Please help us not die!

[FabulousFizban]

So for the last few months our party has been playing a supermodule. When finished, it will be worth four chronicles, if we survive. We went the wrong direction in the damn dungeon and ended up skipping three levels. As a result, we encountered the end boss (an adult green dragon) a player level early and before having killed his three lieutenants or found his secret weakness. We got jumped, bad.

We hit him with a silenced arrow and threw up some summons to cover our retreat into a narrow tunnel where he can't fit and managed to take out two of his lieutenants in the process. No idea where the third one is, but I'm not worried about it.

We managed to evade the dragon for now, but we still have to deal with it if we want our chronicles. Since we also fail if the dragon destroys the town, I made sure to piss the damn thing off before we bailed, keeping it's attention on us.

So here is the problem, our APL is 6, that dragon is a CR 12, how in the hell are we supposed to stop the thing? Our party consists of a warpriest, a master summoner, a monk (MoMS I think), a rogue, and me - an archaeologist. Oh! we also have a shae NPC we acquired who agreed to help us. She almost single-handedly killed the toughest of the dragon's lieutenants when she crit twice in one round, dealing 12d6+24. That was pretty sweet and an "oh, thank god!" moment since the dude was blocking our escape.

So, seriously guys, how do we save our bacon here? Damn thing is +6 on us.

tl;dr how does a APL6 party beat a CR12 green dragon?

[Stormageddon]

Run for your lives!

[AvatarVecna]

Your party's sneaky characters could sneak up on it when it's not paying attention or asleep, while the casters can provide spell support once it's focus is on the sneaks. From what it sounds like, this is a boss you can't really take on without knowing the weakness. Without more knowledge of your group's capabilities (what spells you all have, the rogue's skills, etc.) I can't give any more useful advice than that.

[Segev]

Archaeologist is a Bard archetype, right? Is there a trick you can pull using his variant on Bardic Knowledge to "guess" (have the DM tell you) what that secret weakness is?

Anybody got Architecture and Engineering knowledge? Maybe rigging a corridor just big enough for the dragon to chase you to collapse could deal damage, slow it down, or even pin it in place so you can come up behind it and stab it to death.

Recruit...something...to work with you, maybe. I don't suppose your war priest can get energy resistance to acid in a spell in time to protect the party. That might help a little.

Unless green dragons have water breathing capability that I don't know about, you could possibly use a variant of the "drop things on it" strategy to try to pin it somewhere and flood the area around its head with water. Drown the sucker.

[Spore]

What do your characters already know about the adult green dragon? Also if your dragon is played smarlty he will not be easily provoked and pull your fight out in the open. Does IT know you want the nearby city to survive? It could attack intentionally to provoke an open fight while you try to figure out the problem. I think you need a distraction (did distracting it with summons work? if not, try the monk.)

You should prepare to loose some characters though. I feel distracting with the guy with the highest save and mobility is the best choice. Oh, and START worrying about his last lieutenant. It's kind of his wild card if things get too terrible.

[FabulousFizban]

The dragon is already awake and very pissed off, it is not likely to rest until we are dead. Green dragons have water-breathing in pathfinder so drowning him won't work. As a bard, I have knowledge engineering - and collapsing the tunnel on top of it was actually the plan we came up with. We have some beads of force and there is precedent for a cave-in as the rogue nearly killed himself earlier trying to make a trap with one of the beads.

I took 20 on my knowledge check for the dragon and didn't come up with the weakness on a 31, so bardic knowledge can't help us there (the weakness is the dragon's true name (it is pretending to be a different dragon)). However, with that 31, we know literally everything about the dragon EXCEPT it's name.

We have a ring of acid resist 20, which is what kept the summoner from getting one shotted the first time we were hit with a breath weapon (he failed his save). It had occured to me to give it to the monk and let him go to town with elemental fist, but that monk can't eat six attacks a round from something that strong.

I'm not sure what the summoner's actual spell list is, but we already lost his eidolon and burned through 3 summons escaping. The monk is an offensive machine but, like i said, can't eat all those attacks. The rogue can do dex damage, but 1 per sneak attack means he's taking at least 5 rounds to drop the thing - and that's IF he hits with all his attacks and doesn't die in the process.

The warpriest... honestly, I don't even know what that class does.

As for me, I have one 2nd level spell left (I was saving it for invisibility, V style), and 3 1st level spells. I have gallant inspiration, silence, & invisibility for 2nd; grease, silent image, detect secret doors, and magic aura for 1st. I have dervish dance and hit for 2d6+10 per round with my scimitar.

The dragon managed to get off a shield spell before I hit it with a silenced arrow, so... high AC.

The dragon knows the town is important, but the DM told us it won't attack it until we at least leave it's lair, due to how badly I pissed it off (I made an illusion of the gold we were supposed to bring as ransom then laughed at him and called him a dumbass when he went to interact with it (I needed to make sure it's attention was on us and not the town that sent adventurers to kill it when it wanted tribute)).

Distracting with the summons absolutely worked... at least this time around.

I am all for running, but we lose the module if we do. Once we leave, it destroys the town.

[PapaEmeritusII]

Any chance you could find the third lieutenant and beat the dragon's name out of it? Depending on your party's alignment torture him?

[FabulousFizban]

Any chance you could find the third lieutenant and beat the dragon's name out of it? Depending on your parties alignment torture him?

! That is a great idea. I will run that by the party.

[khachaturian]

well the warpriest is probably the only one in the party with access to remove fear. so unless your dm is ignoring the fear aura, he's probably the only thing keeping your party from complete collapse.

[Coidzor]

So by facing the dragon with 2 lieutenants and taking them out and surviving the Dragon when the writing was so bad that you could make a wrong turn and run into it explicitly too soon you should have made some progress on leveling, indeed, more than if you had just ganked the two of them on their own as solo fights.

And presumably, unless this is some kind of "you need to be more broken than the Test of Spite ban list would allow if you were playing 3.5" bit, going through and clearing the rest of the dungeon and finding his weakness should take care of things.

So... Why isn't that an option?