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Why would I *want* the option to use Metallic Dragons as antagonists? Because Eberron taught me a long time ago that having unpredictable dragons is *waaaaay* more fun than having a monster with "I'm a Good Guy" printed over his head.
Yeah, this... Except for me it was Shadowrun... Especially the Draco foundation.
__________________ Originally Posted by diaglo
Olgar Shiverstone or other new edition DM: so i've gotta wrap up the campaign..
diaglo: we could play OD&D(1974) the only true game. All the other editions are..
other gamer: i could run a campaign set in space with ninja pirates.
other gamers: done. when do we start.
diaglo:
Not upset. I'll change the alignment if I need to.
If their powers were all based on making bunnies fluffy and instilling warmth in the hearts of children everywhere, I might start off irritated, but then start thinking about ways to make that horribly, twistedly evil...
If they had kept them LG I wouldn't have batted an eye, or more honestly, even noticed. But since they did change them to Unaligned, and that caught my attention, I say the change is 100% for the better.
PS
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Never used the D&D alignment system in the first place (in any edition) so I would not have noticed but recently I have been relying a lot on modules so it could be interesting to get a module with an evil gold dragon.
It would have bugged me. I never liked the "all metallics are good and all chromatics are evil" rule. So I would have considered a LG alignment on Gold Dragons to be a wasted opportunity.
I would be irritated if the designers realized that unaligned golden dragons allowed better gaming but still decided to leave the alignment at LG for legacy reasons.
I've seen a lot of threads asking those who want gold dragons as LG to essentially defend their opinion, so I thought I'd turn the tables a bit and see how others feel.
If the Monster Manual had come out with Gold Dragons as Lawful Good, would you have been upset? Assume that there hadn't been any word or warning that they were going to be anything but LG. Would you be more or less upset if the other metallic dragons were unaligned, but gold stayed LG?
Upset? No. They've been Lawful Good since before the Good/Evil axis even existed. My feelings on the subject were settled long ago, so there'd have been no reason to get upset about things staying as they were.
I would have just gone right on never, ever using them.
__________________ Have you ever known a person who always behaved exactly the way you expected? Real people don't stay in character.
I would not have been upset, but I would probably have continued a habit I've had since I started with the Red Box Basic Set and not used them at all.
Never saw much use for LG dragons, to be honest. But I wouldn't have been upset about a minor rules change. But then again, I'm not upset about major rules changes either.
Things change. I will always have my old games to play if I for some reason can't game with a new revision of a rules set.
Que sera, sera and all that. IMO of course, and YMMV.
/M
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I wouldn't have cared if they had kept its original alignment. That said, I have no problems with the change; if I want a LG gold dragon it my campaign, then I'll have a LG gold dragon.
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I think there was a missed opportunity to posit the gold as a besieged remant of the glory days of Arkhosia, the sole breed of dragonkind that stands true to Bahamut's laws... to a fault. This strict adherence to the tenets of honor and justice drove the old empire to war and decline, and to this day gold dragons can't compromise. Which leads to golds being the most enigmatic, reclusive and endangered dragon species (and "species" is pushing it... more like "handful of individuals").
I think there was a missed opportunity to posit the gold as a besieged remant of the glory days of Arkhosia, the sole breed of dragonkind that stands true to Bahamut's laws... to a fault. This strict adherence to the tenets of honor and justice drove the old empire to war and decline, and to this day gold dragons can't compromise. Which leads to golds being the most enigmatic, reclusive and endangered dragon species (and "species" is pushing it... more like "handful of individuals").
That's a cool idea. I think I'll use that for my game.
I think there was a missed opportunity to posit the gold as a besieged remant of the glory days of Arkhosia, the sole breed of dragonkind that stands true to Bahamut's laws... to a fault. This strict adherence to the tenets of honor and justice drove the old empire to war and decline, and to this day gold dragons can't compromise. Which leads to golds being the most enigmatic, reclusive and endangered dragon species (and "species" is pushing it... more like "handful of individuals").
I think there was a missed opportunity to posit the gold as a besieged remant of the glory days of Arkhosia, the sole breed of dragonkind that stands true to Bahamut's laws... to a fault. This strict adherence to the tenets of honor and justice drove the old empire to war and decline, and to this day gold dragons can't compromise. Which leads to golds being the most enigmatic, reclusive and endangered dragon species (and "species" is pushing it... more like "handful of individuals").
I hit you for XP earlier in the thread, but this shows it more.
Lawful. Good. Adversarial. A challenge to overcome and a showcase of a complex personality. Something that makes the world richer. Heck, this take on them may have merited combat statblocks, even.
If they would have been concept-designed from the beginning as something like this, they would be so much better than what we have now, which is just another statblock amongst thousands, and yet another murder-machine to attach it to.
I like to think of dragons as basically unclassed and unaligned. Under this rule, all dragons are one race. As they grow into an ethos and mature, they take on their true form and develop into one of the classic dragon colors/metals. Only the best of the best turn golden.
Of course, this take on dragons is a much larger change than just making then LG or unaligned in the book, and doesn't depend on the book for background/personality anyway. its a setting-specific thing.
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I think there was a missed opportunity to posit the gold as a besieged remant of the glory days of Arkhosia, the sole breed of dragonkind that stands true to Bahamut's laws... to a fault. This strict adherence to the tenets of honor and justice drove the old empire to war and decline, and to this day gold dragons can't compromise. Which leads to golds being the most enigmatic, reclusive and endangered dragon species (and "species" is pushing it... more like "handful of individuals").
While this is a really cool idea, it is also a very specific concept. Thus it limits where I can use golden dragons in my game; the background snippets given in the MM aim to be as open as possible. I think you could use this as a seed for a Dungeon article, though.
An unrelated question would be if strict adherence to the tenets of honor an justice would result necessarily in LG behavior. By old alignments, such a behavior could also be considered LN, which would map to unaligned in 4th ed.
Wouldn't have cared, don't care now. Dragons are whatever alignment I want them to be, just like everything else. They did originally line up along chromatic/metallic alignment lines in the setting I used for the last campaign, but the end of the campaign effectively fragmented them (and the Bahamut-Tiamat dynamic at the heart of it) at the campaign's conclusion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Klaus
I think there was a missed opportunity to posit the gold as a besieged remant of the glory days of Arkhosia, the sole breed of dragonkind that stands true to Bahamut's laws... to a fault. This strict adherence to the tenets of honor and justice drove the old empire to war and decline, and to this day gold dragons can't compromise. Which leads to golds being the most enigmatic, reclusive and endangered dragon species (and "species" is pushing it... more like "handful of individuals").
Also ganking and modifying this a tad to run with if I ever do a sequel to the aforementioned campaign. Opens up a lot of opportunities in that regard. Brilliantly done, Klaus.
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Last edited by Kishin; 10th June 2009 at 07:03 PM..
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