except that you miss the problem there: Kobolds are to dragons as Mongrelfolk are to everyone else in the game. Kobolds are dragons, just not big and powerful ones
Printable View
The fact remains, if you're going to toss a dragon at the team to give them an idea of what dragons are truly capable of, you have a few options.
If they decide to wait till night-fall to go to the nearby place, send a black dragon adult at them. At night. They're possibly the stealthiest of the dragons, the evil one's, anyway.
If they go at any other time, give them a frozen hell with the white dragon.
I'd personally throw a green one at them, but that would wreak a bit of havoc on their equipment...
It's all in the setup. Have the party meet a gnome with a newfangled quick-loading catapult in a heavy-duty fireproof (or acidproof, or whatever) cart, and when they're out and about have the dragon attack. Then it's a running battle as the party rides on a runaway cart with the gnome at the wheel (as it were) with the dragon performing strafing attacks (for whatever reason you see fit). Then when the party runs out of ammo they can fling themselves at the dragon, assuming you treat the aerial assaults as uber-charges for lots of damage.
give them a NPC marshal 1 level lower than the party buffing accuracy and will saves and a squad of 2nd lv mooks, have them be competent in tactics but lack any sort of indivual asskickery, they'll provide some archery support and possibly correct some of the stupider tactics but will really need the pc's to carry the encounter or will die horribly leaving the pc's to pick up the slack.
If you're going for NPC support, give them some low level NPCs whose job is to get eaten by the dragon. Bonus points if you make the NPCs liked by the party.
I think I'll settle with announced white dragon and NPCs for now. I was thinking of introducing rival party of NPCs anyway, so my PCs have some competition. Not going to do DMPCs of them for sure. I'm thinking of druid for some resists and heals, barbarian for net tossing and trying to hold the dragon down and ranger to help barbarian and throwing tanglefoot bag or two at dragon. Party should do the rest and should they get hurt badly, I'll let the dragon escape (most likely going to be badly wounded too) so they can track him down a bit latter and face him with a new strategy.
So the last question is: What music do you recommend for dragon slaying action? :smalltongue:
And as bonus (if you are bored), names for the three NPCs? Probably going to make druid a female half-elf, ranger is going to be human male and barbarian is going to be dwarf male.
Pokemon battle music. Always.
The Okami soundtrack might be good for this. My internet is slow as crap for the moment so I can't give links, but go to Youtube and look up the "Okami OST" followed by "Twin Devils Moshirechik and Kotanechik's Extermination" and "Demon Lord Nine-Tail's Extermination."
Hey, in the last moment
How to make a non-flying dragon:
1. Mineral warrior template.
2. Rattelyr don't have a wings. And chole dragon have tentacles for wings.
How to make a non-casting dragon:
1. The Nameless template takes away spellcasting and SLA.
2. Make it too young or dimwitted dragon.
3. Planar dragons don't have spellcasting at all.
The last thing - if you have a melee party, give them a "melee" dragon:smallcool: For example, dragon-war hulk or frenzy berserker...
If you want to make encounter a bit easy to them without under-CR dragon, you can give something which, while heightening the CR, doesn't do much for actual power. Such as NPC class levels or stacked half-dragon templates...