D&D General Let's Talk About Dragons

R

Reynard

Legend
I love dragons. They are far and away my favorite Big Bad in D&D. I am partial to city-buster sized great wyrms whose coming was foretold and whose wrath changes the course of the river of time. I don't use little dragons very often as I feel like it cheapens them, but sometimes smaller and young dragons show up as scions and servants of the Great Beast of the Earth. I usually leave the D&D color assumptions in place, but will sometimes alter or ignore them. I once rana campaign where dragons got their color from the environment their eggs were hatched in, and another time I had dragons change color as they aged.

I don't use good dragons very often and when I do it is usually as a patron of the party in the fight against the BBED.

How do you like your dragons in D&D?
 

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dave2008

dave2008

Legend
Reynard said:
I love dragons. They are far and away my favorite Big Bad in D&D. I am partial to city-buster sized great wyrms whose coming was foretold and whose wrath changes the course of the river of time. I don't use little dragons very often as I feel like it cheapens them, but sometimes smaller and young dragons show up as scions and servants of the Great Beast of the Earth. I usually leave the D&D color assumptions in place, but will sometimes alter or ignore them. I once rana campaign where dragons got their color from the environment their eggs were hatched in, and another time I had dragons change color as they aged.

I don't use good dragons very often and when I do it is usually as a patron of the party in the fight against the BBED.

How do you like your dragons in D&D?
Click to expand...
My thoughts run pretty similar to you. A dragon in my game is maybe an Adult, but usually an Ancient or Great Wyrm. And I like them a lot tougher and more interesting than typical 5e:

True Dragons: General Information
True Dragons: Alternate Actions

 


LuisCarlos17f

LuisCarlos17f

Legend
I miss all the dragons from the previous editions, I mean, true dragons are those with age categories. For example the cobra dragon as leader of a yuan-ti cult.

Not only are rivals against other dragons for the (hunt) territory but also against the giants. Some dragons, not only chromatics, become patrons of some kobolds tribes. Metalic dragons face diplomatic challengues because relations between kobolds and gnomes, among other no-evil races aren't yet too good.

Some dragons, or brotherhoods, are enough powerful to create their own demiplanes within the elemental chaos/limbo. The most important demiplane is Io's blood islands. There there are a lot of dinosaurs, megafaun and kaijus as potential preys to be hunted.

The relation between the dragons with the hex and tome dragons is not good, because in the eyes of the first ones these aren't "true" dragons, their origin is not natural. They are two new species created thanks humanoid spellcasters who discovered the secret of the "digievolution", something like the sorcerer-kings from Dark Sun setting.
 

James Gasik

James Gasik

We don't talk about Pun-Pun
Supporter
I like using young dragons as NPC's. In one campaign, there was a Wyrmling dragon who had been left to fend for herself. Though weak, she was intelligent, and could take on a humanoid form, and managed to infiltrate a rival organization to the PC's and arrange a great many plots against them.

The reaction of my players to the realization that their hated foe was actually just a baby dragon (that they could easily beat) was mind blowing.

One even said "but she's just a baby, we can't kill a baby!"

Ah, good times.
 

Vaalingrade

Vaalingrade

Legend
Between the 'marauding animal you kill and wear' and 'big, scaley person', my dragons are big, scaley people with cultures and societies. As of this point in my setting, the 'colors' of dragons are both a race and a culture among dragons, so you might find a silver member of the Red Nation who subscribes to their Proud Warrior Race Guy deal for example.

They're also having a big of a social upheaval after a popular dragon philosopher pointed out that they don't tend to create things of their own.

You can tell a shapeshifted dragon by the fact that they usually have twenty pounds of hair (not always on the head). They have a weird fascination with hair because they don't have any. They created the dwarves and... well this is one of the biggest proofs of that.
 

Bitbrain

Bitbrain

Lost in Dark Sun
First, I homebrew all of the monster statblocks I ever use for my campaigns.

Second, my dragons don’t have wings and can’t fly. They make up for this with boatloads of condition immunities, damage resistances/immunities, and a number of other things too.

So, how do I like my dragons? Boss monsters all the way. And aside from the ancient-age dragons for high level campaigns, not even very intelligent boss monsters either. They don’t really need to be though, not when my dragons were created by the gods to serve as living siege weapons and artillery in the Dawn War.

So basically, big scary monster that is threatening the kingdom as either a lone wolf or a would-be world conqueror with an army in front of it.
 

jmartkdr2

jmartkdr2

Hero
I'm too lazy to make up whole new rules for dragons, but:

1. "Personality by color" is just stereotypes - and about as reliable.
2. All dragons are spellcasters.
3. Dragons take long naps - decades or more for adults. This is how there can be so many.

Basically, the statblocks in the MM are just starting points for me to build full characters out of dragons.

I have a whole sub-setting of a Draconic Empire where dragons are both small gods and useless nobles (dragonborn Kshatriya actually run the place), and that includes some shift to the dragon religion, but only if I'm using that empire.

On the other hand, if I wanted dragon riders to be a thing, I'd make dragons big vicious animals. More like the dragonnels with breath weapons than traditional DnD dragons. High-intelligence dragons gain basically nothing from riders, so why would they tolerate them?
 

R

Reynard

Legend
jmartkdr2 said:
On the other hand, if I wanted dragon riders to be a thing, I'd make dragons big vicious animals. More like the dragonnels with breath weapons than traditional DnD dragons. High-intelligence dragons gain basically nothing from riders, so why would they tolerate them?
Click to expand...
Just make the dragons the PCs.
 


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