There is no major convention, many dragons are solitary. You can assume that he might have cast some ability or set up some traps that would alert him to the presence of enemies--or those annoying little kobold pests, who venerate him regardless of how many he eats, wake him up after trying to fight back he invaders.
Remember, 16 monsters makes a CR+8 encounter--just for the love of Apsu come from multiple directions so 1 fireball doesn't resolve an entire battle.
Also, if the Green Dragon is to be fought alone--ugh, why?--then it should be CR (APL+3) to the party as the epic final boss. My experience is that having a single big-bad at the end of the dungeon goes one of two ways, crappy or mediocre.
Instead have the green dragon be CR(APL-1) so it is an epic encounter for one character, then have other CR(APL-1) encounters up to the number of the players in the same battle. Makes things awesome and deadly.
Also, who would say he only has Kobolds guarding him. He might have also monsters as well, forest lords have a tendency to subjugate, enslave, tariff, or kill anyone who comes into their lands.
Yeah, the CR system is a good starting point but it has its problems with balancing the party vs encounter statistics.
The system that I use now is building all the encounters for the PC characters individually.
The hard counter to that is if the Kobolds have bows or slings, they could get 1-2 lucky hits on the PCs and kill them outright.
His lair guardians probably should not be too far below his CR, if only to provide an interesting challenge to your PCs.
What level are your PCs?
Why not use kobold warriors with the half-dragon template and some kobold shamans (witches/clerics/oracles) that have a CR of ~10 each (or something else appropriate for your PCs).
Maybe with some tamed dragon-themed beasts, such as drakes, wyverns, reptiles or dinosaurs?
A gold-inlaid golem would also be a nice addition to the dragon's hoard, as well as some extra protection.
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Uh, correct me if I'm wrong.
12 kobolds = PL+3
Lv. 6 cleric with full plate = PL+4 (The cleric can only spend 1400 gp on protection, so at best he would wear a masterwork agile half-plate and a masterwork heavy shield for AC 20 before buffs. That is more than the suggested AC 18 for a CR 5 tough, so it might even be PL+5)
Yeah, the encounter with the cleric would be beyond epic. (PL+3) I think the Core Rulebook advises against this.
With the right tactics, a bit of luck and a rust monster, they could still beat the cleric.
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Kobold warriors(warriors ranging from 2-4 levels, some ranged feats, some melee focused), a leader (PC classed, fighter-ish level 7-10), a spiritual leader (divine levels, keep him/her a level or 2 below the leader, maybe give him a lower level consort or 2 that help with religious ceremonies), a couple mystics (3-4 sorcerers level 2-4, with a Lead Sorcerer level 5-7).
Feel free to add in some Half-dragon kin of the Green, perhaps some reptilian swamp animals like a giant constrictor, or an alligator. These could be with the Green in the final fight to help split up the party's focus and allow the Green to last more than a round. Also good for RP fun..."YOU KILLED MY SON....NOW YOU SHALL FEEL DEATH!!!" or somesuch...
I would outfit the mystics with wands...everyone firing off acid arrows or magic missiles with wands will make the party feel a bit of a sting while mirror images, mage armor, and shield will prolong any fight with them.
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Uh, correct me if I'm wrong.
12 kobolds = PL+3
Lv. 6 cleric with full plate = PL+4 (The cleric can only spend 1400 gp on protection, so at best he would wear a masterwork agile half-plate and a masterwork heavy shield for AC 20 before buffs. That is more than the suggested AC 18 for a CR 5 tough, so it might even be PL+5)Yeah, the encounter with the cleric would be beyond epic. (PL+3) I think the Core Rulebook advises against this.
With the right tactics, a bit of luck and a rust monster, they could still beat the cleric.
All they would have to do is trip, grapple, disarm, aid another...all the stuff parties forget to do when they are facing a harder foe. Barbarian grapples the cleric, each person helping him can add a possible +2, cleric ain't casting. The rest of the party works on disarming him and maybe swiping his holy symbol (rogue, looking at you) or assisting with the grapple so he can't get out.
Single Bad Guy encounters stink. When the party only has one critter to focus on they can handle much more than usual.
Ha, well, I don't follow the CR rules. A first level party can fight a pack of 10 or 12 kobolts if they have the tools, (sleep spell, long bows) but could never, ever, in a million years kill a 6th level cleric with a feat spent on heavy armor.
Sure they could. Said cleric has a low Touch as and, likely, a pretty low CMD.
The party keeps away from the Cleric. The first round half of them bombard with Tanglefoot Bags to glue the cleric down or at least 1/2 the Cleric's speed. The one with the highest dex attacks with a Net or Lasso (eating the non-proficiency penalty because it's a touch attack)
The others Ready actions to throw Alchemist Fire if the Cleric starts casting. (hopefully interrupting said casting). Toss regular old oil onto him to force Catch Fire checks.
Then, the Cleric's AC is in manageable territory. Attach the lead rope of the net to the cavalier's mount and have him ride in circles dragging the cleric behind (because it makes casting even harder).
Then just make a game out of hitting the cleric as they are dragged by. Hitting a prone and entangled cleric wouldn't be too hard even for a 1st level character.
Best part, these are totally tactics Kobolds might employ. Just replace the horse with a big lizard or something.
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Green dragons are forest creatures, you're thinking of black dragons. So any creatures that can be found in a temperate forest or underground would work, like unicorns?
Half-dragon kobolds would actually be a good choice, as kobolds breed like rabbits, and reach maturity in only 12 years. (Or, you could just make half-dragon rabbits)
Keep in mind that the CR should be between PL-1 and PL+3 and you should be okay. Your players should be used to running away, so you could add tougher encounters, though the dragon should be the toughest. On the other hand, the dragon wouldn't want to be killed by rebelling minions, so maybe they should be a lot weaker.
You might want to select creatures based on their alignments. In that case, kobolds and half-dragons are good choices.
Give some of the kobolds class levels. The Dragon in question has an alignment of LE, so he probably has a ranking system set up.
Alignment of the boss should have a definite effect as to how the dungeon is laid out. The personally of this particular dragon should have an effect, too. For example, if we is vindictive and intelligent, he might have found some nasty monsters for the PCs to encounter. If he is lawful the dungeon should be well organized, and chances are the more stupid and clumsy of the kobolds would have been eaten/killed by the dragon by now do to either his efficiency or his impatience.
Perhaps he's lazy, and the dungeon is designed by a competent kobold, like being heavy with traps.
A chaotic or neutral dragon may have the dungeon set up more for his amusement. The monsters the PCs encounter may be there for the entertainment purposes, such as for pit fighting.
A chaotic dragon's dungeon would probably just be a mess. No sense or order, with collapsed passes and kobolds of various levels of competency. The dungeon itself should be the more difficult aspect in this particular case, opposed to it being difficult by the dragons design. The PCs may encounter monsters that are attracted to the disorganization, such as Otyughs.
EDIT: A Kobold Dragon Disciple could be cool
While it may be too late for this, but the resource book: Kobolds of Golarion (Paizo product) is pretty awesome. May give you some ideas to make a pretty formidable group of kobolds. And like another poster put, traps, Kobolds love their traps. lol
For other encounters and to give a sense of realism and environment. Use the bestiary(ies) and use some critters native the environment. Slimes, Xorns, and things like that, if it fits the environment you're using.
Those are some ideas and myself, love a sense of realism along with history in my games. Hope that helps some and best of luck!
You could make kobolds creature handlers who send captured monsters at the party. Don't waste the PC's time with MM kobolds. Those kobolds should be simple scene dressing, lurking in the corners of the room and fleeing at danger. They should unleash the monsters, ttriggers traps, and run away. Let the party fight some kobold leaders though, as long as they have class levels.
Is there a convention for how powerful his lair guardians would be - the ones he keeps around while he is sleeping?
Any foe not expected to do HP damage to PCs is waste of real life time.
Beware using APL and CR with many mooks. Easy to make no-fun time-sink encounter.
Beware using APL and CR with many mooks. Easy to make no-fun time-sink encounter.
To clarify you NEED to use grapplers or touch attackers when they are multiple low cr monsters.
16 low level monsters that target AC are worthless as they wont be able to hit everyone reliably.
16 low level monsters that target Touch are way more useful since if anyone goes heavy tank they will have an effective touch AC of 10-13, but the Dex characters will just dodge most of it.
16 low level monsters that target CMD with Grapples can be extremely dangerous. Just as a point of reference the Skeletal Owlbears (CR2) have something like +13 to grapple attempts.
16 level 3 adepts using burning hands all hit for 3d6 fire damage, but expect it to be half so average 10 damage per spell, or 160 damage if they all targeted someone and were able to hit. Sure, they die in 1 hit, but that isn't the point. Their longevity is less important than their damage to force the heroes to expend resources.
Primary monster: Green Dragon
Secondary monsters: kobolds, forest drakes
Tertiary monsters: dire weasels, sprites, basilisk
Now of course you can throw in random monsters, but these are the "set piece" types. I don't know anything about your characters, levels or setting so I'm going completely off of the (possibly incorrect) assumption that the green dragon is right out of the Bestiary and that it is at the top of the food chain here (highest CR). Thus I give you:
An age ago the darkened depths amid the wild heart of the Vulghwood Forest were claimed by the fey. Mortals made their homes fearfully on the outskirts, amid the meadows and glens. These primitive folk raised their homes on mounds, wore the skins of animals and placated their faerie neighbors when they could; they warred when they could not.
But then, suddenly, the fey abated. The mortals, bereft of their enemies blundered into the wood and began to build, to settle. They found rugged hills and bogs hidden under the old growth and the gnarled trees yielded much bounty of themselves. To be certain some vestiges of the Fair Folk lingered but the mortals ceased to fear them. Humans, elves and even dwarves and halflings found their way to the edge of the Vulghwood and their scattered villages grew into a kingdom.
That was the first appearance of the Emerald Queen.
The young kings of Vulghmidden respected old boundaries. They never crossed the Wytchtear River and kept their people clear of the deeper bogs. After all there were still other dangers besides faeries in those places. But then something began attacking them all the same; a new foe of great size and power, yet one that was never glimpsed with the naked eye. Despite the monster's size and power it moved unbidden amid even the thickest woods and seemed to come and go as it pleased. For decades this creature preyed upon the hinterlands of Vulghmidden until at last King Halvanek took a troop of his best men deep into the forest and broke the boundary crossing into the dark heart of the forest on the far side of the river.
Legend lore of the age clearly records only a single survivor.
A century has passed since the Halvanek Crusade and it is a widely told tale that a great green dragon, referred to as the Emerald Queen, holds dominion on the far side of the Wytchtear River. She is rumored to be the breaker of the fey; the architect of their downfall though none understand how she accomplished it. Since the failed crusade some daring few have entered the verboten timberlands now known by the name "The Nightmare in Green".
These brave fools have probed the Queen's domain and returned with the following details:
- the power of phantasm and illusion run rampant here, woven into the very trees themselves. Your senses cannot be trusted traveling the trails of this wood
- the paths of the forest are labyrinthine. All along the maze there are stones, walls and even whole-cloth stone constructions woven into the trees. This outer defense is riddled with agents of the dragon; hideous monsters, diminutive draconic humanoids and even remnants of the once-legion fey
- The terrain is unforgiving and pockmarked by bogs, ponds and deep streams. Some have claimed the Queen uses these as easily as the sky to move easily through the labyrinth. Many plants are poisonous or even imbued with some measure of sentience though these creatures are little more than animals in intellect
- there are some few ways down, below the labyrinth. Here the kobolds of the maze make their true homes. They mine the earth and court even darker powers, all for the glory of their mother Queen. They worship the dragon as a god and many of their number are formidable in their own right
- Finally there is the Blackwood Cathedral; the true and nigh-impregnable heart of the Queen's lands. Here in this sanctum; a deep, sodden crevice surrounded on all sides by towering Darkwood and petrified Bloodoaks the monarch takes her ease. The one living being who spied this place and lived relayed that the fissure is many-tiered, open to the canopy above and has many flooded cysts. The ancient and gnarled roots of the forest clamber down the walls all the way to the floor of these caverns where the dragon herself reclined on heaps of fairy gold, Vulghmidden artifacts and the collected wealth of her centuries of predation.
The Emerald Queen is the stuff of legend and nightmare. She is the haunting that sends the children of Vulghmidden to bed at night. She is the unseen horror that sends the eldritch fear through the spines of brave warriors and breaks the souls of the mighty.
Game Notes:
There is the dragon and the tale above talks about her "dungeon"; an expanse of forested labyrinth spanning 10 miles north to south along the western bank of a mighty river. After crossing the river (a couple fords and an old bridge are KNOWN crossings; the PCs might make/find a new one) there are dozens of entry points.
The walls of the place are 60' tall, 10' thick and intersect the trees. At some points charmed fey have been employed to interweave or overgrow sections with the wilds. Also the dragon over time has commanded the best and brightest of her kobold sorcerer-engineers to create illusion-based traps alongside real ones to confound any would-be trespassers.
Going at it from overhead is extremely risky. The canopy is so dense that very little light hits the floor of the labyrinth (light must be brought in and some sections are lit by the inhabitants; consider it like Underground for Vision and Exploration) so many of the dragon's stronger minions (those who can stand sunlight and heights) ward the upper reaches. You might use Moss Trolls, green-hued wyverns or faeries for these guards. You could also have more traps up here or plant creatures.
Once into the labyrinth young adventurers might make a decent career stopping there. There are enclosed stone constructions like halls, shrines and buildings here that serve as lairs for many of the maze's guardians. These creatures have collected tolls and tithes, left to raid Vulghmidden or constructed their own valuables. A culture has emerged among them and those who dwell below so the gold they have has a purpose other than to line the pockets of the characters. Some of these creatures might be bargained with to gain information.
Those who want to kill the dragon HAVE to go down to find a way to her lair (unless they're highly powerful at which point they can employ spells to get right there). There are many obvious (trapped) ways down into the kobold stronghold as well as secret entrances to the undercity. This underground megadungeon is like any you've ever designed; the kobolds live and work here, there are some tunnels that intersect natural caverns waiting to be developed and there might be any number of older subterranean threats that the kobolds are dealing with: aberrations, underground fey, the drow or duergar, etc.
Finally there's the Blackwood Cathedral. This is its own mini-dungeon with 50 chambers woven into this great crater. It descends 6 levels until in a root-filled fissure at the heart of the thing you have the Emerald Queen. Of course the whole place is an echo chamber with vents to all 5 upper levels above her so unless the PCs used extreme magic she knows they're coming. She also has an elite guard of high-clergy who she will use to defend herself.
Now, this shouldn't be the first time the PCs meet the old gal. She has Alter Self 5/day; she likes to put on a nice party dress and go among her subjects in disguise every so often. She can also move with surprising stealth through her whole demesne using Stealth +10, Trackless Step, Water Breathing (bogs and streams), Woodland Stride and using all three of her movement modes: Fly, Overland Speed and Swim.
I think this gives a few avenues for thought. You could have the PCs making forays into the dungeon but just as often dealing with mischief wrought by the dragon's agents around the civilized lands. When they feel ready they can attempt to hack all the way to the dragon herself and settle things once and for all.
Neil Gaiman fan?
I stock run a Kobold tribe with 1/10 Fighters and Rogues, trap making etc. Then I leaven the dough with a like number of Sorcerers and about 1 Cleric per 20-30.
When I ran the last 'Dragon' encounter with guardian Kobolds, it was in a glacier filled with crevasses. Mass waves of grappling Kobolds was the order of the day. Only when the party was up to their eyes in screaming Kobolds did the Dragon appear. They can be quite deadly if the party depends too much on Dex and dodge. And half way through the BBEG fight, the Dragon retreats onto a shelf of ice where the Kobold cleric pops a couple of healing spells on her. Back over 50%, while the party was still grappled and couldn't heal themselves, it was a dirty trick.
I treated the kobold army as a separate monster for exp. Only when the dust settled did the party find they had just beaten equivalent of two CR 15 encounters.
I stock run a Kobold tribe with 1/10 Fighters and Rogues, trap making etc. Then I leaven the dough with a like number of Sorcerers and about 1 Cleric per 20-30.
When I ran the last 'Dragon' encounter with guardian Kobolds, it was in a glacier filled with crevasses. Mass waves of grappling Kobolds was the order of the day. Only when the party was up to their eyes in screaming Kobolds did the Dragon appear. They can be quite deadly if the party depends too much on Dex and dodge. And half way through the BBEG fight, the Dragon retreats onto a shelf of ice where the Kobold cleric pops a couple of healing spells on her. Back over 50%, while the party was still grappled and couldn't heal themselves, it was a dirty trick.
I treated the kobold army as a separate monster for exp. Only when the dust settled did the party find they had just beaten equivalent of two CR 15 encounters.
You played nice. The kobolds could have been using flasks of alchemist's fire, which could have melted parts of the glacier ;)
Beware using APL and CR with many mooks. Easy to make no-fun time-sink encounter.To clarify you NEED to use grapplers or touch attackers when they are multiple low cr monsters...
Yes. Yes. You smart one. Me just handsome one.
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Primary monster: Green Dragon
Secondary monsters: kobolds, forest drakes
Tertiary monsters: dire weasels, sprites, basiliskNow of course you can throw in random monsters, but these are the "set piece" types. I don't know anything about your characters, levels or setting so I'm going completely off of the (possibly incorrect) assumption that the green dragon is right out of the Bestiary and that it is at the top of the food chain here (highest CR). Thus I give you:
** spoiler omitted **...
I'll just borrow some of the ideas here, okay?
Oh sorry Great White Duke, I should've said:
Anyone who likes anything of the spoiler I posted feel free to swipe. Also @ Big But: I've actually never read Gaiman. Did I come close to his style? If so, I'm going to have to bite the bullet and go pick something up. Any suggestions? (sorry to threadjack)
To the OP: I second what others have said here about adding class levels to kobolds. But why stop there?
1. Dragon has a Charm Person ability
2. Forest might have a druid
3. Druid has access to Awaken
Perhaps have the dragon using a minion to Awaken animals and charm them, thus building a network of spies and informants for him. You may have a whole secondary army there of creatures who have no idea who they're really working for but are now intelligent enough for a couple levels in rogue, sorcerer or fighter; possibly even barbarian. Imagine: an Awakened dire weasel barbarian 2/sorcerer 1 with some feats around ignoring somatic components. Now it has intelligence, massive melee abilities, a couple handy buffs, and with a little creativity on the part of the awakening druid perhaps can speak a language.
Another thing to consider: how do the kobolds worship. Do they just go get money and throw it at the dragon? I ask b/cause I have some kobolds in my current game. They worship a dragon that's been imprisoned yet they're still receiving divine spells. They are constantly working on ways to free their patron and also to appease her.
As a result they raid and steal for very specific things that turn into interesting plot hooks. One might be looking for an engineer to design a device powerful enough to launch it's payload into the eye of a storm; another is raiding for deposits of adamantine; still another scours the countryside for half-elves - the dragon's favored meal.
Also @ Big But: I've actually never read Gaiman. Did I come close to his style? If so, I'm going to have to bite the bullet and go pick something up. Any suggestions? (sorry to threadjack)
(sorry about the off topic bit)
It's just that the name and some of the elements of your dungeon really reminded me of A Study in EmeraldWhich features a Victorian London conquered by Lovecraftian Eldritch Abominations, including a Great Old One Queen of England
But seriously, pick up some stuff by Neil Gaiman. He is one of my favorite writers. He's got a lot of stuff in different genres but I could especially recommend American Gods, which is about the old (pagan) deities in modern day America.
You played nice. The kobolds could have been using flasks of alchemist's fire, which could have melted parts of the glacier ;)
Thought about something like that, but having already established that the Dragon took extra damage from fire, it was a no go. Had to make do with snow covered crevices.