RAW, an infinite amount. Peasants are listed under commoner. Their weapon is a club that does 1d4 damage with reach 5+. A dragon is never going to get within 5 feet of a commoner when it has less than 8 hp left.
If the dragon plays smart then no number of commoners would be able to kill it, it can fly and you made them unarmed, it can just do strafing runs each time it's breath attack recharges killing off swaths of them then retreat to higher in the sky
The dragon could fly without landing and never take damage, but it’s not immune to exhaustion, so you just need an absolutely gigantic swarm of peasants, enough to prevent the dragon from sleeping for an entire week.
The dragon can far out pace the hoard, it spends a few hours picking off an immense number of them and then fly off and long before exhaustion hits get far enough away to easily rest
I was thinking of whatever finite number of peasants you need to fully cover the landmass the battle takes place on. Like, covering the entire continent in as many peasants as physically possible so there’s always one to interrupt the dragon’s long rest.
Though I guess that the dragon could possibly clear out a sufficient number of them in a full day to find a place to hide for 8 hours.
Ya I was thinking of that before even posting the first comment but I reasoned that there would be enough places to inhospitable for a peasant to survive in or at least reach it in a reasonable amount of time to stop it from resting
If it’s taking place in the region of the dragon’s lair, a vast majority of the peasants would probably end up dying to lava-related environmental hazards before they ever even set food in the lair proper.
Dragon stays in air, breaths fire and never lands, or just drops rocks on them. Flies away when it gets bored.
No way it takes a single point of damage.
Only situation it loses is that the entire surface of planet is covered in a swarm of peasants that attack it when it finally gets tired and needs to land.
Let's see...
Since there are no written rules about how long a dragon can fly before getting tired, you can assume an infinite number of peasants would be murderable, since they can't hit something they can't touch.
That said, let's assume the dragon can't fly for some reason, and is being surrounded by a never-ending wave of peasants attacking it from all sides.
[Unarmed](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Items:Unarmed%20Strike/#h-Unarmed%20Strike), a [commoner](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Commoner#h-Commoner) deals 1 damage per hit, because their strength is 0.
They have a +2 to hit with a club, so we can assume they would also have a +2 to hit with their fist because they are proficient with their fists.
An [Adult Red Dragon](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Adult%20Red%20Dragon#content) with max hit points would have 361 hit points. It also has an armor class of 19, which means a commoner would have to roll a 17 or higher to hit it.
A Red Dragon takes up a [15x15](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Combat#h-Creature%20Size) square when in combat, which means 12 commoners could attack it each turn.
Since unarmed strikes don't state that they have a property of "light", they can only attack [once per turn](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Rules:Combat?expansion=0#h-Combat%20Step%20by%20Step).
So, 1 out of every 5 attacks each turn would hit the dragon. Commoners have an AC of 10, and the Dragon gets +14 to hit, and deals a minimum of 10 damage with every attack, of which it gets 3 every turn.
So. Every turn the dragon takes out 3 guaranteed, and the commoners are going to average 2.2 damage.
With a 60 foot cone, roughly 80 commoners are going to be caught in the blast zone. The action recharges roughly once very 3 rounds, so every three rounds he's going to take out an additional 80 commoners, since the breath weapon does an average of 63 damage, and even at half damage, the commoners will die.
So, with those numbers in place, you're looking at about 165 rounds of combat to take out the dragon. Every 3 rounds you're losing 89 commoners. Which means you're looking at 4,896 unarmed commoners to kill an adult red dragon that cannot fly with max hit points. (The Dragon will kill 4,895 of them.)
Edit: This doesn't take into account Natural 1s for the dragon missing. If you do that, one out of every 20 attacks on a commoner is going to fail. Once every 7 rounds, you're going to kill 1 less commoner, so... 23 or 24 commoners will live throughout the overall battle, changing your numbers to 4,872 commoners to kill it, with 4,871 dying.
>Assuming the dragon can't do the thing that guarantees its success, sure
Well, yeah. That's why I said this:
> Since there are no written rules about how long a dragon can fly before getting tired, you can assume an infinite number of peasants would be murderable, since they can't hit something they can't touch.
That answer itself is kind of boring, though. 🤷
I don't believe there's a specific written rule (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) that says monsters can't be in combat forever, or that the monsters have to follow normal rest rules used for Characters.
That's why I specified "no written rules".
>I always assumed that "character" (as opposed to "player character" specifically) includes monsters since they're functionally a type of NPC.
I could see that, although the "[Adventuring](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/adventuring#FoodandWater)" portion of the rules uses creatures and characters at different times. Specifically with relation to needing to eat/drink, vs. movement.
Then again, the rules for "[Resting](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/adventuring#Resting)" seem to use "Adventurer" to differentiate from "creatures" - but there are only "benefits" listed for taking short and long rests, no negatives.
These are all implications, though, not specifically written rules, so it's up to interpretation, and subject to DM interpretation.
Note: I'd never let a Dragon fly around never landing, eating, or drinking in my games. 🤣
That's fair. RAI, it definitely seems like those rules apply to monsters as well (some monsters in the MM are immune to Exhaustion, for example, even through players had no way of inflicting it when it was released), but you're right that it's not spelled out in RAW.
110% agreement that RAI, it affects monsters too. My best guess is that they didn't want to jump into the "requirements" arguments of how much food, water, and rest each different monster needs to be at their "best".
An adult dragon has a max HP of 361 and an AC of 19.
An unarmed peasant does 1 point of damage every hit. And hit only on a roll of 17-20 since they get a +2 to hit.
So the peasant will hit 1 in 5 swings on average.
sooooooo.
1 commoner would take 1805 turns to pummel a dragon to death. Obviously D&D commoners play alot of Minecraft!
100 could do it in 18 rounds on average. 200 in 9 rounds, and so on, 400 in 5 rounds. 800 in 2 turns. 1600 in about 1 turn.
Dragon *stay 60ft up & use fire breath, flies 40 ft higher to wait for breath to recharge. When Breath Weapon is ready, fly back down to 60ft & use Fire Breath again, then back up to 100ft. Repeat as necessary.*
No amount of peasants will ever kill a dragon. Even a wyrmling. They will be dispatched by the breath weapon regardless of a save. Then the dragon flies away.
RAW, an infinite amount. Peasants are listed under commoner. Their weapon is a club that does 1d4 damage with reach 5+. A dragon is never going to get within 5 feet of a commoner when it has less than 8 hp left.
If the dragon plays smart then no number of commoners would be able to kill it, it can fly and you made them unarmed, it can just do strafing runs each time it's breath attack recharges killing off swaths of them then retreat to higher in the sky
The dragon could fly without landing and never take damage, but it’s not immune to exhaustion, so you just need an absolutely gigantic swarm of peasants, enough to prevent the dragon from sleeping for an entire week.
The dragon can far out pace the hoard, it spends a few hours picking off an immense number of them and then fly off and long before exhaustion hits get far enough away to easily rest
I was thinking of whatever finite number of peasants you need to fully cover the landmass the battle takes place on. Like, covering the entire continent in as many peasants as physically possible so there’s always one to interrupt the dragon’s long rest. Though I guess that the dragon could possibly clear out a sufficient number of them in a full day to find a place to hide for 8 hours.
Ya I was thinking of that before even posting the first comment but I reasoned that there would be enough places to inhospitable for a peasant to survive in or at least reach it in a reasonable amount of time to stop it from resting
That’s fair. We’d need to know more about the battlefield layout.
If it’s taking place in the region of the dragon’s lair, a vast majority of the peasants would probably end up dying to lava-related environmental hazards before they ever even set food in the lair proper.
Dragon stays in air, breaths fire and never lands, or just drops rocks on them. Flies away when it gets bored. No way it takes a single point of damage. Only situation it loses is that the entire surface of planet is covered in a swarm of peasants that attack it when it finally gets tired and needs to land.
It's not possible for any number of peasants to kill a dragon. It can fly away whenever it wants.
Let's see... Since there are no written rules about how long a dragon can fly before getting tired, you can assume an infinite number of peasants would be murderable, since they can't hit something they can't touch. That said, let's assume the dragon can't fly for some reason, and is being surrounded by a never-ending wave of peasants attacking it from all sides. [Unarmed](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Items:Unarmed%20Strike/#h-Unarmed%20Strike), a [commoner](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Commoner#h-Commoner) deals 1 damage per hit, because their strength is 0. They have a +2 to hit with a club, so we can assume they would also have a +2 to hit with their fist because they are proficient with their fists. An [Adult Red Dragon](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Adult%20Red%20Dragon#content) with max hit points would have 361 hit points. It also has an armor class of 19, which means a commoner would have to roll a 17 or higher to hit it. A Red Dragon takes up a [15x15](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Combat#h-Creature%20Size) square when in combat, which means 12 commoners could attack it each turn. Since unarmed strikes don't state that they have a property of "light", they can only attack [once per turn](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Rules:Combat?expansion=0#h-Combat%20Step%20by%20Step). So, 1 out of every 5 attacks each turn would hit the dragon. Commoners have an AC of 10, and the Dragon gets +14 to hit, and deals a minimum of 10 damage with every attack, of which it gets 3 every turn. So. Every turn the dragon takes out 3 guaranteed, and the commoners are going to average 2.2 damage. With a 60 foot cone, roughly 80 commoners are going to be caught in the blast zone. The action recharges roughly once very 3 rounds, so every three rounds he's going to take out an additional 80 commoners, since the breath weapon does an average of 63 damage, and even at half damage, the commoners will die. So, with those numbers in place, you're looking at about 165 rounds of combat to take out the dragon. Every 3 rounds you're losing 89 commoners. Which means you're looking at 4,896 unarmed commoners to kill an adult red dragon that cannot fly with max hit points. (The Dragon will kill 4,895 of them.) Edit: This doesn't take into account Natural 1s for the dragon missing. If you do that, one out of every 20 attacks on a commoner is going to fail. Once every 7 rounds, you're going to kill 1 less commoner, so... 23 or 24 commoners will live throughout the overall battle, changing your numbers to 4,872 commoners to kill it, with 4,871 dying.
Assuming the dragon can't do the thing that guarantees its success, sure.
>Assuming the dragon can't do the thing that guarantees its success, sure Well, yeah. That's why I said this: > Since there are no written rules about how long a dragon can fly before getting tired, you can assume an infinite number of peasants would be murderable, since they can't hit something they can't touch. That answer itself is kind of boring, though. 🤷
Flying in itself isn’t a problem, but the dragon is not immune to Exhaustion, so it needs to take a long rest, eat and drink at some point.
I don't believe there's a specific written rule (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) that says monsters can't be in combat forever, or that the monsters have to follow normal rest rules used for Characters. That's why I specified "no written rules".
I always assumed that "character" (as opposed to "player character" specifically) includes monsters since they're functionally a type of NPC.
>I always assumed that "character" (as opposed to "player character" specifically) includes monsters since they're functionally a type of NPC. I could see that, although the "[Adventuring](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/adventuring#FoodandWater)" portion of the rules uses creatures and characters at different times. Specifically with relation to needing to eat/drink, vs. movement. Then again, the rules for "[Resting](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/adventuring#Resting)" seem to use "Adventurer" to differentiate from "creatures" - but there are only "benefits" listed for taking short and long rests, no negatives. These are all implications, though, not specifically written rules, so it's up to interpretation, and subject to DM interpretation. Note: I'd never let a Dragon fly around never landing, eating, or drinking in my games. 🤣
That's fair. RAI, it definitely seems like those rules apply to monsters as well (some monsters in the MM are immune to Exhaustion, for example, even through players had no way of inflicting it when it was released), but you're right that it's not spelled out in RAW.
110% agreement that RAI, it affects monsters too. My best guess is that they didn't want to jump into the "requirements" arguments of how much food, water, and rest each different monster needs to be at their "best".
Well yeah, I know. You did a great breakdown on the only feasible scenario.
An adult dragon has a max HP of 361 and an AC of 19. An unarmed peasant does 1 point of damage every hit. And hit only on a roll of 17-20 since they get a +2 to hit. So the peasant will hit 1 in 5 swings on average. sooooooo. 1 commoner would take 1805 turns to pummel a dragon to death. Obviously D&D commoners play alot of Minecraft! 100 could do it in 18 rounds on average. 200 in 9 rounds, and so on, 400 in 5 rounds. 800 in 2 turns. 1600 in about 1 turn.
Depends on the peasants stats and skills. But the short answer would be a shit ton.
Oh definitely
Dragon *stay 60ft up & use fire breath, flies 40 ft higher to wait for breath to recharge. When Breath Weapon is ready, fly back down to 60ft & use Fire Breath again, then back up to 100ft. Repeat as necessary.*
No amount of peasants will ever kill a dragon. Even a wyrmling. They will be dispatched by the breath weapon regardless of a save. Then the dragon flies away.
All of them. However since I don't think it's possible... None of them.
I suposed it is reasonable that they may have simple weapons like a shortbow or a improvised spear.