Dragons CR.

[Derren]

I heard that the CR of the dragons were made with the assumption that the party has prepared for them. Is this true and if yes can someone point me to the place where this is said?

 

[Epametheus]

I don't think this has been officially stated, but it usually becomes apparent once you look at a dragon's CR and then look at what it can actually do.

This was definately the case in 3E, and is apparently still the case in 3.5E, though they bumped up the CRs a little in 3.5. Granted, the nerf to haste probably makes dragon-slaying a little easier in 3.5 (since the dragon generally can't attack and, say, teleport in the same round now).

One of the more extreme examples of this is the Very Young Red Dragon, which is CR 4 in 3.0E The VY red dragon has about 100 HP, an AC close to 20, a 4d10 breath weapon, flight, and does enough melee damage to drop a 4th level frontliner in one round; this is probably a case where a 4th level party that was actually prepped for it would die anyways. 3.4 bumps the VY red dragon's CR to 5, probably in acknowledgement that beating it without 3rd level spells (or a high-level archer) seems nigh-impossible.

 

[dcollins]

I heard that the CR of the dragons were made with the assumption that the party has prepared for them. Is this true and if yes can someone point me to the place where this is said?

I'll basically support what the previous poster said.

Dragon CRs are simply too low. As a 3.0 player, I agree that they're about 2 points too low (and similarly, for their Hit Dice their size categories are too small). The designers more-or-less goofed, wanting dragons to be the most dangerous monster in the system, and broke the CR system in an attempt to do so.

At a later point one of the designers presented this "dragon CRs assume a specially prepared party" argument, but to me that seemed like a pretty transparent rationalization.

 

[Crothian]

Dragon CRs don't actually seem that bad. One factor is the Dragons' DR which is useless. How often do players actually go up against a dragon without a magical weapon?

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

The other rationalization that was attributed to a designer was that dragons are self-important and therefore will, in general, flee if you can beat it down to ~50% HPs.

It sounds reasonable but it should be mentioned explicitly in the MM description if it warrants a shift in CR.