I am running a game for a large party (six characters and two animal companions) at level six. The players have expressed interest in a dragon slaying adventure. I'm pretty familiar with dragons, and I've got a good one picked out, but I'm anxious about a couple of things.
1 - encounters leading up to the dragon itself. As solitary creatures, the dragon isn't likely to have minions or followers/worshipers, and at level 6 there aren't a lot of random encounters that pose a threat significant enough to act as much more than a speed bump on the way to the big encounter.
2 - tangental to 1, the action economy in a fight between 6 (effectively 8) PCs and one solo monster, even a dragon, is massively skewed toward the party. I don't want to threaten one shotting players by pumping up the CR of the fight, and i don't want to quintuple the dragon's HP just to give everyone a chance to "be awesome", but i'm stuck as to what else to do.
1 - encounters leading up to the dragon itself. As solitary creatures, the dragon isn't likely to have minions or followers/worshipers, and at level 6 there aren't a lot of random encounters that pose a threat significant enough to act as much more than a speed bump on the way to the big encounter.
2 - tangental to 1, the action economy in a fight between 6 (effectively 8) PCs and one solo monster, even a dragon, is massively skewed toward the party. I don't want to threaten one shotting players by pumping up the CR of the fight, and i don't want to quintuple the dragon's HP just to give everyone a chance to "be awesome", but i'm stuck as to what else to do.