. The dragon then proceeds to nuke them out of existence before, if he is a fan of Tarantino, sitting down with the lonely, remaining thief and starting a conversation about "what she wants to do about her (very brief) future." (I actually was able to pull this stunt twice).

All the above examples never fail to generate the "There must be a rule against this!" reaction. In my knowledge, from 1E to 3.5E there isn't. In 3.5E "Draconomicon" the dragons actually have the means to be even more SoBs.

Yup. I'll dig out the letter when I get home, but there's a really nasty description of an encounter with a blue dragon in one issue of Dragon Magazine. Involving clever use of spells, magic items, charmed minions, and other ways to frag a party.

5E added Lair Actions to adult and older dragon options, which are particularly obnoxious.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on May 12, 2021, 12:18:26 PM
5E added Lair Actions to adult and older dragon options, which are particularly obnoxious.

OTOH, the 5e dragons don't have spell slots or caster levels.

Quote from: HappyDaze on May 12, 2021, 12:27:16 PM

Quote from: Ghostmaker on May 12, 2021, 12:18:26 PM
5E added Lair Actions to adult and older dragon options, which are particularly obnoxious.

OTOH, the 5e dragons don't have spell slots or caster levels.

At least part, of the inspiration for this thread.  5E nerfed Dragons.

I view dragons as forces of nature in the game world. They can possibly cast spells, they talk, they are the equivalent of a natural disaster with the sense of humor of a cat playing with its next meal. Some are even worshipped as demigods.

Quote from: jeff37923 on May 12, 2021, 01:05:51 PM
I view dragons as forces of nature in the game world. They can possibly cast spells, they talk, they are the equivalent of a natural disaster with the sense of humor of a cat playing with its next meal. Some are even worshipped as demigods.

Heh.  I've described Dragon Quest dragons as combining the worst personality traits of the worst humans, dwarfs, elves, cats, and snakes.

I would run them as magical wielding intelligent dinosaurs.

Quote from: HappyDaze on May 12, 2021, 12:27:16 PM

Quote from: Ghostmaker on May 12, 2021, 12:18:26 PM
5E added Lair Actions to adult and older dragon options, which are particularly obnoxious.

OTOH, the 5e dragons don't have spell slots or caster levels.

It wasn't automatic in older editions, either. In 1e, evil dragons had a 5%, 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40% chance to cast spells (white to red). The median's 1 in 5. Even just being able to speak wasn't that common -- only the two mightiest evil dragons had a better than even chance (blue and red).

Which I kind of like, because it gives dragons more uses and makes them more playable.

So I dug this out. This is from Dragon #149, the Forum. Stats and mechanics are for 1E/2E, as near as I can tell.

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Razisiz the Smart: AC 2; MV 9"/24"; HD 10; hp 80; #AT 3; Dmg 1-6/1-6/3-24; SA breath weapon, spell use, fear aura, saving-throw bonus, detect invisible and hidden objects. His spells are: charm person, reduce, shield, darkness 15' radius, invisibility, mirror image, fireball, and phantasmal force. He is asleep deep in a cave located near the top of a mountain. His cave is approached by the same ' +5 everything' adventurers who, in Mr. Friedlander's scenario, tried to assault Razisiz II. Since Razisiz the Smart has no magic resistance, the party wizard memorizes project image and chain lightning instead of Tenser's transformation. Looks like poor Razisiz hasn't got a chance, right? Wrong.

(Sidenote: The party in question is composed of the following: two 13th level fighters (100 hp each), a 12th level cleric (80 hp), a 13th level magic-user (40 hp), and a 13th level thief (60 hp). The fighters are equipped with gauntlets of ogre power and carrying long swords +5, the cleric carries a mace +5, the thief carries a short sword +5, and the magic-user carries a dagger +5 and has minor globe of invulnerability and mirror image active (the latter has four images)). All party members have constitutions of 16 or better, and each has also purchased protection from lightning from a friendly druid (giving them +4 to saves vs lightning and reducing damage further -- half on a failed save, a quarter on a successful one). Each has enough magical protections and armor to give themselves AC -4.) (taken from Dragon #134)

Also, evidently in 1E, dragons didn't have immunity to damage that was the same as their elemental breath weapon. Huh.)

Long before the party has approached the cave, the PCs have been spotted by the dragon's charmed servants. Most of them are zero-level peasants, but one is a 4th-level illusionist who uses his whispering wind spell to alert a 5th level charmed thief sitting just inside the cave's mouth. The thief promptly wakes her master, and Razisiz prepares for battle. He casts invisibility upon himself, followed by phantasmal force, creating an illusion of himself sleeping. The adventurers' clairvoyance will now show the dragon where he is not, and the cleric's silence spell will miss the head. The dragon's charmed thief picks a magic dagger from the treasure pile and slips into a side passage.

As the party enters the cave, a magic mouth in the ceiling emits a quiet, batlike chirp. The adventurers notice it, but they think the dragon is silenced and hears nothing. They are wrong. Having heard the alarm, the invisible Razisiz casts his darkness spell at a hole in the ceiling that leads to the surface, followed by reduce (on himself), shield, and mirror image, in that order; the shortest-duration spell is the last. As the adventurers negotiate a small chasm across the cave, Razisiz, now 10' long, spreads his wings, picks a wand from the treasure pile, and flies out of the cave through the darkened hole in the ceiling. The battle begins!

(Sidenote: You can tell it's gonna be ugly...)

Round 1: The party crosses the chasm and reaches the dragon's chamber. Before the PCs realize just where the monster has gone, Razisiz (back to his normal size) drops a barrel of oil on the PCs from the hole in the ceiling, followed by a fireball. The spell does 40 hp damage, and the oil explosion adds 25 hp more. The wizard, protected by minor globe of invulnerability, takes only 25 hp; the thief and both fighters make their saves and take 32 hp apiece; and the cleric fails his saving throw and gets the brunt of the attack.

Round 2: The wizard extinguishes the flames with a cloudburst spell; the cleric brings himself up to 30 hp with a cure critical wounds spell; and the thief uses his wand of illumination to light up the hole in the ceiling. One of the fighters drinks a potion of flying and prepares to chase the party's adversary.

Round 3: The wizard casts a fly spell and takes off behind the fighter. As they near the opening, a magic mouth shouts a warning, and Razisiz, no longer invisible but safely out of sight, pulls on a stout bush, which in reality is a trap lever. A portcullis gate in the chute leading outside crashes shut and traps the wizard in the cave. Now the fighter must face the dragon alone.

Round 4: The cleric, the thief, and the second fighter hurry toward the main cave opening, while the wizard begins casting project image. As the first fighter rushes out into the open, he finds Razisiz and his three mirror images flying down at him. The dragon breathes lightning into the cave, bringing down the boulders that were carefully arranged beforehand to cave in. Fighter number two is the only one actually struck by the lightning; he makes his save and takes quarter damage (20 hp), but he is also buried under the tons of rock, as are the thief and the cleric; all three take another 15 hp damage from the cave-in.

Round 5: The charmed thief leaps from the shadows and backstabs the wizard for 11 hp damage (triple damage with a dagger +2). Meanwhile, Razisiz uses his wand of polymorphing on the charmed illusionist, turning him into another blue dragon! Now the flying fighter is confronted by five dragons (three are mirror images), and while the wizard might help him with projected image, the wizard has his own problems (the next hit from the dragon's puny servant may very well kill him). Which way is the fighter going to fly?

(Sidenote: There's a slight problem here: the magic-user should still have his mirror images up and the backstab should miss. That being said, being mobbed by the thief will most certainly distract him from aiding the fighter or getting over to assist the rest of the party.)

Thoughts?

EDIT: fixed some text issues from C&P'ing this out of a PDF.

In my campaigns, powerful casters.  And also, painfully aware that the eldest, greatest, and most pussiant great wyrms, beings which are power and sorcery incarnate, naturally cap out at CL 19.  Also aware that, while when serving as level-appropriate boss monsters they are on the order of magically capable of an equivalent human, they have no promise of getting those level-balanced encounters and absolutely can run into individual humans more personally powerful than them for most of their life.

The metallic dragons generally either ignore this fact or try to make use of it by gently steering local humanoid civilizations in a good, productive, and non-dragon-stabby direction, while the evil ones generally end up carrying over hatchling-era resentment of humanoid populations that made them feel weak, and thus act appropriately.

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Dragons are definitely one of those monsters which should shift the default tactics of militaries just by the possibility of their presence.  But methods to deal with them absolutely exist.  One basic one from the old 3.5E days was distributed longbow squads with a few magic arrows and well-positioned bards to buff them and provide marginal-but-useful fear resistance.  If you're fighting the dragon overland, then you can get a hellacious number of ranged attacks against it, and 5% of a hundred low-level archers rolling their 20s will hurt you, bit by bit.  And while you're dealing with them, you're not dealing with the actual leveled adventurers on the field, who can rally the troops, try to lure you into low-flight range where their own shorter-ranged magics can contend with your own, and if you're not careful, you can run into a Wingbind or equivalent magic from a hidden wizard, and then you're proper fucked with all those archers still on the field, because being able to pick out would-be stealthy thieves is one thing, but finding which of the random archers on the ground is actually wearing illusory armor and casting spells at you when all of those finely-tuned senses is getting flash-banged by the chaos of battle is another thing entirely.

And finally, there's always the risk that while you're away dealing with the army, the actual threat has quietly teleported back into your lair and is looting it and preparing an ambush for when you return, battered and bruised but successful.  And the more humanoids you've pissed off with the magical enslavement and raiding for valuables and random acts of cruelty, the more volunteers you'll have both for the dragon-hunting armies, and for the high-level infiltrate-and-ambush teams.

So, dragons are arrogant and proud, but also aware that they need to wield these aspects of themselves carefully, because although they are mightier and cleverer than humanoids, luck plays a part in every battle, and the dragon only needs to be extremely unlucky once in its very long lifespan for that life to end.

Quote from: robertliguori on May 13, 2021, 10:11:19 AM
In my campaigns, powerful casters.  And also, painfully aware that the eldest, greatest, and most pussiant great wyrms, beings which are power and sorcery incarnate, naturally cap out at CL 19.  Also aware that, while when serving as level-appropriate boss monsters they are on the order of magically capable of an equivalent human, they have no promise of getting those level-balanced encounters and absolutely can run into individual humans more personally powerful than them for most of their life.

The metallic dragons generally either ignore this fact or try to make use of it by gently steering local humanoid civilizations in a good, productive, and non-dragon-stabby direction, while the evil ones generally end up carrying over hatchling-era resentment of humanoid populations that made them feel weak, and thus act appropriately.

---

Dragons are definitely one of those monsters which should shift the default tactics of militaries just by the possibility of their presence.  But methods to deal with them absolutely exist.  One basic one from the old 3.5E days was distributed longbow squads with a few magic arrows and well-positioned bards to buff them and provide marginal-but-useful fear resistance.  If you're fighting the dragon overland, then you can get a hellacious number of ranged attacks against it, and 5% of a hundred low-level archers rolling their 20s will hurt you, bit by bit.  And while you're dealing with them, you're not dealing with the actual leveled adventurers on the field, who can rally the troops, try to lure you into low-flight range where their own shorter-ranged magics can contend with your own, and if you're not careful, you can run into a Wingbind or equivalent magic from a hidden wizard, and then you're proper fucked with all those archers still on the field, because being able to pick out would-be stealthy thieves is one thing, but finding which of the random archers on the ground is actually wearing illusory armor and casting spells at you when all of those finely-tuned senses is getting flash-banged by the chaos of battle is another thing entirely.

And finally, there's always the risk that while you're away dealing with the army, the actual threat has quietly teleported back into your lair and is looting it and preparing an ambush for when you return, battered and bruised but successful.  And the more humanoids you've pissed off with the magical enslavement and raiding for valuables and random acts of cruelty, the more volunteers you'll have both for the dragon-hunting armies, and for the high-level infiltrate-and-ambush teams.

So, dragons are arrogant and proud, but also aware that they need to wield these aspects of themselves carefully, because although they are mightier and cleverer than humanoids, luck plays a part in every battle, and the dragon only needs to be extremely unlucky once in its very long lifespan for that life to end.

Interesting. This is like an inversion of how I portrayed silver dragons; their foes never wind up fighting -just- the silver dragon, but all their allies as well; two tribes of elves, a dwarven clan with a penchant for artillery, three adventurer parties that the dragon helped direct, the kingdom's royal guard because the dragon's hatchling is spending time at court incognito... and so on

Quote from: Ghostmaker on May 13, 2021, 11:47:33 AM

Quote from: robertliguori on May 13, 2021, 10:11:19 AM
In my campaigns, powerful casters.  And also, painfully aware that the eldest, greatest, and most pussiant great wyrms, beings which are power and sorcery incarnate, naturally cap out at CL 19.  Also aware that, while when serving as level-appropriate boss monsters they are on the order of magically capable of an equivalent human, they have no promise of getting those level-balanced encounters and absolutely can run into individual humans more personally powerful than them for most of their life.

The metallic dragons generally either ignore this fact or try to make use of it by gently steering local humanoid civilizations in a good, productive, and non-dragon-stabby direction, while the evil ones generally end up carrying over hatchling-era resentment of humanoid populations that made them feel weak, and thus act appropriately.

---

Dragons are definitely one of those monsters which should shift the default tactics of militaries just by the possibility of their presence.  But methods to deal with them absolutely exist.  One basic one from the old 3.5E days was distributed longbow squads with a few magic arrows and well-positioned bards to buff them and provide marginal-but-useful fear resistance.  If you're fighting the dragon overland, then you can get a hellacious number of ranged attacks against it, and 5% of a hundred low-level archers rolling their 20s will hurt you, bit by bit.  And while you're dealing with them, you're not dealing with the actual leveled adventurers on the field, who can rally the troops, try to lure you into low-flight range where their own shorter-ranged magics can contend with your own, and if you're not careful, you can run into a Wingbind or equivalent magic from a hidden wizard, and then you're proper fucked with all those archers still on the field, because being able to pick out would-be stealthy thieves is one thing, but finding which of the random archers on the ground is actually wearing illusory armor and casting spells at you when all of those finely-tuned senses is getting flash-banged by the chaos of battle is another thing entirely.

And finally, there's always the risk that while you're away dealing with the army, the actual threat has quietly teleported back into your lair and is looting it and preparing an ambush for when you return, battered and bruised but successful.  And the more humanoids you've pissed off with the magical enslavement and raiding for valuables and random acts of cruelty, the more volunteers you'll have both for the dragon-hunting armies, and for the high-level infiltrate-and-ambush teams.

So, dragons are arrogant and proud, but also aware that they need to wield these aspects of themselves carefully, because although they are mightier and cleverer than humanoids, luck plays a part in every battle, and the dragon only needs to be extremely unlucky once in its very long lifespan for that life to end.

Interesting. This is like an inversion of how I portrayed silver dragons; their foes never wind up fighting -just- the silver dragon, but all their allies as well; two tribes of elves, a dwarven clan with a penchant for artillery, three adventurer parties that the dragon helped direct, the kingdom's royal guard because the dragon's hatchling is spending time at court incognito... and so on

Yeah, different dragons have different strategies, but one of the things that I emphasized was that the two big ones that got practiced were either to live some place so remote that you never had to worry about massed humanoids making it there (as many dragons did lairing on drifting glaciers or in volcanic caves or undead-infested swamps, always telling themselves that their lairs represented their strength and prowess and had nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with the gnawing fear of a dozen dragonbane ballistas on the horizon), or to insert themselves directly into the local humanoid populace and ensure that they had their own counter to a giant mass of humanoids bent on their blood and treasure.  Silver dragons would absolutely cultivate a network of allies, while gold dragons might directly interact with the monarchs of the nearby kingdoms and ensure that they had solid mutual-defense treaties writ in stone, and even most of the chromatics would at least keep a tribe of worshipful kobolds around.

Of course, your draconic mileage may vary.  One notable NPC from a previous campaign was a wyrmling gold dragon who determined that he absolutely was obliged to get onto the powerful-adventuring-humanoid-allies train, and did his best to appear to the party in the guise of an ancient and noble wizard, directing them to generalized acts of goodness and valor.  He was moderately indignant when the party saw through his disguise basically instantly, pronounced him adorable scaly babby, and "agreed to benefit from his wisdom and direction" (read: adopted him).

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Myself, I like being able to contrast between young and old dragons, in a way that makes it clear that the most ancient and feared wyrm of legend was once as derpy as the wyrmling above.  It gets at one of the inherent themes of D&D, of starting at low levels, full of potential, and recognizing that potential slowly over time, until you tower over who you once were, while still remaining recognizably them.

Quote from: robertliguori on May 13, 2021, 12:32:53 PM
Of course, your draconic mileage may vary.  One notable NPC from a previous campaign was a wyrmling gold dragon who determined that he absolutely was obliged to get onto the powerful-adventuring-humanoid-allies train, and did his best to appear to the party in the guise of an ancient and noble wizard, directing them to generalized acts of goodness and valor.  He was moderately indignant when the party saw through his disguise basically instantly, pronounced him adorable scaly babby, and "agreed to benefit from his wisdom and direction" (read: adopted him).

'adorable scaly babby'. I laughed so hard at this

Dragons are the "Apex Predator" of many D&D settings. They prey on everything, NOTHING preys on them. When they appear, the most voracious attacker should flee immediately. And they have the intelligence of the wolf pack: dragons might ANTICIPATE what their prey does next. Their instincts are far superior to all other creatures.

They could portray a beast very much akin to an "elemental disaster": like a tornado or hurricane. Something so terrible it terrified the best armies. Their ferocity drives the nightmarish rumors that drift across a kingdom.

RPed well and tactically, dragons are a nearly invincible foe that a smart group of PCs could turn into an ally.

One thing I've really come to like about dragons is the sheer variety in various legends. Dragons like poisonous, regenerating serpents. Dragons with shells, dragons with fur, dragons with multiple heads, and a zillion other options. I always meant to create a dragon-generator, using those myths to make each new dragon unique.