D&D 5E Level 20 Dragon Fight design advice

[ichabod]

Also, lair actions are your friend!

And with dragons, you also have regional effects that could soften them up before the big battle.

 

[Quickleaf]

Some of the tricky parts of this are (1) confined to lair potentially affecting flight, and (2) custom-kitted PCs with things like earthbind spell, dragon slayer swords, or Sharpshooter optimized builds.

For example, limiting flight sort of negates the advantage of earthbind, but restricting the distance the dragon can put between itself and PCs plays into the strengths of Sharpshooter optimized builds.

I've got no experience at 20th level – only played in a 17th level one-shot – but normally I'd tap into the well of the narrative/story to figure out HOW I'm going to address these points of imbalance.

 

[dave2008]

I am likely to use a 3rd party source for a non standard dragon and its minions.

I can be your third party provider for dragons!

Seriously, I am a sucker for any book with dragons and I find all of them lacking. I will provide an update to my ancient red as a template and we can tweak as needed.

Ugh, I'm going to have a hard time to wait until tomorrow to post about this - but I have to get some work done!

 

[RoughCoronet0]

I would recommend looking at the Monstrous Compendium thread made by @dave2008 for some great Greatwyrm Dragon stat blocks. They might serve as a great base for your epic dragon.

 

[dave2008]

I would recommend looking at the Monstrous Compendium thread made by @dave2008 for some great Greatwyrm Dragon stat blocks. They might serve as a great base for your epic dragon.

I'm working on a custom mythic ancient red that I will post here. Hopefully tomorrow.

 

[RoughCoronet0]

A good place to start in creating your dragon encounter is figuring out which type of dragon you want to use. You of course have your Chromatics and your Metallics, but there are also Gem dragons, Shadow Dragons, Planar Dragons, and Dracoliches too. All these types of dragons are going to have different personalities, terrain preferences, magic preferences, favored minions, damage types, and tactics from each other. Red dragons don't tend to fight the same way as a blue or gold dragon, and so on and so forth.

 

[Reynard]

A good place to start in creating your dragon encounter is figuring out which type of dragon you want to use. You of course have your Chromatics and your Metallics, but there are also Gem dragons, Shadow Dragons, Planar Dragons, and Dracoliches too. All these types of dragons are going to have different personalities, terrain preferences, magic preferences, favored minions, damage types, and tactics from each other. Red dragons don't tend to fight the same way as a blue or gold dragon, and so on and so forth.

I am open to suggestions. I am interested in "pulling a fast one" on the playrs with a non-standard dragon (i.e. not a chromatic or metallic, and not one from WotC). The experience I am going for is "we're 20th level, how hard could it b--- OH GAWD, RUN!!!"

 

[deganawida]

I am open to suggestions. I am interested in "pulling a fast one" on the playrs with a non-standard dragon (i.e. not a chromatic or metallic, and not one from WotC). The experience I am going for is "we're 20th level, how hard could it b--- OH GAWD, RUN!!!"

Could do a Cerillian dragon. Breath weapon is a stream of fiery venom.

 

[Stalker0]

So first of all, I don't just recommend minions, I consider them mandatory for this fight if you want it to be a challenge. There are too many ways a party of that size can just wreck a dragon's day, hard stop.

I recommend several beefy minions that can run interference, and several spellcasting minions. Bare minimum you want some dispel slinging minions that can free their boss from various nasty effects or try to strip magics off the party if they have tried to buff themselves up too much.

Lastly, go with the absolute highest CR dragon you can get your hands on. I think the Ancient Red (Cr 24) is honestly a speed bump to a halfway competent 20th level group.

 

[J-H]

I am open to suggestions. I am interested in "pulling a fast one" on the playrs with a non-standard dragon (i.e. not a chromatic or metallic, and not one from WotC). The experience I am going for is "we're 20th level, how hard could it b--- OH GAWD, RUN!!!"

Give it some form of spellcasting, with high level spells, or maybe high level psionics.
The old 3.5 Invulnerability power might be good to try. Some of the usual tricks like grappling the target to force concentration checks don't work so well on a dragon.