D&D 5E New and Different Dragons! Forest/Green Dragon!

• Make dragons more magical, and more mythic. Even a young dragon should be a weird and scary encounter.
• Fill the roll of lesser dragons with...lesser dragons, not just younger dragons. Upgrade drakes to something more like a dragon that is mostly just a beast, and fill out some more CRs with different drakes and wyverns.
• Use more interesting starting points for designing a dragon than color and metal type, espeically things like enviroment and association (eg, forest dragon or fey dragon)
• Make ancient wyrms akin to demigods, and more varied in what makes them scary. Some might be truly gigantic (double or triple the size of current dragons) while others might be super-fast and have flyby and a lot of attacks of different kinds, while others are basically powerful wizards with a lot of HP, etc. Dragons become less and less mortal, less and less natural, as they age?

• Fey associations, but also druidic inspiration. Some of these are druids. An ancient tree might morph into an ancient druidic green dragon when you try to destroy an ancient druidic grove, while another forest dragon might fill the roll of an archfey, and another might simply be a reclusive forest hermit.
• Command of nature. natural casting of things like spike growth and plant growth and the ability to awaken trees? tree stride? Ability to hide when lightly obscured by fog/mist or natural cover like plantlife combined with a sneak attack feature (ambush predator).
• Can fly, but prefers to stay within the treeline.
• Enviromental effects include trees and animals growing to unusual size?
• Moss growth on the dragon? Vines that grab at melee attackers as a reaction?
• Speaks sylvan and can speak with beasts and plants in a manner similar to speak with plants, where greater sentience is temporarily bestowed on them? Hell, maybe animals and plants within a forest dragon's domain are just smarter, and can often speak?

dave2008 said:

Great idea (though I like the standard D&D dragons too), but are you looking for descriptive ideas or stat block ideas or images or all 3!

Personally I add some of that flavor to my D&D dragons, so that:

Black = swamp
Blue = sky (not desert per their lore)
Green = forest
Red = mountain
White = arctic

I then give them spells, traits, and abilities that reflect those general regions. I discussed some of my ideas and some idea images over here: Interested in new dragon designs?

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MechaTarrasque said:

For a forest dragon, I would almost want to go full linnorn, with the wings almost vestigial*. I picture a really smart version of Kaa from the Jungle Book, camouflaged up to the end. I know everyone likes the damaging breath weapons, but some kind of fear or confusion gas (especially if it was colorless, but had some kind of slightly distinct smell so someone with a high wisdom might catch it in time to cast some kind of wind spell to blow it away) would work better for the Dragon King of Bug Hunts.

* I think that one of the unique 2e Linnorns usually ambushed people by looking like a fallen tree. I think it was something like the Corpse Tearer or something like that, but I have old DM memory, so don't hold me to that. If I did remember correctly, you might find some ideas to pillage.

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MechaTarrasque said:

I sympathize. D&D dragon chassis are pretty nice, but they do get overused. I am not so fond of flying swamp and forest dragons. For swamp, I would want some kind of super melee monster like the dragon version of the lovechild of an alligator and a snapping turtle. I have had bearded dragons for a couple of years (one at a time, they aren't social), and that colors how I would do a desert dragon, even though I know "fly by breath weapon" makes a lot of sense in a desert with little cover.

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vincegetorix said:

Ok, for the green one, I do not like associating dragon and trees: to me dragons are a force of destruction/agressivity and forests are associated with creation and peace. I'm ok with dragon associated with ''nature'' though. I have in mind a mantis-like dragon, or maybe a dragon-flytrap. They are both associated with a darker side of nature and the forest world.

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in the case of the flytrap dragon, I think KP's Tome of Beast has a three-headed one starting with a Z or something.

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