D&D 5E Older dragons don't seem to do much damage.

[dave2008]

I'm actually his DM, and my concern wasn't with the overall damage output so much as with the fact the claws and bite base damage seem to stop increasing at Young Adult. So even though they go up a size category each time to Huge and Gargantuan, Claws do a base 2D6 and Bite is 2D10 still, which seems like they should go up an additional D6 and D10 respectively for each size category. Is that a typo or something? Just about everything else seems to scale with size increases.

I have a similiar concern, it just doesn't feel right. I am not really interested in a dragon that does more damage through more attacks, but that hits harder with each attack instead. That being said, I also find damage to be low in general for epic level threats (20+). I would bump up the adult and ancient as dictated by the weapon size guidelines. Thus, I think a simple fix would as follows:

Young Black
Bite: 15 2d10+4; 4 (1d8 acid)
Claw: 11 (2d6+4)
BW: 49 (11d8) acid

Adult
Bite: 22 3d10+6; 4 (1d8 acid)
Claw: 16 (3d6+6)
BW: 63 (14d8) acid
Tail Attack: cost 2 actions (to bring average damage in line)

Ancient
Bite: 30 4d10+8; 9 (2d8 acid)
Claw: 22 (4d6+8)
BW: 85 (19d8) acid
Tail Attack: cost 2 actions (to bring average damage in line)

It still feels low to me, but I think that keeps it close to the DMG guidelines ( I use my own)

 

[Endur]

Traditionally an ancient dragon was nearly unbeatable, that is not true at all in 5E. I think it was Hemlock that showed a 100 lvl 1 human archers could kill an ancient red dragon due to bounded accuracy. If all a king needed was a 100 archers and good terrain to slay a dragon, boy, have they fallen a long, long ways from their days of power.

Did his calculations include dragon fear? That is a dragon's best weapon against large numbers of enemies.

Assume clear terrain. The archers are either at long range (over 120') or within 120'. 19/20 of the archers within 120' have disadvantage due to being frightened (1/20 of the archers have made a saving throw). The archers beyond 120' have disadvantage due to distance (and some of them might also have been frightened in previous rounds). Against AC 22 and having disadvantage, if the archer has +2 to hit, that archer needs to roll two 20's to do damage, I don't see how the archers are any kind of a threat to a creature that has over 500 hp. Figure the dragon kills half a dozen archers a turn, possibly more when breathing fire.

Now lets suppose these aren't just regular guys with bows, but these are 100 level 1 variant human fighters with dex 16 and the sharp shooter feat. No longer have to worry about disadvantage due to range, but the archers will still have disadvantage if they are frightened.

Lets say the archers go first (none are frightened yet). +5 to hit with a longbow vs. ac22, figure 15/100 archers hit and 5/100 archers critical hit for damage of 173 in one round.

Now lets say the dragon goes first and frightens all the archers, but doesn't kill any. archer turn: +5 to hit with a longbow vs. ac22 and disadvantage, figure 4/100 archers hit and 0/100 archers critical hit for damage of 30 in one round.

Dragon fear is going to make a huge difference. The dragon will still take damage, but he should win (and heal all his wounds when he takes a long rest).

 

[Kithas]

Dragons can also dash..., 120' in one turn, then do legendaries to kill a couple archers, take that paltry 130 damage, breath weapon half of them, proceed to slaughter...

 

[Celtavian]

Did his calculations include dragon fear? That is a dragon's best weapon against large numbers of enemies.

Assume clear terrain. The archers are either at long range (over 120') or within 120'. 19/20 of the archers within 120' have disadvantage due to being frightened (1/20 of the archers have made a saving throw). The archers beyond 120' have disadvantage due to distance (and some of them might also have been frightened in previous rounds). Against AC 22 and having disadvantage, if the archer has +2 to hit, that archer needs to roll two 20's to do damage, I don't see how the archers are any kind of a threat to a creature that has over 500 hp. Figure the dragon kills half a dozen archers a turn, possibly more when breathing fire.

Now lets suppose these aren't just regular guys with bows, but these are 100 level 1 variant human fighters with dex 16 and the sharp shooter feat. No longer have to worry about disadvantage due to range, but the archers will still have disadvantage if they are frightened.

Lets say the archers go first (none are frightened yet). +5 to hit with a longbow vs. ac22, figure 15/100 archers hit and 5/100 archers critical hit for damage of 173 in one round.

Now lets say the dragon goes first and frightens all the archers, but doesn't kill any. archer turn: +5 to hit with a longbow vs. ac22 and disadvantage, figure 4/100 archers hit and 0/100 archers critical hit for damage of 30 in one round.

Dragon fear is going to make a huge difference. The dragon will still take damage, but he should win (and heal all his wounds when he takes a long rest).

I think you are right. They were variant humans with Sharpshooter. They started to engage the dragon at 600 feet. Outside the range of its fear and able to get a few rounds of fire before the dragon closes. It's still sad that a creature that once could destroy cities is even capable of being damaged by 100 lvl 1 archers. That was not the case in 3E or most previous editions. They could have at least made dragonhide a lot more formidable.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Did his calculations include dragon fear? That is a dragon's best weapon against large numbers of enemies.

If it was me, probably not, in part because then you have to worry about who wins initiative and whether the dragon can get into range in time, and partly because the fear is so easy to counteract. Just get one low-level wizard to drop a Darkness spell or Fog Cloud in the dragon's face, or on the archers. Now the archers have advantage once (from being unseen) and disadvantage three times (long range, afraid, can't see target). Advantage + disadvantage = nothing.

Dragons only have blindsight out to IIRC 120', so that won't help.

I like to give all my dragons levels in dragon sorcerer to compensate, and also for thematic/aesthetic reasons.

 

[Sunseeker]

A lot of the time they can do that in the dragon lairs with the dragon's allies watching.

It wouldn't surprise me. But then I have a whole tread dedicated to how lackluster high-CR monsters are.

To be honest, I've only fought 3 dragons as a player and two were completely custom monsters with custom lair effects. The other was a stock white adult dragon with no lair vs our level 12 party of 3. Whom we trounced with little effort.

 

[Valdier]

I've noted before on the WotC boards just how messed up dragon CR's are. Many of them don't even come close to following the DMG rules, let alone maintain constistency across their own equally defined counterparts. In many cases things will gain a few hit points, +a few damage and 1AC and be 2-3 CR higher. They are really a mess honestly.

 

[Gwarok]

I don't see any reason to get too worked up about it. CR's are in my book like the Pirate Code, guidelines. But my brother is pretty adamant that they represent hard intel that has been playtested for balance and any deviation is a sin to him. That being said, my main issue was that for some reasons dragons get older, they get bigger in size, yet their base bite/claw damage stays the same. And it's true for every dragon entry, which means they did that on purpose, despite size increases in every other creature causing a linear increase in damage, or, what I think happened, when they were putting the Monster Manual together and some schmuch had to type in the base damage for all types of dragons, he was cutting an pasting and forgot to change it up by age, and the proofreaders didn't catch it. Just my 2cp tho.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

If it was me, probably not, in part because then you have to worry about who wins initiative and whether the dragon can get into range in time, and partly because the fear is so easy to counteract. Just get one low-level wizard to drop a Darkness spell or Fog Cloud in the dragon's face, or on the archers. Now the archers have advantage once (from being unseen) and disadvantage three times (long range, afraid, can't see target). Advantage + disadvantage = nothing.

Dragons only have blindsight out to IIRC 120', so that won't help.

I like to give all my dragons levels in dragon sorcerer to compensate, and also for thematic/aesthetic reasons.

That would not work. The Wizard would have to be much closer then the archers to the dragon to do that and Archers would not get advantage in this case. Plus the Wizard being much closer to the dragon would be the first one killed.

They would have disadvantage if it was on top of them and the dragon would have disadvantage they would not have advantage.

So no they would get their asses kicked.

 

[Illithidbix]

I think you are right. They were variant humans with Sharpshooter. They started to engage the dragon at 600 feet. Outside the range of its fear and able to get a few rounds of fire before the dragon closes. It's still sad that a creature that once could destroy cities is even capable of being damaged by 100 lvl 1 archers. That was not the case in 3E or most previous editions. They could have at least made dragonhide a lot more formidable.

This is taking a bit of a tangent but:

The huge, ancient red dragon in 1E AD&D has 11 HD, 88 hp, an AC of -1. To my knowledge
0 level archers would still need a natural 20 to hit it, but it was still vulnerable to them. More so than 5E where the disadvantage mechanic exists.

Yep it was immune to normal missiles in 2E, had DR in 3E and over thousand HP in 4E, but I find it interesting that 1E AD&D took a more restrained approach to the threat it posed.
(This old RPG.net thread compares the stats http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?374464-Dragons-Through-the-Editions-An-Analysis)

Personally I rather like 5E and bounded accuracy meaning that most monsters can still be hurt by enough peasants, it explains why any farms still exist.

Personally I think the dragon's ancient intelligence, animal cunning, superhuman awareness and aerial maneuverability means that they wouldn't let themselves be simply shot down by blindly charging a prepared regiment of archers.
(And a 100 strong archer regiment all with the sharpshooter feat isn't a thing I imagine in my worlds, I note none of the monsters or NPCs in the MM i've seen have it or an equivalent)