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TheSessionTapes
2019-09-05, 10:33 AM
Been doing some work with my setting... and I'm almost completely sold on scrapping the entire Chromatic/Metallic dragons idea. While I've never been a huge fan of "colour coded dragons", recently I've felt really stymied by the trope. The idea that players (whether intentionally metagaming or not) can get a ridiculous amount of information from just knowing what colour a dragon is I find really crippling to building tension and creating Dragons as realistic NPCs with realistic motivations.

For example:

Local folk talk about a dragon seen flying around the peak of Mount Dragonplace (clue's in the name, really). The intrepid adventurers track the creature back to its lair, but when they arrive they see it has silver scales. They are immediately put at ease, and openly greet their new friend, "Shimmershine the Uber-Powerful-Pandimensional-Beast-Who-For-Some-Reason-Is-Really-Nice-To-Everyone".

Another example:

Same setup above, but when they reach the mountain, they see a flash of Red Scales. Immediately, they know a) This is going to be a fight (most likely), or at least a situation where they will be facing an aggressive foe b) Fire spells and attacks won't work. c) They need to load up on fire resist.

Even if you buck the Alignment conventions and let Dragons all have their own personalities, within the confines of this system, they're still predictable in terms of their capabilities. To my mind, this takes a lot of the terror and splendour out of dragons... they become a "stock encounter" (You're not a real adventurer until you've beaten a Dragon!). Like with all my villains/allies, a prefer a more nuanced and flawed approach.

Sure, that dragon is nice to you now. But he's still a DRAGON; a supergenius intellect in a flying dinosaur's body that oh yeah can also breathe fire. So you'll want to tread REALLY carefully, in case you accidentally insult his Mom or something.

What's everyone else's take on Colour-Coded dragons in D&D / Pathfinder? Do you agree that they're a bit outdated? Or is there an elegance there that I'm missing?

PhoenixPhyre
2019-09-05, 10:47 AM
I kept the "color == element" association (but changed it a bit due to symmetry concerns), but dropped the alignment differences. They're also not different species, but individual characteristics. Each hatchling (an inserted lifecycle step before wyrmlings) develops an affinity for a particular element and seeks out a concentrated source of it, morphing into a wyrmling of the appropriate color. Chromatic or not doesn't develop until later, usually sometime in the young phase. Often not until they're adults. Metallic wyrmlings are rare.

For me, the differences between metallic and chromatic dragons come down to their willingness to learn "lesser" forms of magic beyond their innate magic nature. Metallics are all spell-casters, and usually are more willing to engage with mortals for good or for ill, because they had to learn mortal-style spell-casting. This leads to them picking up shape-shifting as a very common trait. In fact, a dragon who learns to shape-shift will change color (from the chromatic to the metallic variant) as a natural side-effect. Chromatics tend to be more isolationist with regards to mortals, treating them as threats, people to be dominated, or just ignoring them to the extent possible.

None of this tells you anything about their personality, however. It tells a little about preferred lair locations, but only a bit.

Red and Silver: Fire. Mountains vs Plains
Blue and Brass: Air (lightning/thunder respectively). Deserts.
Green and Copper: Earth (acid spray and scouring corrosive sand, both dealing acid damage). Forests/swamps/jungles.
White: Water (cold). Glaciers/cold mountains
Brass: Water (superheated steam = fire damage, but are aquatic). Coastal/reefs
Black: Metallic necrotic (associated with the Shadow plane), rare.
Gold: Metallic radiant (associated with the Astral plane), rare.

King of Nowhere
2019-09-05, 11:59 AM
I've completely scrapped the color-coded alignment myself, and the climax of my campaign involved the revelation that the most ancient gold dragon was actually the villain and was trying to unite all dragons in a crusade against humanoids out of concern that humanoids would take up all the land and there would be no more place for dragons. the gold dragon cohort of the party was secretly his agent, and betrayed the party. but then, the second most ancient gold dragon was one of those that sided with the humanoids.

I gave dragons a relation of dependency with humanoids that turned out really well:
I stated that dragons need loot to survive. more accuratey, they feed off the natural magic field, and this allows them to break all kind of natural laws, first of all the square/cube law when they fly. when they are young, the natural magic field is enough, but as they grow older, they need a focus for it, and that's treasure.
And nothing produces treasure like humanoids, digging gold or making magic items. So, dragons like that there are humanoids making stuff that ends up in their loot.
On the other hand, dragon population is limited by the availability of loot to a few tens of thousands of adult individuals. and a high level humanoid party can take on any dragon - not to mention, since the invention of gunpowder, artillery is the bane of anything big enough to make a good target. Humanoids breed really fast compared to dragons, and they aren't so strongly limited in their numbers by external factors. So, dragons are concerned that humanoids growing in number may pose a threat to them. either by encroaching all their land, or by deciding that they actually want the loot for themselves.
being worshipped as gods and offered sacrifices works even better than loot, but it tend to attract heroes.

I also strongly reduced the "individualistic" part, out of necessity. dragons are smart, they realize that a high level human party can kill any of them, or a bunch of golems carrying cannons, and so they realize that they have to unite, at least to some extent. dragons are still independent, but they do have a loose organization and chain of command, mostly working by age.

I am really happy of how that worked into my campaign. I never liked how traditional dragons do most stuff "just because". This way, I gave them plenty of good reasons to interact with human society either for good or bad. they have good reasons to want to fight humans, cooperate with humans, stay away from humans, or anything in between.

as for elemental affinity, though, I left it there. to be honest, i never even considered changing it. a red dragon is red because red is the color of fire, of course it breath fire.
on the other hand, i tried to make dragons individually by giving each one a personal fighting style. the greater dragon had high dexterity which he used to get a mild tripper build (mild because i didn't want to be too harsh on the players). he also had a homebrewed enlarged version of antimagic field that could cover him completely, while the spell is normally to small to enclose a colossal creature.
another dragon was a wizard; instead of casting as a sorceror of 19th level, he did cast as a wizard, and he had a wider spell selection. he also had access to quicken spells, which i didn't give to other dragons.
another dragon was younger, but he had monk levels. I increased his damage from natural weapons and his spell resistance quite arbitrarily, to be fair, to reach the power level I wanted.
Another dragon was specialized in tail attacks.
And so on.
And it also worked well to make each dragon opponent unique.

Kaptin Keen
2019-09-05, 01:30 PM
I ditched dragons entirely. Sure, they are iconic monsters - but here's what: Back in 1994 or so, my barbarian had dragonscale armor from red, green, blue and black great wyrm dragons, and a full collection of horns from every race except white. Why not white? Because he couldn't arsed to find and kill one, it was too weak a foe, didn't give enough loot or xp, and basically wasn't worth it.

Dragons are not iconic monsters. They're cannon fodder.

Also, Dragon Lance. Yea, way to turn what little respectability they had into 'no, you're now a mount .. you're so common, you're cavalry'.

The last two dragons I used were, respectively, a three-headed dragon, which the party didn't see coming - and an ice dragon (not a white, though there was no visible difference - but the 'ice dragon' breathes not cold but ice shards, physical damage with no save for half ... oh, it's not unfair - it makes an attack roll).

If I ever use a dragon again, it'll be ... different. What springs to mind right now is The Wind. Literally. Good luck fighting that. Although players will find a way, they always do. But that's only really fun (to me at least) if they find it by being creative - not by reading the Monster Manual.

Faily
2019-09-05, 05:09 PM
Scrap alignment and "color-coding for your convenience". Make each dragon a unique creature with unique abilities and traits. Make them something extra special, so that when PCs encounter a dragon, it's really an "OMG"-moment.

A dragon could have green-gold coloring and breathe electricity (say, maybe it has a strong link to the nature forces, or it is a servant of a deity with a suitable portfolio)?

Alabenson
2019-09-05, 05:41 PM
I keep the color coded aspect, but I'll also have the dragons themselves be aware of it and occasionally use it to their own advantages, for example:


Local folk talk about a dragon seen flying around the peak of Mount Dragonplace (clue's in the name, really). The intrepid adventurers track the creature back to its lair, but when they arrive they see it has silver scales. They are immediately put at ease, and openly greet their new friend, "Shimmershine the Uber-Powerful-Pandimensional-Beast-Who-For-Some-Reason-Is-Really-Nice-To-Everyone".

Then, when the players have lowered their guard, Bloodscale the Eater of Orphans" devours them all whilst congratulating himself on having the foresight to learn disguise self

Particle_Man
2019-09-05, 06:31 PM
You could use the Incarnum Dragons (even exclusively if you like). They can be LG, CG, LE or CG but all are purple.

Pleh
2019-09-06, 05:30 AM
Dragons are not iconic monsters. They're cannon fodder.


That depends on what the dragon's relative CR is. Some of my dragons have been punked.

Some I've had to scale back from unintentional TPKs.

Kaptin Keen
2019-09-06, 05:49 AM
That depends on what the dragon's relative CR is. Some of my dragons have been punked.

Some I've had to scale back from unintentional TPKs.

No - it doesn't really have anything to do with relative CR. It has everything to do with commonality. I have, literally, fought more encounters with dragons than with goblins. It's not that they're pushovers - they often are - no, the problem is that they're just 'The Boss Monster'. At the end of every arch or campaign: The Dragon.

They are common as muck. And ... I don't mean to speak on behalf of anyone but myself, but they are the most cliché, boring, unimaginative enemy the game has.

Which is why the last two dragons I used, more than a decade ago, where unique. And if I ever use a 'dragon' again, it will be .. something else. A force of nature, or a universal constant, or some such. Not a scaly fire breathing lizard on a pile of gold.

MoiMagnus
2019-09-06, 05:59 AM
What's everyone else's take on Colour-Coded dragons in D&D / Pathfinder? Do you agree that they're a bit outdated? Or is there an elegance there that I'm missing?

I don't think they're outdated. However, I do think getting rid of them is a good idea for a lot of tables.

Colour-coded dragons are just part of the greater scheme of "races are homogeneous, up to few exceptions":
+ Extraplanars always behave accordingly to their alignment
+ Each race has a unique culture (dwarf are lawful, ...), and when you need a new culture, you create a new race (dark elves, or whatever)

But those choices are not laziness and bad writing. When you have a game where those questions are secondaries, following stereotype is advised, as it means players will need to remember less information, and to ask themselves less irrelevant questions. For example, a lot of gear are made with dragon scales, and you might not want to have the question "But does that mean an innocent and clever being has been killed just so that I can have +1 in AC?". Having entire races of dragons that are evil make this kind of questions much easier to answer: "It is red dragon scales".

When morality questions, subtle plots and/or secrets are primordial to your game, you can (and should) get rid of some of those stereotypes.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-09-06, 07:36 AM
No - it doesn't really have anything to do with relative CR. It has everything to do with commonality. I have, literally, fought more encounters with dragons than with goblins. It's not that they're pushovers - they often are - no, the problem is that they're just 'The Boss Monster'. At the end of every arch or campaign: The Dragon.

They are common as muck. And ... I don't mean to speak on behalf of anyone but myself, but they are the most cliché, boring, unimaginative enemy the game has.

Which is why the last two dragons I used, more than a decade ago, where unique. And if I ever use a 'dragon' again, it will be .. something else. A force of nature, or a universal constant, or some such. Not a scaly fire breathing lizard on a pile of gold.

That's a failure of campaign design, not monster design. By comparison, in 4+ years of running 3 campaigns simultaneously (ie 12+ total campaigns),
* one or more dragons has appeared in each campaign
* Only 2 have been killed, of which
** one was an insane green dragon with tentacles growing out of its back. And he was not even the boss of that arc--the Elder Brain that had dominated it was.
** one wasn't killed in combat, but was talked into an existential crisis to the point that he suffered a catastrophic existence failure[1]

They've encountered friendly dragons (including rescuing one from imprisonment), neutral dragons, dragon-shaped McGuffins (a mated pair of a gold and a dracolich[2]), even an unfriendly one[3], but only rarely outright hostile ones.

[1] long story. The party was rather bummed that he blew up instead of letting them talk him down.
[2] unwillingly undead, was bummed out that he couldn't hoard butterflies because they kept dying around him
[3] there's an albino black dragon that's an antagonist, but he's a coward and thinks he's the best manipulator around so he stays in humanoid form and stirs up trouble against the "good guys" instead of fighting directly.

False God
2019-09-06, 07:36 AM
I keep it in much the same way that Devils are made of evil stuff. It's true for the majority of the population (which is small) that most members of *color/metal* dragon tend towards the given alignment in the books. BUT, that doesn't mean there aren't evil metallics and good chromatics, and ones who sometimes do good or evil outside of their alignments.

The way I wrote it up, the dragons were made by their respective gods. Meaning their alignment issues are a literal "we don't really have free will" issue. It makes chromatics almost sad and empathetic, as they're designed to do evil. It makes a metallic who does evil as the only way they can express their freedom and individuality almost sympathetic. It's why many older dragons go insane, they're constantly analyzing every decision, every behavioural pattern to see which ones are them and which ones are "design choices".

It really depends on your group. Some players enjoyed the "deeper" concept of dragons with moral and ethical implications of what it means to be made of evil but want to do good, or be made of good but do evil. Some players don't, sometimes you just want to beat up a monster lizard.

Kaptin Keen
2019-09-06, 08:19 AM
That's a failure of campaign design, not monster design.

It's nowhere near as simple as that. Look through this thread, and you'll find a dozen examples of how people have made their own dragon designs - because of the failed monster design. But yes .. sometimes it's also a question of failed campaign design.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-09-06, 08:23 AM
It's nowhere near as simple as that. Look through this thread, and you'll find a dozen examples of how people have made their own dragon designs - because of the failed monster design. But yes .. sometimes it's also a question of failed campaign design.

I was responding to the idea that dragons were simply cannon fodder. Sure, I don't particularly like the monster design for dragons, but that's more due to the legacy concerns. But monster design doesn't make something cannon fodder, campaign design does.

Pleh
2019-09-06, 08:50 AM
No - it doesn't really have anything to do with relative CR. It has everything to do with commonality. I have, literally, fought more encounters with dragons than with goblins. It's not that they're pushovers - they often are - no, the problem is that they're just 'The Boss Monster'. At the end of every arch or campaign: The Dragon.

They are common as muck. And ... I don't mean to speak on behalf of anyone but myself, but they are the most cliché, boring, unimaginative enemy the game has.

Which is why the last two dragons I used, more than a decade ago, where unique. And if I ever use a 'dragon' again, it will be .. something else. A force of nature, or a universal constant, or some such. Not a scaly fire breathing lizard on a pile of gold.

How does something being more common make it less iconic? Wouldn't it be the other way around? What do you mean by "iconic" at this point?

Forces of nature and universal constants can also be cannon fodder in RPGs. The rule is, "if it has stats, we can kill it." That definitely takes away some of the grandeur. But that doesn't make them any less *iconic*.

The standard premise that the players are meant to win the game tends to take the teeth out of the concept of monstrocity, which is why I mentioned pumping the CR if you want the fight to be more harrowing and the conflict more dramatic. They definitely feel like more legendary adversaries when they push the heroes to the brink of defeat.


That's a failure of campaign design, not monster design.

Also this. Boss monsters really aren't best used unless they are confronted near the end of the adventuring day, before the players get to reset their combat assets. In D&D at least, there's not really a boss that won't get punked by a fresh party, unless the fight was just unreasonable

Faily
2019-09-06, 08:51 AM
I keep the color coded aspect, but I'll also have the dragons themselves be aware of it and occasionally use it to their own advantages, for example:



Then, when the players have lowered their guard, Bloodscale the Eater of Orphans" devours them all whilst congratulating himself on having the foresight to learn disguise self


Something similar happened in our long-lasting Pathfinder campaign in Mystara.

Our brave adventurers heard rumors of a great dragon terrorizing a place, and as heroes do they set out to defeat the evil! None of the witnesses could confirm the color of the dragon (it was dark and the dragon seemed kind of dark? they were mostly "omg a dragon!!!! panic!!!" themselves so they didn't stop to look closely).

So we head out to where the lair is rumored to be, and lo and behold, a Black Dragon appears! Casters get Resist Energy up, the Magus starts to prep up his best Electricity stuff, and as we engage the Dragon in melee, the Magus unleashed his Intensified Maximized Shocking Grasp on the Dragon... with a Critical Hit to boot! And look, he got through Spell Resistance too!

Cue the haughty laugh of the Dragon as he reveals himself to be a Blue Dragon in disguise (Illusion spells are great). :smallbiggrin:

Kaptin Keen
2019-09-06, 09:19 AM
I was responding to the idea that dragons were simply cannon fodder. Sure, I don't particularly like the monster design for dragons, but that's more due to the legacy concerns. But monster design doesn't make something cannon fodder, campaign design does.

I have to disagree. Or .. no, I agree with you, but I also disagree.

Dragons are cannon fodder because they been abused and overdone to the point that someone, somewhere, had the massive stroke of insanity to think that Dragonlance was a good idea. So in the end, dragons are cannon fodder because of marketing. And thus it is will all things bought and sold. Succes turns gold into ****.


How does something being more common make it less iconic? Wouldn't it be the other way around? What do you mean by "iconic" at this point?

Forces of nature and universal constants can also be cannon fodder in RPGs. The rule is, "if it has stats, we can kill it." That definitely takes away some of the grandeur. But that doesn't make them any less *iconic*.

The standard premise that the players are meant to win the game tends to take the teeth out of the concept of monstrocity, which is why I mentioned pumping the CR if you want the fight to be more harrowing and the conflict more dramatic. They definitely feel like more legendary adversaries when they push the heroes to the brink of defeat.

If you view iconic as a positive, then dragons aren't it. Not to me.

If by iconic you mean done to death and way beyond, then sure - they're so iconic it hurts my eyes merely to cast the slightest gaze upon the horrid ruin thereof.

I'm not going to make statements on anyone's behalf but my own. But if I include a dragon in one of my games, I'll consider that a critical failure of creativity. Dragons are bad enemies for a number of reasons. They are boring and bland, and no CR is going to change that. Sure, if you're in it for the challenge, dragons can certainly be challenging - absolutely. But however challenging, they're still boring. This may be because I've become immune to 'challenges'.

I have a few ... rules of thumb. Let your motivation be about love, for instance. Goes for characters but especially for villains. Make enemies believable, with believable motivations (love - of something - never fails). For this reason, Dracula and Frankensteins monster works as villains.

For the same reason, dragons do not. They're all fireworks and no substance.

Anyways ... I have my reasons for disliking them. Not asking anyone to accept my reasons =)

Corneel
2019-09-06, 09:33 AM
You could also take some inspiration of some of the source material and decide that a dragon is what a person (dwarves are prime candidates) turns into when they start hoarding treasure too much. The type of dragon will be determined on the base of their original race, how they came to have their hoard, the environs etc. Type of course only in terms of stats and appearance, because in terms of alignment they'll all be some variation of Awful Greedy.

Pleh
2019-09-06, 09:37 AM
If you view iconic as a positive, then dragons aren't it. Not to me.

If by iconic you mean done to death and way beyond, then sure - they're so iconic it hurts my eyes merely to cast the slightest gaze upon the horrid ruin thereof.

I'm not going to make statements on anyone's behalf but my own. But if I include a dragon in one of my games, I'll consider that a critical failure of creativity. Dragons are bad enemies for a number of reasons. They are boring and bland, and no CR is going to change that. Sure, if you're in it for the challenge, dragons can certainly be challenging - absolutely. But however challenging, they're still boring. This may be because I've become immune to 'challenges'.

I have a few ... rules of thumb. Let your motivation be about love, for instance. Goes for characters but especially for villains. Make enemies believable, with believable motivations (love - of something - never fails). For this reason, Dracula and Frankensteins monster works as villains.

For the same reason, dragons do not. They're all fireworks and no substance.

Anyways ... I have my reasons for disliking them. Not asking anyone to accept my reasons =)

This makes me feel you might be using dragons as a rigid stablock.

They're intelligent creatures. They should have NPC motives.

Humans are bland and overly common, but any given human can be unique and interesting.

King of Nowhere
2019-09-06, 09:37 AM
It's nowhere near as simple as that. Look through this thread, and you'll find a dozen examples of how people have made their own dragon designs - because of the failed monster design. But yes .. sometimes it's also a question of failed campaign design.
I believe d&d is not a game by itself, but rather like a bunch of lego blocks.
I mean, you take all rules and sourcebooks at face value, you get a horrible, unplayable mess. you can get a low-op tier 5 class together with a high-op tier 5 class together with more or less optimized tier 1 classes, you get hundreds and hundreds of races that you haave to wonder how can they all fit within the same world, you get dozens upon dozens of fluff that often contradict each other, you get the worst level of kitchen sink fantasy.

From this disjoined mess, you take some pieces and give them shape. You can build a fairy tale sword-and-sorcery. You can build a urban fantasy intrigue setting. you can build an overarching epic. you can build a stone age setting, a post-apocaliptic setting, a modern setting. A high-op setting or a low-op setting. a black and white morality, a shade of grey morality, or a completely grey morality. just like from a bunch of lego you can build a space base or a medieval castle.
i consider any manual, including core, to be just that; a box full of concepts and ideas that I can arrange in whatever way I see fit to get the desired outcome.

dragons, they are just one of those building blocks. you can fit it into your construction in a variety of ways. you can also leave it out altogether.
a dozen people have made a dozen different thing with dragons, and that's not a problem with dragons or campaign desing, that's great! that's what should be. the same building block used in different ways.

d&d is a game primarily about creativity and imagination. if there weren't different people doing different things with the building blocks, then it would be a failure of the players, not the design.


"But does that mean an innocent and clever being has been killed just so that I can have +1 in AC?". Having entire races of dragons that are evil make this kind of questions much easier to answer: "It is red dragon scales".


In my world, dragons routinely sell their scales for money. they need to get a loot somewhere, and stealing from humanoids has too much chance of retaliation. scales regrown with magic don't have the same properties, so they can't do it too often and that prevents dragonhide from becoming too common.

every dragonhide armor is marked, and dragons try to keep track of them. there are the armors made from sold scales. there are those made before the gentlemen agreement with humanoids was enforced (it states roughly "if one of us messes up with you, you will be free to retaliate, and viceversa". it's called the gentleman agreement because there isn't a formal threaty, it just happened gradually at the end of the last big war). dragons are ok with those, as they are too pragmatic to not see their value. plus, at least one dragon made for himself an armor of humanoid skins, so that's even.
sometimes dragons gift scales in gratitude, and armors marked that way give a diplomacy bonus with other dragons. when the party rescued a young dragon from an undead monstruosity, the dragon's mother gifted some of her scales to the party to make an armor with.
a dragonhide armor without seals, or with forged seals, people going after dragons for their hides, now that would be something dragons would treat with utmost concern. And by the gentlemen agreement, they would be free to chase and slay the dragon hunters without other humanoids interfering.

LordCdrMilitant
2019-09-06, 09:45 AM
Been doing some work with my setting... and I'm almost completely sold on scrapping the entire Chromatic/Metallic dragons idea. While I've never been a huge fan of "colour coded dragons", recently I've felt really stymied by the trope. The idea that players (whether intentionally metagaming or not) can get a ridiculous amount of information from just knowing what colour a dragon is I find really crippling to building tension and creating Dragons as realistic NPCs with realistic motivations.

For example:

Local folk talk about a dragon seen flying around the peak of Mount Dragonplace (clue's in the name, really). The intrepid adventurers track the creature back to its lair, but when they arrive they see it has silver scales. They are immediately put at ease, and openly greet their new friend, "Shimmershine the Uber-Powerful-Pandimensional-Beast-Who-For-Some-Reason-Is-Really-Nice-To-Everyone".

Another example:

Same setup above, but when they reach the mountain, they see a flash of Red Scales. Immediately, they know a) This is going to be a fight (most likely), or at least a situation where they will be facing an aggressive foe b) Fire spells and attacks won't work. c) They need to load up on fire resist.

Even if you buck the Alignment conventions and let Dragons all have their own personalities, within the confines of this system, they're still predictable in terms of their capabilities. To my mind, this takes a lot of the terror and splendour out of dragons... they become a "stock encounter" (You're not a real adventurer until you've beaten a Dragon!). Like with all my villains/allies, a prefer a more nuanced and flawed approach.

Sure, that dragon is nice to you now. But he's still a DRAGON; a supergenius intellect in a flying dinosaur's body that oh yeah can also breathe fire. So you'll want to tread REALLY carefully, in case you accidentally insult his Mom or something.

What's everyone else's take on Colour-Coded dragons in D&D / Pathfinder? Do you agree that they're a bit outdated? Or is there an elegance there that I'm missing?

There's a lot about dragons I hate, but I like the color-coded dragons. Sort of. Color of the dragon definitely denotes the element, and I like this mechanic as a short hand for how the dragon will attack so the party can prepare and be ready. In general, though, I default to red.

However, I don't really subscribe to the dragons as being fixed good/evil, so they just are.

They also vary in degrees of intelligence by portrayal when I run games, from fairly animalistic to generally blending in with regular society. When they're more animalistic, they're generally kill-on-sight serious threats that maraud about the countryside burning fields and killing cattle until someone stops them. When they're more intelligent, they're generally treated with a degree of fear, but also normalcy, since they're, after all, intelligent enough not to make the local humanoids hate them.

I don't include dragons often, though [but to be fair, I run Sci Fi games far more than fantasy]; usually their influence appears in the form of whatever anti-aircraft weapon I chose to feature in my games. The most recent one I included directly was the lord of a definitely-not-Viking settlement that she had led from being a small backwater into at least a rich, successful, and fairly influential backwater [at the expense of her neighbors, of course]. She answered her liege's call to war, managed her city, lead her army, collected taxes, and was eventually slain by the party during the relief of a city under siege by the not-Viking army.

Imbalance
2019-09-06, 10:47 AM
Being new to D&D, the color-coding is a fresh take to me. I'm more used to them either being mindless fire lizards or deific avatars of change, with scads of other interpretations in between and all extremes of variety in power, abilities, and appearance. It's nice to have a set of standards within the fiction, for once.

Kaptin Keen
2019-09-06, 12:13 PM
This makes me feel you might be using dragons as a rigid stablock.

Yes - obviously everything I've said would give you that idea.

King of Nowhere
2019-09-06, 01:48 PM
Yes - obviously everything I've said would give you that idea.

Actually, it does. strongly.


But if I include a dragon in one of my games, I'll consider that a critical failure of creativity. Dragons are bad enemies for a number of reasons. They are boring and bland, and no CR is going to change that.

I have a few ... rules of thumb. Let your motivation be about love, for instance. Goes for characters but especially for villains. Make enemies believable, with believable motivations (love - of something - never fails). For this reason, Dracula and Frankensteins monster works as villains.

For the same reason, dragons do not. They're all fireworks and no substance.
you are stating that dragons do not have proper motivation. which means that you are using them as a rigid statblock. "it's a fire-breathing flying lizard with an EVIL tag, do your job".
Everything you say about motivation can apply to a dragon as well as to anyone else. and here several people posted ways that worked for them to give dragons more depth. If someone sets up a dragon as a villain without proper motivations and personality, then it's a campaign design failure.

as for monster design failure, as I commented earlier, every monster is a failure if taken at face value, and every monster is good if you work it well into your campaign. because they are just building blocks, concepts that we can keep or leave or tweak to fit into our world. but if they are taken as yet-another-thing in the fantasy kitchen sink? then of course they are a failure.

Kaptin Keen
2019-09-06, 03:21 PM
Actually, it does. strongly.

Sure - if you ignore 90% of it, that is certainly true. Have a wonderful .. well, night, here.

TheSessionTapes
2019-09-06, 04:44 PM
Scrap alignment and "color-coding for your convenience". Make each dragon a unique creature with unique abilities and traits. Make them something extra special, so that when PCs encounter a dragon, it's really an "OMG"-moment.

A dragon could have green-gold coloring and breathe electricity (say, maybe it has a strong link to the nature forces, or it is a servant of a deity with a suitable portfolio)?

That is absolutely my take on Dragons. They should all be unique, and all have something which makes them special. They're not Monster-of-the-Week baddies, they're campaign BBEGs. Or, conversely, they're not random quest givers, they're that one long-lasting NPC ally that the players keep wanting to work with.

MonstarDM
2019-09-06, 05:23 PM
What's everyone else's take on Colour-Coded dragons in D&D / Pathfinder? Do you agree that they're a bit outdated? Or is there an elegance there that I'm missing?

I disagree.

THIS is a game play stlye problem. Period.

And it's not just Dragons, it's every monster and literlay the whole game of D&D.

Lets call your example way Z. So, you read the rules in the book...and then just give up. Colors suck, D&D is trash and so on.

Ok...now lets try way A:

A:The players have their characters approch the red dragon all immune to fire and snicker the whole time. Then the Red Dragon breathes on them and the players just giggle and laugh......until the DM says "I blast of icy frost". The players just sit there in pure shock as the DM rolls the frost damage...that goes right through the fire immunity. Three characters DIE, right there from massive damage. The lone forth player misses with thier melee attacks, and the dragon pounces on that character and rips them to shreads.

So what happened here? Well, Way A is a Rules Example. Sepcificaly 3.5E, as it's the Metabreath feat energy mixture(I'm not sure if other editions have this, but the point is the do have other rules)

Way B: The players have their characters approch the red dragon all immune to fire and snicker the whole time. Then the Red Dragon breathes on them and the players just giggle and laugh......until the DM says "The dragon fire burns so hot that it ignores any fire protection". Four characters die.

So, this is the Homebrew Rules Example. There is a feat in the book Sunstorm, super fire or something, that make fire ''so hot" it ignores fire protection. This DM simply made a Super Fire Metabreath weapon feat.

Way C: The players have their characters approch the red dragon all immune to fire and snicker the whole time. Then the Red Dragon breathes on them and the players just giggle and laugh......until the DM says "The dragonfire also burns your characters souls". Four characters die.

So, this way is very simliar to way B, except it's not really ''just a homebrewed rule", it's more of just a ''special thing". The DM simply says X, and the game rolls on...don't like it: leave. (AKA a typical 1E or 2E game).

Way D: The characters march off to slay the dragon as the players snicker as they have fire immunity and anti fire stuff. Except...once the character get within a mile of the lair....they enter the kill box trap. TONS of monsters, traps, effects, and things will pile on the characters. Each character will have thier hit points mowed down, their ''daily uses" of stuff used, use up healing, be subject to dozens of lasing effects and be hit with a dozen or so dispel magics. So the characters that finnaly get to the dragon fight will have used about 75% of thier resourses, will have less then 25% of thier HP, will have lost several important itmes and have lost most, if not all protections. Only THEN will the dragon show it self and attack......and kill the characters.

So way D is the classic Meatgrinder way. There is no 15 minute game day here.

Way E: The characters march off to slay the dragon as the players snicker as they have fire immunity and anti fire stuff. they find the area and lair oddly empty.....until an invisible/etherial/teleporting/something else dragon attacks them With Compleate Supprise! The dragon 'pops' in does some damage...and 'pops' out...not leaving the characters any chance to counter attack. Slowly, over a whole game day, the dragon kills each character.

So way E is the ''new" meatgrinder way: The Alien Way. Simply put, the dragon does not fight ''fair".

Way F: The characters march off to slay the dragon as the players snicker as they have fire immunity and anti fire stuff....and Supprise: it's NOT a dragon. Oh sure maybe there is an illusion of a dragon, or a shapeshifting monster or maybe a mechanical clockwork creature. But it's NOT a dragon.

Way F is just the classic supprise. You ''thought" it was a dragon....but, supprise, it's not.

Way G: This way uses the silver dragon example. The players see the silver dragon and just laugh "oh whatever it's a silly good dragon, we ignore it". And then the dragon attacks and kills the characters. Why? Well, they simply were not good enough....

Way G is more the Role Playing way. Players think that just as they are ''good", that ''all good" is thier ally....but that is not always true. And most of the time, most characters are not exactly ''pure" good anyway.....

Way H: Agression. You might have noticed all my above examples had this Way in common: Agression. The Dragon wants to KILL the characters. Period. KILL the CHARACTERS! No safe spots, no do overs....just character death.

Way H(and the above ones too) all use this Major Playstlye of ''Mosters kill the Characters". Yes, kill the characters. Yes, if poor Bob's character is killed they have to stop playing the game and go sit in the corner (not really....but they could). Really...this one is HUGE.


So....buch of ways.

Now you might not like some of the Ways....maybe you hate all the above Ways....maybe you think Way Z (that's the players must always auto win vs a dragon) is the "only" way to play the game.

And, if you do like Way Z (or like ways I through Y whatever they are), that is JUST FINE.

But there ARE other ways.....

Mordar
2019-09-06, 06:55 PM
It's nowhere near as simple as that. Look through this thread, and you'll find a dozen examples of how people have made their own dragon designs - because of the failed monster design. But yes .. sometimes it's also a question of failed campaign design.

I'm struggling to see how it is an issue of failed monster design. They are iconic, which of course leads to the path of frequent use which leads to burnout or iconoclastic choices. If they've been super-common in your campaigns (particularly if there's a high overlap of players from one to the next), I totally agree that dragon burnout would render them meaningless. I've been in too many undead-centric campaigns and they all leave the same kind of taste in my mouth now.

I'll agree in general with the alignment issue...but the coloration is a not-terribly abstract way of representing how creatures from a particular environment have evolved. And alignment stuff is fun to subvert for some tables.

But just because people know/learn the strategies to fight these death machines doesn't mean they're badly designed. Do you re-style all of the other "special" kinds of monsters? Make trolls that don't regenerate and aren't especially vulnerable to fire? Convert your vampires so they burn in snowstorms, not sunlight? Have half the pit fiends rocking Good alignments? Make rust monsters destroy anything non-metallic?

- M

Pleh
2019-09-06, 08:10 PM
I've been in too many undead-centric campaigns and they all leave the same kind of taste in my mouth now.

- M

Pretty much rule 1 of undead is you don't go around licking them.

False God
2019-09-06, 08:25 PM
But just because people know/learn the strategies to fight these death machines doesn't mean they're badly designed. Do you re-style all of the other "special" kinds of monsters? Make trolls that don't regenerate and aren't especially vulnerable to fire? Convert your vampires so they burn in snowstorms, not sunlight? Have half the pit fiends rocking Good alignments? Make rust monsters destroy anything non-metallic?

- M

To be fair, I hear a lot of people suggest basically these things when their players start to become genre savvy. I don't understand the issue really, adventurers may not be the brightest bunch but you'd think they'd hear a few stories about trolls, vampires and dragons and their potential weaknesses before they ever encounter one.

Also, just want to echo: the fact that I decided to get creative with dragons, their histories, their powers and their behaviours is not at all a failure of the design, but simply my own creativity.

VoxRationis
2019-09-07, 12:12 AM
I do like having varieties of dragon; however, I'm honestly not a huge fan of the color-coded ones because I'm not a huge fan of the other sorts of breath weapons, or indeed the elemental affinity aspect of D&D dragons. (My DM appears to be of the same mindset, because all the dragons in his campaign breathe fire, regardless of color.) I can respect poison and acid to some degree, but breathing a straight line of lightning seems silly, not least because lightning isn't a substance in the same way that fire is, even in a fantasy setting, which makes the breath weapon seem less homologous to the fire breath of a classic dragon.

NNescio
2019-09-07, 12:18 AM
I do like having varieties of dragon; however, I'm honestly not a huge fan of the color-coded ones because I'm not a huge fan of the other sorts of breath weapons, or indeed the elemental affinity aspect of D&D dragons. (My DM appears to be of the same mindset, because all the dragons in his campaign breathe fire, regardless of color.) I can respect poison and acid to some degree, but breathing a straight line of lightning seems silly, not least because lightning isn't a substance in the same way that fire is, even in a fantasy setting, which makes the breath weapon seem less homologous to the fire breath of a classic dragon.

Eh, both are plasmas. Same state of matter.

Kaptin Keen
2019-09-07, 01:32 AM
I'm struggling to see how it is an issue of failed monster design. They are iconic, which of course leads to the path of frequent use which leads to burnout or iconoclastic choices. If they've been super-common in your campaigns (particularly if there's a high overlap of players from one to the next), I totally agree that dragon burnout would render them meaningless. I've been in too many undead-centric campaigns and they all leave the same kind of taste in my mouth now.

I'll agree in general with the alignment issue...but the coloration is a not-terribly abstract way of representing how creatures from a particular environment have evolved. And alignment stuff is fun to subvert for some tables.

But just because people know/learn the strategies to fight these death machines doesn't mean they're badly designed. Do you re-style all of the other "special" kinds of monsters? Make trolls that don't regenerate and aren't especially vulnerable to fire? Convert your vampires so they burn in snowstorms, not sunlight? Have half the pit fiends rocking Good alignments? Make rust monsters destroy anything non-metallic?

- M

It's not just about how they're described in the Monster Manual. Dragons are represented in books and game modules and campaign worlds and so on. I used Dracula and Frankenstein as examples, because they relatable monsters with human ambitions. They are portrayed as such. They've stood the test of time because of it.

No dragon I ever saw, including Smaug, is like that. Non-relatable, no human ambition, nothing. They are fire breathing scaly lizards, and nothing more. Now, that's a fairly bad foundation, but D&D went on from there to create something that's much worse. They went into excruciating detail about the crunch side of dragons, making god knows how many different types - and they did stuff like Dragon Lance, making dragons even more lame than they already were.

Yes, in my youth dragons were overrepresented in games. That clearly didn't help my view of them. But my issue runs much deeper than that.

Also, yes. Basically, I never use anything as-is from the Monster Manual. It's not that the changes are always huge, but they're always there.

Pleh
2019-09-07, 06:10 AM
No dragon I ever saw, including Smaug, is like that. Non-relatable, no human ambition, nothing. They are fire breathing scaly lizards, and nothing more.

Never seen Dragonheart, then? Never read Eragon? Even Smaug was more than just a lizard. Smaug was meant to be a literary representation of greed personified. He attacked the dwarves because of their greedy hoarding of wealth that Smaug coveted. But he wasn't stupid, either. He could be tricked, but not without deliberately playing to his faults. Bilbo only survived first contact because 1) he was invisible and 2) he had the wits to use Smaug's ego to stall for time. That's not a boring encounter with a scaly fire lizard.

I mean, being that reductive will make EVERYTHING in D&D look bland and unoriginal. I mean, Vampires? Again? How droll.

Kaptin Keen
2019-09-07, 08:59 AM
I mean, being that reductive will make EVERYTHING in D&D look bland and unoriginal.

And yet I feel dragons are particularly lame. You could try to adress the arguments I've made .... or leave it be. Either is fine.

Feddlefew
2019-09-07, 09:52 AM
And yet I feel dragons are particularly lame. You could try to address the arguments I've made .... or leave it be. Either is fine.

Based on what you've said, your encounter design philosophy seem to be picking a monster or group of monsters of the same CR as the party and letting them have at it. That's a pretty terrible way to do it. Of course dragons are consistently getting steamrolled- dragons are designed to be deployed against parties significantly weaker than them.

Have you considered maybe..... Spending a little more time planing encounters? You're doing the D&D equivalent serving up plain spaghetti and blaming the spaghetti for being bland. Add a little sauce. Grab a few dragon powers from 4e dragons and graft them onto the 3.5/5e dragon? Fiddle with the stats? Give every dragon a secondary breath weapon? Lair actions? Do a little historical research and change the fluff to fit a different tradition of dragons?

King of Nowhere
2019-09-07, 10:41 AM
And yet I feel dragons are particularly lame. You could try to adress the arguments I've made .... or leave it be. Either is fine.

this is the third angry response you threw at three different people who, in your estimations, didn't address your arguments. Four, if we count feddlefew who just posted. those people were quoting you and answering point by point. You can't really say they weren't addressing you.

If so many people are apparently misunderstanding you, perhaps it was you who didn't explain yourself clearly? Or perhaps they did address your arguments and you are not seeing it?
Either way, angry/dismissive replies thrown at people who "aren't addressing your arguments", even when they are, are not helping your case

Esprit15
2019-09-07, 04:40 PM
I love dragons. I play a little more loose with alignments on them, though Good metallics and Evil chromatics is still the norm, and type indicating elemental affinity just makes sense (nobody whines about fire elementals always being tied to fire). I do scrap the rankings, though; a black dragon and a gold dragon are only different by appearance, movement modes, and breath weapon. Stats, HD, and a few other things are determined separately.

As far as running them as NPCs, I tend to lean toward four basic types:

The Little One - The dragon is not fully grown, anywhere from just hatched to maybe 20-30 years old. Young dragons tend to be childish, and depending on the individual, can vary from feral (low intelligence and/or Chaotic Evil) to blindly idealistic (any Good), but are most defined by being inexperienced and at the same time believing they’re the strongest thing within a mile - after all, they’re dragons! In a story, they’re useful to set the tone of a story, to feel out what kinds of PCs are being played (do you kill it or try to reason with the creature killing local game that hunters need). They are, unless the game takes place over centuries, never going to be a big bad, and normally either become allies or are killed and quickly forgotten.

The Brute - Dragons who are defined by their strength and brutality. Whether Good or Evil, a Brute is a dragon who doesn’t just think they’re the biggest and strongest thing around, but knows it, and revels in it. An Evil Brute terrorizes local villages, either in their natural form while demanding tribute, or taking a humanoid form through magic and living a devil-may-care life, slaughtering anyone who challenges their desires. A Good Brute meanwhile is not too different from an adventurer, seeking out Evil and hoping to bash its head into the ground. Neither takes much stock in building any firm alliances - such things are either beneath them or feel secondary to their goals. Brutes need not be low intelligence, even if they often are. The defining aspect for them is their solo nature. Brutes should be run as a force of nature, and work best in Black and White morality games.

The Scholar - Normally a side character. Scholars, whether in a city or in a remove cave, are more interested in some form of study or research over actively shaping the world. A Good Scholar is often someone who during a story is to be sought out for advice or information, who themself for reasons within the story is not inclined or unable to directly interfere with the world as is. An Evil Scholar meanwhile is often the precursor to a Dracolich, or otherwise likely threatens the world/planes via their research. Scholars, obviously, are best seen as representative of the ideals and danger of knowledge, when looked at literarily.

The Xorvinthal Player - Named after the draconic, world chess game, the Xorvinthal Player is the opposite of a Brute, and leans into the fact that dragons, especially with time, can grow to be as intelligent compared to a Wizard as a Wizard is to a common person. Xorvinthal Players may be advisors or kings, but always have contacts far and wide, and to fight them is sometimes to declare war on half the world. Xorvinthal Players prefer to leverage political power or their often vast wealth (both of which only accrue as the centuries roll by) against their enemies rather than dirty their claws personally. And, at the end of the day, even if someone survives everything else, they still have to contend with a dragon. A Xorvinthal Player is best played as someone mentioned often and seen never. “They king’s advisor suggested against it.” “The boss approved your pay.” I personally think of the Sibyl System in Psycho-Pass as a non-D&D example of this, where the identity is kept secret and only by further exploration is the truth revealed.

***

That last bit emphasizes a broader point: Dragons are not fundamentally different from any other enemy. At the end of the day, they’re still a stat block. I look at that as “At their lowest point, what does this enemy have going for them?” A dragon, on their worst day if they were otherwise ruined and lost everything they owned and every ally they had ever made, is still a dangerous enemy against an unprepared party (or worse, individual). For example, see V and the Black Dragon before the deal is made.

But, they’re also characters which, if not children, have survived centuries and in most cases intend to live many more. Read some alignment handbooks if you need inspiration on outlooks, and then apply that to someone whose childhood was longer than you’ll likely live, and who remembers when great wars were fought and forgotten empires were at their peaks.

If you can’t make an interesting villain, ally, quest giver, or even encounter with any of that, then that falls on a failure of imagination, not on the game designers. You’re the story teller, the game is just the medium through which the story is told. Orcs, vampires, and dragons are all equally interesting or boring, depending on the DM.

Faily
2019-09-07, 05:26 PM
That last bit emphasizes a broader point: Dragons are not fundamentally different from any other enemy. At the end of the day, they’re still a stat block. I look at that as “At their lowest point, what does this enemy have going for them?” A dragon, on their worst day if they were otherwise ruined and lost everything they owned and every ally they had ever made, is still a dangerous enemy against an unprepared party (or worse, individual). For example, see V and the Black Dragon before the deal is made.

But, they’re also characters which, if not children, have survived centuries and in most cases intend to live many more. Read some alignment handbooks if you need inspiration on outlooks, and then apply that to someone whose childhood was longer than you’ll likely live, and who remembers when great wars were fought and forgotten empires were at their peaks.

If you can’t make an interesting villain, ally, quest giver, or even encounter with any of that, then that falls on a failure of imagination, not on the game designers. You’re the story teller, the game is just the medium through which the story is told. Orcs, vampires, and dragons are all equally interesting or boring, depending on the DM.

Well, I think you win this thread now at least. <3

Wyvern72n
2019-09-08, 02:13 AM
I would scrapped everything for dragons, instead of red=fire, green=poison, black=acid, blue=lightning and white=cold, i went with something different. I always hated how when a hatchlings turns out chromatic they would automatically be associated with evil while metallic dragons have to be good. There are none of that in my world, dragons can be of many different colors and a colour doesn't mean a specific breath weapon and to spice things up dragons can have multiple different breath weapons. The colouring, breath weapon, appearance, abilities, physical and mental capabilities are determined by two things: A) Who the parents are and B) their past experiences and skills. There are Fire dragons who breath fire but can be of any colour but mostly red, green or brown; there are forest dragons who breath poison; swamp/jungle dragons who breath acid; I even put in cavern dragons who have sonic/sound breath weapons because those damage types are underappreciated. In the end a dragon being evil or good being dependant on whether or not their scales are shiny or not is not great, dragons like any other sentient beings can be good or evil based on their upbringing or experience

Kaptin Keen
2019-09-08, 03:21 AM
Based on what you've said, your encounter design philosophy

These aren't my designs. It's baffling me you would think so - I've stated, time and again, that I have not used dragons for more than a decade, and likely never will again.


this is the third angry response

No - it's not. This is the third uncaring response I've given to people who insist on answering things I haven't said. Either relate to what I'm saying ....... or leave me alone.

Either ... is fine. Really.

DeTess
2019-09-08, 04:08 AM
No - it's not. This is the third uncaring response I've given to people who insist on answering things I haven't said. Either relate to what I'm saying ....... or leave me alone.

Either ... is fine. Really.

Maybe you should summarize your arguments then to make clear what they are? From reading your posts, your main problems with dragons seem to be:


I ditched dragons entirely. Sure, they are iconic monsters - but here's what: Back in 1994 or so, my barbarian had dragonscale armor from red, green, blue and black great wyrm dragons, and a full collection of horns from every race except white. Why not white? Because he couldn't arsed to find and kill one, it was too weak a foe, didn't give enough loot or xp, and basically wasn't worth it.


and


No dragon I ever saw, including Smaug, is like that. Non-relatable, no human ambition, nothing. They are fire breathing scaly lizards, and nothing more. Now, that's a fairly bad foundation, but D&D went on from there to create something that's much worse. They went into excruciating detail about the crunch side of dragons, making god knows how many different types - and they did stuff like Dragon Lance, making dragons even more lame than they already were.


The over-use of dragons is, as has already been pointed out a campaign design problem. Dragons not having any personality is also a campaign design problem, as liches, demons, humans, elves etc. also don't have any sort of personality straight out of the monster manual. You've also started rants against the dragon-lance setting several times, but no one is forcing you to use that setting, so I don't see how it is relevant in this case.

I mean, if you don't like dragons because you or your DM's have overused them, then that's fine, but you're presenting 'dragons are bad and you shouldn't use them' as a universal rule, rather than your personal opinion.

MoiMagnus
2019-09-08, 04:52 AM
Dragons not having any personality is also a campaign design problem, as liches, demons, humans, elves etc. also don't have any sort of personality straight out of the monster manual.

I can confirm that all the liches I've ever seen in a D&D games where just "I need a powerful undead creature, and we're not in a pyramid so I can't take a mummy lord" or "I was asleep in my tomb and you tried to pillage it so I will kill everyone of you". Vampires were not better, they're essentially just liches that can fly, and have enough charisma to actually disguise as the "evil count of the village that isn't at all a vampire".
Demons do not even have the subtlety of actually caring about having any emotion other than hatred, and I've never encountered one that pronounced more than one full sentence before trying to destroy everything.

However, human, dragons, devils, gods. I got convincing enemies with actual motivations, ambitions, and personalities. (And I also got brainless enemies from them, of course).

The plot of one of the (unfinished) campaign I've played was "A dragon secretly control the human empire, as the (shapeshifted) husband of the queen, from generations to generations. Using its intelligence and wisdom, he is guiding his human empire toward technology and high-level magic, so that he can ultimately (in ~1000 years) launch an invasion of all the planes, exterminating every extra-planar beings (including demons, devils and gods), and becoming the one and only god of this human-dominated universe."

Kaptin Keen
2019-09-08, 05:50 AM
I mean, if you don't like dragons because you or your DM's have overused them, then that's fine, but you're presenting 'dragons are bad and you shouldn't use them' as a universal rule, rather than your personal opinion.

Everything I say is my personal opinion. I refuse to attach a disclaimer to every thing I say to make that clear - it really should be obvious that since we're talking about something that has no absolute science, everything anyone ever says is an opinion. I'd also like to point out that I've stated that already, and added that I'm not asking anyone to agree with me, or tell them to feel the same.

I don't dislike dragons because GM's have overused them. I dislike them because they're overused - and used deplorably poorly - in every bit of source material I know of.

Someone brought up other media - novels and movies. There are occasional glimmers of light there. Eragon is ... awful. But Dragonheart was decent. I've also, in the meantime, remembered one dragon from an actual RPG that wasn't just filler crap: Dunkelzahn. So it's not entirely without exceptions.

This doesn't shake my conviction in the slightest however.

King of Nowhere
2019-09-08, 06:43 AM
I can confirm that all the liches I've ever seen in a D&D games where just "I need a powerful undead creature, and we're not in a pyramid so I can't take a mummy lord" or "I was asleep in my tomb and you tried to pillage it so I will kill everyone of you".

enters the lich esmeralda.

half a millennia ago, esmeralda was an adventurer. even after she married and raised a family, she still wandered around with her party after loot from time to time.
once, in her quests, she killed a young dragon. she didn't consider that the dragon had a mother, and the dragon's mother killed emeralda's family and bound their souls (yes, I totally got that from vaarsuvius).
esmeralda spent the rest of her life looking for her family, but the dragon disappeared. as it became clear she would be unable to complete her task within her natural life span, she sought to become a lich.

nowadays, esmeralda is still looking for her family. she is always developing new divination spells that would hopefully succeed where the previous ones failed, and this makes her the world's best diviner by a fair margin. she sinks a lot of money into her research, so she will often sell her services, at a premium. and she let everyone know that the moment her family is recovered, she will destroy herself to rejoin them, and all her possessions will go to whoever helped her.
she is kind and grandmotherly, and she offers tea and biscuits to any who comme visit her. she does not look evil, though the negative energy of a lich would drive crazy anyone who is not. some theorize that she found a workaround for that. few actually know that from time to time she looks for a good happy family in a remote part of the world and kill them all, to ensure that she stays evil. she doesn't like doing it, but she muses that at least they'll stay together.

esmeralda was a plot device that the players could contact whenever they were stuck with some mistery or needed more info. later, they managed to solve the puzzle of her lost family; it was the first time they really broke WBL




Demons do not even have the subtlety of actually caring about having any emotion other than hatred, and I've never encountered one that pronounced more than one full sentence before trying to destroy everything.

After many trials, the party finally defeated for good their first archvillain, the elf Tharivol Amakiir, expert in plotting and manipulation.
Tharivol's soul went to the lower planes, where demons conscript souls to fight and expand their dominions.
Tharivol was to face a similar fate, but he started talking. he'd always been good at talking. He managed to persuade the pit fiend Babaugon that his skill at plotting would make him more valuable as an ally than as a minon.
Within a few months, Babaugon and Tharivol became genuine friends, conquering vast swates of lower planes together. Tharivol even attracted a succubi girlfriend, Roxy, who was impressed by his evil, and especially his cunning ways of being apparently kind while sowing evil in the long run.

when the party went to the lower planes on an unrelated quest, they met the whole cadre. there, Tharivol thanked them for defeating him and causing his death, as he was much happier there than he was while alive. the demons were also quite happy to meet the adventurers, saying they owed them a favor.

when the party had to manage a large war, they were able to call some demons to fight for them.




I don't dislike dragons because GM's have overused them. I dislike them because they're overused - and used deplorably poorly - in every bit of source material I know of.


Ah, well, fine with that. we all agree that they were overused, and used poorly most times. we are repliying that they can be used well, though, and each one of us has developed some way to give them compelling motivations.
we are not arguing against your personal dislike. we were just arguing that while they were used poorly, that's a problem of how they were used, and not of dragons themselves.

PhoenixPhyre
2019-09-08, 07:20 AM
For me, the central fact about dragons is that they have hoards. Specifically, all adult dragons have one specific thing (including metaphysical concepts) that they hoard, that they covet, that gives them energy. A dragon in possession of a suitable hoard needs only very little mundane food, and that only if injured. Their energy comes through their connection to the hoard.

Young dragons usually have an idea of what their hoard will be, and are trying to build it as fast as possible. Which makes them brash and dangerous to those around them. When they gather enough, they metamorphose during an extended sleep period (years or more) into adults. Depriving an adult of his hoard is suicidal--it will take any means necessary to rebuild it or destroy you. Because you effectively cut off its food supply and thus pose an existential threat.

Examples of hoards that have come up are:
* A black dragon (now turned dracolich unwillingly) who hoards butterflies.
* His mate, a gold dragon, who hoards political influence.
* A white dragon who hoards magical items. Any magical item.
* Three dragons (a silver, a gold, and a bronze) who together hoard a particular city-state.
* A brass dragon who hoards stories of adventure. To the point that she "invites" interesting people into her den to hear their stories and to tell them her stories. Whether they want to attend or not. She always pays them well, but still. Part of her draconic name translates to "oh will she ever shut up?'[1]
* A gold dragon who hoards architecture. Buildings. Goes by the name "The Landlord". He doesn't care about people at all, as long as they maintain the buildings he considers his (which is all of them within his territory, a partially-ruined city). Uses paralyzing breath almost exclusively so as not to cause damage to structures.

[1] this one is a former player character, a dragonborn sorceress transformed into a true dragon via divine providence at the end of a campaign. She's one of the rulers of a particular city and generally a nice person. Except if she wants you to tell her a story and you try to refuse.

MonstarDM
2019-09-08, 08:47 AM
If you can’t make an interesting villain, ally, quest giver, or even encounter with any of that, then that falls on a failure of imagination, not on the game designers. You’re the story teller, the game is just the medium through which the story is told. Orcs, vampires, and dragons are all equally interesting or boring, depending on the DM.

+1 to this.

Kaptin Keen
2019-09-08, 09:21 AM
Ah, well, fine with that. we all agree that they were overused, and used poorly most times. we are repliying that they can be used well, though, and each one of us has developed some way to give them compelling motivations.
we are not arguing against your personal dislike. we were just arguing that while they were used poorly, that's a problem of how they were used, and not of dragons themselves.

I've never seen them used well. There was a dragon fight in some old module, I forget what it's called. Wasn't even the final encounter, that was some old elf king. But the encounter was well designed, mechanically. A very tight fight, I liked that. The elf king was even better.

But it was still 2 dimensional. There was some fluff background to both elf and dragon - but the GM had to inform us of those things afterwards. Maybe there was some clue we totally missed? =)

Feddlefew
2019-09-08, 11:05 AM
These aren't my designs. It's baffling me you would think so - I've stated, time and again, that I have not used dragons for more than a decade, and likely never will again.

{scrubbed}

Based on what you've said, your encounter design philosophy

An Encounter is not the same thing as a monster. An encounter, by loose definition, is a desecrate challenge the party faces. This includes traps, by the way- a spike trap is an encounter in the same way that an ogre is an encounter. Ditto for talking it out with the local lord, or doing a mine cart chase.

A dragon is not an encounter. A dragon is not a dragon's stat block. A dragon is a tool you use to build an encounter. {scrubbed}

Since you seem to equate a Stat Block with an Encounter, that means my initial assumption-


Based on what you've said, your encounter design philosophy seem to be picking a monster or group of monsters of the same CR as the party and letting them have at it.

-is correct.

Other posters have thoroughly discussed the non-combat aspect of running a big, powerful monster. So let's focus on the encounter building a bit more.

That said, there are some pretty badly designed monsters in the game. Did you know 5e Ice Devils don't have cold immunity? That's a pretty big oversight for something that does cold damage with every attack!

This leads to my next point: I frequently modify stat blocks. Sometimes I just change out weapons or attack elements. Other times I radically edit abilities to make the monster more or less difficult for the party. I've significantly buffed Ice Devils in my own game so that they're CR 15-16 controllers, because I didn't like how they were designed in 5e.


Of course dragons are consistently getting steamrolled- dragons are designed to be deployed against parties significantly weaker than them.

Another thing you have to consider is that not all CR X monsters are equivalent. D&D has certain assumptions about how you will use monsters, but 5e doesn't really talk about them. This is a pretty big design flaw IMO, especially since 4e had a very good tagging system for this sort of thing! CR should be treated as a very loose guideline, a way to search for monsters by approximate power level. However, there's a host of monsters which should never be deployed against an equal level party.

The Gibbering Mouther, for instance, is a CR2 monster that creates difficult terrain in a 10 foot radius around itself, requires a wisdom saving throw every round to avoid being effected by confusion (even if you saved previously), and hits like a truck. It can also blind creatures at a range, and has 67 hp. This thing will eat (literally) entire parties of level 2 adventurers. The Gibbering Mouther was probably meant to be a low level minion for something nasty, or a non-combat encounter. But the monster manual doesn't explicitly state this.

Here is the crux of it. The way you apparently believe powerful monsters are supposed to be used is setting yourself and your players up for disappointment. And you are blaming the game designers for that. Multiple people have tried to explain that you are doing encounter- adventure design, really- poorly, and, as far as we can tell, {scrubbed} . For me it's less about trying to convince you than it is about preventing other people from also making these mistakes.

I learned early on in my DMing career (thank you, TPK courtesy of a CR1 spider swarm) that CR and stat blocks aren't what make encounters go. It's the stuff you, the DM, do with the tools at your disposal. If every fight takes place in a 5x5 box then your players are going to get bored. If your DM is designing encounters this way, or overusing a particular encounter setup, you should probably start poking them about it. Add cover. Use lair actions. You have so many tools available, use them.

Kaptin Keen
2019-09-08, 11:19 AM
{scrub the post, scrub the quote}

{scrubbed}

Kraynic
2019-09-08, 12:14 PM
{scrub the post, scrub the quote}

Maybe I am missing something, but this seems like a really harsh response. As far as I can tell, your objections boil down to basically 2 things:

1) You don't like dragons as they are portrayed in officially (TSR/WOTC) published material.
2) You don't like dragons as they are portrayed in media.

Ok... How does that invalidate anything other people have said? Obviously they don't like how dragons are portrayed all that well either if they are thinking outside the basic stat block/description text. It is like you are saying that it doesn't matter what is said if no one can prove that dragons are fine how they were published 30 years ago.

Personally, one of my favorite portrayals of a dragon is Mokeleb from Hambly's "Dragonsbane". While I think the rest of the series isn't as good as that first book, the changes that Morkeleb goes through are pretty interesting, though it is definitely a different universe. I also like how the dragon Earthquake is portrayed in the book "Giftwish", though she is certainly more of a force of nature than anything you would want to take on as an adversary.

Knaight
2019-09-08, 01:15 PM
I don't particularly like the D&D approach to dragons, so I don't use them - and while there are a number of things I dislike there the color coding is pretty high on the list. Shortly after it is the generic spellcaster with generic spell list problem; were I to not just go for the big dangerous animal approach (which I favor) I'd at least want to do something with magic that isn't just the same spells everyone gets. Granted, that might be more a function of disliking the D&D approach to magic than anything.

I also don't tend to actually use them, or for that matter monsters much at all. The overwhelming majority of active opposition in basically any of my campaigns is other humans, regardless of genre. There's probably something else in most genres (even a historical game might have you see an angry horse or rampaging elephant), but outside of automated drones in certain futuristic settings they're making a pretty minimal appearance.

Esprit15
2019-09-08, 01:22 PM
I don't particularly like the D&D approach to dragons, so I don't use them - and while there are a number of things I dislike there the color coding is pretty high on the list. Shortly after it is the generic spellcaster with generic spell list problem; were I to not just go for the big dangerous animal approach (which I favor) I'd at least want to do something with magic that isn't just the same spells everyone gets. Granted, that might be more a function of disliking the D&D approach to magic than anything.

I also don't tend to actually use them, or for that matter monsters much at all. The overwhelming majority of active opposition in basically any of my campaigns is other humans, regardless of genre. There's probably something else in most genres (even a historical game might have you see an angry horse or rampaging elephant), but outside of automated drones in certain futuristic settings they're making a pretty minimal appearance.

Ooh, yeah, dragons in my games cast completely differently than most PCs, but that requires custom rules that a friend built that I since have been expanding on.

paddyfool
2019-09-11, 04:08 PM
I quite like how dragon spellcasting is handled in Mother of Learning, where human magic has quite a few similarities to D&D (particularly names of spells, although it's a mana-based, non-Vancian system). https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21220/mother-of-learning


Dragons seem to have lots of power, but not all that much finesse. They've primarily been shown to play the role of magical artillery, although we've only seen a very few dragons and nothing from their perspective, so the full range of their abilities may not have been shown.

The Library DM
2019-09-12, 07:04 PM
There seem to be two actual discussions going on here.

The first is covering dragons as defined by abilities and alignment— that is, how do dragons behave, and what can they do, and how are they defined by the rules.

The second is whether dragon, as a thematic story element, is viable and entertaining.

Both impact each other, but in a way they’re also separate.

For the first, I think that the classic D&D system for dragons is just fine. There is no reason that the BtB dragons can’t be solid adversaries (or allies) for PCs, whether in a one-shot adventure or a full campaign. The key isn’t making changes to the dragons, or doing the “Surprise! It’s a black dragon dunked in gold paint” approach. Rather, the DM should be considering the abilities and character of the dragon and making smart tactical and strategic choices based upon these. Dragons are intelligent— they shouldn’t simply be sitting in a room, waiting to be whacked by whatever barbarian bursts through the door. And even then, the encounter maybe shouldn’t even be a necessarily hostile one, much less result in combat. Dragons are crafty, too, and might be willing to negotiate a deal. “What kind of a deal?” “A deal deal!”
That doesn’t mean that the whole concept of dragons can’t be changed in a DM’s world. It’s just that I don’t think the classic dragons are broken, even with experienced players, provided that role-playing conventions are followed. (If you’ve got jaded, meta-gaming munchkins, then nothing you throw at them is going to be any good. If they’re hung up on counting XP values and CR numbers in everything they face, they’ll never actually participate in creating a decent story.) But with decent players, give ‘em a good story, and the fact that they know what a red dragon can do really won’t matter all that much.

That doesn’t mean you can’t “up” the dragon’s game a bit. Dragon #50 first introduced this approach by noting that two claws and a toothy mouth weren’t the only viable combat options for dragons, introducing things like attacks with the rear claws, wing buffets, tail thrashings, and the like. This classic article also let different tail “types” behave like different weapons— for example, a spike tail would behave like a morning star, a “spade” tail like a sword, and so on. These are very logical adjustments to make to the creatures, and just goes to increase the flavor of any combat.

Personally, I’m actually not a fan of spell-casting dragons. I do like the possibility of a dragon having an innate ability to persuade or deceive its opponents, even perhaps mystically altering their perceptions. Think Smaug with Bilbo (who eventually makes his save), or Ancalagon the Black with Turin in The Silmarillion— the latter is pretty much driven nuts by the dragon’s crafty lies! (This all, of course, goes back to the classic Serpent in the Garden theme...).

So there are lots of ways you can use a dragon and have it be challenging and fun.

Which brings us to the second discussion, which is whether a dragon is a viable thematic element in a story, whether it be a novel, a movie, or a game. To me the answer is obvious: Yes, of course it is. It’s not the dragon that is passé— it’s the way its used. “Ninety percent of everything is crud.”— Sturgeon’s Law.
The meaning being, that if you want to find garbage, you will find it. But, rather obviously, just because there are bad books doesn’t mean that all books are bad. And just because there are bad dragon adventures doesn’t mean that all dragon adventures are bad. Yes, dragons have been poorly used, even in published adventures (and yes, in a LOT of them). But so have goblins, orcs, Minotaurs, liches, werewolves, vampires, wraiths, zombies, and any and every monster, villain or object you can name. The fault doesn’t rest in the creature, but in the poor work put into the adventure.

And that poor work can come from both directions. Just as a DM can run a Monty Haul campaign giving out powers and magic and easy encounters like a pusher on the street corner, a player can be the addict grabbing for goodies and XP without ever considering the possibility of role-playing a rich and unique character. Frankly, if players are weighing the XP value of a monster to determine if it’s worth fighting for their characters’ level advancement, then the campaign has lost all sense of story. Of course, even that also falls back on the DM. If that’s the campaign the DM gives the players, then that’s how the players will respond. And yes, it will be boring. Personally, I’d walk away from a game like that. Or maybe offer to take over. But I wouldn’t blame the dragons— they’re not the problem.

King of Nowhere
2019-09-12, 07:47 PM
(if you’ve got jaded, meta-gaming munchkins, then nothing you throw at them is going to be any good. If they’re hung up on counting xp values and cr numbers in everything they face, they’ll never actually participate in creating a decent story.)
STORMWIND FALLACY!!!!!!
:smalltongue:

Max_Killjoy
2019-09-12, 11:20 PM
"Dragons" can be just about anything underneath the dragonesque imagery.

My setting that actually has "dragons"... they're not creatures of plain old flesh and blood, they're elemental entities in physical form, ranging from powerful spirit able to manifest in the physical world, to outright quasigod. "Kill" one, and all you probably get is a rapidly disassociating glomp of whatever the dragon was at heart -- and likely an irked spirit. A fire-breathing dragon can breathe fire because it is, at heart, "fire". You might get a mountain dragon, or a forest dragon, or a rain dragon... or a shadow dragon.

You don't want to get a shadow dragon.

Fable Wright
2019-09-12, 11:46 PM
I just run dragons as The Original MurderhobosTM.

The Green Dragon is the bard murderhobo. He wants people, and is a source of many a half-dragon. He has gone on many adventures and succeeded many diplomacy checks to get his title.

The Red Dragon is the wargamer murderhobo. He wants everything, and he will fight it because it's there, sleeping upon his piles of loot from his mountain fortress, with his rigorously regiments of kobolds fighting in formation in stacked terrain. And he is exactly as smart as he thinks he is.

The White Dragon is the fighter murderhobo. She wants to hunt. A trophy from every creature in the land, from every NPC, and legends of her legendary hunts. Min/max the points into where they matter, and take bits and pieces of everything you can.

The Blue Dragon is the sorcerer murderhobo. She knows the power of a burrow speed and abuses it to no end, even at a cost of some of her upper level abilities. There will be endless traps and hoarded magical knowledge, and while she's not the obsessive researcher that the lich is, that's because it has all been put into blast spells.

The Black Dragon is the rogue murderhobo. Its goal is to rob everyone of everything. What does it do with the loot? Who cares, as long as it can steal it and no one else will be able to take it. It has everything, and will give back nothing. You hear me? NOTHING!

If you fight any of them as humanoids, you're going to know what each of them is about. The sorcerer's been flashy enough that you'll probably have her full spell list. You know to prepare against illusions, charms, and poisons against bards. You know that the black dragon is going to abuse vision and darkness. You prepare. Color coded just simplifies the process of gathering information about them.

What matters is what the dragons are: a mirror to the players. At the end of the game, with every level gained, item collected, and resources exploited. With every monster slain, with your defenses perfected, and your offense unwithstandable. They are you, unfettered, with everything your particular brand of murderhobo wants. And they are dangerous, unstoppable creatures that only true heroes could possibly stand against. After all, what was Fafnir but a fallen adventurer, as the ur-example of western mythology?

...And do you remember what happened the last time someone stole a single piece of gold from your last murderhobo, and lived to tell the tale?

Metallic dragons are the same, except that I play them as their allegedly-good-aligned-murderhobo counterparts.

Mordaedil
2019-09-13, 01:47 AM
I think scrapping the alignment restriction for dragons is all well and fine. I think alignments given in the monster manual are mainly suggestions anyway (yes, even the always trait)

Any intelligent being should be capable of chosing their own fate, outlook and be able to adapt. I don't think it hurts to keep everything else around the creatures as normal, and I'd still keep Bahamut and Tiamat as their normal alignments, but that is mainly because it is established that those are their chosen alignments. I would also give the metallic dragons more ways of blending into human society, given this change to the alignment structure for dragons.

Consider if you want to change what type of dragon Tiamat is, if you prefer her normal appearance, you might want to invent a story for why 5 chromatic dragons are her heads, or you can change her type accordingly with Bahamut being a platinum dragon, she could be an obsidian or crimson dragon. Or maybe put some metallic dragons in there. Have fun with things.

Karl Aegis
2019-09-13, 02:07 AM
The real standout among dragons is Ashardalon. He ate a powerful demon, consumed its essence and made it his heart. My dragons do that, too. Except they might take it too far and start eating deities and pantheons until there are no outsiders anymore. Makes it so there is a pressing need to wipe out all dragons as soon as they show up. So your religion is not wiped out. If they can't get your religion, well, there's always your economy.


But, yeah, base dragons are really lame.

False God
2019-09-13, 08:20 AM
I just run dragons as The Original MurderhobosTM.

The Green Dragon is the bard murderhobo. He wants people, and is a source of many a half-dragon. He has gone on many adventures and succeeded many diplomacy checks to get his title.

The Red Dragon is the wargamer murderhobo. He wants everything, and he will fight it because it's there, sleeping upon his piles of loot from his mountain fortress, with his rigorously regiments of kobolds fighting in formation in stacked terrain. And he is exactly as smart as he thinks he is.

The White Dragon is the fighter murderhobo. She wants to hunt. A trophy from every creature in the land, from every NPC, and legends of her legendary hunts. Min/max the points into where they matter, and take bits and pieces of everything you can.

The Blue Dragon is the sorcerer murderhobo. She knows the power of a burrow speed and abuses it to no end, even at a cost of some of her upper level abilities. There will be endless traps and hoarded magical knowledge, and while she's not the obsessive researcher that the lich is, that's because it has all been put into blast spells.

The Black Dragon is the rogue murderhobo. Its goal is to rob everyone of everything. What does it do with the loot? Who cares, as long as it can steal it and no one else will be able to take it. It has everything, and will give back nothing. You hear me? NOTHING!
That's frelling awesome, now, if you'll excuse me I believe I have an anti-party I need to stat up.

The Library DM
2019-09-13, 12:10 PM
STORMWIND FALLACY!!!!!!
:smalltongue:

Had to look that one up. The problem with stating that such is a fallacy, is that in doing so one is implying that the point is always incorrect, which is a fallacy in and of itself. It’s also a cheap way to deflect a valid observation rather than addressing the actual point being made.

Further, I’m not referring to the 2e-5e emphasis on “character builds.” I’m specifically referring to players who place their gaming emphasis on XP collection and comparative encounter levels, regardless of what edition they’re playing. If a player is basing their <u>character’s</u> actions based on meta-gaming elements which the character has no way of even conceiving, then that player’s desire to engage in an active, creative, immersive story is limited at best. If it’s all about shootin’-n-lootin’-n-skootin’ then it’s a very different sort of game than the one I prefer. For that, I’ll go play Frag.

Further, I come from the very old-school attitude that the player should NEVER have access to the game mechanics of ANY monster, trap, magical item, or environment. The best player experience I have observed is when the player (and by extension, the character) has limited or even no knowledge of what an encounter’s abilities and vulnerabilities are, except as shared by the DM through the in-world elements of rumor, training, and personal history. So if I had a player picking up the MM at my table, I’d ask them, politely but firmly, to put it down. To me, it’s no different than pointing out that it doesn’t matter if the player is an AP Chemistry student, his character has NO CLUE how to make gunpowder (or any other chemical explosive, mixture or compound), or even how to go about experimenting to do so. The point is to emphasize the “reality” of the characters in their world, and not the knowledge we possess in ours— and that includes knowledge of the game mechanics.

Which isn’t to say that one can’t know the mechanics and also set this knowledge aside to role play a character— one can, and to some extent, most players (even munchkins) do this at least to some degree. But the more one concerns oneself with mechanics and bases character actions upon these, the more one risk losing immersion in the “reality” of the game world. No, it’s not a given. But what was being described earlier certainly had a huge whiff of that to it.

Karl Aegis
2019-09-14, 01:35 AM
Man, if I'm not opening up the monster manual to look up the stats of a dragon what separates a dragon from a wyvern mage? Take off the stinger, give it claws and a breath weapon and you got basically the same thing. Nah, it's the fact that they sit on a pile of loot gathered from the local populace that makes them dragons. Go out there and kill those suckers for loot.

King of Nowhere
2019-09-14, 08:02 AM
Had to look that one up. The problem with stating that such is a fallacy, is that in doing so one is implying that the point is always incorrect, which is a fallacy in and of itself. It’s also a cheap way to deflect a valid observation rather than addressing the actual point being made.


peace!
I didn't mean to start an argument; it was mostly intended as a meta-joke (as in, there's always someone pointing out stormwind fallacies, it may as well be me this time). I fully understand your points

Composer99
2019-09-14, 07:08 PM
Been doing some work with my setting... and I'm almost completely sold on scrapping the entire Chromatic/Metallic dragons idea. While I've never been a huge fan of "colour coded dragons", recently I've felt really stymied by the trope. The idea that players (whether intentionally metagaming or not) can get a ridiculous amount of information from just knowing what colour a dragon is I find really crippling to building tension and creating Dragons as realistic NPCs with realistic motivations.

For example:

Local folk talk about a dragon seen flying around the peak of Mount Dragonplace (clue's in the name, really). The intrepid adventurers track the creature back to its lair, but when they arrive they see it has silver scales. They are immediately put at ease, and openly greet their new friend, "Shimmershine the Uber-Powerful-Pandimensional-Beast-Who-For-Some-Reason-Is-Really-Nice-To-Everyone".

Another example:

Same setup above, but when they reach the mountain, they see a flash of Red Scales. Immediately, they know a) This is going to be a fight (most likely), or at least a situation where they will be facing an aggressive foe b) Fire spells and attacks won't work. c) They need to load up on fire resist.

Even if you buck the Alignment conventions and let Dragons all have their own personalities, within the confines of this system, they're still predictable in terms of their capabilities. To my mind, this takes a lot of the terror and splendour out of dragons... they become a "stock encounter" (You're not a real adventurer until you've beaten a Dragon!). Like with all my villains/allies, a prefer a more nuanced and flawed approach.

Sure, that dragon is nice to you now. But he's still a DRAGON; a supergenius intellect in a flying dinosaur's body that oh yeah can also breathe fire. So you'll want to tread REALLY carefully, in case you accidentally insult his Mom or something.

What's everyone else's take on Colour-Coded dragons in D&D / Pathfinder? Do you agree that they're a bit outdated? Or is there an elegance there that I'm missing?

Dragons in D&D/PF are fine, you just have to be a little savvy.

As far as roleplaying and personality of dragons goes, D&D has never treated alignment as a straitjacket. Nothing is stopping your red dragon, blue dragon, black dragon, silver dragon, etc. etc. etc. from being a "realistic" NPC with "realistic" motivations, whatever its alignment. (I put "realistic" in quotes because, to be frank, a dragon should always be somewhat ineffable. Kaptin Keen complained about Dracula and Frankenstein's monster being more relatable than dragons - well, they should be, because they're essentially human in a way that dragons just aren't.)

As combat encounters go, I think it's crucial to never let the adventurers fully set the terms of the encounter. A dragon ought not sit in its lair waiting for them to close to melee, and then sit there and trade blows. Breath weapons are well and good, but dragons have weapons aplenty if they fail. Lairs should be modified to allow the dragon full advantage of its flight and multiattack capabilities if by some mischance it has to fight in its lair proper, and they should weaken all but the most-prepared parties before they even get to face the dragon. Never, ever fight fair with a dragon. Bard got to kill one with his black arrow, but the PCs just have to earn their dragon kill the hard way, dammit! Like Tiamat (so the disclaimer goes in the 5e Rise of Tiamat adventure), normal dragons don't apologise for TPKs.

Of course, a lot really depends on the edition of the game you are using: it's hardest to have a good solid dragon fight when the PCs include 3.5 wizards and CoDzillas among their numbers, as compared to other editions of D&D.

Finally...


"Revenge!" he snorted, and the light of his eyes lit the hall from floor to ceiling like scarlet lightning. "Revenge! The King under the Mountain is dead and where are his kin that dare seek revenge? Girion Lord of Dale is dead, and I have eaten his people like a wolf among sheep, and where are his sons' sons that dare approach me? I kill where I wish and none dare resist. I laid low the warriors of old and their like is not in the world today. Then I was but young and tender. Now I am old, and strong, strong, strong, Thief in the Shadows!" he gloated. "My armour is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death!"

Every dragon, even the ones colour-coded for your convenience (yes, even the metallic ones), should aspire to meet the example set by Smaug.

King of Nowhere
2019-09-14, 08:56 PM
Every dragon, even the ones colour-coded for your convenience (yes, even the metallic ones), should aspire to meet the example set by Smaug.

problem is, they cannot within the ruleset, unless the world is E6. smaug could talk like that because no weapon ccould realistically hurt him, one bite would tear any men in two, one breath would kill anyone along its path.

in d&d, a warrior can deal significant damage to a dragon with a single charge, one bite won't accomplish much of anything, and one breath would still be survived, even without immunities.

but the difference is not in ddragons. old d&d dragons are as powerful as smaug. the difference is adventurers. even mid level d&d adventurers are gods of death compared to the mightiest heros of tolkien lore. dragons are no longer the undisputed lords of creation, and having them keep behaving as such just makes them look dumb, as in this example


Smaug:"Revenge!" he snorted, and the light of his eyes lit the hall from floor to ceiling like scarlet lightning. "Revenge! The King under the Mountain is dead and where are his kin that dare seek revenge? Girion Lord of Dale is dead, and I have eaten his people like a wolf among sheep, and-

Fighter(interrupting him): blah blah, boring old villain monologue. Not interested. I rage and charge, full power attack (rolls) then iterative attacks for pounce (rolls rolls) it's 340 damage

Wizard: ok, I cast quickened true casting, and then I cast bboth my ocular spells, where I had stored twinned empowered maximized fell drain scorching rays, with energy substitution to cold from my archmage power (rolls, rolls, rolls, rolls). And then at the end of my turn I use an immediate action to cast greater celerity, and I cast maximized empowered force orb (rolls some more). It's 512 damage and 12 negative levels.

DM: huh. dragon is dead already.

Rogue: sucks! I didn't even get to act

Cleric: Meh. what a dumb villain.

Ok, the details may change. maybe the dragon had buffed himself, so the wizard had dispelled first, or maybe there were minions too.

but that's the point. Smaug didn't have buffs. He didn't need minions. He didn't need a clever battle plan. Smaug didn't need anything, because he was by far the biggest fish in the pond.
D&D dragons aren't. So they can't behave the same way, and trying to make them behave the same way either makes them dumb, or it makes contradictions. Smaug in a normal campaign world wouldn't last one day.

Plus, IMO Smaug wasn't an interesting villain anyway; did he have any motivation besides "muahaha I'm so big and powerful and evil and I want to sit on this pile of gold"? the only thing that makes him even remotely original is that tolkien wrote him first.

So no, Smaug is a TERRIBLE example on how to make dragons, unless you are playing E6. And I realize this is one of the reasons dragons need to be adjusted according to the world. evil dragons by the book are supposed to be strong as smaug and behave like smaug, except that smaug won't work outside of its context, and so neither do by-the-book dragons.

Fable Wright
2019-09-14, 09:27 PM
Ok, the details may change. maybe the dragon had buffed himself, so the wizard had dispelled first, or maybe there were minions too.

To clarify, your example only "works" with 3.5 and maybe Pathfinder. In 5e, Pathfinder 2, 4e, really any game after that paradigm? It flat-out doesn't happen that way.

And in 3.PF, that dragon is a full spellcaster. "As you charge, the dragon flaps his wings and vanishes as a vast curtain of stone rises before you." (Greater Celerity, dragon casts Wall of Stone blocking LoS and LoE, stops the charge in its tracks, and flies to a Hallucinatory Terrain'd part of its lair where you won't find it until it recovers from Dazed.)

When the dragon recovers, (at my table at least,) it uses a Metamagic Widen rod to cast Antimagic Field, swoops back down, Flyby Attacks the Wizard in a grapple and out of the Fighter's reach. Archer can't do anything through the DR/Magic in an AMF, Fighter can't charge in the air through 20ft of antimagic, Wizard can't teleport out because grappled in an antimagic field.

Alternatively, at a high enough level, the dragon goes ZA WARUDO and does a Celerity Time Stop to set this up.

And now you've got a Smaug fight on your hands.

Pleh
2019-09-14, 11:35 PM
Plus, IMO Smaug wasn't an interesting villain anyway; did he have any motivation besides "muahaha I'm so big and powerful and evil and I want to sit on this pile of gold"? the only thing that makes him even remotely original is that tolkien wrote him first.

Actually, this is one of the few things I think the Hobbit movies did well. They foreshadowed the fact that the Dwarves got greedy first, showing the King with an unhealthy (read: dragonlike) obsession with wealth. Then suddenly an actual dragon came to hoard it for himself. Later, Thorin begins showing symptoms of this same Greed Sickness after reclaiming the treasure. It starts turning the good guys against each other.

Smaug is a terrible villain if you leave him only his ego and statblock.

But he was actually a great villain as Greed personified. There was this ongoing theme that greed begets greed, even in Bilbo's side arc of taking the Ring from Gollum. He was a living component of the curse of Morgoth and a dark reflection of the hubris of the Dwarves themselves.

So let's look back earlier in the thread at the idea of dragons being the world's first murderhobos. Now dragons are a dark reflection of the PCs themselves. You can easily set up a scenario where the players have to be careful as they work towards slaying the dragon that they themselves do not end up becoming no different.

Composer99
2019-09-15, 10:52 AM
lots of stuff

Well, that's me schooled. It's not like the rest of my post made mention of the distinct nature of 3.X games when it came to dragon-fighting, or suggested that DMs make sure they avoid exactly the sort of situation you included as an ex- oh wait.