How many age categories should dragons have?
- Thread starter Celebrim
- Start date
S
Sunseeker
Guest
I never really liked the "age category" thing. I get it from a game perspective, because you can't really adjust for each year but it just bugs me as one of the more obviously meta elements of monster design.
Going off of only having played 3.5, 4e and 5 with any real regularity, I'm not particularly happy with any of them.
3.5 just has too many. It's neat, but some of the "between" age categories are just too freaking close to each other to really make any kind of statistical difference. I don't remember 4 off the top of my head and I don't know where my Draconomicons are for it, so I'll skip to 5, which clearly as too few.
There should I think be:
Whelp (because baby dragons are cute!)
Juvenile
Young
Adult
Mature
Ancient
(Legendary)
I throw in "legendary" more as "this is where you write the really cool, really powerful special snowflake dragons". It's not a category that every species of dragon needs to actually have a stat block for, but more of a conceptual meta location for how much more powerful than "ancient" special dragons should be.
So, that category aside, 6 seems reasonable.
Going off of only having played 3.5, 4e and 5 with any real regularity, I'm not particularly happy with any of them.
3.5 just has too many. It's neat, but some of the "between" age categories are just too freaking close to each other to really make any kind of statistical difference. I don't remember 4 off the top of my head and I don't know where my Draconomicons are for it, so I'll skip to 5, which clearly as too few.
There should I think be:
Whelp (because baby dragons are cute!)
Juvenile
Young
Adult
Mature
Ancient
(Legendary)
I throw in "legendary" more as "this is where you write the really cool, really powerful special snowflake dragons". It's not a category that every species of dragon needs to actually have a stat block for, but more of a conceptual meta location for how much more powerful than "ancient" special dragons should be.
So, that category aside, 6 seems reasonable.
Celebrim
Legend
Agreed. Part of this is inspired by another thread I was in, and part of this is inspired by wanting to completely redo dragons for my 3.X homebrew. But...
Ok, cool. So vote if you are participating!
Tequila Sunrise
Adventurer
Special Snowflake Option: Whatever fits best into the game's level-structure.
With 4e, that'd be say, two categories per tier so there's always an age category within level-range of the party, and another above-epic-level category for those special campaign-finale dragons. So a total of 7 categories.
Other editions are less consistent, challenge-wise, but again I'd go one category per five levels/CRs, with another one tacked on the end for a total of 5. Or, if you're going ELH-uncapped-levels, INFINITE AGE CATEGORIES FTW!!!!
As an Aside: I've never liked how different dragon types have a clear statistical concordance, within each age category. Reds rule, blues are cool, greens clean, blacks lack, whites drool.
I suppose from a DM perspective it makes it more likely you can find a just-so level/CR dragon, assuming you can get the party to the appropriate terrain type -- but it just offends my sense of symmetry.
With 4e, that'd be say, two categories per tier so there's always an age category within level-range of the party, and another above-epic-level category for those special campaign-finale dragons. So a total of 7 categories.
Other editions are less consistent, challenge-wise, but again I'd go one category per five levels/CRs, with another one tacked on the end for a total of 5. Or, if you're going ELH-uncapped-levels, INFINITE AGE CATEGORIES FTW!!!!
As an Aside: I've never liked how different dragon types have a clear statistical concordance, within each age category. Reds rule, blues are cool, greens clean, blacks lack, whites drool.
I suppose from a DM perspective it makes it more likely you can find a just-so level/CR dragon, assuming you can get the party to the appropriate terrain type -- but it just offends my sense of symmetry.
S
Sunseeker
Guest
Spechul snowflake option it is then!
Man in the Funny Hat
Hero
Why should age need to be a consideration? Is an orc older because it has 8 hit points instead of 4? Or is it just a bit bigger/tougher? Age should not need to be tied directly to hit dice/hit points per die or the like for dragons. Every other critter in the book does not make it a factor. Roll the hit points randomly by hit dice just like any other monster or assign them as desired, just like any other monster. If you want it to be a smaller or younger dragon, then say it is smaller or younger. If you want it to have lesser abilities than others of its kind because it is younger, so be it. But I have found that using age categories for dragons as special snowflake monsters unlike all others is more trouble than its ever been worth.
So, _I_ give them standard abilities that vary somewhat by size (S, M, L), and AGE is something I consider a factor in determining what size it is, but when I start putting dragons up against PC's they are NOT going to be fighting a 2hp/die 5HD dragon that they can just subdue - they will face a legendary, feared, magical, biological death machine that is MAYBE nominally geared to be something they can defeat. And its actual age is generally irrelevant at that point.
So, _I_ give them standard abilities that vary somewhat by size (S, M, L), and AGE is something I consider a factor in determining what size it is, but when I start putting dragons up against PC's they are NOT going to be fighting a 2hp/die 5HD dragon that they can just subdue - they will face a legendary, feared, magical, biological death machine that is MAYBE nominally geared to be something they can defeat. And its actual age is generally irrelevant at that point.
Celebrim
Legend
Well, I think it's different because dragons are such iconic creatures, and like giants, they come into our imagination is so many different sizes and have been presented in so many different ways.
I don't think it's unreasonable that we be given a wide range of stat blocks for dragons, especially in a game named Dungeons and Dragons. An on a smaller scale, the whole notion of monsters coming in ranges of danger, was not unique to dragons in the 1e presentation. Many monsters had their HD given as a range, with smaller, average, and larger sizes of the same monster.
As for your comparison with the orc, I think that's very instructive. For orcs, if we want to express an orc that is tougher than normal, we could so that by giving the orc class levels. Now the orc is a 10th level fighter, or a 7th level witch-doctor, or whatever. But the same technique doesn't feel like it works for dragons, and in any event, is probably even more complex than age categories.
What I will agree with though, is despite some legitimately interesting aspects of the classic age category presentation, it has always been more trouble than it is genius. Despite being such an iconic monster, every edition has had problems with the presentation of dragons in one fashion or another. What I am gratified to see so far though, is it doesn't look like there is necessarily going to be strong demand for MORE age categories, and that I can probably back down from the 12 categories that we've seen in recent editions without a lot of outcry.
Celebrim
Legend
As an Aside: I've never liked how different dragon types have a clear statistical concordance, within each age category. Reds rule, blues are cool, greens clean, blacks lack, whites drool.
Interesting. I hadn't given much thought to making all five of the iconic dragon species the same size, and while I can see some merit to the idea, it works against so much history of the game that I don't think I will go that way. I'm not entirely sure why the different dragon species were divided by size, but I don't think it is exactly what you think it is, since the combination of size and age category meant that each dragon largely overlapped the other sort of dragon in danger for different combinations of age and size. That's most easily seen in interpretations in 2e and 3e, where clearly, the older dragons of the smaller race are far more dangerous than the younger sorts of the larger races. Also, even in 1e, the larger sorts of dragons of one race, could be more formidable than smaller sorts of another. For example, a huge black is statistically stronger than a small green and equal to a small blue. It could be simply that Gygax liked variety more than he liked symmetry, and in particular by having asymmetry it gives the red variety a certain mystique it would not otherwise have.
My approach here is to retain the historic progression, but to give some of the smaller species particular areas that they excel in.
Legatus Legionis
< BWAH HA Ha ha >
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Celebrim
Legend
Just out of curiosity, did you understand that I was asking how many age categories you'd prefer dragons to have, and not how much they have in a particular version of the rules?
Although I'm familiar with the every edition and every dragon article pertaining to this issue, I'm not really interested in what the rules are per se. So quoting them to me does me know good. If you think that 12 age categories are better than 8, which it seems you must, could you explain to me why?
While we are on the subject, I find 'wyrm' and 'great wyrm' to be rather awkward. When they were first introduced, they were introduced as extension above 'ancient', and it's not obvious what word English would clearly describe some living thing is older than ancient. But, with the extension out to 12 categories, they became unnecessary if you wanted to reduce the number of categories. Does anyone really love the terms?
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