Im a newish DM and struggle a little with balancing combat. The end boss for this leg of my campaign is going to be a dragon, probably black or green. My party has 8 lvl 7 players and so a young dragon seems too weak, but feel like an adult might be overkill. Any help as to which dragon might be best or even if I should look for a homebrew dragon in between adult and young. Im also considering giving the dragon some magic but am not sure how much that would affect the challenge.
The encounter builder says that 8 (!) level 7s should be able to take care of an adult green or black dragon without much of a sweat. That dragon could maybe do a ton of damage to the players, however, they only need to do like 200 damage to kill a dragon. The AC of 19 isn't so high for a tier 2 party. With a few mages in the party, it might not long outlast the nuking.
According to the encounter designer, an ancient black dragon is just into the deadly range. A single CR 20 monster is still "hard" for a party of that size.
With 8 players it is not a surprise at all you have trouble balancing combat, new dm or not. I have 6 players and i have found that single target fights are just too easy for them. So I’d go with an adult dragon and have some dragon wyrmlings join the fight as well perhaps as a lair action or something like that. Or just some other kind of minion fodder, maybe that comes in waves. From the player side we actually just fought an adult blue dragon with 6 lvl 7s and I found the battle to be very easy. The dragons breath weapon and whether it recharges or not will probably be the deciding factor between a tough and easy battle. It’s a fine line to ride, good luck.
If you have 8 players I think it's fine to just crank up the HP a bit from one of the base stats, or use a blend of the different dragon levels to scale to your group. Lair actions and legendary actions will be a big help so there is a cadence of players and dragon exchanging damage and not just a dogpile of this poor dragon!
Im a newish DM and struggle a little with balancing combat. The end boss for this leg of my campaign is going to be a dragon, probably black or green. My party has 8 lvl 7 players and so a young dragon seems too weak, but feel like an adult might be overkill. Any help as to which dragon might be best or even if I should look for a homebrew dragon in between adult and young. Im also considering giving the dragon some magic but am not sure how much that would affect the challenge.
Thanks in advance for any help
The encounter builder says that 8 (!) level 7s should be able to take care of an adult green or black dragon without much of a sweat. That dragon could maybe do a ton of damage to the players, however, they only need to do like 200 damage to kill a dragon. The AC of 19 isn't so high for a tier 2 party. With a few mages in the party, it might not long outlast the nuking.
According to the encounter designer, an ancient black dragon is just into the deadly range. A single CR 20 monster is still "hard" for a party of that size.
Wow ok, I'll have a look at adult and ancient and maybe just spend an hour test fighting the party against both.
With 8 players it is not a surprise at all you have trouble balancing combat, new dm or not. I have 6 players and i have found that single target fights are just too easy for them. So I’d go with an adult dragon and have some dragon wyrmlings join the fight as well perhaps as a lair action or something like that. Or just some other kind of minion fodder, maybe that comes in waves. From the player side we actually just fought an adult blue dragon with 6 lvl 7s and I found the battle to be very easy. The dragons breath weapon and whether it recharges or not will probably be the deciding factor between a tough and easy battle. It’s a fine line to ride, good luck.
If you have 8 players I think it's fine to just crank up the HP a bit from one of the base stats, or use a blend of the different dragon levels to scale to your group. Lair actions and legendary actions will be a big help so there is a cadence of players and dragon exchanging damage and not just a dogpile of this poor dragon!
You're fine with the dragon. It's one enemy versus the players. They can focus it down.
But don't forget that the dice run the battle. Rolling bad a party of goblins can kill them if those goblins roll good. It's all about the dice.