How do you like your dragons?

[the_david]

Hey everybody,

I've had this idea for a dragon for some time now, but I never had the opportunity to use him in a game. Now when I think of a dragon I feel that there are a few traits that a dragon needs to have. I'm gonna list a few, but I'd also love to hear some of your ideas about this. Allthough I play Pathfinder, some of these ideas go for D&D as well.

Size: I don't like the idea of tiny, small or medium dragons. Dragon size should start at large, at least if you want the party to fight the dragon. I think the Giant once commented on not liking the idea of fighting wyrmlings as they're basically children. I just dislike that idea as wyrmlings aren't epic enough to battle.

Challenge rating: Dragons should have a decent challenge rating. I like to use the level 6 benchmark. At level 6 a ranger or a monk should be able to compete in the olympics. (Archery for the ranger, long jump and 100 meter dash for the monk.) The assumption is that level 6 would be a good benchmark for the physical limit of human beings. D&D and Pathfinder go beyond this limit which could be seen as epic. Now if Sigurd or St. George where 6th level Pathfinder characters, the dragons they would have fought would have at least a CR of 5. As I tend to GM for groups of 4, a dragon should have a CR of 9 to be a nice challenge to a group of 6th level characters. Ofcourse, your preference may vary. Please take this with a grain of salt.

Color coding: I don't like color coded dragons. I don't see why different species of dragon should all have 12 age categories. I don't like that a player can identify a dragon based on its color. (If you have players who do this you should let them fight an undead red dragon and call it a wight dragon.) And I certainly don't like that the green dragon's name is Verdilith and that they take the name Mandrake when they are in human form. If you're gonna name your dragon don't name them after their color! (Sorry, I had to get that of my chest.) So I prefer unique dragons over the so called "true dragons". I thought the dragons from Urban Arcana were an improvement.

Tactics: Dragon's are intelligent and should use any advantage they have. Nightscale from Forge of Fury would be an excellent example of such a dragon.

One last thing: Like all my villains, I like my dragons to have some sort of motivation. Sure, gathering a hoard can be that motivation. Defending a hoard is boring though. The dragon has to take action, gather a bunch of kobolds and highwaymen, demand tribute from a village, etc. On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with a good dragon hunting down the gang that has killed her children and sold their bodyparts as spell components. As long as it's an active dragon who's not waiting to be killed it's okay.

So how do you like your dragons?

[Gildedragon]

Agree on a few points here.
No to color coding
Large and bigger: at smallest they ought be warhorse sized
Smart*

Adding to this:
Haughty
Awesome; possibly even godlike
Not necessarily evil nor good: amoral or under a different moral system as humans.

*I could even differentiate between "True" dragons (smart talking ones with magic) and dragon beasts (GoT style)... The beast ones might be the juvenile form of the True ones

[Celestia]

Medium rare.

[Buufreak]

Medium rare.

With saluted mushrooms.

[Calthropstu]

Medium well, covered in peppers and onion (grilled) served with shrimp and cocktail sauce and a side coleslaw and a baked potato, and a nice red wine.
For the lady friend, she wants hers medium well dipped in almond butter served with a salad and dragon fingers for an appetizer.
Yes, I will be stealing some of her dragon fingers.

[Psyren]

I understand the Giant's perspective but I'm not sure I agree with that hardline stance. A baby dragon is not like babies of other races (Draconomicon 13 makes this clear), and forbidding all wyrmling encounters out of hand removes some pretty iconic fights from RPG canon, like Onyxia. Often the young of a species can be just as dangerous (see also the facehuggers from Alien) and simply being in the beginning stages of life does not mean something is not an antagonist, even one worthy of lethal force.

[KillianHawkeye]

Medium rare.

Give it to us raw and wriggling! :smallwink:



On topic, I sort of agree with the size issue. I feel like the little, young dragons should all be hiding or something, and not yet being any sort of villains. I like my dragons, good and evil alike, to be more like immortal and nearly omnipotent jerks who don't really care about those pesky mortals. I also dislike the color-coding, and feel that dragons of every type should have as much individual variations as any other race of intelligent, living creatures.

[Psyren]

I understand the Giant's perspective but I'm not sure I agree with that hardline stance. A baby dragon is not mentally a baby (Draconomicon 13 makes this clear), and forbidding all wyrmling encounters out of hand removes some pretty iconic fights from RPG canon, like Onyxia. Often the young of a species can be just as dangerous (see also the facehuggers from Alien) and simply being in the beginning stages of life does not mean something is not an antagonist, even one worthy of lethal force.

[Ellrin]

Insofar as we're talking about dragons as a potential enemy in D&D, I'm actually pretty much satisfied with the way they're handled by RAW. I might choose somewhat different lore if I were using them in a campaign of my own divising, but as far as how they're represented, that seems fine to me.

[atemu1234]

I like them in wide and varied roles; they make excellent enemies and allies, or as beings one trades with.

As to edibility, rare is typically my favorite state of consumption. Though I feel like they'd taste of wherever they'd been and whomever they've consumed.

[Thurbane]

I understand the Giant's perspective but I'm not sure I agree with that hardline stance. A baby dragon is not mentally a baby (Draconomicon 13 makes this clear), and forbidding all wyrmling encounters out of hand removes some pretty iconic fights from RPG canon, like Onyxia. Often the young of a species can be just as dangerous (see also the facehuggers from Alien) and simply being in the beginning stages of life does not mean something is not an antagonist, even one worthy of lethal force.

I agree. Removing encounters with younger/smaller dragons could hurt the game.

I mean, all campaigns and games are different, but in my 33 years or so of D&D, I've certainly enjoyed my share of lower level dragon battles.

At the end of the day, it really depends on the tone and style of the game, I guess...

[Celestia]

As was previously mentioned, baby dragons in D&D aren't like normal juveniles. They are born immediately as or even more intelligent than an adult human. They are also instinctually drawn towards their alignments. A newborn chromatic dragon is fully sapient and automatically evil. So, comparing it to killing human babies is disingenuous at best.

And personally, I really like this. It's different. In almost every other depiction, dragons are these ancient, powerful beings of myth and legend. That's nice and all, but it gets boring. I like having small and young dragons who are still just as evil, but the stakes aren't as high, and maybe they are more short sighted. It shakes things up.

[KillianHawkeye]

As was previously mentioned, baby dragons in D&D aren't like normal juveniles. They are born immediately as or even more intelligent than an adult human. They are also instinctually drawn towards their alignments. A newborn chromatic dragon is fully sapient and automatically evil. So, comparing it to killing human babies is disingenuous at best.

And personally, I really like this. It's different. In almost every other depiction, dragons are these ancient, powerful beings of myth and legend. That's nice and all, but it gets boring. I like having small and young dragons who are still just as evil, but the stakes aren't as high, and maybe they are more short sighted. It shakes things up.

I personally dislike having any mortal creature be born with a pre-determined alignment. That's fine for outsiders, who are immortal embodiments of their alignment and literally sprout fully-formed from the fabric of their home planes, but with normal living creatures it just makes it too easy to write off entire races and creature types as automatically okay to murder.

That makes the game very simple and easy for people to interact with, and I guess some people need that or just don't care if their make-believe sessions have a solid moral foundation, but I would like things to be a little more complex and nuanced sometimes. When we get to the point where we see an orc or a drow or a dragon of a certain color and the first and only thought is to kill it and take its stuff (and maybe take one alive to torture it for information), it eliminates a certain amount of stories that we can experience. It stops us from having a story where the orcs are the victims, and the drow are just living their lives in peace, and the dragons have an actual society instead of all being angry loners with nothing but treasure and minions to keep them company.

[Psikerlord]

I like them to be unique - there isnt green dragons and red dragns and blue dragons. There is the Dragon.

[atemu1234]

I personally dislike having any mortal creature be born with a pre-determined alignment. That's fine for outsiders, who are immortal embodiments of their alignment and literally sprout fully-formed from the fabric of their home planes, but with normal living creatures it just makes it too easy to write off entire races and creature types as automatically okay to murder.

That makes the game very simple and easy for people to interact with, and I guess some people need that or just don't care if their make-believe sessions have a solid moral foundation, but I would like things to be a little more complex and nuanced sometimes. When we get to the point where we see an orc or a drow or a dragon of a certain color and the first and only thought is to kill it and take its stuff (and maybe take one alive to torture it for information), it eliminates a certain amount of stories that we can experience. It stops us from having a story where the orcs are the victims, and the drow are just living their lives in peace, and the dragons have an actual society instead of all being angry loners with nothing but treasure and minions to keep them company.

Again, the alignment argument is assuming a human mental standpoint; that infants are, at best, incapable of alignment, and at 'worst' naturally good, or that they are 'blank slates' that alignment is later programmed into.

This fails to take into account certain... inhuman psychologies that exist even in this world, let alone in a world where alignments are 'forces that define the cosmos'.

In this world, it's entirely plausible for something to be born with an innately 'evil' outlook. As in, desires to destroy it's host or environment without qualm. This may be something relative, as these creatures are pretty typically what D&D defines as 'mindless', but it nonetheless poses the question - can something be born 'good' or 'evil'? D&D answers this definitively - yes.

[King539]

With saluted mushrooms.

Myconid fighters?

Honestly, I like my dragons, huge, epic, intelligent, powerful, and really damn scary.

[Celestia]

I personally dislike having any mortal creature be born with a pre-determined alignment. That's fine for outsiders, who are immortal embodiments of their alignment and literally sprout fully-formed from the fabric of their home planes, but with normal living creatures it just makes it too easy to write off entire races and creature types as automatically okay to murder.

That makes the game very simple and easy for people to interact with, and I guess some people need that or just don't care if their make-believe sessions have a solid moral foundation, but I would like things to be a little more complex and nuanced sometimes. When we get to the point where we see an orc or a drow or a dragon of a certain color and the first and only thought is to kill it and take its stuff (and maybe take one alive to torture it for information), it eliminates a certain amount of stories that we can experience. It stops us from having a story where the orcs are the victims, and the drow are just living their lives in peace, and the dragons have an actual society instead of all being angry loners with nothing but treasure and minions to keep them company.
I'm not talking about orcs and drow, and dragons aren't standard humanoids. They are inherently magical beings. There is a difference there. Plus, having them born amoral would simply raise more questions. How can they have adult-level intelligence and wisdom if they don't even know the difference between right and wrong? How are they going to scheme against heroes and manipulate minions when they cannot comprehend motivation and personal values? It makes no sense. You're still looking at young dragons like they're supposed to be children, but they're not.

[Psyren]

It stops us from having a story where the orcs are the victims, and the drow are just living their lives in peace, and the dragons have an actual society instead of all being angry loners with nothing but treasure and minions to keep them company.

You can still have those stories in a world where most red dragons are dangerous and evil. PCs are extraordinary folks among their own peoples, and they can meet the similarly extraordinary members of other peoples too, such as the one curmudgeonly ancient black dragon who'd rather just live in his swamp. That doesn't mean there's no value in having a "type" for those individuals to rail against.

[Scalenex]

I do not like dragons being born with an alignment, and I do not like them being color coded for your convenience with powers pretty much the same for every dragon of that color and age.

I also do not like the idea of ten dragon colors (or more) from an environmental standpoint. A grizzly bear takes up a huge swath of territory to feed itself. Unless your fantasy setting is bigger than real world Earth, I have trouble imagining enough space for sustainable breeding populations of ten dragon subspecies, at least not without exterminating all other monsters.

So my D&D world, I created a home brew generator that can roughly approximate the Monstrous Manual Dragons (though it pushes their sorcerer level higher). HD are based on age which determine skill points and attack value per normal. Each Hit Die is worth a power point, and power points can buy physical abilities or adaptations such as spell-like abilities or gills. Any two dragons can mate, but evil dragons prefer evil dragons and good dragons prefer good dragons. Any dragon can theoretically change alignment but changes tend to be slow. I figure a lot of dragons flirt with helping or exploiting lesser creatures in their youth and tend towards "Just leave me alone!" neutrality as they get older.

Breath weapons usually mimic the parent's but they can spontaneously birth a breath weapon not seen by either parent, especially the parents have mismatched breath weapons like a scandalous hook up between a fire and ice breather.

EDIT: The baby dragons in the early seasons of Game of Thrones are too cute to not have little dragons

In ancient times dragons ran the world and built mighty cities and nations, until they ruined their civilization with massive wars and accidentally unleashed cataclysmic magical forces to decimate the landscape. A few dragons survived. Then the elves ran the world and built mighty cities and nations, until they ruined their civilization with massive wars and accidentally unleashed cataclysmic magical forces to decimate the landscape. A few elves survived. Now the gods gave humans domain over the world. The humans won't break everything right?

When humanity was young, history minded dragons either opted to advise and guide the young race to avoid the mistakes of the past, or they tried to wipe out humanity before it gained a solid foothold power. That means most kingdoms claim a legendary ancestry that was either advised by noble dragons or a legendary ancestor who slew evil dragons or both.

A lot of dungeons or ruins are the remains of fallen dragon cities. Most artifacts of note date from the Age of Dragons. To cut down on the number of languages in the world, most creatures from the Age of Dragons speak Draconic. Beholders were created as guards to protect treasures of dragon kings before they went independent. Kobolds were a mostly failed attempt by a vengeful goddess to create a competitor race to out-breed and wipe out the dragons. Depending on who you ask, the first giants were either miserable slaves or honored servants of the dragon kings.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Shaken, not stirred.

[tiercel]

See, I think color-coding of dragons can be useful...

...for any dragon with the chance to pick up the Disguise Self spell (or effect).

If I'm a classic evil chromatic avaricious mastermind, I'm not sure what would be more hilarious: making adventurers think I'm the color of dragon which is vulnerable to an element I'm immune to, or just making myself look like a disgusting goody-two-claws metallic (of the same breath weapon type) while I'm raiding and pillaging.

("Hi! I'm going to be your village's protector! But first, I need you all to gather in the town square, nice and close so I can address you all properly, there you go, nice tight 50' cone formation--BLAARRRRRGHHHHHHAHAHAHA gods, they fell for it too, easiest. looting. ever. Oh hey! You, in back, 51'-away-peasant! Tell everyone in nearby taverns about the horrible burninating totally GOLD evil dragon that just incinerated everyone else in your village!" *poorly suppressed giggle*)

[Esprit15]

I like my dragons having a slight moral bent, but not enough so for it to be a reliable way to predict whether the scaled creature before you is trustworthy or not. I am fine with them forming their personality in the egg, however. Several types of wyrmlings are after all smarter than the average person, so why shouldn't they be born leaning toward a certain path? I just treat it as slightly different understandings of what they learned via their inborn knowledge.

I do run them with a modification made by a DM of mine that levels the playing field between different kinds, however. Standardizing hitdice and base stats is nice for making white and red dragons equally feared, and means that not all black dragons are some of the weakest, while gold dragons are clearly the strongest. Three white dragons could be vastly different, with one favoring fighting with pure overwhelming might, while another prefers to rely on magic to take his prey, and the last likes hit and run tactics with a their breath weapon. The only thing that type tells you is movement modes available, any elemental weaknesses, and what kind of protection from energy you should prepare. Everything else is quite individual.

Any adult dragon though is a force to be reckoned with, both in pure physical ability and their foreign mentality. These are creatures who make elves appear short lived, after all. They plan, and make plans within plans. They're an apex creature and know it. Devils worry about power structures, demons about who they can beat down next, and angels about keeping the lower planes in check. Dragons meanwhile exist as largely solitary beings, each with their own interests shaped by hundreds of years of reinforcement that they are the most powerful thing within a hundred miles, where they are only stopped by another, equally powerful and impressive being much like them. Whether kind or cruel, ultimately to dragons the lesser races are more amusing (and occasional individuals useful) than they are dangerous.

[Knaight]

I don't tend towards including dragons at all, but if I do it's pretty much exactly opposite the D&D approach. The smaller changes are the systematic removal of a lot of the specifics - color coded dragons go, the color themed breath weapons go (fire stays, and there's various poisons that fit), and half dragons certainly go. The big change is a shift from spell casters that are also titanic paragons of physicality to alpha predators with high end (but not top notch) animal intelligence. In practice, this tends to mean sizes from large to huge, flight, a nice set of attacks, pretty good natural armor, and the distinctive fire breath or caustic spit.

[Eldan]

I like to keep them rare in most worlds. Rare enough that the individual colours usually aren't their own species. Rather, dragons of any colour can give birth to any colour.

While I can see the arguments for dragons always being big, and I probably prefer that too in D&D, there's plenty of historical precedent for dragons of dog-size or smaller, see most depictions of St. George.

[Florian]

I treat my dragons similar to outsiders and elementals. They´re not strictly mortal or "free willed" creatures, but rather personifications of certain concepts, which in turn affect their color.
Half Dragons and the draconic bloodline exist, but they´re not based on mating, but rather on too close proximity to draconic magic or getting fates entangled.
Dragons are rather rare and their reproduction is not keyed to a natural, but rather a mystical cycle.
They hatch with fully formed personalities, so a "Wyrmling" is not a child, just not a fully grown dragon.

[Pleh]

I personally dislike having any mortal creature be born with a pre-determined alignment. That's fine for outsiders, who are immortal embodiments of their alignment and literally sprout fully-formed from the fabric of their home planes, but with normal living creatures it just makes it too easy to write off entire races and creature types as automatically okay to murder.

That makes the game very simple and easy for people to interact with, and I guess some people need that or just don't care if their make-believe sessions have a solid moral foundation, but I would like things to be a little more complex and nuanced sometimes. When we get to the point where we see an orc or a drow or a dragon of a certain color and the first and only thought is to kill it and take its stuff (and maybe take one alive to torture it for information), it eliminates a certain amount of stories that we can experience. It stops us from having a story where the orcs are the victims, and the drow are just living their lives in peace, and the dragons have an actual society instead of all being angry loners with nothing but treasure and minions to keep them company.

Ah, but are dragons even mortal? Outsiders can be slain as well.

I honestly like to use the Stargate Goa'uld psychology with dragons; the game makes it clear that use of aligned spells has an affect on your alignment and arguably that implies your psychological state (the Goa'uld experienced the same effect with technomagic). The dragons that give in to power lust from their magical prowess become almost irredeemably evil and imprint their genetic knowledge (and corruption) onto their descendents.

This leaves room for dramatic tension. Evil dragons, while absolutely evil, are still victims of their own power seeking self mutilation. We can even say this twisting of their state of being even affects them physically (changing the appearance of their scales).

After all, if dark magic seduced and then twisted them into this state, then perhaps the right magic could save them from it.

Now we can enter the infrequently explored RPG drama of whether it is better to kill or brainwash an unrepentantly evil creature. We still have plenty of room to spare for evil dragons to pull a double fake out pretending to be good (or pretending to seek atonement OR *actually* wishing to escape their evil nature...) only to betray the party (... demonstrating their helplessness against the magic that compels their sadistic motivations). Complex enough for you?

Good dragons are not genetically different from evil ones; they only never gave in to the Dark Side(TM) and the magic they learned for good has made their physical and psychological pattern stand out from the twisted chromatic dragons.

Indeed, the concept of the color coding might be a humanoid concept foreign to the dragons.

[NontheistCleric]

Ah, but are dragons even mortal? Outsiders can be slain as well.

There is only one definition of mortal given in D&D, in the Book of Vile Darkness. It includes dragons.

[Pleh]

There is only one definition of mortal given in D&D, in the Book of Vile Darkness. It includes dragons.

I'm interested to look that one up. Got a page number?

Regardless, this thread is all about modifying RAW to fit expectations. Removing their mortality is not too far out of the way.

[Scalenex]

Any adult dragon though is a force to be reckoned with, both in pure physical ability and their foreign mentality. These are creatures who make elves appear short lived, after all. They plan, and make plans within plans. They're an apex creature and know it.

Lions are apex predators and humans can kill them easily. Lions do not know this. Do dragons know this?

It's scary for humans to try to figure out whether a dragon is an aloof curiosity, a terrifying man-eater, or a noble protector. but how do dragons feel about being outnumbered by pathetic mortals 100,000 to 1, some of which have incredible power beyond their right, all lust for gold and glory?

A creature with a long life span would probably be more careful. To most monsters, adventurers are monsters, dragons above all else. Do dragons lose sleep about the fact that out of the masses of weak and inferior humans, some have high levels and great power. Do they fear organized adventuring party's slaying them for glory or advancement, stealing their treasure and eggs, their very hides, all in their lust for fleeting power.

Even if a dragon can beat 99 out of 100 adventuring party, that just means if they fight 100 such groups they die, and the adventurers keep coming.

Alternatively, are dragons just too egotistical and most of them are completely surprised and ashamed when slain?

[Pleh]

Lions are apex predators and humans can kill them easily. Lions do not know this. Do dragons know this?

It's scary for humans to try to figure out whether a dragon is an aloof curiosity, a terrifying man-eater, or a noble protector. but how do dragons feel about being outnumbered by pathetic mortals 100,000 to 1, some of which have incredible power beyond their right, all lust for gold and glory?

A creature with a long life span would probably be more careful. To most monsters, adventurers are monsters, dragons above all else. Do dragons lose sleep about the fact that out of the masses of weak and inferior humans, some have high levels and great power. Do they fear organized adventuring party's slaying them for glory or advancement, stealing their treasure and eggs, their very hides, all in their lust for fleeting power.

Even if a dragon can beat 99 out of 100 adventuring party, that just means if they fight 100 such groups they die, and the adventurers keep coming.

Alternatively, are dragons just too egotistical and most of them are completely surprised and ashamed when slain?

This again asks the question of "how many casters?"

In the tippyverse, dragons are pretty low power compared to humanoids (at least, stock vanilla dragons are).

But I imagine in a setting more approximating a medieval civilization, there may be millions of humanoids, but they are discoordinated, spread out, fighting with each other, and without magic take weeks or months to even communicate with one another. You wouldn't be likely to see more than a few hundred rally against you at one time (and most of those are unskilled commoners: too low a challenge to add xp to the dragon's fight if it were a PC).

How do they feel being outnumbered 10,000 to 1? Probably about how you and I feel when we look into an insect hive. Disgusted, unnerved, and slightly motivated to burn it all down with fire.

The risk of the hive sending out its warrior units to sting you to death for attacking the hive is part of why we avoid immediate confrontation, if possible.

[martixy]

Ah, but are dragons even mortal? Outsiders can be slain as well.

I honestly like to use the Stargate Goa'uld psychology with dragons;

a) They are.
b) That's.... brilliant!

[Andreaz]

Oh, man, dragons are so much...

On alignment and general behavior: I always treated npc alignments as descriptions of the typical member, no tears dropped for changing that value on a dragon's sheet.
That said, it's a bit hard to treat a dragon as "typical" given their relative rarity. All in all my groups still see more dragons closer to the standard than deviants.
I overall go somewhat with the color coding. True Dragons, regardless of alignment or motive of empathy, are nigh-immortal creatures of miraculous power, unmatched intelligence and magical wonder. At the same time few can display the same ferocity, hunger and raw explosive strength that they do. They are monsters, they fit the original meaning of "awesome" and they know it.


Evil dragons barely acknowledge the existence of anyone not revering, antagonizing or despairing over them. If you don't fit in one of those sets you're probably food.
Good dragons do so differently, of course, but even the kindest and most relatable dragons will still find some difficulty to connect. All these other creatures show some fantastic creativity, capacity for heroism and destruction! With such short lives, though, it'll be hard to relate after a century or two.

You know how humans in the real world have this tendency to trust anecdotal evidence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence)? That's the norm for just about every living creature, so i'm extending it to dragons.

Now imagine a couple dragons centuries old... one isolated and one integrated with the puny people's societies.
The former has little "common sense" knowledge of them, and the few who had meaningful encounters with them are probably eskewed towards assuming similar characteristics from other people. The latter will more naturally veer towards assuming the average. After all once you're that old the anecdotal converges to the average (big samples!).

When you're as big as a dragon it's no surprise you see a human like the human sees a crow. Except smarter. (look! they are congregating! is that... are they behaving within a hierarchy? :O)


Going a bit beyond alignment but still in general behavior, the color coding gets more interesting, but I don't go too much for the standard draconomicon 3.5 dragon behavior.

Blues are creatures of the sky, almost never landing, and tint their vanity with discipline and scholarly proclivities. Probably the chromatic dragon most likely to band together, but only as long as there is unity of purpose.
Greens are highly territorial, curious and sneaky, like a big panthera.
Whites are bestial, feral, simplistic, more like a cunning beast (and indeed they aren't much smarter than a human normally is).
Blacks are the devious counterparts to the base monsters that whites are, skewing their behaviour towards more cruelty and sadism.
Reds are the most "iconic", and it shows. Vainer, Scarier, Greedier, Hungrier, Smarter. Daft Punk would be proud. The arrogance shows. If you can use it against him before he can react he's probably ****ed. Good luck with that though.


Dragons and adventurers are all over the place for me. One black dragon captured the prince and asked for a hefty ransom, another is keeping drow from invading because it's really fun to break their haughty ****boys and turn their rotting corpses as zombies against the matriarchs.

One red got really pissed at some dwarf that had the GALL to not flee or pass out in fear of him when he flew high up in the sky and decided to blow up a village for it (seriously, it's bad etiquette to not be scared of a dragon, don't be uncouth like those paladins). Another is a benevolent dictator living as the god-king of a small city-state (do not touch his treasu...I mean his subjects).

In the span of two campaigns we had a blue living in a major port city under the guise of a politically involved merchant, enjoying decades of power plays and scheming in her beloved city, and the other had a pet rider for whom he fell in love, spending the bloodthirsty amazon's lifespan raiding the countryside...

[atemu1234]

Unless your fantasy setting is bigger than real world Earth

In standard D&D, it is.

[NontheistCleric]

Got a page number?

Page 64. Under Mortal Hunter.

[Pleh]

Page 64. Under Mortal Hunter.

Ah. I will point out that this definition limits itself to "the purposes of this prestige class." The author probably didn't intend this to be a universal rule on which creatures could or couldn't be immortal.

The exclusion of outsiders, constructs, and undead all seem obvious, but why are fey immortal? Even when they must eat, sleep, and breathe?

The immortality of the fey seems an arbitrary inclusion to me, so a houserule to include the Dragonblooded type as immortal as well seems very justifiable so long as the setting allows.

[Psyren]

I'm guessing they define mortal as "can die of natural causes" rather than simply "can die." For example, Gods can be killed (by other gods, lack of worship, artifacts, Snarl-like entities and so on), but don't die on their own, so they are considered "immortal."

[tedcahill2]

If dragons are just dragons, with no colors to distinguish them, how do you know what abilities they have? What element is their breath weapon, what spell-like abilities do they have, etc.?

Dragon is not a species, it's a genus (genus might be the wrong word). Point is, a rattlesnake is not a boa constrictor the same way a blue dragon is not a red dragon. They are all dragons, with various sub-species like drakes and wyverns, but their coloring and abilities is what differentiates one dragon from another.

Similarly, a bronze dragon will never produce offspring with a copper dragon the same way a coral snake won't procreate with a cobra.

They aren't the same creatures even if they share a lot of physical similarities.

[Pleh]

I'm guessing they define mortal as "can die of natural causes" rather than simply "can die." For example, Gods can be killed (by other gods, lack of worship, artifacts, Snarl-like entities and so on), but don't die on their own, so they are considered "immortal."

Oh, sure, but I feel like the argument that fey live forever and dragons only *nearly* do is a ruling that could quite easily be changed with the right setting. Some worlds could view them both as immortal, some could view neither as immortal. Others could reverse their respective status.

I'm just saying it's a weak default, not that it isn't the technical default.

Edit: especially since it only really seems to matter to mortal hunters to begin with.

[BearonVonMu]

I like dragons to be the absolute apex predator of the Prime material plane. They might have some competition from groups or bands of creatures, but in a one-on-one contest, they are almost certainly the kings of the land.
I like my dragons to be filled with and have mastery over magic. If there is going to be a new or unusual form of magic, it came from a dragon messing around (like Maui, you're welcome) or trying to investigate an oddity of magical law.
I like my dragons to have strong personalities, studies in extremes. They will not be wishy-washy or neutral, but either brash or sly, inquisitive or demanding, hidden in plain sight or the king of the mountain.
I like my dragons to be memorable, sometimes part of a landscape, not to be fought, and sometimes they stand as one of the biggest, most dangerous encounters of the campaign.

[NontheistCleric]

Ah. I will point out that this definition limits itself to "the purposes of this prestige class." The author probably didn't intend this to be a universal rule on which creatures could or couldn't be immortal.

The exclusion of outsiders, constructs, and undead all seem obvious, but why are fey immortal? Even when they must eat, sleep, and breathe?

The immortality of the fey seems an arbitrary inclusion to me, so a houserule to include the Dragonblooded type as immortal as well seems very justifiable so long as the setting allows.

I'm don't claim it is valid or invalid, just that that is the only definition of mortal by RAW, although there are other abilities (e.g. Mortalbane) that use slightly different parameters but don't specifically say that those define 'mortal'.

[KillianHawkeye]

In this world, it's entirely plausible for something to be born with an innately 'evil' outlook. As in, desires to destroy it's host or environment without qualm. This may be something relative, as these creatures are pretty typically what D&D defines as 'mindless', but it nonetheless poses the question - can something be born 'good' or 'evil'? D&D answers this definitively - yes.

Yeah, I know, but my whole point was that I'd prefer for dragons to not fall into that category.


How can they have adult-level intelligence and wisdom if they don't even know the difference between right and wrong? How are they going to scheme against heroes and manipulate minions when they cannot comprehend motivation and personal values? It makes no sense. You're still looking at young dragons like they're supposed to be children, but they're not.

There is no reason that dragons have to be born as scheming manipulators. There's no reason they can't be born naive. Intelligence and Wisdom represent more than that. They can still learn quickly from bad parenting, and become the monsters you want them to be, without being born that way.

And again, I know that the books say that they are born that way, I am merely stating my preference and wishing for something different because the official way is boring.


You can still have those stories in a world where most red dragons are dangerous and evil.

Can you? If the PCs attack a red dragon on sight and never stop to question its motives or listen to what it has to say, how can you have a story where the dragon is anything but a monster--a combat challenge only there to be beaten? You can't expect your players to accept a new status quo if you don't actually change the status quo.



I honestly like to use the Stargate Goa'uld psychology with dragons; the game makes it clear that use of aligned spells has an affect on your alignment and arguably that implies your psychological state (the Goa'uld experienced the same effect with technomagic). The dragons that give in to power lust from their magical prowess become almost irredeemably evil and imprint their genetic knowledge (and corruption) onto their descendents.

This leaves room for dramatic tension. Evil dragons, while absolutely evil, are still victims of their own power seeking self mutilation. We can even say this twisting of their state of being even affects them physically (changing the appearance of their scales).

After all, if dark magic seduced and then twisted them into this state, then perhaps the right magic could save them from it.

Now we can enter the infrequently explored RPG drama of whether it is better to kill or brainwash an unrepentantly evil creature. We still have plenty of room to spare for evil dragons to pull a double fake out pretending to be good (or pretending to seek atonement OR *actually* wishing to escape their evil nature...) only to betray the party (... demonstrating their helplessness against the magic that compels their sadistic motivations). Complex enough for you?

Good dragons are not genetically different from evil ones; they only never gave in to the Dark Side(TM) and the magic they learned for good has made their physical and psychological pattern stand out from the twisted chromatic dragons.

Indeed, the concept of the color coding might be a humanoid concept foreign to the dragons.

Well I am a huge Stargate nerd, so I like this analogy. This could be a good setup, but it kinda seems like just a way to reinforce the common expectations unless more is done to redesign dragons, perhaps making their color more dependent on their stats rather than their stats depending on their color?

One thing that I'm curious about is if dragons actually have some kind of racial memory. Is that ever established in the D&D canon, or did you also appropriate that from the Goa'uld?

I guess the best way to have "my dragons are different" is to redesign them from the ground up anyway. Maybe I'll have to just do that the next time I create a new campaign setting.

[Psyren]

Can you? If the PCs attack a red dragon on sight and never stop to question its motives or listen to what it has to say, how can you have a story where the dragon is anything but a monster--a combat challenge only there to be beaten? You can't expect your players to accept a new status quo if you don't actually change the status quo.


So in your games, the party never has a reason to listen to anything a villain has to say before whipping out their swords? Them being a villain does not preclude them needing to be listened to, it just means the party needs to be wary. Crafting a story where a blackhearted villain has the information the party needs (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0816.html) is really not difficult.

Also, even putting morality aside, attacking a red dragon on sight is a great way to end up dead.

[Pleh]

One thing that I'm curious about is if dragons actually have some kind of racial memory. Is that ever established in the D&D canon, or did you also appropriate that from the Goa'uld?

Merely appropriated, to my knowledge, but I'll point out that it fits thematically so well that neither one of us is really sure it isn't hiding somewhere in one of the many draconic sources out there.

[Celestia]

There is no reason that dragons have to be born as scheming manipulators. There's no reason they can't be born naive. Intelligence and Wisdom represent more than that. They can still learn quickly from bad parenting, and become the monsters you want them to be, without being born that way.

And again, I know that the books say that they are born that way, I am merely stating my preference and wishing for something different because the official way is boring.
So, the weird, alien biology of being born with fully formed minds is boring, but the literally the same reproduction as every other living thing isn't? Doesn't that seem backwards to you?

[atemu1234]

So, the weird, alien biology of being born with fully formed minds is boring, but the literally the same reproduction as every other living thing isn't? Doesn't that seem backwards to you?

TBH this entire argument is going to go absolutely nowhere. The perspectives on this are clearly "You're simulating murdering babies!" or "These are fully aware, sentient creatures who are born evil, by the rules."

Neither of these opinions are going to change.

[KillianHawkeye]

So, the weird, alien biology of being born with fully formed minds is boring, but the literally the same reproduction as every other living thing isn't? Doesn't that seem backwards to you?

I'm saying it's a slightly interesting idea with profoundly boring results, because it's an idea that doesn't lead anywhere.

Nobody takes the time to think about it during the actual game unless you encounter a dragon that just hatched from its egg, and in that case it does nothing but limit what interactions are possible. Finding some baby dragons and raising them as your pets is an idea a lot of players would be interested in. Finding a baby dragon and just killing it because it's already determined to be a one-dimensional villain is something that could be done with dragons at any other age as well. You've taken an interesting situation and dumbed it down to an everyday combat encounter.

Dragons are smart and cunning. They learn quickly. They don't NEED to be pre-programmed from birth with an inherited personality.

[zergling.exe]

Here's what the Draconomicon says about inherent memory:
A newly hatched dragon emerges from its egg cramped and sodden. After about an hour, it is ready to fly, fight, and reason. It inherits a considerable body of practical knowledge from its parents, though such inherent knowledge often lies buried in the wyrmling’s memory, unnoticed and unused until it is needed.

Draconomicon also has a side-bar on page 13 about rearing a dragon, which actually covers making the dragon your "pet".

[Karl Aegis]

I like my dragons dead. It's a race to see if you can kill them in the ages they are killable, have a sizable hoard and have enough weight on them to be worth killing. Dragon scales are useful for crafting armor and dragon meat is delicious if you cook it right. A delicacy. Many people would pay top dollar to get their hands on a dish containing dragon.

I also have dragons as enemies of divinity and their servants. There is a reason deities reside on the outer planes away from the dragons. Mortals were created so that one day local deities could be created on planets on the Material Plane after the dragons had gone extinct. So that deities could play their games versus each other without non-divine players flipping their tables.

So, yeah. I see one of those I kill it.

[Pleh]

Here's what the Draconomicon says about inherent memory:

Neato, so inherent memory is RAW, even if only so far as "how to be a dragon". Goa'uld variety goes into specific memory, which the draconomicon seems more vague about, so again, it's not changing RAW to use Goa'uld psychology, just taking gentle interpretive liberty.

[Thurbane]

Ah. I will point out that this definition limits itself to "the purposes of this prestige class." The author probably didn't intend this to be a universal rule on which creatures could or couldn't be immortal.

The exclusion of outsiders, constructs, and undead all seem obvious, but why are fey immortal? Even when they must eat, sleep, and breathe?

The immortality of the fey seems an arbitrary inclusion to me, so a houserule to include the Dragonblooded type as immortal as well seems very justifiable so long as the setting allows.

I discussed this in a thread recently: Immortality? (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?528122)

Immortality isn't very well defined in 3.5. The best definition is probably in the monster entry for the Silithar in lords of Madness.


Immortality (Ex): A silthilar does not age, nor can it be harmed by effects that cause magical aging.

...since other creatures lack this ability, it could be construed that they are not immortal.

[Guizonde]

ideally, like karl aegis, very dead. mounted/stuffed and over a mantelpiece optional. i hate the bloody overgrown lizards. brown, blue, red, hot-pink polka dots, they're the same as an elf to me, one barbecue away from a tasty chunk of xp.

now, to be fair, if i'm sitting and i can tell that i'm sitting on a dragon, it's too small for me. first pathfinder session we did the paladin and my inquisitor scouted out a cave. paladin trips on a stalagmite formation. we feel moist wind, and oh look, theresabloodyhugedragonheadstaringusdownandgrinnin gRUNAWAY!! iirc, that bloody thing was over 50m long, and wide enough to comfortably seat 50 children and 7 adults on its back (we parlayed for safe passage).

that is a dragon. we saw it fly when we were on a 3-mast battleship. it took down a sea serpent that was already twice as long as the ship and was easily twice as big as said dragon meal.

despite my hatred of the things, size + potency did mean i didn't immediately attack it. that thing can't be taken down by a cheesed out level 1 party. or level 2. hell, a level 5 party barely managed to take down a blue drake (thing was 3m long, 2m tall, and spat electricity), in the end though, they are allergic to masonry. but you see a cattle-sized lizard, you think "i can frag it".

[BWR]

In general I'm fine with D&D dragons being D&D dragons. I can certainly appreciate variety and novelty when it comes to individual worlds, but it isn't necessary.
What I really like is for my dragons to act smart and civilized. They are all immensely smart and long-lived, so why does almost every setting have them hang around in caves with piles of treasure? No proper buildings or furniture or technology or anything, just really smart beings that hang out in caves waiting for someone to come and kill them and steal their stuff.

For all the faults of the series, the DragonMage trilogy set in Mystara did introduce the concept of a proper society of dragons with all the trappings. They also kept the existence of the dragon society secret from the lesser races so they wouldn't be bothered.
The Dragonstar setting has them as the ruling caste in an interstellar empire. Just try hunting and killing a dragon in this setting.

[Pleh]

I discussed this in a thread recently: Immortality? (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?528122)

Immortality isn't very well defined in 3.5. The best definition is probably in the monster entry for the Silithar in lords of Madness.

...since other creatures lack this ability, it could be construed that they are not immortal.

Wow. So RAW would suggest that fey type creatures are neither mortal nor immortal? That is to say, passage of time affects them (because they are not immortal), but mortal hunters can't use their specialized attacks against them (because they are not mortal).

Quirks of various splat books not referencing one another in construction, I suppose.

[Psyren]

I'm saying it's a slightly interesting idea with profoundly boring results, because it's an idea that doesn't lead anywhere.

Nobody takes the time to think about it during the actual game unless you encounter a dragon that just hatched from its egg, and in that case it does nothing but limit what interactions are possible. Finding some baby dragons and raising them as your pets is an idea a lot of players would be interested in. Finding a baby dragon and just killing it because it's already determined to be a one-dimensional villain is something that could be done with dragons at any other age as well. You've taken an interesting situation and dumbed it down to an everyday combat encounter.

Dragons are smart and cunning. They learn quickly. They don't NEED to be pre-programmed from birth with an inherited personality.

Again, you're conflating "born evil" (or even "born with evil tendencies") with "needing to be killed on sight" - yet straight-facedly accusing everyone else's games of being one-dimensional. It's hypocritical.

[DMVerdandi]

Kind of repeating myself from another site, but oh well.

I think it would be dope to have elves and dragons be the same creature, or rather elves be something like were-dragons. Dragons being the bestial form of elemental nature spirits. I suppose you could simply roll them together into one race/class/thing, as Draconians or just Dragons.

So Dragons would be a long lived race of shape shifting nature spirits(fae) that have a form that resembles man and beast.Altered form wouldn't just be a minor trick they do, or something because they find being too big a problem, it would be apart of the nature of the creature. The bestial form that they possess, colloquially called dragons, forsakes the temperance and humility of their mammalian form, and more resembles that of a gigantic winged lizard...yadda yadda.


In their "Eldr"'/"Alfr" form they have the pointy ears, eyes that are the same color as their element and hair, are graceful and regal, ideal humanoids really, but they ARE nature spirits. And that comes with the pride of being something that is part of the world itself, so they are sometimes considered haughty, fickle, and dynamic (in so much as the element they are tied to is characterized as.)
Que super-senses, strength, spell casting that progresses with age.

They have a hybrid form, that essentially looks like a dragon born or half dragon. Increased natural armor, strength, bite and claw attack, wings, breath attack, etc.

Then their Dragon form. HERE is where I would differ. For this, I would max out size at huge. Only epic and divine would be those insanely gigantic dragons. I would prefer them to be more small and compact at their largest. Only dragons past the age of 1000 could be that big.





Influences would be from like, Völsungsaga as far as Fafnir being the archetypical dragon(and being a dwarf, *cough* dark elf), and REALLY heavy influence from Capcom's Breath of Fire Series. The dragon race is like the primary driver of this idea, really. Smidgeon from changeling in so far as making dragons a type of faerie.

That is how I like my dragons.


How would I do it in 3.5?
-Make 20 levels of dragon. As a racial class, the primary form is that of an elf.

-Use spirit shaman as framework for spellcasting. Spirit shaman caster progression and Spells Retrieved; However, they can retrieve spells from all lists, and cast them as arcane spells.

-Alter form once per day starting at level 1, and then 1 extra time every 3rd level starting at level 3.
Alter form allows you to transform into either full dragon form, or a hybrid form. At level 15, dragon can use alter form at will.

-HD is D12.

-all simple and martial weapon proficiencies, No armor proficiencies, low BAB.

-Hybrid form allows you to gain all the EX and SU abilities, but you only have them as a medium sized dragon.

-Dragonfire adept skills as class skills. 6 + Int

-Can trade in spell retrieved slot for a draconic invocation, breath effect, or draconic aura for the price of 10 xp X minimum level. To change it back to a spell slot, the same price must be payed.

-At first level, then every 2 levels, gains bonus feat that can be used for either draconic feats, metabreath feats, meta magic feats, or monster feats.

-LA+2. Cannot be bought off.

[TheBrassDuke]

So how do you like your dragons?

Preferably fertile.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I went on a bit of a dragon kick in my younger years, and never quite got off of it. (You might have guessed that if you look at my username.) I've read about a huge variety of dragons in folklore, and a wider variety of dragons in fantasy literature. Just about anything is fine.
I like making dragons a higher order of being. In many traditions, dragons are a literary manifestation of the power of nature—power to help humanity (common in the East), power to harm them (common in the West), or just power on its own. Following in that tradition, I like to have dragons as a fundamental part of the natural world, perhaps having existed longer than the gods (or at least the gods that are alive today). Like the natural world, they have power incomprehensible to most mortals and can wipe out most people or even settlements with ease. They are fearsome. They are aloof. They are insurmountable...or so they seem, at least. Like the natural world, with enough work and study, the dragons can be conquered or tamed by humanity. And like the natural world, as civilization advances, they are pushed to more and more distant corners of the world.

Random Replies:


Size: I don't like the idea of tiny, small or medium dragons. Dragon size should start at large, at least if you want the party to fight the dragon. I think the Giant once commented on not liking the idea of fighting wyrmlings as they're basically children. I just dislike that idea as wyrmlings aren't epic enough to battle.
Putting aside how friendly baby dragons are a common enough fantasy trope that Dungeons and "Animated Kitchen Sink" Dragons basically needs to support them, I would think that the problems of "I don't like little dragons" and "I don't want to have the party fight dragon kids" would cancel each other out.



...the color themed breath weapons go (fire stays, and there's various poisons that fit)...
Fun fact: Until relatively recently, poisonous dragons were more common in folklore than fire-breathing ones.



In standard D&D, it is.
I'm not sure this is true. It seems like most D&D-world continents are merely hundreds of miles across, not thousands.


Morality and alignment:


I personally dislike having any mortal creature be born with a pre-determined alignment. That's fine for outsiders, who are immortal embodiments of their alignment and literally sprout fully-formed from the fabric of their home planes, but with normal living creatures it just makes it too easy to write off entire races and creature types as automatically okay to murder.
Quoted for truth. Though I personally like giving even outsiders the option of changing their mind, if they care enough to undergo introspection.

Can you? If the PCs attack a red dragon on sight and never stop to question its motives or listen to what it has to say, how can you have a story where the dragon is anything but a monster--a combat challenge only there to be beaten? You can't expect your players to accept a new status quo if you don't actually change the status quo.
Also quoted for truth. I've seen too many people who think that slapping a "Usually" in front of various humanoids' evil alignments means that the nasty implications of D&D's alignment system are nonexistent.



So in your games, the party never has a reason to listen to anything a villain has to say before whipping out their swords?
In the campaigns I play, they rarely have anything to say. In the campaigns I run, players rarely bother to wait. Such is the status quo.


Silliness:


If you're gonna name your dragon don't name them after their color!
glances at own username
glances at own avatar
glances at own username again
I can't tell if I should be annoyed at this or not.



[food jokes]
Hey, that's offensive! Not to mention tasteless.



I like my dragons dead.

i hate the bloody overgrown lizards.
Okay, that's beyond offensive. What century do you think this is? You can't just say things like that unless you're Donald Trump or something!



Preferably fertile.
...I don't know what this is, but I think I need to file a restraining order.



If I'm a classic evil chromatic avaricious mastermind, I'm not sure what would be more hilarious: making adventurers think I'm the color of dragon which is vulnerable to an element I'm immune to, or just making myself look like a disgusting goody-two-claws metallic (of the same breath weapon type) while I'm raiding and pillaging.
The latter.
...Or so I hear?

[TheBrassDuke]

...I don't know what this is, but I think I need to file a restraining order.

One of my oldest characters--whose name I've chosen for my Username--is the offspring of a Dragon and Human.

If Lyria was not fertile, then Brass wouldn't have been born; neither would his two sisters or brother (and two half-brothers). Our campaign world would suck without that family.

[KillianHawkeye]

Again, you're conflating "born evil" (or even "born with evil tendencies") with "needing to be killed on sight" - yet straight-facedly accusing everyone else's games of being one-dimensional. It's hypocritical.

I'm not "conflating" anything. I'm saying that A leads to B through the process of stereotyping and generalization. It can be a real problem (in the real world, even).

Also, I did not call anyone's games one-dimensional. I called color-coded dragons one-dimensional, because they usually are. What else would you call a villain who was born five minutes ago? It doesn't have a story. It's just being Evil for Evil's sake, and a convenient excuse for heroes to kill it.

Please refrain from taking my posts as personal attacks in the future. :smallannoyed::smallsigh:

[Psyren]

I'm not "conflating" anything. I'm saying that A leads to B through the process of stereotyping and generalization. It can be a real problem (in the real world, even).

1) No one in the real world is born evil. This is fantasy we're talking about.
2) Even if they were, A does not lead to B (killing on sight), no matter how often you keep asserting it. If it does, the problem lies with your PCs, not with the world.



Please refrain from taking my posts as personal attacks in the future. :smallannoyed::smallsigh:

I'm not taking anything personally, I'm just baffled. :smallconfused:

[KillianHawkeye]

I guess I'm just not getting through to you, but I don't care and we should just drop it. I stated my opinion, then tried to explain it with reasons (which are real even if you say they're not), nothing more.

[Karl Aegis]

So you found a dragon hatching. Your options so far are:

Kill it
Kidnap it
Leave it alone

Since dragons are guaranteed to have extremely rich parents your best bet is to kidnap it. From here you can try to ransom it back to its parents, use it as bait to ambush the parents, or, uh, enslave it as a pet, I guess (why??). If those options don't work out you can still convert it into at least part of a suit of armor and a delicious meal (it's like lamb insofar that it is a baby you are eating).

If, uh, enslaving it is a story you, uh, want to play out, let me, um, remind you that considerably less people ADVENTURERS are willing to steal your pet wyvern and sell off its parts to the highest bidder.

Because Wyvern parts are less valuable.

And Wyvern Mages are cooler than dragons while fulfilling the same role.

[Psyren]

I'm still not sure how "there are responses to encountering intelligent evil creatures beyond immediately rolling initiative" is all that complex a concept, but whatever.


In the campaigns I play, they rarely have anything to say. In the campaigns I run, players rarely bother to wait. Such is the status quo.

The status quo comes from these two being related.

[Thurbane]

Wow. So RAW would suggest that fey type creatures are neither mortal nor immortal? That is to say, passage of time affects them (because they are not immortal), but mortal hunters can't use their specialized attacks against them (because they are not mortal).

Quirks of various splat books not referencing one another in construction, I suppose.

Worth noting that some Fey (Kiloren, Dusklings) have age categories. Kiloren do not have a maximum age (they only ever reach old), whereas Dusklings have a maximum age. So not all fey are biologically immortal.

I guess it's totally at the DMs discretion whether fey without age categories live forever, or not.

[Pleh]

Hey, that's offensive! Not to mention tasteless.

Not if you season them right.

[atemu1234]

Preferably fertile.

Found the scalie

[GreatKaiserNui]

I prefer dragons that suddenly appear after you hoard too much gold, or emerge from large quantities of gold fully formed.

Totally devoted to the vice of greed, their health and power is directly correlated with their horde.

In my world, to become a banker you need to learn to negotiate with your dragons.

[Nifft]

I did one setting where dragons were the bankers.

They gave convenient paper Promissory Notes in trade for gold, which they took and sat upon (the reason for this was never revealed).

Everyone within a day's flight of that dragon's lair would accept their Promissory Notes, or get eaten. Usually a dragon's notes would be accepted even further out if there was anything of value within the enforced flight-area, or if the dragon were old enough to have established a reputation (most were).

Dragon's lairs were very secure -- comparable to modern bank vaults. Offices in nearby cities would handle transactions on the dragon's behalf.

== == ==

I did a different setting where dragons were extensions of nature.

If a Blue dragon laired in a volcanic mountain range, then within 5 years that dragon would turn Red. The dragon's color was an expression of his or her environment -- this makes even more sense in 5e where "environment effects" and "lair effects" are specific things.

Elves were similar, but they didn't change over time -- they were just assigned a sub-race based on their place of birth. Wood Elves are elves who were born in the woods; Sea Elves are elves who were born on or under the sea; etc.

[Dimers]

I prefer dragons that suddenly appear after you hoard too much gold, or emerge from large quantities of gold fully formed.

Abiogenesis! Very fitting for a fantasy-medieval world.

@OP: Dragons should be few and far between (one or two in a twenty-level campaign is fine), and each should be a very thoroughly-thought-out character with motivations and plans and preferences. That is to say, I like my dragons rare and well-done.

[TheBrassDuke]

Found the scalie

Lol...what?

[GreatWyrmGold]

1) No one in the real world is born evil. This is fantasy we're talking about.
I've heard too many theoretically-educated First-World people talk about how certain ethnic/religious groups are evil and out to destroy everything good to think you could possibly misunderstand Killian. Stereotyping and generalization leading to horrifying and objectively ridiculous conclusions (whether it's "they're evil," "they're inferior," or just "they're different enough that there's no reason to try understanding them"), with equally horrifying and ridiculous results.
If D&D depicted that sort of stupidity, it would be one thing. But it doesn't—it unintentionally endorses it by simply having it be right. There are many kinds of intelligent creatures which are inherently evil (or good, which comes with its own set of unfortunate implications), often without so much as a veneer of supernatural justification. The "usually chaotic evil" or whatnot races are little better; while a goblin/orc/ogre/etc raised in proper civilized culture can be as good as any elf, just about anyone raised in that despicable, savage culture is going to be evil.

There's the argument that you need these predefined villainous species in a fantasy RPG, for a nice easy antagonist. I don't buy it. Even if, for some reason, you do need to paint entire species as antagonistic for lazy adventure-writing, there are better ways to do it. Not to Godwin's Law it up, but look at the Nazis. Everyone agrees that they were evil; a WWII/early-Cold-War urban fantasy campaign could easily set Nazi occultists as the same kind of simple evil force that goblins and giants and dragons and such often get used for in fantasy. Or look at how medieval Europeans viewed vikings and Mongols and Muslims. Or if a professional setting designer can't be bothered, just make goblins &c low-level demons to clearly differentiate them from the default "people who look different" stance used (for better or for worse) across fantasy literature.

...Sorry for the rant. This is one of my pet peeves.


I'm still not sure how "there are responses to encountering intelligent evil creatures beyond immediately rolling initiative" is all that complex a concept, but whatever.
Neither am I, yet that seems to be the default in most fantasy media. Especially tabletop RPGs. (I've played more video games which offer you the choice of kill/mercy than adventures designed to offer you such a choice, let alone designed to let you recognize that choice. Kind of embarrassing, given how much tabletop RPGs have riding on the whole "play however you like" thing...)


The status quo comes from these two being related.
...What's this supposed to mean? Are you saying that the fact that no one cares causes no one to bother? Because that's not the clearest way to make that point.




Lol...what?
Like furries, but for reptiles. (It's kinda like my restraining-order joke, except less thought-out.)

[KillianHawkeye]

Stereotyping and generalization leading to horrifying and objectively ridiculous conclusions (whether it's "they're evil," "they're inferior," or just "they're different enough that there's no reason to try understanding them"), with equally horrifying and ridiculous results.
If D&D depicted that sort of stupidity, it would be one thing. But it doesn't—it unintentionally endorses it by simply having it be right.

At least SOMEBODY gets it! :smallsmile::smallsmile:

[FreddyNoNose]

Lions are apex predators and humans can kill them easily. Lions do not know this. Do dragons know this?

It's scary for humans to try to figure out whether a dragon is an aloof curiosity, a terrifying man-eater, or a noble protector. but how do dragons feel about being outnumbered by pathetic mortals 100,000 to 1, some of which have incredible power beyond their right, all lust for gold and glory?

A creature with a long life span would probably be more careful. To most monsters, adventurers are monsters, dragons above all else. Do dragons lose sleep about the fact that out of the masses of weak and inferior humans, some have high levels and great power. Do they fear organized adventuring party's slaying them for glory or advancement, stealing their treasure and eggs, their very hides, all in their lust for fleeting power.

Even if a dragon can beat 99 out of 100 adventuring party, that just means if they fight 100 such groups they die, and the adventurers keep coming.

Alternatively, are dragons just too egotistical and most of them are completely surprised and ashamed when slain?

Perhaps dragons should band together and build castle dragon! 100 Dragons living in a castle build for them. Good luck adventurers taking on 100 dragons! Unless you are one of those narrative/powergaming games where you just beat them. You know, after your clever plan goes off well.

[ATHATH]

Shadowrun-style.

'Nuff said.

[BWR]

Perhaps dragons should band together and build castle dragon! 100 Dragons living in a castle build for them. Good luck adventurers taking on 100 dragons! Unless you are one of those narrative/powergaming games where you just beat them. You know, after your clever plan goes off well.

Already (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonstar)done (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Wyrms).

[Doorhandle]

I don't have anything against the color coding but I don't really have anything for it either.

With you on size: maybe even the wyrmlings are large-size?

What I would like are more "weird" dragons, like time dragons, brine dragons, pyroclastic dragons, ect, or possibly even stranger fare.

From a D&D balance perspectives it makes a lot of sense, but I wouldn't mind if dragons couldn't cast spells. I feel that being an airborne firebreathing dinosaur is enough.


Relatedly, dragons as "supermonsters" is a little played out; I wouldn't mind if it wasn't the case, but I don't mind it as it is...so long as they're beatable; the plot-armour of shadowrun dragons leaves a bad taste in my mouth.




I prefer dragons that suddenly appear after you hoard too much gold, or emerge from large quantities of gold fully formed.
That's quite appropriate, actually: Fafnir was driven to patricide by greed, and was transformed into a dragon by said greed.
There was another myth than involves a tiny lizard guarding a gold coin, that eventually grew to dragon size and raised the size of the gold-pile with it.

In my honest opinion, the one thing completely non-negotiable about dragons should be their hoard of gold.

[Dragonexx]

Just like this (http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=483328#483328)

[SorenKnight]

Medium rare.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Medium rare.
Joke's been made, it's still tasteless.

[Dragonexx]

Joke's been made, it's still tasteless.
Are you getting salty?

[Psyren]

I've heard too many theoretically-educated First-World people talk about how certain ethnic/religious groups are evil and out to destroy everything good to think you could possibly misunderstand Killian. Stereotyping and generalization leading to horrifying and objectively ridiculous conclusions (whether it's "they're evil," "they're inferior," or just "they're different enough that there's no reason to try understanding them"), with equally horrifying and ridiculous results.

"Evil dragons, therefore Nazis" is nothing more than an amalgam of False Equivalency and Slippery Slope.



Neither am I, yet that seems to be the default in most fantasy media. Especially tabletop RPGs.

It's the GM's responsibility to craft stories where whipping out your sword the minute you realize the being across from you is evil is not the best answer. Again, it's not difficult. And even if you want to avoid the Hannibal Lecture by removing anything interesting your chromatic dragons might have to say, there's still the fact that they're dragons and therefore that rolling initiative without any form of preparation is a great way to end up as chow.



...What's this supposed to mean? Are you saying that the fact that no one cares causes no one to bother? Because that's not the clearest way to make that point.

I meant the fact that your villains having nothing meaningful to say, and your players being conditioned to not bother listening to what villains have to say, are likely related.

[Thurbane]

It's the GM's responsibility to craft stories where whipping out your sword the minute you realize the being across from you is evil is not the best answer.

Just a counterpoint: it depends entirely on the game and group. There is no default "right" or "wrong" way to play D&D. I'm sure there are many groups where "kill it as soon as you know it's evil" is a perfectly legitimate style of play.

If the DM and players are enjoying the game, then they are certainly not playing it wrong.

[Nifft]

Just a counterpoint: it depends entirely on the game and group. There is no default "right" or "wrong" way to play D&D. I'm sure there are many groups where "kill it as soon as you know it's evil" is a perfectly legitimate style of play.

If the DM and players are enjoying the game, then they are certainly not playing it wrong.

I suspect that for every grizzled poster bemoaning "oh not evil blue dragons again", there are ten new players excitedly discovering that desert dragons are blue ("not green?") and they breathe lightning ("woah! it's like how static electricity can build up in dry climates? that's so original!").

The classics may not remain fresh to someone who's seen ~40 years of continuous gaming, but they're classics because they work well for each new generation of players.

[Psyren]

Just a counterpoint: it depends entirely on the game and group. There is no default "right" or "wrong" way to play D&D. I'm sure there are many groups where "kill it as soon as you know it's evil" is a perfectly legitimate style of play.

If the DM and players are enjoying the game, then they are certainly not playing it wrong.

Certainly - just pointing out that, if you're a GM who wants your players to behave or not behave a certain way, you're given the tools to make that happen.

[Jay R]

So you found a dragon hatching. Your options so far are:

Kill it
Kidnap it
Leave it alone

Since dragons are guaranteed to have extremely rich parents your best bet is to kidnap it. From here you can try to ransom it back to its parents, use it as bait to ambush the parents, or, uh, enslave it as a pet, I guess (why??). If those options don't work out you can still convert it into at least part of a suit of armor and a delicious meal (it's like lamb insofar that it is a baby you are eating).

Kidnap it to sell. I'm not in the long-term business of raising dragons, but I'll bet somebody is.

[Nifft]

Kidnap it to sell. I'm not in the long-term business of raising dragons, but I'll bet somebody is.

Mmm, yes, raising dragons, indeed.

Training in etiquette, dance, embroidery...

Now I'm picturing Moliere's School for Dragon Wives.

[GreatWyrmGold]

"Evil dragons, therefore Nazis" is nothing more than an amalgam of False Equivalency and Slippery Slope.
Nowhere did I say that writing a game world with such unfortunate implications causes/enables racism. (The reality of the situation is...complex.) I merely pointed out the existence of both unfortunate implications and racism. I didn't try to connect one to the other, and the only connection I see between the two in that post is that I had a segue between talking about one and the other.
I talked about racism because you claimed that stereotyping and generalization weren't problems in the real world, which was so shockingly stupid to say that I figured you couldn't have thought that through for a second. I talked about unfortunate implications because...well...unfortunate implications are precisely what was being talked about in that conversation?


It's the GM's responsibility to craft stories where whipping out your sword the minute you realize the being across from you is evil is not the best answer. Again, it's not difficult.
Not often attempted, either.
I'm not saying it's difficult; I have never said such! I have merely said that most D&D adventures, both official ones made by the designers and ones homebrewed by individual DMs, don't typically consider any options for resolving encounters other than combat. Similarly, most players don't consider alternate options. In practice, initiative tends to be rolled as soon as players and enemies notice one another (give or take some kind of generic battle cry). It's a frustrating cycle for those who want to see TRPGs do things that haven't been done better in VRPGs.


I meant the fact that your villains having nothing meaningful to say, and your players being conditioned to not bother listening to what villains have to say, are likely related.
*facepalm*
See, I would think that when I use the phrase "play in" for one statement and "run" for the other, people would realize that I'm not running the first. Ain't nothing I can do if I'm in front of the screen.
When I run games, and the players think to try talking things through, they can often resolve encounters nonviolently. But only one player I regularly game with ever thinks to try that. The possibility just doesn't occur to most of them. Which is frustrating.



Mmm, yes, raising dragons, indeed.
Training in etiquette, dance, embroidery...
Now I'm picturing Moliere's School for Dragon Wives.
I'd watch that anime.

[Pleh]

I'd watch that anime.

Anime? Clearly this is really a muppets episode.

More seriously, the game is rigged for combat. Most abilities heroes can gain just make them more efficient at violence. Nonviolent alternatives are clearly auxillary.

[GreatWyrmGold]

More seriously, the game is rigged for combat. Most abilities heroes can gain just make them more efficient at violence. Nonviolent alternatives are clearly auxillary.
Which is a problem I have with modern TRPG design in general. I don't think it's any secret that TRPGs are competing with VRPGs in the modern market...so why are they focusing on the area where the deficiencies of TRPGs are most clear, and their strengths most obscured?

[Nifft]

Mmm, yes, raising dragons, indeed.
Training in etiquette, dance, embroidery...
Now I'm picturing Moliere's School for Dragon Wives.


I'd watch that anime.

Maybe it could be a game: Dragon Antagonists Training & Education.

It's a D.A.T.E. simulator.

I bet Japan would buy it.

[Florian]

Which is a problem I have with modern TRPG design in general. I don't think it's any secret that TRPGs are competing with VRPGs in the modern market...so why are they focusing on the area where the deficiencies of TRPGs are most clear, and their strengths most obscured?

What do you think about the latest PF APs?

[Jay R]

Mmm, yes, raising dragons, indeed.

Training in etiquette, dance, embroidery...

Now I'm picturing Moliere's School for Dragon Wives.
I'd watch that anime.
Anime? Clearly this is really a muppets episode.

Game of Thrones, actually. The Mother of Dragons isn't animated, but her cute children are. She's even taught one of them a new dance in the last couple of episodes.

[Psyren]

Nowhere did I say that writing a game world with such unfortunate implications causes/enables racism. (The reality of the situation is...complex.) I merely pointed out the existence of both unfortunate implications and racism. I didn't try to connect one to the other, and the only connection I see between the two in that post is that I had a segue between talking about one and the other.

So if they're not connected, and you even admit they are not connected, what is the point of juxtaposing them?



I talked about racism because you claimed that stereotyping and generalization weren't problems in the real world, which was so shockingly stupid to say that I figured you couldn't have thought that through for a second.

That IS shockingly stupid, which is why I didn't and wouldn't say that :smallconfused: :smallconfused: :smallconfused:




Not often attempted, either.
I'm not saying it's difficult; I have never said such! I have merely said that most D&D adventures, both official ones made by the designers and ones homebrewed by individual DMs, don't typically consider any options for resolving encounters other than combat. Similarly, most players don't consider alternate options. In practice, initiative tends to be rolled as soon as players and enemies notice one another (give or take some kind of generic battle cry). It's a frustrating cycle for those who want to see TRPGs do things that haven't been done better in VRPGs.

More detail is given to the combat side of things because the non-combat resolutions are so broad. Nothing is stopping you from, instead of running a combat as written in an AP or a homebrew campaign, talking things out instead; the DMG even goes as far as to say that you should award the same amount of XP if the players overcome the challenge this way. But because those methods are so broad, devoting page real estate to something you can never do justice is always going to take a backseat to describing what the hobgoblin archers on the lookout tower are doing on their initiative or whatever.



*facepalm*
See, I would think that when I use the phrase "play in" for one statement and "run" for the other, people would realize that I'm not running the first. Ain't nothing I can do if I'm in front of the screen.
When I run games, and the players think to try talking things through, they can often resolve encounters nonviolently. But only one player I regularly game with ever thinks to try that. The possibility just doesn't occur to most of them. Which is frustrating.

My apologies for conflating the two scenarios but it doesn't change my underlying point - if your players OR the players you're playing with aren't thinking to try that, that's on them and on the GM who is crafting those encounters. The system itself has the necessary tools, but even perfect tools (which these aren't) are meaningless if they go unused.

[Pleh]

Which is a problem I have with modern TRPG design in general. I don't think it's any secret that TRPGs are competing with VRPGs in the modern market...so why are they focusing on the area where the deficiencies of TRPGs are most clear, and their strengths most obscured?

I disagree. Video games are superior at creating simulations, but TRPGs have no constraints.

You can't (simply) program just anything you can imagine, but you can imagine anything you want. Video games get one imagined picture and extrapolate that one picture really well with some minimal flexibility. TRPGs are limited only by your personal creativity.

[Jay R]

I disagree. Video games are superior at creating simulations, but TRPGs have no constraints.

You can't (simply) program just anything you can imagine, but you can imagine anything you want. Video games get one imagined picture and extrapolate that one picture really well with some minimal flexibility. TRPGs are limited only by your personal creativity.

TRPGs are also limited by the imagination of the players and DM. Maybe you "can imagine anything you want," but not everybody can. That's one reason why the game will never appeal to lots of people.

[Pleh]

TRPGs are also limited by the imagination of the players and DM. Maybe you "can imagine anything you want," but not everybody can. That's one reason why the game will never appeal to lots of people.

Is it maybe better to say, "some people don't want to imagine (in this context)"?

I see no inability in average person to do what TRPGs require. I see a great deal of lack of desire to do so.

Hence, it again seems to be less a problem with TRPGs and more just that games are generally just a matter of taste.

[GreatWyrmGold]

What do you think about the latest PF APs?
I'm not familiar with them. Or what "AP" stands for. I'd like to know more, especially if they bring more variety and focus to non-combat scenarios.
Even if they buck the trend, I maintain that the trend exists.



So if they're not connected, and you even admit they are not connected, what is the point of juxtaposing them?
They were replying to the same statement in different ways.


That IS shockingly stupid, which is why I didn't and wouldn't say that :smallconfused: :smallconfused: :smallconfused:
I'll buy that you didn't intend to say it, but it sure sounded like you said it.


More detail is given to the combat side of things because the non-combat resolutions are so broad. Nothing is stopping you from, instead of running a combat as written in an AP or a homebrew campaign, talking things out instead; the DMG even goes as far as to say that you should award the same amount of XP if the players overcome the challenge this way. But because those methods are so broad, devoting page real estate to something you can never do justice is always going to take a backseat to describing what the hobgoblin archers on the lookout tower are doing on their initiative or whatever.
I'm not sure what your point is. Are you claiming that the writers should get brownie points for not specifically saying "The players can't talk to the enemies"? (And there are published adventures which do try to lock the players out of nonviolent resolutions.)
Moreover, the simple existence of systems for nonviolent conflict resolution hardly suggests that combat isn't the intended method to resolve nearly all obstacles. Just look at them for a second—nine times out of ten, it's rolling a die and hoping your numbers are big enough, while the tenth time it's essentially trying to convince the DM that your actions succeed. And if you're wondering what else it could be, you need to play more video games. While many rely on a glorified version of the roll-high-enough system, or on a static conversation tree, many others try to do something interesting.
With conversation in specific, I'd like to recommend Last Word. It's built around a social conflict system which has statistics, special abilities, and strategic depth. Last Word is little more than a proof of concept, but it's one heck of a concept.


My apologies for conflating the two scenarios but it doesn't change my underlying point - if your players OR the players you're playing with aren't thinking to try that, that's on them and on the GM who is crafting those encounters. The system itself has the necessary tools, but even perfect tools (which these aren't) are meaningless if they go unused.
I'm not sure what your point is.



I disagree. Video games are superior at creating simulations, but TRPGs have no constraints.

You can't (simply) program just anything you can imagine, but you can imagine anything you want. Video games get one imagined picture and extrapolate that one picture really well with some minimal flexibility. TRPGs are limited only by your personal creativity.
I never said that TRPGs had no strengths, only that combat was not one of them.
And TRPGs aren't limited by my creativity so much as by the GM's creativity and permissiveness—and, in many cases, the creativity and effort of whoever wrote the adventure path. It's impossible to generalize about homebrew adventures, but published adventures—which tend to serve as inspirations and guides to many homebrew adventure designers—are fair game. Unfortunately, they aren't that impressive. Until recently, I've been playing one for D&D Next which took us through the occupation and recapture of either Flan or Molmaster; I was away at school most of the time, so I don't have the clearest picture of what was going on. However, from my long stints during Christmas and especially summer vacation, I got what I feel is an accurate sense of what the adventures were generally like; go to a place, fight some monsters (usually ones with whom negotiation was impossible, due to intelligence or language barriers or whatnot), find the boss, kill the boss, get the next plot hook, story bits scattered among the adventure (rarely more interactive than cutscenes). Do you have any idea how much Bethesda's fans would revolt if they published such a linear game? And remember, this is a published adventure, following Organized Play rules, so you can't pin it all on my DM.
Even Storm King's Thunder, which from what I've seen thus far is a much more open-ended adventure, with many potential plot threads that can be missed or followed depending on player actions, is highly constrained compared to the likes of Fallout, Skyrim, or The Witcher 3. Maybe it's a matter of TRPG designers needing to simplify adventures until they can run on an H. sapiens-brand hard drive with a tree-pulp hard drive, or maybe it's because video games dedicate resources specifically to making their games more flexible to facilitate different playstyles and/or replay value, or maybe it's just that TRPG designers don't have a reason to care. Does it matter? In this way, TRPGs are falling behind the electronic genres they inspired.



TRPGs are also limited by the imagination of the players and DM. Maybe you "can imagine anything you want," but not everybody can. That's one reason why the game will never appeal to lots of people.
I disagree. Everyone can imagine anything they want; they just want different things.

[Psyren]

I'll buy that you didn't intend to say it, but it sure sounded like you said it.

Mind quoting where I said that?



I'm not sure what your point is. Are you claiming that the writers should get brownie points for not specifically saying "The players can't talk to the enemies"? (And there are published adventures which do try to lock the players out of nonviolent resolutions.)
Moreover, the simple existence of systems for nonviolent conflict resolution hardly suggests that combat isn't the intended method to resolve nearly all obstacles. Just look at them for a second—nine times out of ten, it's rolling a die and hoping your numbers are big enough, while the tenth time it's essentially trying to convince the DM that your actions succeed. And if you're wondering what else it could be, you need to play more video games. While many rely on a glorified version of the roll-high-enough system, or on a static conversation tree, many others try to do something interesting.
With conversation in specific, I'd like to recommend Last Word. It's built around a social conflict system which has statistics, special abilities, and strategic depth. Last Word is little more than a proof of concept, but it's one heck of a concept.

1) Complex Skill Checks, Verbal Duels, and other such mechanics are things that exist.
2) I'm not the one with hangups about combat encounters involving dragons. If you are, the onus is on you to look into the tools that exist (such as the two I suggested.)
3) When APs lock you into combat with a dragon, generally it's because that specific dragon cannot be reasoned with, not because none of them can be.



I'm not sure what your point is.

If you want your games (or the people you play them with) to be better, make them better. Complaining on a forum will not accomplish that objective.

And incidentally, I responded to your survey about TTRPGs.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Mind quoting where I said that?
To focus on the relevant sentences:


I'm saying that A leads to B through the process of stereotyping and generalization. It can be a real problem (in the real world, even).
1) No one in the real world is born evil.
By not explaining what you meant by that, you accidentally imply a level of ignorance of racism which is disquieting. This is why I tend to be verbose, sesquipedalian, and precise—I don't like leaving ambiguity.


[quote]1) Complex Skill Checks, Verbal Duels, and other such mechanics are things that exist.
2) I'm not the one with hangups about combat encounters involving dragons. If you are, the onus is on you to look into the tools that exist (such as the two I suggested.)
3) When APs lock you into combat with a dragon, generally it's because that specific dragon cannot be reasoned with, not because none of them can be.
1a. Complex skill checks are just rolling a bunch of dice in a row. How is that better than
1b. Huh. In my time playing Pathfinder, nobody mentioned those mechanics. They're pretty good, too—while lacking some of what Last Word had, it also fixes some of its problems.
2. It's such a damn shame that the only tool in major RPGs that actually makes noncombat mechanics interesting is an obscure supplemental rule in a second-tier RPG. And that is a gorram shame, because it lends itself to scenarios which show off TRPGs' strengths far, far better than
3. Can't speak for dragons in specific, but if my 5e Organized Play DM is running things right, then the "Here be monsters, roll initiative" approach is the default, not the exception. (I haven't read the adventures in question, but we noticed some situations which blatantly were trying to lock players into combat, e.g. making sure the enemies only spoke an obscure language not common in the path's other enemies.)


If you want your games (or the people you play them with) to be better, make them better. Complaining on a forum will not accomplish that objective.
I try! But if you had read my Pelor-damned posts, you may have noticed something funny...

In the campaigns I run, players rarely bother to wait.
I can't force my players to care! I can only give them the option and hope beyond hope that they take it. Which they oh-so-rarely do. And while I'm on the subject:

Ain't nothing I can do if I'm in front of the screen.
Because that's where I spend most of my time—in front of the screen.

And to be blunt...it's a cycle. The TRPGs I play are boring, so I don't enjoy them, so I'm less likely to put extra effort in in hopes that the other players will cooperate and let them be more interesting, so they continue to be boring, and so on and so forth. I can't think of a single thing that would make me want to play D&D over Valkyria Chronicles, Baldur's Gate, or Cards Against Humanity...and that's a shame, because the TRPG medium is capable of things that other media aren't.

[Psyren]

To focus on the relevant sentences:

By not explaining what you meant by that, you accidentally imply a level of ignorance of racism which is disquieting. This is why I tend to be verbose, sesquipedalian, and precise—I don't like leaving ambiguity.

...What on earth did I "accidentally imply" by saying that nobody in the real world is born evil? Are you saying you believe they are? :smallconfused:



1a. Complex skill checks are just rolling a bunch of dice in a row. How is that better than
1b. Huh. In my time playing Pathfinder, nobody mentioned those mechanics. They're pretty good, too—while lacking some of what Last Word had, it also fixes some of its problems.
2. It's such a damn shame that the only tool in major RPGs that actually makes noncombat mechanics interesting is an obscure supplemental rule in a second-tier RPG. And that is a gorram shame, because it lends itself to scenarios which show off TRPGs' strengths far, far better than
3. Can't speak for dragons in specific, but if my 5e Organized Play DM is running things right, then the "Here be monsters, roll initiative" approach is the default, not the exception. (I haven't read the adventures in question, but we noticed some situations which blatantly were trying to lock players into combat, e.g. making sure the enemies only spoke an obscure language not common in the path's other enemies.)

However more prevalent you believe these tools should be (personally I don't really care), hopefully now you at least know they exist and can encourage your groups to use them if they ameliorate your problem.



I try! But if you had read my Pelor-damned posts, you may have noticed something funny...

I can't force my players to care! I can only give them the option and hope beyond hope that they take it. Which they oh-so-rarely do. And while I'm on the subject:

Because that's where I spend most of my time—in front of the screen.

Without being overly callous, that is a playgroup issue, not a system one. All the designers can do is give your group the tools - they can't (and shouldn't be expected to) force your fellow players to use them.

[GreatWyrmGold]

...What on earth did I "accidentally imply" by saying that nobody in the real world is born evil? Are you saying you believe they are? :smallconfused:
The phrasing made it seem like you were saying that the problems being brought up didn't exist in the real world. Which is obviously not what you meant.


However more prevalent you believe these tools should be (personally I don't really care), hopefully now you at least know they exist and can encourage your groups to use them if they ameliorate your problem.
When I'm playing Pathfinder. And the only Pathfinder DM I have access to is probably the hackiest-and-slashiest of the gamers I know. (Which is probably part of why I'd never heard of the verbal duel system.)
But I should stop complaining. Paizo did good.


Without being overly callous, that is a playgroup issue, not a system one. All the designers can do is give your group the tools - they can't (and shouldn't be expected to) force your fellow players to use them.
Alright, two things.
First off, most games don't give those tools. I mean, technically, they give tools, but the tools are terrible.
Second off, I was replying to you essentially telling me that I was only having those problems because I was too lazy to get up and solve them. (Which is wrong.) The fact that the problem is theoretically soluble does not mean it is as simple as you were implying.

[Psyren]

The phrasing made it seem like you were saying that the problems being brought up didn't exist in the real world. Which is obviously not what you meant.

You mean fantastic creatures that are typified by, among other things, being born with both intelligence and a moral outlook? I do have to wonder where else you've seen that.



Alright, two things.
First off, most games don't give those tools. I mean, technically, they give tools, but the tools are terrible.
Second off, I was replying to you essentially telling me that I was only having those problems because I was too lazy to get up and solve them. (Which is wrong.) The fact that the problem is theoretically soluble does not mean it is as simple as you were implying.

For the record, I'm not saying you are lazy. The folks you're playing with might be though. This is not a problem you can solve on your own, but I don't think it's that complicated even so (if they are willing, anyway, which it doesn't seem they are.)

[Florian]

I'm not familiar with them. Or what "AP" stands for. I'd like to know more, especially if they bring more variety and focus to non-combat scenarios.
Even if they buck the trend, I maintain that the trend exists.

AP stand for "Adventure Path", the ready-made campaigns for Pathfinder. They´re doing a lot that players can interact with the game environment beyond "I kill it" or "I cast dominate person on it". You actually should interact with the "bad guys" to find out what the story actually is about, a lot of them can be reasoned with and combat doesn't have to be to death. Jade Regent has you strike up a (romantic) relationship or friendly rivalry with your fellow travelers on a long treck, nearly any "named NPC" in Shattered Star can always be talked to, maybe reasoned with and some will turn into allies or potential new quest-givers, Shattered Skull has the players trying to gain a seat at an important council and later will be about shaping council politics, and so on.

[GreatWyrmGold]

AP stand for "Adventure Path", the ready-made campaigns for Pathfinder. They´re doing a lot that players can interact with the game environment beyond "I kill it" or "I cast dominate person on it". You actually should interact with the "bad guys" to find out what the story actually is about, a lot of them can be reasoned with and combat doesn't have to be to death. Jade Regent has you strike up a (romantic) relationship or friendly rivalry with your fellow travelers on a long treck, nearly any "named NPC" in Shattered Star can always be talked to, maybe reasoned with and some will turn into allies or potential new quest-givers, Shattered Skull has the players trying to gain a seat at an important council and later will be about shaping council politics, and so on.
I really need to find a better Pathfinder DM.