I think White Dragons are lower CR than Blue Dragons because Cold damage is much more commonly resisted. I can think of quite a few features that provide resistance to it, but I can only think of a couple that resist Lightning damage.
It's a good difference, but take a look at the shambling mound and gladiator stat blocks. They are the same CR.
Gladiators have 14 Cr, or 16 with a shield when the mound always has 15, But gladiators have a parry adding 3 once per round.
Gladiators have 112 Hp while the mounds have 136.
Gladiators may have a higher damage output with three attacks per turn, but shambling mounds can theoretically restrain someone with their grab.
Given all this I can sort of see why they'd be the same. They're pretty much even. But if lightning resistances are so powerful, then not only does the mound have resistances to cold and fire, it literally Heals from lightning! So if they are the same CR then I don't think that the White and Blue CR difference can be because of the lightning immunity.
That's not quite what I was saying. I was referring to the damage type of the breath weapons. Lightning is not very commonly resisted, while Cold damage is resisted very often.
However, the Red Dragon also is higher CR and has the most common resistance (I assume) in history of DND... it does deal more damage, though, perhaps to offset the aforementioned resistances.
But of course, players play to the best of their tactical ability even if they have intelligence 8.
That depend on the table and the player. I know plenty of players who will play their characters based on their intelligence and for example attack a devil with fire because their character does not know they are immune.
I think White Dragons are lower CR than Blue Dragons because Cold damage is much more commonly resisted. I can think of quite a few features that provide resistance to it, but I can only think of a couple that resist Lightning damage.
It's a good difference, but take a look at the shambling mound and gladiator stat blocks. They are the same CR.
Gladiators have 14 Cr, or 16 with a shield when the mound always has 15, But gladiators have a parry adding 3 once per round.
Gladiators have 112 Hp while the mounds have 136.
Gladiators may have a higher damage output with three attacks per turn, but shambling mounds can theoretically restrain someone with their grab.
Given all this I can sort of see why they'd be the same. They're pretty much even. But if lightning resistances are so powerful, then not only does the mound have resistances to cold and fire, it literally Heals from lightning! So if they are the same CR then I don't think that the White and Blue CR difference can be because of the lightning immunity.
That's not quite what I was saying. I was referring to the damage type of the breath weapons. Lightning is not very commonly resisted, while Cold damage is resisted very often.
However, the Red Dragon also is higher CR and has the most common resistance (I assume) in history of DND... it does deal more damage, though, perhaps to offset the aforementioned resistances.
Sorry for that misinterpretation there. Is cold really commonly resisted than lightning?
You have a great point for that second option and that's really something I don't consider a lot, which is that you should play as tactically as you think the enemy would play based off its intelligence. But of course, players play to the best of their tactical ability even if they have intelligence 8. But yeah its an interesting difference that I never considered. But I do have a couple of questions from your dragon encounter.
First of all: is grabbing them and flying them 80 feet in the air something they can do. I mean I don't really see why not, but it's not really an attack. Theoretically, dragons should be able to grapple any low strength players and do that to them regardless.
Second: how come the fight was just 'over' as you put it. why were the players so far away that healing wasn't an option?
Third: also, to me it feels like you may have just gotten very unlucky. I don't know what level your party was or how many were in it, so I don't really know what your chances were. But, I mean if the paralyzing breath is really as strong as you say, what level should players be when fighting a Silver dragon. I mean, how much better do their chances get when leveling up. Sure you might get a +1 increase, some classes might even get advantage on this sort of stuff, but if the fight can go out the way you describe it, I feel like players could end up with this sort of stuff happening no matter what level they are. (Of course level 17-20+ is just overpowered so lets not count that)
There is no reason why a dragon can not grapple. About the only rules convenience I gave them is allowing them to get 2 grapples off on paralyzed enemies instead of a bite/claw in the round they were grabbed. But it seemed reasonable given they were paralyzed.
80 feet of Flight allows the dragon to drop people in places it will take too many rounds for their party members to get to in order to heal them. Especially given their lairs are among the clouds, in mountains with ridiculously high peaks. You are only flying a few round sup and out, but the drop is hundreds of feat down as its a off a mountain cliff, but damage caps off at 200 feet and 20d6 so everything after that is moot. And that is assuming the DM is not as nice as I was and it didn't just finish them off while unconscious and bury them in rubble a human sized character couldn't hope to move so they can't even resurrect them. But in this case its the cleric and wizard that are dying and the rogue and fighter would need to find a way to them multiple rounds away to use a healing potion. If the wizard had not been killed then things like dimension door to get there in time is an option. But when you just have to hoof it and lots of the movement involves climbing which is not really towards them but over the obstacle so you can start to move towards them its just not an option anymore when a dragon is coming back to kill you.
And no leveling does not help much against the breath weapon as the save system in 5e is such that unless its one of your 2 primary saves it does not increase at all as you level but the DCs you face does. So higher level characters fail saves more often than low level ones. It is possible a character might take resilient con, usually a caster as an option instead of warcaster, but most seem to take warcaster. And yes sure it might go up by one if they use a stat boost on con. That is not incredibly uncommon but plenty of character have things they value in other areas and think the 14 con is enough. And statistically they were not that unlucky except the rogue who rolled like 10 times and never got a 18 I don't remember how many rounds the fight lasted, 3 people rolling and needing to roll a 18 or higher lots of times will fail, heck probably the majority of times will result in all of them failing. The cleric and wizard only failed twice, but they were unconscious before they had a chance to roll a 3rd time so its kind of moot. And 4 rolls not hitting 18 or a d20 is probably like 50/50 chance one of them gets 1 success. So not really that unlucky. The 2024 version can spam it now from how I read it but at least its only incapacitated in the first save, paralyzed on the 2nd. 2014 it starts of paralyzed so every attack by the dragon is a crit. The only real bout of unlucky was they were caught in a position where the dragons breath hit all of them. But 60 foot cones are pretty huge so its not always easy to avoid that. And don't get me wrong I am sure a more optimized party would have solutions for this, so the odds of them all failing their saves would be far less. But I don't think the CR system assumes optimization to that degree with specific feats or taking a one level fighter dip as your starting class etc.
Funnily enough the only reason they were fighting the silver dragon is we were playing an evil campaign. If they had been neutral or good, the drop would not have killed them as being close to the dragons lair would have given them something like a feather fall effect. Which for that dragon was its test to see if he should kill you or just neutralize you.
Ok, So I'm learning A lot of things here. I understand why a dragon could totally grapple and fly into the air, but in general, unless the fight is taking place where you'll have plenty of ranged attacks, I like to keep my dragons more grounded. It can be very annoying if you are a melee fighter and all the sudden you're limited to just you're ranged attacks. I also learnt that this is taking place in its lair in a mountain, but as it is in the description, they are more likely to reside deep in a cavern, where they wouldn't be able to just pick up characters and drop them 200 feet in the air, or run away. If a dragon is actually bothering to fight the characters it is probably because it is in a corner. So I feel like the circumstances of you're fight are very different than how I imagined an average fight going.
Also, you still didn't tell me the details of the party you had, like the levels and classes. And still, if the paralyzing breath is so powerful what level should you be?
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Adult Black (CR 14): 195 hp, AC 19, bite +11/21, claw +11/13, tail +11/15, breath DC 18/54
Adult Green (CR 15): 207 hp, AC 19, bite +11/21, claw +11/13, tail +11/15, breath DC 18/56
Adult White (CR 13): 200 hp, AC 18, bite +11/21, claw +11/13, tail +11/15, breath DC 18/54
The lower AC does make the adult white dragon slightly less durable (it's probably worth 10-15 hit points), but even so... they all have the same offensive CR (2 points of breath damage is a rounding error, and poison is a legitimately terrible damage type), and the hit point difference is about 1 defensive CR.
2024 did slightly better (the adult green has a pretty substantial damage increase over the white, though black vs white is still pretty much noise level).
Adult Black (CR 14): 195 hp, AC 19, rend +11/17, breath DC 18/54. Acid arrow and cloud of insects add about 6 dpr.
Adult Green (CR 15): 207 hp, AC 19, rend +11/22, breath DC 18/56. Spells and legendary actions don't increase nominal DPR.
Adult White (CR 13): 200 hp, AC 18, rend +11/17, breath DC 18/54. Spells and legendary actions don't increase nominal DPR.
While I still haven't tested out the white and silver and blue adult dragon comparison. I've been looking at some of the CR's for plenty of things and I think CR can't be a set thing. To explain: An Adult Silver Dragon can't have a pinpointed average dmg per round. Because all of that depends on what the situation is and what breath attacks they will use. I believe I explained this in an earlier post, the cold breath does do more damage in a round than the Paralyzing breath does, but you won't necessarily get everyone with one breath attack. Same with the paralyzing breath. there is no 'average' positioning. Should the fall damage from throwing two characters off a cliff count as average damage per round? When calculating average damage should you take the average amount of all the attacks it might do? Going from the monster creation rules in the Dungeon Masters Guide 2014, when it comes to complex move sets, there is no real way to pinpoint the CR, and it seems like they sort of just guess? And it's definitely not just dragons either.
They also made some strange choices for the Monster features table. Take the example I posted earlier comparing gladiator and shambling mound. When looking at the 'Monster Feature' table, the lightning absorption has no effect of CR at all! A very strange choice, especially because something like the shambling mound doesn't have an obvious resistance like a devil to fire. Even 8th level characters that in all rights should destroy it, might end up spamming lightning bolt or something and just keep fighting it, making it a significantly higher challenge than the gladiator.
Now lets add in Revenants, another CR 5 enemy. These enemies could be equipped with weapons and armor like they do in the Curse of Strahd campaign to go from a 2d6+4+4d6 at the cost of its grab to a 2d10+4+4d6 damage per hit. This pretty much already makes it more powerful than a gladiator, maybe not as much as the mound though. But now lets take into account the regeneration feat. although it says in the table that this should increase its effective HP by 30, it seems to have no effect on its CR, considering how its the same as the gladiator, when I believe a single revenant easily solos the gladiator, and an armed and armored revenant solos the mounds.
So yeah, I really don't know. I think the only real way to find out a things CR would be to conduct multiple tests on the creature before making it and then scaling based off its objective difficulty. The thing that makes this difficult is that difficulty isn't objective, its subjective, based off of skill and circumstances. If anyone has anything to add to that go ahead, and of course. I will be running tests on the silver, white, and blue dragons soon. I'm excited to see those results. And once again thanks to anyone who's responded on the thread, your input is very much appreciated.
I think White Dragons are lower CR than Blue Dragons because Cold damage is much more commonly resisted. I can think of quite a few features that provide resistance to it, but I can only think of a couple that resist Lightning damage.
It's a good difference, but take a look at the shambling mound and gladiator stat blocks. They are the same CR.
Gladiators have 14 Cr, or 16 with a shield when the mound always has 15, But gladiators have a parry adding 3 once per round.
Gladiators have 112 Hp while the mounds have 136.
Gladiators may have a higher damage output with three attacks per turn, but shambling mounds can theoretically restrain someone with their grab.
Given all this I can sort of see why they'd be the same. They're pretty much even. But if lightning resistances are so powerful, then not only does the mound have resistances to cold and fire, it literally Heals from lightning! So if they are the same CR then I don't think that the White and Blue CR difference can be because of the lightning immunity.
That's not quite what I was saying. I was referring to the damage type of the breath weapons. Lightning is not very commonly resisted, while Cold damage is resisted very often.
However, the Red Dragon also is higher CR and has the most common resistance (I assume) in history of DND... it does deal more damage, though, perhaps to offset the aforementioned resistances.
Sorry for that misinterpretation there. Is cold really commonly resisted than lightning?
All good!
Off the top of my head, cold resistances: Warlock, Fathomless 6th level, Fiend 10th Level, Genie (Marid) 6th level. Tiefling, Infernal Constitution. Goliath. Triton. Storm Herald Barbarian 6th level. White Dragonborn. So 8, plus all the magic items (like Ring of Warmth and Armor of resistance, but I won't count those because... magic items.)
Lightning resistances: Blue Dragonborn. Sorcerer Storm Sorcery. And... I can't think of anything else, save for magic items. Most class features resist Thunder, not Lightning.
It's also worth noting that Cold damage is the most resisted type in the 2014 MM (46 resistances). It only has 20 Immune creatures, however. Lightning, on the other hand, has 35 resistances and 10 immunities.
It's also worth noting that Cold damage is the most resisted type in the 2014 MM (46 resistances). It only has 20 Immune creatures, however. Lightning, on the other hand, has 35 resistances and 10 immunities.
Poison has only 5 resistances but 136 immunities, so it's pretty clearly the winner on "bad damage type". Also, protection from poison is a vastly better spell than protection from energy -- it's lower level, doesn't require concentration, and also protects from a condition -- and is the most commonly resisted damage type on a species (in the PHB, green dragonborn, dwarf, abyssal tiefling).
While I still haven't tested out the white and silver and blue adult dragon comparison. I've been looking at some of the CR's for plenty of things and I think CR can't be a set thing. To explain: An Adult Silver Dragon can't have a pinpointed average dmg per round. Because all of that depends on what the situation is and what breath attacks they will use. I believe I explained this in an earlier post, the cold breath does do more damage in a round than the Paralyzing breath does, but you won't necessarily get everyone with one breath attack. Same with the paralyzing breath. there is no 'average' positioning. Should the fall damage from throwing two characters off a cliff count as average damage per round? When calculating average damage should you take the average amount of all the attacks it might do? Going from the monster creation rules in the Dungeon Masters Guide 2014, when it comes to complex move sets, there is no real way to pinpoint the CR, and it seems like they sort of just guess? And it's definitely not just dragons either.
They also made some strange choices for the Monster features table. Take the example I posted earlier comparing gladiator and shambling mound. When looking at the 'Monster Feature' table, the lightning absorption has no effect of CR at all! A very strange choice, especially because something like the shambling mound doesn't have an obvious resistance like a devil to fire. Even 8th level characters that in all rights should destroy it, might end up spamming lightning bolt or something and just keep fighting it, making it a significantly higher challenge than the gladiator.
Now lets add in Revenants, another CR 5 enemy. These enemies could be equipped with weapons and armor like they do in the Curse of Strahd campaign to go from a 2d6+4+4d6 at the cost of its grab to a 2d10+4+4d6 damage per hit. This pretty much already makes it more powerful than a gladiator, maybe not as much as the mound though. But now lets take into account the regeneration feat. although it says in the table that this should increase its effective HP by 30, it seems to have no effect on its CR, considering how its the same as the gladiator, when I believe a single revenant easily solos the gladiator, and an armed and armored revenant solos the mounds.
So yeah, I really don't know. I think the only real way to find out a things CR would be to conduct multiple tests on the creature before making it and then scaling based off its objective difficulty. The thing that makes this difficult is that difficulty isn't objective, its subjective, based off of skill and circumstances. If anyone has anything to add to that go ahead, and of course. I will be running tests on the silver, white, and blue dragons soon. I'm excited to see those results. And once again thanks to anyone who's responded on the thread, your input is very much appreciated.
level 14 fighter, wizard. cleric, rogue. Their lair can be deep in a cavern but their ideal is lost human structures, in this case an old tower. The thing is save or suck effects frequently take all the skill out of the equation. You fail the save you are out of the fight. And again the DC is 20 and most people just have their con modifier. They are far far more likely to fail. Lets say only one failed. The dragon can just pick off that one and unless the party has a way to keep up with a 80 foot flight speed its probably over for that one. And then it can rinse and repeat. That being said it is possible with the right spells and right tactics they can get by, wind wall for example blocks gasses, now the dragon can just stick its head in take 4d8 and then breathe on everyone. But I am sure there is a spell I am not thinking of off hand that would stop it. So if they know it, have it prepped and get it off in time they are protected from that. It usually comes with some other disadvantage like having to stay within 10 feet of the paladin if you just wanted a save boost for example, with a lot of dragon fights if you have a paladin(they didn't) that is something people juggle, stick next to the paladin and be area of effect bait, or spread out and lose the bonus to your saves. There aren't that many pure upside defenses for things like this.
It can change shape so spotting it isn't easy, its just one sparrow in a flock of sparrows. So it getting the drop on the party isn't exactly a stretch. its smart so a well armed party approaching its lair in a stealthy way is going to make it suspicious. I don't have combat logs I am going from memory and it was probably 9 years ago, so I don't have more details.
And remember these CRs were created when all we had was just the core classes/sub classes. So a lot of spells did not exist yet, feats and magic items were optional features which the Cr did not assume etc. So a if people prepped in this way etc might not work as it just did not exist back then.
While I still haven't tested out the white and silver and blue adult dragon comparison. I've been looking at some of the CR's for plenty of things and I think CR can't be a set thing. To explain: An Adult Silver Dragon can't have a pinpointed average dmg per round. Because all of that depends on what the situation is and what breath attacks they will use. I believe I explained this in an earlier post, the cold breath does do more damage in a round than the Paralyzing breath does, but you won't necessarily get everyone with one breath attack. Same with the paralyzing breath. there is no 'average' positioning. Should the fall damage from throwing two characters off a cliff count as average damage per round? When calculating average damage should you take the average amount of all the attacks it might do? Going from the monster creation rules in the Dungeon Masters Guide 2014, when it comes to complex move sets, there is no real way to pinpoint the CR, and it seems like they sort of just guess? And it's definitely not just dragons either.
They also made some strange choices for the Monster features table. Take the example I posted earlier comparing gladiator and shambling mound. When looking at the 'Monster Feature' table, the lightning absorption has no effect of CR at all! A very strange choice, especially because something like the shambling mound doesn't have an obvious resistance like a devil to fire. Even 8th level characters that in all rights should destroy it, might end up spamming lightning bolt or something and just keep fighting it, making it a significantly higher challenge than the gladiator.
Now lets add in Revenants, another CR 5 enemy. These enemies could be equipped with weapons and armor like they do in the Curse of Strahd campaign to go from a 2d6+4+4d6 at the cost of its grab to a 2d10+4+4d6 damage per hit. This pretty much already makes it more powerful than a gladiator, maybe not as much as the mound though. But now lets take into account the regeneration feat. although it says in the table that this should increase its effective HP by 30, it seems to have no effect on its CR, considering how its the same as the gladiator, when I believe a single revenant easily solos the gladiator, and an armed and armored revenant solos the mounds.
So yeah, I really don't know. I think the only real way to find out a things CR would be to conduct multiple tests on the creature before making it and then scaling based off its objective difficulty. The thing that makes this difficult is that difficulty isn't objective, its subjective, based off of skill and circumstances. If anyone has anything to add to that go ahead, and of course. I will be running tests on the silver, white, and blue dragons soon. I'm excited to see those results. And once again thanks to anyone who's responded on the thread, your input is very much appreciated.
level 14 fighter, wizard. cleric, rogue. Their lair can be deep in a cavern but their ideal is lost human structures, in this case an old tower. The thing is save or suck effects frequently take all the skill out of the equation. You fail the save you are out of the fight. And again the DC is 20 and most people just have their con modifier. They are far far more likely to fail. Lets say only one failed. The dragon can just pick off that one and unless the party has a way to keep up with a 80 foot flight speed its probably over for that one. And then it can rinse and repeat. That being said it is possible with the right spells and right tactics they can get by, wind wall for example blocks gasses, now the dragon can just stick its head in take 4d8 and then breathe on everyone. But I am sure there is a spell I am not thinking of off hand that would stop it. So if they know it, have it prepped and get it off in time they are protected from that. It usually comes with some other disadvantage like having to stay within 10 feet of the paladin if you just wanted a save boost for example, with a lot of dragon fights if you have a paladin(they didn't) that is something people juggle, stick next to the paladin and be area of effect bait, or spread out and lose the bonus to your saves. There aren't that many pure upside defenses for things like this.
It can change shape so spotting it isn't easy, its just one sparrow in a flock of sparrows. So it getting the drop on the party isn't exactly a stretch. its smart so a well armed party approaching its lair in a stealthy way is going to make it suspicious. I don't have combat logs I am going from memory and it was probably 9 years ago, so I don't have more details.
And remember these CRs were created when all we had was just the core classes/sub classes. So a lot of spells did not exist yet, feats and magic items were optional features which the Cr did not assume etc. So a if people prepped in this way etc might not work as it just did not exist back then.
Level 14, eh?
I see why you'd say the paralyzing breath is so powerful, because of this, but I think this is just a thing with dragons. If you decide the dragon is really smart, is dead set on killing the players, and has access to grappling and yeeting them 80 feet, yeah its deserving of the high CR. But I think this is just a thing with most flying huge creatures. I always say the Tarrasque wasn't as strong because it can be cheesed with a flying speed. Any dragon can decide to grapple a character, and fly into the air; and any smart dragon can just fly out of range and just come back and breath attack them once recharged.
Also, I think that if the paralyzing breath is as strong as you say, which it totally could end up being, why is it not stronger then, red and gold dragons. I mean they have weakening breath for golds and just high damage fire for reds. But an ancient silver dragon has a DC 24 paralyzing breath! I don't know if maybe the guys at HQ didn't really think that through, but it would seem if that is the case, the silver dragons should be significantly higher CR. What do you think?
Also, side not here: I think that if you're attacking a dragon, you have to be tactically prepared. I don't think the players should ALL be getting hit with that breath attack. The breath attacks are one of the main strategic challenges when fighting a dragon of any color, and you have to be careful with your positioning and plan ahead. This is just some general dragonhunting basics.
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Just had an Idea: Adult White Dragons can also grapple with a player and then, because we are in the icy lair, the dragon can take them under the ice and, because of the swim speed, drop them 40 feet deep and have them drown. Then the ice freezes over, in the environment, much more effective then yeeting people off cliffs.
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Just had an Idea: Adult White Dragons can also grapple with a player and then, because we are in the icy lair, the dragon can take them under the ice and, because of the swim speed, drop them 40 feet deep and have them drown. Then the ice freezes over, in the environment, much more effective then yeeting people off cliffs.
Sadly no. I ran it that way the first time I used them. But apparently you need the tunneling feature on your burrow to bring people with you.
No. A burrowing creature can drag another creature with them only if they have the ability to leave a tunnel. For example, a Purple Worm has the Tunneler trait, so it can drag a Grappled creature into a tunnel it creates when burrowing. Conversely, an Earth Elemental can’t drag a creature into the ground with it.
Actually, I was talking about Swim speed. White dragons lair could have a freezing lake and I don't think you need any feat to do that. Same with flying speed.
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That's not quite what I was saying. I was referring to the damage type of the breath weapons. Lightning is not very commonly resisted, while Cold damage is resisted very often.
However, the Red Dragon also is higher CR and has the most common resistance (I assume) in history of DND... it does deal more damage, though, perhaps to offset the aforementioned resistances.
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That depend on the table and the player. I know plenty of players who will play their characters based on their intelligence and for example attack a devil with fire because their character does not know they are immune.
Sorry for that misinterpretation there. Is cold really commonly resisted than lightning?
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Ok, So I'm learning A lot of things here. I understand why a dragon could totally grapple and fly into the air, but in general, unless the fight is taking place where you'll have plenty of ranged attacks, I like to keep my dragons more grounded. It can be very annoying if you are a melee fighter and all the sudden you're limited to just you're ranged attacks. I also learnt that this is taking place in its lair in a mountain, but as it is in the description, they are more likely to reside deep in a cavern, where they wouldn't be able to just pick up characters and drop them 200 feet in the air, or run away. If a dragon is actually bothering to fight the characters it is probably because it is in a corner. So I feel like the circumstances of you're fight are very different than how I imagined an average fight going.
Also, you still didn't tell me the details of the party you had, like the levels and classes. And still, if the paralyzing breath is so powerful what level should you be?
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Dragon CRs are kind of a mess in 2014.
The lower AC does make the adult white dragon slightly less durable (it's probably worth 10-15 hit points), but even so... they all have the same offensive CR (2 points of breath damage is a rounding error, and poison is a legitimately terrible damage type), and the hit point difference is about 1 defensive CR.
2024 did slightly better (the adult green has a pretty substantial damage increase over the white, though black vs white is still pretty much noise level).
While I still haven't tested out the white and silver and blue adult dragon comparison. I've been looking at some of the CR's for plenty of things and I think CR can't be a set thing. To explain: An Adult Silver Dragon can't have a pinpointed average dmg per round. Because all of that depends on what the situation is and what breath attacks they will use. I believe I explained this in an earlier post, the cold breath does do more damage in a round than the Paralyzing breath does, but you won't necessarily get everyone with one breath attack. Same with the paralyzing breath. there is no 'average' positioning. Should the fall damage from throwing two characters off a cliff count as average damage per round? When calculating average damage should you take the average amount of all the attacks it might do? Going from the monster creation rules in the Dungeon Masters Guide 2014, when it comes to complex move sets, there is no real way to pinpoint the CR, and it seems like they sort of just guess? And it's definitely not just dragons either.
They also made some strange choices for the Monster features table. Take the example I posted earlier comparing gladiator and shambling mound. When looking at the 'Monster Feature' table, the lightning absorption has no effect of CR at all! A very strange choice, especially because something like the shambling mound doesn't have an obvious resistance like a devil to fire. Even 8th level characters that in all rights should destroy it, might end up spamming lightning bolt or something and just keep fighting it, making it a significantly higher challenge than the gladiator.
Now lets add in Revenants, another CR 5 enemy. These enemies could be equipped with weapons and armor like they do in the Curse of Strahd campaign to go from a 2d6+4+4d6 at the cost of its grab to a 2d10+4+4d6 damage per hit. This pretty much already makes it more powerful than a gladiator, maybe not as much as the mound though. But now lets take into account the regeneration feat. although it says in the table that this should increase its effective HP by 30, it seems to have no effect on its CR, considering how its the same as the gladiator, when I believe a single revenant easily solos the gladiator, and an armed and armored revenant solos the mounds.
So yeah, I really don't know. I think the only real way to find out a things CR would be to conduct multiple tests on the creature before making it and then scaling based off its objective difficulty. The thing that makes this difficult is that difficulty isn't objective, its subjective, based off of skill and circumstances. If anyone has anything to add to that go ahead, and of course. I will be running tests on the silver, white, and blue dragons soon. I'm excited to see those results. And once again thanks to anyone who's responded on the thread, your input is very much appreciated.
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All good!
Off the top of my head, cold resistances: Warlock, Fathomless 6th level, Fiend 10th Level, Genie (Marid) 6th level. Tiefling, Infernal Constitution. Goliath. Triton. Storm Herald Barbarian 6th level. White Dragonborn. So 8, plus all the magic items (like Ring of Warmth and Armor of resistance, but I won't count those because... magic items.)
Lightning resistances: Blue Dragonborn. Sorcerer Storm Sorcery. And... I can't think of anything else, save for magic items. Most class features resist Thunder, not Lightning.
It's also worth noting that Cold damage is the most resisted type in the 2014 MM (46 resistances). It only has 20 Immune creatures, however. Lightning, on the other hand, has 35 resistances and 10 immunities.
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Poison has only 5 resistances but 136 immunities, so it's pretty clearly the winner on "bad damage type". Also, protection from poison is a vastly better spell than protection from energy -- it's lower level, doesn't require concentration, and also protects from a condition -- and is the most commonly resisted damage type on a species (in the PHB, green dragonborn, dwarf, abyssal tiefling).
level 14 fighter, wizard. cleric, rogue. Their lair can be deep in a cavern but their ideal is lost human structures, in this case an old tower. The thing is save or suck effects frequently take all the skill out of the equation. You fail the save you are out of the fight. And again the DC is 20 and most people just have their con modifier. They are far far more likely to fail. Lets say only one failed. The dragon can just pick off that one and unless the party has a way to keep up with a 80 foot flight speed its probably over for that one. And then it can rinse and repeat. That being said it is possible with the right spells and right tactics they can get by, wind wall for example blocks gasses, now the dragon can just stick its head in take 4d8 and then breathe on everyone. But I am sure there is a spell I am not thinking of off hand that would stop it. So if they know it, have it prepped and get it off in time they are protected from that. It usually comes with some other disadvantage like having to stay within 10 feet of the paladin if you just wanted a save boost for example, with a lot of dragon fights if you have a paladin(they didn't) that is something people juggle, stick next to the paladin and be area of effect bait, or spread out and lose the bonus to your saves. There aren't that many pure upside defenses for things like this.
It can change shape so spotting it isn't easy, its just one sparrow in a flock of sparrows. So it getting the drop on the party isn't exactly a stretch. its smart so a well armed party approaching its lair in a stealthy way is going to make it suspicious. I don't have combat logs I am going from memory and it was probably 9 years ago, so I don't have more details.
And remember these CRs were created when all we had was just the core classes/sub classes. So a lot of spells did not exist yet, feats and magic items were optional features which the Cr did not assume etc. So a if people prepped in this way etc might not work as it just did not exist back then.
Level 14, eh?
I see why you'd say the paralyzing breath is so powerful, because of this, but I think this is just a thing with dragons. If you decide the dragon is really smart, is dead set on killing the players, and has access to grappling and yeeting them 80 feet, yeah its deserving of the high CR. But I think this is just a thing with most flying huge creatures. I always say the Tarrasque wasn't as strong because it can be cheesed with a flying speed. Any dragon can decide to grapple a character, and fly into the air; and any smart dragon can just fly out of range and just come back and breath attack them once recharged.
Also, I think that if the paralyzing breath is as strong as you say, which it totally could end up being, why is it not stronger then, red and gold dragons. I mean they have weakening breath for golds and just high damage fire for reds. But an ancient silver dragon has a DC 24 paralyzing breath! I don't know if maybe the guys at HQ didn't really think that through, but it would seem if that is the case, the silver dragons should be significantly higher CR. What do you think?
Also, side not here: I think that if you're attacking a dragon, you have to be tactically prepared. I don't think the players should ALL be getting hit with that breath attack. The breath attacks are one of the main strategic challenges when fighting a dragon of any color, and you have to be careful with your positioning and plan ahead. This is just some general dragonhunting basics.
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Just had an Idea: Adult White Dragons can also grapple with a player and then, because we are in the icy lair, the dragon can take them under the ice and, because of the swim speed, drop them 40 feet deep and have them drown. Then the ice freezes over, in the environment, much more effective then yeeting people off cliffs.
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Sadly no. I ran it that way the first time I used them. But apparently you need the tunneling feature on your burrow to bring people with you.
Oh well, forget I said it then.
Edit: wait actually, I think that rule only applies to burrowing.
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There are some answers in the SAC related to your question too:
Actually, I was talking about Swim speed. White dragons lair could have a freezing lake and I don't think you need any feat to do that. Same with flying speed.
"Uh, I have Illusory Script. I think I can read that."