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so i am in an area where all these worshipers are calling up a dragon of tremendous power. all my characters are 20th level, we quickly destroy all the other worshipers and mages and clerics, but then the dragon just destroys us. all four wear greater rings of fire and acid. weapons are all holy and cold iron, barely do damage. how do i get better hit percentage (right now 10%) and how do we protect against the backlash and breath weapons better? please help.

Here's a string of posts from rpgcodex.net about that fight. The cliff-notes version of it:

- I suggest using freezing sphere and acid burst and whatnot while the dragon gets stuck in a web and keeping the characters spread out so he can't kill them all at once

- Ashery suggests flanking the dragon to increase the chance to hit him

- Darth Roxor suggests harm and cone of cold, etc

- Getter77 makes the key suggestion to use irresistable dance to incapacitate the dragon

I hope that is at least somewhat helpful.

I've used an elemental next to him that he dispells and hopefully dispells a bit on himself. IIRC he should have a weakness for cold so I used maximised freezing sphere and harm.

thanks! i will try out every suggestion. on to my 10th attempt!!

It may sound disturbing to hear, but the fight after that is more difficult

i actually had no problems once i implemented the suggestions, so thanks.
monkey lancer, you are correct... the last last battle HAS proven to be quite the challenge. lol!

Well, I finally got to this encounter. My party has two wizards (and two clerics), so it was a pretty easy fight, although it took a while to whittle away at the dragon. This was my strategy, though:

Round 1: Wizards use dehydrate to kill most of the mooks. Clerics do whatever.
Round 2: One wizard uses waves of exhaustion. The other uses web. The dragon is now paralyzed.
Round N: Kill any remaining random guys, and pick away at the dragon.

From there on, the dragon can cast lots of annoying stilled spells, and use his breath weapon, but he can't move, so he's pretty much at your mercy. Web + waves of exhaustion is killer for quite a few enemies, because it's -10 dexterity. When I played it, one of the enemy clerics managed to cast death ward on the dragon, but if no one does, you can coup de grace every round until the dragon dies, and there's nothing he can do about it.

Like everyone else has said, Web is the key here. The way I did it is a bit different from the method most people seem to be using, though. The way I did it-

Step 1. widened web. Take up the whole area with the dragon and his cultists. Hitting the party a bit is OK; you're not moving any time soon.
Step 2. Arrows on the cultists. Waste them all while they're still in the web to prevent them from swarming you. Plug up any areas of the web that are fireballed away with non-widened webs.
Step 3. By now, the widened web should be gone, or have at most a couple of rounds left. Have your entire party retreat around the corner to make the dragon get close.
Step 4. When he does get close, Irresistable Dance.
Step 5. Win.

Do you get to rest after the fight with the big red dragon and his worshippers? And is there only one other fight after that?

After the fight you can leave the dungeon and rest in the city.
And there are several fights afterwards, but again... you can leave&rest anytime then so no big deal.