[SixOfSpades]

Where did this idea that Dragons cater to your level come from?? Sorry, but it's wrong. Only random spawns are level-based: Fryman, since your party was low-level when you entered the Temple Ruins, you encountered Shades and Shade Wolves. If you had held off exploring this map area until much later in the game, you would have found yourself up against Skeleton Warriors and Liches. The random-spawn engine only controls what creatures appear, as far as I know no creature in the game adjusts its difficulty to your party level.

Dragons: A few years back, I overheard my old boss relating his adventures over the weekend [spoilerish clues smudged out]: "And so I go into one of them and I find myself in this [place]. I look at the big [object]-thing, and there's the icon that says you can do something, and I'm curious, so I say I want to [verb] it. A message appears that says, 'Are you sure you want to [verb] it?' and I'm thinkin', 'Yeah, I'm a Level 10 Fighter, I should be able to handle pretty much anything,' so I say 'Yeah, I want to [verb] it. Well, all of a sudden out pops this [HIGH-LEVEL ENEMY!!] He immediately starts casting [9TH-LEVEL SPELL!], and then right afterward he casts [ANOTHER 9TH-LEVEL SPELL!], and I'm like, 'OKAY, I'll be going now!'"

Moral: You so puny!

In BG1, being Level 8 or so meant you had pretty much the entire game under your thumb. BG2, however, has a much larger thumb. Trust me--you puny. Dragons are big. They are scary. They got claws and teeth and wings and breath weapons and spells. Yeah, it's possible to take them out when you're low-level . . . but I wouldn't recommend it until you're comfortable beating them with a more experienced party.

The basics:
Know Your Foe: The color of a Dragon's scales gives a valuable clue as to its favored element. Red Dragons, for instance, deal with Fire. They breathe fire, and fire cannot harm them--I think it actually even heals them. Therefore, when facing a Red Dragon, getting some Fire Resistance is good, and using fire-based attacks on it is bad.
Use some good Summons to try to distract the Dragon into attacking someone other than your party members.
Spread your party out, so that one Wing Buffet doesn't take everyone out of commission at once.
Spells that hamper or incapacitate an enemy are often more useful than spells that do damage.