Its called "dungeons and dragons" But often dragons are a generic mook like any other...

Dragons are weaker than those, not stronger.

>But is that CR 10 young red dragon really any worse than an aboleth, an alhoon, a death slaad, a deva, a guardian naga, or a yochlol?
Few of those should be considered mooks, even at higher levels.

When playing through the 3e Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, our group got roughed up by a Blue Dragon. He killed one of the characters and sent the rest packing. During a post-combat parley, the dragon held up his kill and used the PC's corpse like a ventriloquist's dummy to help mock the party.

The messy room dragon is the father of all chaos

>dozens of other games where things like Bonds and Relationships are actually important to the mechanics and gameplay
And dear god do they hamper any attempt at interesting roleplaying

I can’t say I’ve played a game with strong social mechanics before but it does sound like it would get in the way to me.

>Its called "dungeons and dragons" But often dragons are a generic mook like any other
If that's the case then it's the DM who's to blame.

A young blue dragon time blasted into an angry ancient dragon with an instant 2000 year grudge.

A white ancient and a silver ancient fighting in the skies above, frozen clouds slamming down into a battle against a young red green and black.

An ancient red dragon vs an airship in a tornado, lots of spinning fire.

I've always dm'd ancient to be more Smaug like.

Which ones SHOULD be considered mooks among those?

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Fucking what? I have yet to even see a dragon in the five years I've been playing, they should just rename it "Crypts & Liches".
I have also never seen anyone outside of pathfinder use the CR system. Am I just an outlier? Or is everyone just used to shitty DMs?

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>I have to blame the system for my faults

Probably Yochlol which are generally subordinates to more powerful fiends.

Also, these are all compared to YOUNG dragons, which are basically still kids. An adolescent of their species is obviously a bit weaker. Note that their size is only Large, meaning they are the same size category as a Giant Spider.

If you're using CR then an adult dragon's lowest CR is 13 for White Dragons which are the retards of the Dragon race.

never seen it in use either

>You might as well be playing Freeform.

Freeform is pretty good for roleplaying. Great in fact.
It's not great for combat, but for people talking and interacting with each other, forming bonds and relationships, it's pretty good.

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>Fucking what? I have yet to even see a dragon in the five years I've been playing, they should just rename it "Crypts & Liches".
Shit, my games should then be called "Holes and Oozes"

All these comments about roleplay onus being on players, yet 4E still gets shit on, somehow.
>the cancerous hypocrisy that is Veeky Forums

>Its called "dungeons and dragons" But often dragons are a generic mook
Play some fucking games before posting here kiddo

>the best DMs I know
Anecdotal arrogance is best arrogance
D&D, especially 1e, is purely character driven by the majority of old schoolers

It wasn't an interesting encounter in setup, but my players did once chokeslam a dragon off its tower, which was a pretty interesting way to deal with it.

>I have also never seen anyone outside of pathfinder use the CR system. Am I just an outlier?
No. You're just someone who's played the game. Which does make you an outlier on /tg

Oh, that's because 4e unabashedly focused everything on combat, and the combat wasn't that good and it took years for it to be fixed.

It would be like a car maker saying "Screw comfort, screw utility, screw having more than one seat, I'm going to make fast cars," and then making a car that tops off at 80.

>Too bad nothing except the combat is actually supported
I remember the first time I heard something like this, in the 1980’s.
‘Not saving a score in ‘talking’m != ‘not being able to talk’
D&D means the solution is in your head, not on your character sheet

>It would be like a car maker saying "Screw comfort, screw utility, screw having more than one seat, I'm going to make fast cars," and then making a car that tops off at 80.

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Guy named Mark Chance ran it.
Learned that the orcs in a nearby mountain were suddenly super-organized and went to wipe them out.
The kept retreating.
Eventually in volcanic caldera, 1’ of water over the bottom, orc going into deeper cave. We wade into the shallow lake and-
BAM! Adult blue dragon who had enslaved the orcs breathes lightning into the water! Half damage (save for one fourth) to all.
We run for dry land, terrified!
Orcs have sealed us in, so we’re just targets, now.
Great fun

I ran a pretty long term dungeon for my players at a mid level that was a metallic dragons local hideout. The party made it through all of his puzzles and challenges and arrived in the central room. They were greeted by a man with shining bronze hair and shimmering brilliant bronze eyes. He spoke with them for a short while and granted each party member with a reward. One of them, asked for a potion (one to cure lycanthropy which was part of her side story) a couple asked for basic magic weapons, and one asked for a rod to improve his necromancy (secretly as the setting recognized necromancy as almost 100% evil) The dragon was interested but dubious about that one so the player was challenged to a fight. So his necromancer cleric had to fight a monk that served the dragon as more or less a handmaiden or maid. He lost so the dragon instead just rewarded him with some basic potions and gold.

Another event was the party running into an adolescent mercurial dragon (metallic) that was travelling via a cart with a bunch of wares. He was a trader for fun but his cart had broken down on the road and he had no real way to repair it. The party helped him get back and so he decided to give them a little reward, which ended up being a magic mite shield he had in his cart. The party couldn't really tell he was a dragon as the colour hadn't bled fully into his eyes like the previous ones so he simply had white hair and grey eyes.

I also have one where the party met an elder earth elemental and didn't end up fighting him if people want that story too.

One of the easiest ways to see if someone has actually *read* the AD&D rules is if they think it is just combat.
The DMG has a ton of pages dedicated to personalities, quirks, interacting with NPCs, influencing morale, etc. Just the section in hiring a sage talks about how personality and such is critically important.
But I guess to some people ‘so I can’t just roll a die and make him like me?’ = ‘it isn’t in thecrules’

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>But often dragons are a generic mook like any other
Just play them smart and not touch ground unless absolutely necessary. Blast away with Breath Weapons, then retreat until recharged. Make the party fucking RUN when they realize they have no effective counter to that. They are much more of a menace if the party can't simply rush their beatsticks into melee like against any other dumb monster.

>White Dragons which are the retards of the Dragon race
Does anyone else ignore the color based dragon tier system? I really like the age based stuff but find the red>blue>green>black>white dumb.

I don't actually go by colour tier, I do age, and I do Chromatic vs Metallic but otherwise I just have them rank by age and they can sort out pecking order as need be.

I have the differences in powers, but all dark green in color

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Combat has never been interesting in any tabletop roleplaying game. It only starts to become interesting as the game becomes less a tabletop RPG and more a wargame. The closest to a tabletop RPG I've seen that had fun combat was kingdom death.

And people saying "lol, don't use any rules for social things" aren't thinking clearly. Social rules help a fuckton in places. Contacts from shadowrun have saved me so much work and done so much for all my games.

>Combat has never been interesting in any tabletop roleplaying gam
Translation
>I’ve had shitty GMs
————-
>Social rules help a fuckton in places. Contacts from shadowrun have saved me so much work and done so much for all my games.
Translation
>I’m too dim to figure out how to do that without written rules and dice, durrrrrr

Nah.
It just means I've played games with actually good combat and actually good social systems, and you haven't, which then causes you to curse those sour grapes.

>It just means I've played games with actually good combat and actually good social systems, and you haven't,
You DO get that user was saying he HAS played games with good combat, right, fuckwit?
And you DO get that you originally said you *never* played a TRPG with good combat, but now claim you have, right, fuckwit?
Durrrrrrr is right

Congratulations, you have the same level of experience for complaining about them as most of the other people on Veeky Forums who do.

Yep. He basically admitted to having never played a good game, and so not understanding what a good game looks like.

>but is a dragon really any worse than an eldritch abomination from before the time of creation with entire civilizations wrapped around its little tendril, an immortal undead time traveler that can make thralls of kings and armies in their entirety, a beast of pure, unrelenting chaos that can render cities into burning wastelands of mutant toads and dead civilians overnight, literal immoprtal divine beings, or a demonic abomination directly commanded by a fucking god?

That sounds kinky

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I wouldn't know. Dragons have only appeared in my homebrew a handful of times. Back in 1990, 1992, 2015, and week after next. I suppose I make them fun by not using them.

I had a player wulfgar a dragon at lvl 9 once I think. Was quite impressed.

I ran a game when 5e first came out. Dungeon was an old vampires tomb with some inspiration from Egyptian pyramids. Filled mainly with traps and required the party to navigate the dungeon with a sphere of annihilation and very few monsters, other than a couple mummies and a adult dragon at the end. Because of how the dungeon was set up the party did not at all expect the dragon at the end which turned into a cool fight with the players trying to use the tombs layout to their advantage

give me an example of a good combat encounter user, I'm interested in finding out what's quality according to you

Personally I've never found a game where social mechanics are good, but most of them that come to mind had restrictive ideas, so I just throw them out completely
Now, if you could procure some good example, I'd be happy to consider them

well, if you follow the reply chain, then you can probably look at kingdom death.

I like mechanics like contacts from shadowrun.
It not only gives mechanical benefit to statting out your background for the munchkins, but gives firm ideas of what the contact can do within the game system for the GM, and gives the narrative player a way to slot more characters into the game.

It's one of the rule concepts I actually like from that mismanaged badly edited embezzled heap of garbage. That and big piles of d6es.

This is what DNDfags actually believe

>You might as well be playing Freeform.
What's wrong with that

They're not wrong

while good for playing ideas that I cannot normally grok into rules, having systems in order to simulate the world takes weight off of the GM and also allows you to include an engaging game alongside the roleplaying exercise.
Admittedly, the game is mostly a mathematical puzzle, but those have much merit as games.

Here is the dragon's TPK of the party:
>level 13
>hunting a dragon
>we had just finished killing a bunch of kobolds the dragon had control over
>suddenly a scry sensor pops up
>turn to party to tell them
>dragon teleports in with greater invisibility as I am telling the party
>surprise round begins
>casts Wall of Force to block off the entrance to the cavern
>we're suddenly fighting an invisible dragon in close quarters
>round 1 begins
>the wizard casts See Invisibility (beat the dragon in initiative)
>dragon breath weapons the party and stops flying
>dragons have the crush ability to just smash foes, lands on the party
>catches everyone but the summoner with crush
>wizard and investigator die
>wizard did have a contingency but it goes used in the fight against the kobold sorcerer when it and he had a spell duel
>summoner's turn comes, grabs me because I'm on the edge of the dragon's crush and dimension doors away
>cavalier is stuck alone and eaten by dragon

The dragon murdered us. I suppose it was memorable.

>this is what grognards actually played
FTFY

Dragons are pretty much just there to make the person who beat them look cooler.

Back in the day I was in an AD&D campaign where a powerful dragon controlled a mountain pass on a trade route.
All travelers paid a toll so the dragon was filthy rich; it had hobgoblins and gargoyle servants collect the fees (they also looted).
There was a rumor that if you could impress the dragon it would waive the fee, so we tried to dazzle it with stunts, rare animals, riddles, codes (forwarded via the servants) - nothing. Then the thief sent a joke.
Soon we were in the presence of the dragon and in a joke contest. Eventually the dragon laughed - and we paid no toll and received a small ‘gift’.
We kept this up and after 3 game years were ready - asked for a joke contest, delivered, and when the dragon was roaring with laughter attacked, beginning with a backstab with a dragon slayer.
Epic battle, we barely won, took the choicest loot, and got the hell out of there

I'm not asking for a system
I'm confident that I can make an interesting encounter in any system, what I'm asking for is an example but you don't seem to be able to give me one

>this is what quality play is
yes
t.someone opposed to everything dnd ever

Kingdom death is literally an example. Just take one of the encounters from it. Hell, just take the tutorial fight.

>card deck determines creature actions
>literally no initiative for reaction, ability for out of the box thinking, or innovation, or personal creativity
>”good combat”
It’s a $400 ‘choose your own adventure’ game, you fucking dolt

>getting it this wrong because of the pricetag
That shit is easily piratable, you have no excuse other than sour grapes bitching.

>it's not good combat if I can't ignore the rules and do whatever I want!
kek
Though for real, having locational damage alone opens up more room for tactics than most tabletop these days.

>thinks ‘doing something creative’ = ‘breaking the rules’
Typical

It must be, since you categorically declared you could do nothing creative in a game where you can do creative things that relies heavily on its ruleset.

>He needs rules and mechanics to tell him how to interact with people

though for real, you should probably ignore statements that are said before "for real though" and have something like a kek in them, as they are generally meant to be a joke.

You’re assuming I haven’t played it
That’s incorrect
That mechanic was moribund with the first Amber RPG and the idea that that it is superior to something like Rolemaster is recockulous
>having locational damage alone opens up more room for tactics than most tabletop these days.
Boot Hill had location charts in, what? ‘79? Rolemaster has highly detailed locational damage capable of being used with virtually any TRPG in ‘82
All you’re doing is proving you haven’t played TROGs much

No, I pointed out that Kingdom Death is limiting, thus the idea it in inherently ‘more fun’ is ridiculous

>claims to have played it
>thinks he is talking about locational charts when he said locational damage

You in fact said there was "literally no personal creativity".
While the point you are currently raising is also silly, I'd appreciate you not outright lie about the points you previously made.

...aaaaand you’ve never played Boot Hill

an interesting response to being caught in a mistruth.

There isn’t
>pull card
>roll die
>’far superior to ‘roll die’’
>’if my figure is over here it’s different than if it’s over there;that’ss Unique, right? Right?!’
Lol

‘Location, facing, and position affects damage and combat’ is a very old idea, not unique to Kingdom Death
And you’re confusing two different anons, user

You both have failed to create a point and have disagreed with your own previous posts denying saying such things.

>Too bad nothing except the combat is actually supported
What are skill checks?
>I need social combat so I can spend 30 minutes to convince someone to agree with me when I could have talked it out in ten minutes.

That's why I said these days, user.
The closest you get to locational damage in modern tabletop is flanking.
Still, an interesting response to being caught in a mistruth nonetheless.

ITT:board game fags fucking up a dragon thread

Man, you have summed up my ideas about how awful combat is perfectly.
I would much prefer it if all combat was handled by either actually fighting, or playing some twitch based digital game that can solve the combat in a minute instead of the goddamn glacial speed some systems run at.

Huh?
That was my only post in this thread until now.

Any vids/tutorials of the old school style? I'm trying to learn DMing.

Was for
I have now three posts - I cant disagree with me yet

go tell yourself to fuck off, if you're so many great people.

I think Jeff Rients has some online?
The core of old school was
‘Ok, what do you do?’ and no one looked at the character sheet!
‘I flirt with the maid’ and you figured it out on the fly with a reaction roll. Bribing a guard? Actually role play the encounter/throw a reaction roll/d20 plus charisma/the DM just figures it out/whatever seemed best.
Look at it this way: bluffing is *incredibly* important to poker. There’s no rules for bluffing. You just do it dynamically based on the situation and who is at the table.
That’s 90% of old school play

Check the supergenius

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I keep pitching you gold and you keep fucking missing the catch

System elitists Pls go

We talking dragons here, fuck off back to your respective caves and we can get back on track before your bullshittery kills the thread.

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>old school play
pretty sure that's how you're supposed to Dm, at least that's how Veeky Forums told me to do it
why the fuck would you look at your character hseet during an interaction ?
t. almost millenial

Has anyone here ever fought a Prismatic Dragon? Would you start a campaign where a Great Wyrm would be the final encounter? Or is it too OP?

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Get with people playing 3.5/Pathfinder or Fate and you ask them what they do and they'll look for a modifier to a die roll to talk to someone.

>too OP
if it have stats PCs can kill it.
Never played on epic levels myself but people say they are borken and not enjoyable, so I would avoid him or nerf enough for a lvl20 party to take him on.