7 to 8 pc's of 16th Lvl Avg.; Opinions on what CR Red dragon to throw at the group

[Jaxom]

Before I posted this thread I was leaning toward Ancient more than the Wyrm and giving it the Half-Fiend Template. Based on the players and their classes I figured these were good chioces. This is the final encounter of the adventure and the previous encounter drained them of a few resources, but not many. I was also going to give the dragon a few spells form "The Book of Vile Darkness" for the surprise element.

 

[Jaxom]

BTW our houserule for Harm is the following:

100 (save for half), cannot take you to below 1d4 HP

 

[green slime]

If you are seriously worried about the Harm tactic, you could have the dragon buff a spell turning. Which might be a cause of some consernation for the cleric that got through the Spell Resistance...

And while the others are plinking away with MM against its incredible Spell Resistance, the dragon can then dine on Cleric, with a light seasoning of Paladin, or Barbarian if you prefer.

Nobody gets close to the Dragon for free, they have reach, Blindsight, Tremoursense, and Scent (IRC).

No Great Wyrm run by me will ever fall in 2 rounds to mere non-Epic mortals. Did they get their "great" status from a cornflakes packet?

Facing this dragon should be a battle royal, an event talked about for years in the future, where the ebb and flow of the combat is equal to the hope and dispair of the players as they realise the full extent of the cunning of the beast.

The dragon has heaps of prep-time, as he knows who the PCs are, what their weaknesses/strengths are. The only uncertainty as far as the dragon goes is when the party will decide to meet their fate.

This gives the dragon time to prepare traps, glyphs, wards, allies, friends, illusions, phantasms, to its hearts desire.

 

[AuraSeer]

If you are seriously worried about the Harm tactic, you could have the dragon buff a spell turning. Which might be a cause of some consernation for the cleric that got through the Spell Resistance...

Spell Turning does not work against touch spells.

 

[green slime]

Damn Third sentence First Paragraph blindness got me again!

But seriously, there should be a way to counter this threat with a spell, other than wall of force , antimagic field, or counterspelling...

There should be an Improved Spell Immunity hiding in a supplement somewhere, surely?

Or a dragon spell for buffing Spell Resistance? At this level, blur and mirror image just aren't so impressive.

Of course there is always contingency - resurrection or heal or some such.

Wierd that Negative Energy Protection doesn't help.

 

[Gaiden]

Greenslime - is it true that the dragon knows about the party ahead of time? (I could have eaten "stupid breakfast" this morning and completely missed that.

If that is true, then yes, you are absolutely right, you should definitely lower the age.

I am basing all of my posts for this thread from the point of view of DMing and Playing. If I was a DM and I made the Red fiendish dragon encounter as difficult as I possibly could weighing the cunning of a dragon and then the cunning of a dragon whose that old, the amount of treasure such a dragon could have, the amount of allies (read as creatures weaker than the dragon who submit to it out of fear) the dragon would have, the amount of adventurers such a dragon would have killed in the past, etc., I still would fear that the players would win.

Let's first assume the Dragon has time to plan the encounter -

BOOM - PC's die.

It's really not worth talking about. Even if the Dragon is only an adult, it should be able to kill the entire party either in the surprise round or one or two rounds afterwards. Afterall, it could do something as simple as use a wand of Summon Monster V to summon some lantern archons and have them teleport to the party in increments forcing the spell casters to waste all their spells. Send in some of the weaker allies and basically drain the group of their daily resources. Then once the PC's have destroyed every last enemy and think they are victorious with half their party unconscious just show up and breath on them. Also, the irony of killing a Paladin and two presumably good clerics with lantern archons would simply be too cool from the Dragon's point of view.

Therefore, the Dragon can't have time to plan if the DM wants to avoid a TPK.


Let's give the PC's time to plan - well, pretty much the same thing as when the Dragon plans except vice-a-versa. They all cast ghost form, enchant all of their weapons with ghost touch (for the relevant fighters in the group) all have protection from fire on. All have stone skin, all have shield of faith, recitation, bless, blur, all the wizards will have shield and mage armor up, every one will have expiditious retreat, etc. etc. etc. Finally get em all hasted, teleport in with a teleportation circle (only after scrying on a fly that inhabits the dragon's dung to make sure there is no contingency set up if someone teleports inside) Once they are in and next to the unaware dragon do the harm/magic missile combo and poof their goes your advanced Great Wyrm fiendish Red Dragon with Character levels. (btw- I am going by PHB/core rules, yes - I presume all rules are being used as written/errated).

Therefore, it seems that the only way this encounter will be worth anything is both sides are caught unawares or are only given a short prep time. In this case the battle between the two groups favors the PC's even if the Dragon is a great wyrm.

Btw - Green slime, if you DMed fairly (which I am not making any assumptions about for or against) I will tell you that if you pitted me controlling 8 16th level PCs against a Red Great Wyrm, I could drop it in the surprise round. This obviously assumes I was given time to plan. But, believe me, at that level with that many players, there is no way anything except Gods and possibly some epic characters can survive a surprise attack by the 16th level group - I will promise you that.

 

[DeBhaal]

Sounds to me that your running Bastion of Broken Souls ... becasue taht adventure is set up just about exactly like that ... and if that is the adventure your running ... I think CR27 is enough ... esspecially with a suprise when the dragon dies ...

 

[Endur]

Red Dragon Challenges

Red Dragon Challenge all depends on how tough you want the battle to be.

I could see throwing anything from an Adult Red Dragon to a Wrym against a party of eight 16th level characters.

If you make the Dragon Fiendish, that basically gives the Dragon cold resistance 20 and raises SR to 25 (if the Dragon is old or less).

If you make the Dragon a half-fiend, that would give him +1 ac, a bunch of extra evil cleric spells, immune to poison, cold/acid/electricity resistance 20, and stat increases to str, dex, con, int, chr, etc.

It might not be appropriate for the Dragon to be a half-fiend (i.e. is this a child of Tiamat, or a normal Dragon from the lower planes)?

The snatch feat (improved grab for claws and bite) is a great way to defeat Harm spellcasters. Just grab the spellcaster and squeeze until the spellcaster dies. With Reach, you can wait until the spell caster moves towards you.

Definitely take Combat Reflexes so you can grab more than one spell caster as they move towards you.

The higher level Red Dragons can use contingency and heal together, so if you do get harmed, you immediately get all your hit points back.

Lots of awesome spells that a high level Red Dragon can use.

A Great Wrym is simply invincible.

Tom

 

[Plane Sailing]

Well, for a party of 4x16th level characters, a climactic and challenging battle would be CR18 or 20. Since you've got double the size of party, technically you would just add 2 to the desired CR, giving 22. whether fiendish or half-fiendish template is added gives +2, so you would be looking at a book-value of CR20 for your red dragon.

(thumbs through MM)

That would look like a Very Old Red Dragon.


His key tactic would be summoned allies of some form, since numbers count badly against him. At caster level 11 he won't have many of the gosh-wow spells, but the fact that he is allowed to choose any Cleric spells as well as Wizard spells goes in his favour. Spell Immunity to Magic Missiles seems like a rather obviously good choice I would anticipate that it would have already obtained a ring of counterspelling which contains (harm) in it...

Cheers

 

[Jaxom]

DeBhaal

Sounds to me that your running Bastion of Broken Souls ... becasue taht adventure is set up just about exactly like that ... and if that is the adventure your running ... I think CR27 is enough ... esspecially with a suprise when the dragon dies ...

There might be players from the session, so I'm glad you didn't say too much, but this is exactly what I'm running. Do you think the CR 27 is too much for the group of 7 to 8 16th level pc's. The adventure is written for 18th level characters which makes me wounder why the a CR of 27 is placed there in the first place.