See, the practical upshot of our situation is that, since adventuring parties carry wands of<em>lessor vigor</em>, any encounter that doesn't do one of the following two things is worthless:<br/>1) Kill someone outright<br/>2) Inflict some meaningful penalty that even a well-prepared group doesn't have a way to dispel.<br/><br/>Of course, a fang dragon is one nasty mofo, and killing someone is a distinct possibility, but that's still a lot of space to pay for him -- especially since good tactics can probably shut him down if approached head-on.  What we need to make something like him useful, I think, is some way to make him into an ambush -- especially if he can be alerted to come charging in from behind when the heroes are fighting someone else...