Honestly, I don't know. It's never lived past the first casting for me. I usually wait to go after the dragon until I'm fairly high level with tricked out composite longbows. 3-4 attacks per round per character with Holy Flaming weapons eats a lot of hit points quick.
Thanks. Well I don't think the new one's going to be doing so much of that. Would anyone be terribly offended to think that it would focus primarily on its rather awesome melee attacks (bite, claw, wing, tail) after doing one fear and launching a single breath attack? The problem with this type of scenario is that you're facing one opponent, so no matter what cool spell-like abilities it may have, it's only going to do one per round, and whatever it is, that's the only thing that's going to be coming at you that round. It will also function as a 5th level caster, so it wouldn't have access to any of the truly deadly stuff anyway. Seems better to me that it would use all the melee power at its disposal and leave Ray of Enfeeblement spells for the little fish. Basically the dragon will become 'old ' instead of 'adult,' which is a substantial improvement. The little guys will become 'juvenile' instead of 'young.' They'll probably still be fairly easy but they basically seem to be there as canon fodder anyway.
Not offended at all, Gaear! I remember the first time I encountered the dragon, and I look forward to that initial shock again.
sounds more like the 2nd D in... I had been wondering what age category the dragons are---thinking it must be adultish....'why not make it old to very old,' and low and behold! ^^ Looking forward to fighting the upgraded version Gaear. You don't want to stick the little 'uns with the mother(?)? Or, somehow restrict access to the cave...like, the passage between the drow and spider cave collapses, players can leave from the final area, but would not be able to return. If this could be coupled with making the encounter rooms "zoned" for passing time only rather than resting, the single dragon could prove more of a challenge.
It's a shame it can't "Wing Buffet" or whatever it's called. On second thought, an Ice Dragon doesn't have that attack does it? And maybe this is why the dragon isn't as white and glistening as it's young ones, (I quote) ... The scales of a wyrmling white dragon glisten like mirrors. As the dragon ages, the sheen disappears, and by very old age, scales of pale blue and light gray are mixed in with the white.
Dragons do get two wing attacks, along with two claw attacks, one bite attack, and one tail attack, each round. Unfortunately the animations don't exist for wing, tail, and bite, so all it ever looks like it's doing is clawing. It won't get more, just better. That's all per RAW.
You mean attack different party members? I don't think so, although maybe we could give it great cleave. (It already has cleave.)
Great Cleave! Does it use its power attack? (....seems that some of us are trying to make sure this dragon gives us a TPK.)