Monster spotlight
Ancient Green Dragon
CR 22 gargantuan dragon
Your campfire gutters as every pine around the clearing bows at once, pressed flat by a wind from above. The birds stop singing. Through a gap in the canopy you glimpse scales the colour of wet moss sliding past, then a horned head lowers between the trunks. Its nostrils flare over your open packs of smoked pork and hard cheese. A warm, amused voice rolls out of it in perfect Common: 'You salt your meat well. Who taught you that, and what will you trade me for the rest?'
Quick hook. An ancient green dragon is circling overhead, drawn by the smell of the party's rations.
In the world. It lairs beneath the oldest stand of the forest, in a black pool fed by springs, where it can breathe as easily under the water as above it. It eats deer, bears and the occasional traveller, but what it truly hungers for is leverage: secrets, debts and servants who think the bargains were their idea. Near its territory, leaves yellow at the edges, songbirds fall silent, carcasses lie unmarked by teeth, and woodcutters speak warmly of a generous patron they have never seen.
How it fights. It talks first, learning names and weaknesses. When it strikes, it stays aloft and drops Noxious Miasma onto whoever clusters together, then sweeps Poison Breath across the survivors from above the treetops. A spellcaster who seems dangerous gets Mind Invasion, cast with a sneer about something the dragon overheard earlier. Anyone who closes in faces Multiattack, three Rend blows from a reach that ignores the undergrowth, and Pounce lets it reposition and tear at a fleeing target. Legendary Resistance shrugs off the spell meant to end it. If the fight turns, it dives into its pool and waits.
Running it
- It can fly: fight it somewhere with a low ceiling, or it will stay out of reach of anyone without a ranged attack.
- It takes Legendary Actions, so it acts between the party's turns. Give the players a second objective so they can't simply focus it down.
- Dragons fight from range and land only to finish off a single, isolated target.
Encounter ideas
- The ration thief
- A Young Green Dragon has been raiding the party's camp each night, clumsy and hungry. The ancient watches from above, curious whether its offspring can outwit them. Kill the youngster and the ancient attacks in grief and fury. Spare it, and the elder offers a bargain: tutor its child in human cunning for a season.
- A rival's tribute
- An Adult Green Dragon is quietly claiming the southern woods, and the ancient wants it humiliated rather than slain. It asks the party to carry a poisoned gift of salted meat to the rival's lair. Whatever the outcome, both dragons now know the party's names, and each will want them gone.
Best for. A solo threat for 4 characters of level 20–20, or one piece of a bigger fight. Found in: forest.
The writing in this drop is by AI (Claude), working from our hand-built tables. Creatures, numbers and rules come from the tables and the SRD, never from the AI. How we use AI