Dragons CR.

[Jhaelen]

All the issues I've ever encountered as a DM or a player have to do with the encounters with dragons.
When you are ready and geared up for a battle with a dragon it can be easy as pie. When a dragon falls out of the sky and burns everything in sight then it can be deadly.

This.

Until dragons get good at spellcasting, they can make for tough but not inappropriate encounters for their CR. Their most dangerous tool is their breath weapon. If that is neutered because the party has protection against it, a dragon encounter can turn into a yawnfest.

In my game dragons had another important tool: reputation. Until the party reached high levels they never really dared to fight a dragon. They were much more likely to surrender or try to bargain.

As has been mentioned, dragon encounters aren't meant to be routine. If the dragon's purpose is to be fought (and slain), the DM will have provided opportunities to gain advantages against the dragon, even if it's 'just' information.

 

[Runestar]

To answer your question of 'why?', the idea is that dragons should not be normal encounters. You should not be fighting 13.3 dragons per level, and a fight with one should not consume a mere one fifth of your resources. Dragons are the top dog in this game and are intended to be extremely difficult.

The way of accomplishing this under the CR system is to make dragons' CRs lower than their powers would otherwise suggest, so players are matched up with extremely difficult encounters even if the DM uses CR and EL.

That is possibly the most retarded reasoning I have ever heard.

The whole point of cr is to serve as an accurate indicator of how tough a monster is expected to be. It is not the designer's place to arbitrarily adjust the cr up or down depending on how he feels the encounter should be run.

Else, this might lead to problems of double patching, where unknowing DMs use higher cr dragons to make for a tougher encounter, not realising their cr already takes this consideration into account.

 

[kivuli]

Flight speeds that are very high. One feat lets them cut that speed in half to move like a hummingbird.

Do you remember what feat that is, or where it's located?
I can't think of any off the top of my head that do that.

Improved Maneuverability increases maneuverability by one step, but only as far as good, which is only the second highest rating. This allows for hover, and wing-overs, but it's still not quite hummingbird like (maneuverability: perfect)

-K

 

[Runestar]

We won, nobody from our group died. So it wasn't a TPK or anything. But compared to almost any other CR 5, man, that was hard.

Actually, another party reported that when they managed to hit the green dragon with a wingbind, it ended up being a walkover. They simply surrounded the grounded dragon and beat it into paste, because at medium-size, its melee attack routine absolutely stank.

So yeah, only if it can stay in the air out of reach of the PCs and spam its breath weapon, then the PCs may have trouble.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Ahnehnois, would you cite your source? I would be very surprised to hear that the authors deliberately broke the CR scores in order to trick DMs & players into overly-difficult encounters. I would like to read about that from those that said it.

For my part, I suspect the authors just didn't get the CRs right. I'd alter every single CR listed for every single dragon to be at least 1 CR higher. This assumes that you are a DM who understands how to run a dragon encounter well. This also assumes that you do not cheat, do not break rules, and do not deliberately railroad an encounter to be harder than usual by DM fiat. Dragons are legitimately hard, so there is no reason to manipulate them.

I remember reading that info-i.e. that dragons are intentionally underrated to make them difficult-from the mouth of WotC but I can't remember a source. If I do I'll put it up.

 

[Icyshadowlord]

All of this just seems a bit confusing to me. From what I've thought out, shouldn't an evil dragon be prone to taunts (especially the ever-prideful red or dumbass white) and thus leap at the players with double the rage if properly provoked?

Being smart is one thing, but no matter how smart a villain is, their personality and temperament can always get the better of them. Also, I have seen the whole issue with the CR of dragons as I myself was hoping to play my Paladin and upgrade it to Vassal of Bahamut (which requires SINGLE-HANDEDLY SLAYING A JUVENILE OR OLDER RED DRAGON)

I know it is pretty weak to just say "up to the DM to decide" but I myself have no idea how to approach this. Yes, the CRs are deceptive, but what can you do about it, and how much do they actually deviate from the actual level of danger in the end?

 

[ValhallaGH]

CRs for dragons are generally about 20% low (observation; supported by Trailblazer, pg. 4)

First, we adjusted the CR of all dragons upwards to reflect their
true CR. It is a well-known piece of trivia at this point that the
original designers of 3e deliberately undervalued dragons so
that they would pose an appropriately difficult and “startling”
challenge for players. We’ve corrected all dragon CRs by adding
33% to their listed CR (multiply the listed CR by 4/3). This enables
us to compare the dragons against other creatures of the same
“true” CR, rather than having the dragons skew the data at the
lower CR values.
Note: Because of this methodology, ALL of the monster data
appearing for CR26 and above belongs solely to the true dragons.

Where does this trivia come from? Semi-official sources such as Sean K. Reynolds.

[While I'm briefly on the subject of dragons, I should rant about this thing that not a lot of people know: Dragons are intentionally undervalued for their CR. Why? Because dragon CRs are set assuming that the PCs known the dragon exists and are planning to fight it. "PCs shouldn'st stumble into a dragon's lair" is the argument. While that may work for the big dragons, unfortunately it doesn't apply to the smaller ones, whose CRs are still way too low.
For example, a young white dragon is CR 3, but it has 9 hit dice, AC 18, +11 base attack, and a 3d6 breath weapon. By comparison, two ogres are EL 4, have 8 hit dice between them, AC 16, +8 base attack each, and no breath weapon.
They're the only monster in the book that has its CR set up like that, and (even worse) nowhere does the book tell you this! See the problem? So when you use dragons, treat them as if their CR were at least 1 higher.
End rant.]

 

[frankthedm]

Do you remember what feat that is, or where it's located?

I can't think of any off the top of my head that do that.

Monster Manual; Monster Feats section

Hover [General]
Prerequisite: Fly speed.

Benefit: When flying, the creature can halt its forward motion and hover in place as a move action. It can then fly in any direction, including straight down or straight up, at half speed, regardless of its maneuverability.

If a creature begins its turn hovering, it can hover in place for the turn and take a full-round action. A hovering creature cannot make wing attacks, but it can attack with all other limbs and appendages it could use in a full attack. The creature can instead use a breath weapon or cast a spell instead of making physical attacks, if it could normally do so...

Dragons favor Alertness, Blind-Fight, Cleave, Flyby Attack, Hover, Improved Initiative, Improved Sunder, Power Attack, Snatch, Weapon Focus (claw or bite), Wingover, and any metamagic feat that is available and useful to sorcerers.

So for many dragons, "fly 150 ft. (poor)" really winds up being "fly 75 ft. (Hover Feat)".

Also it takes a move to start hovering, it doesn't take an action to stop hovering. The dragon still can flying charge 300" or flying Run 600". Ready to deal with casters who think Dimension Door-ing without breaking LOS would be safe.

 

[Celebrim]

I generally adjust dragon CR 1-2 up, and humanoid NPC CR 1-2 down (or more in the event of non-elite stat arrays, below expected equipment, non-combat builds, levels in an NPC class, etc.).

I used to worry alot about computing EL, but I've decided to stop worrying about that directly and instead compute XP directly from CR of the monsters involved in the encounter which ends up being something halfway between 3.X and Pathfinder. I'm pretty good at eyeballing challenges, and certainly far better than simple mechanistic systems for determining difficulty are.

 

[kivuli]

CRs for dragons are generally about 20% low (observation; supported by Trailblazer, pg. 4)

Where does this trivia come from? Semi-official sources such as Sean K. Reynolds.

While I'm briefly on the subject of dragons, I should rant about this thing that not a lot of people know: Dragons are intentionally undervalued for their CR. Why? Because dragon CRs are set assuming that the PCs known the dragon exists and are planning to fight it. "PCs shouldn'st stumble into a dragon's lair" is the argument. While that may work for the big dragons, unfortunately it doesn't apply to the smaller ones, whose CRs are still way too low.
For example, a young white dragon is CR 3, but it has 9 hit dice, AC 18, +11 base attack, and a 3d6 breath weapon. By comparison, two ogres are EL 4, have 8 hit dice between them, AC 16, +8 base attack each, and no breath weapon.
They're the only monster in the book that has its CR set up like that, and (even worse) nowhere does the book tell you this! See the problem? So when you use dragons, treat them as if their CR were at least 1 higher.
End rant.

By the (3.5) draconomicon, a young white dragon is CR 4.
-K