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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Stalker0" data-source="post: 8101756" data-attributes="member: 5889">Young Red Dragon - You could probably add like 1-2 damage somewhere, by my napkin math its basically 5.5 CR, with the CR just a smidge below a true 6, and I always feel dragons should be on the upper threshold of their CR.I think the new unstoppable is a reasonable compromise. It "consumes" a reaction without "using" a reaction, which avoids the messy interaction with certain conditions.For breath weapon, its getting there, that thing is nice and scary<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> The reason I had recommended the disintegrate effect against spells, is what I have found in my high level games is Wall of Force type spells are just boss enders for monsters that don't have Teleport effects. Especially if the fight is in a Dragon's lair, it is trivial for mages to section off entire areas of the terrain and effectively cage the dragon. For an 18 CR boss monster to compete, it really needs some way to counter these kinds of effects. I thought it was flavor appropriate that a dragon, instead of evading these obstacles as a "lesser" creature would....simply bowls them over with its breath. Dispel Magic is not enough to do that, hence the disintegrate note.I'm noting the change to the claw the now inflicts prone (I think that is new). I'm all for it, but you had mentioned concerns about the dragon getting too much advantage on its attacks, and the claw proning will ensure that a lot of advantage will be had. That said, the dragon does have to hit and the saving throw failed for that to kick in, compared to the detect which simply works.The Disintegration note aside, this Dragon looks like a scary encounter. He opens with a breath, blooding half the group and knocking them out of the first round of combat, while stripping away a lot of buffs a high level group is going to be used to...which suddenly puts all the old tricks back on the table (no matter how much you prepare...you cannot outplan a full adult dragon). Second round, the dragon gets to use its fear....and unlike other encounters at this level where the party often has anti-fear magics....this party is going to suffer that fear. Then one player is going to get malled by the dragon, which considering the breath damage may knock them out (maybe a kill but that's really optimistic for these levels). On the flip side, 270 hp ain't much when your dealing with characters that can dish out ~100 damage. So its literally a question of whether the players can survive the incapacitation, stun, and fear effects long enough to bring enough pain before the next breath....as that next breath may signal death to several members. I imagine the players will watch that breath recharge roll as if it was the most important roll of their lives....because it absolutely might be. Yeah....that's a f***ing dragon!I also took a look at dragon scales, as I was just curious how well the dragon scales worked against "mob" type encounters. So as an example, a military unit of 20 basic 12 dex archers (aka +3 attack), would deal 11 damage to the dragon on a given round if firing at 150 feet or closer. By mob rules, 4 of the attackers would hit, and 50% of the hits would do damage past the dragon scales (aka 5+ on a d8 longbow roll). So 4*.5*5.5 (avg damage for a longbow with +1 dex) = 11 (this is basically the same reduction as resistance to nonmagical weapons would offer). So effectively 25 volleys could kill the dragon...whether that is 1 unit attacking 25 times or 25 units attacking once. So this just gives you an idea of how "riff raff resistance" your Adult Red Dragon is. So a strong city that could field ~500 "good" archers (+1 dex are good stock, I would never assume any higher for large numbers of units unless its an "elite" unit or elven archers) would be nigh adult dragon proof if they were disciplined and there was enough warning in the city to call them to arms (aka literally take out a dragon out of the sky before it did much damage). And up to about 200 archers would still ensure the dragon is unlikely to attack more than a 2 rounds before being scared off.In smaller areas that could only field a few units....the dragon would of course reign supreme, as its going to kill a full unit flat dead with its breath weapon, and a few archer units are not going to do damage quickly enough to stop a dragon flying in and just shredding them to bits.And once your at the Elder range of Dragon Scale 8, now the archers drop to 2.75 damage a round per unit....your now at the point of nigh "invulnerability" vs non-hero forces.The stealth bonus on larger dragons may be a little off, I have never thought of Dnd dragons are particularly "stealthy", especially Red Dragons (maybe black dragons who hide underwater or something". A +9 stealth is actually very solid</blockquote>

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