Dragon vs. Wizard

[Jack_Simth]

Easy.

Give the dragon levels in wizard.

If you follow CR guidelines as written, that is actually better than you might think.

You see, as a Dragon is not inherently Wizardly, Wizard levels technically qualify as nonassociated class levels until they exceed racial Hit Dice.

A Very Young Silver Dragon is CR 5 and has 10 racial HD. If you add 10 Wizard levels, those 10 are nonassociated, and increase the CR by 5; additionally, you get to add the elete array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8) in free of charge. Officially, a Very Young Silver Dragon has stat modifiers of: +4 Str, +4 Con, +4 Int, +4 Wis, +4 Charisma. With the Elite array, that could be, oh, Str 12 (8+4), Dex 10 (10+0), Con 18 (14+4), Int 19 (15+4), Wis 17 (13+4), Cha 16 (12+4) - and the dragon would get normal stat increases at HD 12, 16, and 20; three of them; Intelligence sounds good for this build, so that's Str 12, Dex 10, Con 18, Int 22, Wis 17, Cha 16 - and we haven't introduced Magic yet.

So your officially CR 10 dragon is a Wiz-10 with some stat boosts and 10 racial HD. Further Wizard levels are now associated, though. Still, when he hits CR 20, he is a full-fledged Wiz-20 (and still with 10 racial HD). And two more ability boosts (HD 24 and 28; Int is good - brings it up to 24 before magic). Do note that a Venerable Elf variant with a +2 Racial bonus to Int and a base Int of 18 would only have an Int of 28 before magic. Toss in a +5 Tome and a +6 Headband of Intellect for both, and there is, at best, a save DC difference of... 2? And the Dragon has a few bonus feats to play with, better saves, better BAB, better movement, better ... well, almost everything, really, unless the non-dragon rolled really well on stats... and these competitions usually use a point buy.

And the dragon is playing defense, in the lair. And can play a human whenever (3 times a day, for as long as desired). Basically, the Dragon can be a Wizard+.

(A Wyrmling Bronze is also a decent choice, as is a Young, Very Young, or Juvenile White; a Very Young Red, a Young or Very Young Green, a Young, Very Young, or Wyrmling Blue, or a Young Black - but the Very Young Silver is about the best for this piece of cheddar... if you are focusing on Save DC and stats; for other choices, you will want different dragons and ages).

The Very Young Silver actually has a level adjustment (+4), so can quite legally have a defineable XP pool. If the Young Silver forgoes a single level of Wizard, that's 33,000 loose XP to play with.

The Dragon's actual lair is not physically accessable without going through solid rock (turned into a critter with a burrow speed, went underground until the Dragon hit bedrock, cast a Silent Stilled Disintigrate to make a 10x10 seed room; regular Disintigrate spells (after becoming a "normal" creature) to enlarge as needed; Wall of Stone to seal off the top like normal rock, and keeps the area covered with a Dimension Lock and a Permanencied Mage's Private Sanctum). The actual lair also has a few Permanencied and Heightened Symbols, set to a custom trigger activiation: As soon as ready. No more than one is offline at any given time. Half a dozen will do the job quite nicely. As the attacking Wizard, you don't know this until after you're in (pretty much can't view the area by any means).

The Dragon maintains a "social" lair with similar defenses, minus the always-active Symbols; there are still several Permanencied Symbols about, but they have a custom trigger method that the Dragon can cause whenever (Symbols can be set to anything the caster wants, provided it is either observable or in a short list of things; a Quickened Shadow Conjouration can cause a critter of semi-arbitrary size, shape, and alignment to suddenly be inside the area of all of them, setting them off with a Swift action on the part of the dragon).

The Dragon of course maintains a normal set of The Logic Ninja's Paranoid Wizard Defenses (Mind Blank, Well-worded Contingency, and so forth).

Oh yeah - and so far, the above is pure Core.

... and going outside Core, the Wizard is going to have problems. Having 30 HD, the Dragon qualifies for Epic feats - like, oh, Spell Stowaway (Time Stop). Or maybe Permanent Emanation (Antimagic Field) (can be turned on or off as a free action). The Dragon also has the option of such things as the Celerity+Foresight combo.