Loss of Innate Spellcasting (or 'How Dragons Build Lairs')

Derren said:

Its not only the DM changing games in mid game which is problematic. Not changing things also is.
With statted out abilities the Dm can look over this abilities and decide if some of those abilities would be useful in this new situation.

When there are no such printed out abilities the DM can either "cheat" or devalue the opponents without knowing if it is appropriate.
No matter what the DM does it is arbitrary and imo problematic.

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Or, the DM can stat out the dragon's "nonstandard" abilities before the game and then stick to those abilities. Like giving the dragon class levels, only with less number-crunching. Every good DM I've ever played with has house-ruled and homebrewed things. I would never, ever want to play under a DM who thought the published rulebooks were the immutable Word of God.

Derren said:

It is arbitrary when the DM does not have any limits on what the dragon has. Say he does set up trapped lairs, spy networks etc. and explains everything with "the dragon has rituals for that". Now the PCs find a loophole. Can the dragon now counteract the loophole with the rituals it has? No matter how the DMs decides it is arbitrary.

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The DM has the responsibility to decide which rituals the Dragon has access to before the adventure begins. It is the same type of responsibility as picking the Sorceror spells a 3.5 Dragon knows.

Then, sometimes DMs screw up and miss something important. It's the DMs responsibility to decide whether the Dragon wasn't smarter then him and retroactively gives him access to the right spell or ritual, or whether he decides that it's better for the game if the players get to outsmart the Dragon.

Over the course of the campaign, is possible that the Dragons picks up new Rituals, if the PCs use a loophole (without killing him) and he takes note of it. Which seems a fair lot easier then learning a new spell for Dragons in 3.5. And also adds yet another plot hook (stop the Dragon from performing/gaining access to the ritual that brings his plans back on track)

Derren said:

They are very often masterminds or at least have trapped lairs and magical wards. But without magic there is no way that they could have placed this wards. So either every dragon has magic or every dragon has minions. In 4E this would both be houserules as dragons are non spellcasting solo encounters.

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Two responses:

1) It doesn't follow from the fact that a 4e monster is not a spellcaster that it does not have use of magic. I doubt, for example, that demons will typically be spellcasters but I'm sure that they will have the use of magic.

2) The fact that a monster is (in the metagame sense) a solo monster does not remotely imply that (ingame) it has no minions. All it means is that the game plays best when the PCs do not have to fight the minions and the boss in the same combat. For the typical dragon, and the typical minion-set that has been suggested in this thread and the companion challenge thread, that should be very easy for the GM to arrange (eg first one clears the warrens of kobolds, then one goes and fights the dragon mastermind).

Derren said:

It is arbitrary when the DM does not have any limits on what the dragon has. Say he does set up trapped lairs, spy networks etc. and explains everything with "the dragon has rituals for that". Now the PCs find a loophole. Can the dragon now counteract the loophole with the rituals it has? No matter how the DMs decides it is arbitrary.

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Others have dealt with this comment to my satisfaction!