Creating Rock Dragons.

[Mistah J]

As for the "faux-gold" part, it is quite simple actully, there is a low-level spell called Undetectable Alignment, if the dragon gained the ability to cast that spell 3/day at the very young age, or perhaps even once per day per age category, it should cover that aspect quite nicely. No?

Oh absolutely, there are plenty of ways for this dragon to hide its alignment and really, any of them will do the job. I just thought, rather than having "no alignment" with undetectable alignment, the dragon would be able to fool others into thinking it actually had a Lawful Good alignment (like an actual Gold dragon) with misdirection.

But really, it is six of one and half a dozen of the other.

 

[Mortis]

Oh absolutely, there are plenty of ways for this dragon to hide its alignment and really, any of them will do the job. I just thought, rather than having "no alignment" with undetectable alignment, the dragon would be able to fool others into thinking it actually had a Lawful Good alignment (like an actual Gold dragon) with misdirection.

I'm with Mistah on this, it's one thing for 'know alignment' to return a false alignment (ie Lawful Good in this case), it's quite a different thing for it to return 'unknown' or some such. Why would a gold dragon be hiding it's alignment? :\

Regards
Mortis

 

[Shade]

Why not give 'em both? That way, at lower levels it can hide its alignment, but as it ages, grows more devious.

 

[Mortis]

Why not give 'em both? That way, at lower levels it can hide its alignment, but as it ages, grows more devious.

That's a great idea Shade.

Regards
Mortis

 

[Mistah J]

Thank-you Shade and thank-you Mortis.

Why not give 'em both? That way, at lower levels it can hide its alignment, but as it ages, grows more devious.

Perfect solution!

Especially if when they age, their colour gets less and less like a real Gold Dragon. That way, the older dragon has an even better tool to allay suspicions anyone might have.

So, that tallies up to - rage, stoneskin, nondectection, and misdirection by my count.

Oh! what about waterbreathing? One the one hand, that would help it pretend to be a Gold Dragon but personally I think it shouldn't have it and here is why: There needs to be some way that a party can figure out that what they are dealing with is not a gold dragon and I think its inability to breathe water would be a nice subtle clue. Perhaps we could even go far as to say that, generally speaking, Pyrite Dragons absolutely hate the water and avoid it whenever they can.

What say you?

 

[Shade]

Yep, those four and the fiery cone (listed separately). We also had geas/quest, like the gold. Do we want to keep that?

To summarize what we've got so far...

Fiery Cone (Sp): An adult or older pyrite dragon can use this ability three times per day. This functions exactly like the cone of cold spell, except that it deals fire damage rather than cold damage.

Other Spell-Like Abilities: 3/day—rage (juvenile or older); 1/day—misdirection (old or older), nondetection (juvenile or older), stoneskin (ancient or older), geas/quest (great wyrm).

I agree...no waterbreathing, and I'm fine with the aversion to water.

 

[RavinRay]

I'm reviving this thread because the ferrous dragons appeared in Dragon Magazine #356 courtesy of BOZ and Shade, and a backstory of the Iron Wars between them and the rock dragons was mentioned at the Paizo message board. I'm not sure whether we should finish converting true dragons first, and then the other new dragons thread, though, because I think those have priority.

Anyway! I've just got a brainwave. Replace sulfur (which is an element and a mineral, but rarely forms large mono-mineralic rocks) with marble. And since these are chaotic dragons, let the younger age categories of the marble dragon be the limestone dragon, much like lung dragons start off as yu lung. This makes sense in that marble is metamorphosed limestone. Whaddaya think?

 

[Shade]

Since these aren't likely to be published anytime soon, we can make as many as we want.

Cool idea for the limestone/marble.

Once I get some more free time I'd be happy to participate in this thread again.

 

[freyar]

Hey, this looks fun! It'll take a while to catch up on what's been done, though...

 

[RavinRay]

I actually made a post about my 2e pyrite dragon several months ago when it was deleted during one of EN World's maintenance upgrades. I'm not going to re-post it but instead add some fluff for the pyrite that I did in-home.

Pyrite dragons are a species of dragon created from the magical breeding of gold and red dragons. Garyx, the draconic deity of fiery destruction, competed with Tiamat for the worship of red dragons. Frustrated over her more prominent appeal, he decided to create a fire-based dragon wholly his own. In a vile experiment, he initiated a cross-breeding program between captured gold and red dragons, adding some of his own destructive proclivities in the process. The result was a dragon that inherited many of the gold dragon’s physical attributes, but also the chaotic evil bent of the red dragon.

When they fold their wings close to their bodies, pyrite dragons strongly resembly gold dragons. They have dull yellow scales that shine with a metallic luster as they age, and two horns spiral from the back of their heads just behind their modestly-crested ears. On closer inspection, an older pyrite dragon’s scales have parallel striations, and when they extend their wings the difference with gold dragon wings are obvious: the front third is supported by the alar limb and four alar fingers, while the rest of the wing is supported by spines emerging from the alar olecranon and sides of the body, much like a copper dragon’s. Like red dragons, pyrite dragons smell strongly of sulfur.

Though both pyrite and red dragons follow Garyx, the former consider themselves as his favored and view the latter as their rivals and treat them with contempt. Gold dragons are their mortal enemies, and the two species often come into conflict.

Since the rock dragons are all chaotic, I figured they need not all have a common origin.