The Dungeons and the Dragons of Dungeons & Dragons: Black Dragon Lairs

There are two aspects of Dungeons & Dragons history that I love to include as often as I can in my campaigns. I find dungeons so important to D&D that it’s rare I will run even short arcs without them. The iconic nature or sheer power that comes with introducing a dragon into the narrative and the reaction you get from players when they find out there are rumors of a dragon… To me, these separate are wonderful, but together make for the set piece that brings D&D to firing on all cylinders. Let’s explore the different D&D dragons and the lairs they might make in a world where dungeons are reality. Let’s start out with one of my favorites: the Black Dragon.

Introducing a dragon

I’m not one for padding or regurgitating published content, so if you need some in-the-weeds background and information on black dragons, check out the fifth edition D&D Monster Manual on page 89. Among the chromatic dragons, black dragons are easy to use due to their lower challenge rating and proclivity to live in more varied environments than many of the other dragons. Their insidious nature and often having many servants means they are among one of the easiest creatures to write a dungeon for.

When writing black dragon servants, I tend towards kobolds due to how fun a kobold dungeon can be to craft, but you could also use lizardfolk and hell, por que no los dos if you’re feeling froggy. If you’re having trouble deciding, try using kobolds for a young black dragon and lizardfolk for an adult or ancient black dragon. I’ve use kobolds for adult, but they do require a little bit of help with a tier 3 party.

With all of these legendary monsters in D&D, the easiest place to find inspiration is the lairs and lair actions. I really love the idea that a black dragon in his lair is much more terrifying than if you found one just walking down the road. The acid pools, fog and thick plant growth can really put the players on edge as they approach the dragon’s territory.

Finding ways to build up and raise the tension around the idea of the dragon can really make that final battle exciting. Black dragons are intelligent, but not so much that they can’t be deceived, especially with their evil and superior nature. A younger black dragon might stalk the party and torment them with fleeting images in the fog or sending servants to harry the party as they approach the lair, trying to weaken them before the final battle on his turf. Now that the party is properly paranoid and tired, what happens once they find that yawning cave opening?

The black dragon lair

I like to think black dragons are paranoid and to combat this, will find ways to keep anyone from sneaking up on them. Whether it be adventures, other dragons or even wild animals wandering in, the black dragon has no intention of letting anything get the jump. Imagine a black dragon with a cult following of kobolds, their scales turned black, their minds grown sinister. They not only venerate this dragon, but care for his varied pets. The dragon has hand selected, collected and raised weird monsters out of a curiosity of dangerous creatures, using them as guard pets and natural alarm systems. Shambling mounds living outside the cave mouths to consume any wandering beasts makes for a great first encounter. Cutting through them can consume a few of the party’s resources and be a unique encounter as martial characters are being engulfed, while the casters might accidentally help or heal the strange plant creatures.

Once the characters enter into the first chamber, they might have to deal with doombats, shrieking and yipping loudly while they attack. The sounds might alarm the lair denizens and even break the focus of the spellcasters in the party. The chamber’s defenders being airborne allows the kobolds to set bear traps all around, so a party kept busy with the screaming foes might step into a trap. The lair tunnels should be littered with all manner of traps and small tunnels for the servants to move around quickly and secretly from chamber to chamber. Pit traps, murder holes and the heavy stones known as skullpoppers throughout the dungeon.

Another major aspect of the black dragon often overlooked is its amphibious nature. To think a creature that can live comfortably in the water, land and air wouldn’t use all of those to its advantage is silly. It might actively flood all caverns that lead directly into his hoard chamber and fill them with terribly vicious subterranean aquatic wildlife to keep interlopers who make it through the minions at bay. Having a party going through all of these traps just to find they have to go through a monster-filled watery maze can build the fear and hate for this black dragon.

Now, haggard and looking like a group of drowned rats, the party has finally made it to the dragon. While his lair didn’t stop them, it did weaken and tire them allowing for, what he presumes, an easy fight with the added benefit of magic item delivery. The dragon may try to intimidate the party into laying down their treasures and it’ll let them leave alive. This is a terrible lie and it plans to kill them the moment they throw down their gear.

The party will never do this, but the dragon is prepared, saving his most powerful and well-trained servants for this encounter. At the proper signal, they emerge now showing this is not going to be a singular foe. Once the battle begins, the dragon has selected a very high ceiling chamber with pools of acidic water everywhere, allowing him to pick off the weakest members of the party one by one, flying them to the ceiling and tearing them apart, only descending to cover them in acid and pick up a new target. The party is busy dealing with kobold warriors and maybe even a couple of guard drakes, all while magical darkness, buzzing insects and the caustic water itself strikes out at the party.

Dragons no longer having innate spellcasting in 5E D&D (unless you use those easy-to-incorporate variant rules), but this doesn’t mean they aren’t aware and prepared for spellcasters. A black dragon might plant groves of witchgrass with the natural ability to dispel arcane magic. Many of the spellcasters in the party might find their spells misfiring or completely ineffective. Despite all of it, once the party turns the tides and have hurt the dragon, he can either try to trick them into letting him live with promises of treasure, or simply flee into a hidden passage in one of the acidic pools or breaking through a thin ceiling to fly to safety.

What do you think? How do you feel about dungeons and dragons in your Dungeons & Dragons games? Have you used a black dragon or faced against one? How was it? Let me know in the comments below.

Like this?

Did you enjoy this post? Nerdarchy’s awesome volunteer staff of writers and editors do their best to create engaging, useful and fun content to share. If you like what you find here on our site, consider patronizing us in a good way through Patreon.

On top of reaching our goal of paying our writers, pledging gets you exclusive monthly content for your D&D game, opportunities to game with Nerdarchy, access to patron-only channels on our Discord and more.

With your generous support we’ll continue to create quality content between our YouTube channel and blog, invest in equipment to increase recording quality, and keep creating original publications and products to enhance your tabletop roleplaying and gaming experience.

Thank you for your consideration and as always, until next time stay nerdy!

[amazon_link asins=’B015KNBR76,0786966262,0786966246′ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’nerdarchy-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’2c3ed327-780e-11e8-9164-3365e63c0f02′]