13 headed Dragon!

[Drummer701]

Soooo DM decided to drop a 13 headed dragon on us in an semi-epic PF campaign...

Is this thing from another system or game? or does it sound like a made up creation?

Any help on if anyone has heard of this abomination would help :)

[Gavinfoxx]

Hydra, maybe?

[Drummer701]

It could have very well been created... had 13 heads, 3 hearts, and most of the heads were chromatic but the thing was not evil :/

I was thinking maybe Faerun or Grey hawk or something...

[Doorhandle]

Could be a hydra. Did it have wings? Could it cast spells? Saying that it breathed fire or whatever won't help, plenty of hydras do that.

Otherwise, I think it may just be a normal dragon with ALL the other half-dragon templates stacked upon it. By RAW, if I recall correctly, you gain the natural attacks of all the templates you have stacked upon you, which would explain the 13 bite attacks, and 26 claws (but only 1 tail sweep/two wings, fortunatly.)

Regardless, should it turn against you, I would suggest chipping away at it with touch-spells from a fair distance away, as breath-weapons do not travel far, and it's melee-strength/natural attacks will be ridiculous, but it's hit-points comically under-leveled for something with that much C.R. Also, note it has to specifically be touch spells: If it stacked up the natural armour from 12-or-so templates, it's natural armour is gonna be HUGE.

[Jallorn]

There's a template somewhere official that gives a monster extra heads. Don't remember where, but that could be in use.

[Kuulvheysoon]

There's a template somewhere official that gives a monster extra heads. Don't remember where, but that could be in use.

Multi-headed template, from Savage Species.

[Drummer701]

I believe it resembles how Tiamat works in some aspects...

[Igneel]

More then likely a combination of Mult-Headed + Half-Dragon x whatever amount the Dm felt like, on most likely a Hydra base. At least that's the simpliest method of accomplishing it imho.

[Ranting Fool]

Just as long as it wasn't called Fluffy

[elpollo]

More then likely a combination of Mult-Headed + Half-Dragon x whatever amount the Dm felt like, on most likely a Hydra base. At least that's the simpliest method of accomplishing it imho.

Where are people getting the hydra from? We have nowhere near enough information to make that sort of assumption, and the simplest way to make a dragon with many heads would be to take a dragon and say "Now it has 13 bite attacks and breath weapons" (which we don't actually know it has), rather than take an unrelated creature, buff it significantly (to make it an appropriate near-epic encounter), give it wings, spell casting, etc.

But yeah, it sounds made up to me. I'm struggling to visualise how you'd fit 13 heads on 1 dragon, though.

[2xMachina]

Where are people getting the hydra from? We have nowhere near enough information to make that sort of assumption, and the simplest way to make a dragon with many heads would be to take a dragon and say "Now it has 13 bite attacks and breath weapons" (which we don't actually know it has), rather than take an unrelated creature, buff it significantly (to make it an appropriate near-epic encounter), give it wings, spell casting, etc.

But yeah, it sounds made up to me. I'm struggling to visualise how you'd fit 13 heads on 1 dragon, though.

Hydra is the basic multi-headed thing that breathes fire (or ice, depending on the variant)

[rweird]

What is its size category? It it isn't Huge, it can't be a hydra, I'd probably think it is a multiheaded dragon, maybe with a few half dragon templates.

To defeat it: If it doesn't have the cold subtype, Spectral Hand + Maximized Shivering Touch will still defeat it because it won't have any higher of a Dex, if its immune, try greater bestow curse, (Its will save should be bad for its CR because of the templates) to reduce its strength to 1, you just made it a lot less scary, maybe target another ability if you have a good way to do at least 1 point of damage to that ability. If you get its strength to 1, make liberal us of touch attacks to defeat it (If you have a charger, wraithstrike him and watch it crumble). If you get an ability of its to 0, coup it an be done.

[Urpriest]

All of you are failing to notice the "it has three hearts" thing. Maybe that's just fluff...but if it has any mechanical effect, then this thing is rather thoroughly homebrew, since I can't think of anything that does that.

[Starbuck_II]

Soooo DM decided to drop a 13 headed dragon on us in an semi-epic PF campaign...

Is this thing from another system or game? or does it sound like a made up creation?

Any help on if anyone has heard of this abomination would help :)

I can find a 7 headed Dragon (biblical reference), 8 headed (movie called Orochi), an angelfire.com story about a 13 headed dragon, but no stats.

[137beth]

Why is homebrew so hard for the playground to fathom? In high level games, both house rules and homebrew are extremely common. Assuming that this is a real game, and not a min-max experiment on the forum.

[rweird]

We try to rationalize it using what we know. If it is in a 3rd party, then we might know about it. We know it can be various template combos, and we mention them. We could just say, oh, its homebrew, we don't know, the OP said it could be homebrew, we are thinking of things we know about, it very well could be made up, though we don't know the DM. We don't know if he used homebrew before, we don't really know the importance of it anyways. We are using what we know of, and how it could be explained in D&D, we very well could be wrong, though the more details, the more accurate this could be. We aren't opposed to homebrew, we just can't really do anything with it if we don't know its stat, and we try to work with things we know about and can do things with (Template creatures to get what it can do).

I'm kind of curious how the OP knows it has three hearts. Also, any more info about the campaign and if the DM used homebrew before would be helpful.

[Drummer701]

The reason I know it has three hearts is because I am a Monk/Paladin, I used quivering palm and the DM let me use a Perception check to view the anatomy of said dragon when setting up the vibrations in its body...

Like I said this could very well be a DM creation, I was just curious to see if such a thing existed out there...

[Igneel]

Where are people getting the hydra from? We have nowhere near enough information to make that sort of assumption, and the simplest way to make a dragon with many heads would be to take a dragon and say "Now it has 13 bite attacks and breath weapons" (which we don't actually know it has), rather than take an unrelated creature, buff it significantly (to make it an appropriate near-epic encounter), give it wings, spell casting, etc.

Hydras (3.5 (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/hydra.htm)/PF (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/magical-beasts/hydra)) have stats for a base 5-headed to 12 just in the Monster Manuals. Its simple enough to add additional heads along with HD either using the Multi-headed template formula or continuing the pattern Hydras follow of gaining +1HD/additional head. Whether it re-grows the heads or not might suggest that its a hydra with templates to gain dragon-type, or at the very least the hydra was used for the base creature design.

The only reason why I used the Hydra as an example is because it's the closest creature that comes to that outside of Tiamat (5 heads) and a Demon Lord (forgot name, but has 2 heads) that again comes to mind. It is relevant to figuring out what the monster is, as the Hydra practically holds the market in 'multi-headedness'. There aren't many monsters with multiple heads, unless you count the Medusa's snake hair as individual heads...

It can easily be just a re-fluffed Hydra, or a DM creation that just took the Hydra mechanics for multiple heads. The multiple hearts is definitely something I've never heard about from other monsters, so that may very well be the case.

[BShammie]

I found the Multiheaded template (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mm/20020621a) on the WotC site.

I agree with the others though; what you fought was probably either homebrew or a refluffed hydra.