Black Dragons D&D | Let's Build an Encounter | D&D Quest Ideas

Hey everyone! It's good to be back.

Since this channel is starting to grow at a pretty decent rate, I wanted to take a step back and reevaluate my videos. I took a couple of weeks to get some artwork done and plan ways to make my video more dynamic, useful, and enjoyable overall. I also took some time to plan out a new series of player-specific videos (which I'll be launching soon).

As you can see, this video is edited pretty differently than the previous ones and I'll be making further changes over the next few weeks to make sure that my videos are the best they can be. Let me know if you like the changes!

Thanks to everyone so far for how the channel has been growing. I'll now be back to weekly uploads, and hopefully, not stopping for a while. Cheers!

Planning for my group I GM for, I plan to have a Lich (brother of one of my PCs)😁 make a deal with an ancient Black Dragon and share its lair in exchange for teaching the dragon magic, spells, gold, treasure, zombie minions, guards, ect.

Black dragons were always my favorite dragons so I am overjoyed you made this

The funny thing is that my party of level 3 survived an encounter. 3 out of the 5 members survived on 1 HP and rolled a nat 20 for saving thing throw

Great stuff. Thanks.

Are you by chance planning to create encounters for the greatwyrms? I'm curious to see how you could make them all unique, as the official statblock for them are just copy-paste of the same greatwyrm with no unique features to speak of.

I love the dragons in dnd mixing of good and evil especially when done well thanks you for video
Root buff up (you can decide) strength, an life buff, regenerative healing, block wild sence, evil magic power up and speed, Invisible, teleport or natural armour plating buff, recharge power/fear abilities and add some so extra against party to
Root is toxic to humanoids and it could make acid to slowly kill the victim heal spells can't stop damage or drains them spell/objects or helping black dragon recharge/heal/buff up regenerative healing factor not party etc
Root buff up could gives dragons wishes eg foresight or mind powers can see party own battles planned so they could plan ahead
Could used the spells any class used disarmed is and recharge they own strength & abilities to turn off counters justs when need used spells/element/divine power of eg druds abilities to power up/upgrade this dragon so evil smart

the black dragon try to act like a friend then back stab anyone in the party

Loved the video, hope you made more. Have a like and a sub. Thanks for the content.

Black dragons are my favorite chromatic dragon.
Even though the monster manual states that’s their the most evil but one of the weaker dragons 🐉
That sentence made me sad 😔

What softwares do you use to make these videos

thanks man, i'll be using this soon!!!

I am definitely putting this dragon in my crossover story imagine a fight between it, Inuyasha.

+ 12 deception !? Freaking great

I will adapt this to a Green Dragon encounter for my campaign with the following tweaks:

It's for a group of 4-5 15th level characters.
The Lair is an Adult green Dragon and a CR14 or so male night hag (male is homebrew, it's an evil wither from one of the PC's backstory, that cursed it's home forest to gain power and drains the life out of it). The Duo is sharing their lair to gain synergy of their hobbies of messing with people.
There also are two or three green dragon wyrmlings and a from time to time visiting male adult green dragon which is the father. That one is missing the one leg.

The village people will send them to a unicorn in the woods, which is the shapechaging male green dragon, so the unicorn is missing one leg. It tells the same story of the dragon's weakness of poison instead of acid and send's the group on a fetchquest for some venomous plants and to deal with a group of kobolds, that fell from the female dragon's grace. On that quest one of the wyrmlings might show up shortly and then flee.

When the group finally makes it to the lair, they offer the poisoned meat to the dragon to let them peacefully continue to the witcher, which it then accepts and takes off to eat it. But the wyrmlings in their unwise youth intervene and try to stop the group from progressing, not knowing the meat distraction was a trap all along. When the wyrmlings are inevitably losing, the male adult swipes in, obviously missing one leg and taking the wyrmlings to safe ground in his own a far away lair, removing them from the equation. Then mama dragon is real pissed and attacks with the hag.

It's supposed to be really hard and the hag has some artifact mcguffin for the group as well, which led them to the forest in the first place.

black dragons remind me of the barons from dune super evil rulers that love to torture things for fun there also part of house harkonnen black dragon would fit well with house harkonnens armies of evil

I came here to bolster my plans for a Black Dragon encounter I am planning. I am definitely adding the shapeshifting idea and shambling mounds in the encounter, as well as fog, poisoned water and vines among the aesthetic. So my campaign revolves around the party seeking out an “awakened” Nether Scroll somewhere on the Netheril Plains. The party seeks out the ruins of the once floating cities and must deal with the new inhabitants. One of these ruins fell in a swamp in the southern region of the Netheril Plains where Lizardfolk have battled Troglodytes for decades in an ongoing turf war. Sprinkle in a few Slaadi among the Troglodytes to throw off the party’s scent of a draconic threat. The party will encounter a forgotten sentient species that’s mostly friendly, caught between the two factions: the grung. The grung help the party exploit a weakness in the ruins the Lizardfolk inhabit, bringing further collapse to the ruins and allowing the Troglodytes an advantage to charge and thin the numbers on both sides in a cold bloody battle.

As a reward for their help, the grung promise their “greatest treasures” to the party. They lead the party to the grungs sacred nesting grounds, hidden from all others in a small cave system in a sinkhole. The back of the cave is the Black Dragon Lair and treasure horde, and one of the Grung guides, is the dragon itself. The dragon helped the Lizardfolk gain a foothold in the ruins and also brought Slaadi to the Troglodytes. His grand scheme of watching them both tear each other apart has come to fruition and now his ambitions require warm blood in a ritual to taint and corrupt the nesting grounds of the grung to mutate the next generations of tadpoles into something truly hideous. The water falling into the sinkhole gives plenty of wading pools in the cave for the Black Dragon to use for his Lair Action. Vine and vegetation growth can be summoned into Shambling Mounds. Perhaps a few corrupted grung mutates already exist and spring forth when initiative is rolled. Fleeing will be near impossible for the party. I hope I’m playing up the vile and sinister nature of the Black Dragon well enough

Trinston was here. .

So, Yeah, basically had my black dragon turn a literal town into what can only be described as "The Zone" from STALKER. There were a paltry 5 survivors who had gone mad from the sight of the crazed beast. The party had eventually met with a bunch of hideous, Mangled undead which, terrifyingly enough, the black dragon used as catalysts, conductors for his spells. Eventually, they met a knight, seemingly uncorrupted, who offered to fight the dragon with them so as to avenge his fallen comrades whose barely dead, mangled, perpetually Anguished forms were crucified and used as turrets. Still trying to think of ways for my black dragon to one up such fuckery in the actual encounter.

One way I love to boost black dragon encounters is for the PCs to find a survivor before they reach the lair proper. In my world, Black dragons have a hidden ability to sting victims with a necrotic poison that makes their limbs rot while not letting them die, and black dragons use this to pickle living victims trapped in their lair. This NPC is one such victim, with one arm already eaten by the dragon and the other is necrotic beyond healing. Miraculously he's survived (allowed to escape) because the dragon wanted to let him loose and spread despair to the countryside. He tells the PCs of the horrors of the dragon's lair before dieing to the fever in about an hour.
After the PCs finally kill this dragon, they find a half-flooded prison cell in its lair with the remains of multiple other humanoids in the foul water - each body missing 2-3 limbs. The dragon's hoard contains personal effects from these victims - lockets and wedding rings and the like.

The root is the last spell component needed to mix with the dragons acid breath to create jellies. Phlegmy acid dragon jellies

I totally did the pop a dragon outta nowhere. I twisted a Adult Red into a Pryoclastic dragon. A lot of fights have only bothered like... one or two of them mildly. This dragon had Disintegrate as a breath weapon. The Monk AND barbarian where sweating bullets after the dragon popped outta the ground and blasted them for 80 damage. Never got his breath weapon back, but it was the most fun most my party had.... My fighter spent the entre fight frightened

I'd say the dastardly deception is more of a green dragon move while a black dragon would favor just straight up sadism but still very well thought out encounter. PArticuarly like the missing arm reveal because it softly builds a backstory to the dragon.

I feel like another spin you could have for the root is it doe nothing and he sent them out to just spice up his next meal for him followed by him eating acting like its negatively affecting him then possibly playing dead or weak for a moment before dropping the act and taunting them for "being so gullible" before trying to kill them

Please do an encounter for each chromatic type!! This is amazing!

Running a short adventure (maybe 2 sessions) of a young black dragon who's new lair is poisoning the nearby water supply of an elven town. I love the idea of her purposely leading people to their deaths with a fake quest. Since there's a big market for traveling adventurers in my setting, she won't have a lack of volunteers.

I recently discovered HNS, your video are top 1% of dnd vids, I hope that you get the following that you deserve

The villagers are strapped to the dragons shoulders, neck, and flanks. If the players don't want to accidentally hit them, they have to hit AC 2 higher.

Okay so being the sadistic f*** that I am I would have the weakest member of the party have a vision of their own death or how the dragon wants to kill them and no one else but the victim can see it like if they were going through the swamp and to the victim of the illusion a fog rolls in and they hear someone crying for help they rushed towards the sound to see a shadow person impaled on one of those tree spikes you see in the swamps the victim will walk closer as the quiet Weeps of this new person cough up their blood while trying to cry out about how they're friends left them how they were abandoned and as the victim gets closer to the person on the tree trunk The Voice gets more garbled as your first intended victim sees the person as them before they melt away creating a splash that pushes away the fog and reveals that your intended victim is still right next to the party but no one else saw the vision but them I would continue like this showing each player how I the black dragon intended to kill them as I continuously change the trees the way green Dragon would in order to keep that Adventure party in my swamp lost

It could be played as the root really is toxic, but because it's growing within the affected area of the dragon's domain, and dragons have insane constitution & long lives, it's also something they've long been aware of and developed a tolerance to, so eating it won't effect them, but chewing it up & mixing the root's toxins in with it's saliva will allow it to spit the poison back out.
That could be done either by adding a Con ST against being poisoned on taking damage from the dragon's acidic breath weapon (especially if that action is being played as the dragon spitting/ spewing out a corrosive liquid), or by giving them an alternate "breath weapon" type attack, probably best as either a ranged single target attack or a smaller aoe than their true breath weapon, that deals poison damage, less than their acid breath would deal, but has that same ST to resist being afflicted with a more potent poison with adverse effects beyond the basic "poisoned" condition.

In the case of the latter, it could be appropriate to restrict their usage of it, such as by making it only be usable once or twice before they've spat all the poison out, so the action wouldn't get a recharge count, and/ or by making it so the dragon can't use their acid breath while they have the poison in their mouth. That could be explained as their acid actually counteracting the poison, similar to mixing an acid with a base. It'd mean that using their breath weapon would neutralise the toxin mixed into their spit, and would possibly also weaken the effectiveness of the first acid breath they let out after chewing up the root (which means giving the dragon the root does have at least one small upside for the party going on the detour).
It's not that they can't use their acid, it's that using the it would cost them the ability to continue using the poison, and while the acid certainly is a horrifically painful way to die, the poison is less overtly lethal while being comparably painful and debilitating, and as Black Dragons are so sadistic and malicious, they want to keep using to poison as long as they can get away with against the party so as to cripple them without killing them, just to drag out their suffering, and by means provided to it by the party's own efforts no less.

In the event of the party slaying the dragon, this will also be a potentially decent way to set up an optional "reward" the party can walk away with; An amount of the dragon's acid could be harvested from their corpse, which if the party went to the effort of getting the root, through a combination of gameplay hints and egotistical gloating from the dragon, they would know is not just a powerful acid but also can serve as an antidote to that plant's toxins, though probably not a safe one for anything other than that dragon without a fair amount of dilution first. Depending on the setup to the encounter, finding a cure to that poison could be used as the reason they're going in the dragon's territory in the first place, and could be what tips them off to trying to use it against the dragon if your players are the sort that'd be quick to distrust the hunter & you don't want to risk the encounter turning into an early combat.

oh this is great, I've definitely gotta do something like this in my game

You could make the root grow back his missing limb. He sent them on the root mission to make himself whole again

Borrowing this. Will keep you updated on results

Your encounters are awesome! How do you not have 100k subs yet this content is what all DM's need

i love this ... like a lot, i unfortunately cannot share it around incase i decide to steal any of these fantastic encounter details .... but you have found yourself a dedicated subscriber for certain

Really enjoying your videos. Keep up the good work!

Most high quality sleeper channel, man you deserve hundreds of thousands of subs

Oh man!
I'm so dumb sometimes.
Use the players to power boost the dragon.
I should have thought of that!

I'm currently running a campaign with an ancient black dragon as the BBEG. (the players don't know that yet)
So far, I've presented them with a number of choices and up till now, every choice they've made has been EXACTLY what that dragon wanted them to choose. (Except one...minor inconvenience...easily "fixed.")
So his "grand plan" is going off without a hitch at the moment. Hell, the PCs are helping him do it! They just don't know it!
My only "hang up" was: since they won't be confronting him directly until high level, I was kicking around ideas to make him a bit tougher than the book version. Getting the PCs to do it? Well...duh! Seems so obvious now that you said it!
He's been using them the whole campaign.
Why wouldn't he use them for that too?!
LOL
LOVE IT!

You my friend have just earned another subscriber. Excellent encounter building; maybe even the best I’ve seen.

Excellent video!

Subbed. Black Dragon is the best dragon. Change my mind.

This is a great encounter. I'd love to see a banderhobb encounter. I love how they are able to reduce a character to 0 hp without killing them. It seems like it could be great for a scary encounter for a low level party with a low chance of tpk. I've been trying to figure out an idea for the group I run but I'm not entirely sold on any of my ideas.

What is this? a D&D channel that does not suck? :O Those are rare. Good job!

I really like this series of video. As a DM, I frequently build my campain around monsters I find cool. You have very nice ideas and nice twists as your plots unfold. If I may ask for you next video, could you make an exemple based on a good character, like an angel or a benevolent ghost?

Ah yes, another encounter that made me wish my parties weren't only level 4-5 yet

LOVE the upgrades to your presentation!

Sometimes the best part of a good meal is its presentation and your tips on building the impending dread are fantastic and will really make the moment they come face to face with the dragon have so much more weight to it!

One piece of advice would be to make sure your reason for telling the party a black dragon is vulnerable to acid is really good. That's a very hard sell to anyone with some experience with D&D.

Having multiple objectives in that fight like saving civilians is always a really nice touch. Does the party try and spring them from whatever cage they are in? Are they safer there or trying to run away?

Spicing it up even more... adding black dragon wyrmlings around! Maybe they will feed on the civilians and really pressure the player to save them. If they do, does the dragon momma take that personally? Are they sadistic enough to not care about their own offspring? This could add a very interesting dynamic to this already amazing encounter! GREAT job as always!!

If I may, the root could give the black dragon an attack similar to the orange dragon, a liquid that explodes when exposed to air a few seconds after he spits it out

You are way to good to have this few subs

How about some encounters for genies?