Dragon hunting tactics?

[Evilhalfling]

dragons tend to have terrible caster levels - use a dispel to drop those defenses.
be persistant, dragons cant heal in a day unless they have lots of cleric/slaves
when you want to find the dragons lair, ask local animals, birds will know where it lives, most animals will know which directon it normally comes from.
definatley hit it in the lair, if ou find an empty lair, all the better. - do wach out for traps.

for fleeing dragons - unless you can get a web spell up, of a handy Wall of Force - you are SOL
they really are impossibly fast. normally you can hope for 1 more FB as it flees, so save one unless its red,

 

[DonTadow]

We're playing the Red Hand of Doom, and last night we ran afoul of a dragon who killed one of our party, then fled when we got it low on HP.

I'm a mounted archer, so I could easily keep pace with it and fire arrows. But it ended up casting some defensive buffs that got its AC up to 27 or so, which is, y'know, hard to hit. We're 6th level, and my attack bonus is +11/+6 with my bow, or +9/+9/+4 if I rapid shot.

I thought I was fairly well prepared, with tanglefoot bags, nets, and whips to give me at least a chance to keep it from getting away. I tagged it with one tanglefoot bag, but then it retreated and drank healing potions for a few rounds before returning. Afterward it stayed at least 60 in the air.

Really, when confronted with a smart, hit-and-run tactic using dragon whose CR is close to your level, what kind of tactics should a party use? Me? I'm thinking next time I'll rapidshot a bunch of alchemist fires at the thing, what with its Touch AC of 9. Sadly, the DM won't let me use the lasso out of Book of Exalted Deeds, which would have at least given me a chance to snag the critter.

LOL wow, you won't believe that but we ran that same encounter this evening. If I'm guessing right, its the "bridge one" right. We ended up taking down the dragon in 2 rounds, but the DM used abit of fiat ( module fiat), to make it get away, even though we clearly owned it. We were all sixth level.
Theres me playing a binder (Tome of Magic)
A warlock
A Scout
A harrier (IH)
and a Fighter

My job was to take out the bridge so I was pretty much out of combat and a decoy for the other side of the army to shoot at.

Once the dragon flew towards the party, the warlock and fighter teleported using the scroll on the dragons back. The harrier fired a heavy crossbow and super critted the dragon on the attack (2 rolls of 20 in a row). The fighter scored a crit with one of her hits as well, the Scout made both of her shots while the warlock used her powerful eldritch blast. There was just some really good rolling.

The luck carried us all the way to the Chimera battle, which we used the same tactic and killed.

So my advice, a lot of luck preperation and teamwork. If everyone does their job right, you'll see the DM cry (whom cursed us out because we beat it before it ws able to use its gas attack).