QUOTE (Glyph @ Mar 10 2012, 08:06 PM)
The fact that they are "supposed" to be so powerful is the whole problem. They simply don't fit within the same power scale as the rest of the game universe.
I agree. The way I see a Great Dragon, on a scale of power, is that they should fall somewhere far short of a Celestial Exalt (from Exalted.) Perhaps in the range of a weak 3rd circle demon from a relatively weak Primordial.
Big? Yes. Bad?
Oh yes. Virtually a superpower unto themselves? Not really, but they have so much concentrated power in one package that they should be dealt with carefully and courted/diplomatized with as if they were.
Should one survive declaring a one-Dragon-crusade against a heavily-industrial AAA Megacorp with standing armies and a vast military-industrial-magical complex?
Not a chance in hell. The
moment he shows his face, someone should be screaming into a commlink "It's Sirrurg!" (or whomever is the target du jour,) at which point the Thor Shots start falling on his ass, orbital lasers blast him, a squadron of 50+ Force 12+ Spirits and their magician handlers should be mobilized into an astral assault while aerospace assets are scrambled, etcetera etcetera. Nukes aren't even out of the question, though of course they're always a crapshoot as to whether or not they'll initiate properly.
Frankly, the way I see it, Dragons aren't the dominant species on Earth anymore, and they need to get used to that fact.
If it does come down to a knock-down, drag-out, us-or-them battle for survival, trial-of-annihilation style war between Dragons and Metahumanity, Metahumanity will win, for certain values of the term 'victory,' if for no other reason than dragons need Earth to survive and metahumanity (in the strictest, survival-of-the-species sense,)
doesn't. The absolute worst-case scenario, corps and nations being unable to withstand the spiritual onslaught the dragons will summon up and bind, Earth can be glassed from orbit and beyond, and the dragons who survive the onslaught will be left to deal with the crippling background count, toxic everything, and general lack of anything whatsoever left in the wake of such a battle, while metahumanity gets to work implementing massive artificial reproduction techniques and colonizing Mars and the moon far more thoroughly.
Of course, this is probably a little irrelevant to the question of whether or not your runners can survive crossing a Great Dragon. My notion is that it's
possible, but it's pretty much a campaign-ender, or at least group-characters-retirer, whether you survive or not, because you're either going to have to sell your soul to someone powerful enough to assure your protection (another Great Dragon,)
kill the Great Dragon in question (
and survive the fact that other dragons, even ones that hated him, will be out for your guts,) or remove yourself from his reach, such as (at a bare minimum) Zurich Orbital, or preferably Mars (or, if you're feeling frisky and your group is largely MagicRun, take an astral rift to some nifty Metaplane where all forms of tracking, magical and mundane, fail utterly, and never come back.)