D&D (2024) 2025's Ancient Green Dragon Stat Block From The New Monster Manual

The new ancient green dragon from the 2025 Monster Manual was previewed at Gen Con.

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[dave2008]

Besides blowing back your enemies with a wing buffet, you could have an ability to push a missile off course as a parry-like reaction, possibly include a rend with a grapple for its bite on a crit or +5 over the mark, a missed claw attack would require forced movement to successfully dodge... and so much more. Anyways it is what it is.

The thing is, to do everything a dragon could do makes for a huge and unwieldy statblock. I know, I have made many, many, many dragon statblocks and tried many different things. It is a fight between what it should/could do and what is more iconic or interesting. It is a tough balance.

What I would like is just some general actions by age category or whatever (like tail sweeps & wing buffets) in a sidebar (like spellcasting used to be) or table in the Dragon section that can be assumed to be part of a dragon's statblock, but not actually included in each stat block. Alternately, just use the improvised action options in the DMG.

Of course, I don't really need any of this as I can do it myself, but...I do like to see how others would do it!

 

[dave2008]

Since the word "bloodied" supposedly re-appears in this edition, I had high hopes that we'd see the feature return that breath weapons recharge when the dragon becomes bloodied. That was one of the simplest but coolest rules in 4e and I wanted to see it back. Too bad. Easy enough to house rule, though.

EDIT: confirmed that bloodied is an official term in the new PHB. Makes this even more of a shame.

It is a CR issue. If the dragon used its breath weapon 2x (which bloodied recharge would do), then the CR would jump quite a bit.

It is worth noting that in 4e the dragon breath did pathetic damage (24 HP) on characters that had a lot more hit points - so doing it 2x in one combat wasn't a big deal. I much prefer on 77 HP damage breath weapon once to two 24 HP damage breath weapons.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

for fight against big-ass dragons, I usually add Wings and Tail as their own statblocks with their own HP pool and action allotment (obviously tail has a speed of 0 and wings move the ''main body'' as part of their move). So players can target those parts to remove some attack power to the dragon.

 

[Zaukrie]

for fight against big-ass dragons, I usually add Wings and Tail as their own statblocks with their own HP pool and action allotment (obviously tail has a speed of 0 and wings move the ''main body'' as part of their move). So players can target those parts to remove some attack power to the dragon.

Interesting idea!

 

[dave2008]

Interesting idea!

My most recent Tiamat has a stat block for each head, one for the body, and one for the wings and tail. She is very fearsome!

 

[Stalker0]

It is a CR issue. If the dragon used its breath weapon 2x (which bloodied recharge would do), then the CR would jump quite a bit.

Its true, but on the other hand it would be a lot more consistent to the CR math to have a dragon with a breath, and then a 2nd breath on bloodied rather than the die roll we get now.

Right now you actually can get 3 types of dragon encounters, if you go for "optimized damage". Now since the dragon's breath is very lopsided damage wise in CR calculations, that's actually a HUGE swing. (The 3 rends do 81 dmg, and the breath does 154 for "effective CR" purposes, plus a base of 81 dmg from reaction rends. So each round of breath is 235 dmg, and each round of rend is 162)

44% of the time you get a Dragon with 1 breath, and 2 rounds of attacks. (186 dmg, CR23)
44% of the time you get a Dragon with 2 breaths, and 1 round of attack. (210 dmg, CR24)
12% of the time you get a Dragon with 3 breath, and 0 rounds of attack. (235 dmg, CR26)

Where is if you went with a dragon that doesn't recharge its breath through a roll, and only does it on bloodied, then you would get a consistent "2 breath" model for your CR

 

[Weiley31]

Even if lair/legendary actions are gone, one can always....ADD EM BACK !!

Clutches old MM in hand while laughing like an evil Tom the cat.

 

[Zaukrie]

CR is stupid. Always has been, always will be.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Both times I've used dragons in 5e, they've been disappointing. Can't do damage, can't debuff, die fast. And this whilst the encounter CR being way above the party level. I'm not sure this improves things that much. I like making the legendary actions into reactions, but I don't like merging all physical attacks into one attack profile. And DPR still seems low to me.

 

[dave2008]

Bot times I've used dragons in 5e, they've been disappointing. Can't do damage, can't debuff, die fast. And this whilst the encounter CR being way above the party level. I'm not sure this improves things that much. I like making the legendary actions into reactions, but I don't like merging all physical attacks into one attack profile. And DPR still seems low to me.

It is definitely a thematic improvement, just not much of an improvement in damage or defense, but that wasn't going to change much as they said they were maintaining the existing CR.