Converting Epic Level Creatures

[demiurge1138]

CR 22 for the full spellcasting.

[Shade]

22 it is.

Updated. Finished?

[freyar]

He looks good.

[Big Mac]

This thread was sliding down the second page.

Is this the last epic monster?

[Shade]

Nope, not the last by a longshot.

It's OK for some of these to slide off the first page. I try not to have more than 10 conversion threads going at a time, as I find that it gets confusing to keep up with and folks tend to only respond to a few at a time. So this thread will be revisited once some of the others get some attention (like the Planescape thread that was just "reactivated").

[Shade]

Grey Dragon
(Draco Nox Diabolus)
Frequency: Very rare
# App: 1
AC: -5 (-2)
Move: 15"/24"
Hit Dice: 12 (96 hit points)
% in Lair: 100%
Treasure Type: H, S, T, U
# Att: 5
Dmg/Att: 1-8/1-8/1-4/1-4/5-40
Special Attacks: See Below
Special Defenses: See Below
Magic Resistance: Standard
Intelligence: Low
Alignment: Chaotic evil
Size: L (48' long)
Psionics: Nil
Chance of Speaking: 25%
Chance of Magic Use: 75%
Chance of Sleeping: 10%

The grey dragon, Rahab, is hated by dragons as much as he is hated by all other creatures. The only living things around him are the men, dwarves, and goblins he has enslaved. He lives deep in a cavern in a remote mountain range and never ventures forth from it.

The grey dragon attacks with the usual claw/claw/bite routine but gets two additional swings with his claws because of his tremendous speed. The latter two claw attacks are at -1 "to hit" and do only 1-4 points of damage. Rahab's breath weapon is a gas cloud that affects all victims with its boundaries (2" + 2" + 3") as a super-powerful charm spell. Affected characters or creatures who fail their saving throw vs. breath weapon will never again attack Rahab or do him harm for as long as they live, or until the effect of the breath weapon is negated by a remove curse spell.

Those who enter the dragon's cavern will find nothing but a large mound of blackness, for Rahab is hidden by a form of continual darkness. The spell is not affected by anything save continual light, which will act as a light spell. In this darkness, Rahab has an armor class of -5. If the darkness is temporarly alleviated by the application of continual light, its armor class worsens to -2.

If adversaries come close enough to the dragon, or if Rahab advances toward his foes, the grey dragon may be able to envelop his opponents in this blackness, effectively blinding them. If he manages to do this Rahab receives a +5 bonus "to hit" on each character so affected. The dragon's own vision is sufficient to see under the darkness. The edge of the area of darkness is approximately three feet away from the dragon and surrounds him totally.

The dragon can cast two magic-user spells per day, but can use no spell of higher than third level.

Originally appeared in Dragon Magazine #62 (1982).

[Shade]

Although not apparently epic, note that by the "divide by 4.5" rule, he'd have 21 Hit Dice.

[freyar]

Originally Posted by Shade

Although not apparently epic, note that by the "divide by 4.5" rule, he'd have 21 Hit Dice.

He reads like he should be somewhat epic, but then his powers don't seem so great. Let's give him a little boost, shall we?

First off, what's the story on this guy? Some sort of mutated true dragon or something else?

[demiurge1138]

Originally Posted by freyar

First off, what's the story on this guy? Some sort of mutated true dragon or something else?

He... doesn't have one. The text Shade gives is all of it. We should make one up!

[freyar]

That's kind of sad. I expect more from Dragon magazine, really.

The charming breath is reminiscent of metallic dragons, kind of, while the darkness (and color) fits a black dragon. Maybe he's a unique half-black/half-brass or something. Some failed experiment of Tiamat, perhaps? He's a bit large for 21 HD, but that's ok...

[Shade]

Maybe a metallic dragon that turned to evil and darkness? Or a radiant dragon corrupted by demons?

We could also use all of the above, leaving the origins as rumors.

[freyar]

I like the rumor idea. And since he could really use a little jazzing up, we can use them as inspirations for abilities. Any of these would also work to explain why he's hated by other dragons.

So, then, Gargantuan or Colossal? He seems borderline, depending on how chunky he is. I guess C.

[demiurge1138]

I like the metallic/chromatic hybrid idea.

And this was pretty early Dragon Magazine. Besides which, most of the flavor and background went into the faerie dragon, introduced the same issue. There's a reason those keep advancing editions while this one has gone untouched.

[freyar]

Originally Posted by demiurge1138

I like the metallic/chromatic hybrid idea.

And this was pretty early Dragon Magazine. Besides which, most of the flavor and background went into the faerie dragon, introduced the same issue. There's a reason those keep advancing editions while this one has gone untouched.

Yeah, it's easy to see.

Ok, so far we have a haste kind of effect (extra claw attacks), a strong darkness aura, a charming breath weapon, and relatively weak magic use. Should we add some of the other usual dragon stuff, like tail slap & sweep, wing buffets, etc, just for starters?

[Shade]

Originally Posted by freyar

Yeah, it's easy to see.

Ok, so far we have a haste kind of effect (extra claw attacks), a strong darkness aura, a charming breath weapon, and relatively weak magic use. Should we add some of the other usual dragon stuff, like tail slap & sweep, wing buffets, etc, just for starters?

Yeah, I think so.

Most Colossal dragons have way more than 20 HD. Do we want to boost his, or drop him to Gargantuan?

[freyar]

Hard choice. I think that the way he's presented, he makes more sense at G with 21HD, though C with more HD would probably be fun. I guess Gargantuan.

[Shade]

In that case, he probably compares favorably with a wyrm white dragon in terms of size and relative power level. It has...

Str 35, Dex 10, Con 25, Int 14, Wis 15, Cha 16

Rahab's Int is listed as Low (thus, 5-7). Do we want to keep him that unintelligent, or boost him like the example above?

[freyar]

Hmm, how smart (or dumb) were 1e white dragons? I'd probably be in favor of boosting his Int to keep him at least in line with a white. Honestly, he's unique, so I'd like him to at least be better than a white dragon at 21HD!

[Shade]

Average (low).

Note that I compared him to a wyrm white dragon, since that is the lowest HD Gargantuan dragon I could find and is close to what I'd imagine is the target CR (19-20). However, even that "lowly" dragon has 33 HD. So we might really want to consider boosting his HD.

[freyar]

Yeah, I've noticed that Huge and larger earlier edition monsters often don't have enough HD. Let's go with 35, maybe. That's an increase of 2/3 just to get him reasonable! I think we should seriously consider improving his spellcasting or else giving him some SLAs. If it's too much of a stretch, I guess we could just shrink him to Huge and keep his abilities as they are.