A dragon

 

Save vs dragon breath

For the first time in my DM-ing career, I think I'm gonna be able to use a dragon in a game! During last session, I rolled for a random encounter when the PCs were getting back to town from the Castle Bugbear (the dungeon they're currently exploring). It's a relatively safe area currently, so encounters only happen whenever I roll a 2 on 2d6. However, 3 to 5 means an omen or the spoor of an encounter. First I rolled a 3 with the 2d6 (spoor or omen), and then I rolled a 20 on the random encounter table of the region (which is a dragon), so I told the PCs something like: "When your halfway to town from the dungeon you suddenly hear a loud reptilian-sounding roar off in the distance..."

Just kidding. Instead of saying that I basically just said: "Oh shit! Dragon hahah. You guys hear a dragon's roar not very far away". I was pretty surprised and excited, obviously, and the players got pretty scared (as they rightly should be, considering the stats I rolled for the dragon! :S).

Then one of the players said "The dragon is probably going to eat that giant wounded bird in the castle's broken tower", which made perfect sense. So I decided that now there's a 1-in-8 chance that the dragon will be there the next few times they visit the dungeon. Looking forward to seeing how the situation develops.