This is one of the reasons why I value dedicated archers, switch hitters, and ranged damage spells. That is how we deal with fast fliers. There are a lot of high mobility creatures and I tend to use mobility a great deal as a DM to move in and out of combat so enemies avoid AOOs and the like.
There are a few feats for dealing with this, but usually higher level. At low level this would be immensely difficult if you didn't have a ranged attacking party and some kind of cover or terrain to manipulate.
It won't be easy, but you could try a slow spell or building your eidolon to grapple. If you have a bigger eidolon who can fly, they can try to grapple a dragon which applies the grabbed condition which immobilizes them until they escape.
The main thing is slowing their actions as flying they always have to use an action to fly, then two action breath weapon. If it flies in, you try to grab it. If successful, then it will have to spend actions to escape and try to keep flying.
Most GMs will allow you to grab a limb if it tries to use reach to attack you and run with reach.
If you fight a flying dragon out in the open where it can strafe you, you're probably going to die unless the DM is nice. Inside you can usually find ways to use the terrain.
There's something to be said about not fighting a dragon in open terrain. That said killing the level 7 dragon at level 4 in open terrain would probably require a very specific party.
If it flies within 30ft to breathe you have it easier. A multiclass fighter/caster can cast Jump to leap 30ft into the air and trip it before falling or else use a ranged trip weapon like the bola to bring it down. Have another fighter or fighter/ranger with a bow move in and ready trip or plink it with arrows for damage. Then you want a cleric for resist x and heal so you don't just lose to the damage output and maybe a bard sustaining hideous laughter, casting inspire and using one for all. When not healing cleric should probably cast fear. Bring healing potions and have everyone spec battle medicine to self heal if needed.
60ft feet hurts worse because you have to actually move up before doing anything but healing is easier (line vs cone). Fighters should probably have lvl2 longstrider on them from scrolls and both have bolas to first stride->trip and then stride->ready.
Or I could be wildly overthinking this and 3 bow fighters plus cleric could be more than adequate for the task.
Level 4 is a much more interesting thought exercise than 5 thanks to the lack of 3rd level spells. I should probably test this sort of thing more often.
Who is setting up this confrontation?
A GM should know better, and several published dragons show this by having the dragon's personality override such prolonged tactics (i.e. there's a dragon outside in an AP that specifically will engage to the death when it could easily withdraw, get healing, and return or just go harass the town where's there's less ranged power).
This isn't particularly worse than dropping the same party in an Aboleth/Alghollthu Master's watery lair (one full of permanent objects and ongoing illusions that it refreshes every hour). They'd be royally outclassed and likely unprepared to fight in water, deal with the illusions, and fight a +3 thug w/ Dominate. Even prepped, it may simply be impossible if you play that monster at its ultimate.
In a sandbox world, players should know better (even if their PCs don't!). The party shouldn't be stumbling upon level+3 monsters by accident (at least not in fatal ways) so should be coming in prepared for this hit-and-run situation (perhaps by targeting the dragon's hoard). And they should be wise enough to know whether their party's build can even tackle such strategies. Newbies, I'd flat out warn them.
And if the party's of a better level, Haste isn't so bad, since the dragon would have to land in order to Stride. Most warriors should be able to Stride/Stride/Strike (or Trip/Grapple if desperate). Funnily enough in considering this, it's the Champion in full plate who seems most ineffective despite them being the quintessential dragon slayers. :)
This is only a problem if the GM makes it a problem by crafting the situation to begin with (or a published adventure writer makes a flub IMO). Setting & strategy impact the danger level, and that's true of any encounter. Piling them on top of an already superior creature is overkill (and I've frequently seen it done with inferior creatures to make them more severe than levels & XP would indicate).
Keep in mind that according to the aerial combat rules, the GM is supposed to factor in terrain limitations to where a creature can fly (such as the height of trees).
Additionally, the aerial combat rules and flying rules say that if you want to pull of certain maneuvers (such as tight turns) you need to make acrobatics checks, and they state that if you move against the wind you treat it as difficult terrain. These are things the GM should definitely factor in when running flying creatures, as it makes terrain matter a lot more to flyers, meaning that the party can really mitigate the threat of hit and run flying tactics by sheltering in a ravine or forest.
Additionally, there are a bunch of spells (many of which you get at pretty low levels) that can help deal with flyers (the standard hit/run attack pattern leaves the creature in range on the round that it moves in to attack, so you hit it with spells then). Here are a bunch of them that are all 1st level spells.
Animate Rope You get to use two commands when you cast this spell, so go with the bind command on the creature, and the tie command for the other end of the rope to a nearby tree or rock. The most reasonable ruling for what would happen is that the creature has to use the escape action (or attack the rope to destroy i) to be able to move more than the ropes length (up to 50 feet for this spell) away from the tied end of the rope.
Command The stand in place command burns an action (or an entire turn) for the targeted creature to just stay where they are.
Deja Vu This forces a creature to copy an entire turn (including the direction of movement) - this is situational, but can lead to hilarious circumstances like forcing a creature to fly into a wall.
Gust of Wind Failures on the save against this are automatically critical failures for flying creatures, knocking them prone. Prone causes a flying creature to fall, which then leaves them prone on the floor and forced to waste an action to stand before they can fly again.
Tether Forces the target to burn an action to Escape before it can move more than 30 feet away from you.
Don't forget Earthbind, that spell is literally made for grounding fliers.
Also readying an action could help, depending on what you ready
ranged trip with an according weapon as soon as the enemy comes close enough (bolas, aklys) and as soon as the enemy is grounded (if you have an able character) grappling them should surely help
I think this is great for mixing up encounters. The end goal of encountering a fast flying creature that makes strafing runs at irregular intervals is not to kill the creature, but to make it to your destination. Whether that is to escape, or to enter some building/caverns that the enemy is trying to drive you away from.
It encourages tactics like spreading out so that the entire group doesn't take damage, taking cover when enemy is approaching and moving afterwards, setting up one character to be better protected against the damage and have that character draw fire.
Also, with several rounds between incoming damage, the lethality of the encounter goes down quite a bit.
The down side of the hit and run tactic is that while the party can't hit the dragon while it is out of range recharging the breath weapon it also can't hit them.
While the dragon is 200 feet way fo1d4 rounds your PCs can be
1) finding greater cover for +4 to reflex saves vs. breath weapon
2) healing
3) drawing potions/elixirs for healing/defenses
4) rummaging in bags for scrolls etc.
5) switching to that longbow you never use
6) reloading your crossbow
7) repositioning to avoid a full party AOE
8) Hiding!
9) Ready an action to attack
The OP lists level 7 dragon, which is Young Black. It has a line. So if it wants to hit more than one PC it will need to be pretty low to the ground. Even with a 30 ft cone, if you are firing straight down you can't be more than 20 feet up to hit more than 2-3 very tightly packed targets. Also, breath weapon is two actions. So the dragon can fly in and blast, but probably only hits one or two PCs. The PCs then all get to take their readied actions to hit and then a full turn to hit the dragon with everything they've got before the dragon can retreat.
Is this tactic strong? yes. Does it require different strategy by the PCs? Also yes. Is it impossibly hard to deal with, even at level 4? No.
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I think the problem here can be summarized as "level +3, with terrain advantage".
As a player, I guess the best you can do is try to move the battle to a different map ("let's take cover in this cave where it can't fly as well / under the thicker canopy"). Although cave system and line breath weapon might not be that much better..
As a GM I would say, slap a Weak template on the dragon and play it to the best of its ability. I hate having to softball overtuned enemies, I'd rather play a properly tuned one to the hilt.
I've been in this situation. My PCs ran away, "losing" 2 NPCs in the process. They came back with a better preparation.
In my opinion, these fights are nice, but you need to give a way out to the characters. Otherwise, it just seems unfair (unless you have very tactically minded characters or if they know before-hand what they will have to deal with).
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1. The situation is super tough for PCs.
2. The situation is supposed to be super tough for PCs.
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I use fast fliers as a GM very sparingly, and if I don't give the PCs an advantage, I'll definitely treat the enemy as higher XP than its CR would otherwise indicate.
Some things I've done as a GM:
- Given the PCs a lot of boulders to use as cover.
- Allowed PCs to sneak into the dragon's lair: this gives motivation for the dragon to press into melee attack, rather than running away.
- Just straight up made the dragon super arrogant, so it thought it could take on the PCs in melee. This is usually the "okay, we need to wrap up this session, so let's end this fight" move.
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This hasn't come up super often as a player, but some ways I've countered fast fliers as a PC:
- Readied Strikes (especially with short-ranged thrown weapons like daggers and alchemical bombs)
- Been "bait" so that the dragon flies over all my allies' readied actions in order to hit me
- Prepared (often with scrolls) earthbind or air walk / fly so that we can engage in melee.
Being totally honest, though? I feel like a lot of players who whine the most have characters who are the least prepared. It's the CHA-dumped 120 DPR greatsword fighter that always cries the most about any encounter in which they can't Stride up to a brute and Strike-Strike-Strike their way to victory. As soon as the GM throws a flier at the group or puts a river of lava between the party and the enemy, you'd think it's the end of the world from the whining.
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I agree with Watery Soup, some of the unhappy players kinda had it coming.
At some point our party ran into a vrock. Those are large flying demons with 10ft reach and a double AoO. We were not ready. We were all about the non-reach melee weapons. Got quite badly messed up. GM did allow us to flee into the thick-canopied jungle and shake it off.
One of the players was furious about how unfair the encounter was. I on the other hand really relished the opportunity to "next time, I'm going to be SO ready for you" it.
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As a GM I think you should not put players in a situation where they can't win and can't flee. But it's okay to put them in a situation that's basically "figure out a solution or flee and come back with a solution". Not all the time, because that becomes a grind. But occasionally.
Just make sure that you know at least one solution really exists. It's fine if the players come up with a different one, but you need to know that the problem really can be solved. And also that the players can find out about the solution. (This can be a problem if it's hidden behind a Recall Knowledge on a L+3 Unique creature..)