Tiamat without divinity

[ArlEammon]

How powerful is Tiamat without divinity?

[Goaty14]

That's pretty open-ended if you expect a mechanical answer. I suppose even without cults of evil dragons, Tiamat is sill a really large, 5-headed dragon, so maybe -(3-5) CR depending on how the divine spells every deity gets would've been spent normally.

[Fire Tarrasque]

WAIT, DID YOU JUST CALL TIAMAT CR 3-5?
Standard Dragon Wyrmlings are more powerful than that. Tiamat is Ancient Dragon level, BASE.

[nikkoli]

I believe they ment reduce tiamats divine cr by 3 to 5 to get tiamat as a "regular" monster, so cr x is normal w/ divine rank, and cr would be xx-(3 to 5) w/o divine rank.

[demonslayerelf]

It depends on edition and intention.
Intention-wise, I mean "Logically", or "Mechanically". Logically, she's the difference between a body builder and Hercules. They're both good in their field(Strength/Being a dragon), but one is the peak of their biology's limits, and the other is a god.

Mechanically, edition matters more than logic. 1, 2, 3, 3.5, etc. Tiamat is WAY stronger than 5e Tiamat(And I dunno about 4e).

Looking at 5e, Tiamat doesn't get any "divine" powers, at least none identified as such. Each of her breath weapons are identical to the ancient's breath weapons, just slightly longer each time.

Her bite, claw, and tail damages double, the range of her fear doubles, she gets 30 regeneration, limited magic immunity, 2 extra LR's, and 2 extra LA's. Probably chalk the regen, LMI, and extra legendary stuff upto being divine, the rest to just being more powerful in general, probably.


In other editions, gods get... A lot. While the books are hot messes, the 3.5 books over divinity are pretty generous. Gods usually get their own planes, tons of special abilities, absolute control over purviews, massive bonuses to basically everything... So that's a massive difference right there.



I guess, in summary, the difference between editions matters as to the change she undergoes, but the end result is the same. She's a big-ass more-than-ancient dragon with 5 heads.