Creating Draconic Adventures

The difficulty of the dragon adventure path

Jul 03, 2025

I'm writing this the same week as I order the print run on The Conquest of Chaos. I have a handful of projects in front of me but I am wondering about creating another adventure path. Seeing as this one took about 5 years to create from start to completion, don't go holding your breath for it to come out anytime soon though. I would love to create something that focuses on dragons, though I do have a couple other ideas rolling around in my head. But I think dragons present a kind of difficulty that aren't present in an adventure path focused on giants. I'll be outlining a few thoughts I have on the subject.

1. Giants are a people. Dragons are not.

You can have many giants in an adventure, but you can't have a dungeon full of dragons. Dragons are usually used as the end boss in typical fantasy TTRPGs. Its the same even if you look at dragon-filled video games, such as the Dark Souls series or Skyrim. Dragons are typically bosses at the end of levels or challenging random encounters. The one dragon focused adventure path that I've played, The Red Hand of Doom, uses draconic kobolds, cultists, and other minions to do their bidding and keeps dragons as the boss for the different chapters of that campaign.

This means that the PCs will probably be fighting minions of the dragon, or at least solving problems created by the dragon's presence. The PCs will have to work their way towards the actual dragon fight.

However, if we look at literary sources then dragons are again treated very differently than they are in adventures. Let's take the equivalent of a bingo free space and use the Hobbit as an example. We hear of what Smaug has done, but he is only an encounter for the main characters near the end of the book. He does not send out minions to fight or lay clever traps. He is instead the equivalent of a boss for which characters have all the time that they want to prepare against. They spend the earlier parts of the book becoming more experienced and capable for this eventual encounter.

Haku, Spirited Away — Are dragon nature spirits?

2. More than a bag of hit points

The 1 HP Dragon supplies an answer to this problem. Perhaps the dragon cannot be defeated or even hurt until a certain condition is met. Or at least they should be able to be weakened by smart players who meet such a condition. If we look again at Smaug, he can only be wounded once his weakness is discovered. It only takes one good blow but that condition must be met.

Even if not using that paradigm, combat with a dragon should be interesting. When I ran G2, I reworked the dragon encounter to be a part of the boss room with the ice giant jarl in the throne room. This created a very dynamic fight where the PCS had to fight giants on the ground who wanted to win or at least survive and dragons in the air (though still in a somewhat enclosed space so more melee PCs could still fight them if they were clever). As arial creatures, both they and the PCs should use the environment. The environment and enemy tactics should help create interesting options for combat.

In a level 20 5e adventure I ran, the PCs used a magical mech to fight a dragon-lich while in the orbit of a star. Nearby asteroids could be used as cover and the floating corpses of deific heralds could be used as ways to buff the PCs. The gravity of the star made moving either easier or more difficult. Though the dragon did have a massive amount of hit points, the constantly changing environment (and the dragon's variety of spells and other powers) made the combat interesting even though it probably lasted too long.

3. An adventure path needs escalation

Relating back to the first point, it would be boring if the level one adventure is a baby dragon, then the level 2 adventurer is an adolescent dragon, and so forth. If you keep having dragon boss fights then the players know what to expect. You need to have twists and the occasional trope subversion in order to keep things interesting. Perhaps a DCC funnel can I have a dragon that may kill many PCs, such as in my adventure Lullaby for the Volcanic Wyrm. But I couldn't do the same style of adventure over and over. One adventure might feature and focus on draconic cultists who wish to somehow evolve into dragons through ritually eating their flesh. The next might feature cultists who gather resources for their dragon lord, or maybe seek to hatch a dragon egg. And you don't want to fall into the trap of having cultists that don't really gain anything by being in a cult.

4. How dragons affect the world

This is more about the supposed plot of the adventure path. What is the end game here? What do dragons want? Classic folk tales and stories often have dragons wanting gold and sleeping on piles of it. That's not a very dynamic enemy. The Red Hand of Doom or The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford offer us a couple avenues that have been taken but that you wouldn't want to retread so that things feel original.

Are towns and cities living in fear of the dragons? A city's walls are meaningless against a flying dragon. Or are the dragons more subtle in their methods? This veers towards the "cultist" focused path. Is a dragon the mastermind or does a faction wish to bargain with or control dragons to get their way? This is really the core of the adventure path's plot and needs to be decided early on. If not, you'll end up reworking how the adventures connect together later on. Are dragons a part of the world's pantheon and how do the other deities feel about this? Huge variety here from setting to setting.

Conclusion

I know my knowledge of dragon focused adventures is far from encyclopedic. There's probably a huge number of great dragon adventures that I could for reference. Looking at the past is only useful if it's helps me look for something new. And while all of the above are great considerations for a dragon focused adventure/campaign, having those answers don't create one. You still need an intriguing situation that allows the players to create a story.

What's your favorite dragon focused adventure or adventure path?