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ed to understand the strange developments. The campaign
now has new game rules the player characters can access,
new enemies with grudges against them, and new allies suddenly
thrust into prominence. The PCs might become the
world’s experts on the changes and find themselves sought
out by dragons of all varieties that want to gain the mysterious
abilities—or stop the puny mortals from sharing those
secrets too freely.
This method also has drawbacks. Players could feel that
dragon foes have an unfair advantage, since they’ve gained
new powers that the PCs have never faced or learned to
counter. More important, if you want to let the characters
gain new draconic options, their current class levels can pose
problems. Many feats, prestige classes, and other elements
in Dragon Magic are perfectly appropriate for ongoing campaigns,
but the characters won’t have earned the prerequisites
they need to qualify for the new options. However, you can
overcome this by simply letting the players revise their
characters, or by introducing a magical force or event to the
campaign that alters the characters on a fundamental level.
“The Battle of Dragon Fall,” a sample adventure presented
in this chapter, provides one way to introduce the new rules
into a campaign and let the PCs incorporate these options
retroactively.
DRACONIC
CAMPAIGN MODELS
Dragon Magic introduces new options for dragons and
for characters who want to be more dragonlike. When
combined with Draconomicon and Races of the Dragon, this
material produces more dragon-specific ideas than a typical
campaign can use. But rather than construct a fully realized
world with dragons around every bend, consider changing
your campaign model to give the creatures more time in the
spotlight. The sample models below can be used in almost
any situation. You can start a new campaign world based on
one of these models, or add one to an ongoing campaign to
represent a major change in the balance of power.
BRINGERS OF DESTRUCTION
In a “Bringers of Destruction” campaign, dragons are the most
powerful foes available and serve as the primary antagonists.
More than just the final challenge of a given adventure or
a single dungeon, they are the biggest threat to everyone
and everything. Young dragons leave their hatcheries in
droves, scouring the countryside as they seek food and territory
of their own. Half-dragons and draconic creatures are
common—for example, half-dragon dire wolves stalk the
wilderness, and draconic trolls lurk in swamps and mountains.
Entire civilizations have been brought low by dragons
in the past, and current kingdoms fear that the same will
happen to them.
In this model, the main difference is a greater frequency
of dragon encounters. Low-level adventurers can expect to
face wyrmlings and creatures that have the draconic template
early in their careers, and each advance in level brings
conflicts with older and more dangerous dragon foes. This
situation encourages players to select dragons as favored
enemies, buy or make dragon bane weapons, and look for ways
to minimize the advantages of breath weapons and flight.
It also produces a game in which characters who depend
on sneak attacks or weapons with high threat ranges know
they’ll have plenty of opportunities to shine.
The in-game logic for such common encounters can be as
simple as a high birth rate among evil dragons. If a mated pair
of adult blue dragons starts producing four to six wyrmlings
each decade until they reach a modest old age of 501, they will
sire an average of 200 offspring. Alternatively, you can make
the logic more complex, or make it central to a long-running
plot. Perhaps most dragons have slept for centuries, and are
only now awaking from their long hibernation for some
mysterious reason. Or perhaps they rarely interfered with the
affairs of lesser creatures in the past because good and evil
dragons were too evenly matched, but recently something happened
to all good-aligned dragons, clearing the way for their
opponents to unleash havoc. If a specific event is responsible
for a wave of dragon attacks, eventually the PCs will want to
find out what has gone wrong and fix it.
Of course, good dragons need not disappear in a “Bringers
of Destruction” campaign. They can be featured as exceptional
champions of peace and safety—or as destructive
forces in their own right. Maybe they collectively decide to
raze lands that are ruled through terror, preferring smoldering
ruins to the petty tyranny of evil kings. Or perhaps the
good-aligned dragons suffer from madness or a curse that
turns them against even kindly realms. Again, this makes an
excellent focal point for a campaign. If even good dragons
have begun spreading death and destruction, the PCs will
want to figure out what went wrong and restore the natural
balance.
This model also allows more emphasis on draconic
creatures and adherents. Perhaps it is not true dragons, but
their offspring and worshipers, that pose a major threat. For
example, a clan of kobolds might fill its ranks with so many
half-dragons and dragonblooded warriors that it becomes a
mighty force of destruction. Normally, kobolds are considered
inconveniences at best, but with their draconic heritage
reawakened, they might conquer opposing tribes and eventually
seize the surrounding humanoid kingdoms. Rulers of
far-off lands might snicker when the first human city falls to
a kobold horde, but as the scaled threat expands, they would
have to take it seriously.
Similarly, even nondragon threats could be given a draconic
flavor. Groups of wild animals might follow draconic pack
leaders, bands of assassins could include sorcerers with the
Draconic Heritage feat or rogues with the Dragontouched
feat, and brigands might have dragonfire adepts among
their number. Other inhabitants of the campaign world
would have to consider how to defend against their ravages.
A kingdom might outlaw anyone with the slightest con-
CHAPTER 5
DRACONIC
CAMPAIGNS
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