Anyone else think dragons are too powerful?

[moritheil]

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.

Oh, they don't plague me when I DM. I give them nightmares. I'd dig up my "AC 54 at level 6" thread for you if I could find it.

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.

Any character that I've seen that's serious about toe-to-toe melee at epic levels has included some way to hit touch AC for the entire duration of a fight.

 

[moritheil]

Actually, eight 20th-level PCs should be good for encounters significantly beyond EL 24.

Sorry, I should clarify that I'm going by the EL rules, which state a party of 4 at level 20 is good for an encounter at level 20. Doubling it means you add 4 to the EL; thus an eight player party indicates EL 24.

As for what practically works, that varies widely for the reasons I mentioned above.

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.

If you'll forgive my saying so, I suspect what it really means is that those players had no idea of how epic combat works. They should have planned for half or indeed a majority of their number to be wiped out in the opening round before acting.

As a very simple exercise on what I would expect, what if all seven had been clerics? Suppose 3 live through the dragon's attack. Two of those three clerics cast gate and summon solars with maximized hit points. The third casts miracle and brings all the dead back to life instantly to fight on. They all cast gate and summon solars with maximized hit points.

Then the real battle is joined. Various characters spam dispel magic at the dragon with superior caster level, pulling away its buff spells, while other casters attempt to keep the dragon stunned or blinded. The solars lay down a hail of ranged fire, forcing the dragon to keep making saving throws until it rolls low and promptly dies.

That's an example of what I'd expect in a normal epic fight. In a powergaming fight?

A level 20 party cleric with 7 or 8 classes cobbled together wins initiative easily, coming out ahead of the dragon by 20 or more. He tosses a quickened dispel, appears next to it via teleportation from an item as his move action, then paralyzes it instantly via a high caster level holy word (no saving throw, impossible to fail SR check due to having a caster level of 40+ vs an SR of 38.)

Or perhaps the level 20 mage wins initiative and promptly throws a dispel followed by 16 negative levels against the flat-footed touch AC of the great wyrm. It loses a chunk of hit points, caster level, and attack bonuses, and falls prey to save-or-die spells when the others act.

The fight is over and the dragon has done nothing. The party spends more time dividing the loot than anything else.