Becoming a dracolich in 3.5e is a bad deal and no dragon would do it

[redking]

In the 3.5 edition, the dracolich template does not explicitly allow the dragon to continue growing and progressing through age categories, which means they lose out on the benefits that come with aging, such as increased ability scores, size, and other age-related benefits. This makes it less appealing for a dragon to become a dracolich, as they may feel that they are stagnating in power and development.

Perhaps I might have hallucinated it, but in 2E I feel sure that dracoliches continued to grow in their undead state. This should be restored in 3.5e if that is the case (or even if it isn't). Does this work?

Ageless Undead Progression (Ex): A dracolich retains the ability to grow and progress through age categories despite its undead state. As it ages, it gains the increased ability scores, size, and other benefits appropriate for the base creature's age category. The dracolich's HD, Challenge Rating, and Level Adjustment may also increase as it advances through age categories. The Cult of the Dragon is known to exploit this characteristic, targeting younger dragons and guiding them through their transformation into dracoliches, fostering their growth and amassing formidable allies over time.

Just add that to the dracolich template, and true dragon objections to the process will be much reduced.

[Inevitability]

Dragons don't become dracoliches for the power (just as human spellcasters don't become liches for the paralyzing touch), they do it for the security. If you're a dragon, there are entire societies of people organized around the idea of hunting you for sport and making magic items out of your hide, and only one of them needs to get lucky over many thousands of years.

Being a dracolich simply offers an insane amount of security, even if it sacrifices aging advancement. Even if most dragons wouldn't take it, the more paranoid ones have every reason to do so.

And besides, RHD advancement isn't the only way to grow in power. A dracolich can still take class levels, seek out more magical transformations, etc.

[Remuko]

on top of what inevitability said, dragons are long lived, but not immortal. some may fear mortality. this gives them (un)life unending. and on top of that, if they are worried about the age thing, they can just wait to become one after theyre a great wyrm and at the peak of power they could gain from such means?

[False God]

Reasonably speaking, a dragon is unlikely to become a dracolich until later in life. If they do it sooner, it is likely a response to immediate threats to their continued existence (beyond the norm). And no, I wouldn't allow them to keep growing in their undead state. They lost that benefit in exchange for the immortality of undeath.

Transforming a young dragon into a dracolich shouldn't be easier, it should be harder. The younger the dragon, the less likely it is to survive the process. If for no other reason than they have less HP, worse saves, and less magic.

[redking]

Perhaps I might have hallucinated it, but in 2E I feel sure that dracoliches continued to grow in their undead state. This should be restored in 3.5e if that is the case (or even if it isn't). Does this work?

Did I hallucinate the 2E Dracoliches?

[Crake]

Reasonably speaking, a dragon is unlikely to become a dracolich until later in life. If they do it sooner, it is likely a response to immediate threats to their continued existence (beyond the norm). And no, I wouldn't allow them to keep growing in their undead state. They lost that benefit in exchange for the immortality of undeath.

Also worth noting that a young dracolich can arrange themselves to be brought back to life after said immediate threats are resolved as well, so that they can continue aging. In fact, dracolichdom in general may just be something that dragons do on a temporary basis for temporary power/security, making sure to sequester away a small part of their original body that they can use for a contingent resurrection down the line.

[Zanos]

The draconomicon entry for dracolich also says that some evil casters coerce dragons into being dracoliches. I don't know why you would want to do that, but it says it's true.

[Crake]

The draconomicon entry for dracolich also says that some evil casters coerce dragons into being dracoliches. I don't know why you would want to do that, but it says it's true.

Well, a dracolich can be controlled via turn undead/command undead, might be potentially easier than controlling the dragon by other means.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Isn't there a spell that allows you to cut off a body part (typically a toe) and store your soul into it? A dragon could cast that just as easily. Also, they have access to the ability to bring themselves back (even at a remove via purchasing contingent rezzes, which they can afford well before they can cast those spells themselves).

So it's not security against being murdered, but against aging that would push a dragon to become a dracolich. And since the big-time dragons all want to become great wyrms, only great wyrms would typically become dracoliches.

[Zanos]

Well, a dracolich can be controlled via turn undead/command undead, might be potentially easier than controlling the dragon by other means.
I feel like charm monster would suit such purposes better, or just killing a dragon and turning it into a mindless undead if you want something idiot proof.


Isn't there a spell that allows you to cut off a body part (typically a toe) and store your soul into it? A dragon could cast that just as easily. Also, they have access to the ability to bring themselves back (even at a remove via purchasing contingent rezzes, which they can afford well before they can cast those spells themselves).

So it's not security against being murdered, but against aging that would push a dragon to become a dracolich. And since the big-time dragons all want to become great wyrms, only great wyrms would typically become dracoliches.
If you go down that rabbit hole there's no reason for anyone to pursue undeath, since spells and magic items exist to become immortal via simpler and often cheaper means. So you'll have to invent a reason immortality seekers in your game don't pursue those methods, not just dragons.

[johnbragg]

Did I hallucinate the 2E Dracoliches?

I think they were in the Forgotten Realms addition to th eMonstrous Compendium

[Biggus]

Did I hallucinate the 2E Dracoliches?

I can't find anything about in its 2E MM entry. I don't have all the 2E books though so it's possible it's mentioned somewhere else.

[Crake]

I feel like charm monster would suit such purposes better, or just killing a dragon and turning it into a mindless undead if you want something idiot proof.

I dont think you can really put charm monster on the same level as controlling undead via rebuke. One is very loosly “control” the other is absolute total, uncontested domination

[Thane of Fife]

Did I hallucinate the 2E Dracoliches?

The 2e entry for Dracoliches in Cult of the Dragon is explicit that they continue to age like normal dragons do, but most other dracolich stat blocks I can find don't have that sentence.


The draconomicon entry for dracolich also says that some evil casters coerce dragons into being dracoliches. I don't know why you would want to do that, but it says it's true.

I think that the origin of the dracolich as a monster is with the Forgotten Realms Cult of the Dragon, who are insane evil wizards determined to bring about the rule of the world by undead dragons. So I guess the reason why you would want to do that is "Because you're crazy."

[Zanos]

I dont think you can really put charm monster on the same level as controlling undead via rebuke. One is very loosly “control” the other is absolute total, uncontested domination
Command Undead is no better than charm for sentient undead. Rebuking is absolute control, sure, but dragons tend to be pretty poor servants if hit dice is your budget. I suppose not a horrid idea, but considering the expense, complexity, risk, and efficacy, I question it as a wise pursuit even if rebuking is available.

[Crake]

Command Undead is no better than charm for sentient undead. Rebuking is absolute control, sure, but dragons tend to be pretty poor servants if hit dice is your budget. I suppose not a horrid idea, but considering the expense, complexity, risk, and efficacy, I question it as a wise pursuit even if rebuking is available.

I’m not saying its an amazing idea, im saying its an idea, an example of why said evil characters might suggest such a thing. It doubly works if youre a necromancer who banned enchantment.

Personally, if i wanted to control a dragon, I’d just use the elemental rebuking to control it while it was young, and then maintain the control as it ages by just keeping my cleric level high enough.

[redking]

The 2e entry for Dracoliches in Cult of the Dragon is explicit that they continue to age like normal dragons do, but most other dracolich stat blocks I can find don't have that sentence.

Thanks! I thought I had confabulated it. The Dracolich template in 3.5e doesn't say that they stop progressing through age categories, but people assume it due to their undead state. I makes sense that the magic of the transformation ensures continued growth, albeit unnaturally.

[Crichton]

I think that the origin of the dracolich as a monster is with the Forgotten Realms Cult of the Dragon

Nope, it goes waaaaay back. Dragotha, the dracolich under White Plume Mountain, super iconic to Oerth and Greyhawk as a setting, published back in 1979 and updated many times since. I'm not sure they used the actual word 'dracolich' in that module, but essentially that's what he is.

[redking]

Page 103, 2E Cult of the Dragon


Dracoliches continue to age just as dragons do, becoming more powerful as they enter new age categories.

There it is. I don't think that it is as simple as "just get class levels, brah" for dragons. It makes sense that the dracoliches continue to grow (necromantic growth instead of biological) as dragons. Otherwise no dragons would do it. "I can guarantee that you'll be weaker than your peers in a century" is hardly an inducement.

[hamishspence]

Thanks! I thought I had confabulated it. The Dracolich template in 3.5e doesn't say that they stop progressing through age categories, but people assume it due to their undead state. I makes sense that the magic of the transformation ensures continued growth, albeit unnaturally.

In Spellfire a point is made of how one of the dracoliches had accepted dracolichdom young (well, by dragon standards):

The dracolich put its great head to one side and regarded her, considering. It had been proud and great in life, and very curious. It had thought much on the intricacies of the art, and on death, and so had accepted the cult's offer to die and become undead.

Aghazstamn had accepted young and missed many years of high flying and dealing death upon lesser creatures, of battling other wyrms in the clear air, and of mating in roaring silence, gliding together in the chill upper air. It regretted the losses. Now here was a call to war.

and in the 3.5 book Dragons of Faerun, its description says "Blue wyrm dracolich" (second oldest age category). That might qualify as a hint that it aged all the way to wyrm at some point after the dracolich transformation.

[redking]

In Spellfire a point is made of how one of the dracoliches had accepted dracolichdom young (well, by dragon standards);

The dracolich put its great head to one side and regarded her, considering. It had been proud and great in life, and very curious. It had thought much on the intricacies of the art, and on death, and so had accepted the cult's offer to die and become undead.

Aghazstamn had accepted young and missed many years of high flying and dealing death upon lesser creatures, of battling other wyrms in the clear air, and of mating in roaring silence, gliding together in the chill upper air. It regretted the losses. Now here was a call to war.


and in the 3.5 book Dragons of Faerun, its description says "Blue wyrm dracolich" (second oldest age category). That might qualify as a hint that it aged all the way to wyrm at some point after the dracolich transformation.

Good point. I went and had a good read of Cult of the Dragon today. In CotD, the cultists prefer changing old age category spellcasting dragons or older, but they can change dragons of any age. This may be because of the expense of the transformation into a Dracolich. Alternatively, it may be that older dragons are more capable of handling undeath or more capable of successfully surviving the transformation than young dragons.

[Maat Mons]

Well, first you want to reach Great Wyrm age. Then you want to gain however many Virtual Age Categories (Draconomicon, p99) it takes to reach colossal size, and one more for the extra benefits the book calls “Colossal+.” After that, I could maybe see opting for Dracolichdom, but there’s no rush until you’re approaching the onset of Twilight (Draconomicon, p14).

One perk of undeath is that you eventually should acquire the Evolved Undead template (Libris Mortis, p99). Eventually, you’ll succeed at gaining an evolution 99 times, and your chances of evolving each 100 years becomes 100%. Then you’re gaining +1 natural armor, +2 Strength, and +2 Charisma every 100 years for doing absolutely nothing.

One reason not to go for undeath is that Dragon maximum lifespan is based on Charisma, and Dragons gain +2 Charisma for every 3 racial hit dice they manage to gain past Great Wyrm. So, if you can manage to gain 3 hit dice every 100 years (for a chromatic dragon) or every 200 years (for a metallic dragon), you’ll never die. Well, not of old age, and that’s the only thing True Resurrection can’t bring you back from.

[wilphe]

Good point. I went and had a good read of Cult of the Dragon today. In CotD, the cultists prefer changing old age category spellcasting dragons or older, but they can change dragons of any age. This may be because of the expense of the transformation into a Dracolich. Alternatively, it may be that older dragons are more capable of handling undeath or more capable of successfully surviving the transformation than young dragons.

At least one of the 3E books - I cannot remember which, says the Cult targets dragons who are down on their luck or who have not done as well as they thought they might

So there's "All of the other dragons used to laugh at my puny hoard, now I will show them all"

[icefractal]

I'd assume that similar to non-dragon Liches, one of the big factors is simplicity / rejection of the world.

Like, you can escape old age by reincarnating and other forms of death via contingency, you can mimic the immunities of undeath via spells ... but those all take attention, maintenance, and in some cases rely on having allies. Board discussion (especially optimization) generally assumes characters with perfect executive function, but what if you're the stereotypical absent-minded mage who can't be arsed to handle all that?

Lichdom, on the other hand, is simple. You don't need food, air, or help from anyone else. You can just sit in your tower studying for literally decades or centuries and not worry about what's going on outside. And if someone breaks in to kill you after 50 years, you're fairly well defended and able to auto-rez, without needing to have vigilantly done your buff routine 18,000+ times.

This is, incidentally, why the 5E "hungry Lich" concept ruins the whole point, IMO.

[Biggus]

There it is. I don't think that it is as simple as "just get class levels, brah" for dragons. It makes sense that the dracoliches continue to grow (necromantic growth instead of biological) as dragons. Otherwise no dragons would do it. "I can guarantee that you'll be weaker than your peers in a century" is hardly an inducement.

Well, not really. You can gain class levels far, far faster than you can gain age categories, and the main reason a dragon wouldn't want to go adventuring ("it's high-risk and I'm very long-lived") doesn't apply to a dracolich which is already dead and has its phylactery safely stashed away somewhere.



Eventually, you’ll succeed at gaining an evolution 99 times, and your chances of evolving each 100 years becomes 100%.


True, but that's a big "eventually", it'd take an average of roughly 250,000 years to reach that point...

[MaxiDuRaritry]

True, but that's a big "eventually", it'd take an average of roughly 250,000 years to reach that point...Dragons are known for hibernating for long periods between rampages. Being undead, the maximum amount of time increases to "permanent until awoken," since biological limits are no longer a factor. So the dracolich acquires access to a flowing-time plane with large amounts of negative energy in it where the dracolich can hibernate for a few hundred millennia, and it won't even notice the passing of time outside of how strong it suddenly is when it wakes up.

[Maat Mons]

Slight aside, has there ever been a "dracobaelnorn?"

[Biggus]

Dragons are known for hibernating for long periods between rampages. Being undead, the maximum amount of time increases to "permanent until awoken," since biological limits are no longer a factor. So the dracolich acquires access to a flowing-time plane with large amounts of negative energy in it where the dracolich can hibernate for a few hundred millennia, and it won't even notice the passing of time outside of how strong it suddenly is when it wakes up.

Yes, if the universe you're playing in is even that old. Fantasy settings tend to have much shorter timespans than the real world; the oldest creature in Forgotten Realms with a specified age is "only" about 30,000 IIRC.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Yes, if the universe you're playing in is even that old. Fantasy settings tend to have much shorter timespans than the real world; the oldest creature in Forgotten Realms with a specified age is "only" about 30,000 IIRC.Remember: flowing time. That means that it could have a timeframe of 100 years per second in real time. That means it'd only take 1,000 seconds (less than 20 minutes) for 100,000 years to pass for you. And if the plane is especially dense with negative energy due to connections with the Negative Energy Plane, it'd take even less for you to hit evolved undead pretty hard.

[Saintheart]

Slight aside, has there ever been a "dracobaelnorn?"

Yes. Miirym, the guardian ghost dragon of Candlekeep. Though that seems to be more of an accident than anything else.

[Mechalich]

Yes, if the universe you're playing in is even that old. Fantasy settings tend to have much shorter timespans than the real world; the oldest creature in Forgotten Realms with a specified age is "only" about 30,000 IIRC.

D&D history goes further back, sort of. In the classic 2e understanding of long-term history everything is post-apocalyptic, and that apocalypse was the downfall of the Illithid Empire, which ruled thousands of crystal spheres. That empire appears to have fallen something in the range of 30,000-50,000 years prior to the present. Since very few beings survived the downfall of said empire and the Gith rampages across the cosmos that followed, the history of the multiverse effectively only goes back that far.

[Chronos]

Exactly what planes, with what time and energy traits, exist is also something that varies from cosmology to cosmology. I don't think the standard cosmology even contains any fast-time planes at all, and I think that the fastest time that's called out specifically in any official source is only 10:1 and not negative-energy.

Unless your setting includes the Genesis spell and lets the caster set all of their planar traits, of course.

[redking]

Dracoliches increasing age categories in their undead state in 3.5e. Yay or nay?

[Saintheart]

Well, if nothing else at least being a Dracolich stops adventurers just oneshotting you with Shivering Touch...

[Thunder999]

Undead don't age and nothing calls Dracolich an exception, so no age category increases.

It's like how a human lich misses out on that +3 int/wis/cha, except more noticeably because dragons usually gain more.

Dracolich is for those dragons who fear death and are willing to give up the easy long term power that comes with age in return for knowing that they will actually live that long, it also allows them to be much more reckless which could be a huge benefit to a dragon with serious ambitions.

[redking]

Undead don't age and nothing calls Dracolich an exception, so no age category increases.

In 3.5e, there is no indication that Dracoliches advance by age categories in the template, but there are hints of it in supplements, where Dracoliches continued to age.


Page 103, 2E Cult of the Dragon


Dracoliches continue to age just as dragons do, becoming more powerful as they enter new age categories.

There it is. I don't think that it is as simple as "just get class levels, brah" for dragons. It makes sense that the dracoliches continue to grow (necromantic growth instead of biological) as dragons. Otherwise no dragons would do it. "I can guarantee that you'll be weaker than your peers in a century" is hardly an inducement.

In 2E it was explicit. Anyway, I feel certain no dragon would take this deal if it were otherwise. The modality of the dragon is not analogous to that of a human lich.