Undead Dragon boss for 3rd level Adventurers

[EnnPeeCee]

I'm trying to come up with a good boos for the end of my campaign, but can't decide the best way to go about it. The party is 3rd level and consists of a swift hunter, a duskblade, a barbarian, a favored soul, and a dragon shaman. They are mostly all new to d&d, but I've helped them make competent characters.

Now, I want them to encounter an undead dragon as the final enemy in my dungeon. I've looked at the skeleton and zombie templates, but I feel like it would just make a big stupid enemy that stands there getting hit while trying to hit back. I'd like it to be a somewhat intelligent enemy.

Looking through Dracomnomnomnomicon, I found the Dracolich template. It looks like the kind of thing I want to use, but I have no idea how powerful it is. Would applying this template to, say, a very young white dragon be too much to handle?

Also, any other suggestions are appreciated.

[Runestar]

I feel dracolich may be too strong at such low levels, when the PCs have no way around its paralyzing gaze/attacks.

Easiest way would be to make a skeletal dragon (using the draconomicon template), make it intelligent (via the awaken undead spell in spell compendium), and slap on spellstiched (complete arcane) if you want it to have some spellcasting capabilities.

Blam! Low-level dracolich. :smallcool: For a young white dragon, that would work out to a final cr of 3 (which can be deceptive, given its myriad of undead immunities and buffs). :smalltongue:

[EnnPeeCee]

Alright, that does sound more in line for what they can handle. As a side note, I wasn't intending to use the phylactery rules from dracolich; I thought those would just make the encounter more work than I intend it to be.

But yeah, I'll take a look at those templates.