Xorvintaal dragons and interactions with regular dragons

[Albions_Angel]

Hi all,

I am thinking of playing around with some Xorvintaal dragons. I have a region of my world that is all city states that were either originally created by, or are still secretly ruled by, dragons. So Xorvintaal makes a lot of sense there.

That said, I am wondering about... things.

First up, I know Xorvintaal has no real rules. The whole idea is its something the DM can make seem complicated, without having to actually be complicated.No PC should understand it. I also understand that the intent of an Xorvintaal dragon is one more akin to standard fantasy tropes, of firebreathing, powerful, intelligent but non-magical dragons.

But, I have been wondering about Xorvintaal dragons relations with standard dragons. By lore, The Right of Xorvintaal strips a dragon of its spells, in exchange for a few abilities and the power to acquire more through the great game. This nets them prestige, and they are considered a higher form of dragon (to dragon society). But, by the CRUNCH, they are just weaker dragons (by themselves). So, I have 2 thoughts.

1) What stops a Xorvintaal dragon employing regular dragons and steamrollering everyone else in the game? There is no ruling on this, so what are the thoughts of the Playground?

2) What stops chaotic chromatic dragons from saying "stuff prestige, lets go raid the Xorvintaal hoards with our vastly superior powers"? Metallic dragons are good, so wont do that. And Lawful dragons will respect the game, even if they dont play. But what stops the others?

The reason I want to know this, is because I want both Xorvintaal dragons and regular dragons in this area, potentially working together from time to time, but I cant, at the moment, make up any good reasons for how the balance is kept.

As a side question, found a beautiful thread from years ago about feating and equipping a Xorvintaal dragon. But there was some debate over how much such a dragon has to blow. What is the wealth of a dragon by age category? Dragons are triple treasure. But treasure isnt wealth.

If we take Old as a marker.

An Old Red is CR 20. By the SRD, that means 3x80,000gp or 240,000gp if we go by treasure
But, NPC gear wealth is given by the tables in the DMG (p208 for epic).
Old Red has 28HD, so thats 3,300,000 gp
Though, that table works on ECL, not HD. Old Red has no LA, but Young Red is +6, and it seems to be increasing by 1 each age category.
Well, if we assume Old Red is still +6, then we have ECL of 34, for 7,000,000gp.
Alternately, if it keeps increasing, then we have an LA of +11 and an ECL of 39, for 12,300,000gp.

All vastly different numbers. Did that ever get sorted out?

[The Viscount]

1 The greatest barrier to employing dragons would be the payment. Dragons are greedy and understand their power, so it would be immensely expensive to have a dragon of any power.

2 The same thing that stops Xorvintaal dragons from winning the game from the get go. One of the few things explained about Xorvintaal is that it involves the guarding, movement, and capture of hoards. Any dragon who is halfway competent at the great game will be guarding or hiding its hoard. Because they don't have spells they can be much more liberal with the use of anti-magic fields.

I see no reason why you couldn't use treasure in place of wealth for dragons where WBL falls off.

[Helluin]

Wrt question 2, I imagine that Xorvintaal dragons enjoy a sort of prestige among dragons much like world class chess players are respected in our society, and that the draconic community might police itself. A dragon sabotaging the great game would be like someone trying to win a chess match against a world champion by cheating with their cellphone - the honour of the dragons (both Xorvintaal and regular) might demand that they act against such an affront?

[zfs]

Wrt question 2, I imagine that Xorvintaal dragons enjoy a sort of prestige among dragons much like world class chess players are respected in our society, and that the draconic community might police itself. A dragon sabotaging the great game would be like someone trying to win a chess match against a world champion by cheating with their cellphone - the honour of the dragons (both Xorvintaal and regular) might demand that they act against such an affront?

Adding to that, dragons can be heavily motivated by things like prophecy and superstition. Perhaps it is said that dragons who interfere with Xorvintaal are known to meet an unfortunate end.