How powerful is flight to dragons? And how can I make a land dragons stand out.

[Sir cryosin]

So in my world I was creating a city with large walls and I needed a reason why it has huge walls and I thought of land dragons also called land Drake's. I see land Drake's as tougher and resilient then normal dragons. So I am just going to use the dragons stats in book but add some more to AC and HP. Is there a better way to make land dragons stand out a bit more but keep them feeling like dragons.

[NecroDancer]

Give them the ability to cause quakes and summon elementals. Perhaps some innate spell casting with spells like stoneshape, flesh to stone, bones of the earth. Maybe they can turn portions of earth into quicksand of cause crystals and gems to form in caves as part of their regional effects?

[Millstone85]

Attack on Tarrasque?

[CoffeenPizza]

Flight is very powerful, especially once the dragon is getting legendary actions. Anytime the PCs have to deal with mobility that the entire party party can not duplicate it presents a dynamic change on the map. The wing flap legendary action also allows the drag to escape being surrounded and move, again resetting the board to make the players think.

If you're going to remove wings seriously consider allowing your drakes to misty step or disengage as a legendary action, otherwise your drake fights will turn into a surround and pound.

[tieren]

Give them earthglide

[Contrast]

Give them the ability to cause quakes and summon elementals. Perhaps some innate spell casting with spells like stoneshape, flesh to stone, bones of the earth. Maybe they can turn portions of earth into quicksand of cause crystals and gems to form in caves as part of their regional effects?


Give them earthglide

A number of these ideas seem to completely negate the point of having walls to act as a defence against them...

Also, keep in mind depending on how big your land drakes are going to be the walls may have to be incredibly massive to realistically keep them out. Honestly the simpler answer is probably just to have the walls magically reinforced with glyphs or magic somehow such that they provide a sphere of protection from all directions.

[Sir cryosin]

The city has two names Mountain wall's is nickname and it name is dragonhalt. And yes the walls are the highet of a small mountain. As for the replacement for the wings beating it just it tail swipe knocking things back.

[Cespenar]

Give them wings anyway, but they can only leap and glide short distances because of their heavy bodies. The walls are built taller than they can jump, from experience.

And yes, just give them better AC and HP.

[Jgosse]

Give them extra speed. I once had a dragon and swapped out wings for extra legs, and gave it extra claw atks. I would look at the old savage species book from 3.5 for ideas.

[GorogIrongut]

I would personally just give a land based dragon battlefield control instead of wings. This could include:
1. The ability to cause an earthquake that leaves fissures in the field. The party now has difficult terrain that's quite deadly. Every turn this is used, players within a 100' radius must take a dex check or fall prone.
2. The ability to summon spikes up from the ground (roughly the equivalent of Stone of Wall)... Again more battlefield control.
3. You can summon walls of trees/bushes/thorns akin to the green dragon and their legendary/lair actions. Battlefield control with small amounts of damage.
4. Depending on if you want to be truly evil, you could create a whirlwind of dirt/sand/debris. It would reduce visibility to 5' and everything within range of it would move as if in difficult terrain. Ranged weaponry would be at serious negatives.

Last but not least, if you're worried about your players tearing through the dragon, give it expanded senses (i.e. a wider area of tremorsense and true sight). Then just give it a bad ass breath weapon. Maybe it does more damage. Maybe it recharges more easily. You could also boost the dragon's ac. It traded it's flight for crazy, strong armour.

Do these things and you've got a tank that controls the board, vision and is a beast when they finally get in combat with it.

[MrFahrenheit]

A few thoughts, mainly from a plot perspective:

1. Fluff-wise, a wingless dragon stands out for that very reason.

2. Mechanically, consider a burrow speed. This also serves a dramatic purpose as well, though: instead of giving the drakes an earthquake ability, they can slowly, carefully burrow beneath the walls until they eventually fall. Gives the party time to investigate why the walls seem wobbly early in the campaign, or are starting to mysteriously develop cracks, and if they don't get to the crux of the matter in enough time, or get to the wrong answer and then move on ("oh you guys, it's just ankhegs. Chill lol"), the walls crumble.

3. Building off of #2, there are a lot of creatures smaller than the dragons that would totally take advantage of a tunnel system appearing, even if they could develop their own (ankhegs being one - as a great red herring - and anything from the underdark being another). This is a useful tool in throwing the party off - do they keep going down into the opportunists' lair, and get misled (failed nature/history checks = the party can't tell that, when the tunnel complexes meet, they were built by entirely different creatures in either direction), or do they follow the tunnel complex out of the city, under the farmlands, and into the drakes' lair before it's too late?

[MrStabby]

It is worth considering why dragons are so dangerous.

Take a look at an adult dragon for example. Solid HP, Solid attacks, legendary saves... it has an ok, if unremarkable base.

It is the interaction of the other features that really make these guys badass.

Breath weapons can usually hit at least 2 party members and allow some really powerful spike damage from range.

Flying lets the dragon attack with a breath weapon and pull back to cover to buy time for it to recharge.

Once the breath weapon has weakened PCs a dragon is mobile enough, smart enough, and (with legendary actions) offensively powerful enough to pick off isolated weaker party members. If they spread out, they get picked off. If they huddle together they take more damage from breath weapons.

Taking wings away isn't just dropping the speed, it is seriously nerfing their breath attacks and their ability to focus down an individual.


To replace a fly speed you need something pretty big. I would suggest going to town on the spellcasting - give them a thematically appropriate spell list up to say level 4 for an adult, level 5 for ancient, let them cast spells as legendary actions (level 4 uses 3 actions, level 3 uses 2 actions, levels 1 and 2 use one action).

My suggested spells - say for an ancient Red Dragon - would be:
level 5: Dominate person, Telekinesis
level 4: Fire shield, Wall of fire
level 3: fireball, counterspell
level 2: misty step, scorching ray
level 1: Shield, fog cloud, Hellish Rebuke

These compensate for the lack of flying with more damage and more versatility. Counterspell and misty step stops wall spells from being immediate victories for the party, shield compensates for not being able to stay out of range of melee party members by flying and fog cloud is useful to stop enemies from just shooting the dragon at range - especially if they are flying. The 5th level spells for dominate person and telekinesis add a bit more flexibility to the dragon by meaning that it can target different saves but equally as importantly it helps them in their role as malevolent antagonists with formidable mental powers - able to turn others to their will and to impact the world around them through only the power of their mind.

[Logosloki]

Flight offers Dragons two things- Safety and a way to close the gap. If you give the Dragons the same move speed as their flight speed and maybe some of the more interesting traits like Pounce then your dragons are going to be just as menacing as their flighted brethren.

[Sir cryosin]

How about adding a swallow ability to them as well.

[MrStabby]

How about adding a swallow ability to them as well.

Sure, but this isn't going to solve anything - but it does add to the coolness factor.

By level 3 PCs can cast levitate and rise off the ground and just shoot the lizard. Its a pretty unrewarding encounter, especially if the dragon gets caught in the open. The dragon needs an attack at the range that PCs could engage the dragon at or a means to bring them to earth.

Now if the swallow attack were to be based on a chameleon tongue with a longbow range then it would help.

[Jgosse]

Maybe give it some sort of jump/leap ability.

[Kane0]

Flightless dragons are basically Drakes or Linnorms (depending largely on CR), so you can poach stuff from previous editions using those.

[RagingBluMunky]

I have an idea, what about a crushing roll attack, a line attack, length being maybe half movement, width being the dragon's size (if it takes up a 20x20 square, line is 20ft wide). Knocks them prone unless they make a dex save.

Or maybe replacing the cone breath attacks with something like fireball. Maybe give them a boulder hurl attack like giants have.

[Hrugner]

I guess something like burrowing would make the walls less interesting as well. Normally, a dragon's flight allows it to start and stop engagements at will and harry a target before engaging. A windwall that prevented ranged targeting(spell or otherwise) outside of 30ft could have a similar effect while also flipping which types of characters usually suffer during flying target encounters.