| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I've a party of 5 lvl 4 characters. Barbarian, Warpriest, Fighter, Wizard and Investigator. They're about to go up against a level 7 young adult black dragon (spell caster variant).
It's listed by experience as between moderate and severe for a party of their size but I'm concerned that it might just TPK them given it's to hit bonus, AC and various offensive abilities.
Have I given them too much to handle?
Assuming they play intelligently? Shouldn't be a problem.
Yeah, that's going to be rough. CR+3 is bad enough, but the specific level difference crosses one of the ability boost levels (level 5). So the stats for the monster are going to be 4 points higher than a level 4 enemy instead of only 3.
The thing can make up to 5 attacks per round (Strike, Draconic Frenzy, Tail Lash) - two of them being at full attack bonus. I haven't seen the actual numbers for your player's AC, but typical for those classes is at best 21, with the Barbarian and Wizard lower. So it hits on a 2 and crits on a 12 for those two full bonus attacks. Using claw attacks for its 3rd and 4th attacks in the round it will still hit on a 10.
The Fighter will have a +12 to hit. Everyone else will have +10 at best. So the Fighter will need a 13 to hit and the rest will need a 15. Crits on nat-20 only for the entire party. 2nd and 3rd attacks can pretty much be forgotten about. 2nd attack is crit fishing, and 3rd attack is hit fishing (nat-20 will still miss the AC, but get boosted to a hit).
Incapacitation spells can be stripped from the book entirely. Other than that, choose spells based on their successful save effects. The Wizard's spells will have a save DC of about 20. So the Reflex save spells are the best bet and the dragon will need to roll an 8 in order to success save, and will crit success on an 18.
Yeah, if the party pulls out something creative and is a master of tactics - they may be able to pull this off. There are things that they can do to swing the math in their favor a bit. But not a lot - the system clamps that. Also, the dragon has things like Blur and Invisibility that can extend the fight longer. And the longer it lasts the more its advantage becomes noticeable. Repeated rolls trend toward the average. And the average is stacked against the players.
Otherwise I would highly recommend lowering the level of the dragon by a couple (weak template maybe) and adding some minions of some variety.
|
I agree with breithauptclan, it's one of those hinge moments in a party's career where a level difference like that is really painful.
But there are several ways to fix the numbers while still making it feel like a boss encounter:
- Make the dragon Weak but playing it quite smart and making sure it can make good use of the environment. Black dragons like swamps; if part (but for the love of god not the whole) combat area is swampy difficult terrain that characters might even have to swim through, that's going to make a big difference. Careful though, this can be extremely powerful on its own. If the melee characters can't get to the beast and it can easily outmaneuver them and strafe them with its breath weapon, you may have actually made the encounter worse. To give the party a better chance, you could set up an earlier encounter in a similar terrain with some hit and run archers, then give them a few days to lick their wounds and consider if they have spells/scrolls or something to adapt to that kind of terrain a bit.
- Make it Weak but adding some minions until you get to a total Severe XP budget.
- Make it Weak, except for the reduction in HP: increase its original HP by about 50% instead. The lower numbers from Weak mean the party will do better landing hits and making saves, but the high HP still makes it a chunky fight like a boss should be.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It's a tough encounter but...
The dragon doesn't have much incentive in staying in the air. It doesn't have a Cone Breath Weapon, nor nice AoE spells. So it'll certainly land to fight.
It's a pretty dangerous melee enemy, on the other hand. But nothing out of bounds at their level. In my opinion, it'll be a tough fight but far from an impossible one.
My 6 lvl 5 players (Fighter,
Flurry Ranger, Thief Rogue, Battle Oracle, Storm Druid, Paladin Champion) party once faced an Elite Greater Barghest with Breath mutation. It was a challenge fight due how hard was to hit it and due it's high hit rate yet the barghest didn't have a chance against their numbers:
- The barghest was first in initiative and of course I made it to breath against the players. One of them (the Oracle) almost fall but rapidly use lvl 3 heal, the fighter and champion surround the creature, the fighter power attacked doing a good amount of damage in the bargesh, the thief also hits doing precision damage, the druid used tempest surge also giving some damage. Only the ranger and champion that done less damage but yet their weapons was magical and ignored the opponent physical resistance.
- In second turn I made the bargesh to use invisibility to take a better position but this activate an AoO of the fighter and due a bad stealth check all players except the paladin noticed where is the bargesh new position yet the failed to hit it.
- In 3º turn the bargesh casted confusion against fighter but fighter resisted only being stunned 1 and then it attacked the fighter hiting a bite but half of the damage was reduced by paladin reaction that also thrown his lance against the bargesh doing some damage, all other players tried to hit the fiend but only the druid hits and made some more damage.
- In 4º turn the bargesh tried to flee and changet it form to a globin to pass trought a tight passage but after this the druid casted a lightning bolt and killed the creature.
So even a stronger opponent being a hard challenge, the numeric advantage and some tactics overcome it without a great difficult. So don't worry too much about it. Specially if your players are a well balanced party and now how to use their tactical and their own abilities in their favor.
In this way I can stage the combat in two stages. Aerial dragon that they have some cover against vs ground dragon that is injured.
I think i'll also take the recommendation to reduce the AC and its attack bonus and increase its HP.
Thoughts? Again, thank you for the excellent advice.
That sounds like a reasonable and engaging boss battle.
You might also drop its attack bonus and saves by a point or two though. Then it will be more in line with a CR+1 or CR+2 enemy. And at that point this is effectively a battle against a CR+1 dragon and a CR+2 dragon. Which is also a 140 XP Severe encounter worthy of a boss battle.