On Friday night, I was playing 2nd Edition D&D. The party came out of a cave, and we were ambushed by a red dragon who was cruising through the neighborhood. It nearly wiped us out in the first round with its fiery breath, putting most of us in the single-digit hit point range (translated from geek speak: It almost killed us), and killing the cleric’s NPC wife. The dragon then stayed aloft, out of shortbow and sling range (but not Thrown Rock range, apparently; Belt of Giant Strength FTW) because there was no real reason for it to try and engage us in melee, as apparently only one of us could fly, that being Dale the cleric (who had been given wings sometime last year while we were losing our minds trying to lift the curse of Castle Amber).
So Dale streaks up towards it while the rest of us tried to figure out what to do. The wizard waited, hoping it would come low enough to use cone of cold on it. My character is a druid. Druids in 2nd ed are a type of priest (in later editions they come into their own), and they have a very narrow spell selection. Because of this, I often tend not to have offensive spells in my repertoire, instead opting for healing and utility spells like stone shape or speak with animals. And, as I mentioned, it was out of bowshot. So I had a few choices: try and hide, heal someone for a little bit, or come up with a Cunning Plan™.
I opted for the latter.
Using the druid power now known as wild shape, I turned into a small bird and flew past the dragon, over its wing. Then, I changed into an elk, whcih is at the upper limit of the size of animal that a druid can shapeshift into, but still weighs somewhere around 1,300 pounds, and let gravity do the rest. (I didn’t expect to survive, but it was either that or let the dragon kill us all, as far as I could see.)
THAC0 is whacko if you're a teen.
And gravity did its job; I wish I could say the same. I think that the DM had me roll to hit its regular AC, which I would probably not have been able to do even with the bonus she gave me for velocity. I sailed past it with an elkish bleat of dismay, and pancaked. Fortunately, the wizard remembered that he had lightning bolt in his repertoire, and the fighters were able to chuck some more rocks at it, and we were able to defeat it.
I was Googling and trying to find pictures of the red dragon from the 2nd Ed. Monstrous Compendium, but could not find one. I really wanted to draw that beard that I remember them having from my youth, but I couldn’t get a reference. So, I had to draw a red dragon from 3.5.
I didn’t draw it that well, mind you, but I drew it.
