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More D20 Radio from Steel Wind, (take the Ancient part down a few notches)

If you like the flying dragons....

An Ancient White Drake?

The thing has, by default, invisibility, true strike, Flyby Attack, Greater Vital Strike AND Improved Sunder. Base Damage of 2d8+16 on the bite. With Greater Vital Strike, that's 8d8+16 on the bite. And unlike with a charge, you can use a Flyby Attack and Greater Vital Strike in the same round. With a CMB of +34 and True Strike? It literally can't fail to sunder unless it rolls a 1. Average damage to the weapon is 52 points. SNAP

There are VERY few weapons in the Pathfinder Role-Playing Game that an Ancient White Drake cannot sunder to the destroyed condition in one shot -- and NOTHING IN THE GAME will survive a second sunder attack. A +4 Enhancement Bonus sword might survive the first sunder attempt. +3 enhancement bonus sword or less is auto *destroyed* on the first bite. (From surprise no less). With Flyby Attack, it's a matter of spooking the party (so they draw weapons), cast true strike (just to be sure), fly in from invisible MOVE 100 Feet - Vital Strike with a Bite to Sunder Most Powerful Weapon in the Party with a +54 to the CMB (insta win) (Watch weapon shatter to smitherenes in its icy maw) MOVE 100 Ft. *Laugh maniacally.*

In all probability, your tank just lost his +3 Kick Ass Flaming Bane Weapon of Doom on the surprise round. No save.

Your Barbarian's kick ass GreatAxe is similarly a Dragon hors d'oeuvre. I wouldn't hold back on doing it either. It's a DRAGON. There are no stops that are unfairly pulled with a dragon -- especially an ancient Drake.

Do a wingover to spook party into buffing up and then FLY AWAY at Mach for a few minutes. C'mon back in now that the buffs have died down and pick off another shiny weapon. Or just LEAVE. Try the heroes again in a few hours when they have let their guard down. The Dragon can be patient.

You might have a chance inside in its cave -- but where it can fly? Not looking good. A 12th level party can unleash hell if the dragon stick around and lands -- but it shouldn't be sticking around until it feels the time is right to lay down the smack. Landing early and going toe-to-toe is for idiots. It's Ancient. It didn't get to BE Ancient by being an idiot.

From d20 radio.

On the subject of flying dragons:

Flying dragons are boring, and far less scary. Your flying dragon just needs to roll a single 1 and they are dead (Any immobilizing effect ruins their day as the party surrounds and begins the stomping.) There are a myriad number of ways to bring down a size huge creature.

Then you hit an ancient white dragon like mine... in its lair.

A white dragon's lair is a hollowed out icy mountain (Read: Glacier). Consider that, now consider that they can ice shape and wall of ice at will. So all the floors are difficult terrain. Consider that they know the layout of their ICY MAZE OF MIRROR WALLS. Now consider they have Dimension door. Consider their icy maze in conjunction with teleportation. Now consider you should actually USE the dragon's ridiculous wealth (remember, dragons are generally by definition high fantasy and thus have SIX TIMES standard wealth for that CR, putting them in the realm of player wealth.)

Now consider you're working with an ice monster. There's this spell called simulacrum. It gives you a big dragon looking target that shouts SMITE ME. Paladins hate this trick. Then you move into the mega-size flyby room and let them burn all their tricks to stop it from flying.

Oh and if you ever get in trouble, you can summon a freaking blizzard and just have better-than-invisibility... once every 1d4 rounds. (Note that blizzards are windstorms and thus make ranged attacks impossible within their boundaries. And you have snow vision.)

Right before death, you defensively D-Door to the lair under your lair because WE NEED TO GO DEEPER. Oh, and because this lair is a maze with elixirs of heal and potions of restoration hidden in the walls where only your dragon knows where they are. And now we get to the part where the white dragon is scary.

White dragons have a burrow speed, and a stealth score of +16. You'll never see it coming when its head pops out of the wall and it starts breaking everything. It has a 15 ft reach, in a maze of mirrors, and it can break through walls at 20ft per move action... and then immediately fill that space with a wall of ice. Oh, and you can come from the ceiling and the floor. Players don't have z axis because battlemats don't usually have them. Disabuse them of this notion.

Lairs are SO much scarier than derping about in the air.

The above is how you run a dragon. It's an encounter in an encounter in an encounter. You play defensively, because you're a dragon and you can bide your time. Your powers recharge. You don't have weapons/armor they can sunder. And when you've finally played cat and mouse for 20 rounds, and the players have had their strength whittled down to nothing and had a GRAND time trying to not die... you remind them why dragons are scary in enclosed spaces, and wall them into a star wars garbage disposal style room (Icing into the room every round growing in the walls.) They either teleport away, or you break through the final wall and show them why breath weapons are scary when they're coming through a 2x2 ft opening in the ice (Ice shape) and entering a perfectly conical room.