Adult Nightmare Dragon Seems Under-CRed

[Balkoth]

Just compare said dragon to a Juvenile Gold Dragon, for example.

Or to the Monster Creation chart.

Its stats seem more in the CR12-13 range...not CR10.

Just had our party of three people (Armor Master Fighter, Alchemist, and Bard) get wrecked by one. We were level 9 at the time.

Spoiler:

Orsephellius in the Lunar Prison from in Strange Aeons

Didn't help that we were apparently breezing through encounters enough that the GM decided to maximize the HP of all enemies to make it harder...which when presented a problem when we ran into this seeming brick wall...

[Path>Starfinder]

I would suggest this be moved to the relevant Adventure Path thread or at least list it as such before the Spoiler link.

Regarding your comment, I havent faced enough other dragons to know how difficult the encounter was in comparison but facing it with standard (rather than maximized) hit points was not overly difficult.

[Balkoth]

Relevant Adventure Path? It's a standard creature from Bestiary 5. It's not specific to any Adventure path.

I mentioned where I encountered one to give some context, but that has nothing to do with whether it's the stats of a CR12-13 creature that's listed as CR10.

[Illeist]

Dragons are always tough, but Nightmare Dragons seem unnecessarily so. Compare to young red dragons or adult black dragons, both at CR 10, and you'll find that Nightmare Dragons are better in pretty much every category. I know that CR's generally a poor indicator of difficulty, but developers continue to use it, so it needs to be accurate.

[Lady-J]

well its suposta be a nightmare to deal with so it looks fine to me

[Balkoth]

Lady-J wrote:

well its suposta be a nightmare to deal with so it looks fine to me

Let's take it a step further and claim it's a CR4 or something!

[Perfect Tommy]

The nightmare template is a touch strong for its +1 CR rating. As bad as it is on that dragon (and I agree with you about it being under CR), its even worse when its applied to low level creatures where it has been applied as a +0 CR.

[Rysky]

Perfect Tommy wrote:

The nightmare template is a touch strong for its +1 CR rating. As bad as it is on that dragon (and I agree with you about it being under CR), its even worse when its applied to low level creatures where it has been applied as a +0 CR.

The Nightmare Dragon doesn't have that template, it's its own thing.

[Philippe Lam]

http://archivesofnethys.com/MonsterDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Young%20Umbral%20D ragon

http://archivesofnethys.com/MonsterDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Young%20Void%20Dra gon

Given other dragon examples, I don't see why the nightmare one being a CR 10 is overpowered. It's something even a party of level 6 or 7 PCs can encounter, so at 9 it sounds fair. Adding the advanced template wouldn't even shock me.

[Balkoth]

Philippe Lam wrote:

Given other dragon examples, I don't see why the nightmare one being a CR 10 is overpowered.

Compared to the two other CR10 dragons you linked to, the Adult Nightmare Dragon has...

- 75%ish more HP
- 4 more AC
- 4 more Fort/Will
- SR21
- 50% faster move speed
- 6 more AB
- 4 more damage per hit
- Breath weapon that deals 50% more damage with 5 higher DC
- Better spells/spell like abilities

And you think the Adult Nightmare Dragon needs the advanced template on top of that to be a CR10? Perhaps you could explain your reasoning on this.

[JDLPF]

Let's take a moment to run it past the Simple Monster Creation rules, which give us benchmark values for each of the monster's core stats.

AC: 26, t 9, f 26 = CR 10
Saving Throws: Fort +15, Ref +8, Will +14 = CR 11-12
CMD: 33 = CR 13
hp: 175 = CR 12
Ability DC: 20-23 = CR 14-18
Spell DC: 13 = CR 8-11
Ability Modifiers: +9, +7, +4 = CR 13-14
Skills: +18-20(8), +10(1) = CR 12-13
Natural Attacks: 6 at +20 (13) = CR 12-15

Overall, this creature's sitting more inside the CR 12-14 range by the raw numbers.

[Chemlak]

Gotta say, the OP has a point. The only place the adult nightmare dragon has numbers below average for table 1-1 is Poor Save, by all of 1 point. Its worst save DCs for spells are on the mark, with most being above, and it is above the 1-1 benchmark in every other respect, by at least a couple of CR points.

Considering that every post, seminar, or whatever about designing monsters that I’ve seen or heard from Paizo they say that using table 1-1 as the target for the CR is essential to monster design, having a creature that hits the alleged CR+2 pretty much across the board tells me it should be CR 12, and possibly even 13 with some of those numbers.

[Rogar Valertis]

The Nightmare Dragon is really strong and the questions raised about its CR are legitimate imo. That said I think a party of 3 PCs wasn't the best benchmark for this kind of challenge.

[Sara Marie]

Removed a post. Feel free to rephrase your comment in a less baiting or disrespectful manner.

[blahpers]

I agree, the CR on that thing needs review.

[Balkoth]

Rogar Valertis wrote:

That said I think a party of 3 PCs wasn't the best benchmark for this kind of challenge.

Somewhat ironically, I think it might have actually been one of the best benchmarks. Why? Because three level 9 PCs are considered CR12 overall. So a CR10 dragon should have been stronger than any PC individually but the group overall would be twice as strong as the dragon.

But the dragon is CR12-13...then suddenly it's as strong or stronger than the group.

On the flip side, say we had four level 10 PCs (CR14). A CR10 would be a speed bump and a CR12 would still be half as strong as the party. So the CR incorrectness would not be as noticeable.

[Chemlak]

Ball parking the base dragon comes up with a CR of 2 using table 1-1, so this suggests that there may be a flaw in the dragon advancement table somewhere.

I’m busy for the next few days, so can’t put the time in right now, but checking different ages of the nightmare and white dragon (same base CR) against the table, as well as other dragon types, would give a good empirical indication of the cause (which could be a lot of things, such as size, HD, starting ability array, or simply reaching a particular age).

On the plus side, Hero Lab has (albeit sometimes mildly flawed) versions of all the Bestiary 1 dragons at all ages.