I’ve played a lot of D&D over the years. Hundreds of hours.
But these so-called “dungeons”? No captives. Not even any cells. That’s not a dungeon. that’s a glorified cave.
And don’t even get me started on the dragons. Dragonborn? Sure, I’ve seen plenty. Heard my fair share of Draconic. And wyverns are fairly common I suppose but that’s like pointing at all the dogs in the world and saying “we’re infested with wolves!”
I’m beginning to feel like I’ve been lied to all this time.
Dragons are pretty high level-threats in D&D, which most players rarely get to fight because most campaigns don’t last that long. Which does make it a bit weird to name the entire franchise after such a rare enemy.
On top of that old dragons in disguise meddling with human society make good NPCs… which the players will not find out until much later.
So even when they meet Dragons -even ones not antagonistic- early on they will rarely realize it…
FYI: you can throw a dragon at any party at any time as a non-combat encounter or as a natural disaster they aren’t supposed to be able to fight or control
Good point.
Counterpoint: Many groups have trouble discerning between a regular encounter and an encounter they aren’t supposed to fight.
Yeah, my DM threw a young white(I think) dragon at us pretty early in the campaign. It wasn’t meant to be a fight we won, we were only meant to drive it off and possibly have a sidequest type thing to go loot it’s lair later.
It tried to fly away. We teleported into the air after it, and I clung to it’s back and kept dropping divine smites in it until it died. Was fantastic.
There’s pseudodragons and whelps that can easily be low level encounters. I threw a green dragon and a bunch of flying kobolds at my level 3 party and they easily won the fight.