Intelligent Things To Do With a Dragon Around

[DerVVulfman]

Trust me guys, I didn't come up with this.
I got this from a youtube video recounting pen-n-paper RPG stories.
Unfortunately, no names were attributed.
Spoilers for "Dungeon of the Mad Mage" campaign.

Intelligent Things To Do With a Dragon Around

We're down in Wyllowwood, and as we're exploring we come upon a young green dragon who cals himself Tearulai, in his lair. He'a a fairly calm fellow, though he reacts a bit slowly to things and almost seems like a child in some ways. Part of that may be because he's a young dragon. Part of that might also be "the freaking sword stuck in his head!"

It's a longsword, and its in his head "to the hilt!"

Our group, being the mostly-good bunch we are, decide to remove said sword from said head, with Tearulai's permission of course. We manage to do so, and the dragon reverts to its lawful evil self. We soon discover why, as Tearulai gives us the sword and our paladin Angela attunes to it.

The sword is sentient.

Its name is actually Tearulai, and its a sentient Sword of Sharpness.  The dragon's actual name is Valdemar, and it HATES Wyllow, the archdruid who maintains this forest level within the dungeon. And it tells use as much, telling us it will find and kill Wyllow for what she did to him, and that we have one chance to leave him alone or he'll kill us.

We did the intelligent thing and left.

Then we heard noises coming from the room a few minutes later. And so, we did the un-intelligent thing and went back to check on the dragon.

Our ranger Hadari opened the door, caught a poison breath to the face, and immediately closed the door like "No thanks, we're good" Unfortunately Valdemar wasn't having it. He went out the other door, picked up our other cleric Betheniel, and yeeted him into the woods.

At this point, we're like, we're not losing Betheniel again, we just brought him back like six sessions ago. Before this session, we'd been talking about Betheniel's Grave Domain Channel Divinity, Path to the Grave, and we'd discovered that the reason his player hadn't used it yet was she wasn't sure exactly what it did, because she didn't understand what vulnerability to damage was (this is her first campaign).

We'd decided we'd give it a try at some point if need be, and this looked like as good a time as any. So he uses Path to the Grave to curse Valdemar with vulnerability to all the damage from the next attack on him.

Torxina was next up. I said "Go big or go home" and launched a fifth-level Guiding Bolt, which... predictably, missed. I'd even said before I rolled, "Every time I use this, it either misses completely or it ends up being what kills the enemy." We were about thirty minutes into the session at the point, and I still had my once-per-session inspiration, which I'd normally save until later in the session. But my second roll was a Nat-19 for a total of 28 (We play and roll everything at advantage, and just take the left die total until we actually have advantage. It just makes things go faster).

I wanted this to go well, so I burned my inspiration and took the 28, then I rolled damage, plus my bonus from Radiant Soul (9, since we're ninth level)... 35 damage, doubled to 70.

We were all excited about the hit, and the DM said it took Valdemar to bloodied. But he didn't say anything about the next player going. I said that was the end of my turn, and he said, "I'm not done yet."

Cue the surprised "Huh?" from the table.

And then the DM said something we'd never heard him say before.

"I... normally don't have to do this, because normally players don't do enough damage. But you did more than half its maximum hit points in damage, and I used the Massive Damage rules against monsters. It failed its Constitution save, and I rolled a three for the roll table to see what effect it suffered.  You watch as Valdemar crumbles to the ground, unconscious but still breathing, with one failed death save."

I wish we had been playing in person, because I'm pretty sure all our faces had the same "what the hell just happened?" expression. Even over voice, the surprise of the party was readily apparent in the exclamations of "Did that just happen?", "What the hell?", "That's awesome", and the like.

The player playing our ranger simply said "Well, I think that was a successful test of that ability!"

And that's how we slew a young green dragon with one fifth-level spell.

Sadly, we ended up giving the sword back to Wyllow so she could revive Valdemar and shove the sword in his head again because having him there witht he sword in his head helped keep the balance of Wyllowwod's ecosystem, and she wasn't going to let us leave with it without a fight.  She wasn't evil, and we really didn't want to have to fight her.

[kyonides]

Dunno the rest of the guys here, but to me it sounds like there's a loophole in that sentient sword story.
Like why would IT give its permission to be ever removed if it'd end up going back to that dragon's head anyways?