NPC party of dragons

[udalrich]

I recently realized that many levels from now, it would make sense for my players to encounter an enemy party that covers the traditional party roles (at least for combat) but consisted entirely of dragons.

Has anyone done an NPC party of dragons?

This would look like a typical adventuring party, except that it consists of dragons instead of PC races. There would be a tank, a healer, an arcane caster, scout and someone to generate DPR.

The immediate concerns that I can think of are these.

• Dragons are designed to be effective as a solo encounter. Will 4-5 at once have a synergistic effect that makes them much stronger than expected?
  
• Are there classes that do not work well when applied to a dragon?
  

There would be, for example, 4-5 saves against fearful presence and probably the same number of breath weapons in the first round. They would be lower since I'm probably using dragons with a CR 4 lower than what I would for a single encounter, but that's still a lot of chances to roll a 1 (or even a 5).

I think a dragon sorcerer and a dragon "fighter" would be effective. I less certain how well they would be able to handle the healer and scout rolls. Healing spells would be several levels behind, since a significant part of their CR comes from being a dragon.

I'm thinking about this now since this is also something that would be foreshadowed long before it actually happens.

Anybody have experience with this?

[pobbes]

Well, if you want to add class levels to dragons that could take you to another place all together, but, in general, different dragons already fall into different flavors. You'll find most dragons have a few abilities in common that make them "solo" these are:

• Damaging Aura - To balance multiple melee
• Breath Weapon - To consistently damage multiple opponents
• Terrain Control - Again helping them create 1v1 opportunities by hindering movement or trapping characters in terrain.
• Defensive Spells- Mage Armor, Blink, Shield, Glitterdust all designed to improve survivability against multiple targets.
• Crowd Control Magic - Thanks to the great ability of damage output a dragon normally has, most dragons use their spells for crowd control with interposing hand, mirage arcana, or dominate monster. These spells help deal with the dangers of larger groups.

Disregarding these things, all dragons already fall into certain archetypes. The silver's fighting past death makes a great warrior. The dragons bless and luck abilities make a shade of bard. Copper trap finding and making makes him an excellent rogue. Brass is an enchanting communicator. White dragons special abilities actually makes them a kind of caster type. Greens have a druid flavor with treant, woodland stride, and fog abilities. Black dragon acid bite makes him a powerful fighter as well.
The difficulty with dragon parties actually corrects itself fairly easily. For the most part the biggest issues which could completely cripple PCs in groups are the breath weapon, terrain control, and crowd control magic. Terrain control is usually specific to on terrain type until the highest levels, so in a mixed party of dragons then only one would be able to provide terrain control at a time. Breath weapons are the biggest problem in a party of homogeneous dragons, but if you mix dragons, then generally, they cannot reliably use their breath weapons without endangering the rest of the group. Sure, breath weapons will be flying, but not every time they come up, against the whole party. Finally, for the party you are designing you will want to be customizing their spell choice which will remove the crowd control issues.
So, to do this the easiest way, change the dragon's feat and magic to fit their roll. Give the rogue silence and invisibility. Give the warrior buffs to help with combat. Healing won't really be effective for dragons just because of the way they are built, but a buffer with spells like haste, aid, bless, and similar spells could be useful with some clutch healing when necessary. Many dragons easily fit the scout role, and detect spells or movement enhancing effects would enhance this. The dedicated caster can have some variation, but might be the biggest breath weapon user, using spells for crowd control, and then lining up breath attacks for area damage.
Some things that could help. Have the "arcane caster" use protection from energy for his breath type on his allies ,at least the fighter-type dragons, so he can still breath weapon on top of them at the party. Use the scout to allow the dragons prep their spells in anticipation for combat so they aren't wasting actions to better prepare for their roles. Use consumable magic items, especially wands or scrolls to give the arcane dragon more variety and range. Be clever, the thief type dragon doesn't get much benefit in combat other than being a dragon, but if he's under leveled from the PCs that won't count for much. Let him use stealth to be effective by isolation or bypassing party defenses (i.e. invisibly flying past the warriors and such to swoop grab the PC caster and drag him away from the fight). Also, try to keep your tactics to the dragon's roles. Ultimately, it may be most effective for the dragons to just fly in low circles over the party alternating spell damage and breath weapons, but then the encounter(s) would be less memorable and feel more like your just trying to murder the PCs without breaking the encounter rules.

[brassbaboon]

I have not done this in PathFinder. I've done it in 2e and dragons of equal level simply overpowered PCs. Just the action economy alone was enough to crush the PCs.

I would be very careful about this, and I'd also give a lot of thought to how dragons themselves would actually use their powers. It is not likely that they would break up into these roles and play them as diligently as a PC party does. After all every dragon can tank, every dragon can breathe, every dragon can multi-attack.... Why would one or two miss out on all that fun?