Anyone else think dragons are too powerful?

[ruleslawyer]

Yes, that's the point. If you want to play a dragon, be prepared to give up a lot of levels.

Eight level 20 PCs are maybe good for a CR 22-24 encounter. A CR 26 dragon has a significant edge on them, by the CR system.

Actually, eight 20th-level PCs should be good for encounters significantly beyond EL 24... also the DM is safer to ensure that those encounters are composed of multiple lower-CR creatures rather than single higher-CR creatures.

As written, a great wyrm red dragon is an "overwhelming encounter" for a party of four 20th-level PCs (the standard size). The fact that the dragon is probably under-CRed by 1 or 2 (even with the increase from 3.0 to 3.5) is an additional problem.

Dragons are *tough.*

Your eight 20th-level PCs are probably just fine, but that is an atypical group size. Moreover, I'd guess that at least one PC bites it in that fight (not that this is all that big a deal given the availability of true resurrection).

I've just never seen a dragon that didn't require a high-level party to fight it. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Given the number of dragons that populate WotC modules at all levels of play (starting at 1st), and the fact that gaming groups seem to get through those modules hopefully more than half the time, I'd say it's certainly doable. I don't use little dragons IMC; I don't want more than two or three dragon encounters in a given campaign and if I'm going to make them special, it probably shouldn't be too early in the game. I have not yet had a dragon show up in my current 8th-level game, for instance.

As others have said, I just want higher-level dragons to be something other than high-level sorcerers in lizard costumes. It looks like 4e is taking things in a better direction in that respect.

 

[ruleslawyer]

I don't know . . . against the players I tend to interact with, dragons are sandbagged with a lot of useless features: AC that doesn't stop attacks, spells that get dispelled, and SR that isn't even a credible speedbump. But I play with optimizers.

If you are plagued by optimizers, may I direct your attention to a tome called the Draconomicon? Particularly in the caster level and SR department, there are some... er, interesting tweaks.

As to AC: I'm a bit surprised, actually. Red dragon AC lines up with fiend-level AC at higher CRs, and the dragons get magic to boost that. An adult red is looking at mage armor and cat's grace minimum, which gets him up to 35 (balor levels). Against *touch* attacks, the dragon might be hosed, but that's true of 90% of the monsters in the MM.

 

[akbearfoot]

If the PCs know they will be facing a dragon and have time to prepare, they will fare well, and probably win. If they encounter a dragon with no warning, and no pre-buffing, they wiill most likely all be killed. This is going with CR equivalent encounters.


Something was probably off with that 8 lvl 20 PCs against the single dragon...If they were somehow 'surprised' by the dragon then sure, it would be expected they'd be decimated. Nobody can survive that many dice of damage many times if they don't have magical protections.

 

[Darklone]

I'm not sure where you're getting that. Of the ten "core" dragons, only two (gold and silver) have the Alternate Form ability.

Have a look at the bronze dragon

 

[Afrodyte]

I'm of 2 minds about dragons. It's not that they're too powerful. It's just that their powers don't really . . . match. I prefer dragons like the ones of Chinese myth: less "flying lizard" and more "power of nature incarnate." Sort of like these.

 

[Desdichado]

Nope. They're not powerful enough, if anything.

I prefer to use the dragons from The Monsternomicon which... honestly... probably aren't meant to actually be fought. They'd kick just about anything's butt.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

In the spirit of clarity:
the fight I described above did not involve the Dragon surprising the PCs. It was a stand up fight, the PCs tried to surprise it and failed. I suspect a lot of it was that they were out-played by the guy running the Draggy. Superior tactics and all that.

Whether or not this proves dragons are overpowered or not, I dunno. I'd have to care a lot more about the exact RAW governing encounter levels than I actually do to be able to judge. By itself it doesn't even make an argument for "all dragons are played like mighty wizards rather than mighty lizards," although this one was. It merely serves as an example of the type of things that dragons are capable of if played in the manner that (I think) the RAW encourages them to be played.

cheers all.

 

[kenobi65]

Have a look at the bronze dragon

OK, I missed that one. Three out of ten have the alternate form ability, which is still a minority of them. Also, all of which are metallic (i.e., good) dragons, which still means that many PC parties would never face them as opponents.

 

[Delta]

I sort of agree with the OP. Dragons in 3E core rules have a lot of problems (undervalued CR, stat block info scatter shot all over the place, etc.)

My biggest beef is that dragons are way too powerful for their size. There's an internal logic to 3E D&D that Hit Dice sort of follow size categories (on average Small 1-2 HD, Med 2-4, Large 4-8, Huge 8-16, etc.) Then these Tiny-sized wyrmlings come in at 4 HD and blow that to smithereens. If they're that strong, they should be at least as big as an ogre so adventurers know to be afraid (and not recreate Monty Python's killer rabbit scene).

The other related thing is that they try to cover too much territory with the dragons, having something at every CR level from 1 to 20+. It's kind of hard to rationalize a creature that's quadruples in size between its Adult stage and it's end-of-life Great Wyrm stage. Finally, I've never been fond of the plethora of metallic types; just give me one good Gold type, the rest evil, that's all I need to use in my game.

In my campaign I cap things at around level 15; bumped up dragons by one size category (incl. damage); stripped down to the original 6 colors from OD&D; and only use the first 4 age categories. Seems to make them a lot more manageable.

 

[frankthedm]

My biggest beef is that dragons are way too powerful for their size. There's an internal logic to 3E D&D that Hit Dice sort of follow size categories (on average Small 1-2 HD, Med 2-4, Large 4-8, Huge 8-16, etc.) Then these Tiny-sized wyrmlings come in at 4 HD and blow that to smithereens. If they're that strong, they should be at least as big as an ogre so adventurers know to be afraid (and not recreate Monty Python's killer rabbit scene).

Agreed. Plus, when the dragon is tiny, the PCs may feel more like babykillers than dragonslayers.