Will this creature kill my party?

[GlitterAndRain]

Hi everybody! So my party has been plowing through almost every encounter and I'd like to give them a deadly challenge for their final battle, but i'm afraid I might go too far. What do you guys think? My party(all 5th level) consists of a Cleric(focused on spells), Warforged Fighter(tripper), Rogue(twf), Warlock, Ranger(Bow), Ranger(THF), Paladin, and Monk(grappler).

I gave it 32pb, BTW.

Medium Dragon (Water)
Alignment: Always Chaotic Evil
Initiative: +6; Senses: blindsense 60 ft., darkvision120 ft., low-light vision, and keen senses
Languages: Draconic

AC: 24 (+12 natural, +2 Dex), touch 12, flat-footed 22
Hit Dice: 13d12+65 (155 hp)
Fort +13, Ref+10, Will+8

Speed: 60 ft., fly 150 ft., (poor), swim 60 ft.
Space: 5 ft./5 ft.
Base Attack +13; Grapple +19
Attack: 1 Bite +19, 2 claws +17, 2 wings +17 melee; Breath 60' lineranged
Damage: 1 bite 1d8+7, 2 claws 1d6+3, 2 wings 1d4+3, Breath weapon 8d4 (21)
Special Attacks: Breath weapon 8d4 acid Reff 21 for half

Abilities: Str 22, Dex 14, Con 20, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 10
Special Qualities: Acid immunity, water breathing, Darkness, Darkvision 120', Blindsense 60'
Feats: Flyby Attack, Improved flight, Alertness, Imp. Initiative, Multiattack, (Not sure for the 6th feat, maybe Awaken SR?)
Skills: Skill points: Not assigned because it likely wont matter
Breath Weapon (Su): A black dragon has one type of breath weapon, a line of acid. Using a breath weapon is a standard action. Once a dragon breathes, it can't breathe again until 1d4 rounds later. A blast from a breath weapon always starts at the dragon's mouth and extends in a direction of the dragon's choice. The black dragon's breath weapon deals 8d4 acid damage. Creatures caught in the area can attempt Reflex saves (DC 18) to take half damage
Spell-Like Abilities: 3/day - darkness (radius 40 feet).

[Falontani]

I'm looking at it thinking to myself, give the cleric time to buff with relevant buffs and most of it's damaging abilities will be pinging off them except a full attack, which even a warforged fighter should not be doing.

Played tactically however if near the water it can grapple the warlock or maybe the cleric and pull them deep under water (moving at half speed with a successful grapple check still allows 75' of movement, easily gets you into the water where you just keep plunging. Leave the warlock or cleric deep under there and let them drown. The warforged fighter most likely has adamantine body meaning he's slow, stay aloft and breath him down. The ranger could be an issue with archery, plop a targeted darkness on them, or do a sunder (attack of opportunity) and smash their bow.
Basically, dont play the dragon as a tank with a bag of hit points, but as a pinnacle hunter with enough intelligence to know that spellcasting is a threat. The last feat could be improved maneuverability, or a metabreath.

[flappeercraft]

If played as a dumb foe, then the dragon would be an easy encounter, if played in a tactical manner and using all its resources in the right manner, the dragon would win without a problem. Just play somewhere in between, with some tactics prepared beforehand and some preparation but not excessive.

[vasilidor]

If you take the advice of the guy above this post, it may very well. then again intelligent dragons should be played intelligently. You should give the dragon a reason to not kill the party if they do not attack it right away.

[Falontani]

If you take the advice of the guy above this post, it may very well. then again intelligent dragons should be played intelligently. You should give the dragon a reason to not kill the party if they do not attack it right away.

Well! If you want a memorable fight then make it memorable ^_^ after you kill one or two of them then it can land and attempt to face tank if you really want it to be memorable but not kill them all.

[Quarian Rex]

That really depends on the party. How optimized are they? How geared are they? How competent are they? What are their stats like? There are a lot of unknowns here. Looking at what you have here and assuming minimal competencies on the part of the party there is a good chance of a TPK unless you are extremely generous with escape options or deliberately play the dragon as an imbecile.

With five attacks with +17 to hit and higher you are effectively auto-hitting most rounds. With the 24 AC and massive BAB advantage you have essentially shut down the tripper (good luck tripping the quadruped), the rogue (probably won't be able to hit and will be destroyed near instantly if he does), the archer (at fifth level he probably doesn't have the tricks needed to make a bow build hold its own), and the grappler (the BAB/strength advantage is too damn high for him to have a hope in hell of doing what he is built for). That only leaves the Cleric (whose effectiveness may be all over the place depending on the build), the Warlock (who will be able to do consistent damage, but it's a Warlock, so damage will be low unless there is some shenanigans), and the Paladin (who, depending on his Str and Cha, may be able to smite effectively) to carry the entire party, and depending on the builds (and the dice) even they may be completely ineffective. If the Cleric usually memorizes Fort save spells they are going to be in for a bad time.

You have potentially made an encounter where 4 out of 7 party members will be almost completely useless using a creature almost three times their HD. And this will all probably be in darkness (how many of the party have darkvision?). What are you actually trying to achieve here?

Now, how much of what I've said actually applies to you and your group is something that you will have to figure out for yourself. I have been challenged by worse as a player and inflicted worse as a DM and some of those were mistakes while others weren't. Take a look at the party's stats. If 4 out of 5 martials can only hit on an 18 or higher, you might want to rethink things.

[denthor]

Before this encounter see how they do against four trolls.

At 5th level the trolls should send them home.

We have a party of 3. 11th barbarian \thief. 9th level wizard 7th level ranger ( bow sniper) trolls give us a run for our money.

[GlitterAndRain]

They're not very optimized. The bow ranger will hit on a 13, the THF ranger will hit on a 13, The Fighter will hit on 14, the warlock will always hit, the clerics spells will be mostly uselss, the rogue will hit on a 15 melee or 13 ranged, The paladin will hit on a 14. So I guess the AC may be too high.

I'm trying to give them a very difficult fight to cap this particular adventure. They've been blowing through everything else I've put in front of them.

Maybe I should drop it's dex and shift it down 1 age category to Young?

[Quarian Rex]

They're not very optimized. The bow ranger will hit on a 13, the THF ranger will hit on a 13, The Fighter will hit on 14, the warlock will always hit, the clerics spells will be mostly uselss, the rogue will hit on a 15 melee or 13 ranged, The paladin will hit on a 14. So I guess the AC may be too high.

I'm trying to give them a very difficult fight to cap this particular adventure. They've been blowing through everything else I've put in front of them.

Maybe I should drop it's dex and shift it down 1 age category to Young?

That's actually a pretty good hit range overall (better than I expected). I'd just drop the darkness spell-like (this will be a tough fight, best to let the party actually find their target) and I think that you'll have a pretty interesting fight. An argument could be made to shave a bit off Dex but I think dropping the age category would be too much.

Good luck.

[Steve Edwards]

if it's the last session, go harder on them, they should have enough experience working as a group to be able to take it down or figure out a way to give them selves the advantage

[Sam K]

What have you thrown at them in the past, and how have they "blown through it"?

They are a large group of low-tier classes and most of their builds require itemisation and optimisation to perform well. They can probably power through a lot of "CR appropriate" challenges simply because of action economy (they can throw out a lot of dice) assuming the enemy uses only basic tactics (walk up and hit the guy in the front), but I'm guessing an optimised enemy, or an optimised 4 man party of equal level using clever tactics, could completely wreck them. A single AoE save-or-suck spell (especially if you can find one targeting willpower) could take out most of them. They are almost completely dependent on melee attacks, so flying foes could plink away at them while they were unable to retaliate, difficult terrain could be almost as effective, and a spell like glitterdust could cripple them. Using focus fire on the weakest party members is also likely to take down at least one or two.

I can give you an example: I was playing a cleric 1/crusader 1 draconic water orc with very high stats in a solo campaign. I had rampaged through encounters WAY above my level, one or two shotting things my DM thought might be over the top, and coming out of the fights at full hp because of crusader self healing. But in an underwater exploration scenario, I was held at a stalemate by a handful of 1hd fishmen using nets and light crossbows. They moved much faster than my character and would just "kite" around, shooting from outside of my charge range, and catch him in nets if he got too close to his objective. They could hardly hit (range increments underwater), but given enough time they would have worn him down. While I had turned several large sharks into so much low-grade sashimi, these handfull of pesky fish-men were a much greater challenge because they played to their strengths instead of letting me bring my characters A-game.

Not saying you shouldn't set your party up against a dragon, I just want to raise the idea that you could probably challenge them seriously just by having them face enemies that plays to the partys weaknesses. If you have them fight that dragon with clever tactics it will likely kill at least a couple of them and if you play for keeps it could easily wipe them. If you want to find the right level, maybe run a couple of simulated combats to see how they perform and what kind of tactics may be overwhelming.

[death390]

with an 8 man party like yours the raw action economy they have is the problem (as previously stated). the best way to give them a challenge would be to give them 5-6 enemies, 1-2 being "boss" while the others go after the other members.


perhaps play to their strengths? set the grappler up with a grappler to give him a challenge, a someof ranged users to go after the bow ranger and warlock, 2 bruisers (preferably large) then top it off with some kind of spellcaster boss. (maybe a couple of ogers, several kobolds with bows, an oger magi, and his pet bear?)

as Sam K said intelligent and tactically played lower powered creatures can prove to be a greater risk than the "dumb" powerful ones. so for example with my idea setting kobolds with bows on a upper ledge with partial cover is devastating because the melee users can't easily get to them while the party would have a 20% miss chance due to partial cover (to basically replace AC since they would basically auto-hit). meanwhile the oger magi is the most dangerous due to regeneration needing multiple party members to deal with him efficiently with 3 members have to deal with the secondary bruisers and bear.


numbers have their own advantage, without cleave wading through a legion of small enemies is time consuming. wading though a group of weak enemies armed with alchemical weaponry is a bitch (AC 5 to hit a target square so don't have to hit the person). hell the "we will blot out the sun" arrow rain works great (just have several weak enemies aid another to boost the to-hit of their poor shots)

[Vaern]

The major problem I see here is that clerics' most damaging offensive spells tend to be very short range, with inflict, harm, and slay living all being touch range. You have two two-weapon-fighters, a tripper, and a grappler. The paladin looks pretty nondescript and I'm assuming he's sword & board.
The majority of the group is built for melee, which means they're going to have a really bad time against anything with flying. It really doesn't have a reason to do much other than circle around overhead and rain acid breath in the party one ever couple of rounds, but even when it decides to swoop in for a flyby attack there's no reason for it to remain within melee range.
Deadliness aside, if you throw an enemy at the group that negates 3/4 of their builds and reduces them to sitting on the sidelines with crossbows, even if they end up winning, it's not going to be fun.
The only way I can see them actually enjoying this fight is if you decide to have the thing swoop down at the monk after he has declared a readied action to grapple if the dragon comes in range. He manages to pin the dragon's wings and brings it down, allowing the rest of your melee players to do literally anything before the dragon escapes.

[Bronk]

They're not very optimized. The bow ranger will hit on a 13, the THF ranger will hit on a 13, The Fighter will hit on 14, the warlock will always hit, the clerics spells will be mostly uselss, the rogue will hit on a 15 melee or 13 ranged, The paladin will hit on a 14. So I guess the AC may be too high.

I'm trying to give them a very difficult fight to cap this particular adventure. They've been blowing through everything else I've put in front of them.

Maybe I should drop it's dex and shift it down 1 age category to Young?

I think this encounter will either kill your players quickly (strafing runs with its breath weapon) or worse, turn into a boring slog as the characters surround the thing and plink away at it, missing most of the time, which is aggravating to players. The fight will slog on even longer because they'll have to start healing each other over and over. I once did the same thing in one of my games, and what I thought would be an easy fight lasted way longer than anyone wanted.

Another problem is that a medium dragon just doesn't have the same boss battle feel as something bigger.

Without knowing anything else about your adventure, my suggestion would be to have this thing be a land drake of some kind (so you don't need an excuse for why it isn't flying away), and big. When fighting it, make sure there are a bunch of environmental factors that can work in the PC's favor, like cave collapses and so on.

Also, let them not just grapple the thing, but hop on and climb all over it if they want, stabbing as they go. Maybe have them take some damage as it crashes into walls to spice things up.

[Axle-Gear]

I'm with Death390 on making the encounter multiple creatures. I would submit that it doesn't even have to be that many, but you want to spread out the attacks that would otherwise pile into the boss. Solo monsters rarely work anywhere above a party of three; either they drop handily due to action economy, or they're too beefed up for the party to deal with.

My recommendation is to give the party a few guys that are easy to take down, but will become a massive problem if ignored to get more damage into the dragon.

Say, take the dragon down a little bit, and toss in a couple of hardy sorcerers or clerics on foot to toss around buffs/debuffs, maybe even some Shield Other spells to ensure the dragon is the last to drop. I'm sure such loyal disciples won't mind. :P And maybe at least one decent melee footsoldier to make sure the spellcasters aren't overwhelmed, or have the dragon swoop down to help when one of his cronies is in trouble.

[GlitterAndRain]

So I ran a few simulations with a Young dragon, and the dragon can just stay out of range(the terrain really favors it) and breathe on them and there isn't much the PCs can do. Except possibly summon a shark to keep the dragon out of the water, but then the dragon just has to stay out at 60' and the only one who can deal reliable damage is the Warlock with an average of 10 damage. The total average damage output for the party(average damage on hit*((number of rolls which can hit AC19)/20)) is 30. But that assumes the party can see the dragon(only 1 PC has darkvision) and that the dragon isn't gaining cover from being submerged in the water.