A question on Dragons (3.5/PF)

[Tanuki Tales]

What is the toughest (non-unique/Non-Deity/Non-custom created/Non-Epic) breed of Dragon?

And what is the toughest breed if you include Epic and Custom created?

[The Glyphstone]

1. Reds, I think. Maybe Gold.

2. Force or Prismatic.

[Claudius Maximus]

Golds are stronger than reds. I'm pretty sure they're the strongest non-epic dragon breed.

[Eldariel]

By Core, Gold is the toughest, followed by Silver and Red. Advanced Dragons, and some of the other breeds affect this, but I don't recall any of the non-epic stocks (non-Templated) being stronger than the stock Great Wyrm Gold.

EDIT: Ninjas. How I hate thee.

[Schylerwalker]

Purple dragons are up there with red and silver, I believe. Not sure if they're a match for gold. I'll look it up.

[Teron]

If Dragon magazine material counts, the tome dragon is pretty impressive. Its natural attacks and breath weapon are relatively weak, but it has a faster sorcerer casting progression that starts as a wyrmling and goes past 20, knows all conjuration and divination spells on the sorcerer list in addition to its normal spells known by level, and can use metamagic without increased casting time and at a discount in spell levels. If other dragons are fighter/sorcerer/eldritch knights, the tome dragon is a god wizard in the worst sense; great wyrms even get astral projection as a spell-like ability to remind you how a caster with every mental stat over 30 "should" be played.

[arguskos]

By Core, Gold is the toughest, followed by Silver and Red. Advanced Dragons, and some of the other breeds affect this, but I don't recall any of the non-epic stocks (non-Templated) being stronger than the stock Great Wyrm Gold.

EDIT: Ninjas. How I hate thee.

I still prefer the Purple myself. It's such a close fight between Purple and Gold, it's tough to choose. They are pretty clearly the Top Dogs though, no doubt about it.

I do think the fact that the Purple has three, pretty good, breath weapons edges out the Gold a tiny bit. The perma blind is nice, but the untyped cone of damage means that it can help lay down some suppressing fire on those pesky adventuring bastards.

[Dusk Eclipse]

If we count epic, the prismatic dragon wins hands down, I mean the wyrmling is CR 16 or something like that.

[Eldariel]

I still prefer the Purple myself. It's such a close fight between Purple and Gold, it's tough to choose. They are pretty clearly the Top Dogs though, no doubt about it.

I do think the fact that the Purple has three, pretty good, breath weapons edges out the Gold a tiny bit. The perma blind is nice, but the untyped cone of damage means that it can help lay down some suppressing fire on those pesky adventuring bastards.

Yeah, but that tasty, tasty Cleric-casting from Gold...

[arguskos]

Yeah, but that tasty, tasty Cleric-casting from Gold...

Yeah, that's really nice, but don't all Dragons have UMD on their skill list anyways? And, besides, Purples get like a bazillion more spells, at a higher CL. Given the power of their defenses at this level, it'll probably come down to damage in the end too. The Purple's superior breath weapons help cinch that deal, since it's breath can't be resisted by anything, while a single spell can render the Gold's breath weapon pointless. Oh, and the lightsaber lets it make 4 12d10 touch attacks. That's 48d10 untyped damage from a single breath weapon, more than anything can absorb safely. Toss a Maximize Breath in there, and we're looking at 480 damage in 4 touch attacks, which ARE going to hit. That's a HUGE amount of the Gold's life.

I think the Purple's benefits kinda outweigh the Cleric casting from the Gold.

[Eldariel]

Yeah, that's really nice, but don't all Dragons have UMD on their skill list anyways? And, besides, Purples get like a bazillion more spells, at a higher CL. Given the power of their defenses at this level, it'll probably come down to damage in the end too. The Purple's superior breath weapons help cinch that deal, since it's breath can't be resisted by anything, while a single spell can render the Gold's breath weapon pointless. Oh, and the lightsaber lets it make 4 12d10 touch attacks. That's 48d10 untyped damage from a single breath weapon, more than anything can absorb safely. Toss a Maximize Breath in there, and we're looking at 480 damage in 4 touch attacks, which ARE going to hit. That's a HUGE amount of the Gold's life.

I think the Purple's benefits kinda outweigh the Cleric casting from the Gold.

But I feel doing attacks with the Breath Weapon as opposed to doing melee attacks is really quite silly. And like, there's Scintillating Scales (which, provided the Dragon knows Persistent Spell, should always be Persisted and is still a swift action otherwise), which does mean it's just as hard for the Purple to hit with the Breath Attack as Naturals (though that's not very hard). Of course, the real question is which is more deadly against everything else; they'd be quite evenly matched with hosts of advantages for both in a straight fight.

In Dragon Wars, I strongly prefer Quickened Breaths as they're free actions leaving full actions for attacking (their melee damage is really quite respectable, especially if they take Shock Trooper + some source of Pounce like Lion's Charge, Dire Charge or similar, and their spellcasting can see their melee attacks through). I mean, 6 natural weapons, 1x1 Str, 1x1½ Str, 4x½ Str, 4d8+4d6*2+2d8*2+4d6 and 41*6. And that's before accounting for the Greater Magic Fang they probably have on all their natural weapons (it can be Miracled if nothing else), probable Strength-boosts and so on.

But with just +11 Str mod, +5 weapons and those bonuses, it averages 403 damage if all the 6 attacks hit (and if you have the Dragon cast Righteous Might, it'll deal much more thanks to scaling of size increases at this point). Combined with Quickened Breath and some such, that'd almost be lethal already. I mean, the Breath Saber is nice, but their melee deals same class of damage as Maximized Breath Saber and avoiding the Breath Saber isn't much harder than avoiding the melee attacks. So I wouldn't base the advantage on that.


Now, the reason I feel Purple Dragon does stand a great chance is the stupidly strong casting it has. It just plain outspells Great Gold, and though its spell list is worse, it still has a bunch of incredible options in the full arcane list. And yeah, there's always UMD, but some things are hard to replicate with UMD due to scrolls being scrolls and Wands capping at 4.

The save DCs are unlike to be relevant since equipped Great Wyrms just have so insane save bonuses that they'll really only fail on 1s and they can get Pride-domain granted power or something to negate those.

[arguskos]

Ah, but the Lightsaber is alongside all your other attacks, sans the bite. This means, it can use it's breath weapon for the turn to get 4 attacks of 120 each, PLUS it's entire remaining attack routine. This is significant, IMO, since it's got all the Gold's tricks, plus a trump card the Gold can't match.

However, yeah, they're probably pretty damn matched against one another.

Against your average adventuring party, the Purple is probably better off as well, simply because of it's better attack routine (it has the entire combat routine of the Gold, plus Lightsaber for 480 against PCs, which can and will chunk the whole party) and the fact that in a spell war, it's ability to out cast the whole party (more spells/day) is highly significant, as you've mentioned.

Oh, and Night Flyer is significant as well, since it can Hide against the party very very well, meaning it can and will open with a Lightsaber Lion's Charge Full Attack from Hell, FROM THE SKY!!