Alexander123
First Post
I've heard that the CR of dragons does not equate with their actual power. Can someone elaborate on whether this is so and if so why?
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Dragons CR.
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frankthedm
First Post
Pretty much.
They generally have a better stats than other foes for their CR, that can be further exasperated by judicious use of buffs.
Flight speeds that are very high. One feat lets them cut that speed in half to move like a hummingbird.
They generally have a better stats than other foes for their CR, that can be further exasperated by judicious use of buffs.
Flight speeds that are very high. One feat lets them cut that speed in half to move like a hummingbird.
Magesmiley
Explorer
Take a wizard, cleric, or fighter of the same level as the dragon's CR and do a comparison. It should be obvious real quick which one should be worth more XPs.
frankthedm
First Post
Classed NPCs are often weak or frequently glass jawed for their CRs. They should not be used as a yardstick for CR.Take a wizard, cleric, or fighter of the same level as the dragon's CR and do a comparison. It should be obvious real quick which one should be worth more XPs.
Tovec
Explorer
All the issues I've ever encountered as a DM or a player have to do with the encounters with dragons.
When you are ready and geared up for a battle with a dragon it can be easy as pie. When a dragon falls out of the sky and burns everything in sight then it can be deadly. I don't think this is much different than most other encounters except that dragons are weak against opposed elements (ice really defeats those Reds ladies and gentlemen). Any prepared wizard can get things in order to take one down, adjusting for its extra senses, breath weapon, flight speed, etc. In such cases the fight is over very quickly. When it swoops out of no where, and players aren't ready for it then it is a much bigger difference. They have to use terrain, smarts and tactics - all of which the dragon has the advantage.
Most of my experience has been tackling larger dragons in their lairs and dealing with the results. In nearly all situations we won nearly hands down. The only time it would be contested is if they had other monsters (non-dragons) to help them.
To compare this to other monsters. How often do you find a lair of an evil outsider on material plane? It doesn't happen very often. Best chance you have is finding a caster you know will summon a demon (for sake of argument) and prepare for that. Even when that happens they have much more variety in what they will summon. A beholder isn't weak against a specific type of element. A troll, while weak against fire and acid, HEALS all other damage up like it never happened. Not the same with dragons. If dragons were immune to all damage or resistant to the extend of regeneration or something similar that would be a different story. When a caster can divine specific answers before entering battle and prepare then the CR is vastly overrated compared to the monster encountered.
What I would suggest to fight this is take the expectations and flip them on their head. Take a breath weapon from a blue, a couple of magical abilities from a green, the mindset of a white and put them onto a red, then make the red NOT weak against ice but instead something like acid. I think dragon design should be much more grab bag with options but sadly no dragon design book has worked this way. They just put out splat books with pre-designed dragons and hope they fit into you game.
In the future when I'm going to be running dragons I hope to do it more grab bag of abilities, ones that I feel fit as opposed to what the book designers tell me fits. I don't know how well it will work but if it does I'll let you all know of my progress.
ps. If you really want to mess with party have the above Red look and act like a humanoid until he shows his real teeth.
pps. I hope to run a council of wyrms game coming up, so maybe I can test things out then.
When you are ready and geared up for a battle with a dragon it can be easy as pie. When a dragon falls out of the sky and burns everything in sight then it can be deadly. I don't think this is much different than most other encounters except that dragons are weak against opposed elements (ice really defeats those Reds ladies and gentlemen). Any prepared wizard can get things in order to take one down, adjusting for its extra senses, breath weapon, flight speed, etc. In such cases the fight is over very quickly. When it swoops out of no where, and players aren't ready for it then it is a much bigger difference. They have to use terrain, smarts and tactics - all of which the dragon has the advantage.
Most of my experience has been tackling larger dragons in their lairs and dealing with the results. In nearly all situations we won nearly hands down. The only time it would be contested is if they had other monsters (non-dragons) to help them.
To compare this to other monsters. How often do you find a lair of an evil outsider on material plane? It doesn't happen very often. Best chance you have is finding a caster you know will summon a demon (for sake of argument) and prepare for that. Even when that happens they have much more variety in what they will summon. A beholder isn't weak against a specific type of element. A troll, while weak against fire and acid, HEALS all other damage up like it never happened. Not the same with dragons. If dragons were immune to all damage or resistant to the extend of regeneration or something similar that would be a different story. When a caster can divine specific answers before entering battle and prepare then the CR is vastly overrated compared to the monster encountered.
What I would suggest to fight this is take the expectations and flip them on their head. Take a breath weapon from a blue, a couple of magical abilities from a green, the mindset of a white and put them onto a red, then make the red NOT weak against ice but instead something like acid. I think dragon design should be much more grab bag with options but sadly no dragon design book has worked this way. They just put out splat books with pre-designed dragons and hope they fit into you game.
In the future when I'm going to be running dragons I hope to do it more grab bag of abilities, ones that I feel fit as opposed to what the book designers tell me fits. I don't know how well it will work but if it does I'll let you all know of my progress.
ps. If you really want to mess with party have the above Red look and act like a humanoid until he shows his real teeth.
pps. I hope to run a council of wyrms game coming up, so maybe I can test things out then.
Sekhmet
First Post
Tovec, I think one of the major problems with your examples is the way the DM prepared the fight. Very few dragons (Gold) will ever fight toe-to-toe, or allow you to trap them in their lairs.
The vast majority of dragons are ambushers, striking hard and fast : Swoop down, blast everything with it's breath, make an attack or two, and fly the hell away. This is because the vast majority of dragons have a far superior Intelligence score. They won't stand and die when they can flee.
Anything that survives one breath is not worth a dragon's time, and the dragon will most likely not even bother to attack it.
Properly played, any Dragon is a hard CR to calculate, just like most other CR18+ enemies. I've played Old Blues and Old Reds to such dramatic affect that my players will almost invariably find a way to flee, rather than face, any large dragon.
I popped an Ancient Time down on my party of 4 when they were finishing their epic level quest (I make it a point to make all PC's perform some epic task before being able to advance to 21st level), ended in a TPK - They just couldn't keep up with the dragon's strategies.
The vast majority of dragons are ambushers, striking hard and fast : Swoop down, blast everything with it's breath, make an attack or two, and fly the hell away. This is because the vast majority of dragons have a far superior Intelligence score. They won't stand and die when they can flee.
Anything that survives one breath is not worth a dragon's time, and the dragon will most likely not even bother to attack it.
Properly played, any Dragon is a hard CR to calculate, just like most other CR18+ enemies. I've played Old Blues and Old Reds to such dramatic affect that my players will almost invariably find a way to flee, rather than face, any large dragon.
I popped an Ancient Time down on my party of 4 when they were finishing their epic level quest (I make it a point to make all PC's perform some epic task before being able to advance to 21st level), ended in a TPK - They just couldn't keep up with the dragon's strategies.
Dross
Explorer
I've heard at 3rd to ???th hand that the intention was to make Dragons the big bads of their CR and that they were rated a couple of points down from what they should actually be.
While not all same CR critters are actually the same threat (some can be way off), looking at what they can do to other intelligent same CR critters I can understand this rumour being the case.
While not all same CR critters are actually the same threat (some can be way off), looking at what they can do to other intelligent same CR critters I can understand this rumour being the case.
Ahnehnois
First Post
To answer your question of 'why?', the idea is that dragons should not be normal encounters. You should not be fighting 13.3 dragons per level, and a fight with one should not consume a mere one fifth of your resources. Dragons are the top dog in this game and are intended to be extremely difficult.
The way of accomplishing this under the CR system is to make dragons' CRs lower than their powers would otherwise suggest, so players are matched up with extremely difficult encounters even if the DM uses CR and EL.
aboyd
Explorer
Ahnehnois, would you cite your source? I would be very surprised to hear that the authors deliberately broke the CR scores in order to trick DMs & players into overly-difficult encounters. I would like to read about that from those that said it.
For my part, I suspect the authors just didn't get the CRs right. I'd alter every single CR listed for every single dragon to be at least 1 CR higher. This assumes that you are a DM who understands how to run a dragon encounter well. This also assumes that you do not cheat, do not break rules, and do not deliberately railroad an encounter to be harder than usual by DM fiat. Dragons are legitimately hard, so there is no reason to manipulate them.
Regarding the OP, here is my take. Consider Ozyrrandion. He's the first dragon encountered in the module Red Hand of Doom. He's a young green dragon, CR 5. He has 104 hit points, AC 23, flight with flyby attack & hover, a breath weapon, blindsense, and if he can full attack he gets 5 rolls: bite/claw/claw/wing/wing.
Compare that to a hill giant. 102 HP, 20 AC, can't fly and doesn't even have spring attack (so he can't pull off the "hit 'em and get out of range before they retaliate" thing), cleave, rock throwing (ex), and if he can full attack he gets only 2 attacks (but they pack a punch).
You might say, "uh, hey, those are actually pretty similar, so why are you trying to make it sound like the dragon is so tough?" Well, okay, maybe the hill giant is equal to or only a little bit weaker than the dragon, but consider this:
Young dragon: CR 5.
Hill giant: CR 7.
Yeah? The hill giant is weaker or equal at best when we look at the stat block, but he's given a CR that indicates he's 2 points tougher than the dragon. That makes little sense.
When you consider that our CR 5 dragon also gets triple the amount of treasure that the hill giant gets, and that dragons are typically played as intelligent enough to use their treasure in combat, the difference becomes even more dangerous. In fact, we can see that with our example of Ozyrrandion. He's wearing an amulet of health +2, and bracers of armor +3... and the module notes that if he gets hurt too badly, he will pull back long enough to drink some potions and come back into combat buffed.
He is absolutely scary for a CR 5.
When I got to play through that encounter, never having read the module, our adventuring group got badly, badly hurt. And we were level 7 or 8 at the time! Our problems? Where to start? The only character in our group that could fly was my cleric with the travel domain. So you can already guess how ineffective the rest of the group felt, grounded, plinking away with arrows. And with the dragon doing flyby breath attacks, our fighter just stood around with a readied action to "swing my sword when the dragon gets within reach" that never triggered. Eventually the fighter gave up on it and started climbing to the top of a tower in a futile attempt to leap off the tower and at least get one mid-air swing while falling.
Even my cleric with flight had trouble. I couldn't keep up with the dragon's flight speed. At one point I used Dimension Door just to get ahead of his flight pattern.
The player running our sorcerer didn't know much about dragons and so when she managed to blind it, of course she was sad to learn that the dragon had blindsense. Eventually she stood on the ground, hurling fireballs over & over again.
We won, nobody from our group died. So it wasn't a TPK or anything. But compared to almost any other CR 5, man, that was hard.
Dragons continue to outclass the PCs as you go up in CR. The dragons with very high CRs have spellcasting levels, DR, SR, extra attacks & abilities, etc. And the flavor text for dragons indicates that unlike a hill giant who might stupidly stand toe-to-toe in melee, trading blows, a dragon has no interest in that. Fighter climbs to the top of a tower and shouts challenges at the dragon? So? A DM might envision the dragon screaming through the air, landing on the crenelations, and engaging in a brutal combat with the mighty warrior. But that's not how D&D dragons are described. A green dragon will hear the fighter's taunts, get just close enough to spit acid from out of reach, and then fly back even further. It has zero willingness to engage in a fair fight. It makes them even more difficult.
Whew.
For my part, I suspect the authors just didn't get the CRs right. I'd alter every single CR listed for every single dragon to be at least 1 CR higher. This assumes that you are a DM who understands how to run a dragon encounter well. This also assumes that you do not cheat, do not break rules, and do not deliberately railroad an encounter to be harder than usual by DM fiat. Dragons are legitimately hard, so there is no reason to manipulate them.
Regarding the OP, here is my take. Consider Ozyrrandion. He's the first dragon encountered in the module Red Hand of Doom. He's a young green dragon, CR 5. He has 104 hit points, AC 23, flight with flyby attack & hover, a breath weapon, blindsense, and if he can full attack he gets 5 rolls: bite/claw/claw/wing/wing.
Compare that to a hill giant. 102 HP, 20 AC, can't fly and doesn't even have spring attack (so he can't pull off the "hit 'em and get out of range before they retaliate" thing), cleave, rock throwing (ex), and if he can full attack he gets only 2 attacks (but they pack a punch).
You might say, "uh, hey, those are actually pretty similar, so why are you trying to make it sound like the dragon is so tough?" Well, okay, maybe the hill giant is equal to or only a little bit weaker than the dragon, but consider this:
Young dragon: CR 5.
Hill giant: CR 7.
Yeah? The hill giant is weaker or equal at best when we look at the stat block, but he's given a CR that indicates he's 2 points tougher than the dragon. That makes little sense.
When you consider that our CR 5 dragon also gets triple the amount of treasure that the hill giant gets, and that dragons are typically played as intelligent enough to use their treasure in combat, the difference becomes even more dangerous. In fact, we can see that with our example of Ozyrrandion. He's wearing an amulet of health +2, and bracers of armor +3... and the module notes that if he gets hurt too badly, he will pull back long enough to drink some potions and come back into combat buffed.
He is absolutely scary for a CR 5.
When I got to play through that encounter, never having read the module, our adventuring group got badly, badly hurt. And we were level 7 or 8 at the time! Our problems? Where to start? The only character in our group that could fly was my cleric with the travel domain. So you can already guess how ineffective the rest of the group felt, grounded, plinking away with arrows. And with the dragon doing flyby breath attacks, our fighter just stood around with a readied action to "swing my sword when the dragon gets within reach" that never triggered. Eventually the fighter gave up on it and started climbing to the top of a tower in a futile attempt to leap off the tower and at least get one mid-air swing while falling.
Even my cleric with flight had trouble. I couldn't keep up with the dragon's flight speed. At one point I used Dimension Door just to get ahead of his flight pattern.
The player running our sorcerer didn't know much about dragons and so when she managed to blind it, of course she was sad to learn that the dragon had blindsense. Eventually she stood on the ground, hurling fireballs over & over again.
We won, nobody from our group died. So it wasn't a TPK or anything. But compared to almost any other CR 5, man, that was hard.
Dragons continue to outclass the PCs as you go up in CR. The dragons with very high CRs have spellcasting levels, DR, SR, extra attacks & abilities, etc. And the flavor text for dragons indicates that unlike a hill giant who might stupidly stand toe-to-toe in melee, trading blows, a dragon has no interest in that. Fighter climbs to the top of a tower and shouts challenges at the dragon? So? A DM might envision the dragon screaming through the air, landing on the crenelations, and engaging in a brutal combat with the mighty warrior. But that's not how D&D dragons are described. A green dragon will hear the fighter's taunts, get just close enough to spit acid from out of reach, and then fly back even further. It has zero willingness to engage in a fair fight. It makes them even more difficult.
Whew.
frankthedm
First Post
I remember reading that myself. Monte Cook was the person, but I have not found the actual text.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-legacy-discussion/79723-dragons-cr.html
http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-legacy-discussion/36664-dragon-cr-s-too-low.html
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