How do you slay a red dragon?

[pawsplay]

Your front line guys need miss chances, preferably blur, concealment, mirror image (rings of minor spell storing can do this), and so forth. The dragon's attack bonus is high enough to hit, hit, and hit.

In fact, withstanding full attacks is just a bad idea in general. Make one attack, then Tumble away, even unskilled. One AoO is better than a full attack.

Rings of fire resistance, whatever's appropriate for your level. Just taking ten points off each attack can be the difference between the cleric burning spells and the party dying.

Someone should be designated to ready to interrupt any spell the dragon casts. Magic missile, archery, or a a character in charge range can accomplish this.

Summoned monsters. Lots of summoned monsters. They clutter up the dragon's movement, and who knows? some of them may roll 20s. In the meantime, they provide flanking.

 

[lukelightning]

I scratch out its hit points and write "-10", but then again, I'm the DM.

 

[werk]

One thing that I've seen from DMs is to either give the dragon a lair that is easily escaped, like multiple entrances/exits, so they can play hit and run, or to put the dragon deep in a hole that is very perilous to enter, for one spectacular showdown.

I'm rather fond of the deep, secure, hole. Throw a couple forbiddances on the way in, traps (curses and non-fire energy attacks), guards (rogues+low walls+blacklight=fun), and difficult terrain (slick, sloping floors and such).

Dragons don't sleep on a pillow in the middle of a field, they sleep on a pile of gold at the heart of Fort Knox.

 

[Cedric]

One thing that I've seen from DMs is to either give the dragon a lair that is easily escaped, like multiple entrances/exits, so they can play hit and run, or to put the dragon deep in a hole that is very perilous to enter, for one spectacular showdown.

I'm rather fond of the deep, secure, hole. Throw a couple forbiddances on the way in, traps (curses and non-fire energy attacks), guards (rogues+low walls+blacklight=fun), and difficult terrain (slick, sloping floors and such).

Dragons don't sleep on a pillow in the middle of a field, they sleep on a pile of gold at the heart of Fort Knox.

Yes, but make sure you leave a backdoor to Fort Knox and trap the bejeesus out of it. Had one GM that set us up like that...so my character went in through the back door. Turns out that the 'back door' was the Dragons privy and as soon as the Dragon breathed fire in that direction the privy exploded also, doing extra damage.

Even as a cleric with fire protection up (2nd edition here), I barely survived that blast.

 

[Thunderfoot]

From a DM standpoint, no dragon's lair is a "single entity. I think on the level of the Egyptian tombs of the Phaoroh's. Multiple false rooms, traps out the ying-yang, arieal getaway paths (ie a sun-roof or three) Treasure vault located away from the sleeping chamber or perhaps have them together but seperated from the rest of the lair via a "Special" entrance way (pit of lava, frozen lake, swamp water, pool of sand, etc) and several smaller, well-cared-for buffer monsters to both soak damage, deplete party resources and warn of the impending attack (so that I might have the dragon outmanuever them and so carry on the tradition of NEVER allowing dragons to be a, "hey, we need XP and money so lets go fight a dragon", monster.)

Member of B.A.D.D. (Bothered About Disposible Dragons) for a long, LONG, time.

 

[Mechnomancer]

round one: Area dispell magic

round two: Swoop and grab cleric. Drop as free action from sky.

Round three: swallow whole arcane magic user.

Round four: Stay out of range and plink away at pcs with spells and breath.

The Draconomicon has a bunch of feats to help with your TPK.

 

[Mr Vergee]

Seeing how you have no experience with dragons, I'll assume your players don't either. A mature red dragon is enough of a challenge as it is. Do not try to make it too powerful either, unless you want your party to fail.

The ideas of some kind of protection vs. cold and soem nifty escape routes out of its lair are quite nice though, but I wouldn't go much further than that.

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

Place the dragon's lair underneath The Tomb of Horrors. Any PCs that survive the tomb and get to the lair will be softened up a bit for the dragon.

 

[heimdall]

With the proper set of minions, even early warning kobolds that go running in to wake up said dragon (so he can attack the party on the wing), you can make the dragon impossible to defeat. Is that what you're after or are you just trying to keep the dragon from dying in the first 2 rounds?