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Alveanerle
2008-10-11, 03:39 PM
Hello there.

I'm looking for some good ideas for dragon builds, CR around 18-21.
I'm not looking for complete stat blocks, more like general build ideas, or even separate tricks/tactics that can be added to dragons for some jolly goodness.

Background: i'm about to throw some 3 to 4 dragon encounters at my players (group size 5, levels 15-16, the power indicator slightly biased to the "optimized" size od the spectrum - recently they onerounded a fiendish green dragon CR 20, and were only slighly amused by his powerattacking smites).

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-10-11, 03:58 PM
Scintillating Scales(spell, Draconomicon, SpC). Turn that Nat Armor into a Deflection bonus.
Epic Feats(Epic Spellcasting, Epic Leadership, Automatic Quicken, any others you have room for)
Steadfast Determination(Con instead of Wis to Will)

Dragons are Epic spellcasters with massive melee capabilities. Take primarily swift-action spells that boost melee to get the full advantage. They also qualify for Epic, so use that. It would help if we knew what your party is made of, and how they got the Green.

wadledo
2008-10-11, 04:01 PM
Steel dragon (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mm/20040328a).
Check around that one for a few more, and it would be nice to know how you play them.

Flickerdart
2008-10-11, 04:02 PM
Add 20 Wizard levels to a CR 14 fellow. They're unassociated, so they count for 1/2 CR. Send this monster against a level 20 party and watch the slaughter. Or, same thing to 4 CR 10 dragons, which is much worse.

Eldariel
2008-10-11, 04:36 PM
Just...don't abuse CR system. That's just stupid. It's specifically stated to be just a guideline, and it's a bad one at that. Rather, make a tough, appropriate encounter. Epic feats are a big one (Permanent Emanation has multiple awesome uses (Repulsion being a big one) and can be picked even for non-Great Wyrms [who don't qualify for Epic Spellcasting]), and spells. Specifically, defensive and control-spells. Dragon with Greater Mirror Image, Scintillating Scales, Greater Mage Armor, Contingency: Teleport/Heal and Displacement is already a much tougher challenge than a vanilla Dragon.

One with access to Superior Invisibility, Imperious Glare (or just Intimidate-check - combine with Frightful Presence for massive damage! - or at least, a massive number of running opponents; add Imperious Command [Drow of the Underdark] and they'll truly be screwed), Ghostform, Time Stop, Solid Fog, Wings of Cover, Wings of Flurry, Wall of Force, Forcecage, Wish, Greater Planar Binding, Gate, Wraithstrike ("Wraithstrike, PA for 40, Dire Charge as per the epic feat" - evinscerates your average unprepared fools), Maw of Chaos, Mass Avasculate, Blasphemy and company is just on another level than a standard Dragon.

Realize that using magic does not remove the option of using physical attacks and Breath Weapon. I would make it a priority to pick up "Quicken Breath"-feat from Draconomicon though - that feats allows breathing as a free action. That means, on the first round of the combat, you can make a full attack charge, cast a quickened spell and breathe. That evens out the action advantage the players have a lot. You could even take more Metabreath-feats (Animate Breath was suggested to me and does look pretty spiffy).


Basically though, the Dragon should use standard control magic to try and separate the party members from each other to prevent it from getting overwhelmed by opponent's huge number of actions. Stuff like Solid Fog, Wall of Force and such Quickened (use the 7th level spell "Arcane Spellsurge" to quicken them - makes all your Standard Action-spells Swift, and is a Swift Cast for Dragons) is pure gold here. Also, "Wingstorm"-feat from Draconomicon is great, allowing your Dragon to simply blow the fools away and make 'em get ripped apart in the airflow.

Dragons are the quinessential Gishes with automatic spell progression, full BAB, huge number of natural attacks and incredible mobility. Pre-epic, that's the natural way to play them.

Oh yeah, pick the "Awaken Spell Resistance"-feat once - it'll make the Dragon's spell resistance incredible (equal to HD!).

Alveanerle
2008-10-11, 05:51 PM
Scintillating Scales(spell, Draconomicon, SpC). Turn that Nat Armor into a Deflection bonus.

Oh yea, the green dragon had it turned on too. It was amusing to see the wizard's face when he was told that his fist ray of his incredibly empowered scorching ray (yea yea) failed to connect. And then he rolled two natural 20s for next 2 rays.

Epic Feats(Epic Spellcasting, Epic Leadership, Automatic Quicken, any others you have room for)

The dragon qualifies for epic if its past old age cathegory, but it still needs to fultill rest of feat prerequisites. So no epic spellcasting within a reasonable dragon CR (as it can't cast spells of 9th level).


Dragons are Epic spellcasters with massive melee capabilities. Take primarily swift-action spells that boost melee to get the full advantage. They also qualify for Epic, so use that. It would help if we knew what your party is made of, and how they got the Green.

See above for the comment on epic spellcasting. Other epic feats look good thou, espiecialy Dire Charge.

As for the party composition:
- optimized blaster wizard/incantate10/loremaster1 (lvl16)
- glass cannon warblade/master of nine (lvl 16). excellent offense (was first in the group to break 200 dam/round - only knight and warlock can't do that by now), but a low AC and reflex defenses.
- hitter rogue/swashbuckler (lvl 15, Otto von Beaver's swashbuckler variant). small, dealing tons of damage, incredibly hard to hit, goes down on will saves.
- uber tanker knight (lvl 15, slightly toned down Otto von Beaver's knight variant). Saving butt of everyone (granting save rerolls, protecting the wizard, etc.).
- uber everything paladin/hospitaler/cleric/human paragon (lvl 16). Requires many buffs to enter the Terminator mode.
- warlock/hellfire warlock (lvl 14, he's on and off). The warlock is known for providing most fun for everyone, due to his personal traits and his ability to spread chaos around him. The only "normal" character in the group. If targetted goes down like a dockworker on a banana peel.

Regarding the green one - just checked my notes on the initiative table, it was slightly more than one round. But still a quickie.

The green one had improved invis, scintilating scales, bearstr, cat's grace, shield and mage armor on. He also had nonstandard stats (slightly more in DEX) and combat reflexes.
Surprise: diving charge at the strongest good emanation in the party (smite good + power attack). Took a chunk off the paladin, and quickened breathed some acid damage. End of surprise round.

Round one - paladin gets out of dragon's reach, both he and his mount eat up an AoO, and fires one one of his divine powerups; wizard casts quickened glitterdust and maximized empowered searing scorching ray; dragon attacks someone in reach and starts hovering (dust cloud goes up, reducing the visibility greatly);warblade moves in, eats up AoO, does some damage and moves out of dragon's reach; rogue moves into dragon's reach and does some damage; knight fires up his bong pipe and enters the "protect them all" mode.

Round two - paladin delays;wizard delays;dragon stops hovering and full attacks rogue (only 2 attacks connect or so); warblade moves in and does a full attack; either rogue or paladin finishes off the beast; knights draws his carving knife "ok who wants green dragonscale sleeves?".



Steel dragon.

Interesting. Although i'm now trying to find rather mroe evil aligned opponents. Nevertheless, thank you for pointing to a neat source.



Add 20 Wizard levels to a CR 14 fellow. They're unassociated, so they count for 1/2 CR. Send this monster against a level 20 party and watch the slaughter. Or, same thing to 4 CR 10 dragons, which is much worse.

Won't work. The unassociated class levels start counting as full once they surpass the original CR, right? Besides, i want to challange them with some dragons, not outright slaughter everyone with Wiz20 who just happens to have different shape.

Belial_the_Leveler
2008-10-11, 06:00 PM
Awaken Spell Resistance + Deflect Ray (the spell).

Your dragon only needs to fear warriors now.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-10-11, 06:07 PM
Looks like you've got a party optimized for damage-dealing. The Dragon will have Int and Wis of about 18 each, have it plan. The party should never have more than 2 members attacking at once. Use battlefield control, Antimagic fields, Walls of Force, and an army of Kobold Worshippers to make sure the PCs get seperated long before they run into him, and the dragon has time to heal between enemies.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-10-11, 06:23 PM
Won't work. The unassociated class levels start counting as full once they surpass the original CR, right? Besides, i want to challange them with some dragons, not outright slaughter everyone with Wiz20 who just happens to have different shape.

It's based on HD, not CR. A CR 14 black dragon has 22 HD, for instance, so you can give it 21 Wizard levels and get CR 21-22, depending on how you round.


Just...don't abuse CR system. That's just stupid. It's specifically stated to be just a guideline, and it's a bad one at that.

This is how it works in WotC's own examples, too (admittedly, Dragons of Faerūn is one of the worst-edited books they've put out, so go figure if you should buy any of the stats in it).

I think the Creeping Doom (or somesuch) was the epic wizard black dracolich with a ridiculously low CR? I forget.

AstralFire
2008-10-11, 06:27 PM
While that may be true, I have to say that abusing the CR system has always seemed very counterproductive to me.

98% of the time, the only person who will be basing things on CR is the DM - you. So if you start 'optimizing' your encounters to take advantage of the poorly thought-out CR system... I dunno, it seems only one step above saying "Rocks fall, everyone dies" and just DM Fiating your way through everything. I actually have less of an issue with careful use of DM Fiat.

The point is to provide an interesting challenge, not "see how you can say 'No U' and kill them all."

Alveanerle
2008-10-11, 06:53 PM
Just...don't abuse CR system. That's just stupid. It's specifically stated to be just a guideline, and it's a bad one at that. Rather, make a tough, appropriate encounter.

That's exactly what i'm trying to achieve :-D

[skips some good advice]


One with access to Superior Invisibility, Imperious Glare (or just Intimidate-check - combine with Frightful Presence for massive damage! - or at least, a massive number of running opponents; add Imperious Command [Drow of the Underdark] and they'll truly be screwed),

Now that's something neat! Superior Invis is 8th, so hard to get it for chromatic dragons if i do not wish to send the hardship of the encounter into the stratosphere, but the fear-path advice is a good one. They have dozillion of pluses for saves vs fear, but the DC of it can also be slightly improved (ability focus).

Regarding Imperious Glare - its description says something about "demoralized" opponent - it would indicate the neccesity for Intimidiate skill check - can one intimidiate more than one opponent at once?

[skipping rest of the spell advice]

If it's possible i'd like to not turn that into "lets fight a high level wizard that has a strange shape of a dragon", and instead focus on other draconic aspects, just aided by the spellcasting. The wraithstrike advise sounds just excellent :smallcool:



Realize that using magic does not remove the option of using physical attacks and Breath Weapon. I would make it a priority to pick up "Quicken Breath"-feat from Draconomicon though - that feats allows breathing as a free action. That means, on the first round of the combat, you can make a full attack charge, cast a quickened spell and breathe.
Unfortunately, it does not work like that for me. Draconomicon was issued before WoTC got the idea of introducing swift/quickened actions. Upon their introduction, casting of quickened spell (previously defined as a free action too) was moved to a swift action. So it follows that quickened breathes would follow the same route. "RAW or not RAW" discussion aside - in my game i treat it as a swift action.


That evens out the action advantage the players have a lot. You could even take more Metabreath-feats (Animate Breath was suggested to me and does look pretty spiffy).
To my understanding if you're quickening the breath you are not going to use it anymore in the combat (+4 to timeout duration). So there's nothing preventing the dragon from stacking several other metabreath feats on top of the "one and quickened". Too bad quicken does not stack with maximize for breathes :smallbiggrin:



Basically though, the Dragon should use standard control magic to try and separate the party members from each other to prevent it from getting overwhelmed by opponent's huge number of actions. Stuff like Solid Fog, Wall of Force and such Quickened (use the 7th level spell "Arcane Spellsurge" to quicken them - makes all your Standard Action-spells Swift, and is a Swift Cast for Dragons) is pure gold here. Also, "Wingstorm"-feat from Draconomicon is great, allowing your Dragon to simply blow the fools away and make 'em get ripped apart in the airflow.

Arcane Spellsurge - i don't have the book, but basing on the available description it's an incredible gem. Thank you for bringing it up.

And windstorm - either that, or the other feat (forgot its name) that allows for stomping the ground (or hitting it with a tail), efficiently making it an area bullrush + knockdown effect. That combined with combat reflexes and improved trip so they have it tougher to get back to the action. Preferably also combined with some way to extend the reach of a natural attack.


Oh yeah, pick the "Awaken Spell Resistance"-feat once - it'll make the Dragon's spell resistance incredible (equal to HD!).

Mmm, noticed that one and liked it from the spot.

Other ideas i had:
- going the snatch, improved snatch, multisnatch route - grab someone, then run away slowly grinding him to a bloody pulp
- using the MMV dragon variant, for the dragon toxin and other goodiness. This requires a mandatory Awaken SR feat, or possibly some way of invoking AMF.
- hex dragon with that feat that allows spellcasting in a non-suited forms. Combined with project image and hex dragon's ability to morph into something really small and innocent looking.
- for a bit of a wild touch, i also considered picking an old Sand Dragon, and replacing its sorcerer spellcasting with swordsage maneuvers of equivalent level.

Fax Celestis
2008-10-11, 06:57 PM
Animate Breath spell gives your dragon elemental minions.

Alveanerle
2008-10-11, 07:03 PM
What about Arcane Strike (feat from CWar) - would it grant bonuses to all of dragon's natural weapons or just one of them?
The feat description says that the energy can be channeled into "a melee weapon, your unarmed strike, or natural weapons". The example at the end of feat description however clearly states that the character can use the bonus attack/damage with a "single melee weapon of his choice".

AstralFire
2008-10-11, 07:49 PM
What about Arcane Strike (feat from CWar) - would it grant bonuses to all of dragon's natural weapons or just one of them?
The feat description says that the energy can be channeled into "a melee weapon, your unarmed strike, or natural weapons". The example at the end of feat description however clearly states that the character can use the bonus attack/damage with a "single melee weapon of his choice".

I would say it only affects one natural weapon.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-10-11, 08:08 PM
Does it affect all attacks on a full attack? If so, it should probably affect all of a dragon's natural attacks. If not, it should affect one.

AstralFire
2008-10-11, 08:10 PM
Does it affect all attacks on a full attack? If so, it should probably affect all of a dragon's natural attacks. If not, it should affect one.

It works on all with one weapon in a full, but usually multiple natural weapons have to be enchanted separately.

Biffoniacus_Furiou
2008-10-11, 09:25 PM
The absolute first priority of any high-level powerful foe should be to even the odds. If there are multiple PCs, he should do anything he can to split them up or take some of them out of the fight temporarily, so that he can focus on killing them a few at a time. Spells like Prismatic Wall, Maze, and especially Iceberg (FB) are extremely useful for that. He should have minions, some particularly powerful combatants such as Simulacrums, some to tempt the PCs into wasting actions on such as those from Animate Breath, and some to force the PCs to deal with them such as Golems which target spellcasters. Summoned creatures that can be dispelled or dismissed are a waste of time.

If a Dragon is capable of casting Moment of Prescience, it should always have one active and always use it on initiative. Don't tell the players what its initiative is or how it got a result that beat all of theirs if they aren't aware of this trick. If you roll initiative each round instead of once at the beginning of combat, most initiative-boosting magic won't really matter unless you make a bonus apply to its initiative for the entire encounter rather than just the first initiative roll.

Check my posts in the following threads for more advice on running a dragon encounter:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=92749
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=86672

Eldariel
2008-10-12, 12:34 AM
If it's possible i'd like to not turn that into "lets fight a high level wizard that has a strange shape of a dragon", and instead focus on other draconic aspects, just aided by the spellcasting. The wraithstrike advise sounds just excellent :smallcool:

Well, you do need some amount of magic to even things up. As Biffoniacus said, the opponents normally have something like 4 actions to Dragon's one. If they do anything relevant over all those actions, the Dragon is toast even if it's way stronger individually than any of the players. This is why control magic is so important - it allows the Dragon to engage the individually weaker opponents on one-to-one basis.

It also makes the encounter more epic as disabling opponents makes the fight last way longer and occupies enemy casters and overall, just slows things down. This is basically just roleplaying the dragon's potent Int. At the very least, use defensive spells like Greater Mirror Image, Wings of Cover (Races of the Dragon, second level Draconic spell - Immediate action, gain a total cover against one attack - incredible against casters trying for Touch Attacks or Manyshot Archers), Greater Mage Armor ('cause y'know, why not), Scintillating Scales (else it'll be very easy to drop with touch attacks), Contingency and Displacement. If a Dragon has magical capabilities, use them. No, you don't have to use them as its primary combat mode, but you should use them to their maximum capacity. The above spells allow:
-The Dragon to escape instant death twice: makes the fight more epic as it's harder to one-shot the Dragon.
-Make the Dragon way more difficult to kill with simple arrow peppering - should allow you to tie the casters to the combat simply by forcing some way of penetrating the illusionary defenses.
-Basically make all "cheap kills" (Arcane Reached Shivering Touches, for example) impossible.


Unfortunately, it does not work like that for me. Draconomicon was issued before WoTC got the idea of introducing swift/quickened actions. Upon their introduction, casting of quickened spell (previously defined as a free action too) was moved to a swift action. So it follows that quickened breathes would follow the same route. "RAW or not RAW" discussion aside - in my game i treat it as a swift action.

To my understanding if you're quickening the breath you are not going to use it anymore in the combat (+4 to timeout duration). So there's nothing preventing the dragon from stacking several other metabreath feats on top of the "one and quickened". Too bad quicken does not stack with maximize for breathes :smallbiggrin:

Meh. One thing though: Before Swift Action-errata, you were able to breathe and cast a swift spell in the same turn. Just something to think about. Also, it's not hard to rule that the Dragon essentially breathes while doing its other actions - casting spell or attacking really doesn't require its mouth.

As for meta'ing the Breath, there are actually solid spells for that in Races of the Dragon (and maybe Draconomicon or Spell Compendium too - can't remember). This saves you feat (which, as you probably have noticed, are a precious commodity for Dragons as they need to pump up so many different things).


Arcane Spellsurge - i don't have the book, but basing on the available description it's an incredible gem. Thank you for bringing it up.

It's in Races of the Dragon. Does just what I stated, so you can use it off that information allow. Same book also has "Wings of Cover", which gives you full cover against any one attack and is an immediate cover. That super metamagicked Enervation or Shivering Touch after Spell Resistance is better to Cover vs. as it'd quite possibly end the encounter in one shot.



Mmm, noticed that one and liked it from the spot.

Other ideas i had:
- going the snatch, improved snatch, multisnatch route - grab someone, then run away slowly grinding him to a bloody pulp
- using the MMV dragon variant, for the dragon toxin and other goodiness. This requires a mandatory Awaken SR feat, or possibly some way of invoking AMF.
- hex dragon with that feat that allows spellcasting in a non-suited forms. Combined with project image and hex dragon's ability to morph into something really small and innocent looking.
- for a bit of a wild touch, i also considered picking an old Sand Dragon, and replacing its sorcerer spellcasting with swordsage maneuvers of equivalent level.

Hmm, I'd go with a core Dragon for now just to show your players what they truly can do. As touched before, use magic to make the Dragon more durable. You can also use magic to make the players expend their resources (illusions and such - Disguise Self/Polymorph/Alter Self to appear as a Dragon of different variety so they'll try to hit its immunity instead of its weakness with magic; likewise, Images and such so they'll waste attack resources on them and will be reluctant to go all-out against the real dragon as they think it may be an illusion too - maybe attack with 2 illusions and one real simultaneously or such), get allies (Planar Binding-line, Dominate/Charm-line and such - something to present with the Dragon in the encounter), and to dispel their equipment/buffs for a more fair combat, and to hit more easily. Also, work the feats out. Few important ones:
-Awaken Spell Resistance
-Practiced Spellcaster (so the opposing casters don't as easily dispel all the buffs/counter all the magic)
-Power Attack
-Flyby Attack (although not as worthwhile if you plan on full attacking instead of breath strafing/spellcasting)
-Extend Spell (maybe for some buffs - not absolutely necessary, but worthwhile to consider; Practiced Spellcaster may be enough though - you'll want as many buffs on 24/7 as you want so that you don't need to cast them in combat)

Then you'll want at least Good manoeuvrability (Improved Flight and/or items/magic) or the Hover-feat and Wingover-feat. Snatch-line is probably too expensive feat wise, and your opponents have so many ways to counteract it from Freedom of Movement to simple teleportation. I wouldn't bother with it - focus on single feats that enhance the Dragon instead. Dire Charge, for example, seems like a must if you plan on melee.

Also, do use the Dragon's massive wealth to buff it up (at least get +6 Charisma item and +5 inherent - also, Con, Str and mayhap Dex), get it defensive items (perhaps its elemental weakness, some immunity stuff such as Scarab of Invulnerability [Magic Item Compendium] and such), and things that make its Flight better, Lair Wards and overall stuff that makes the whole Dragon more potent. It has immense wealth so it better use it to appear even more formidable (Dragons fight each other - they need all the help they can get).

And as you have Spellcasting, try to pick a Dragon that can pick "Heal" as a spell known. If it's taking bad damage (you should never die in one turn with all the suggested buffs and defenses), teleport away and Heal it a few times and come right back at full HP and fully buffed up. Just make use of everything the Dragon has, play it up to its Int (or as close as you can), make it use spells that allow it to gain allies and make your players truly feel while they're known as the mightiest creatures to inhabit the multiverse. I'd say the encounter was a suggest if the first fight ends in a draw with PCs retreating in the end and the Dragon moving to engage them the next day again until one side manages to force the other to a fight to the death (through dimensional movement-blocking magic and such). Oh yeah, and while Dragons are mighty spellcasters, don't forget to use the Spell-Likes too - those are their native abilities, after all!

mostlyharmful
2008-10-12, 03:51 AM
As a possibility there's plenty of fantasy tropes based around a Dragon shifted to humanoid frellin' with an adventuring parties brains well before they get to the lair/fight/ambush. It's old, smart, bored and skilled up the wazoo, use that. If you let them affect PCs then once you max his bluff, disguise, diplomacy and sense motive he'll be only detectable through your slipups.

Give them old davey the hermit to guide them to the evil Davinaxivaths lair, let him get to know them (good for letting him anticipate encounter tactics) and either bluff/diplomance or mindbend a split in the group.

Plus there's a nice fork in that plan, either they get it, feel good for getting it and get an advantage on the Dragon or they don't and get to kick themselves for setting themselves up.

Talic
2008-10-12, 04:14 AM
Hello there.

I'm looking for some good ideas for dragon builds, CR around 18-21.
I'm not looking for complete stat blocks, more like general build ideas, or even separate tricks/tactics that can be added to dragons for some jolly goodness.

Background: i'm about to throw some 3 to 4 dragon encounters at my players (group size 5, levels 15-16, the power indicator slightly biased to the "optimized" size od the spectrum - recently they onerounded a fiendish green dragon CR 20, and were only slighly amused by his powerattacking smites).

You want them to be not amused? You want to challenge them? Ok, here goes.

Let's go for CR 21

Young Adult Blue Dragon. 18 HD, CR 11.
+4 Wis modifier. Shuffle stats to put a 16 in Wis, bringing it to a 20 Wis.
Add 18 levels of Cleric (+9 CR)
Add in 1 more level of ToB Class (+1 CR)

At cleric 17, you get 9th level magic.
At Cleric 18 you get the Epic Spellcasting feat.
And then you have ToB 1.

Now, you have 40 ranks in Knowledge (Religion). That's some epic spellcasting there. Not to mention 18th level spellcasting for ClericZilla with Dragon. Avoid DMM, if you intend for the party to live. If not, you have feats to burn (12 feats, not counting the Epic Spellcasting slot you take at Cleric 18).

ToB Class gives you a few maneuvers, but with an initiator level of 19, you aren't exactly limited on what you can pick. Pick one that gives you a bunch of granted maneuvers, or take a few martial study/martial maneuver feats, so you qualify for a few high power maneuvers (Time Stands Still? Mountain Tombstone Strike? Diamond Nightmare Blade? Pick 2.)

Now you have something that can go toe to toe with a party. Give it Epic Mage Armor, Epic contingent Resurrection, just go with the standard book epics. They're good enough. Combine with Scintillating Scales (it does still cast as a fairly low level sorceror too), and you have a rather impressive creature, with VERY impressive HP, stats, saves, casting, and melee ability.

Eldariel
2008-10-12, 05:52 AM
Oh yeah, three big spells I forgot to mention:
-Wind Wall (level 3)
-Ray Deflection (level 4, Spell Compendium)
-Ironguard (level 7, Spell Compendium)

with those two on, most of the party's normal tricks will be like to blow straight through the Dragon, so to speak. Spell Turning is the next step up from Ray Deflection - turning anything is just awesome, and throwing it right back at the wielder...priceless!

With regards to the party though, it's folly for the Dragon to engage them in straight melee and the beast knows that - if there's 4 powerful melee warriors, no Dragon is going to try to fight them all at once (at least before a few breaths and some magic to soften them up/split them apart). You may use melee, but the others need to be behind Wall of Force/Solid Fog/similar effects that prevent them all from ganging up to the Dragon (if the Dragon is alone, it should not fight a vastly larger number of opponents at once).

The simple thing that happened was that the Green one took on too many opponents at once and was easily overwhelmed (and didn't have Contingency to save its butt) - absolutely nobody should be surprised. Btw, I suggest that it uses its AoOs for tripping (you may as well pick up Combat Expertise > Improved Trip) to stop the opponent from reaching it if it intends on fighting in melee - this makes its reach already much more difficult. But yea, the dragon isn't dumb enough to allow 4 melee characters to attack it at once.


It's pitiful though how weak chromatic dragons are magically. No wonder metallic dragons own the roost - your average Bronze or Copper Dragon would whip the floor with a white, blue, green or black of the same age category, let alone Silver or Gold Dragons. Only Reds are really frightening out of the chromatic ones (and even that needs to be Ancient CR 23 to get level 7 spells - alternatively, Very Old with a Sorcerer-level would work, but that'd still be CR 22).

Krimm_Blackleaf
2008-10-12, 05:55 AM
I'll just leave this here... (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=87472)

Alveanerle
2008-10-12, 10:00 AM
Thank you all for great advices here!

Just a few more issues here:

- i recall there was a feat somewhere that builded atop the flyby attack, and allowed for multiple attacks during the flyby routine (up to the number of attacks of opportuinity the creature has IIRC), but only one per opponent passed. Anyone remembers what it was?

- what ways (spells/feats) are there for extending the reach of a natural weapon?

- if the dragon uses manufactured weapons in his appendages, it would get the normal weapon routine on that appendage as allowed by BAB, right?

- what are some manufactured weapons a dragon can use?

And to give more information on the background situation - the party is doing well on their way to stop the upcoming Age of Worms - they are doing the King of Rifts adventure right now. So basicly it's them with the bright idea of infiltrating the city of giants that is currently besieged (and partially destroyed) by an army of dragons - both them and the dragons are looking for a very peculiar phylactery - that of the First Dracolich. Natural inhabitants of the cite are of course hostile to everyone they dont know, or at least in the "shoot first ask questions later" mood. Since the war is raging around, it's not uncommon to meet wounded dragons/giants, or ones with depleted daily resources.
Sure i could pull any number of dragons out of the attacking stack and throw it at PCs, but for now they still did not make any big mistake and are avoiding any open exposure. The green one was a stray encounter while they were watching the besieged city from afar. The last session ended with their decision to make a run through an open ledge to the other part of the city - now that ledge will for sure be watched by some dragon scouts, so it's a great opportunity for me to start the "zombie survival horror", just with dragons in place of zombies.

mostlyharmful
2008-10-12, 11:43 AM
- what ways (spells/feats) are there for extending the reach of a natural weapon?

Bloodwind, SpC I believe. Right up there with Scintallating Scales for Dragons. Add in Improved Invis and you can mash up a group pretty bad, just be aware of TPKs

Magnor Criol
2008-10-12, 12:32 PM
Pretty much all of my advice has either already been stated already, or is overshadowed by someone else's superior advice, so I'll skip the particulars.

I would highly suggest procuring a copy of Draconomicon, if you don't have one. I found that book to be very enlightening for all aspects of dragons, both in terms of from a player's perspective, and from a DM's. It has interesting information about dragon habits and personality (to make this dragon more than just a "rawr kill you" monster to the PCs) and some interesting segments about fights involving dragons. It also has lots of interesting feats and spells to use, as many people here have already pointed out.

I liked Sstoopidtallkid's advice; keep in mind that a dragon, even a chromatic one, will be very intelligent. Have it analyze the party and prepare for them. An opponent who keys its defenses specifically to target you? That should be pretty freaky for the PCs.

Also remember that the alignments of the dragons aren't set in stone; they're all unique beings, so an evil gold dragon isn't impossible, just very rare. Imagine letting the PCs meet said gold dragon, thinking it was good, and then it turns on them when it has their trust because they think it's good. A misleading gold dragon - LE instead of LG - could do some serious damage to a party.