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

[Wolfspider]

Dragons are the winged lizards who breathe fire. That is the single distinct and memorable niche dragons have ever occupied in myth and pop culture. Diluting that, rather than emphasizing it, would be a mistake.

Heh. Dungeons & Dragons has influenced pop culture quite a bit, I would say, and if its dragons are "wizardly," as you put it, I guess that they are more than just winged lizards who breathe fire.

 

[Cryptos]

It doesn't seem like much of a problem for me.

I could see dragons passing down ancient knowledge in the form of rituals, if someone wanted that in a campaign, and simply giving them the rituals with no major effect on the degree of challenge they present in combat.

What I really can't see is an ancient race with powerful natural attributes that improve over time (to the point where they can strip magical protection you could get from any spell off a person) spending any amount of time learning how to cast magic missile when they can just turn their head and cough to make a village burn. It sounds like their natural abilities outstrip the effectiveness of any single spell in combat.

Even if the Dragon can cast 8th level spells, the fact that they have studied arcane magic would imply that they had to spend a considerable amount of time learning the lower rungs of arcane spells... and that doesn't really feel right to me. "So, dad, I've been practicing these magic missile spells since I was hatched. Why don't I just grow old and breathe on things?"

What has been revealed doesn't seem to stop me from giving rituals to any NPC I feel should have them. Or artifacts. Or cults. That is the stuff that would give them the power to be major players in the world, really. They're basically defining ritual as a very extended spell that you need to prepare in order to do anything that affects the campaign world - teleportation, resurrection, etc. They're the one type of magic that it seems you can still learn independent of level (you can learn as many rituals as you can discover, much as a 1-3e wizard could learn all spells for his level) so it would seem to me that if you felt it necessary, you could give them to just about any NPC you want to throw at the PCs.

The "natural abilities" of dragons are what scream "dragon" for me. Spellcasting isn't the first, second, or fifth thing I think of.

 

[Merlin the Tuna]

OTOH, the Mearls post I linked to above says that feats are one of the things you can add to monsters if you want to customize them. I expect that it's going to be that if a given feat or feats suit a monster, it'll have them, instead of "all monsters must have at least 1 feat per 3 levels/Hit Dice, and any above and beyond this must be called out as bonus feats."

Alternatively, feats may be granted only by class levels and not by monstrous hit dice.

 

[Incenjucar]

Basically, with monsters, instead of "The dragon has Weapon Focus (Bite) they'll just have the +1 calculated in rather than bothering to note WHY it's in, etc., or so it appears.

There's no real reason to give a reason.

 

[Sir Brennen]

Alternatively, feats may be granted only by class levels and not by monstrous hit dice.

Well, since monsters don't *have* hit dice, but are defined as simply being a level X monster, what's the real difference? Especially since feats will be even less class specific. You could simply think of "monster" as being an NPC class.

Based on the info from Mearls in the link above, Tuna, I think your's is an unlikely speculation (that is, adding feats to monsters requires class levels).

Here it is for reference (emphasis mine):

In 4e you can make up monster NPCs with class levels, feats, modified skills, magic items, and everything you can do in 3e to your heart's content. We wouldn't dream of taking that away from you - it's too much fun.

PCs are a slightly different story. We'd rather create a specific PC write up for a monster that reins in any potential issues at the table or for game balance.

 

[KrazyHades]

as long as there is a mechanism in place to add class abilities to the dragon (or any other monster, for that matter)

They have a name for that. It's called GURPS.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Please define what you mean by "wizardly" dragons.

I mean ability of dragons to use magical spells, especially the exact same magical spells that humans use. In other words, a wizardly dragon is a dragon who has the same abilities as a human wizard.

Heh. Dungeons & Dragons has influenced pop culture quite a bit, I would say, and if its dragons are "wizardly," as you put it, I guess that they are more than just winged lizards who breathe fire.

Err, I have trouble understanding what you exactly mean here. Are you saying that, since D&D has had an influence on pop culture, then the specific trait of "wizardly" dragons must exist in pop culture as a whole, and thus is now considered to be an important part of dragons by most people?

This is not the case at all. If you want to argue that spellcasting dragons are common, you need to provide evidence from outside D&D. A (non-tabletop RPG based) videogame, an anime, or something else specific that has spellcasting dragons would suffice.

Anyways, one of my favorite depictions of dragons is in the videogame Odin Sphere. In that game, the dragons are all essentially winged lizards who breathe fire (except that not all have wings and not all breathe fire). Every battle against them is a massive fight against a giant reptilian monster who stomps (or flies) around the battlefield. One Wagner, breathes fire down upon you that conjures up fire spirits, and creates tornadoes when he beats his massive wings. Another, Belial, fights only by biting, trying to inhale you, and spitting out the armor of the soldiers he has digested. The last one, Levanthan, is a colossal serpent than breathes down giant energy beams that ruin the landscape and is surrounded by crackling lightning. But beyond being powerful beasts, Wagner and Belial are wise and philosophical, offering help and advice as much as they seek battle and destruction, aiding their friends and devouring their enemies. Another dragon, Hindel, is a powerful prophet.

I don't think any of those dragons needs magic spells, especially silly things like Alarm spells and Illusions, in order to be interesting. The power that comes from their physical power, the elemental might of their breath weapons, and the wisdom of their long age is more than enough.

 

[Derren]

I don't think any of those dragons needs magic spells, especially silly things like Alarm spells and Illusions, in order to be interesting. The power that comes from their physical power, the elemental might of their breath weapons, and the wisdom of their long age is more than enough.

Dragons also have to sleep from time to time and then an alarm spell is quite handy.

It seems to me that many people do not understand my point. Dragons don't need spells to be strong combatants (except for "Escape from overpowered ability" spells). They needs spells to be anything else than a combatant.
Their lifestyle and physical characteristics makes it impossible for dragons to actually create anything without magic. Especially when you want them to be BBEG they must be able to do BBEG stuff like scrying, spying etc. and they need a appropriate lair defense. And they can only achieve that either through minions or magic. When minions do it then those guys are the real BBEG. Destroy them and the dragon is helpless.

Some people do want dragons to be dumb beast which do nothing, but that are not the D&D dragons. Dragons in D&D are (for the most part) intelligent and have high ambitions. And for that they need some way to affect the world in a different way than simply razing poorly defended villages and demand some few copper coins as tribute.

You can say that the DM can simply make this up and this is correct, but why should I pay for a book which tells me to make things up? I don't need D&D for that. There is a good post from kamikaze midget which explains why it is better for monsters to have out of combat abilities in the rules (thats what magic would be for dragons) instead of simply saying that the DM should give them whatever he wants them to have.
http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=3983551&postcount=149

In the end, dragons having spellcasting is more of a "Should monsters have out of combat abilities which explain how they function in the world in the rules?" question. And the answer is yes.

 

[The Little Raven]

In the end, dragons having spellcasting is more of a "Should monsters have out of combat abilities which explain how they function in the world in the rules?" question. And the answer is yes.

The answer is no. I don't need to know that a dragon can carve out his lair, specifically using his Create Lair spell-like ability, nor do I need to know he has 20 ranks in Profession (Cook). All I need to know is what he can do as an encounter, then some fluff to tell me what they're like aside from combat. I'm not sacrificing space in the MM so that tons of stuff that hardly gets used can displace other monsters.

 

[Derren]

I'm not sacrificing space in the MM so that tons of stuff that hardly gets used can displace other monsters.

Most monsters in the MM won't be used too.
I rather have additional rules for sensible monsters than three additional Ethereal Filcher.