Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder dragons?

[jasin]

How do they compare to 3.5 dragons? More precisely, how does Pathfinder dragons vs. Pathfinder PCs compare to 3.5 dragons vs. 3.5 PCs.

In 3.5, dragons were intentionally under-CR-ed. An 8th-level party would wipe the floor with any CR 8 opponent, but would have to put in serious work against a CR 8 dragon. This had the advantage of making dragons seem awesome and tough, but the disadvantage of being quite misleading in terms of encounter design.

Now I've noticed that the Pathfinder young green is CR 8, with mostly the same stats as the 3.5 young green at CR 5!

Can someone with more experience or who has studied the numbers in more depth tell us: are dragon CR normalized overall? Can I expect any CR x Pathfinder dragon to be no tougher than any CR x Pathfinder monster?

 

[James Jacobs]

The design philosophy that a dragon should be under-CRd didn't make sense to us, because that only helps to break the value of a working CR system. So when we built the dragons, we more or less did our best to build them so that they'd be accurately represented by their CR.

A GM can, of course, still achieve the same end effect by putting a party up against a dragon of CR of +4 or so above average party level... but since a dragon's CR now behaves more or less like the same CR for any creature... the tool is accurate.

Now, that said... I think that dragons still skew toward the high end of their CR range... but the goal was to make a CR X creature be close in power to any other CR X creature, be they a dragon or an advanced flumph.

 

[Kaisoku]

As I recall, the dragon was not evaluated in a vacuum when they went with picking the CRs.
They felt that Dragons were to be used as "big event" encounters, that the GM would drop a lot of hints before pitting the PCs against it, such that time to investigate would reveal their breath weapon and other abilities, etc.

Basically, they CR'd it with the concept that a party would be invading the dragon's home with the intent to kill it, prepared and everything.

These are supposed to be factors that a DM applies after the CR, and which one would do with any other creature in the bestiary.

They assumed. And you know what that gets you.

I far prefer the idea of having the CR based on abilities and mechanics, and then let each DM determine how the CR is affected by circumstance.
This lets a DM spring a Dragon onto a party as a surprise, and have a proper CR to work with.

 

[IronWolf]

The design philosophy that a dragon should be under-CRd didn't make sense to us, because that only helps to break the value of a working CR system. So when we built the dragons, we more or less did our best to build them so that they'd be accurately represented by their CR.

A GM can, of course, still achieve the same end effect by putting a party up against a dragon of CR of +4 or so above average party level... but since a dragon's CR now behaves more or less like the same CR for any creature... the tool is accurate.

A wise design decision in my opinion. I would rather have a logical (well as logical as one can be) CR system and know if I really want to challenge a party then I should adjust the dragon upwards and not always have to remember in the back of my head that the dragon CR was skewed.

 

[DaveMage]

A wise design decision in my opinion. I would rather have a logical (well as logical as one can be) CR system and know if I really want to challenge a party then I should adjust the dragon upwards and not always have to remember in the back of my head that the dragon CR was skewed.

Agreed. Especially since dragons can now more properly be used as non-BBEGs.

 

[Cor_Malek]

Well then, there you have it, straight from the horses mouth - yay for EnWorld ;-P

I'd guess it'll avoid quite a few TPK's by newbie GM's. I remember the surprise of both players and GM when a dragon with "appropriate" CR (slightly on +, as most enemies we faced then) wiped floor, walls and ceiling with us, back when we were starting playing. Funny thing is, that story-wise, the intention was to let us have a relatively easy victory, so that we would underestimate the threat.

I guess that the 3.x version worked good for people who always had to work strictly by the rules, it forced them to make dragon encounters harder. It could backfire when people didn't know about that, and scaled the CR up on their own account ;P

 

[Jhaelen]

They felt that Dragons were to be used as "big event" encounters, that the GM would drop a lot of hints before pitting the PCs against it, such that time to investigate would reveal their breath weapon and other abilities, etc.

Basically, they CR'd it with the concept that a party would be invading the dragon's home with the intent to kill it, prepared and everything.

That may well be true. It would also explain in part why my players never had much problems when fighting dragons:

In the beginning, they were always scared when encountering dragons and would rather parlay than fight. Which usually works well, since you also get xp for overcoming them without fighting.

Later, they were still scared, but willing to take them on, resulting in very careful play, and not pulling any stops, i.e. using their 'biggest guns', so to speak.

In the end, they realized that dragons are 'not so tough', particularly since the ones most often encountered are conveniently color-coded. Cast a Mass Resist Energy, and the fight's outcome is decided early.

About the best any dragon could hope for was to drop an unlucky pc that became a target for a full attack. But I never had any pc deaths in dragon fights.

Pcs have been killed by orcs, gray ooze, mummies, cockatrices, dire sharks, hill giants, voidminds, kuo-toas, hezrou, earth elementals, and xorns, but never by dragons.