Dragon! Rogue Dragon Over the Northern Marches

The troops watched in awe and fear as the enormous beast flew lazily in the sky.

“What is it doing, Caster?” asked the General. “What is it waiting for?”

The old magic-user watched in silence and thought back to his younger days. Far too many springs to count, he thought. Back to when he had seen his first dragon. He shook his head and replied.

“Who can say? Dragons do what they want, when they want, and none can figure them out.”

“Can we kill it?” asked the General.

“Perhaps we can; or perhaps it will tire of the fight and fly away. Or perhaps we will all perish. Better to prepare for the worse and hope for the best.”

Gracefully the dragon made a wide, sweeping arc, towards the army as it had before. But this time it was different. This time its massive wings beat fast and it began to pick up speed.

The fight was on!

When you’re facing a dragon, best played as a Non-Player, we need to determine how it will act. Will it melee or fly over your army attacking with its breath? When will it leave, if ever? Here’s how we do it:

Dragons in RRtK

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Here's what happened:

Each activation I rolled on the NP Dragon Test to see what the dragon would do. It continued to fly over the Tropilium line breathing fire and death on units at random. As long as there are more units than the Rep of the dragon it will  fly over, breathing fire, and weakening the enemy. Until there are less units than the Dragon Rep or...

It rolls three or more "ones" on the NP Dragon Test. Then it acts as if it has more Rep than enemy units and attacks the opposing unit with the highest Rep, the leader. It did, so it attacked. The first round of melee was a draw and more Tropilium units surrounded the dragon, who left after taking 3 hits.

After a few more rounds of fire breathing it rolled three ones again and went back to the attack, eventually chasing off the leader and routing off quite a few opposing units.

But for each hit the dragon takes that's one less d6 it rolls on the test. It rolled zero successes (a score of 1, 2 or 3) and that means the dragon flies off. This meant that the few battered units left on the field could claim a victory.

My guess is that if the dragon had stuck around for two more turns it would have won.

I like this new procedure with the NP Dragon Test as it allows for the dragon to behave in a Non-Player way. I realized this was necessary because if I had played the dragon there wouldn't be much of a battle. AC 8 meant few hits from missile fire, if any and I would spend the whole time flying over and breathing fire on the units until they all routed.