[3.5 Creature] How To Train Your Homebrew [Film Version]

[MandibleBones]

Night Fury

"Speed: unknown. Size: unknown. The unholy offspring of lightning and Death itself. Never engage this dragon. Your only hope: hide and pray it does not find you."

LARGE DRAGON
HD 14d12+56 (140 hp)
Speed 60 ft. (12 squares); Fly 200 ft. (good)
Init: +13
AC 31 (-1 size, +9 dex, +13 natural); touch 18; flat-footed 22
b]BAB[/b] +14; Grp +22
Attack Bite +22 melee (2d6+9)
Full-Attack Bite +22 melee (2d6+9) and 2 claws +17 melee (1d8+3) and 2 wings +17 melee (1d6+3) and tail slap +17 melee (1d8+9)
Space 15 ft.; Reach 10 ft.
Special Attacks Breath Weapon, Turbocharge
Special Qualities Dragon traits, Frightful Presence, Fire Immunity, Blindsense, Keen Senses, A Shadow in the Darkness
Saves Fort +13 Ref +18 Will +11
Abilities Str 22, Dex 28, Con 18, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 14
Skills Hide 26, Listen 19, Search 17, Sense Motive 19, Spot 19, Tumble 26
Feats Weapon Finesse, Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Improved Precise Shot, Shot on the Run, Improved Initiative (B)
Environment Any
Organization Solitary
Challenge Rating 14
Treasure None
Alignment Usually Neutral
Advancement --
Level Adjustment --

Breath Weapon (Su): A Night Fury has one type of breath weapon, a burst of superheated plasma which is treated as a ranged touch attack, available once every 1d3 rounds as a swift action. A Night Fury's breath weapon has a range of 80 feet, deals 10d8 damage (half of which is fire, the other half of which is untyped), and deals half damage again on the next round.

Turbocharge (Su): On any round in which a Night Fury could use its breath weapon, it can instead elect to charge through solid objects, dealing damage from its breath weapon to every object on the line and ignoring hardness. If the Night Fury cannot punch a hole or destroy an object on the line, the charge stops there.

Frightful Presence (Ex): A Night Fury can unsettle foes with its mere presence, due to the distinct noise it makes flying through the air. The ability takes effect automatically whenever the dragon attacks, charges, or flies overhead. Creatures within a radius of 100 feet are subject to the effect if they have fewer HD than the dragon. A potentially affected creature that succeeds on a DC 20 Will save remains immune to that dragon’s frightful presence for 24 hours. On a failure, creatures with 4 or less HD become panicked for 4d6 rounds and those with 5 or more HD become shaken for 4d6 rounds. A Night Fury ignores the frightful presence of other dragons.

Fire Immunity: A Night Fury is immune to fire-based attacks as well as natural and magical fire. This immunity does not extend to the inside of the dragon.

Blindsense (Ex): A Night Fury can pinpoint creatures within a distance of 60 feet. Opponents the dragon can’t actually see still have total concealment against the dragon.

Keen Senses (Ex): A Night Fury sees four times as well as a human in shadowy illumination and twice as well in normal light. It also has darkvision out to 120 feet.

A Shadow in the Darkness (Ex): A Night Fury can use the Hide skill even while being observed. As long as it is in some sort of darkness (including a shadow), a Night Fury can hide itself from view in the open without anything to actually hide behind. It cannot, however, hide in its own shadow.

...

Anyone want to tackle the rest of them?

[DracoDei]

I don't recall anything that would make me think there is lingering damage... also, Turbo-charge is very odd... I know the scene you are talking about, but I would more call that the logical extention of what it looks like when something that has high speed, AC and DR crashes.

Note that I think Toothless breath-weaponed at the last second to bust his way through the cover on the arena.

[DragoonWraith]

Should have some kind of howl or something. No one ever saw the Night Fury or got within 50 ft before Hiccup, but they certainly were all terrified.

[DracoDei]

Should have some kind of howl or something. No one ever saw the Night Fury or got within 50 ft before Hiccup, but they certainly were all terrified.
I may have this quote in the wrong order, but: "Never steals fish. Never seen. Never misses."
A howl would be the exact opposite of why they were terrified... a nightfury was the equivalent of a stealth "fighter" (which are useless in a dog-fight) firing laser guided multi-role missiles but without the maneuverability and speed loses (so they CAN dog-fight). The only thing you ever saw was the (gelled?) acetylene projectiles. There might have been a howl, but if so I would say there is a good chance that the PROJECTILE made the noise.

Speaking of which, some ranks in Hide might not be amiss.

[DragoonWraith]

According to Lappy9000's link, the sound actually came from the whistle of the air as the Night Fury moved as fast as it did.

Nonetheless, the Night Fury was heard, but never seen. They all had warning it was coming (hence screams of "Night Fury!"), and the explosion was seen, but not the creature itself.

Definitely needs a form of Hides in Plain Sight.

[DracoDei]

Nonetheless, the Night Fury was heard, but never seen. They all had warning it was coming (hence screams of "Night Fury!"), and the explosion was seen, but not the creature itself.

Definitely needs a form of Hides in Plain Sight.

Thought of that myself, but I decided (and I could be wrong) that darkness counts as concealment, so you can hide in it without any special ability.

[DragoonWraith]

Massive hide bonus while flying at high speed in the night sky?

[Draz74]

Toothless' flight maneuverability was certainly not "perfect" in the movie. Even with an uninjured tail, I doubt he could, say, fly backwards (towards his own tail). Perfect maneuverability is reserved for things like will-o-wisps or air elementals that can literally be oriented in any direction and don't mind.

[DragoonWraith]

I do agree with that.

[DracoDei]

+8 or better hide bonus for darkness does sound like it should handle that aspect.

As for maneuverability, with higher speeds it basically becomes moot since the only real difference between Good and Perfect is that Good requires you to expend some movement to do certain things. FWIW I gave my Wing Dragons (see MAIN Sig. since they are one of my best works) Good maneuverability, but a supernatural ability to boost that to Perfect for a short period (or they can take a Feat or buy a Pectoral of Maneuverability or cast Wings of Air or...)

[The Tygre]

Are you planning on doing any of the other dragons or just sticking to the Night Fury?

[MandibleBones]

According to Lappy9000's link, the sound actually came from the whistle of the air as the Night Fury moved as fast as it did.

Nonetheless, the Night Fury was heard, but never seen. They all had warning it was coming (hence screams of "Night Fury!"), and the explosion was seen, but not the creature itself.

Definitely needs a form of Hides in Plain Sight.

Yeah, and ranks in Hide (which I realize I missed - oops!). Maybe increase the range on the Frightful Presence to account for the sound, too?

DD: Yeah, but the night sky isn't really total darkness, either. Also, Good manuverablilty works for this - certainly the NF has better than most, if not all, of the other dragons in the film (I would guess the Terrible Terror probably has good as well simply due to its small (tiny?) size). The only difference between good and perfect, IIRC, is that it cost double for a good man. flyer to ascend straight up.

Draz - of course, the injured tail probably dropped it straight to Clumsy, so there's that.

Tygre - If I get the motivation to do the others, I will. If other posters want to stat out the others in this thread, I will not be offended in the slightest, of course :smallsmile:

[MandibleBones]

I don't recall anything that would make me think there is lingering damage... also, Turbo-charge is very odd... I know the scene you are talking about, but I would more call that the logical extention of what it looks like when something that has high speed, AC and DR crashes.

Note that I think Toothless breath-weaponed at the last second to bust his way through the cover on the arena.

I changed the Turbocharge from being maximum breath weapon damage to simply doing its breath weapon damage, though it still ignores hardness (see also smashing the tower in the opening scene, cutting through iron bars later on). I agree that, flavor wise, Toothless simply used the breath weapon at the last minute, but for that to work every time in D&D terms, I'd have to make the breath weapon itself ignore hardness... something I'm not willing to do for "not using a ranged touch attack to destroy the Fighter's +5 Heavy Fortification Full Plate which cost him way too much gold and is the only reason he's still useful at level 17 with a CR 14 creature" reasons.

As for the lingering damage, the breath is some sort of gel, and hangs in the air enough for Hiccup to get mildly burned by it when Toothless flies through it a few seconds later. It's not doing the entire clinging breath damage, since that's not really in-flavor with the film.

[Debihuman]

For a creature that is supposed to be very fast, it moves slower than most of standard Large dragons. A Large black dragon moves at 60 ft but flies at 150 feet. A Large Brass dragon moves at 60 ft. but flies at 200 ft.This should be faster.

Debby

[DracoDei]

For a creature that is supposed to be very fast, it moves slower than most of standard Large dragons. A Large black dragon moves at 60 ft but flies at 150 feet. A Large Brass dragon moves at 60 ft. but flies at 200 ft.This should be faster.

Debby

Thought of that myself. Put it down to "this isn't for any setting that includes True Dragons." and so didn't bother mentioning it. The Green Death MIGHT have been a somewhat degenerate True Dragon... none of the others were.

[DragoonWraith]

Before he lost part of his tail, I'd have put Toothless much faster, actually. A Peregrine Falcon in a dive has a move speed of about 1760 ft (200 MPH), which is the fastest for any animal on earth without artificial assistance (though using gravity like that might qualify). It does not make a ballistic whistle like Toothless did. 150 ft. move speed is only 17.~ MPH; a horse canters at nearly that speed, and gallops at 25-30 mph (220-264 ft. move speed).

Night Fury speed is easily 40 MPH, and more likely closer to 80 MPH (cheetah speed), so 350 to 700 move speed is appropriate.

[Chainsaw Hobbit]

This is cool because while watching the movie (which was ok) I thought about the D&D stats of the dragons. Now I know someone else had the same idea which makes me feel like I'm not crazy for a bit.

[MandibleBones]

Let's go with the Brass Dragon's 200 move speed. That puts it at about 22 mph cruising speed (which means it charges up to about 45 miles per hour and goes all-out at either 67 or 90, and dives at twice that due to good manueverability).

Toothless, even uninjured, likely didn't go faster than that - since doing so would likely have thrown Hiccup into a pancake-shaped smudge on a mountainside.

[DragoonWraith]

Toothless, even uninjured, likely didn't go faster than that - since doing so would likely have thrown Hiccup into a pancake-shaped smudge on a mountainside.
Hiccup never rode an uninjured Toothless. It was my impression that Toothless never went as fast as he did before the injury with Hiccup on board, either because the prosthetic wasn't good enough or because, exactly, it would have been impossible for Hiccup to stay on.

[MandibleBones]

Fair enough. Let's keep with at 200 and maintain a semblance of balance, then?

[DragoonWraith]

...I totally forgot about double-moves, running, charging, and how they affect your movement in a round. Yeah, that's sounding more reasonable, then.