D&D 4E Things wrong with 4e: Dragons

Grimmjow · Apr 25, 2012

You can tell dragons are the big thing in a game when the word "Dragon" is in the name of the game, but i feel like they could have put more work into the dragons, namely the chromatic dragons and the catastrophic dragons. i mean how hard is it to come up with colors and natural disasters. Orange and yellow come right to mind with colors, and tsunami, tornado, thunderstorms all come to my mind with natural disasters. They only gave us three catastrophic and 7 chromatic, while the metallic (which are my favorite so i don't complain about this too often) had a whole 12 dragons for DMs to use. I really hope more gets put into the dragons in DDN.

UngeheuerLich · Apr 25, 2012

Not for core...

Dragons are about right in 4e. Only the monsterbook not listing good monsters like metallic dragons was a big mistake...

Grimmjow · Apr 25, 2012

i don't think it has to be in core (although i do agree that they need my silver dragon in MM1) i just think they need to be added in. I mean they had three monster manuals and two books devoted to dragons, but the chromatic and catastrophic dragons were cut short.

Glade Riven · Apr 25, 2012

I'd rather have a dragon customising system instead of the traditional Rainbow of Doom. The current setup sends a confusing message.

Ramaster · Apr 25, 2012

When you said: Things wrong with 4e: Dragons I thought you were going to talk about PCs Stun-locking them, or that they suffer from action economy related issues (like most Solo Monsters). Those, in my opinion, are the Things wrong with 4e Dragons.

Disclamer: I actualy like the design of 4e, but I always thought that Solo monsters were not very well implemented.

Grimmjow · Apr 25, 2012

Transbot9 said:
I'd rather have a dragon customising system instead of the traditional Rainbow of Doom. The current setup sends a confusing message.

That would be nice but i think a lot of us would still like the basic dragons that they have giving us. I'm sure they could find a way to do both

Ramaster said:
When you said: Things wrong with 4e: Dragons I thought you were going to talk about PCs Stun-locking them, or that they suffer from action economy related issues (like most Solo Monsters). Those, in my opinion, are the Things wrong with 4e Dragons.

Disclamer: I actualy like the design of 4e, but I always thought that Solo monsters were not very well implemented.

No stunlock is lame and should be fixed in DDN but i feel like the colors/catastrophic needed work too (i should have addressed that right of the bat sorry) i mean how hard would it be to take the radiant dragon from 3.5 or w/e and say its a yellow dragon sometimes called radiant (which if i needed to i would do)

Klaus · Apr 25, 2012

Grimmjow said:
You can tell dragons are the big thing in a game when the word "Dragon" is in the name of the game, but i feel like they could have put more work into the dragons, namely the chromatic dragons and the catastrophic dragons. i mean how hard is it to come up with colors and natural disasters. Orange and yellow come right to mind with colors, and tsunami, tornado, thunderstorms all come to my mind with natural disasters. They only gave us three catastrophic and 7 chromatic, while the metallic (which are my favorite so i don't complain about this too often) had a whole 12 dragons for DMs to use. I really hope more gets put into the dragons in DDN.

Isn't Black, Blue, Green, Red, White, Gray, Purple and Brown enough? It's easy to pick up a new color, but what would a Burnt Sienna dragon add to the game? Is there an environment missing?

As for the Catastrophics, I don't think those really caught on with the D&D crowd. I'd prefer the wingless linnorms to have a shot at the spotlight, for that added Norse vibe.

And 4e was the edition that got dragons most right, because they now feel like actual dragons, breath weapons a-blazin'. In 1e and 2e, their breath weapons were too limited (to the point where Dragonlance had to introduce a new rule to let Krynnish dragons breathe more often). In 3e, they were too much "dragon-shaped sorcerers", to the point where the Xorvinthaal template had to be created (in MM5) to make them feel draconic.

Neonchameleon · Apr 25, 2012

Ramaster said:
When you said: Things wrong with 4e: Dragons I thought you were going to talk about PCs Stun-locking them, or that they suffer from action economy related issues (like most Solo Monsters). Those, in my opinion, are the Things wrong with 4e Dragons.

Disclamer: I actualy like the design of 4e, but I always thought that Solo monsters were not very well implemented.

Have you seen the Monster Vault dragons? The ones with an Instinctive Action on their initiative +10 (with about the power of a Standard Action) that if they can't take causes them to shed the stun. And every MV monster has a way of shaking stunlock. (That said strong or stacked debuffs will still do really nasty things to solos).

Grimmjow said:
You can tell dragons are the big thing in a game when the word "Dragon" is in the name of the game, but i feel like they could have put more work into the dragons, namely the chromatic dragons and the catastrophic dragons. i mean how hard is it to come up with colors and natural disasters. Orange and yellow come right to mind with colors, and tsunami, tornado, thunderstorms all come to my mind with natural disasters. They only gave us three catastrophic and 7 chromatic, while the metallic (which are my favorite so i don't complain about this too often) had a whole 12 dragons for DMs to use. I really hope more gets put into the dragons in DDN.

Red and yellow and pink and blue. I can sing a rainbow... And I normally use the catastrophic dragons for elementals. Dragons should be what they are. Scary. And the rainbow gets silly unless you're playing something like Dragonlance. (12 metallic dragons?)

I'm much keener on interesting dragons like Calystrix the Three-Headed (who grows a fourth when bloodied).

Ramaster · Apr 25, 2012

Neonchameleon said:
Have you seen the Monster Vault dragons? The ones with an Instinctive Action on their initiative +10 (with about the power of a Standard Action) that if they can't take causes them to shed the stun. And every MV monster has a way of shaking stunlock. (That said strong or stacked debuffs will still do really nasty things to solos).

Actually I haven't!

I stopped buying 4e after MM3 (not because it don't like the game, I just started playing Pathfinder more often).

But, in light of this new discovery, Monter vault might be worth a look!

The fact that I have to BUY it to know how the monsters are built annoys me... why can't it be like pathfinder??? Everything is on the SRD (And I mean EVERYTHING, even 3rd party stuff) and if I see anything I like, I buy the respective book!

Sorry for the rant!

jshaft37 · Apr 25, 2012

The Dragons in MV and MV:TttNV are awesome and interesting. 4E's dragons, and monsters in general (imo), are the best of any edition. With quick adjustments cribbed from MV, the two Dragon splat books are completely usable.