
roguerouge |

I think Rivozair has a lot of potential tactics for DMs to consider, but that very surplus of options means that I have questions about priorities...
Questions:
What was your table's experience of this fight like? What were your dragon's best tactics?
Since the dragon can pick the ground for the fight with its mobility and its ability to set fires and kill innocents to attract good PCs, where would it WANT the PCs to congregate? A park? A dense housing area?
Possible tactics:
If the party hasn't done the Song of Silver yet, now is an excellent time to use the fear aura to herd civilians into a stampede towards the party.
Stay long range from the party, tossing fireballs for three rounds. (Unlikely to damage them if the PCs have gathered intel on the dragon strike reprisals during book 4 or talked to now-found Original Silver Ravens).
Flyby Attack against casters. (I wish the dragon had Vital strike for this.)
Summon that barbed devil long before he gets trapped in melee. It doesn't have flight but has several medium range options.
Hover: The barbed devil might melee a PC, while the dragon uses hover to cut off line of sight by casters and archers on that combat, blasting from above. Even on its own, hovering within melee range and preventing some types of PC spells with the cloud might be effective.
Use burrow to approach for the surprise value? People forget blue dragons have that ability. Flavorful, but much less advantageous than invisibility... unless the party has invisibility purge or see invisibility up. Might be interesting for Rivozair to summon its barbed devil to use its fire attacks and pyrotechnics to give the impression of Rivozair being in an area, only for the dragon to actually be hidden underground using blindsense to surface and strike from the ground?
Jack that AC: Mage armor, Mirror Image, and Dispel Chaos makes life miserable for melee PCs.
If authority points are at 0, Barzillai Thrune might have Grivenner and his priests cast some long-duration buff spells on the dragon before send her out to fight. Sample spells: freedom of movement, magic circle against good, magic vestments, resist energy, bull's strength, bear's endurance, owl's wisdom, etc.
Drop the roof of a workman's hut on the party, rather than a cow. (Urban flavor!) Light load carrying capacity is 466 pounds or less, and maybe use telekinesis rules to adjudicate. Alternatively, scoop up a Kintargan's dead body and use it for a flavorful but disgusting attack.

roguerouge |
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And all that went to hell when a strafing run by the dragon turned into getting blinded on a failed save on glitterdust, a full attack from the monk with that broken flying kick pounce-ability, a few hits from the inquisitor, and a long range magic missile took it down.
On the plus side, the whole team of heroes had to chip in (two cohorts, Shensen, and a mook), they had to use three action points, and they had fun.
Plus the magic missile that brought the dragon down meant that it landed on the monk for 60 damage when he rolled a 1 on his Reflex save.

DM Livgin |
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I had grand plans of the dragon throwing the gauntlet down in a dramatic manner: It made some fly-by breath attacks on isolated ravens outside the lucky bones, then perched on the roof of the temple in full view of the city. My plan was to give the group a good chance to buff to the nines and have a dramatic fight with larger stakes than just killing the dragon. So when the group approached the temple fully buffed the dragon took to the skies and flew full speed towards the opera house (the focal location of the song of silver), it had planned to spend a few rounds lighting the building on fire before the ravens arrived, I would get to use those maps again, and the players would have a chance to show off some of their more mobility orientated abilities (teleport, fly).
Unfortunately the clues I left about where exactly that dragon was flying were not successful, the group believed the dragons was fleeing. In their eyes the dragon was fleeing and they just spent an hour planning buffs. They were not allowing this to go to waste. They kicked open the temple doors and charged in, Starting a 3 session long epic encounter involving all of the temple and the dragon.
The dragon specifically arrived late to the fight because it took many rounds to realize the ravens would not be pursuing it and return to defend the temple. Because the group was still fighting the high priest and the vampire when the dragon arrived it served as a good flanking pressure on the group terrifying the casters. I also didn't want to TPK quickly so the dragon made some subpar tactical choices: throwing out breath weapons every time it was available and destroying summoned monsters that were doing a number on mooks. I'm quite sure the dragon would have caused a TPK as it came in to wipe up a wounded, depleted group, but the skald/hellknight multiclass got a very lucky curse on to the dragon, then it rolled to not act for 3 of the next 4 rounds...