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

[Gwarok]

Did his calculations include dragon fear?

They did not. And on a personal note, the group included a 13th level Paladin. I never realized how annoying they are until we had one with a 20 CHA join the team 10' immunity to fear and charm, +5 to everyones saving throws, and come 15th he gets perma Prot vs Evil. That is one very handy class to have in your group at this level.

But yea, Dragon Fear is a hugely important ability for them, one of the defining ones really. Also, someone was telling me I can do whatever with my Dragons, and I as DM am way ahead of you on that. I in fact will have weapon resistance that increase with age, and the Ancient ones will be immune to non magic, resistant to magic, and only take full damage from dragon slaying weapons. I like the idea that if you're going to try melee an Ancient one, you're going to need some specifically designed for the task. Dragons are in the name of the game, and the big ones are going to be hard to kill. Like Demon Prince hard.

 

[Celtavian]

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)

I could see a 100 archers with Sharpshooter and a 14 to 16 dexterity. Archery is power in intelligently built armies. In fact, I could see nations building dragon killing armies with 100 or double or triple that archer companies that are trained to spread out widely to avoid breath weapons preventing the ability of the dragon to kill them. Once a king new that even an ancient dragon could be killed by common archery, it would be his focus to maintain large archery companies specifically for dragon slaying. Archers supported by priests and mages with some contingents of footmen that take swings or throw javelins if the dragon decides to land to attack anyone.

When a 100 archers are a threat to an ancient dragon, it means that a king or other ruler can very easily field an army large enough to repel an ancient dragon without employing high level adventurers. As far as Smaug goes, that doesn't happen because ancient intelligence, animal cunning, superhuman awareness, and aerial maneuverability tells it to stay away from human settlements because its very easy for them to die.

Ancient Intelligence tells it that common archers can harm it.

Superhuman awareness tells it that arrow fire shoots farther than its superhuman awareness and thus that awareness does absolutely nothing to help it against massed archery.

Animal cunning is of no help to this creature considering it's ability to stealth is very low without magic and cunning doesn't help against massed archery. So it's best to stay away from human settlements because it will likely die.

Aerial maneuverability doesn't help much against massed archery and in fact makes it a better target.

I like Bounded Accuracy as well for many things, but not for dragon design. They made dragons too weak. I've fought a lot of them having gone through Tyranny of Dragons. They became quite the easy fight even in their lair when we hit about lvl 9. The only thing we had trouble against was massed dragons as in multiple at the same time. We fought a dragon light of six young red dragons and that was dangerous due to the massed breath weapons. But by lvl 9 adult dragons were running from us in their lairs. We killed them in 12 seconds or two rounds or so. Pretty sad. We killed an adult green and an adult red in this fashion with relative ease at lvl 9. I figured dragons would be a tougher fight. I think they should be.

 

[aramis erak]

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.

It is the overall damage, not the individual attack damage, that scales.

In one turn an Ancient Black gets
1A: Fright (DC19 Wis), Bite +15 for 19, 2 claws +15 for 15 each
3 Legendaries:

• Tail +15 for 17
• Wing Buffet (counts as 2) 15'radius DC23 Dex vs 15+prone.
• Automatically detect something hidden or invisible

So in one round it can usually neutralize 2-3 with fear, do 45 in melee, tail for another 17 vs someone who engages it, Wingbuffet when guy number 2 closes in and hit both for 15... So 92 DPR typical. And it's almost never missing. Hottest AC's I've seen in play are 25 with shield spell... and even then it's a 50/50. The wing buffet's 55% vs the VERY best PC's (Dex 20, proficient +6 for level 20).. Against a typical fighter of mid level, it's more like 90%.

An adult gets
1A: Fright (DC 16 Wis), Bite +11 for 15, 2 claws +11 for 13 each
3 Legendaries:

• Tail +15 for 15
• Wing Buffet (counts as 2) 10'radius DC19 Dex vs 13+prone.
• Automatically detect something hidden or invisible

So, same calculations... Fear neutralizes 1-2, does 41 in melee, tail for 15, and buffet 2 for 26... 82 expected... except that the odds of hit are 6 points lower, too... but AC is only likely to climb about 3 points between "Adult is appropriate" and "Ancient is appropriate"... because by high levels (11-15), improvement in AC is usually "Can I get the correct magic armor?"

And the young?
1A Bite +7 for 15, 2 claws +7 for 11, no legendaries.

Oh, and if in lair, lair actions are the same regardless of age... If you want to make a young dragon nasty, put it in lair with some draconian "pets"/servants/sycophants - Drakes or dragonborn or kobolds.

Worse, make it a pair of nestmates working together... which is 4x the threat of 1 lone dragon.

 

[Quartz]

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

Not really. A prepared army runs away - scatters - after the dragon uses its fear ability, then regroups an hour or two later, and the troops are unaffected by the fear for the rest of the day and the dragon is toast. Against an army dragon fear is best used as an escape ability. Or rather, breathes a few times, slaughters a few of those running away, then soars off contemptuously.

Against a small or medium-sized group dragon fear is very different. The dragon can use dragon fear and pick off its enemies during the one hour period.

 

[Huntsman57]

As mentioned, the attacks add up to do a fair amount of damage overall. Still, I've never felt dragons were done to my tastes in any edition, 5E included. What I like about 5E is the legendary and lair actions which add a lot of flavor. What I don't like about any edition of D&D is that I would prefer less hits but more damage per hit. This would create a more dramatic visual image of dodging away just in time to avoid certain death. Of course some might argue that the damage being dealt that didn't kill the player is equivalent to that near miss. However, a hit is a hit and a miss is a miss. It may be that a hit for 20 damage that is a mere scrape to a 20th level character is a grievous injury to a 4th level character, but you can't call a hit a miss.

As an aside, I loathe the ACs of dragons in 5E. If I were to have a single greatest criticism in regards to dragons, it would be that these beasts are legendary for their impermeable scales. Of course, the DMG gives us the option to adjust this, and I have begun giving -3/ hit and +3 AC to adult dragons, while giving -6/ hit and +6 AC to ancient dragons, but then I also want to increase the damage per hit without reducing the attack bonus any farther. That leaves me only with the option of simply making adult and ancient dragons a higher CR.

Edit: my best bet would probably be to eliminate multi-attack, and roll claw attacks into merely a flavor thing interchangeable with tail attacks for legendary actions. The dragon's regular attack would simply be a single bit that, were it to hit, would deal out much more damage. As an example, an ancient black dragon gets 3 attacks for an average damage of 19/15/15. Instead, the dragon just gets a single bite for 49. Fewer attacks that hit less often but did substantially more damage with a dragon that was far more resilient will provide proper mass to the creature in the minds of the players, which should add to immersion, without, hopefully, adjusting the CR..

 

[Illithidbix]

I could see a 100 archers with Sharpshooter and a 14 to 16 dexterity. Archery is power in intelligently built armies. In fact, I could see nations building dragon killing armies with 100 or double or triple that archer companies that are trained to spread out widely to avoid breath weapons preventing the ability of the dragon to kill them. Once a king new that even an ancient dragon could be killed by common archery, it would be his focus to maintain large archery companies specifically for dragon slaying. Archers supported by priests and mages with some contingents of footmen that take swings or throw javelins if the dragon decides to land to attack anyone.

When a 100 archers are a threat to an ancient dragon, it means that a king or other ruler can very easily field an army large enough to repel an ancient dragon without employing high level adventurers. As far as Smaug goes, that doesn't happen because ancient intelligence, animal cunning, superhuman awareness, and aerial maneuverability tells it to stay away from human settlements because its very easy for them to die.

Ancient Intelligence tells it that common archers can harm it.

Superhuman awareness tells it that arrow fire shoots farther than its superhuman awareness and thus that awareness does absolutely nothing to help it against massed archery.

Animal cunning is of no help to this creature considering it's ability to stealth is very low without magic and cunning doesn't help against massed archery. So it's best to stay away from human settlements because it will likely die.

Aerial maneuverability doesn't help much against massed archery and in fact makes it a better target.

I like Bounded Accuracy as well for many things, but not for dragon design. They made dragons too weak. I've fought a lot of them having gone through Tyranny of Dragons. They became quite the easy fight even in their lair when we hit about lvl 9. The only thing we had trouble against was massed dragons as in multiple at the same time. We fought a dragon light of six young red dragons and that was dangerous due to the massed breath weapons. But by lvl 9 adult dragons were running from us in their lairs. We killed them in 12 seconds or two rounds or so. Pretty sad. We killed an adult green and an adult red in this fashion with relative ease at lvl 9. I figured dragons would be a tougher fight. I think they should be.

I perhaps envisage what classes and levels and feats mean in my worlds somewhat differently.
"High" Dex and feats aren't something that are just taught on target ranges, like levels and classes they're a function of the touch of destiny on characters and are talented . And the sort of people who it slaps doesn't hang about as foot soldiers in armies. The vast majority of trained soldiers have guard stats, a few embittered survivors are veterans; everyone with classes, levels and feats aren't about to be recruited into archery regiments because they're too busy running around being Robin Hood or stuck in the brig because they're Starbuck.
(I will concede a few NPCs like thugs end up being oddly competent compared to my paradigm.)

I also envisage monsters threatening cities somewhat differently, even Ancient Dragons would only do it with allies.
or perhaps that the very sight of a Ancient Dragon is scary enough that most archers will decide it's not worth their 2gp/day wage to try and aggravate it even as their captain yells "I've done the maths! We can toates kill it!"

However I do agree, iconic monsters can be surprisingly wussy if encountered by themselves and not part of a full adventuring day.
I think a fundamental problem is the six-eight medium/hard encounters of an adventuring day don't mesh with many iconic scenarios with a single awesome, set piece fight.
I normally greatly increase hit points and add legendary actions.

 

[Gwarok]

It is the overall damage, not the individual attack damage, that scales.

Well actually no, it's not. Things of a similar design increase in damage with size. A medium sized longsword does 1D8, large one does 2D8, and a huge one does 3D8, etc... Seeing a Gargantuan dragon bite for 2D10, the same as a large one, bothers me as much it would seeing as a Huge Fire Giant wielding a huge longsword that does 1D8. I understand that in terms of the behind the scenes mechanics for balance that when adding things like legendary actions for adult and ancient dragons they need to pare it down, but not at the expense of some sense of continuity that the claws of a Gargantuan dragon would have more base damage than those of a Large one. It comes down to a meta vs. "reality*" judgement call, so I will be scaling my adult and ancient dragons accordingly. If that means I need to bump the relative CR, so be it.

* - I understand the absurdity of using a term like reality when speaking of how much damage a made up dragon does

 

[Valdier]

If you remake most of the dragons using the DMG, they end up much stronger than what is in the MM. They are definitely under powered.

 

[dave2008]

As mentioned, the attacks add up to do a fair amount of damage overall. Still, I've never felt dragons were done to my tastes in any edition, 5E included. What I like about 5E is the legendary and lair actions which add a lot of flavor. What I don't like about any edition of D&D is that I would prefer less hits but more damage per hit. This would create a more dramatic visual image of dodging away just in time to avoid certain death. Of course some might argue that the damage being dealt that didn't kill the player is equivalent to that near miss. However, a hit is a hit and a miss is a miss. It may be that a hit for 20 damage that is a mere scrape to a 20th level character is a grievous injury to a 4th level character, but you can't call a hit a miss.

As an aside, I loathe the ACs of dragons in 5E. If I were to have a single greatest criticism in regards to dragons, it would be that these beasts are legendary for their impermeable scales. Of course, the DMG gives us the option to adjust this, and I have begun giving -3/ hit and +3 AC to adult dragons, while giving -6/ hit and +6 AC to ancient dragons, but then I also want to increase the damage per hit without reducing the attack bonus any farther. That leaves me only with the option of simply making adult and ancient dragons a higher CR.

Edit: my best bet would probably be to eliminate multi-attack, and roll claw attacks into merely a flavor thing interchangeable with tail attacks for legendary actions. The dragon's regular attack would simply be a single bit that, were it to hit, would deal out much more damage. As an example, an ancient black dragon gets 3 attacks for an average damage of 19/15/15. Instead, the dragon just gets a single bite for 49. Fewer attacks that hit less often but did substantially more damage with a dragon that was far more resilient will provide proper mass to the creature in the minds of the players, which should add to immersion, without, hopefully, adjusting the CR..

I prefer harder but fewer attacks myself. A few posts ago I suggested upping the bite, claw and breathweapon damage, but limit the tail attack to a 2 action cost so it only has a max of 4 attacks per round, but does the same or more damage. Personally that is not enough for me so I started reworking epic threats to make them hit harder. I have only done two dragons so far: http://http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?468639-5e-EPIC-MONSTER-UPDATES/page2 , but I will eventually get all the ancient dragons updated.

 

[Eltab]

Because my Tiamat group was blowing away all random fights, I amped-up Arauthator: he became an Ancient White Dragon, max HP and anything else that I could.

He had half the group on Death Saving Throws in 4 rounds because they stayed clumped up and ate 2 Breath Weapons, plus Multiattack every turn, plus every Lair Action attack I could possibly get off.
Then somebody revived the Bard, who pulled out a Staff of Healing, and ...

Arauthator's head now resides in a Bag of Holding. It is a VERY effective demonstration that "this group really is as tough as all that".