D&D (2024) Check Out The New Monster Manual’s Ancient Gold Dragon

Wizards of the Coast has previewed (part of) the stat block for one of its iconic monsters on social media. Take a look!

 

[Upper_Krust]

I don't like this dragon. It is size of a bus but it does not hit hard at all. Breath weapon is pretty sad too. Its power comes from banishment, which completely overshadows the other options, and is annoying and boring.

Exactly instead of the frustrating Banish effect it should just do a lot more damage.

I want dragon that feels big and physically powerful. I want breath weapon, the signature ability of dragons, to be scary. On the other hand I don't want abilities that force players to do nothing on their turn.

It doesn't look like these Legendary Actions solve any issues either.

I mentioned it previously but the more I consider it, the worse an idea I think Legendary Actions are because the designers massively weaken the dragon to shoehorn in the Legendary Actions.

The solution I am using is:

1. Make the Actions far more important (ie. more damaging) than Reactions. Lets say on average damage dice is half for Reactions.
2. Each Reaction must react to that character alone (tactically the dragon might be able to catch multiple characters with a tail strike or whatever, but only if the secondary character is close to the character the dragon is reacting to).

This way its (multi-attack) Actions + 1 Reaction add up to the target DPR for the monster, even if it gets 3 or 4 Reactions per round.

Also reacting to the actions of a specific character makes the fight feel far more personal.

I hope chromatics are better.

We can but hope. I suspect higher AC and lower initiative and that's about it.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Again, why are we having the Dragon fight solo against level 20 PCs, when it was argued to be a solo fight for level 17 PCs?

Solo fight for...
Five Level 17 characters
Four Level 18 characters
Four Level 19 characters (in its Lair)
Three Level 20 characters (in its Lair)

Heck, why are we continuing to argue it must be a solo fight, when we all are perfectly aware that solo fights are incredibly difficult to balance and every fight we actually run at the table usually has minions and other creatures?

The XP Budget says its a solo monster.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Solo fight for...
Five Level 17 characters
Four Level 18 characters
Four Level 19 characters (in its Lair)
Three Level 20 characters (in its Lair

I feel the 5 level 17s would do better than the three level 20s, but any solo monster fight is going to favour the party. Legendary actions don’t do much to address the action economy deficit, or the power versatility deficit. Give the dragon a pet cleric.

 

[Upper_Krust]

But it has never worked. It didn't work in 3.X to the point that they redesigned solo monsters in 4e, and it still didn't work. And they tried to use legendary actions in 5e... and it still didn't work. So why would we expect it to work after 20+ years of it not working?

Solo monsters in 4E worked fairly well.

The main reason its not working here is because the dragon's damage is too low.

Legendary Resistance is half the equation (for solving Boss monster saves); the other half being that it should cost the Boss a 'Reaction' to use one. That way forcing it to use Legendary Resistance depletes its DPR and has 'consequence'.

 

[Upper_Krust]

I feel the 5 level 17s would do better than the three level 20s,

I agree, doubly so in the case of the Banish tactic by the dragon.

The DPR average of five Level 17 characters likely outstrips the three Level 20 characters.

but any solo monster fight is going to favour the party.

Which is why a solo monster needs the capacity to drop one PC per round, otherwise it has no chance of success.

Legendary actions don’t do much to address the action economy deficit, or the power versatility deficit. Give the dragon a pet cleric.

Designers weaken monsters to accommodate Legendary Actions - that's why they are a bad idea; design wise.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Solo monsters in 4E worked fairly well.

Perhaps on the monster design side, but not on character design side. Characters had a lot of powers that required several foes to be used or at least to be effective. And as every power was independent instead of using some shared pool of uses, if you had many of such powers and faced a solo foe your "power budget" for the encounter was cut significantly.

 

[dave2008]

I totally agree with you then. Still, their numbers and design works a bit better in some cases. They deal a lot more damage, for a start.

The actual damage numbers for Forzaantirilys are lower than the 2024 gold dragon. However, since Forzaantirilys can ignore resistance to Fire damage, she probably has the edge.

Ancient Gold Dragon DPR: 182
Forzaantirilys DPR: 151-164 (depending on how often you want to say its bonus actions & reactions are effective)

 

[dave2008]

Yes its extremely disappointing...we will see if the 'mighty' Tarrasque suffers the same fate in a few weeks.

I am pretty confident the damage will be bigger than the dragon, but still to low. The 2014 could make 8 attacks in a round. Each attack can't do enough damage, IMO, if you are dividing its DPR by 8.

 

[abirdcall]

Eh, I think you misunderstood. Villain actions can be used multiple times per fight. I thought it would be weaker to only do something off-turn once, but it actually speeds up the game because I interrupt the turn flow less. My players enjoyed that too.
Listen, I don’t like everything about their design either, but they playtested their monsters a lot, and it shows. Even my players enjoyed them more. They keep performing well.


Friend, I am using the encounter building rules from the 2024 DMG to determine that a CR24 solo should be a high challenge encounter for 3 20th level characters. Of course I know better, but I need to test before I can be sure.

I know that, you know that, but it’s a new edition-ish and we can’t keep on saying that without testing.

There seems to be a misunderstanding of what a 'hard' encounter is.

The 20th level party should be able to kill multiple ancient gold dragons in an adventuring day.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Which is why a solo monster needs the capacity to drop one PC per round, otherwise it has no chance of success.


Designers weaken monsters to accommodate Legendary Actions - that's why they are a bad idea; design wise

The trouble with monsters that hit like a brick outhouse is that if the party lose initiative that's one PC dead, even if they eventually win. The banish thing is intended to take a party member out without actually killing them.