D&D 5E CR 13 dragon beaten by level 7 party observations

[Rhenny]

You're absolutely right about this. Dragon's flying around for 20 rounds and doing flyby breath attacks is hardly exciting.

But unfortunately putting them within melee range is asking for a dead Dragon. They need about double their hit points to actually provide an epic fight.

Maybe one of their legendary actions should be "Second Wind" or something, which allows them to regain 1d10 + their CR worth of hit points. Also get rid of their legendary perception check and give them true sight instead.

In the playtest, one of the lair actions was to regain 30 hp. It really helped the dragon survive for a lot longer although I think when I ran a modified white dragon encounter against a party of 8th level PCs in the playtest, the PCs prevailed in about 8 rounds even with the 30 hp regeneration used 4 times. (I think 4x was the limit in the playtest).

 

[BigVanVader]

If I ever run a Dragon, I'm just gonna say nothing can hurt it until the players get magical weapons, which aren't optimized against dragons.

In fact, that'll probably be the campaign, right there.

 

[Rhenny]

If I ever run a Dragon, I'm just gonna say nothing can hurt it until the players get magical weapons, which aren't optimized against dragons.

In fact, that'll probably be the campaign, right there.

I think a lot of people have this same idea about dragons. They are so magical and rare (in most campaigns) that they should be nearly invincible.

For example, in the Dragonlance series, the "Dragonlance" became an important magical weapon needed to fight the dragons full out.

Damage resistance from past editions helped to perpetuate this concept too.

 

[DaveDash]

DMs need to give dragons anti-fighter tactics - Trip and then pounce or rake, or land on the fighter and grapple/pin. I'd even let the larger dragons grapple/pin with its body while attacking with front claws or bite.

Well the problem is most martial types will be better at grappling than the Dragon due to athletics. Grapples/Shove should have really been just str/dex checks. If the Dragon flies around though and stays at reach it should render the melee martial pretty ineffective, but again, then we have a boring fight on our hands (and the melee player misses out on the fun).

The dragon CAN however go after whatever player is poor at grappling and get him/her, since the party is likely separated due to breath weapon. In fact I'd highly recommend that.

 

[Sacrosanct]

perhaps a few points of clarification. The ceiling was high, and the dragon did fly once, but it was more of a hop because there wasn't a lot of room. It also wasn't surprised. It knew we were there, but was monologueing while we moved up, and couldn't see us because it was in the back treasure room. So the cleric fireballed it, at which point it screamed "It's on!" and flew out. Right past me and my AoO

and we were wounded pretty bad. I had AC 20 with 58 HP and heavy armor mastery (-3 dmg) and finished with 17 HP. The only thing saving the cleric was his warding flare ability (impose disadvantage).

to answer the earlier question, we would have a really hard time doing any medium battles afterward because we were spent. All superiority dice gone. Only a couple level 1 spells left. Action surge and second winds gone with all 3 fighters

it did use lair actions (fog to damage and blind the archers) and legendary actions. The only thing that kept my halfling from flying from a tail swipe was that I was already against the wall ;-)

the point of ky OP wasn't to say that the rules are broken because a party of 7th level beat a CR13 creature, but to say that there were a lot of factors in our favor, stacking the deck, and to notice that a single creature of the same encounter difficulty of several low CR creatures is easier, so keep that in mind when designing encounters. If that dragon had even 2 CR1 minions, we probably would have lost easily as we'd have to deal with them

 

[Joe Liker]

Well the problem is most martial types will be better at grappling than the Dragon due to athletics. Grapples/Shove should have really been just str/dex checks. If the Dragon flies around though and stays at reach it should render the melee martial pretty ineffective, but again, then we have a boring fight on our hands (and the melee player misses out on the fun).

The dragon CAN however go after whatever player is poor at grappling and get him/her, since the party is likely separated due to breath weapon. In fact I'd highly recommend that.

You could always use a dragon that's proficient in Athletics if you want it to be a good grappler. That could be its "thing"! Renowned throughout the land for grabbing knights and flinging them off of mountains!

 

[Scorpio616]

Do you know how gigantic a cave has to be for that?

The rules ever cover that? While all one would have to do is look a miniature to see a flying critter is going to need about three times it's base size to flap it's wings, I don't remember many editions calling that out.

 

[SilverfireSage]

Do you know how gigantic a cave has to be for that?

If you can rationalize a giant, intelligent, magic, frost breathing lizard with wings, I think you can rationalize it managed to find a cave big enough to fly around in.

 

[Rhenny]

You could always use a dragon that's proficient in Athletics if you want it to be a good grappler. That could be its "thing"! Renowned throughout the land for grabbing knights and flinging them off of mountains!

I think this is kind of what WoTC has in mind for dragons. When they get old enough, they adopt a strategy or special tactic that makes them unique. Unfortunately, none of this is written in the monster manual, so it is only something I infer from the unique dragons that appear in some adventures.

I'm running Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle right now (converted for 5e), and there is a green dragon in it that casts spells, particularly invisibility. It uses its ability, and it's taste for Elven flesh, to hunt Elves. It basically has become a horror story/living legend for Wood Elves in the region.

I think WoTC needs to expand dragon rules/modifications...perhaps that will be a splat book in the future like it was in the past. For now, DMs need to do it with only the DMG guidelines.

 

[pemerton]

The DM ruled that since white dragons aren't that smart, it used its legendary resistance 3 times in a row on 3 failed saves in a row (DM rolled its saves poorly) rather than save LR for a big spell.

I wouldn't run Legendary Resistance that way, myself. It isn't something a creature in game "uses" ("Behold, fools! Kneel before the might of my Legendary Resistance!"), it's a game mechanic that keeps legendary creatures from quickly losing to the unlucky saving throw, to simulate how they've survived for so long. Dumb creature or smart creature, I would use it tactically.

I agree with Agamon on running LR, although the OP has said that in practice it didn't affect the outcome.

Single high CR monsters aren't nearly as challenging as many low CR monsters. I.e., if you use the encounter designed rules, a deadly encounter with one higher CR monster will not be as tough as a deadly encounter made up from several lower CR monsters. Technically they are both deadly encounters, but in actual play, when you've got many creatures to worry about, it seems a lot harder than one single creature you can all focus on. I think it's because that one high CR monster just has to fail a save once for something like goading strike or hold person or likewise, and the entire battle is turned. While against multiple lower CR opponents, having one of them fail a save doesn't affect any of the others, and something like goading strike has less effect.

The problems that "solos" have with action economy was well-known in 4e. I think that Legendary Actions are a better way of trying to compensate for this than most of the techniques adopted in 4e (some 4e solos, like beholders, have off-turn actions that work very similarly to legendary actions). But it sounds like they still aren't quite there yet.