Here are a lot of juicy details about Fizban's Treasury of Dragons from the updated Issue 38 of Dragon+.
For those hoping this will be heavily Dragonlance, it looks unlikely -- they say they are only giving a "very brief nod" to the setting.
You might think that the standard collective noun for dragons is either a flight of dragons, a weyr of dragons, a school of dragons, or a wing of dragons. Well, Fizban the Fabulous has so much valuable information to share with you about these unique creatures that “treasury” of dragons is the only description that properly captures it. Because once you begin to measure the impact dragons have on D&D, you realize they touch every facet of the game.
“Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons is comparable to Volo’s Guide to Monsters or Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, as it brings together a combination of lore and monster material,” Project Lead James Wyatt tells Dragon+. “This source book contains the revised dragonborn races, feats, and spells that we previewed in Unearthed Arcana, as well as magic items, a deeper dive into the Monster Manual dragons, dragon adjacent monsters, lair maps, and various tables to help you generate adventure ideas.”
Chapter One
“Following the introduction, Chapter One contains character options and is where you’ll find the revised dragonborn races, as well as the Way of the Ascendent Dragon monk and the Drakewarden ranger subclasses from previous Unearthed Arcana releases.
“Some of the feedback on the dragon subclasses said, ‘I want a dragon-flavored blank’ where blank is just about any other class in the Player’s Handbook. There’s a limit to the amount we can provide so we’ve included a table to spur players’ imaginations and help give any character they’re playing some dragon flavor.
“If you want a dragon-themed warlock, for example, you could play an archfey warlock whose patron is a moonstone dragon, a new kind of dragon that’s tied to the Feywild. If you want a dragon cleric, you can take any domain and worship Bahamut or Tiamat to add that dragon flavor. Maybe you’re from Eberron and have a dragonmark. Or you might decide that you gained your powers when you found a dragon claw that you now use as your spellcasting focus.”
Chapter Two
“The second chapter contains a handful of new spells, most of which we previewed in Unearthed Arcana. It also contains new magic items that have ties to dragons.
“If DMs and players really embrace this book then they’re going to be seeing a lot of dragons in their campaigns. One new concept we introduce here is hoard items. These are magic items that become more powerful when they’re steeped in a dragon’s hoard.
“If you find an item in a blue wyrmling’s hoard, for example, and then several levels later you use that item to kill an adult red dragon and you steep it in that hoard, it may become more powerful because it’s the hoard of an adult dragon. The item might also change its characteristics slightly, because it’s been affected by a red dragon’s magic instead of a blue dragon.”
Chapter Three
“This chapter is aimed at the Dungeon Master and is all about building dragons as unique characters—both in terms of personality and mechanical tweaks. We also look at how you can build encounters, adventures, and entire campaigns around dragons. This includes a whole bunch of tables that are a great way to quickly share a lot of really dense story ideas. We hope that these tiny nuggets spark inspiration in a DM’s brain.
“This is primarily a mainstream D&D book but we do give a very brief nod in the direction of Tarkir, which is Magic: The Gathering‘s dragon world, as well as Dragonlance. We also reference the second edition Council of Wyrms setting, which was another world that was built around dragons.
“The Council of Wyrms was a string of isles that were ruled by a bunch of different dragon clans. Their council gave the setting its name and in Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons we discuss different ways you might build a setting like that with dragons as major players.”
Chapter Four
“In this chapter we focus on lairs and hoards. This book embraces the D&D multiverse and talks about dragons as the quintessential creatures of the material plane. Bahamut and Tiamat created the material plane, so dragon essence is fundamentally tied to it. That explains why when a dragon creates its lair, it becomes a sort of magical nexus as the dragon’s essence seeps into the surrounding area and regional effects are created.
“We include some new regional effects, a couple of new lair actions that are tied to specific lair maps we include in the next chapter, as well as tables to help generate cool and interesting hoards. You’ll find a few other brand-new lair options later in the book, such as when we’re discussing amethyst dragons in Chapter Five and as part of certain monster entries in Chapter Six.”
Chapter Five
“Chapter Five makes up a third of the book and takes an in-depth look at each kind of dragon. By highlighting a dragon’s personality traits, ideals, and other creatures that might associate with them, we help you build a storyline around them.
“One of the guiding principles of this book is show don’t tell. We could simply tell you about the personality of brass dragons, but if we give you a bunch of tables that show you their personality traits and put words into that brass dragon’s mouth, that’s more effective. That might include objects that the brass dragon has a relationship with—maybe it has conversations with a bust of a philosopher that it calls Leonard!
“We also look at alignment. For example, chromatic dragons are typically evil, so can there ever be a good black dragon? The beauty of the word ‘typically’ is that there’s always the possibility. Each entry in this chapter starts with a table of personality traits and a table of ideals. And the final entry on the table of ideals is always something that’s dramatically outside the norm for that dragon’s alignment as we wanted to make the point that typically does mean typically, not always.”
Chapter Six
“This is the bestiary chapter, which makes up almost a third of the book. A revised version of the sapphire dragon is listed here, alongside the rest of the gem dragon family: amethyst, crystal, emerald, and topaz. It also includes stats for deep dragons, and moonstone dragons, as well as dragonborn champions, humanoid dragon servitors, and various other dragon-adjacent creatures. We also include stats for aspects of Bahamut and Tiamat.
“I have a fondness for dragon turtles and we’ve included additional age categories for those creatures. The dragon turtle in the Monster Manual breaks the pattern for size categories because it’s one size larger than an adult dragon. We’ve decided that’s an adult dragon turtle and have created some younger version scaled down from that. But the ancient dragon turtle is a monster.
“We’ve also included chromatic, metallic, and gem versions of what we call greatwyrm dragons. These creatures use the mythic monster rules from Mythic Odysseys of Theros to create epic battles. And the ancient dragon turtle is also in that category.”
For those hoping this will be heavily Dragonlance, it looks unlikely -- they say they are only giving a "very brief nod" to the setting.
You might think that the standard collective noun for dragons is either a flight of dragons, a weyr of dragons, a school of dragons, or a wing of dragons. Well, Fizban the Fabulous has so much valuable information to share with you about these unique creatures that “treasury” of dragons is the only description that properly captures it. Because once you begin to measure the impact dragons have on D&D, you realize they touch every facet of the game.
“Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons is comparable to Volo’s Guide to Monsters or Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, as it brings together a combination of lore and monster material,” Project Lead James Wyatt tells Dragon+. “This source book contains the revised dragonborn races, feats, and spells that we previewed in Unearthed Arcana, as well as magic items, a deeper dive into the Monster Manual dragons, dragon adjacent monsters, lair maps, and various tables to help you generate adventure ideas.”
Chapter One
“Following the introduction, Chapter One contains character options and is where you’ll find the revised dragonborn races, as well as the Way of the Ascendent Dragon monk and the Drakewarden ranger subclasses from previous Unearthed Arcana releases.
“Some of the feedback on the dragon subclasses said, ‘I want a dragon-flavored blank’ where blank is just about any other class in the Player’s Handbook. There’s a limit to the amount we can provide so we’ve included a table to spur players’ imaginations and help give any character they’re playing some dragon flavor.
“If you want a dragon-themed warlock, for example, you could play an archfey warlock whose patron is a moonstone dragon, a new kind of dragon that’s tied to the Feywild. If you want a dragon cleric, you can take any domain and worship Bahamut or Tiamat to add that dragon flavor. Maybe you’re from Eberron and have a dragonmark. Or you might decide that you gained your powers when you found a dragon claw that you now use as your spellcasting focus.”
Chapter Two
“The second chapter contains a handful of new spells, most of which we previewed in Unearthed Arcana. It also contains new magic items that have ties to dragons.
“If DMs and players really embrace this book then they’re going to be seeing a lot of dragons in their campaigns. One new concept we introduce here is hoard items. These are magic items that become more powerful when they’re steeped in a dragon’s hoard.
“If you find an item in a blue wyrmling’s hoard, for example, and then several levels later you use that item to kill an adult red dragon and you steep it in that hoard, it may become more powerful because it’s the hoard of an adult dragon. The item might also change its characteristics slightly, because it’s been affected by a red dragon’s magic instead of a blue dragon.”
Chapter Three
“This chapter is aimed at the Dungeon Master and is all about building dragons as unique characters—both in terms of personality and mechanical tweaks. We also look at how you can build encounters, adventures, and entire campaigns around dragons. This includes a whole bunch of tables that are a great way to quickly share a lot of really dense story ideas. We hope that these tiny nuggets spark inspiration in a DM’s brain.
“This is primarily a mainstream D&D book but we do give a very brief nod in the direction of Tarkir, which is Magic: The Gathering‘s dragon world, as well as Dragonlance. We also reference the second edition Council of Wyrms setting, which was another world that was built around dragons.
“The Council of Wyrms was a string of isles that were ruled by a bunch of different dragon clans. Their council gave the setting its name and in Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons we discuss different ways you might build a setting like that with dragons as major players.”
Chapter Four
“In this chapter we focus on lairs and hoards. This book embraces the D&D multiverse and talks about dragons as the quintessential creatures of the material plane. Bahamut and Tiamat created the material plane, so dragon essence is fundamentally tied to it. That explains why when a dragon creates its lair, it becomes a sort of magical nexus as the dragon’s essence seeps into the surrounding area and regional effects are created.
“We include some new regional effects, a couple of new lair actions that are tied to specific lair maps we include in the next chapter, as well as tables to help generate cool and interesting hoards. You’ll find a few other brand-new lair options later in the book, such as when we’re discussing amethyst dragons in Chapter Five and as part of certain monster entries in Chapter Six.”
Chapter Five
“Chapter Five makes up a third of the book and takes an in-depth look at each kind of dragon. By highlighting a dragon’s personality traits, ideals, and other creatures that might associate with them, we help you build a storyline around them.
“One of the guiding principles of this book is show don’t tell. We could simply tell you about the personality of brass dragons, but if we give you a bunch of tables that show you their personality traits and put words into that brass dragon’s mouth, that’s more effective. That might include objects that the brass dragon has a relationship with—maybe it has conversations with a bust of a philosopher that it calls Leonard!
“We also look at alignment. For example, chromatic dragons are typically evil, so can there ever be a good black dragon? The beauty of the word ‘typically’ is that there’s always the possibility. Each entry in this chapter starts with a table of personality traits and a table of ideals. And the final entry on the table of ideals is always something that’s dramatically outside the norm for that dragon’s alignment as we wanted to make the point that typically does mean typically, not always.”
Chapter Six
“This is the bestiary chapter, which makes up almost a third of the book. A revised version of the sapphire dragon is listed here, alongside the rest of the gem dragon family: amethyst, crystal, emerald, and topaz. It also includes stats for deep dragons, and moonstone dragons, as well as dragonborn champions, humanoid dragon servitors, and various other dragon-adjacent creatures. We also include stats for aspects of Bahamut and Tiamat.
“I have a fondness for dragon turtles and we’ve included additional age categories for those creatures. The dragon turtle in the Monster Manual breaks the pattern for size categories because it’s one size larger than an adult dragon. We’ve decided that’s an adult dragon turtle and have created some younger version scaled down from that. But the ancient dragon turtle is a monster.
“We’ve also included chromatic, metallic, and gem versions of what we call greatwyrm dragons. These creatures use the mythic monster rules from Mythic Odysseys of Theros to create epic battles. And the ancient dragon turtle is also in that category.”
)
