D&D 5E What Level To Hunt A Great Wyrm?

[Cordwainer Fish]

Smaug didn't have any minions...

And look what happened to him.

 

[steeldragons]

And look what happened to him.

True.

lol.

 

[Reynard]

And look what happened to him.

True.

lol.

It's not Smaug's fault that the GM gave their pet player an Arrow of Dragon Slaying.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Solo creatures can be hard to balance. The encounter math says 5x PC20s is looking at a Hard encounter and 5x PC19 is Deadly. IMO boss battles should be at a minimum Hard, with the possible exception that you already threw several waves of minions to exhaust the party.

Consider the realities of your fight. Dragons are flying creatures so there should be room for a huge dragon to spread their wings and get to the sky. By the same token, it may be sufficiently small that their breath weapon can cover the entire area the dragon doesn't fill.

There should be no useful cover. Any nooks or crannies in the lair should be trapped or some kind of trick the dragon has prepared.

Dragons have 60ft blindsight so use it. Fill the lair with fully obscuring smoke. Casters can't hit targets they can't see and martials will be at disadvantage. Meanwhile the dragon gets to attack with advantage.

Using a CR24 Ancient Red as an exemplar, it gets the fear presence , the "normal bite + 2x claws" multi attack (or a breath weapon), one free AoE lair attack each round plus 3 legendary actions.

The dragon has treasure and let them use it. Other heroes probably brought ice weapons to use on a red dragon, which are also good for a red dragon to use on heroes with fire resistance spells. Other nice things are items of Dispel Magic or AntiMagic to strip away those immunities.

Avoid wasting actions on potions of healing until the dragon is fleeing. However a potion of polymorph into a giant ape so it can make ranged attacks (and force PCs to waste resources) to assess the PCs. Potions of haste to let them cast a spell then breath fire plus a bit of AC. Potions of Cold Resistance.

Ancient reds get spellcasting: bane, dominate person, heat metal, hypnotic pattern, power word stun, suggestion each 1/day with save dc 21. Spells aren't a great choice vs melee attacks but can be used strategically. Bane before fear or breathing fire. Suggestion "run for you life" after savaging a PC. Dominate Person to make a caster Dispel Magic on allies or themselves.

I will recommend against spreading out attacks, aside from AoEs. Focus on one physically weaker PC and beat them down. Don't go for the fighter, eat a Wizard or rogue. Force the cleric to spend spells on healing the victim. In theory tit can get 7 attacks on its chosen foe per round (with advantage) for ~100hp/round which should terrify a squishier PC.

Feel free to have a pool of boiling hot water that is a few feet deep. Let the dragon grapple a caster, chew on it, squeeze it, swat it several times, then submerge them. Maybe add a Glyph of Warding on the pool that casts AntiMagic so that water breathing and fire resistance is removed. Trade one claw for boiling/drowning damage plus eliminating a caster's spells.

Glub-glub.

The dragon should be okay with fleeing. If it gets to half hit points, flee. After all, who says the lair fight should be the,final fight? Why not have that be the halfway point in the overall adventure where they hunt each other?

Maybe when it flees it triggers a trap that drops lava into the cavern. Can the PCs escape before they are crushed/incinerated/suffocated?

Play hit and run for days. Drop boulders from high altitude. Fly up, grapple a PC and run away with them, chewing and crushing as they go. Wait for the PCs to go home and set a whole city on fire, possibly by dropping flaming trees onto the city so the dragon isn't in range. Fly by the farms and Fear the animals so they cripple themselves running away.

 

[ezo]

It depends on the players and classes, but likely tier 4. 9th-level spells can be real game breakers IMO. For example, invulnerability is a prime example, a caster completely immune to all damage for 100 rounds! A Wizard (18)/ Warlock (2) can defeat an ancient red dragon single-handed if it doesn't flee and then return to fight after the invulnerability spell expires.

The important thing is for the Great Wyrm to control the battlefield and recognizing fleeing might be necessary, especially to return to confront the PCs on its own terms.

Also throwing a curve at the group is a great way to make the adventure and challenge more difficult.

I have an old adventure I wrote for AD&D made for 21-24th level PCs, it took more than six sessions, but was a lot of fun for the players, with a couple twists and turns tossed in to keep them on their toes.

 

[Reynard]

It depends on the players and classes, but likely tier 4. 9th-level spells can be real game breakers IMO. For example, invulnerability is a prime example, a caster completely immune to all damage for 100 rounds! A Wizard (18)/ Warlock (2) can defeat an ancient red dragon single-handed if it doesn't flee and then return to fight after the invulnerability spell expires.

The important thing is for the Great Wyrm to control the battlefield and recognizing fleeing might be necessary, especially to return to confront the PCs on its own terms.

Also throwing a curve at the group is a great way to make the adventure and challenge more difficult.

I have an old adventure I wrote for AD&D made for 21-24th level PCs, it took more than six sessions, but was a lot of fun for the players, with a couple twists and turns tossed in to keep them on their toes.

I'm looking for the minimum level reasonable for the exercise.

 

[ezo]

I'm looking for the minimum level reasonable for the exercise.

Ah, well that depends on a lot of factors:

• type of dragon
• magic items granted
• number of PCs
• classes
• multiclassing or not
• feats

But I would think 15th or 16th at a bare minimum, not knowing the answers to the above. 13th level PCs should be pounded into dust by a great wyrm.

 

[Oofta]

Solo creatures can be hard to balance. The encounter math says 5x PC20s is looking at a Hard encounter and 5x PC19 is Deadly. IMO boss battles should be at a minimum Hard, with the possible exception that you already threw several waves of minions to exhaust the party.

Consider the realities of your fight. Dragons are flying creatures so there should be room for a huge dragon to spread their wings and get to the sky. By the same token, it may be sufficiently small that their breath weapon can cover the entire area the dragon doesn't fill.

There should be no useful cover. Any nooks or crannies in the lair should be trapped or some kind of trick the dragon has prepared.

Dragons have 60ft blindsight so use it. Fill the lair with fully obscuring smoke. Casters can't hit targets they can't see and martials will be at disadvantage. Meanwhile the dragon gets to attack with advantage.

Using a CR24 Ancient Red as an exemplar, it gets the fear presence , the "normal bite + 2x claws" multi attack (or a breath weapon), one free AoE lair attack each round plus 3 legendary actions.

The dragon has treasure and let them use it. Other heroes probably brought ice weapons to use on a red dragon, which are also good for a red dragon to use on heroes with fire resistance spells. Other nice things are items of Dispel Magic or AntiMagic to strip away those immunities.

Avoid wasting actions on potions of healing until the dragon is fleeing. However a potion of polymorph into a giant ape so it can make ranged attacks (and force PCs to waste resources) to assess the PCs. Potions of haste to let them cast a spell then breath fire plus a bit of AC. Potions of Cold Resistance.

Ancient reds get spellcasting: bane, dominate person, heat metal, hypnotic pattern, power word stun, suggestion each 1/day with save dc 21. Spells aren't a great choice vs melee attacks but can be used strategically. Bane before fear or breathing fire. Suggestion "run for you life" after savaging a PC. Dominate Person to make a caster Dispel Magic on allies or themselves.

I will recommend against spreading out attacks, aside from AoEs. Focus on one physically weaker PC and beat them down. Don't go for the fighter, eat a Wizard or rogue. Force the cleric to spend spells on healing the victim. In theory tit can get 7 attacks on its chosen foe per round (with advantage) for ~100hp/round which should terrify a squishier PC.

Feel free to have a pool of boiling hot water that is a few feet deep. Let the dragon grapple a caster, chew on it, squeeze it, swat it several times, then submerge them. Maybe add a Glyph of Warding on the pool that casts AntiMagic so that water breathing and fire resistance is removed. Trade one claw for boiling/drowning damage plus eliminating a caster's spells.

Glub-glub.

The dragon should be okay with fleeing. If it gets to half hit points, flee. After all, who says the lair fight should be the,final fight? Why not have that be the halfway point in the overall adventure where they hunt each other?

Maybe when it flees it triggers a trap that drops lava into the cavern. Can the PCs escape before they are crushed/incinerated/suffocated?

Play hit and run for days. Drop boulders from high altitude. Fly up, grapple a PC and run away with them, chewing and crushing as they go. Wait for the PCs to go home and set a whole city on fire, possibly by dropping flaming trees onto the city so the dragon isn't in range. Fly by the farms and Fear the animals so they cripple themselves running away.

I was going to say much the same. A while back in my game the PCs were level 17, facing an ancient red dracolich. I did add in an iron golem (gets healed by fire ) because in general I don't like solos. But the environment was largely set up for the dragon, it was an unexpected fight and I had terrain features like barrels filled with oil for ongoing damage, etc.. It was a bit touch and go, although the dragon ultimately just left.

But there are a ton of tactics you can use. A dragon should never land and go toe-to-toe with PCs unless forced to, set things up so they can fly out of line of sight, make effective use of terrain and include ways to break line of sight. Then take advantage of reach and whatever you do, don't fight fair.

A lot just depends on the players, builds and how effectively they can coordinate.

 

[J-H]

Probably around 12-14, but it also depends on how stingy you are with magic items. If they only have a couple of non-consumables each, they'll need to be higher level and you probably will get a bunch of casters/half-casters. I've seen some high level one shots start off with only 4 items total, and that's not enough to even equip a sword & board fighter with magic gear (1 weapon, plate, shield, doesn't leave much to choose from for mobility/utility/fun/backup ranged weapon items).

 

[LordEntrails]

Thematically, to me, a great wyrm is something for tier 4 characters. This should be one of the epic fights of legend. Of course what that means in character level is really dependent upon you and your players' vision of the world and PC levels. That being said, I would put that around level 16 in my heart. I would make the difficulty of the dragon (and allies) fit that level party. Not take an existing stat block and figure out the characters needed to fight it.

Note, the PCs don't need to start at that level, you can give them a level after each session leading up to the fight. That way they get some character development over the duration of the adventure.