How to Fight a Dragon

Dragons are pretty much indestructible, save killing one via pure luck (Bard vs. Smaug). If dragons existed in an otherwise low fantasy world and were at the top of the food chain, how would non-magical humans fight them?

Impossible to kill is... subjective. Dragons have various weakpoints, unlike in a High Fantasy realm where you could have your resident Mage bomb em a Dragon could be struck down with a fatal blow to the heart where their soft underbelly lies. Or blinded with the use of arrows.

For that matter, a catapult might do the trick if you launch something hard enough (like, say, a giant boulder). If you believe their scales are just too resilient for weaponry, you could try poisoning their choice of food.

Or let yourself get eaten and go to town on it's insides.

You'd have to negate the mobility advantage. Does the dragon have the traditional cavern lair? Fight it in there. Yes, it's the dragon's home ground. Yes, you'd be advancing into whatever nasty breath weapon your wyrm has. But that's still better than having it fly out of reach while launching strafing attacks. Alternatively you can try nets to try to keep it on the ground. One story I've read actually made use of kites as "barrage balloons" of sorts...lots of ropes up in the air, dragon flew into it, got entangled and downed.

You don't even need to get through the scales. The wings of a dragon are nothing but a thin membrane hanging on fragile finger bones. You only need a couple of arrows (or a single catapult projectile) to pierce the membrane, and the dragon falls from the sky, hitting the ground with all of its weight.

But admitted, on the ground it's a wholly different scenario. Basically, if catapults and ballistas are the most advanced ranged weapons in your setting and there is no strong magic, your best bet would be to lure the dragon into some kind of a trap (as Matt already said).

edited 12th Mar '15 3:07:22 PM by Paradisesnake

Anti-aircraft guns work well enough in my setting. Since I'm guessing your society can't just fill the skies with explosives, they could certainly fill the skies with fuckhuge high velocity ballista bolts. If you're dealing with an airborne target like that and don't have access to SAM sites or the like, then pure volume of munitions is your friend.

Fantasy setting dude. Not "Gate Thus the JSDF fought there"

But a lot of heavy rocks may help.

I would like to note that "dragons being all but indestructible" is not true in all, or even most, fantasy settings. Sure you have your massively overpowered dragons that are roughly the size of Godzilla, but you also have your much smaller, less powerful dragons, the size of an elephant or smaller. The rules for fighting Glaurung are not the same as the rules for fighting Kazul. So I suppose my request of the OP is describe your dragon to us.

How I intelligent are they? And what "alignment". Both of those things make a huge difference.

If they have an alignment. They could just as easily be a force of nature in their own right. It is really up to the depiction of the dragon.

It really is going to depend on which depiction of dragon's you go with.

It might be easier to give an example with some detail of which depiction of dragon you are referring to.

edited 13th Mar '15 3:45:53 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Thank you for the suggestions, and yeah I should elaborate on my dragons a bit more.

Dragons in My world are a force of nature with no real alignment (unless eat anything in sight counts as chaotic evil). They are (for now) very large western-style dragons with a huge wingspan and a material akin to limpet teeth as scales. It can breathe fire but can only use it sparingly.

They used to be smaller and live in the mountains but as they evolved and became bigger they exhausted their food sources and flew to lower climes, treating humans and livestock as food now

So, they're not very smart? Kind of like big flying sharks? Build a dummy villiage with a sacrificial cow filled with poison and broken glass.

Depends on the kind of force opposing them. Lone villages will probably just move away (or starve), organized polities will organize hunts for them, depending on the tech level. The tethered goat approach to tiger hunting would probably apply here as well, suitably adapted for a battery of ballistae or so.

In one novel I wrote, the Wizards' Guild tried to kill the dragon and when that failed, magicked up a group of heroes to kill it in its cave. Of course the dragon in question was under control of a demon lord, so I don't know how applicable that is here.

Dragons tend to be categorized in two grades, lesser and greater. Lesser dragons tend to be the size of a rhino (wings folded) and weigh as much as a horse. It's risky to face them since they've got scales like half inch thick steel plate and magic on par with modern artillery pieces. A team of specialists can sometimes kill a lesser dragon but it's considered the paradigm of skill to face even a lesser dragon and live.

General tactics for facing a lesser dragon varies a great deal depending on what's on hand. A lesser dragon's fire breath usually has a range of only a dozen yards or so so general tactics is to attack the dragon as it's making a run and try to force it down. After that it's a matter of wolfpack tactics going for the weakpoints in the scales. It should be noted that even lesser dragons are as smart as any mortal race and, when not under the sway of their overpowering instincts, they can be just as clever as any human.

Greater dragons don't even flinch to anything less than a small army and even then it's assumed you'll loose a small army worth of men if you challenge one. There are only 6 great nations on Gaia because only a great nation can afford to face down a dragon more than once a generation. It's scales are like castle walls and breath can lay waste to entire towns from five stories up. In general a greater dragon weighs as much as a naval ship but there aren't any limits to their size.

Standard doctrine to face a greater dragon is to either face it in it's lair or to dispel it's flight magics. As a rule, greater dragons are too big for the aerodynamic profile the lesser dragons use (which is similar to a pterosaur assisted by magic and updrafts). In fact, greater dragons are so big that by rights they can't fly at all so they cheat and use magic. Teams of mages can dispel this magic and force a greater dragon down. After that, martial adepts (magical martial artists) have to carve through the scales to the dragon's vitals.

Most nations prefer to negociate with greater dragons, keeping their capacity to kill dragons as a bargaining chip. Every so often you'll see a huge ass dragon approaching a capital city with an olive tree in claw.

The part that caught my attention in OP's post was that this was a low-fantasy world. Magic is right out. So I suppose it'll be similar to real life elephant or other megabeast hunting, with the added twist that the prey can fly; that means somehow neutralizing the flight advantage is vital. See tactics from bird poachers.

Wait till the dragon lands, then throw a metal net over it (see Shrek and Maleficent). Then kill it at your leisure. Or cut out the middle man and drop boulders on it. Pouring molten metal or hot oil over it would also work. Baiting it to land with a farm animal (or virgin sacrifice, depending on the culture) would help with this plan.

Cannons might also work, though medeval cannons are typically hard to aim, especially aim well enough to hit a flying target.

Flurries of arrows might do the trick, depending on toughness of scales. May help if arrows are on fire.

If you want your guy to be truly badass, wait till it lands, then attack it with a sword.

edited 26th Mar '15 6:58:50 AM by washington213

Lighting an arrow on fire doesn't necessarily make it any more directly lethal, quite the opposite in fact (the extra bulk from whatever you're using as your incendiary payload messes up the aerodynamics quite a bit, resulting in significantly reduced impact energy at longer ranges). Fire arrows can cause significant secondary damage due to fires going out of control, but in terms of the primary effect they're not exactly competitive.

That's not even taking into account that fire immunity is pretty much the Required Secondary Power for anything that breathes fire :P.

That said...boulders would work, if you can lure the dragon into a narrow valley or canyon. Depending on how much magic there is in their anatomy they could be very slow to lift off again, so an old-fashioned avalanche might take one out.

If you can get water. Water that shit. Find a way to get a dragon underwater, drown it.

Catapults wouldn't work, they're not terribly accurate and pretty much impossible to re-aim quickly. Arrows won't be much use either : they (presumably) can't go through the scales, and poking holes in the wings won't affect the dragon much (unless you damage them to the point they rip apart). Your best bet would be ballistas, which hopefully pack enough punch to pierce the scales. You'll need them in great number, to make up for the long reload time, and because the dragon will probably try and destroy them. Once the dragon is grounded, I think the best thing to do would be to swarm it from all sides (except the front, obviously) with long spears. Tricky though, since a hit from the tails or the wings would kill a man.

Depends on what you throw with your catapults. A big rock? Yeah, that's not going to work. A large bag of oversized caltrops? Now we're talking. You'll still need some damn good timing and a lot of luck, but a hit would probably shred a wing rather comprehensively.

Loads like that were used in medieval catapults (which were pure siege engines usually, with no place in an open field battle) to turn them into improvised "field artillery", and apparently their effect on large formations was frightening enough to make them one of the weapons officially banned for use on other christians by several popes.

What about drowning a dragon?

Drowning it would work, but it'd be difficult. Assuming the animal has basic swimming skills and won't sink like a rock, the only reliable way to drown it is to attach it to something heavy, like a rock, or restrict its movement like with a net.

Arrows could work if you get a lucky shot and hit it in the eye or hit in the open mouth which is presumably weaker than the scales. While this sounds like a difficult hit, if you're fighting the dragon with an army, then the arrows would be fired in volleys, so the chance of hitting something vital increases greatly.

I have always found that in dealing with things that fly, there are two sure-fire avenues.

The simplest: lots of projectiles. A dragon can only dodge so many, and a lot of small but heavy rocks are very good at shattering the lighter bones the dragon probably has in its wings. That's discounting how the wings themselves are likely thin. If the dragon in question is magic enough to just ignore their wings being blown apart, then it probably doesn't even need the wings. This is one reason the shotgun is considered an excellent bird-killing weapon in real life.

Plan B: Nets. Set up some catapults next to each other with rocks. Tie the net between the rocks, launch them at once. Reload time would be awful, but if you engineer it right with heavy enough rocks, it'll force the dragon to the ground, at which point you more or less kill it whenever someone gets the stones to walk up to it. Make sure the net is fire-proof, maybe some kind of metal.

Other than that, well... there are a couple of options. Try projectiles with blinding substances in them. Ink, dust, coal. If it doesn't need it's eyes to see, try tossing explosives or stinkbombs at it. Anything to give you the advantage.