TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK BOYS

Isn’t this the plot of Fire Emblem Three Houses

Babe wake up, new forbidden snack just dropped

Walking Wake

Young Black Dragon called Gendridd, wasn’t meant to be a major obstacle, his personally is that he’s evil mostly just because he’s having a fantastic time being an asshole and constantly taunting people (to the extent that the first and so far only lair effect he’s got is the ability to heckle people at any location in the lair). Anyways he was fully aware that he’d get one-rounded trying to fight a party of four level 7 PCs, so instead of fighting them stole the party’s unattended bags and sat in a tree to taunt them about it before flying off (he did not consider this might lead to fighting them anyway).

The party’s plan was to ambush him in his own territory, so their plan was to cut through some of the most overgrown parts of the swamp to get behind his lair and set up an ambush, instead of confronting any of his minions. However, between several spellcaster party members who had both completely dumped their strength/dexterity and couldn’t cast spells while drowning, party members wearing full heavy armour that weighed them down significantly, and bad rolls, then two of them fell into a bog, and in trying to rescue them the others also fell in and they all drowned, resulting in the first TPK.

Obviously that wasn’t a super satisfying ending, so for closure I offered to run a oneshot with a level 5 party in Gendridd’s lair, sent to avenge the original party, on condition that I wouldn’t hold back with enemy strategy and tactics (no bullshit with magic, just good enemy postioning, balanced teams that had lots of options in fights, and had actual battle plans). They made it through most of the dungeon pretty well, while constantly trading off verbal barbs with Gendridd who basically ran a snarky sports commentary the entire way through, letting them know how eager he was to crush them when they made it to HIS big boss chamber. Anyways they reached the outside of the chamber and they were just preparing to fight the skeletons who were guarding his door when he jumped out of an acid river behind them and got a Surprise Round, hitting two of them with a breath weapon and then rolling good enough initiative to knock out their fragile backline casters.

After that then he’s become popular/respected enough to get Promoted To NPC.

TLDR: First wipe due to RNGiamat cursing the d20 and a party badly suited to dealing with falling in a bog. Second wipe because Gendridd employed the secret chromatic dragon art of ‘lying to people’.

Can confirm, I run a LOT of dragons and the interesting dragon villains are generally about finding unique takes on their common traits or villains because of their response to their circumstances rather than pure random villainy. We’ve got the red dragon who self-perpetuates her own cycle of violence, we’ve got the black dragon who’s mentally broken because their worldview of being entitled to everything due to their strength collapsed after they lost a territorial struggle, we’ve got the emerald dragon who’s desire not to be bothered by their humanoid allies led them to neglect their promises, we’ve got the silver dragon who loved her friends so much she was willing to fall into necromancy to try and undo their deaths.

Also we have That Bastard With Eight Player Kills.

That said, always remember: To become cliche, something needs to work super well first- so well that everyone does it. It only crosses from great into cliche if everyone does it and forgets why and how it worked in the first place.

Fully intended! Vex helping both explain stuff for new players and make funny jokes about content is straight up aspirational

Thank you <3

She’s a character with the Unholy Ravager class, I use her to spice up my Forgotten Realms games (White Dragoness in a non-snowy area jumpscare)

On the contrary, puzzles can be half the fun, especially if your players are idiots

There is a Young Black Dragon in my world who was literally never meant to be a major issue for any players but currently has EIGHT player character deaths attributed to him, because the first (level 8) party TPKd when they tried to move deeper into his territory to ambush him after he stole one of their bags, and they all drowned in a bog (trying to help each other and the ones who went to help also getting into trouble). Then there was a oneshot where a second (level 5) party went to his lair to avenge the first one and they also TPK’d because he got a surprise round against them.

Thank fuck for that. With any luck the better conditions will even give them the power to push back on management if management demands something stupid be added to a game.

In an industry as notoriously dreadful as game development, every bit of quality of life counts.

They do have their place- just that place isn’t “something you can just drink every day without thinking about”

TieflingMelissa! She’s a pretty significant community figure on Twitter and Twitch, great memes, nice discord server.

She’s very down bad for dragons (same), but honestly she’s actually pretty wholesome; her server doesn’t allow explicit NSFW and she spends a lot of time helping new players learn the rules of the game.

Disguised??? She’s the biggest icon in the community for it lol (and a legitimately great content creator)

God this feels EXACTLY like Azeroth from World of Warcraft. But hey the dragons have some isles and eggs so I’m down for that, love me some dragons that are actually doing well in a setting

Skill Issue

(I joke, of course)

If you have advice for how to reword it so that it’s

-Easily comprehensible

-Does not have loopholes that rules lawyers will exploit

Then I’d be happy to correct any flaws you identify!

And you’re not the first to bring up the Wyrmling point, however tying the power of a player character to their age is a terrible idea because that would make it exceedingly difficult to level up during a campaign.

Oh you must not have seen Vex’s memes! I might not be as funny as them but I do my best; they’re a Lancer (Mech RPG) memelord pretty well known for making memes about the game that were good enough to actually get a significant amount of players into it.

Here, check these out

https://vexwerewolf.tumblr.com/post/701919090911182848/what-if-i-just-posted-all-26-of-the-lancer-mech

While you make fundamentally good points, I think there is a core reason that balance is important to me: DnD is a multiplayer game, not a singleplayer game.

I actually think it’s fine that different classes are strong at different levels! The entire premise of Wizard is that they’re a squishy who will die if they’re sneezed on at level 1, who grows into a reality-warping god by level 20. Having someone that needs to be looked after at low levels and can then look after the team at high levels encourages teamwork!

The reason that I say DnD is so badly unbalanced is because once level 5 comes around? Casters very, VERY firmly become way better than non-casters for two reasons. Casters have AoE damage, and casters have utility. Non-casters have no utility, and because they also really struggle to increase AC, they can’t function in any role except for single-target damage. A good level 5 caster can make the rest of the party feel really lackluster because they can do in one turn what the rest of the party needs 4 or 5 turns to do (HP and AC are much less of an issue at this point too). And this gap only gets wider and wider with every passing level, which rapidly makes it less and less fun to play a non-caster.

Once level 13 hits, anyone who isn’t a full caster is completely irrelevant. That is not fun for anyone who isn’t a full caster. Hell, it’s SO badly broken at this level that it’s almost certainly the reason why Baldur’s Gate 3 only goes up to level 12- and that game already does a huge amount of buffing martials and nerfing casters. A 13th level caster can instantly beat pretty much any encounter not explicitly designed to bully them, and even then there’s a good chance they find a way to solo the encounter on turn 1 anyways.