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<blockquote data-quote="Asha'man" data-source="post: 4598983" data-attributes="member: 52424">This might not be applicable to your game, but if it is, here is what I think:You are going about this backwards, taking a big, powerful dragon in advantageous circumstances and asking for help to make it fair.But it shouldn't be fair. It certainly shouldn't be fair at the expense of good (or even realistic) tactics on the dragon's part. Run the encounter at sea, make the dragon use its advantages (come at the ship from below and tear up the hull, dive down to escape retaliation, or if somehow attacked, take to the air and strafe them to pieces with flyby breaths. By all means have Mage Armor precast.) but use a smaller dragon. Actually, a mature adult would probably massacre a level 10 party even fighting in a cave. I would suggest using a young adult instead. It's Large, nominally CR 9, but dragons have something like an invisible +3 over their listed CRs, so it should be appropriate. To pad out the reward for what will likely be a grueling and tricky fight, increase the EL by +1 for fighting on a ship/in water, and award exp for any NPCs the PCs manage to save (Even the scout is likely to be quite useless in this encounter, the NPCs will require protection)&nbsp;Good feats include: Multiattack (the dragon won't be full-attacking most likely, but basically all dragons have this feat. If you're feeling cruel, replace it with one of the evil feats I list below), Power attack, Flyby attack (A must-have), Wingover (For tight turns in the air), Recover Breath, Shape Breath (to turn the breath into a cone, from Draconomicon) and any one of Maximize Breath, Quicken Breath and Awaken Spell Resistance (from Draconomicon). I'd not use more than one of these last feats or the dragon is likely to be too dangerous.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Asha'man, post: 4598983, member: 52424"] This might not be applicable to your game, but if it is, here is what I think: You are going about this backwards, taking a big, powerful dragon in advantageous circumstances and asking for help to make it fair. But it shouldn't be fair. It certainly shouldn't be fair at the expense of good (or even realistic) tactics on the dragon's part. Run the encounter at sea, make the dragon use its advantages (come at the ship from below and tear up the hull, dive down to escape retaliation, or if somehow attacked, take to the air and strafe them to pieces with flyby breaths. By all means have Mage Armor precast.) but use a smaller dragon. Actually, a mature adult would probably massacre a level 10 party even fighting in a cave. I would suggest using a young adult instead. It's Large, nominally CR 9, but dragons have something like an invisible +3 over their listed CRs, so it should be appropriate. To pad out the reward for what will likely be a grueling and tricky fight, increase the EL by +1 for fighting on a ship/in water, and award exp for any NPCs the PCs manage to save (Even the scout is likely to be quite useless in this encounter, the NPCs will require protection) Good feats include: Multiattack (the dragon won't be full-attacking most likely, but basically all dragons have this feat. If you're feeling cruel, replace it with one of the evil feats I list below), Power attack, Flyby attack (A must-have), Wingover (For tight turns in the air), Recover Breath, Shape Breath (to turn the breath into a cone, from Draconomicon) and any one of Maximize Breath, Quicken Breath and Awaken Spell Resistance (from Draconomicon). I'd not use more than one of these last feats or the dragon is likely to be too dangerous. [/QUOTE]

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