D&D 5E Fizban's Treasury Dragons Ranked By Challenge Rating

WotC has been sending out previews of Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, due out next month, to folks on Twitter. Amongst those are art pieces and other items.

By Challenge Rating the dragons in the book are:

• Ancient crystal (19)
• Ancient topaz (20)
• Ancient emerald (21)
• Ancient moonstone (21)
• Ancient sapphire (22)
• Elder brain dragon (22)
• Ancient amethyst (23)
• Ancient dragon turtle (24)
• Gem greatwyrm (26)
• Chromatic greatwyrm (27)
• Metallic greatwyrm (28)
• Apects of Bahamut and Tiamat (30)

Interestingly, it appears that the great wyrm category is divided into three -- gem, chromatic, metallic -- rather than by each dragon type.

There's also an alphabetical list of all 20 dragon types in the book:

• Amethyst
• Black
• Blue
• Brass
• Bronze
• Copper
• Crystal
• Deep
• Dragon turtle
• Emerald
• Faerie
• Gold
• Green
• Moonstone
• Red
• Sapphire
• Shadow
• Silver
• Topaz
• White

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I disagree. In general, sure, but there are some specific parts that do need retconning in order to take full advantage of the new audience (just like how Ravenloft got quite a few retcons in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft to appease to both newer and older fans).

I'm worried that the reaction to 4e and Nentir Vale will prevent them from doing it again. I really hope they do, because they're clearly very talented at making awesome and inspiring lore. However, their contract with Ed Greenwood where they agree to keep making FR books in order to keep the rights to the setting will also probably stop them from doing this.

They already broke that, it included using him to wrote novels and stuff, they know they can get away with it because Greenwood is too nice to sue, so they can get away with it sadly.

Even as they are on the cusp of turning the Forgotten Realms into a billion dollar movie making franchise. For what Ed has done for him, they should not only go back to publishing novels, they should buy him a Supercomputer.

 

[Scribe]

I disagree. In general, sure, but there are some specific parts that do need retconning in order to take full advantage of the new audience (just like how Ravenloft got quite a few retcons in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft to appease to both newer and older fans).

I'm worried that the reaction to 4e and Nentir Vale will prevent them from doing it again. I really hope they do, because they're clearly very talented at making awesome and inspiring lore. However, their contract with Ed Greenwood where they agree to keep making FR books in order to keep the rights to the setting will also probably stop them from doing this.

I just dont see it. You rock the boat enough, you piss off enough people who then poison the well for your 'new' audience.

You dont need to do that. As to the 4e/Nentir Vale stuff, I think they could do it now, with some of the lessons learned from 4e.

The problem (to me) will always be pushing changes on a setting, where instead it could have just been a new setting, a new angle or interpretation on those tropes.

And dump the 4e Tiefling!

 

[see]

And that wasn't even the point.

Er, no, it was the entire point all along, because my involvement in this entire chain or replies (follow the up-arrows) started with a reply to:

Good to know. I'm not against the concept of a fairy dragon (if anyone else here has read the Fablehaven series by Brandon Mull, you'll know about Raxtus the Fairy Dragon, who I think is awesome), I just absolutely despise the ones that exist in D&D. They shouldn't be prankster dragon-cats with invisibility and trickery magic. They should be Feywild equivalents of the Shadow Dragons that have nature and healing magic and are actually dragon-sized instead of Tiny.

I was always discussing your assertion of what faerie dragons in D&D should be.

Well, what they "should be" is necessarily a question not of what any individual would have preferred (de gustibus non est disputandum, after all), but rather what WotC needed to have published in order to achieve WotC's goals.

Thus why my initial response was not "invisible prankster cat-dragons are cool!" or "tradition is sacred", but rather:

the designers eliminating a long-established creature just to steal its name for a completely different concept would be gratuitously insulting to the existing fanbase.

I was assuming, I grant, it would be obvious that "gratuitously insulting to the existing fanbase" was a reference to commercial viability. Insofar as that was not clear, I owe you an apology for not being explicit.

Now, as far as . . .

Which, though true, doesn't matter now with a Dragon book coming out. They can change the lore for faerie dragons midway through an edition. It's not unprecedented. Drow lore is changing, for example. They have the fanbase now, and are capable of abandoning sacred cows for the purpose of improving D&D without tradition-sticklers getting in the way now.

. . . I think that radically changing faerie dragons seven years into an edition is an even worse idea for WotC than doing so at the change of an edition, when people expect things will change.

Yes, there are legions of new fans acquired over the last seven years. The thing is, these new fans of 5th edition are fans of 5th edition as it exists, not fans of a hypothetical revised version they've never seen. They're as likely to be attached to the faerie dragons they saw for the first time in the 5th edition Monster Manual as any played-since-1983 fan is attached to the faerie dragons they saw for the first time in the 1st edition Monster Manual II. Few of the new fans will care if a new book contradicts some "canon" that was done in 1974, 1984, 1994, or 2004, but many many more will if it contradicts canon from 2014.

The drow case you invoke is not parallel, since the "classic" drow are being kept as-is alongside the new cultures (that the designers on social media keep pointing out the Menzoberranzan drow aren't changing is a clear indicator that they get this), and the change doesn't invalidate the current Monster Manual statblock the way replacing existing faerie dragons with a completely different version would.

The correct move for WotC, then, is to parallel the shadow dragon with a new fey dragon template with its own distinct name, while leaving the extant faerie dragon alone.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I just dont see it. You rock the boat enough, you piss off enough people who then poison the well for your 'new' audience.

You dont need to do that. As to the 4e/Nentir Vale stuff, I think they could do it now, with some of the lessons learned from 4e.

The problem (to me) will always be pushing changes on a setting, where instead it could have just been a new setting, a new angle or interpretation on those tropes.

And dump the 4e Tiefling!

I broadly agree with that, but dumping the 4e Tiefling ship has sailed, it evolved into the 5e Tiefling, which then evolved later to have enough offshoots to make even the Elves go into shock (9 MToF subraces, plus the SCAG's Devil's Tongue, Winged, Feral, and Planescape style Tieflings, vs 7 Elven subraces did I miss any?). Thanks to critical role, novels, and the coplayers and video games and other stuff, 5e Tieflings aren't going anywhere.

Google Tieflings and look at the images and most will 4e/5e style, with a smattering of plabescape art.

 

[Scribe]

I broadly agree with that, but dumping the 4e Tiefling ship has saved, it evolved into the 5e Tiefling, which then evolved later to have enough offshoots to make even the Elves go into shock (9 MToF subraces, plus the SCAG's Devil's Tongue, Winged, Feral, and Planescape style Tieflings, vs 7 Elven subraces did I miss any?). Thanks to critical role and the coplayers and video games and other stuff, 5e Tieflings aren't going anywhere.

Let an old man dream....(scag was enough to salvage the race for me anyway).

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Let an old man dream....(scag was enough to salvage the race for me anyway).

Planescape will likely go even deeper into old school Tieflings, Genasi, and Aasimars, when they get around to it, plus how they old school and new school planetouched fit together.

 

[Scribe]

Thats the dream.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

I don't like seeing Dragon Gods getting demoted.

They where never gods to begin with, it was only foolish squishy humanoids that thought so

 

[Mind of tempest]

I have loved pretty much everything about the Great Wheel cosmology since I first sat down with the 1st edition Manual of the Planes and read it cover to cover. When they added to it with Planescape (added, not replaced) I fell in love with all over again. It felt and feels like the sort of thing centuries of loremasters and sages would come up with as a sort of "grand unified theory". The biggest problem I had with the 4th ed version was that everything about it was designed to be super playable on the tabletop, with little concern for the worlds that supposedly believed in it. It felt completely artificial to me, and thus I see it as gamey and poor worldbuilding. On the other hand, the Feywild/Shadowfell dichotomy is workable and capable of being added to the Wheel without replacing anything (as 5th ed demonstrated), so that's all right.

the wheel feels too big and only changeable with belief also some of the planes feel a bit superfluous and being purely based on alignment is a losing battle these days.
perhaps something defined but large with lots of it being traverlable to but not all of it?
how does one get the organic feel to it?

 

[Henadic Theologian]

They where never gods to begin with, it was only foolish squishy humanoids that thought so

No they were Gods, they had the clerics to prove it.