Help me design my Dragon boss fight.

[Templarkommando]

3.5 is my edition. Let me give you a little of background on my party-composition:

Rogue 2/Pally 5
Rogue 7
Wizard 7
Sorcerer 7
Rogue 5/Fighter 2
Bard 7*
Barbarian 7
Rogue 7*

*Characters with an asterisk may or may not be able to make this game.

The dragon fight is going to take place in a large sanctuary-type room that is quite long and broad with high (negotiable height) vaulted ceilings. There are some catwalks that run along the length of the room for the original purpose of placing decorations, but I'm hoping to incorporate them into the fight in some way. My intention is that the dragon is a red. Now that my basics are out of the way, I have some questions (feel free to answer as many or as few as you like):

1. What essential information do I need to know to run a dragon fight that is in an enclosed space?
2. Is this room big enough for the dragon to fly across as a way of making the fight harder?
3. Which iteration of red dragon is appropriate for this party?
4. What (if any) modifications should I make in the event that some of my characters can't make this session?
5. It is conceivable (though not strictly necessary) that this dragon has body guards. Said body guards would likely be more mundane.. fighters, something like that. Is this a good addition to this fight?
6. The MM says that a dragon breathes once every 1d4 rounds. Should I play this strictly by the book, or should I do something different?
7. On the off-chance that I get a TPK, is it a good idea to act as if the party is captured and imprisoned rather than killed?

Let me inform you basically what I'm trying to do here. I want this fight to have the following traits:
A. Difficult, though I would like to forego a TPK. Deaths are acceptable, but I would prefer killing one or two as opposed to all 8 of my party members.
B. Interesting - I want my party to be able to use strategy to help them on their way. For example, jumping from the catwalk onto the dragon makes him easier to hit or causes more damage.
C. Reasonably long. Something in the range of 8 rounds would be okay with me - give or take 2 or 3 rounds.
D. Simple - I want to bring across the effect of "IT'S A FREAKIN' DRAGON," without memorizing every portion of the stat-block.

[Jormengand]

1: Dragons are dangerous even without flight. With flight, they are perfectly capable of kiting out of sneak attack range before flying in, breathing, and rushing off again.
2: Any dragon that takes up more than four squares is going to annihilate your party; you'll be hard-pressed to make the room NOT flyable-across.
3: Wyrmling. I'm not kidding. A young dragon's breath weapon averages 33 damage on each creature who fails REF, which will probably one-shot the wizard or sorcerer. Any large red dragon is dishing out 27+(4.5*STR) damage, while the Wyrmling "Only" deals 21 damage on a full attack (and 11 with its breath weapon).
4: Be thankful that fewer of the squishy characters are around. Pity about the rogue, though, they might have had good REF and evasion.
5: No. Dragons played sensibly are ludicrously powerful anyway.
6: That's the recharge time. It has to wait 1d4 rounds before it can do it again, just like how the PHB tells you that sorcerers only cast so many spells per day. It's not part of their tactics. That said, it's probably the most sensible thing a red dragon wyrmling can do, especially if most of the party forgets to pack ranged weapons.
7: Possibly. However, red dragons are impulsive and vicious. They wouldn't take prisoners without exceedingly good reason.
8: Oh, and remember to give it three feats and 60 skill points. It's an intelligent creature, they get feat and skills. Do your players a favour and give it useless ones.

A: Yeah, be careful. Your best bet may be to make the dragon do stupid things like dive into the enemy's melee fighters and give them a chance to kill it, rather than going full frenzy on the casters and then flying around breathing at people.
B: The dragon has a 150 foot fly speed. It even has a 40 foot land speed, for whatever reason. If it doesn't want to be jumped on, they're not gonna get to jump on it. Also, it can probably just grapple them and pull them off the edge of the catwalks with its +10 grapple modifier.
C: The fight will take a while. The dragon can only kill one party member per round, and the casters won't have any good cold spells by that level. At best, they can fire off 7d6 lightning bolts at it until it goes away, because at least it doesn't resist those. Meanwhile, no-one else can actually land a hit on the damn thing, let alone start eating through its 59 hit points, unless it decides to go toe-to-toe with them for some reason.
D: Dragons have a pretty low size:power ratio. You could try a wyvern instead (Add a single hit die of advancement and it becomes huge. Probably a mistake, but there we have it). No breath weapon means no kiting out of the way of everything, and it flies slower than a real dragon. A half-dragon huge viper would give it flight and a single shot of breath weapon before forcing it to fight up close and personal. Alternatively, zombie dragon? It has more hit points and DR, but looks scarier, does less damage, and generally has a higher scary:killy ratio. Unable to make its ridiculous full attack, a zombie red young adult has a stack (247) of hit points but is unintelligent, can only make one attack (probably a bite for an average of 25 damage, which is more than the wyrmling's full attack but only slightly, so that's probably okay), and has no breath weapon. You could go the whole hog and set a huge wyvern zombie on them. You could even buff it up to CR 7 by stacking more hit dice (or even a few levels of fighter or even blackguard, not that zombies can do that but hush, you're the DM) on it. Or actually, it can have some other zombies floating around as bodyguards. A few human zombies and a troglodyte or two, with a huge Wyvern lording it over them. Could be fun. Ignore the bit that says rogues can't sneak attack undead. That's a silly rule, and you're the DM.

Basically, don't believe the CRs they put on those things. Dragons have really low CRs because they're meant to be boss monsters, even though the CR system already takes that into account. Don't do dragons, kids.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Your party size is a big problem here. Even with the normal party of 4 vs one dragon you already run into the action economy problem, with twice that many players it's basically impossible to make the dragon tough enough to survive even 1 round against the party without turning it into a TPK.
Just using a higher CR dragon won't work, because at that point all the parties attacks will just miss/fail while the dragon will tear through them like a hot knife through butter.

Challenging a big party of players pretty much requires multiple opponent encounters, so a pair or small nest of CR-appropriate dragons is probably a better idea than a single dragon.
You could also use minions, but with a smart party that's still highly likely to end up with the party focusing the dragon until it goes down first unless you take steps to seperate the battlefield to force them to split their attention.

[Geddy2112]

Seconding the above- with a solo big bad monster against a big party, it is going to be a quick bloodbath. Either the dragon dies in 1-2 rounds, or the players do.

Read this (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nx-o8VAjhUwh3nnfzDQT-JA5eFLnN_BZJiBitGjBMDg/edit?pref=2&pli=1), not only is it good advice for this dragon bossfight, but for every other encounter you make from here on out.

[Sword-Geass]

1- You need to be able to answer: How did the dragon get there? And why is he there?
2- If the dragon got there because it's his base, yes. If he was forced to, maybe. Probably he has the room to fly, you aren't likely to put yourself in a bad spot on pourpouse, and dragons are smart.
3- Dependa on their optimization, if they built properly, they may handle something a bit bigger than normal, if they think toughness is great... well, not so much. You know them better. But aim for a cr one lower than normal for the party, I'll explain next why.
4- Schrödinger minions. If the party is complete the minions are with the dragon, if someone is missing, they aren't.
5- Covered in 4.
6- Dragons use their breath whenever they would caught two or more persons with it. Simple.
7- Red dragons aren't likely to do that. Make sure your party is ready to run if things go south.

B- If you want it to be interesting, play it smart. Kite them. Make them use their brain to force it to the ground. A dragon playing the full atack game is an idiot (and soon to be dead) dragon. Dragons are scary because they are intelligent, not for their numbers (only).

Also: check this, it has a section about running dragon encounters.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?303204-The-Truest-of-the-True-A-Handbook-to-non-Kobold-Dragons-(WIP)

[ExLibrisMortis]

You can cripple the dragons a bit. For example, to improve the dragon's action economy without making the encounter impossibly hard, you have two wyrmlings. One of them was wounded by some dragon hunter's trap, so it's exhausted (-6 str, -6 dex, moves at half speed) and at half health. This dragon is initially prone (+4 AC vs. ranged attacks, -4 vs. melee attacks), stationary, gets up and defends itself if attacked in melee, but does not move to attack, and mainly relies on its breath weapon. The other wyrmling defends their wounded sibling (even red dragons have a sense of family), so it stays on the ground. It puts itself between the party and their sibling, relying on AoOs (Combat Reflexes) and pushing enemies back (Combat Expertise, Improved Trip, Knock-Down) until heavily damaged.

If you want, you can even have the dragon hunters drop in. They're level 3-4 LE rangers with FE (dragons), intent on butchering the dragons for cash. They have lost some of their numbers earlier, so they are happy to let the PCs engage, while firing poisoned arrows from above (damage: 1 con/1 con), but if it appears the PCs are having an easy time of it, they'll start attacking whichever side seems to have the upper hand, in order to eventually loot both.

Note: this will mess with any dragon-loving PCs you have. Remember that offering to heal the wyrmling just gets you eaten slightly more mercifully (e.g. faster).

[Lvl 2 Expert]

As ExlibrisMortis said, you could consider making the dragon hurt. As in, it has a gaping hole in one of its wings and is missing an eye. Put some tunnels in the lair where the dragon doesn't fit, inhabited by some large bugs or another kind of symbolic resistance that technically makes the tunnels a dangerous place but still lets the party use them to run from the dragon. You could also consider giving them a different species of sort of dragon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draconic_creature) to fight. Linnorms (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/dragons/linnorm) can't fly, Landwyrms (http://kahdnd.pbworks.com/w/page/5588924/Landwyrm) can't fly or breath stuff. Simply put: the more advantages you can pile on for the party, the bigger and more imposing your dragon can be. A huge Hill Landwyrm is challenge rating 12. With a large party, enough extra advantages, some magic weapons or other useful items dropped in their lap and some secretly tying the dragons arm behind its back a little where they can't see it (12 and 7 is still quite a difference after all, almost a factor two, maybe go for something large after all...) that might even be sort of doable. Much more imposing than a wyrmling, yet it still leaves actual dragons as a more menacing threat for later in the campaign. Maybe the wyrm even worked for a red dragon that will start tracking them after the fight.

[DirePorkChop]

I am running a dragon encounter this upcoming Saturday. The combat will be taking place on a mountain top, while a silver dragon tries to destroy everything that the PC's have worked towards. I planned on the dragon destroying a huge portion of the mountain top, creating spaces that provide cover against it's breath weapon, having places where the PC's can attack it from high ground, and all around tactics on the PC's parts. I plan on using that age old DM tool, lying, to make it a challenging and fun encounter. Someone, anyone is getting thrown from the top of a mountain because "reasons". I would simply fudge the dice. If it seems like the players are getting too swamped and you roll a 20, "Man, second 1 tonight. I am really getting suck rolls tonight guys" On the other hand, If its too much of a walk in the park you can tack on another 50-100 HP, or an additional die to its BW. You are the DM, this is as much your story as it is your players.

[DarkSoul]

If one of your goals of the fight is to put a healthy fear of dragons into your players, then by rights you should throw a juvenile (CR 10) at a party of 8 level 7's. That will very likely destroy them, so I'd say use a young (CR 7) dragon and give it maximum hit points. This will bring it's power down a bit, but still make it tough enough to handle the number of hits the players will dish out.

It tops out at 195 hp. You mentioned that a couple players might not be there. For each of them that isn't, take 15-20 hp off the dragon's maximum total.

What everyone else has said about dragons is pretty much right on: they're overpowered for their CR, and should be used sparingly because they are very, very dangerous encounters. Definitely be ready to pull your punches if your players get even a couple of bad rolls.

As for what to keep in mind:

If the dragon can't fly and it's getting attacked, it should immediately try to get somewhere that allows it to get airborne. You might have the dragon's lair be a bit too cramped for it to maneuver, and make sure the players know that the dragon is going to try to get to a more open area. They should realize that if it can get off the ground they're likely dead.

Your players will fear a dragon much more if they have to run from it at least once before they kill it. I don't think it should be crippled or disabled beyond the possible cramped quarters in the beginning of the battle.

[ksbsnowowl]

[Wisdom]
ELM has some good advice.

Three-way encounters can be an excellent challenge, and can let you get away with using monsters the PC's might not otherwise be able to handle.

I've twice used the following encounter against low-level gestalt parties (2nd level party of three, and a 1st level party of six). The party is tracking down a 7th level gestalt Barb/Frenzied Berserker//Rogue. They catch up to him just as the Frenzied Berserker comes across two Ice Trolls (CR 4). They enter the combat after the first blows are traded between the two higher challenge parties, and work to balance it so the trolls and the frenzied berserker "run out of gas" at roughly the same time.

Both times I've used that, it was a great, epic fight that terrified my players going into it, but left them beaming with pride when they had succeeded.


You can also use a beefier dragon, and hamper it in some way. I placed the same parties above (at 5th level) against a Stone Giant (CR 8) and a Fensir (CR 5), but the Stone Giant had been cursed (Bestow Curse), giving him a –4 penalty to all d20 rolls. He would be easier to affect with spells, and he wouldn't hit as often, but it would still hurt if he hit you.

Your party of six to eight 7th level characters has an APL of 8.2 to 9. I'd put them up against a CR 10 dragon that's been cursed. Or a CR 8 dragon that's got some other component to the encounter (the above recommended dragon hunters, or a second CR 8 dragon that is injured).

[Bobby Baratheon]

Nothing quite like a hellfire wyrm to spice things up. I kid, I kid. I would be inclined to go with the two wyrmlings/one injured idea. That gives you some interesting RP options in addition to the fun of fighting a dragon. For bonus points, have the dragon hunters approach the PCs before the fight and negotiate for their help (with the hidden intention of betraying them), then have them hang back and let the PCs soak up the worst punishment during the fight. Could be a pretty interesting encounter, and one with real options for the players besides "kill this thing" or "run away".