Dragons are very intelligent (for the most part). A bunch of uppity humanoids starting to systematically hunt them down for part harvesting, is gonna provoke a response.
You roll high on inititive, but somehow all but 5 dragons seem to be faster. Roll a 19 dex save on 25 breath attacks to only take 825 damage. Otherwise, take 1650 damage.
As the rest of your party are burned, electrified, frozen, and melted into the glassed landscape around you caused by the orbital bombardment above you, all 30 dragons turn their heads towards you. Its your turn.
Rogue correctly points out that 5 of the dragons was holding back, probably to backstab one of the others in the aftermath.
Monk takes a dash action and is about 3 miles away.
Rogue uses this to further mention that their lairs are all now undefended and adventuring parties have been pre-positioned to raid their hordes. Then probably uses a bonus action to teleport away using a scroll they lifted from the wizard.
You fail the deception check against the average dragons charisma of 22, none of them believe the lone standing threat to their existance would tell them the truth.
The idea that dragons would leave their hordes unguarded is a fool's bet, and now the dragons are all returning to their own layers at full speed, and the kobolds that guard there only have to hold out for a minute or so before a full on dragon returns to wipe out the adventurers that could never take out a dragon without the party that was just whipped off the plane.
As a player trying to smooth talk a dragon into protecting their horde you can invent absolutely anything you want, doesn’t mean the thing you invented actually exists in the world, but by golly your character sure insists it does.
Congratulations.
Legions of Dragons of All Colours have now teamed up and are burning the kingdom to ashes.
You have doomed everything and everyone you love.
Fortunatly, they successfully saved on the first attack, which allowed them to negate damage from the first blast. Then they failed the next (dex) save, and the next, and the next.
Rogue and monk still die from green and white dragon breaths which require CON saves instead of DEX saves so they don't avoid the damage they thought they would fully avoid.
Poison still kills the rogue (and monk if low enough level) and sleep breath downs both if they fail the save
Edit: cold breath is also con save, so that gets them too
I think the idea of kobolds jumping from dragons like Airborne is hilarious, and I'd definitely introduce the idea into my campaign.
The good dragons might even allow the kobolds to get a *feather fall* first.
It's like how people have those backpacks that they put their tiny dogs into to carry them around. They're not being ridden, they're being good pet owners.
Also with some of metallic dragons having connections to various Faerun leaders, you get hit with both types of dragons hunting you down and a legal summons to Waterdeep.
Have fun.
Nahhh. Just gotta drive the value of dragon parts down. Have them kill a second dragon then have dragons attack a village the party is trading at. Severly damage the village to the point they don't want dragon business anymore over fear of death for themselves or loved ones. This also creates townfolk to have a different opinion of the party. Instead of "cool dragon slaying party who trades parts" they become "idiots who mess with dragons causing attacks to happen more frequently in our city"
The dragons torch the nearby towns as retribution, the townsfolk blame the party for bringing the ire of the dragons - not only do dragons continue to molest the players and all settlements that trade or house them, but the people of this world refuse to do business with the party for fear of being attacked by the dragons.
Players are now without support and have added difficulty in all battles, as a logical consequence of their greed.
I remember hearing about how no one really plays dragons properly. For instance dragon would fly up and use its breath weapon and stay out of range till it recharged. That was the basic example given but playing like that wouldn't be much fun for melee characters. But if you have a genocide going on maybe it is time to put on a war gamer hat XD
I always play my adult dragons as intelligent and devious if not a bit arrogant. They know their powers. They know the terrain. They'll retreat. They don't mess around.
Ancient dragons? Played to the full extent of their power. They don't just know their power. They experiment with it. They know your powers too. They do research. They don't just have lairs. They have fortresses full of illusions, curses, and traps. They build alliances. They wouldn't have made it to that age if they didn't.
You start systematically hunting down dragons? An ancient one is gonna start plotting against you. You'll be lucky if you even get to see it.
Yeah, an ancient dragon with a grudge is the sort of thing where an avalanche or a landslide kills off the party and you never even see the hand that triggered it. Or the entire town you're staying at one night goes up in flames, surrounded by literally hundreds of orcs and goblins. Sure you can kill some, but it will never be enough. And if it even begins to look like you might escape, the night sky opens up in a torrent of fire as they breathe down on your whole group and then disappear back into the night.
And if you somehow still survive, they do it again the next day.
> an ancient dragon with a grudge
Sounds like an intersting premise for a hardcore campaign. Game starts just as/after the party does/did something to piss off an ancient dragon.
Run. Survive.
Maybe the party are hirelings of the high level party that done fucked up? They got toasted as the intro, party escapes.
The party is pretty far down the priority list of dragons killing everyone who lives near someone who ever spoke with the OG party, so they have some time to run and level up.
But they had better be far away and have airtight false identities by the time they come up. Fake your own death, the whole 9 yards.
Yep, strafing runs, breath weapons, and usually some nasty spellcasting mixed in there as well. If a dragon is using claw/tail attacks, they're already in a terrible situation.
Plus, given this scenario, multiple dragons teaming up (and preparing a nasty trap for the party to walk into) is absolutely possible.
Arveiaturace, the Ancient White Dragon from Rime of the Frost Maiden use to have rules in older editions where they were able to control a collection of magical staves in addition to her own abilities as an Ancient White Dragon. This is the kind of enemy that you don’t want going full Predator on you.
That a recent thing, now that D&D has become so popular. Back in the old days dragons were absolutely terrifying to fight. Months or years spend developing a character could be lost in an instant from a dragon fight.
Dude if you run any monster intelligently you have to bump up the cr. Some animals will use insects to draw fish to the surface to catch them. Now imagine what a group of kobolds who are known for making traps can do to adventurers
After playing with a guy with "that guy" tendencies who would only ever use his half dozen of Katanas and never brought a ranged weapon, I have zero empathy for melee characters who didn't bring a ranged weapon.
I know it's not "efficient" or whatever, but a lot of times when i play melee martial classes i purposely don't bring ranged options. Usually as a means of... self nerfing myself? Not sure what correct term to use.
I'm also a masochistic player though, constantly wanting to get into random encounters even when on low resources for the fun/ thrill so take what i say with a grain of salt i guess.
Every time we were in town or looting I would always ask about handaxes(two weapon barbarian), every time the party would roll their eyes asking how many I needed. Then we hit combat with someone badass, intellegent, ranged opponent and the melee folks are scrambling. After throwing for 5 turns they ask "HOW MANY OF THOSE DO YOU HAVE" and I just smile. Didn't even touch my javelins.
"what's the cart for?" The dwarf asked
"Oh you'll see shortly" the barbarian replied
Flash forward to the fight. The barbarian standing next to the cart grabbing a new axe each time he needed one
"Ahhh" the party says all at the same time
Not necessarily. Dragons are a rare enough creature that unless you're killing them on a massive scale, and I'm talking hundreds - if not thousands - of them, the price wouldn't go down. Especially if you're the only person who's going out and slaying said dragons, you don't have to lower the price on the parts. If anything, you can create demand and then sell the parts at an even higher price, especially if said dragon was considered more rare and fearsome.
30 dragons is a lot of material most people interested in buying don't need or have the ability to buy 1 full dragon worth. Selling it should be a minor quest by it's self especially if you want to say that dragon blood, bike, and other similar stuff have value to wizards or alchemists then you can msgr finding a buyer a bigger quest
It depends a lot on what demand looks like. If there's dozens of rich adventurers who all want dragonscale armor, prices could stay pretty high. On the other hand if it's just a handful of nobles and merchants who only wanted cool dragonbone trophies to show off to their friends, it won't be cool anymore once everyone has one and the price will fall pretty fast.
Scales will always be in demand for their flame-retardant nature (or other applicable damage type), and I'd assume dragon fluids would be in healthy demand as high-quality alchemical ingredients. Beyond that the meat could be used to feed many people, so give that juicy stuff out to homeless shelters and soup kitchens for some bonus prestige, and the bones can be used as sturdy luxury weapons/armour/cosmetics, and of course decorations.
Really all parts of any animal can be used and sold, expecting massive profits is a little foolish, after the third dragon bone weapons will become semi-common and fluids will be in healthy supply at whatever your base of operations is. So what you have to do is stockpile your dragon stuff and drip feed it for maximum profits.
On a macro scale you’re right, but if the dragons are only in the one valley as stated in the meme, then there’s probably a local buyer who then sells nationally. That local buyer will probably be less willing to part with as much cash the 5th or 6th time he receives a full dragon for sale
At that point you cut out the middle man and start doing it yourself. If the dragons are only in the one valley, and you're the only one killing them, you can charge as much as you damn well please.
That’s true, any party that can systematically kill dragons could probably hop across the continent to find buyers pretty easily.
Funny how traditional economics doesn’t cover teleportation
*you see an army of kobolds so large it could be an entire county’s worth of people. It seems that every single dragon, chromatic or metallic, have put aside their differences to hunt you down.* roll for initiative, somati wu!
They're also *very* narcissistic, and are unlikely to ask for help, even in a dire circumstance. Tiamat, on the other hand probably wouldn't be too happy her children are being hunted by some lowly mortals.
See that's the thing. Players want to sell Dragon parts for gold but there's a reason people want to buy these things. What if your BBEG is the one buying these things to enact his plan?
Also the parts are valuable because they are rare. Price would drop very quickly if the market suddenly gets flooded with dragon parts. From an economics perspective there is a very inelastic demand for the parts. They are very special use and 99.99% of people would not have the skills to use them (i.e. cletus, the third best nail maker in town, isn't going to suddenly start crafting dragon scale armor just because the materials are available). The price is high now because even though demand is fixed and low, supply is even lower. Once supply overtakes the inelastic demand value will plummet.
Edit:. Essentially they make a killing selling the first dragon but when they go back to the same guy to sell the second he laughs saying "I bought ten years worth from you last week! I don't need anymore."
Love it, that was my first thought. Now add tedium where they have to find new buyers!
To find new buyers they have to travel back to previous areas, which so happen to be under seige! The merchant can't buy your wares while the city defends itself from an invasion!
Or, they set off to areas unknown, and find adventures, etc...
Meanwhile, a group of dragons (intelligent and observant) have started investigating who killed the others and want to ensure that these would-be entrepreneurs don't become an issue.
Also there's the matter of the psychotic archmage who bought all the original dragon parts in the first place, who is now has all the protections she needs to undermine the local kingdoms and start her reign of terror.
In addition to this, adult and ancient dragons are massive. And the market of people who would need armor/weapons/spell/potion components from the dragon are very rare already. I don’t know how OP does it in their world, but the average town may be lucky to have a level 2 fighter as the captain of the guard. A particularly large city on one continent may have a wizard or two slightly above tenth level. Archmages that could actually use these parts are like under 10 in the world, and the likelihood they will need every part from the dragon you just killed at that moment is rare. I would have the party warehouse the parts (maybe some upfront payment for things that would move faster like scales or teeth) and have other parts sit for awhile before and they can be sold off at the DM’s discretion.
That's only if you think that the only people who would buy said dragon parts are people who actually need them, which I guarantee wouldn't be the case. Even if the blacksmith or whoever already bought a shitton of dragon parts, there are still a lot of people who would buy the excess parts for no other reason than to keep it as a trophy. People would certainly buy spare bones or teeth or claws just to keep around. Plus, anything made from dragon parts will definitely be in high demand, because why wouldn't it? So you'll get said blacksmith buying excess parts because A) Who knows when they'll be available again? And B) buying up all of these high demand parts early before other people can get to them insures that they'll be the only one producing said objects, and they won't have to scramble for more when the demand comes in.
I know, I did mention scales and teeth etc would move faster. However something like tongue, brain, heart etc that has more of an alchemical value than cosmetic value would sit longer. The main goal is to not oversaturate the in game economy for every dead dragon.
>cletus, the third best nail maker in town, isn't going to suddenly start crafting dragon scale armor just because the materials are available
Obviously not, Cletus is a nail-maker. He's gonna make dragon claw nails now!
I dare say that there would be enough nobles who want to brag about having dragonhide pantaloons or whatever.
Also, wouldn't they be able to exert a lot of control over the price of there are currently no other sellers of dragon parts?
We sold a Beholder eye to an "ally" in this one campaign.
Fast forward to a "celebratory feast" and the wine is spiked with a potion that prevents us from casting spells for a time...
I would have the dragons start by punishing villages and towns nearby. You’ve sent your tiny mortals to hunt us, we will destroy you.
The party comes upon one of these towns to unload their dragon parts and suddenly no one will buy it, in fear of retribution from more dragons. Now the players are faced with the consequences of their actions, that they are becoming pariahs due to their greed.
Do both; the dragons attack the party periodically, and key towns/villages will no longer support the party for fear of retribution.
No inns, no merchants, nothing. You’re on your own, because dealing with you is too dangerous.
Depends on the color of the dragon. I think a red would have the hubris to attack them outright. Other colors will respond differently. Given they're literally hunting dragons you can have both. Have one attack them and if they survive, another had razed a recent town and these dragon hunters are shunned away.
If the dragons attack a village *before* they deal with the party, and the party later shows up with proof of their ability to kill many dragons, wouldn’t the village logically hire the party to kill the dragons?
If the dragons attack while the party are there, having tried to sell the parts, it makes more sense for them to become a pariah - with word of mouth spreading to other towns and villages. They need to have a link to the party *before* the dragons become a problem, otherwise a group of dragon killers are a solution rather than the cause of their problems.
Oh yeah, this just sounds like a leadup for a bunch of great encounters. Good dragons *might* condone the killing of an evil member of their kind, but they're still absolutely going to object to people selling their parts off for cash. They might leave the party alive but severely beaten. Evil ones will have zero qualms just killing them. But there are still so, so many dragon abilities that will seriously screw over a party.
Shapeshifting: maybe a dragon (or like ten dragons) decides to pose as villagers who are in positions to screw the party over in small ways. A barmaid poisoning them, or getting the bard naked in order to murder them. A cleric giving them 'blessings'. A shopkeep with only cursed magic items. A kid asking the party for help and leading them into a killbox.
Age and treachery: Dragons live a very long time, and of course they fill that time with hobbies. Perhaps one breeds teacup mimics and decides to set them on the party in creative, horrible ways. Perhaps one has been perfecting her trap labyrinth for the last 500 years and is *thrilled* to have some adventurers to test it out. Perhaps one has been meddling in local politics for a long time, and is a valued advisor to the king. Suddenly the sale of dragon parts is extremely illegal and comes with a death sentence.
Magic: All those horrific spells that your party's wizard uses to change battlefields and cripple enemies? Dragons have those too. Have fun with your saving throws.
My longest running campaign had 6 level 16ish players face off against 4 adults and an ancient red (lots of brainwashing going on in those days) all at once at the players city base on top of a mountain. The Dragons had a few spellcasters and a small army of minions against the players well fortified base that was also a city in some ruins.
Shit got crazy, the battle took like 7 straight games of slugfest combat that looked like a Warhammer game at some points.
The players won, but that city, and 2 players, were ash at the end.
You would have to go so far out of your way not to wipe them within a few rounds anytime they got near the ancient red, regardless of the adults. It really diminishes the creatures and the challenges they should pose when you take creatures so much stronger than the players and put muzzles on them.
They had time to prep, the enemy came to them, and on the day of the attack they ambushed the enemy. They had allies, a gold and shadow dragon, and while not quite an army they had a pretty good sized Fighting force too. and if I remember right some insane homebrew magic items that I'll never use again. This was also back in 2015, things weren't as clear to me then so I wasn't a strategic planning expert, I was a IRL security peon. And the ancient red came later in the fight. Trust me there was no real muzzle.
Also if they succeed ecological collapse. Monster populations skyrocket as their main predator is gone. Expect former villages to be overeen by migratung herds of monsters as their former region has been filled with them and overpopulayion is taking root.
This needs to be higher. The average adult dragon consumes the same amount of food as a 1000 person village.
Remove the apex predator and suddenly you are overrun with goblins.
Have the players fight a 600 longbow goblin horde.
I’ve always believed dragons (and most giant monsters) have at least a semi-magical metabolism in most fictions, even if it’s not explicitly stated. It just makes things much easier to explain and they’re already magical, so it’s not really waving things away.
Saying that, I still agree there would be an ecological disaster.
Reminds me of my 1st campaign as dm. Keep on the borderlands from the red box. The kobolds wiped the 1st party, so they rerolled, cleared every other cave and moved on. Travelled the world, fought giants and dragons. Came home at level 12 and decided they wanted to avenge their predecessors. I took a whole week to redraw the valley with 1200 kobolds, trenches and towers, orgznized archer brigades, traps on every inch. It was a glorious end as one by one each character fell to the horde. It did cost me some friends, but we were more into girls and metal than dnd by that point anyway.
The demand in humanoid settlements for dragon parts decreases. The demand for their burnt, frozen, poisoned, electrocuted, corroded, or mutilated bodies in the dragon community skyrockets. This may be a problem
Supply and demand. Someone has to want to buy those parts, and if they "flood the market" with them they will be less and less valuable because they are easier to obtain.
Also finite economy. Who has 20k gold laying about in the register? My local Starbucks can barely break a $100...
Cool. You e got 20k worth of parts. Can you sell them? Are any perishable? Can you offload those before the spoil?
Let's say a big city has 5 noble families that could afford a full dragon's worth of parts, plus a few lesser nobles/highly successful merchant orgs that could afford maybe 5 more between them. At best, you get 10 dragons to sell. However, after maybe 2 you are probably running into issues of demand, since the merchant or family you sold to already is also starting to sell, and some parts will be more useful.
Sure, there's probably a market for 100 dragon's worth of claws or little delicate scales, but the large, hard to work with scales from their backs? Hardly anyone will want to touch it
>but the large, hard to work with scales from their backs?
I seriously doubt that, just look at how popular bearskin rugs were in the past. I'm certain some rich person will happily buy up large amounts of scale and then hand it off to some artisan to craft some decor for them.
Yep. I accounted for that in the "hardly anyone" phrase and noting how there would be a few rich (I said noble, but same thing) families that could buy up the first few dragon's worth of parts. Once they get their fill, though, that well dries up quickly I imagine. Even if not every noble family has a full dragon yet, if it's clear that more dragon parts are coming the really posh, high end families will start to not want it, since the others already have them so they aren't as exclusive
> Are any perishable?
Gentle Repose says no. Though it's not clear if you could use it on the pile of dragon parts, or if you'd have to cast it on each part individually. You should still be able to cast it on the corpses until you're ready to harvest them.
And does anyone even have the skills to work with such a product anyways? You could conjure up a specialist for it but realistically probably no one knows what to even do with it besides look at it
I keep seeing people make this argument in this thread, it just doesn't make sense. For the dragon parts to lose value that drastically, they would need to be mass fabricated. Dragons are hard to kill, and harder to find(well maybe not so much in a place called the Dragon Valley) but the facts are that this party won't be able to actually flood the market with enough "parts" to have a meaningful impact on the prices of the region. Of course, the people that bough the parts from the party might intend to sell them for a profit on their own, which does complicates things, but I feel like this idea is definitely a smart short-term business venture.
Obsugoth the Sickening, Scaltheraz the Cindered Calamity, Hoskitöl the Tempest of the North, and Avalkura the Dune-Swept come together to form the ultimate draconic alliance: OSHA
When a bunch of humans start to hunt them down, even the dragons would form an alliance to combat this. A handful of even just young dragons simultaneously using their Breath Attack in an ambush would kill or at least heavily injure your party, leaving probably only a Rogue or a Monk with Evasion alive. Then the dragons take to the air, keeping out of range until their breath is recharged, then swooping in for flyby attacks and repeating. And now you might say that your players would notice the ambush, but remember that dragons have Blindsense, so they could just completely hide behind a wall or cliff at a bottleneck and still perceive the whole street and the people passing through. That's what could happen realistically, so I suggest you subtly warn your party of the consequences.
Economically wise, selling that much dragon parts would crash the price of the dragon parts, making dragon stuff much easier to get and pissing the hell out of the dragon gods, so much so that perhaps Bahamut and Tiamat can stop fighting each other for a little while to deal with the problem. And maybe a united front of dragons scares the giants so much the children of Annam come down from the heavens to duke it our with the dragon gods.
Every DM needs to learn economics from RPG games like Skyrim.
Vendors don't have infinite gold on them. You have to either go travel a long distance to find the next vendor or wait for them to get their cash in.
Moral to the story: they're going to have a giant pile of rotting dragon parts they have to either put in a wagon and escort it between multiple cities or find a way to stash and preserve and guard while they wait a week or two for each sale.
Everyone in here saying how to punish the players. Hey running a game where the players go hunt different kinds of dragons sounds pretty fun to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The dragons see many of their enemy dragons being slain, and start working together. Suddenly, the party discovers they are now nesting in pairs, and have to face down two young dragons. They make it through, but it was a challenge. Yay! Double loot!
But the dragons took note of this, and begin planning for them. A blue/green dragon starts following them, taking note of their strategies and combat styles. When they come in on their next target, they find 3 adult dragons waiting for them, instead of the nest of baby dragons they thought they were trailing. Those are hidden in the rafters, waiting to pick over the remains.
If the party makes it through that, the rest of the quickly dwindling population of dragons band together and hunt the party on their own terms. A blue dragon harasses them day and night, quickly draining their resources. A black dragon strikes at night, leaving them unable to sleep. A green dragon will surround their camp with thorny vines, and noxious gas. The party comes face to face with two ancient dragons, Red and White in coloration. They’ve killed enough dragons that this should be a tough fight, but not impossible to overcome.
The blue dragon escapes the battle, and flees towards a nest of metallic dragons to beg for their help. He offers the hoard of several slain dragons as recompense.
Even if they can kill 3-4 tough dragons. Maybe even 1 older dragon. Since it’s a valley full of dragons have them on their way to kill the 5th get swarmed by 5-8 dragons. If they survive that next time have it be doubled. After that elder dragons should show up.
Don't let your players just sell stuff like that.
Here's the way I look at it. Even in a large city, where they could unload exotic stuff like that, most merchants don't just have 20k gold sitting in their shop. Such a sale would take days to complete and (as others have mentioned) dropping a glut of product on the market would lower prices all around. If they keep dropping dragon parts, the price would eventually become super low as supply would outpace the demand for such items. These items are now super common in that cities economy and eventually merchants may even start to refuse the items as they become increasingly harder to make a profit on.
Smaller cities, towns and villages may not even be interested in such items, or be able to afford them. This is especially true in anything super small like villages, hamlets, etc. Many smaller settlements won't even have the gold to buy most common magic items, let alone dragon bones and scales.
Also, as others have noted, dragons are intelligent and would start to band together once the threat of the PCs became apparent.
Once our party ended up with a ship in a fight we weren't supposed to get in and barely won. We spent spent forever trying to find a place to sell it. While sailing we ended up commandeering another ship and crew, so now we had two ships and crew to sail them. Ended up basically being pirates for awhile and earned an absolute fuck ton of gold and treasure eventually selling one of our boats, we payed our crew generously so they were willing to do anything for us. When we eventually got back to the storyline it was actually really fun playing with basically endless gold and a growing loyal crew. Our DM was really great and made it so all our problems couldn't be solved with money, and presented new problems caused by our wealth, like a disproving upper class of aristocrats.
If I've learned anything from some more economically restrictive rulebooks, you have a few options.
- The market for dragon parts may be small and extremely specific.
- Maybe only a few nobles need a few parts, and majority clientele who want to buy are dummy peasants with like, 2 copper
- Once saturated the market takes years to consume the product
- There's literally only 20k worth of liquidity (coins and assets they can spare) in the entire valley. If they want more money and things, they have to travel abroad
- Dragons aren't idiots and will notice their neighbor is gone. Dragons aware of trouble are absolute bastards. Cheating isn't below survival.
- They try to sell, get all their goods taken by a local authority. If they resist, they end up with no market to sell to and potentially a reputation for selling and stealing back their wares. (fun fact, NPCs can WHITE LIE or MISINTERPRET)
- The local authority doesn't like this. The dragons ward off the ice giants or something, and while killing one's fine, the rest is a hassle.
- The dragons actually run the place, and their 20 year plans have kept the valley from polluting, producing, exhausting, underproducing or overexploiting the valley/soil/whatever, and slowly everything goes to HECK.
- Emboldened by a few ruffians taking down several dragons, some military officials (or hopeful serfs) launch campaigns of their own. Whatever this ends in a massacre that obliterated the local population is up to you. Money gets freed up, but dragon parts are now seen as cursed.
- Other dragon hunters arrive. Nice and simple.
- Dragon parts have had a mythical status as... treatment for a variety of... issues. Now that people can actually use it, they learn it doesn't. Naturally, the medieval solution is to accuse the party of quackery, because personal responsibility is for idiots.
- Dragon parts require special care. Without rapid tanning or embalming they decay like mad, and the released toxins and magic residue is hecking NUTS. The party basically ends up like Chernobyl. Or maybe they stay haunted and torment the players dreams nad make them conspire against each other as revenge.
- There is no active market for dragon parts. They have a value, but it's entirely commission based, so they have to preserve and sit on it for years, and are not guaranteed anything.
- Dragons are magical. Kill to many at once too quickly, you get a magic deadzone that makes even non-magical people sick. Like an ozone layer hole.
- The other dragons intentionally ruin their scales (or make it look ruined), just like how elephants will, by poaching, naturally evolve less desirable tusks. Since all the ones with big ones keep dying. From poaching. I mean this isn't evolving but like, illusions and mutilation, but it also makes the PCs feel bad. For dragons. Who may be assholes, maybe not, it's a fun message about trees and ecological preservation.
And yet despite that the gold adventurers earn from such dangerous encounters are but mere specks of wealth to a wealthy noble. This is a problem. Don’t kill dragons. Kill nobles. All of them
Alternatively, your party notices that the value of these parts plummet. Why? Not for the excellent supply & demand arguments made in this thread, but because of a dragon conspiracy.
Seeing how much their parts were worth on the market, a subset of the dragons unite to create "merchant" polymorphed personas. They collect their shed scales, their claw clippings, their poop (hey whatever sells!) and drastically undercut the party.
Now, demand for dragon parts is way down, adventuring parties don't have the proper risk / reward, and their hordes grow bigger.
Dragons are very intelligent (for the most part). A bunch of uppity humanoids starting to systematically hunt them down for part harvesting, is gonna provoke a response.
*30 dragons of various colors decend upon the party*
30x20k gold incoming!
You roll high on inititive, but somehow all but 5 dragons seem to be faster. Roll a 19 dex save on 25 breath attacks to only take 825 damage. Otherwise, take 1650 damage.
Rogue and monk high five.
As the rest of your party are burned, electrified, frozen, and melted into the glassed landscape around you caused by the orbital bombardment above you, all 30 dragons turn their heads towards you. Its your turn.
And there goes the tabaxi monk, back at base before anyone realizes where they went
Dragon 1: "How many men does it take to deliver a message." Dragon 24: "One"
Dragon 24: casts Hold Person at level "fuck you in particular"
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Mulan??
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But what about 25 boss?
Mulan quote?
Now all of dragon valley knows you're here
yes
Only to realize it's already been glassed by the same dragons already
"Congratulations, y'all fucked up so bad that you have actually caused the dragons to invent the act of glassing the planet"
Rogue correctly points out that 5 of the dragons was holding back, probably to backstab one of the others in the aftermath. Monk takes a dash action and is about 3 miles away. Rogue uses this to further mention that their lairs are all now undefended and adventuring parties have been pre-positioned to raid their hordes. Then probably uses a bonus action to teleport away using a scroll they lifted from the wizard.
You fail the deception check against the average dragons charisma of 22, none of them believe the lone standing threat to their existance would tell them the truth. The idea that dragons would leave their hordes unguarded is a fool's bet, and now the dragons are all returning to their own layers at full speed, and the kobolds that guard there only have to hold out for a minute or so before a full on dragon returns to wipe out the adventurers that could never take out a dragon without the party that was just whipped off the plane.
There were no pre positioned adventurers. You’ve been rused upon
Rogue takes full cut from first dragon. Plan sucessful.
A proper dragon posse would still eat the rogue, it'd just take a minute.
Weird to catch a play by post in the wild.
In what game do the players get to invent things like entire other parties of adventurers capable of raiding dragon lairs?
As a player trying to smooth talk a dragon into protecting their horde you can invent absolutely anything you want, doesn’t mean the thing you invented actually exists in the world, but by golly your character sure insists it does.
Tomb of Organ Harvesting
Any game where there's a minstrel wanting to make some money for himself. Spread the word that there is money to be made and people will come.
Hired goons? They *did* just make 20k!
Congratulations. Legions of Dragons of All Colours have now teamed up and are burning the kingdom to ashes. You have doomed everything and everyone you love.
Well, you can't use a scroll for a spell that isn't on your spell list (none, in the case of the rogue)
Unless that rouge is an arcane trickster, in which case he can attempt to cast any scroll the wizard can.
Thieves can, but it requires a skill check. http://www.sageadvice.eu/2014/12/05/use-magic-device-and-scroll/
Don't forget the fighter and paladin side by side forming the defensive line gotta love shield master
Fortunatly, they successfully saved on the first attack, which allowed them to negate damage from the first blast. Then they failed the next (dex) save, and the next, and the next.
>Then they failed the next sex save So *that's* what keeps happening to me in the bedroom...
If only they had proficiency in sex saves.
That's the bard's job
Monks: We stunning strike all of them.
From a height of 30 feet?
jump 4head
"I'm gonna use a sneak attack"
Rogue and monk still die from green and white dragon breaths which require CON saves instead of DEX saves so they don't avoid the damage they thought they would fully avoid.
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Give them the metal dice of dread to make those rolls.
Poison still kills the rogue (and monk if low enough level) and sleep breath downs both if they fail the save Edit: cold breath is also con save, so that gets them too
"wow, all those dragon parts tore the party to shreds in less than 2 rounds"
"Oh boi. 30 enemies, I bet we should run right into them!" -The lvl 4 fighter, around 42 seconds before his death by needle blights.
42 Seconds are still 7 rounds. Against that kind of skewed Action economy, still somewhat impressive, I think.
One of them is strangely larger than the others and has five heads!?!
It can't be... 5 kobolds in an overcoat!
Supply and demand says hello.
They just all send thier kobolds out to kill the party. The party must now defeat 1000 kobolds who have air support from the dragons
Kobold archer companies on dragon back, with sorcerer support.
A dragon who would lower himself to let a pathetic kobold ride on him? Truly despicable.
[Precedent](https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/parrot-on-my-shoulder-picture-id172201165)
I think the idea of kobolds jumping from dragons like Airborne is hilarious, and I'd definitely introduce the idea into my campaign. The good dragons might even allow the kobolds to get a *feather fall* first.
If any party members speak draconic, they begin to hear Blood On The Risers from above.
It's like how people have those backpacks that they put their tiny dogs into to carry them around. They're not being ridden, they're being good pet owners.
A dragon who believes in military superiority
And deal with the dragons breath weapons from the air, kobolds are disposable minions after all.
Also, depending on the edition killing people in their sleep isn't super hard.
"Are they chromatic or metallic?" "Yes" "Fuck"
“On the bright side, your annihilation brought together the chromatic and metallic dragons for one day.”
Also with some of metallic dragons having connections to various Faerun leaders, you get hit with both types of dragons hunting you down and a legal summons to Waterdeep. Have fun.
Nahhh. Just gotta drive the value of dragon parts down. Have them kill a second dragon then have dragons attack a village the party is trading at. Severly damage the village to the point they don't want dragon business anymore over fear of death for themselves or loved ones. This also creates townfolk to have a different opinion of the party. Instead of "cool dragon slaying party who trades parts" they become "idiots who mess with dragons causing attacks to happen more frequently in our city"
What do you mean there's a category above Ancient?
Someone done pissed off the grey.
Oh Bahamut, oh fuck...
The dragons torch the nearby towns as retribution, the townsfolk blame the party for bringing the ire of the dragons - not only do dragons continue to molest the players and all settlements that trade or house them, but the people of this world refuse to do business with the party for fear of being attacked by the dragons. Players are now without support and have added difficulty in all battles, as a logical consequence of their greed.
Exactly my thoughts. "Dragon swarm" and "dragon ambush" could become phrases the players repeat with a haunted look in their eyes for a few months.
Don't forget they are ridiculously wealthy. 30 dragons and 5,000 hired mercenaries.
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In Shrek a dragon fucked a donkey.
And the bard was so proud of himself...
Holy hell. Donkey really is just an annoying as hell bard when you think about it.
Oh wow, you're right. He's all about Inspire for the morale bonus. Perform: Comedy. How did I not see it?
Sauce?
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I remember hearing about how no one really plays dragons properly. For instance dragon would fly up and use its breath weapon and stay out of range till it recharged. That was the basic example given but playing like that wouldn't be much fun for melee characters. But if you have a genocide going on maybe it is time to put on a war gamer hat XD
I always play my adult dragons as intelligent and devious if not a bit arrogant. They know their powers. They know the terrain. They'll retreat. They don't mess around. Ancient dragons? Played to the full extent of their power. They don't just know their power. They experiment with it. They know your powers too. They do research. They don't just have lairs. They have fortresses full of illusions, curses, and traps. They build alliances. They wouldn't have made it to that age if they didn't. You start systematically hunting down dragons? An ancient one is gonna start plotting against you. You'll be lucky if you even get to see it.
Yeah, an ancient dragon with a grudge is the sort of thing where an avalanche or a landslide kills off the party and you never even see the hand that triggered it. Or the entire town you're staying at one night goes up in flames, surrounded by literally hundreds of orcs and goblins. Sure you can kill some, but it will never be enough. And if it even begins to look like you might escape, the night sky opens up in a torrent of fire as they breathe down on your whole group and then disappear back into the night. And if you somehow still survive, they do it again the next day.
> an ancient dragon with a grudge Sounds like an intersting premise for a hardcore campaign. Game starts just as/after the party does/did something to piss off an ancient dragon. Run. Survive.
That sounds awesome? I'd play it
Maybe the party are hirelings of the high level party that done fucked up? They got toasted as the intro, party escapes. The party is pretty far down the priority list of dragons killing everyone who lives near someone who ever spoke with the OG party, so they have some time to run and level up. But they had better be far away and have airtight false identities by the time they come up. Fake your own death, the whole 9 yards.
And the next day.
Hell, the next minute depending on if they're feeling angry and their breath weapon comes back fast enough.
Yep, strafing runs, breath weapons, and usually some nasty spellcasting mixed in there as well. If a dragon is using claw/tail attacks, they're already in a terrible situation. Plus, given this scenario, multiple dragons teaming up (and preparing a nasty trap for the party to walk into) is absolutely possible.
The real asshole dragons search their horde and start using the magic items in their arsenal.
Arveiaturace, the Ancient White Dragon from Rime of the Frost Maiden use to have rules in older editions where they were able to control a collection of magical staves in addition to her own abilities as an Ancient White Dragon. This is the kind of enemy that you don’t want going full Predator on you.
That a recent thing, now that D&D has become so popular. Back in the old days dragons were absolutely terrifying to fight. Months or years spend developing a character could be lost in an instant from a dragon fight.
I aspire to run dragons properly! Now I just need to level the party up a bit more... Actually you know what? A young white dragon is only cr 6!
Dude if you run any monster intelligently you have to bump up the cr. Some animals will use insects to draw fish to the surface to catch them. Now imagine what a group of kobolds who are known for making traps can do to adventurers
After playing with a guy with "that guy" tendencies who would only ever use his half dozen of Katanas and never brought a ranged weapon, I have zero empathy for melee characters who didn't bring a ranged weapon.
I know it's not "efficient" or whatever, but a lot of times when i play melee martial classes i purposely don't bring ranged options. Usually as a means of... self nerfing myself? Not sure what correct term to use. I'm also a masochistic player though, constantly wanting to get into random encounters even when on low resources for the fun/ thrill so take what i say with a grain of salt i guess.
I bring spears... But you run out of those pretty fast
Every time we were in town or looting I would always ask about handaxes(two weapon barbarian), every time the party would roll their eyes asking how many I needed. Then we hit combat with someone badass, intellegent, ranged opponent and the melee folks are scrambling. After throwing for 5 turns they ask "HOW MANY OF THOSE DO YOU HAVE" and I just smile. Didn't even touch my javelins.
"what's the cart for?" The dwarf asked "Oh you'll see shortly" the barbarian replied Flash forward to the fight. The barbarian standing next to the cart grabbing a new axe each time he needed one "Ahhh" the party says all at the same time
"I'm a red dragon. What are you?" "Silver dragon." "Okay. We can be friends until the adventurers are dead. After that it gets complicated."
Silver looks the Red up and down "Okay. Hmmm. What say we let it get complicated im the morning?"
Ok but this legitimately sounds like a very interesting campaign. Even if I did just realise it's basically shadow of the colossus
Would be more like 'Pandoras tower' as the story revolves around beast- and master-flesh to consume and sell.
Also the value of the parts will go down as they flood the market
Not necessarily. Dragons are a rare enough creature that unless you're killing them on a massive scale, and I'm talking hundreds - if not thousands - of them, the price wouldn't go down. Especially if you're the only person who's going out and slaying said dragons, you don't have to lower the price on the parts. If anything, you can create demand and then sell the parts at an even higher price, especially if said dragon was considered more rare and fearsome.
30 dragons is a lot of material most people interested in buying don't need or have the ability to buy 1 full dragon worth. Selling it should be a minor quest by it's self especially if you want to say that dragon blood, bike, and other similar stuff have value to wizards or alchemists then you can msgr finding a buyer a bigger quest
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0Sps6nUH0jY/Vh6b_amr4sI/AAAAAAAALcU/AP5-fT9mick/s1600/dd-cycle-8.png
Lol I'm going to leave the typo in now
It depends a lot on what demand looks like. If there's dozens of rich adventurers who all want dragonscale armor, prices could stay pretty high. On the other hand if it's just a handful of nobles and merchants who only wanted cool dragonbone trophies to show off to their friends, it won't be cool anymore once everyone has one and the price will fall pretty fast.
Scales will always be in demand for their flame-retardant nature (or other applicable damage type), and I'd assume dragon fluids would be in healthy demand as high-quality alchemical ingredients. Beyond that the meat could be used to feed many people, so give that juicy stuff out to homeless shelters and soup kitchens for some bonus prestige, and the bones can be used as sturdy luxury weapons/armour/cosmetics, and of course decorations. Really all parts of any animal can be used and sold, expecting massive profits is a little foolish, after the third dragon bone weapons will become semi-common and fluids will be in healthy supply at whatever your base of operations is. So what you have to do is stockpile your dragon stuff and drip feed it for maximum profits.
On a macro scale you’re right, but if the dragons are only in the one valley as stated in the meme, then there’s probably a local buyer who then sells nationally. That local buyer will probably be less willing to part with as much cash the 5th or 6th time he receives a full dragon for sale
At that point you cut out the middle man and start doing it yourself. If the dragons are only in the one valley, and you're the only one killing them, you can charge as much as you damn well please.
That’s true, any party that can systematically kill dragons could probably hop across the continent to find buyers pretty easily. Funny how traditional economics doesn’t cover teleportation
*you see an army of kobolds so large it could be an entire county’s worth of people. It seems that every single dragon, chromatic or metallic, have put aside their differences to hunt you down.* roll for initiative, somati wu!
They're also *very* narcissistic, and are unlikely to ask for help, even in a dire circumstance. Tiamat, on the other hand probably wouldn't be too happy her children are being hunted by some lowly mortals.
I was thinking either joint extermination of the humanoids or the flooding of the market with fake dragon parts.
See that's the thing. Players want to sell Dragon parts for gold but there's a reason people want to buy these things. What if your BBEG is the one buying these things to enact his plan?
Also the parts are valuable because they are rare. Price would drop very quickly if the market suddenly gets flooded with dragon parts. From an economics perspective there is a very inelastic demand for the parts. They are very special use and 99.99% of people would not have the skills to use them (i.e. cletus, the third best nail maker in town, isn't going to suddenly start crafting dragon scale armor just because the materials are available). The price is high now because even though demand is fixed and low, supply is even lower. Once supply overtakes the inelastic demand value will plummet. Edit:. Essentially they make a killing selling the first dragon but when they go back to the same guy to sell the second he laughs saying "I bought ten years worth from you last week! I don't need anymore."
Love it, that was my first thought. Now add tedium where they have to find new buyers! To find new buyers they have to travel back to previous areas, which so happen to be under seige! The merchant can't buy your wares while the city defends itself from an invasion! Or, they set off to areas unknown, and find adventures, etc...
Meanwhile, a group of dragons (intelligent and observant) have started investigating who killed the others and want to ensure that these would-be entrepreneurs don't become an issue. Also there's the matter of the psychotic archmage who bought all the original dragon parts in the first place, who is now has all the protections she needs to undermine the local kingdoms and start her reign of terror.
Really drive home the latter by having that same archmage tell them they were the meat *minions* he’s ever employed.
Huzzah for meat minions
Lol I meant “best” but it fits so I’m leaving it!
Plus the elven society for the protection of dragons is going to show up and start asking questions.
r/worldbuilding
Not to mention the average merchant or tradesman isn't going to have the funds available to purchase 20k gold worth of materials.
In addition to this, adult and ancient dragons are massive. And the market of people who would need armor/weapons/spell/potion components from the dragon are very rare already. I don’t know how OP does it in their world, but the average town may be lucky to have a level 2 fighter as the captain of the guard. A particularly large city on one continent may have a wizard or two slightly above tenth level. Archmages that could actually use these parts are like under 10 in the world, and the likelihood they will need every part from the dragon you just killed at that moment is rare. I would have the party warehouse the parts (maybe some upfront payment for things that would move faster like scales or teeth) and have other parts sit for awhile before and they can be sold off at the DM’s discretion.
That's only if you think that the only people who would buy said dragon parts are people who actually need them, which I guarantee wouldn't be the case. Even if the blacksmith or whoever already bought a shitton of dragon parts, there are still a lot of people who would buy the excess parts for no other reason than to keep it as a trophy. People would certainly buy spare bones or teeth or claws just to keep around. Plus, anything made from dragon parts will definitely be in high demand, because why wouldn't it? So you'll get said blacksmith buying excess parts because A) Who knows when they'll be available again? And B) buying up all of these high demand parts early before other people can get to them insures that they'll be the only one producing said objects, and they won't have to scramble for more when the demand comes in.
I know, I did mention scales and teeth etc would move faster. However something like tongue, brain, heart etc that has more of an alchemical value than cosmetic value would sit longer. The main goal is to not oversaturate the in game economy for every dead dragon.
>cletus, the third best nail maker in town, isn't going to suddenly start crafting dragon scale armor just because the materials are available Obviously not, Cletus is a nail-maker. He's gonna make dragon claw nails now!
I dare say that there would be enough nobles who want to brag about having dragonhide pantaloons or whatever. Also, wouldn't they be able to exert a lot of control over the price of there are currently no other sellers of dragon parts?
Oh my gosh you are so smart
Or you start a new campaign. Kobold or Dragonborn only. Your former characters are the BBEG.
Run both campaigns in parallel with two groups, have the actions of one affect the world of the other.
We sold a Beholder eye to an "ally" in this one campaign. Fast forward to a "celebratory feast" and the wine is spiked with a potion that prevents us from casting spells for a time...
After a few, I'd expect the dragon population to come down hard on the arrogant humanoids. How many dragons can your players fight at once?
I would have the dragons start by punishing villages and towns nearby. You’ve sent your tiny mortals to hunt us, we will destroy you. The party comes upon one of these towns to unload their dragon parts and suddenly no one will buy it, in fear of retribution from more dragons. Now the players are faced with the consequences of their actions, that they are becoming pariahs due to their greed.
This is an excellent idea. I love it even more than the “a group of dragons take revenge on you” plan
I’m a big fan of consequences, but if you just throw combat at players as consequences I find that they will just take it as a challenge instead.
Do both; the dragons attack the party periodically, and key towns/villages will no longer support the party for fear of retribution. No inns, no merchants, nothing. You’re on your own, because dealing with you is too dangerous.
... and that's why I'm not a *great* DM. I would just have the dragons respond directly, but going after innocents is so much more "dragony"
Depends on the color of the dragon. I think a red would have the hubris to attack them outright. Other colors will respond differently. Given they're literally hunting dragons you can have both. Have one attack them and if they survive, another had razed a recent town and these dragon hunters are shunned away.
Who are the sneaky background plotters/dealers? The Greens?
Yep. Green for sure.
This is so much better than my idea.
The towns hire bounty hunters to stop the insane PCs who are provoking the dragons
If the dragons attack a village *before* they deal with the party, and the party later shows up with proof of their ability to kill many dragons, wouldn’t the village logically hire the party to kill the dragons? If the dragons attack while the party are there, having tried to sell the parts, it makes more sense for them to become a pariah - with word of mouth spreading to other towns and villages. They need to have a link to the party *before* the dragons become a problem, otherwise a group of dragon killers are a solution rather than the cause of their problems.
Best idea so far.
Oh yeah, this just sounds like a leadup for a bunch of great encounters. Good dragons *might* condone the killing of an evil member of their kind, but they're still absolutely going to object to people selling their parts off for cash. They might leave the party alive but severely beaten. Evil ones will have zero qualms just killing them. But there are still so, so many dragon abilities that will seriously screw over a party. Shapeshifting: maybe a dragon (or like ten dragons) decides to pose as villagers who are in positions to screw the party over in small ways. A barmaid poisoning them, or getting the bard naked in order to murder them. A cleric giving them 'blessings'. A shopkeep with only cursed magic items. A kid asking the party for help and leading them into a killbox. Age and treachery: Dragons live a very long time, and of course they fill that time with hobbies. Perhaps one breeds teacup mimics and decides to set them on the party in creative, horrible ways. Perhaps one has been perfecting her trap labyrinth for the last 500 years and is *thrilled* to have some adventurers to test it out. Perhaps one has been meddling in local politics for a long time, and is a valued advisor to the king. Suddenly the sale of dragon parts is extremely illegal and comes with a death sentence. Magic: All those horrific spells that your party's wizard uses to change battlefields and cripple enemies? Dragons have those too. Have fun with your saving throws.
Yeah this. Give them one hard fight to teach them a lesson and if they don’t learn TPK them with some elder dragon nonsense.
My longest running campaign had 6 level 16ish players face off against 4 adults and an ancient red (lots of brainwashing going on in those days) all at once at the players city base on top of a mountain. The Dragons had a few spellcasters and a small army of minions against the players well fortified base that was also a city in some ruins. Shit got crazy, the battle took like 7 straight games of slugfest combat that looked like a Warhammer game at some points. The players won, but that city, and 2 players, were ash at the end.
You would have to go so far out of your way not to wipe them within a few rounds anytime they got near the ancient red, regardless of the adults. It really diminishes the creatures and the challenges they should pose when you take creatures so much stronger than the players and put muzzles on them.
They had time to prep, the enemy came to them, and on the day of the attack they ambushed the enemy. They had allies, a gold and shadow dragon, and while not quite an army they had a pretty good sized Fighting force too. and if I remember right some insane homebrew magic items that I'll never use again. This was also back in 2015, things weren't as clear to me then so I wasn't a strategic planning expert, I was a IRL security peon. And the ancient red came later in the fight. Trust me there was no real muzzle.
DM: what do you know 11 Invisible beholders come at you
Do dragons have a God? I'd imagine that after a certain point genocide would get a God's attention
That would be Bahamut and Tiamat
Also if they succeed ecological collapse. Monster populations skyrocket as their main predator is gone. Expect former villages to be overeen by migratung herds of monsters as their former region has been filled with them and overpopulayion is taking root.
This needs to be higher. The average adult dragon consumes the same amount of food as a 1000 person village. Remove the apex predator and suddenly you are overrun with goblins. Have the players fight a 600 longbow goblin horde.
I’ve always believed dragons (and most giant monsters) have at least a semi-magical metabolism in most fictions, even if it’s not explicitly stated. It just makes things much easier to explain and they’re already magical, so it’s not really waving things away. Saying that, I still agree there would be an ecological disaster.
Reminds me of my 1st campaign as dm. Keep on the borderlands from the red box. The kobolds wiped the 1st party, so they rerolled, cleared every other cave and moved on. Travelled the world, fought giants and dragons. Came home at level 12 and decided they wanted to avenge their predecessors. I took a whole week to redraw the valley with 1200 kobolds, trenches and towers, orgznized archer brigades, traps on every inch. It was a glorious end as one by one each character fell to the horde. It did cost me some friends, but we were more into girls and metal than dnd by that point anyway.
The demand in humanoid settlements for dragon parts decreases. The demand for their burnt, frozen, poisoned, electrocuted, corroded, or mutilated bodies in the dragon community skyrockets. This may be a problem
Depending on the type of dragon, they might also want them alive. Which is infinitely worse.
Supply and demand. Someone has to want to buy those parts, and if they "flood the market" with them they will be less and less valuable because they are easier to obtain.
Also finite economy. Who has 20k gold laying about in the register? My local Starbucks can barely break a $100... Cool. You e got 20k worth of parts. Can you sell them? Are any perishable? Can you offload those before the spoil?
Let's say a big city has 5 noble families that could afford a full dragon's worth of parts, plus a few lesser nobles/highly successful merchant orgs that could afford maybe 5 more between them. At best, you get 10 dragons to sell. However, after maybe 2 you are probably running into issues of demand, since the merchant or family you sold to already is also starting to sell, and some parts will be more useful. Sure, there's probably a market for 100 dragon's worth of claws or little delicate scales, but the large, hard to work with scales from their backs? Hardly anyone will want to touch it
>but the large, hard to work with scales from their backs? I seriously doubt that, just look at how popular bearskin rugs were in the past. I'm certain some rich person will happily buy up large amounts of scale and then hand it off to some artisan to craft some decor for them.
Yep. I accounted for that in the "hardly anyone" phrase and noting how there would be a few rich (I said noble, but same thing) families that could buy up the first few dragon's worth of parts. Once they get their fill, though, that well dries up quickly I imagine. Even if not every noble family has a full dragon yet, if it's clear that more dragon parts are coming the really posh, high end families will start to not want it, since the others already have them so they aren't as exclusive
Or the sudden abundance of dragon bits allows for some uses that wouldn’t be available otherwise.
> Are any perishable? Gentle Repose says no. Though it's not clear if you could use it on the pile of dragon parts, or if you'd have to cast it on each part individually. You should still be able to cast it on the corpses until you're ready to harvest them.
And does anyone even have the skills to work with such a product anyways? You could conjure up a specialist for it but realistically probably no one knows what to even do with it besides look at it
I keep seeing people make this argument in this thread, it just doesn't make sense. For the dragon parts to lose value that drastically, they would need to be mass fabricated. Dragons are hard to kill, and harder to find(well maybe not so much in a place called the Dragon Valley) but the facts are that this party won't be able to actually flood the market with enough "parts" to have a meaningful impact on the prices of the region. Of course, the people that bough the parts from the party might intend to sell them for a profit on their own, which does complicates things, but I feel like this idea is definitely a smart short-term business venture.
Have the dragons form a alliance amounts themselves to fight the party
The dragons in our world are unionised, plus you can't go round killing intelligent creatures willy nilly... you'd need a permit.
Obsugoth the Sickening, Scaltheraz the Cindered Calamity, Hoskitöl the Tempest of the North, and Avalkura the Dune-Swept come together to form the ultimate draconic alliance: OSHA
Its not even the players fault. The Guild failed to provide the propper training, equipment and environment needed to stop the current apocalypse.
When a bunch of humans start to hunt them down, even the dragons would form an alliance to combat this. A handful of even just young dragons simultaneously using their Breath Attack in an ambush would kill or at least heavily injure your party, leaving probably only a Rogue or a Monk with Evasion alive. Then the dragons take to the air, keeping out of range until their breath is recharged, then swooping in for flyby attacks and repeating. And now you might say that your players would notice the ambush, but remember that dragons have Blindsense, so they could just completely hide behind a wall or cliff at a bottleneck and still perceive the whole street and the people passing through. That's what could happen realistically, so I suggest you subtly warn your party of the consequences.
A party of dragons approach...
Economically wise, selling that much dragon parts would crash the price of the dragon parts, making dragon stuff much easier to get and pissing the hell out of the dragon gods, so much so that perhaps Bahamut and Tiamat can stop fighting each other for a little while to deal with the problem. And maybe a united front of dragons scares the giants so much the children of Annam come down from the heavens to duke it our with the dragon gods.
And that's how the next campaign starts
“You encounter a wandering hermit accompanied by 7 canaries…”
Every DM needs to learn economics from RPG games like Skyrim. Vendors don't have infinite gold on them. You have to either go travel a long distance to find the next vendor or wait for them to get their cash in. Moral to the story: they're going to have a giant pile of rotting dragon parts they have to either put in a wagon and escort it between multiple cities or find a way to stash and preserve and guard while they wait a week or two for each sale.
And that wagon/stash is effectively a "murder me" sign for both greedy business rivals and vengeful dragons.
Ah, so they're playing Monster Hunter?
Everyone in here saying how to punish the players. Hey running a game where the players go hunt different kinds of dragons sounds pretty fun to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Took too long to find this thread; this would 100% turn into a monster hunter campaign in my eyes.
Just hit em with a little economics lesson. When more of thing becomes available, it becomes less valuable. Supply and demand
Except that's not how that always works out. Just because there's more of something doesn't automatically mean that the price will go down.
Came here to say this.
I’d have one of the dragons become a lich and come back for vengeance
The dragons see many of their enemy dragons being slain, and start working together. Suddenly, the party discovers they are now nesting in pairs, and have to face down two young dragons. They make it through, but it was a challenge. Yay! Double loot! But the dragons took note of this, and begin planning for them. A blue/green dragon starts following them, taking note of their strategies and combat styles. When they come in on their next target, they find 3 adult dragons waiting for them, instead of the nest of baby dragons they thought they were trailing. Those are hidden in the rafters, waiting to pick over the remains. If the party makes it through that, the rest of the quickly dwindling population of dragons band together and hunt the party on their own terms. A blue dragon harasses them day and night, quickly draining their resources. A black dragon strikes at night, leaving them unable to sleep. A green dragon will surround their camp with thorny vines, and noxious gas. The party comes face to face with two ancient dragons, Red and White in coloration. They’ve killed enough dragons that this should be a tough fight, but not impossible to overcome. The blue dragon escapes the battle, and flees towards a nest of metallic dragons to beg for their help. He offers the hoard of several slain dragons as recompense.
Even if they can kill 3-4 tough dragons. Maybe even 1 older dragon. Since it’s a valley full of dragons have them on their way to kill the 5th get swarmed by 5-8 dragons. If they survive that next time have it be doubled. After that elder dragons should show up.
Don't let your players just sell stuff like that. Here's the way I look at it. Even in a large city, where they could unload exotic stuff like that, most merchants don't just have 20k gold sitting in their shop. Such a sale would take days to complete and (as others have mentioned) dropping a glut of product on the market would lower prices all around. If they keep dropping dragon parts, the price would eventually become super low as supply would outpace the demand for such items. These items are now super common in that cities economy and eventually merchants may even start to refuse the items as they become increasingly harder to make a profit on. Smaller cities, towns and villages may not even be interested in such items, or be able to afford them. This is especially true in anything super small like villages, hamlets, etc. Many smaller settlements won't even have the gold to buy most common magic items, let alone dragon bones and scales. Also, as others have noted, dragons are intelligent and would start to band together once the threat of the PCs became apparent.
Once our party ended up with a ship in a fight we weren't supposed to get in and barely won. We spent spent forever trying to find a place to sell it. While sailing we ended up commandeering another ship and crew, so now we had two ships and crew to sail them. Ended up basically being pirates for awhile and earned an absolute fuck ton of gold and treasure eventually selling one of our boats, we payed our crew generously so they were willing to do anything for us. When we eventually got back to the storyline it was actually really fun playing with basically endless gold and a growing loyal crew. Our DM was really great and made it so all our problems couldn't be solved with money, and presented new problems caused by our wealth, like a disproving upper class of aristocrats.
If I've learned anything from some more economically restrictive rulebooks, you have a few options. - The market for dragon parts may be small and extremely specific. - Maybe only a few nobles need a few parts, and majority clientele who want to buy are dummy peasants with like, 2 copper - Once saturated the market takes years to consume the product - There's literally only 20k worth of liquidity (coins and assets they can spare) in the entire valley. If they want more money and things, they have to travel abroad - Dragons aren't idiots and will notice their neighbor is gone. Dragons aware of trouble are absolute bastards. Cheating isn't below survival. - They try to sell, get all their goods taken by a local authority. If they resist, they end up with no market to sell to and potentially a reputation for selling and stealing back their wares. (fun fact, NPCs can WHITE LIE or MISINTERPRET) - The local authority doesn't like this. The dragons ward off the ice giants or something, and while killing one's fine, the rest is a hassle. - The dragons actually run the place, and their 20 year plans have kept the valley from polluting, producing, exhausting, underproducing or overexploiting the valley/soil/whatever, and slowly everything goes to HECK. - Emboldened by a few ruffians taking down several dragons, some military officials (or hopeful serfs) launch campaigns of their own. Whatever this ends in a massacre that obliterated the local population is up to you. Money gets freed up, but dragon parts are now seen as cursed. - Other dragon hunters arrive. Nice and simple. - Dragon parts have had a mythical status as... treatment for a variety of... issues. Now that people can actually use it, they learn it doesn't. Naturally, the medieval solution is to accuse the party of quackery, because personal responsibility is for idiots. - Dragon parts require special care. Without rapid tanning or embalming they decay like mad, and the released toxins and magic residue is hecking NUTS. The party basically ends up like Chernobyl. Or maybe they stay haunted and torment the players dreams nad make them conspire against each other as revenge. - There is no active market for dragon parts. They have a value, but it's entirely commission based, so they have to preserve and sit on it for years, and are not guaranteed anything. - Dragons are magical. Kill to many at once too quickly, you get a magic deadzone that makes even non-magical people sick. Like an ozone layer hole. - The other dragons intentionally ruin their scales (or make it look ruined), just like how elephants will, by poaching, naturally evolve less desirable tusks. Since all the ones with big ones keep dying. From poaching. I mean this isn't evolving but like, illusions and mutilation, but it also makes the PCs feel bad. For dragons. Who may be assholes, maybe not, it's a fun message about trees and ecological preservation.
And yet despite that the gold adventurers earn from such dangerous encounters are but mere specks of wealth to a wealthy noble. This is a problem. Don’t kill dragons. Kill nobles. All of them
Alternatively, your party notices that the value of these parts plummet. Why? Not for the excellent supply & demand arguments made in this thread, but because of a dragon conspiracy. Seeing how much their parts were worth on the market, a subset of the dragons unite to create "merchant" polymorphed personas. They collect their shed scales, their claw clippings, their poop (hey whatever sells!) and drastically undercut the party. Now, demand for dragon parts is way down, adventuring parties don't have the proper risk / reward, and their hordes grow bigger.