I remember an adventure a long time ago, Dragon Mountain. Great little module for AD&D 2nd Edition.
If you're unclear on the AD&D thing, think like D&D 2.5, cause AD&D was kinda the step up from the 'red box' or whatever box (there was a few colours).
Incidentally, if you didn't know, the A is Advanced, and it was pretty crunchy.
Anyhow, so for Friday, I'm taking some inspiration from Dragon Mountain and the worshipping community of Kobolds. It's a part of their heritage and culture, and the more I think about it, the more I think that an ancient dragon in a mountain community has champions, maybe a cult, maybe the kobolds are just the start of it.
The truth is that an ancient red dragon is known to be the most egotistical and aggressive of the bunch. This dragon has minions, and if we want to play the ego card ("he'd want to kill us") I would argue his ego would be amped with an audience comprised of his own peoples.
With that in mind, we have the stage set for an epic battle where I've written some basic ideas for making the kobolds simple to run, given I'll have a horde of them to operate.
The mass combat rules are available online here:
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/unearthed-arcana/mass-combat
https://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/2017_UAMassCombat_MCUA_v1.pdf
In short I'll be looking at the +1 CR per 20 creatures as a good rule by which to increase the attack capability of the horde.
Every turn, we add 20 to the fray. We start with 60 kobolds? Maybe 80. The 4 CR equates to a +2 proficiency bonus (coupled with a +2 dexterity bonus) for the buggers.
At 5 * 20 or 100, we go to +3 prof bonus. Then at round 9, four rounds later, we go to +4. The horde is now hitting for a +6 total.
I'll be hitting once every turn, and taking a lot of flack for 'legendary actions'.
The horde also has infinite reactions, but is not immune to disengage.
Now on top of this, I have cultists and hmm.. how about a paladin of Tiamat.. or two.
But Dooley, why?
But players, why. Seriously.
Ancient dragon, been left alone for a thousand years; has been bargained with and has a seat on the council, must be a reason why.
Underground base, thousands upon thousands of minions dying to do the bbeg's bidding and a complete community of bent civilization at your beck.
The players don't realize it, but to say they've shaken a hornets nest (or put the hose to it, with Helbrims tsunami) is an understatement.
I didn't do that. The players did. This is a case of the players wanting a combat and I am not going to let them simply 'win' so they can 'move on.'
This time, the players need to accept that they've tried to shake a veritable god and it's time to pay the piper.
Yeah what the f!ck what that about?
So Mitch flooded the tunnel. I did some math and I haven't reviewed the tape, but I made the tunnel 200' tall, then made the adjoining horizontal tunnel 100' tall.
So effectively there's 100' down, then left into the adjoining 100' tall tunnel, at the ceiling of said tunnel.
Now, nevermind stalagtites, spiders and what not, we want to figure the speed with which Petron'X got where he was, and moreover why he wasn't affected by the tsunami as Mitch had hoped.
The door was 50' tall (diameter) and so that door resides 25' up the wall.
The tunnels that Helbrim flooded are approximately 100' in diameter as well. So Helbrim flooded the place using the tsunami spell and 4500000 cubic feet of water (according to the spell, which is 300x300x50 feet).
Anyhow, the point is that at face value, we had a 50' thick volume of water filling the tunnel. That volume moves at 50' a turn away from the caster, according to RAW. If we account for gravity, one rule is that an object 'falls' instantly up to 500 feet.
Xanathar's Guide to Everything, page 77;
When you fall from a great height you instantly descend up to 500 feet. If you're still falling on your next turn you descend up to 500 feet at the end of that turn. This process continues until the fall ends.
Of course, feather fall is an reaction, or interruption as the Wizards folks might be accustomed to calling it.
So the water should hit the dragon!
The water DID hit the dragon. So what happened?
I had it make an acrobatics check to survive the water blast and it made it with flying colours. No pun intended.
Afterwards, it flew the rest of its movement through the open hatch way which was closed by the dragon to prevent flooding of the inner under city,
What about the rest of the water?
So it's true that that is not a small amount of water, and its also true that the kobolds, having been in the position to endure avalanches of snow falling into their home.
A tsunami is not the same as an avalanche and the kobolds were not prepared for that, so the flooding at the bottom of their main shaftway is a detrimental thing, but in this case, more for any players at the bottom then the dragon.
The kobolds that were IN that first shaft are assuredly drowning or treading water. Most of the infrastructure clinging to the side fo the tunnel ways was washed out by Helbrim, effectively flushing the first tunnel of any threat. However, that doesn't mean that the inner walls of the shaft way were flushed; there are still lots of the little buggers inside their caves and although these guys don't exactly build doors onto their cave entrances (the construction workers do, most lean up a piece of wood, some roll a rock, others hang a fur or leather).
The holes on the side of the tunnel way will get wet, but they're not getting flooded, and the kobolds residing within the walls are not going to take this sitting down.
This is an Ancient Dragon.
It's an odd idea that folks can accept that good dragons have however much of a constructed and engineered environment, and yet can't imagine an evil dragon having more then a cave, a pile of scat covered corpses, and the phat mountain of gold and lootz nearby.
Why the fuck wouldn't an ancient dragon, a powerful being with a massive ego, who has lived for countless years, at least have a sofa and a friend?
In this case, he happens to have a city of worshippers underneath the fucking temple ruins he met the players at. He met them at the ruins of a human temple that had a carving of Petron'X overlooking it.
Then they figured they'd shoot him.
The High Level Risk Factor
Players don't want their characters to die. Either that or they profess that the death should be a sensible and epic one. I agree with the latter, that story deaths should be amazing. Sometimes though, war is just war. Shitty and not epic. It's just people dying, because someone else got a lucky shot.
My point is that players want to ensure that the only way they're dying is through 'legitamite' means. It's hard to deal with sometimes as you can get into arguments about all sorts of things.
Lets make an example: A character gets hit with an avalanche. Like, right in the middle of that path of falling snow and rock and ice and shit.
How much damage does that do? Do they have some way of surviving it? Typically you'd make a saving throw and hope for the best, then deal several dice worth of randomly rolled damage.
One figures the character should be ded unless there's some sort of fluke.
Kill a low level character this way, and whatever, no big deal, roll another one.
Kill a high level character this way, and suddenly we're googling the physics behind an avalanche and figuring the velocity, percentage of avalanche contents and respective density thereby.
The game suddenly becomes very crunchy because nobody wants to die for an insipid reason.
However, players take stupid risks and figure they can argue with the gods for survival.
"I'm going to follow this dragon down a shaft."
Or better still, "I'm going to attack an 'evil' dragon that has a seat on the council of wyrms. Some how, some way, in my mind, this is the sensible route because I want a combat."
Well, you got your combat.
Pass the salt?
Ahh, but not because the players veered, or the players are stuck in an abitrary combat, or even because the players are risking themselves.
No the players will bitch and moan about the combat and enjoy themselves through it; that's the human condition. That's not what I'm upset about.
The players may not even stick around for the combat. They may fuck off to Waterdeep via teleport so any planning and fore thought I put into this environment becomes somewhat moot.
Still that's not even why I'm upset.
I'm upset because I'll now have to mobilize Petron'X to some degree, and make a thing of this politically when I'd rather have left this branch well and alone.
The truth is that I like the story line and the way it's developing, and I don't even mind the sudden involvement of a raging ancient dragon. The fact is the Cloud Spires will be suffering for what occurred here though. The Council of Wyrms had a defensive pact and agreement with the Cloud Spires, for hundreds of years.
That shit just got broken because whether the party realizes it or not, this means they've fired upon the Council of Wyrms.
So what are their options?
We'll see what they choose to do, but killing Petron'X is effectively their only option. In for a penny.
If they let him live, or if he decides to take it to the council, the question becomes whether or not they'll back him.
Maybe they could grovel their way out :D
If he takes it to the council, then they won't have any choice but to end agreements with the Cloud Spires; he didn't shoot first, after all.
This means dragons will be allowed to roost, fly over and attack the city if they choose, and opens the way for Frost Fire members to run amok unhinged.
While Frost Fire members would break the pact to skirmish with the kingdom from time to time, it was typically argued that those were rebels who didn't honour the agreements that the Frost Fire as a whole had made with the Council (way back in season 1).
Now, there's no such agreement.
Friends in numbers.
If the Cloud Spires isn't mended, the military population available to the kingdom is halved and they lose specific resources.
At this time, the idea is that Cid Meir is working to mend the church and relations in Dodsland. While that's fine, there's still the matter of Daed's Outreach being both decimated and suffering an onslaught.
The players need to establish and delegate more allies as Acererak's strength becomes thicker and thicker; instead of creating schisms and splintering further.
Reaching out.
A new Waterdeep adventure is shipping out and I'll have my copy tomorrow and was expecting to have a week to read through it for material for next Friday.
If everything gets settled in Petron'X's domain within a night, then we can move on to the big city, and meet some people.
New friends, new contacts, new adventures.
How much is planned and how much is made up?
About 50 / 50. I pre plan a lot of stuff, and sometimes we don't get to these things.
A lot of times the stuff I've pre planned can be fit into the situation. Sometimes it's very ham fisted.
Either way the story moves along with table side improv making up the filler to join pieces I've made.
Sometimes a villain comes along as a result of a viewier injection, or as player investigation; the overarching idea still plays the way it ought to and who the intermediary players are doesn't matter. Petron'X will either die at the hands of the players, or harrass the players after they teleport away from his craziness.
Perhaps it will give a nice side plot where they can hold military might against a real military nemesis.
Maybe I'll just have the devilry pop in and completely wipe the place out.
<3