How to run an Adult White Dragon as a deadly foe, and how to beat them, by The Brass Dragon.
White Dragons are the smallest and least intelligent of the chromatic dragons. However, that does not mean they are dim-witted. Much like a tiger outsmarting an inexperienced hunter, a White Dragon can use its knowledge and mastery of its environment against you and become an even more difficult foe to face than some other, more powerful dragons.
“There is something extravagantly insensate about an Antarctic blizzard at night. Its vindictiveness cannot be measured on an anemometer sheet. It is more than just wind: it is a solid wall of snow moving at gale force, pounding like surf. (Because of this blinding, suffocating drift, in the Antarctic winds of only moderate velocity have the punishing force of full-fledged hurricanes elsewhere.) The whole malevolent rush is concentrated upon you as upon a personal enemy. In the senseless explosion of sound you are reduced to a crawling thing on the margin of a disintegrating world; you can’t see, you can’t hear, you can hardly move. The lungs gasp after the air sucked out of them, and the brain is shaken. Nothing in the world will so quickly isolate a man.”
– Admiral Richard E. Byrd
Ambush in the Arctic
Wilston had always been fascinated by the snow as a child, having grown up in the warm south where some local languages didn’t even have a word for such a thing. Now, he cursed it with every word he knew.
The three hunters clutched feebly to a frigid rope as they pulled a houndless sled bearing ivory tusks and heavy mammoth fur through waist deep hardened snow, pounded by the relentless onslaught of a howling blizzard. It was as if some cold and merciless god was punishing them for whatever sin it deemed they had committed.
Even the most experienced of the hunters at the front – a goliath of a man who had ventured this route nine times – struggled to push forward as the freezing wall of wind and sleet slammed into him. Wilston had considered himself lucky before the blizzard, for he could walk in the carved out tracks of that man. Now, though, the storm was so fierce any reprieve in the snow behind the guide was quickly filled in before Wilston could take advantage of it.
There was a tug on the rope which ground Wilston and the guide to a halt. They looked back, seeing the third man – Krond – face down in the snow and struggling to get back to his feet. Wilston hadn’t realised amidst the deafening roar of the storm that his friend had been falling behind.
“We have to keep moving!” said the guide, shouting above the cacophony.
“We can’t leave him behind!” Wilston shouted back. “Besides, do you want to lose the sled and have our hunt be for nothing?”
He pulled on the rope that Krond was clinging to in an effort to make it back to him. He was no more than ten good paces away, but in this environment ten became fifty as with each struggled step Wilston only managed to push a few inches forward.
Then they were hit with a blast of freezing wind out of nowhere, accompanied by a blinding flurry as if winter itself had concentrated its primordial power upon them for a moment. Wilston dropped to his knees, half buried in the snow, and for that moment he lost sight of Krond and the sled.
The blizzard continued to rage, but the strange flurry had dissipated as quickly as it had come. Wilston got back up and continued pulling on the rope, only to notice it had been severed. He looked back to where Krond had been.
He was gone.
“Krond?” Wilston called out repeatedly.
“What happened?” the guide bellowed.
The only sign Krond and the sled had existed at all was a shallow ditch in the snow, now quickly being filled back in as if to erase all memory of them.
Then the flurry returned, colliding into the two men like a wall of ice. The guide looked up, spotting a black shadow larger than the mammoth they had hunted, flying through the death shroud of the storm overhead.
“Dragon!” he cried out .He gestured in a direction to the left of the trail. The two men mustered what little might the cold had not sapped from them to run, but the icy grip of winter endlessly grabbed at their legs, slowing and tripping them.
They thought for certain they would die to this foe, but all went quiet for a while. They continued fleeing only to come to the edge of a steep cliff. The bottom could not be seen, for clouds of ice and snow blinded them to it.
“This was not here before…” the guide said.
Wilston surveyed what little of his surroundings he could see, but the blizzard had removed all features besides this cliff with an unknowable drop. “Are we lost?”
“We–”
The flurry returned for a third time, snatching up the guide as silently as a winter hag stealing a child from its crib.
Wilston looked down once more, his legs numb. He considered leaping. Would he land safely? Would he be broken at the bottom of some inescapable gorge?
The ground shook. Mounds of snow broke away and fell over the precipice. He turned, drawing his axe in his senseless hands.
Before him stood a beast half shrouded by the blizzard. Its scales were pearly white and coated in rime, its bestial eyes glowed with icy blue malice, and its maw was large enough to swallow a man hole.
Wilston lunged at the foe, striking it in the snout with his axe of dwarven steel.
It shattered like thin ice against the glacial hide of the dragon.
Its maw opened, filling with an eerie blue light. Then, a blast of ice so cold that it immediately ripped out any warmth the hunter had within him, and all went dark.
Combat Tactics
White Dragons may not be the most intelligent dragon, but adults have an intelligence score of 8, which puts them well above most animals. If a tiger with an intelligence of 3 can outwit an inexperienced hunter, then imagine what the White Dragon can do with 8.
For further reference: Apes have an intelligence score of 6, putting them in line with your party’s barbarian.
Therefore, you shouldn’t treat the White Dragon as an intelligent foe that thinks five steps ahead, but instead as a cunning predator, using the cover of a blizzard to stalk its prey. Their perception is extremely high and they also have blindsight, allowing them to see through even the harshest snowstorm.
You could also have it open with its breath weapon, dealing significant cold damage to the party before disappearing again into the fog.
It will also have better knowledge of its environment than even the most experienced guide. In the short story above, the dragon picks off the weakest member of the group without hesitation, but even with an 8 Intelligence it is cautious enough to examine the other hunters first before attacking, and it could do so stealthily under the cover of the blizzard. Once it knew that they could barely move, and that they were heading towards a dead end, it toyed with them a bit before circling around and striking again, swiftly and silently.
The Encounter
For this encounter, the fight will take place in the setting of the short story. The party is lost in a blizzard, moving through deep snow that is considered difficult terrain. There is a sheer cliff to the left, and many more miles of open snow-covered wilderness to the right.
It is up to you how high that cliff is. It could be instant death, or it could be a way out. Don’t punish the players too hard for opting to jump. Give them at least one chance to save themselves by rolling, perhaps to land in deep enough snow that it breaks their fall, or to catch onto a branch as they fall (yes that’s unrealistic but this is a game).
Consider making the group roll checks against the cold before the encounter. They might be well equipped to handle winter conditions, but emphasize that this blizzard is more powerful than usual, like some malevolent wintery force is causing it (the dragon). Failing these checks could result in frostbite, exhaustion, or HP loss. Don’t make the consequences too debilitating, but have them make the adventurers feel vulnerable and like they’re fighting a losing battle before the fight even starts.
Then comes the dragon. White Dragon’s aren’t as smart as Black Dragons, so they won’t know who is actually the weakest member of the group, but they will be able to spot stragglers or smaller party members that look less threatening.
If the group is huddled close together, open with the dragon’s breath weapon. White Dragon’s are aggressive creatures and will probably want to end the fight with as little resistance as possible.
If that doesn’t work, have the dragon weave in and out of the cover of the blizzard as it attacks weakened party members. Alternatively, you could make use of its burrow speed by having it move beneath the ice and snow and ambush the group from below, using its blindsight to guide it.
Consider why the dragon is attacking: Is it there to eat, to defend its territory, or is it there to assert its dominance over lesser creatures?
If it’s here to eat, this makes it more dangerous. It will likely not ignore downed players, and instead focus on them so it can feed, at least until the fight starts going badly for it, then it might change its priorities.
If it’s just defending its territory, it might even be content with just battering the group with a few breath attacks to weaken them and allowing the environment to do the rest, and if the group still pushes ahead, then it will come back to make sure they die this time.
If it’s asserting dominance, as even white dragons like to do, it will toy with its prey. Have it fling some off the cliff so it can get some amusement in watching them fall screaming to their demise. Have it partially freeze some of the adventures so it can watch them struggle.
Once the fight starts going badly for the dragon, though, then it may consider retreat. Perhaps the group can follow it back to its lair.
The White Dragon’s lair should not be overly complex. Like the environment outside, it should be deathly cold and hazardous, but a White Dragon isn’t smart enough to set up complex traps. Instead, consider having the floors and walls of the lair be extremely slippery, and maybe have some areas of thin ice concealing deadly drops deep into the glacier. You could also have falling ice during the fight, as the dragon’s movements shake the cavern.
If you are fighting the dragon in its lair, its probably going to opt for the ‘defending its territory’ choice, rather than trying to feed or dominate. However, it will not take chances by allowing any of the adventurers to live if they have gotten this far. It will thrash and swipe like a cornered animal, and unleash its breath as many times as possible.
If the group is still beating it, it might even beg for mercy. White Dragons are perhaps the only chromatic dragon that would do this, but that does not mean they are defeated when they do. They might offer to fight for the group only to betray them at the earliest possible chance. This could be the moment they turn their backs, or later down the line when it has promised to help them defeat a clan of Frost Giants, only to wait until they’ve engaged in combat before unleashing icy devastation upon the already weakened and distracted party.
(As adult dragons with an 8 in intelligence, they are capable of communicating in common to the party. Remember when you voice them that 8 intelligence isn’t ogre levels of stupid [those have an intelligence of 5],but it’s 1 intelligence below a Berserker. So it can speak, but it won’t understand anything complicated and might get offended if you talk like a pseudo-intellectual using unnecessarily long words, like Jack.)
How to Defeat the Dragon
Adventurers can take advantage of the white dragon’s aggressive nature by luring it into a trap. If they know the dragon is in the area, blizzard or no, they can prepare for it. The dragon may have a high passive perception and blindsight, but it does not have truesight and it is not all-seeing. A carefully hidden trap, or magically concealed one, may escape its notice. Here are a few ideas you can use:
Falling Boulders: Lure the white dragon into a canyon if there is one nearby. Not only will this terrain negate its mobility somewhat, but no matter how good the dragon’s passive perception is, it is unlikely to spot some well placed explosives beneath dozens of tons of rocks above it, or the shape-changed druid in the form of a small bird waiting above with a thunderwave or some other spell in its human form list to set off the trap once combat begins.
Magical Wards: White Dragons aren’t exactly magically gifted or knowledgable. If you stand out in the open making yourselves look like vulnerable, tasty morsels, and have some rocks with glyphs of warding on them all around you, the dragon is unlikely to detect them and will probably set them off, triggering whatever magical effect you’ve designed them to make. Explosions are always good, but you could also conceal some high level spells inside of them if you have access to such things, such as Forcecage, which would immediately shut the dragon down the moment it gets trapped.
Frost Giants: Okay, so these aren’t exactly considered ‘traps’, and usually aren’t friendly to the adventurers. They also sometimes ally with white dragons, although usually against the dragon’s will. However, if you can convince a tribe of frost giants to go on the ultimate hunt by taking down the region’s local terror in the Adult White Dragon up in the mountains, then you will have yourself some powerful allies that will know the environment as well, or perhaps better than the dragon, and will not be affected as much by whatever that environment throws at them.
The Spicy Meatball Strategy:
Step one: Find a nice tasty beast the dragon will not be able to resist (or one of your own party members you’ve grown tired of). A baby mammoth or a moose will do.
Step two: strap explosives or magical wards to the beast.
Step three: ?
Step four: profit.
Summary
The Adult White Dragon is a cunning predator that has near peerless knowledge of its harsh terrain. It can use blizzards and deep snow to conceal its approach, while relying on blindsight to keep its eyes on its prey.
It is not a mastermind villain. It will probably try to fight the party out in the field, rather than in its lair. This means the party can also set traps for it, if they expect its appearance.
Use its arrogance and aggression against it if you are one of the players. Use the element of surprise if you are the DM.
DM TIP: Always remember the fun of the players supersedes the challenge of the game. A lot of DM’s like to brag about how many player characters they’ve killed, but most groups, especially in today’s day and age, aren’t going to enjoy throwing characters away constantly. If all dragons were run properly, they’d be impossible to beat, so let your players have some advantages too, such as:
- Ensure they are appropriately levelled for the encounter. Don’t throw this at a low level party.
- Ensure they are appropriately geared. Unless the encounter is supposed to be a villain reveal where the goal is not to kill the party, it’s probable that they’ll be fighting the dragon towards the end of whatever wintery arc they’ve been on. They should have some cold resistance at the very least.
“I, for one, think the party could do with chilling off at any level.” – Jack
Lost Lore Library 