I am thinking about dragons again and rather than start a new thread I'll ask here:
How do you feel about the different takes on dragons in the different editions?
My favorite are the 2E dragons. They got such an awesome power boost, they went from the Basic/1E St George's Dragon to the city busting Smaug/Lodoss War type. I remember liking 3.x/PF dragons because they were big complex beasties, but 5E dragons left me cold until Fizban's came out. I am not familiar with how 4E handled dragons.
I fear I have little experience with 2e dragons, so I can't much speak on that.
3.x/PF dragons have the
weight to throw around that befits their iconic status, but they are probably the most intense example of the 3rd edition engine's mechanically-overwrought nature. High level dragons make enormous numbers of attacks, often have half a dozen special abilites
and spellcasting, and yet can be just as vulnerable to scry-n-fry or SoD/SoS against a well-prepared full caster.
4e made the "color doesn't
determine alignment" thing canon--different dragon species have
tendencies, but those tendencies don't strictly manifest all the same way. E.g., gold dragons
view themselves as righteous, but that can be an incredibly dangerous, even villainous characteristic in a being that is nigh-immortal, incredibly powerful, and highly intelligent. They can become unfeeling tyrants who
think what they're doing is for the best, more or less what TVTropes calls an "omniscient morality license," or aloof protectors that don't really
like mortals but feel compelled to prevent threats to mortal lives.
Chromatic dragons are rather more likely to be evil than good, because (as the Monster Manual notes) they are the inheritors of Io's
hubris, and there is a reason Pride was held to be the greatest of the deadly sins. But they
can evolve into someone like late-era David Xanatos, or maybe some of the slowly-becoming-personable dragons from Shadowrun: sometimes jerks, but not overtly malicious and willing to help out when it's appropriate.
4e also introduced a concept I find absolutely delightful,
catastrophic dragons. These are dragons who betrayed the side of the gods during the Dawn War, turning to the Primordials for protection; they have literally become living natural disasters. Which is just awesome. They aren't naturally good or evil, just really
chaotic, because they've given themselves over to the raw power of the elements and exist mostly to consume and break things.
I am thinking about dragons again and rather than start a new thread I'll ask here:
How do you feel about the different takes on dragons in the different editions?
My favorite are the 2E dragons. They got such an awesome power boost, they went from the Basic/1E St George's Dragon to the city busting Smaug/Lodoss War type. I remember liking 3.x/PF dragons because they were big complex beasties, but 5E dragons left me cold until Fizban's came out. I am not familiar with how 4E handled dragons.
I fear I have little experience with 2e dragons, so I can't much speak on that.
3.x/PF dragons have the
weight to throw around that befits their iconic status, but they are probably the most intense example of the 3rd edition engine's mechanically-overwrought nature. High level dragons make enormous numbers of attacks, often have half a dozen special abilites
and spellcasting, and yet can be just as vulnerable to scry-n-fry or SoD/SoS against a well-prepared full caster.
4e made the "color doesn't
determine alignment" thing canon--different dragon species have
tendencies, but those tendencies don't strictly manifest all the same way. E.g., gold dragons
view themselves as righteous, but that can be an incredibly dangerous, even villainous characteristic in a being that is nigh-immortal, incredibly powerful, and highly intelligent. They can become unfeeling tyrants who
think what they're doing is for the best, more or less what TVTropes calls an "omniscient morality license," or aloof protectors that don't really
like mortals but feel compelled to prevent threats to mortal lives.
Chromatic dragons are rather more likely to be evil than good, because (as the Monster Manual notes) they are the inheritors of Io's
hubris, and there is a reason Pride was held to be the greatest of the deadly sins. But they
can evolve into someone like late-era David Xanatos, or maybe some of the slowly-becoming-personable dragons from Shadowrun: sometimes jerks, but not overtly malicious and willing to help out when it's appropriate.
4e also introduced a concept I find absolutely delightful,
catastrophic dragons. These are dragons who betrayed the side of the gods during the Dawn War, turning to the Primordials for protection; they have literally become living natural disasters. Which is just awesome. They aren't naturally good or evil, just really
chaotic, because they've given themselves over to the raw power of the elements and exist mostly to consume and break things.
---
I've actually had a neat opportunity to do some "what if" stuff in my Dungeon World game that I'm kind of pleased about. Basically, the players are in a spot where an artifact has been accidentally misused, causing a "time crash" situation--reality itself is damaged, and things from the future or the past, or alternate timelines, are accidentally intersecting with the players' world. One thing they've come across is people who are very clearly
gold half-dragons. These are clearly the possible future children of Shen and Hafsa, their friends, but the half-dragons looked haggard and worn and dirty--like they've been fighting hard in rough conditions. Spoopy alt-timeline stuff! But also showing that half-dragons (which, up to this point, they've only met
one, and that was a Scary Bad Thing) can be at least plausibly benevolent.