A Subdued Reaction

 

As I mentioned in the previous post, dragon subdual rules are an interesting little nugget buried amid the monster listings which rarely comes up in my games, but after talking about dragons in general, I felt it deserved a closer look.

Essentially, PCs can choose to beat a dragon up instead of killing it. Damaging spells and ranged weapons cannot be used to subdue -though I might allow thrown rocks, but not sling stones or bullets. Rather, blunt weapons like clubs or maces are used. A sword can be turned to hit with the “flat of the blade” for similar results. The battered creature, being intelligent enough to understand that the party could have killed it, but they chose not to. Therefore, to save its skin, the dragon surrenders.

The “subdued” beast doesn’t suddenly feel affection for the PCs. It is a prisoner. It will try to escape or kill its captors if it sees a reasonable chance. By the book, such a creature cannot be kept for any length of time and must be sold off as soon as reasonably possible. Players could see tens of thousands of gold for a live, subdued dragon sale (up to1k/hp). The AD&D (1st edition) rules in the Monster Manual for subduing dragons and how subdual damage works are far more complex (big surprise!) but follow the same general concepts.

So to start with, why have these rules at all? I can’t speak with authority on what the gang in Lake Geneva were thinking, but I’m guessing that some player wanted to try and capture a dragon for one reason or another and a set of rules was worked up to cover the situation. It would seem the DM that came up with this ruling wasn’t wild about a pet dragon sticking with the party, so he stipulated the selling of the creature was necessary. Given that you pretty much have to get up close and in melee with the beast to subdue it, and that your non-lethal damage does NOT reduce how many points of damage their breath weapon does, it seems a pretty fair level of difficulty for the players to pull it off.

So if you can’t keep Ol’ Scaly to ride around like you’re on Pern, and you would have gotten the hoard anyway if you’d just killed it, why go to the trouble? I can think of three possible reasons:

1) The dragon knows something or can do something for the PCs that they don’t know/cant’t do themselves.

2) The dragon serves a role in the larger world and killing it might cause downstream effects the PCs wish to avoid, but they still want the loot or to discourage the dragon from doing something. Maybe it was raiding a nearby town’s livestock, but the dragon’s presence keeps other monsters from overrunning the region. In that case, selling it off might not work, but I imagine releasing the creature once the PCs’ goals are met could be a viable option.

3) Number-crunching PCs. Defeating your average, BTB dragon has about 40hp and is worth about 1700-1800xp. An average hoard has a value of 50K. Referees may or may not award full XP for defeating a foe without killing it (I do) or for the gold earned by selling such a beast (again, I would) but selling the subdued dragon turns approximately 50,000gp (and XP) into up to 90,000! Definitely worth considering.

It’s probably fair to say that not every campaign has an economy that supports many “FS: Subdued Dragon. 1000gp/hp OBO” ads, but it IS something that is assumed to exist in your classic BX world, at least potentially. PCs might not be able to turn dragon resale into a sustainable business, but the idea that there’s one rich person out there that has a use for such a thing is not unheard of. Maybe a chaotic wizard has built his tower and wants to stick the dragon down in the dungeon below it as a guardian monster. He’ll send prisoners down for snacks and let it hoard some loot from any intruders it kills. A recently beat up and robbed dragon might actually be cool with an arrangement like that (at least for a time).

For myself, I’m not 100% on-board with the “must be sold” part of the language. While I wouldn’t make a subdued dragon into a “loyal beast” for the party, like a horse or some such (at least not without some powerful magic), I could see a situation where the players might make a deal with the dragon in exchange for letting it go later. Or where the buyer might have the cash, but it turns out he wants the dragon for alchemical ingredients and plans on killing it and cutting it up for parts. Some PCs might balk at such treatment of an intelligent being and want to find another solution. The dragon might be well-motivated to make such a deal to avoid the chopping block, or see this is an excuse to try and break free. There are many interesting situations to be created from such a scenario beyond a payday for the characters.

The PCs might not even be the ones with the dragon! Imagine them running into an NPC party on the road that’s hauling a bunch of dragon treasure back to town with a blue dragon in a cage. What if the NPC party is cool with the dragon being vivisected by some crazy mage as long as they get paid. What if the dragon could speak and begs the PCs for help (Remember Blues are neutral, not chaotic, in BX)? Now THAT could be a really interesting encounter!

I’ve rambled on a fair bit here, so I’ll wrap up. Is the inclusion of subdual rules sort of… weird? Maybe. But to me, it’s a weirdness very consistent with the Swords & Sorcery aspect of BX and fits really well into the assumed nature of BX settings. It’s also a rule that simply is not likely to come up terribly often. Not unless dragons are way more common in your games than mine. Not only do the PCs need to encounter a dragon either as part of a dungeon, randomly, or seeking one out on purpose; then they’d need to decide to forgo most spells and ranged attacks, then they’d need to defeat it with nonlethal damage, and THEN they need to get it someplace with a buyer to sell it to. If the party doesn’t have a buyer lined up ahead of time, what do you do with the dragon while you are asking around town? Granted, the party could realize quite a windfall from this, both in wealth and XP, so be prepared for the fallout from that. Most parties that could pull this off are probably far enough from low levels that it won’t disrupt things TOO much for each of them to gain 15-20K xp and similar amounts of treasure. Frankly, the boost to their reputations might be a bigger deal depending on how the society in your game views such things.

It’s a complicated enough endeavor that I wouldn’t spend a lot of time or energy worrying about the rules being balanced or more detailed or not. Chances are if your players are about to try subduing a dragon, you’ll have some heads up to review the rules and make your choices. For myself, I think the rules as-is are a pretty good springboard for this kind of situation to get introduced into a campaign. If dragons are at all a big deal in your setting, subduing a dragon and the aftermath of it could easily give you fodder for the next several sessions.