You're all making this combat far too difficult. :) I put a character who was useless in this combat (rogue because not enough +3 or better arrows) at the bottom of the stairs from the platform and cast Otiluke's Resilient Sphere on her. The dragon couldn't get to me and my characters pelted it with missle weapons while summoned creatures got up close and personal.

This was with high lvl characters in HOF, so I suppose summoned critters might not be able to damage the guardian if lower lvl characters summoned them.

I thought about using one of my undead as the Otiluke's Sphere blockade but I was afraid it might resist the spell or something.

I find Otiluke's Resilient Sphere to block a path too cheesey to use. Why shouldn't anyone be able to move the sphere aside? I'll only use it to "turn off" the target.

The only battle that I use it in is in the Lava Fields (you know that battle).

Uuuuh . . . ok. I tend to use the best tactics and weapons in my arsenal. Many people have been writing about maintaining the RP in RPG. I know that if I were one of characters and fighting a dragon the size of a double decker bus, I wouldn't tell the mage of the party, "Don't use that silly Otiluke's Sphere thing again. That takes all the sport out of the fight." I would want to do anything and everything I could to prevent that dragon from biting, shredding, or swallowing me. Not using a potent part of my arsenal would be like our (the U.S. military) saying, "Let's not use the stealth fighters and bombers. It's nearly impossible for anyone to target us. Let's get some WWII fighters. That will make things far more sporting! And let's outfit our infantry with muskets instead of automatic weapons!"

Yeah Luvian,

I managed to get all of my dead character's items and then raise them and gave them back. But even though i managed to deter the dragon with my undead minions, the dragon will simply unsummon them. That was really tough. Actually to kill the dragon it was more of luck rather than skill hehehehe. But the mage did help a lot. Without my mage and her spells, i would be doomed.

Dmouse

To a previous poster,

The mordekainen's sword scroll is in the Yuan-ti treasure room in the temple along with finger of death, power word stun and one other 7th lvl mage scroll.

Lower resistance and protection from acid are the keys to killing the Guardian. Lower his resistance and hit him with finger of death from the mage and destruction from our cleric. Both of them do damage even if he makes his save. Making sure your front line fighters are covered by PoA will keep the damage they take down to a minimum. Having a remove fear spell or two is also useful. Summoned monsters do get banished but they are useful for distracting the guardian for a while.

When I was fighting him I found the acid damage negligible compared to the tremendous phsyical damage he inflicted on my party however I do agree that you need Lower resistance and Resist fear to succeed.