whats the CR of a shadow dragon/Dracolich?

[NecroDancer]

I was hoping to build an adult gold shadow dragon for a one shot game. However I'm having a tough time figuring out the CR of this creature.

This lead me to wonder how high does the shadow/Dracolich template raise a dragons CR, I can't find the answer in the MM can the playground help me out with this?

[Erys]

It seems, based on the templates used and comparing the CRs of the original dragons, dracolich is +1 CR and shadow dragon is +3. But, I don't see any hard rules that say this out right.

[lunaticfringe]

Whatever you want it to be because.

A shadow dragon can't be transformed into a dracolich, for it has already lost too much of its physical form. Page 83

[MaxWilson]

I was hoping to build an adult gold shadow dragon for a one shot game. However I'm having a tough time figuring out the CR of this creature.

This lead me to wonder how high does the shadow/Dracolich template raise a dragons CR, I can't find the answer in the MM can the playground help me out with this?

You have to recompute it based on the DMG tables.

[Chaosvii7]

I was hoping to build an adult gold shadow dragon for a one shot game. However I'm having a tough time figuring out the CR of this creature.

This lead me to wonder how high does the shadow/Dracolich template raise a dragons CR, I can't find the answer in the MM can the playground help me out with this?

That's because there is no hard number for CR adjustment. In order to figure out how much a template improves a monster's CR, you'll have to add the benefits of the template in and re-calculate it using the rules in the DMG on making monsters.

In doing so, you might also find that some of the monsters in the MM don't really stack up all that well to their CRs. The dragons probably do, at the very least.