Help a DM with high lvl PCs

[Adamaro]

Ok guys, (and (cat)girls)

I need help.

I am a long-time DM, but most of my games were low-level. Now after an odd twist of events, one party member turned into a CR 15 dragon (adult silver). It is only a temporary thing, sort of a wish he got granted by a god to revenge the death of his long-deceased parents and friends who were killed in a raid by evil NPCs.

Now, the prioblem is, these Evil NPCs have PC classes and are in essence vanilla D&D party.

I have no problem leading lower level PC classess and higher level monsters, but let's say we have a fighter, cleric and sorcerer lvl 14 here ... then I am done because I simply forget a bunch of things and use wrong spells.
Catch is, that PC who turned into a dragon is a VERY GOOD player and I have no doubt he will push his dragon abilites to the max.

So I am thinking if anyone here could maybe be able to build three lvl 14 NPCS (fighter, cleric, sorcerer) which are AS SIMPLE TO USE AS POSSIBLE.

Problem for me is that a char of such a level takes lots of knowlege to be put to good use and after some "macros" are trained, this is no problem, but for me as a rather unexperienced higher-lvl DM, this is a nightmare.

There is lot of money on these levels, thus lots of UMD stuff, spells, feat use.

Could it be possible to make, for an example a fighter, that would have in essence only two decent attacks, maybe 5 spells to be used for a cleric and another five for sorcerer? Maybe, like a computer-script for a computer D&D game?

I basicly need a DM-friendly 4E-like character at lvl 14 3.5 ed. If possible.

I would also like to emphasize that I am not really sure this is the right approach, so I hope for our "hive mind" to come up with a solution.

tnx

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

Usually it's a bad idea to have a caster become a one-trick-pony, but I see that this is a special case. I'm acting under the assumption that you need characters which are simple to use, not necessarily to make, and that your dragon player will optimize a fair amount.

For the Sorcerer, I'd say go mailman lite; no Incantatrix, and no Celerity line, because your player probably doesn't optimize that much, but keep the Arcane Thesis'd Searing Empowered Orbs of Fire. Pick up True Seeing and True Strike for targeting. If you're feeling saucy, get Arcane Fusion and Arcane Spellsurge for multiple actions.

Oddly enough, the DMM Persist cleric is pretty easy to play, since all your stuff is "always on" anyway and you usually just whack things. Stuff like Mass Lesser Vigor, Righteous Wrath of the Faithful and Recitation are good group buffs. Ice Axe, Holy Star, Righteous Might and Divine Power are good self buffs. Basically with that loadout (assuming you can get that many TU uses) the cleric just shoots his laser beam, walks up to the target and hits it. If something needs to be dispelled, he gets out his dispelling cord and Inquisition Domain and Greater Dispel Magic's it.

The Fighter... is very easy to be one-note. I'd start with a large-sized race if possible (powerful build works) and go the Dungeoncrasher/Knockback/Shocktrooper route. Pounce may be excessive. Just make sure to grab an item that grants flight (winged boots?) an item that grants short teleportation (add anklets of translocation), an item that gets rid of things (rod of negation), and stuff to help with saves (cleric casts Superior Resistance and Death Ward, Sorcerer casts Disobedience, et cetera).

That should provide plenty of challenge for your dragon.

[Diarmuid]

Is this dragon PC going to be taking these lvl 14 NPC's on by himself? Are the other still lower level PC's going to get wiped out in this encounter?

Was he able to keep his previous class abilities to be usable while in this dragon form?

Take into account, 3 lvl 14 NPC's (naked) are a CR17 (DMG, p49). If you outfit them with full WBL, you're looking at more like a CR18-20 depending on how super optimized your items are. Also take into account that your PC doesnt have the WBL to support his new CR 15 form.

If he is going to be taking them on alone, you need to remember that the CR's are based on a party of 4 taking on the encounter. Reversing the encounter design process....your CR15 dragon is barely a challenge for a party of lvl 14 NPC's, probably taking only 30-35% of their resources to defeat it.

[Adamaro]

Tnx guys. Ill check these things out, but I still think it will take huge amounts of time to get charsheets together.

[excruciarch]

Are your Silver Dragon PC planning on attacking a party like that alone or he has someone to back him up? ('Cause a party of 14lvl Cleric and 14lvl Sorcerer will annihilate him.)
PS
The whole point in making something optimized to put against your PCs is having something to balance the difficulty level of a battle out. And in the end you end up not using all that juicy stuff just because you don't want your PCs to get killed.