Stats for Good Metallic Dragons?

[ki11erDM]

Have you ever needed stats for a Good Metallic Dragon out side of a story telling encounter or a role playing encounter?

 

[Remathilis]

I've used the stats a couple times...

1.) A silver dragon (the PCs were allied with) fought a red (and foes) and I used stat blocks for each dragon.

2.) The PCs fought a dominated copper dragon and killed it before they realized it was dominated.

3.) A different group fought a gold dragon with noble intentions (LG) but who was decieved into doing something utterly evil in the hope that "the end justified the means".

Three times. Oddly, that's about the same amount of times I've used a beholder in game, FWIW...

 

[Glyfair]

I voted once or twice. I will also note that to use them now in 4E, all I really would do would be to write the word "good" in the current statblocks where alignment goes. Hardly the need to require any changes.

 

[Crothian]

Good does not always mean on the same side as the PCs. It's one thing to have the Pcs fight and defeat evil all the time. To really make things interesting sometimes my good aligned PCs have to fight and defeat other good characters and creatures.

 

[Nifft]

Mu: my dragons are morally ambiguous individuals; their alignments are all putty in my claws.

Cheers, -- N

 

[ki11erDM]

Three times. Oddly, that's about the same amount of times I've used a beholder in game, FWIW...

But the page count is what really matters to me... 3 uses of a beholder for one page of text is not that bad. But 3 uses of good dragons for 6-8 pages just seem a bit much.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Three times. Oddly, that's about the same amount of times I've used a beholder in game, FWIW...

With more monsters in the game than most players will ever use, I wonder what the counts of using ANY one monster more than once or twice is. Maybe you get more use out of the orcs or goblins, but how often have you even used, say, the blood fiend abomination, or the malebranche?

For good dragons, my main points for making sure the word "good" is in that alignment box have more to do with fantasy archetype and the fact that I believe the MM should be a place for challenges, not just statblocks.

That said, I've still used the good dragon stats quite often, because to use them in earlier editions, all I had to do was ignore the word "good" in the statblocks, and hardly make any changes at all. Also my parties can occasionally tend to the more mercenary or even evil, and my "good" creatures can tend to the over-zealous and persecutory, so when the gold dragon is burning down your village for housing dangerous dragon-slayers, yes, the people will want to put a spear in it (just because two people are good doesn't mean they can't come to violent and fatal conflict).

 

[Nifft]

With more monsters in the game than most players will ever use, I wonder what the counts of using ANY one monster more than once or twice is.

IMHO the wasted pages only rise above the threshold of consciousness when you realize that you don't use a whole class of critter.

For example, my peeve with 3.5e's monster books was the huge number of pages devoted to what were (to me useless) "Yet Another Humanoid"s.

Cheers, -- N

 

[doctorhook]

You're aware that 4E has stats for benign (read: good) metallic dragons, right? The alignment entry for all the metallic dragons in MM2 reads "Unaligned", which for a monster can mean "benign" as often as it means "hostile". Thus, 4E's metallic dragons are implicitly as good as the DM wants them to be.

 

[doctorhook]

IMHO the wasted pages only rise above the threshold of consciousness when you realize that you don't use a whole class of critter.

For example, my peeve with 3.5e's monster books was the huge number of pages devoted to what were (to me useless) "Yet Another Humanoid"s.

Cheers, -- N

This.

I've used masses of Kobolds and Goblins already back in the early days of 4E, but now more than then, I tend to pick monsters based on level and role. So if I decide I'm looking for a Controller and an Artillery monster, I go to the appropriate level and then choose from the available monsters (listed by level and role in the appendix). I've found myself including in encounters monsters that I never otherwise would have considered, and thus my Monster Manual sees a lot more overall use than it did in 3.5E.