Is this monster in Lost Mines of Phandelver too much for a group of level 3 characters?

Question

My group of 8 level 3 players are about to run through the Thundertree Ruins and will probably have a hand at fighting the dragon. My question stems from the fact that a single poison breath attack from the dragon will outright kill all but 1 player assuming they fail their saving throws.

I understand this encounter is supposed to be ridiculously deadly, but I don't want to be punishing my players for testing the lengths at which they can fight stuff. A fight should be challenging and they should be able to try and run away, but instant obliteration seems a bit much.

All PCs are level 3 (HP in parenthesis):

• Wood elf moon druid (27)
• dwarven frenzy barbarian (44)
• fire genasi archer ranger (37) (pseudodragon companion (12))
• wood elf assassin rogue (27)
• human wild magic sorcerer (22)
• dragonborn fighter (29)
• human monk (24)
• human fighter (32)

Answer 1

If I may indulge in a frame challenge.

A group of wandering murderers who, without provocation, attack an intelligent sentient being deserve what they get. This is especially so since, earlier in the module:

There is an evil Red Wizard of Thay who the party is expected to deal with in a non-violent fashion.

There are any number of ways that the party could interact with the dragon to their mutual benefit, albeit not without risk. From the Monster Manual p.95 (my emphasis):

The most cunning and treacherous of true dragons, green dragons use misdirection and trickery to get the upper hand against their enemies. Nasty tempered and thoroughly evil, they take special pleasure in subverting and corrupting the good-hearted. In the ancient forests they roam, green dragons demonstrate an aggression that is often less about territory than it is about gaining power and wealth with as little effort as possible.

Green dragons are consummate liars and masters of double talk. They favor intimidation of lesser creatures, but employ more subtle manipulations when dealing with other dragons. A green dragon attacks animals and monsters with no provocation, especially when dealing with potential threats to its territory. When dealing with sentient creatures, a green dragon demonstrates a lust for power that rivals its draconic desire for treasure, and it is always on the lookout for creatures that can help it further its ambitions.

A green dragon stalks its victims as it plans its assault, sometimes shadowing creatures for days. If a target is weak, the dragon enjoys the terror its appearance evokes before it attacks. It never slays all its foes, preferring to use intimidation to establish control over survivors. It then learns what it can about other creatures' activities near its territory, and about any treasure to be found nearby. Green dragons occasionally release prisoners if they can be ransomed. Otherwise, a creature must prove its value to the dragon daily or die.

There are plenty of levers here that a socially adept party can manipulate. It the party can give this dragon what it wants then they are in a position to make a deal.

Even if the situation deteriorates to violence, it is unlikely to result in a TPK since green dragons don't do that! At worst it will kill one or two, capture as many as it can and scare the rest off. The adventuring opportunities in being a prisoner/slave of a green dragon and having to convince it of your worth each and every day are huge!

Oh, and Phandelver is deliberately set up as a sandbox campaign - your players should know, because you tell them, that in this type of campaign they will encounter things that they can't kill and that will kill them. The appropriate response to hearing about or finding signs of a dragon is to go somewhere else!

Answer 2

Spoilers of published materials ahead.

Even with 8 characters and the preponderance of possible turns before the dragon goes, with where the encounter kicks off this has a strong statistical chance of being a total party kill; I'd give it a 85% confidence level. Clustering into the tower is through a narrow door, making the dragon's breath weapon on the first turn a strong choice if he is played fairly. At level 3, their hit points would be too low to survive an average breath attack, and they don't have the damage per round to get the dragon to half health.

Justification.

The tower that Venomfang has made his lair is a 30' diameter cylinder, with an attached ante chamber that is 20' by 20' that is attached by a medium door way. His size category is Large, occupying a 10' by 10' square; the Medium size category players can't move through, or stop in, the area he controls. If they come through the door, the most they can fit in the tower is 4-5 PC's, the others in the outer room. From the module:

Venomfang does not want to give up such a promising lair, but if the characters reduce the dragon to half its hit points, it climbs to the top of the tower and flies off to fight another day.

This suggests that the Venomfang fight will occur within the lair. This belief leans on the understanding that the dragon, as an intelligent creature, will maximize his advantages if a fight ensues. Meeting the PC in combat outside of the tower is a strategic mistake; the bottleneck of the door makes the breath weapon more effective.

That said, there are ways out of this dilemma.

Have the dragon not be there, and use the druid NPC to warn off the party in an insulting haughty fashion. Recommend they come back after a time, with an offered reward beyond what the book provides. This will remove the chance of killing the party half way through the scripted adventure, and leaving some content for the later half.

Or, have the dragon make a bad choice and leave the tower, if the players can effectively coax him out.

Humble brag about winning

When my party engaged the dragon, it was after the climactic battle with the books end boss, so we had the Spider Staff. The party was five strong at level 5, with a Light Domain Cleric, Fighter, Totem Barbarian, Rogue, and Sorcerer. A character Wall walked up the wall to secure a rope for others to climb after, and we attacked from above. Additionally, Web was used to trap the dragon in the tower, allowing the party to beat him past half health and into his grave, with advantage because he was restrained.

Answer 3

First, the numbers

A group of 8 3rd-level adventurers have a budgeted XP threshold of 600, 1200, 1800, and 3200 for an Easy, Medium, Hard, and Deadly encounter.

A Young Green Dragon has an EXP value of 3900, which is Deadly. But! remember, you have to account for having more than the recommended player count of 4-6. The DMG goes off to say:

Party Size

... If the party contains six or more characters, use the next lowest multiplier on the table. Use a multiplier of 0.5 for a single monster.

Therefore, for a group of 3 to 6 adventurers, the Young Green Dragon would be, theoretically, Deadly. But for a group of 8, it is only Hard. Like you, I have DMed LMoP for a group with more than the recommended players. I had 9 players fighting the Dragon at the time, and it was brutal (two of them fell unconscious, and their Donkey died- poor Will Smith) but they pulled it off.

---

Second, the numbers lie

Much of how difficult the fight turns out is how it starts and how the circumstances mount against or for the players.

If your players simply run in, guns blazing, it will more likely lead to a TPK, which, depending on your preference may or may not be a desirable outcome. If your players are smart about it, they can easily employ tactics that will turn the battle toward a favorable resolution. Or, they can find out more about the dragon and its strengths and weaknesses in order to be more prepared.

This is a broad discussion and I won't delve into it in fear of getting too opinionated.

---

Thirdly, know your characters

Looking at your party, they all look pretty high-tier: moon druids, fighters, barbarians, and rogues are really strong at this level so you shouldn't worry too much. Now, if the group were mainly composed of diplomat monks and courtly wizards who specialize in non-combat areas of the game, you're going to have a problem.

---

Lastly, don't forget this relevant text:

Warning! Spoilers! If you plan on playing LMoP, do not look

From page 33 of the module, it says:

Venomfang does not want to give up such a promising lair, but if the characters reduce the dragon to half its hit points, it climbs to the top of the tower and flies off to fight another day.

So your players are really only fighting half of the Dragon. Good luck!

Answer 4

In general, I would say a team of 8 should not have a major risk of TPK against the unaltered thundertree dragon, provided their team has good balance and thinks tactically.

---

Example:

I ran a group of 6 players through the encounter with the dragon (they were 3rd level if I recall correctly), and increased his HP since there were more of them. They still managed to kill it (admittedly, I waited one turn longer than I should have for him to leave, since they had him just over half health at that time). That's not to say that they didn't go down, but we had a cleric on the team, who brought them back as soon as he could.

That being said, I made sure (in character, through the druid) to warn them that he was very powerful. So they made sure they were at full health & spell slots, and drew him out of the castle into the field just in front of it. This let them maneuver around more, and surround him, making his breath weapon a lot less effective.

---

Now, in your case, given that you have no healers (presuming mood druid stays in wild shape most of the time) it may be a bit harder, but I'd say let it play out, and if worst comes to worst, they were all dreaming.

Answer 5

Victory through Action Economy

Strategy, circumstances, and luck will all play huge roles in such an encounter, and so we really can't predict what will happen. However, your party is unlikely to be "instantly obliterated" and, provided they are reasonably competent, they actually have a good chance of carrying the day. Almost certainly some of them will go down, but it is more likely that the survivors will drive the dragon off than that they will all die.

Reasonable Competency

One of my biggest assumptions in what follows is that your party will encounter the dragon when they are fresh, perhaps after having fought only the cultists, who should not have taxed their resources. Have the party read the signs posted at all the entrances to the town, warning of zombies and plant creatures? Have they, being so warned, then scouted ahead (pseudodragon, moon druid, rogue with mask of the wild)? Have they seen the tower on the hill overlooking all the town and reasoned that something both big and bad is there? Has their scouting found the dragon cultists or the druid, either of whom could tell them about the dragon? On their way up to the tower have they seen the dead spiders and smelled the acrid smell? Have they looked in the arrow slits of the tower?

A party that stumbles into the tower low on resources (hp, spells, abilities) after a series of fights is indeed likely to be completely overcome by the dragon. But a reasonably competent party will have noticed at least one of the many ways they are being warned about the dragon and they should be encountering it fresh - even if they don't know that this boss monster is specifically a green dragon, they should be prepared for a difficult fight.

Just a wee cone

Yes, the dragon's breath is fearsome, and yes, it can one-shot seven of your eight PCs if they fail their saves. However, this is just a young green dragon, and its cone is only 30'. While your party could all fit in its cone if they tried, unless they have packed themselves together for pass without trace or something similar (they don't even have a paladin whose aura they are trying to stay in), it is hard to imagine why a party of eight would all be so close that the breath could affect enough of them. Certainly as soon as they realize that it is a dragon, they should be actively trying to position themselves apart from one another. For a gridless encounter, the DMG suggests that a 30' cone should affect just three PC's (Adjudicating Areas of Effect, p. 249). As a worst case scenario, suppose a clueless party with no idea they are facing a dragon crowds into the cottage next to the tower, and then throws open the door allowing the dragon to breathe on them. Of the sixteen squares in the cottage, only eight are at least half in the cone's area of effect. So yes, if your entire party packs into the cottage and then chooses to stand on exactly the eight squares that match a cone emerging from the tower, the dragon could breathe on all of them and if they they all fail their saves, only the dwarf would be left. (Side note, half of your party is of a class that has proficiency in Con saves, so they should be at about 50/50 to make the DC14 save).

Back of the envelope

The win condition for the party is doing half the dragon's hp in damage to it. To drive the dragon off, they need to do 68 points of damage before they all die. At third level, let's suppose a character can reliably contribute ten points of a damage per turn. Now, the dragon does have a higher-than-average AC of 18, but that's not harder to hit than the many hobgoblins the party faced in Cragmaw Castle. Still, we can lower our damage rate to 7hp per character-turn to be conservative. In other words, the party wins if they can spend a total of ten character-turns with the dragon (and remember, they are a party of eight).

As a further conservative estimate, suppose the dragon goes first (pretty unlikely; it has a +1) and immediately eliminates three party members with its breath weapon. The remaining five party members then attack; at the end of the round they have done 5 character-turns worth of damage to the dragon.

On the second round, assuming the dragon's breath doesn't recharge, it will be lucky to eliminate just one more PC. With a +7 to hit, its melee attacks are going to be about 50/50 to hit your party's ACs, but it will need more than two hits to take out most of the unwounded party members (more realistically, it should be splitting up its melee attacks to eliminate anyone that survived its initial breath, but we have already assumed that they all died). After the dragon goes and removes one more, the remaining four PCs add another 4 character-turns worth of damage, and the dragon is now at a total of 9.

On the third round, we can have the dragon eliminate two more PCs; perhaps its breath has recharged or it has a fabulous round of melee. Now the two remaining PCs take it to a total of 11 character-rounds of damage. At the start of the fourth round it will flee and the two surviving party members will begin stabilizing their allies.

This victory is entirely possible because you have a party of eight - few single boss monsters can turn the tide against such an onslaught of action economy. Suppose that instead of eight PC's doing 7 damage per turn, you had a party of four PCs doing 15 damage per turn. They are going to need only 5 character-turns to rout the dragon, half as many as your party. Let's further assume that of our initial three PCs in the dragon breath, there is one survivor (perhaps the dwarf, or someone does make their save). How would this fight likely play out?

Round one, the dragon drops two PCs. The remaining two put 2 character-turns of damage on the dragon. Round two, the dragon eliminates one more PC. The last PC puts 1 more turn on the dragon, for a total of 3 of the 5 needed. Round three, the dragon eliminates the last PC. It is a TPK and the dragon hasn't even been taken to half. This is a deadly encounter for a party of four - but your party of eight under-leveled PCs has a reasonable chance of survival.

Strafing?

Some might suggest that the "proper" way to run the dragon is to encounter it flying and have it strafe the party. I think this is a terrible idea for the dragon. Its 80 foot fly speed is powerful, but its only missile attack is its breath and that has a range of just 30'. It can't dash and breathe on the same turn. If it tries to wait at a distance until its breath recharges, and then move in to 30' range, it will be taking missile fire from the party all the way in and all the way back out and they will have time to spread out so that only one of them can be breathed on. Readied actions will make it difficult to even get close without taking hits. Unless it is such a dark night that it can use its superior 120' darkvision to stay unseen, and it is committed to a long night of Stealth checks and picking off party members one at a time, the dragon will do far less damage strafing than if it just went toe to toe with the party.

What happened with my party of four

Party of four, all fourth level. Barbarian, Dwarven Cleric, Warlock, 3/1 Sorcerer/Monk. Mirna had told them where the heirloom was, so they entered town from the SE and immediately eliminated the cultists. The last two cultists had tried to escape to the tower so they went there next. They ignored the spiders, the acrid smell, and the chance to look in the arrow slits. The barbarian opened the door to the tower while the other three were outside the cottage.

First round - the barbarian was surprised and took 40 points of breath weapon - but saved for half. The dragon remained in the tower; if it did not recharge it wanted to solo melee the barbarian, but if it did recharge it figured it could fly out and get the other three. Second round - The dragon did recharge, so it flew out of the tower (hit by the barbarian's opportunity attack). It needed its entire move to go 40' up and out of the tower and then back down to the ground to try to angle for all three of those outside. In the end, no matter where I dropped the cone template it could get only two of the PC's. Forty more points of breath weapon - the sorcerer and cleric both saved; 20 points to the sorcerer, 10 to the cleric (dwarven resistance to poison). The warlock hit it and ran inside, the barbarian ran outside and shot it with a bow (couldn't reach in melee that round). The cleric hit as well. The sorcerer used Glasstaff's staff to drop a web on it. Third round - no recharge, the dragon failed its dex save and had to use its action to Strength check break out of the web. By the time it left the difficult terrain it could not move far enough away from the party to keep them from engaging with missile fire. It took enough hits to drop it below half. Round four - it recharged, then breathed on everyone but the warlock for another 40. The sorcerer failed and went down but false life kept him from being instantly killed. The cleric made the save and took 10 (dwarf). The barbarian made the save and took 10 (bear totem). The dragon flew away, and the party won.

Answer 6

We managed to defeat the dragon with only a druid (wildshaped), a rogue and a war cleric of level 3. We did use the hit and run tactics a lot. 3 crits do help. It wont be an epic and memorable fight if you didnt do something crazy.