I can also give a 5 hour class on the matter if you're interested.
this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
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Well, I don't think my players are here but I'll put it in spoiler tags anyway. Those playing in a world called Yphilios, don't expand this.
Frostfang's equipment
The dragon they will have to fight, Frostfang, is an adult white dragon. But he is not your typical "huge polar bear with wings" white dragon. Frostfang found a nice little golden ring on the head of a wizard he ate that fits his claw pretty well, and this ring (Headband of Intellect) made him a lot smarter and enabled him to learn the spells from the wizard's books (and other books that other dead wizards left behind).
In addition to the ring and the spells, he has been learning blacksmithing from an artificer he has kept captive for this purpose, and wears a breastplate made from the breastplates of all the paladins who tried to kill him. It is a Breastplate of Radiant Resistance. (There are three paladins in the party, sue me.)
He also has a Dagger of Warning. Partially because of the Warning property, and partially because this way he can cast Steel Wind Strike. Because I'm evil.
Maybe I'll also give him a piecemaker. Lair actions are one thing, but a six-foot metal bolt flying at you at mach 3 is another.
Sexy stuff! That's definitely the way it's meant to be done, I love him. Does he have a reputation, in-world?
Not a global reputation yet because he is fairly young (he is growing much faster than the average dragon due to the great nutrition he receives, namely a steady stream of adventurers from the nearby city) but he has been the bane of a small country (~the size of Luxemburg) for the last few months, and killing him is getting urgent because it's already spring but the fields are still frozen solid due to his influence on the local climate.
Though a famed dragonologist did notice that his behavior changed considerably; instead of randomly raiding villages he started targeting Skyfleet installations up north, pushing the city's Skyfleet back and getting them away from his mountain.
He definitely sounds like a great encounter to run- don't forget that you can also reflect his increased intelligence in his lair design, making passageways more orderly, having guards with an organized rota and good training (as well as the equipment taken from those scores of fallen heroes), and traps that are better thoguht out. Of course, the key is to be challenging but fair, so if that would be impossible for your players to beat, perhaps they'll find all his minions in the process of upgrading the lair to do that.
But there's the other critical aspect- how are you going to roleplay your boy? Is diplomacy a viable solution (probably not because there are three paladins in the party)? Does he want anything in particular? Does he have Plans that he'd like to talk about? Perhaps he might even set his sights on taking control of the nearby nation! Or maybe he wants to capture those paladins alive, to see if he can steal the secrets of divine knowledge from them... Or he's still a white dragon at heart, and just really wants to find a dragoness to have 'private time' with.
The basic setup will be quite simple: after ruining the country's plans to set up proper anti-dragon defenses in the capital, he will land on top of the city hall and tell them that he is bored of random raids and now demands the respect and tribute that a dragon deserves. Namely, one million gold pieces and 20 of "their young" per month. First delivery expected in 15 days.
Diplomacy would be viable, if the party could somehow convince the country to give up a significant chunk of their GDP and 20 children per month. But I doubt they would do that.
After which, they will have those two weeks to cross the frozen northern wilderness (a hex crawl with 100 traversable tiles) and confront the dragon directly. There are a number of set encounters and locations on those hexes (the most notable is Clawhold, the only permanent settlement of the Tabaxi tribe who populate the north, and the 13 abandoned mountaintop fortresses that they might come back and clear out even after they take care of the dragon). The dragon himself is nesting in the far northeastern corner of this map (the party starts from the southwest, obviously) in a mountain named the Pillar of Lights.
A "piecemaker" you say? Hmm.