Discussing Draedens

When I saw the draeden mention in the book, I cracked one of those wide, dumb smiles that made me look like the Joker.

hamishspence said:

I tend to the idea that most old and new fluff can be pulled into a coherent whole. Hopefully, the current edition of D&D will lead that way: maybe clear up a few mysteries.

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i think FC1 really took a step in the right direction as far as that goes. let's hope it can become an example of how to keep (many, if not most) fans of any edition happy.

Hey all!

paradox42 said:

The Cogent, from Upper_Krust's Immortals Handbook Epic Bestiary, is very likely based on the Draeden from the original Immortals box set. Its nickname, "World Flayer," calls the image of a Draeden to mind immediately if one has ever seen the original monster entry, and its description is fairly close to that of a Draeden (though Cogents are far smaller- only a couple hundred feet long or so). The IH version is a CR 88 entity from the "Far Place" which is essentially like the Far Realm in 3E Manual fo the Planes.

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The Cogent was certainly inspired by the Draeden (my all time favourite monster of OD&D*). I was a bit annoyed at WotC for not including it in the Epic Level Handbook. Although what started out as an homage went through a lot of changes (not least the size of it, which I'll comment on more below) with shape and its powers, primarily because the original had none, to be fair. So I added stuff like 'Birthquake' (where severed tentacles become a new monster called Akishra/Astral Worm), 'Divine Electricity' (its psynapses carry a heavy electrical charge), 'Mind Boggling' (where it can bend reality to use all its tentacles on one opponent) among many others. Its Damage Reduction is 50/epic and mindless (sentient beings and weapons are less effective against beings from the Dimension of Thought), and so on.

Also I proffered the idea that they were the disembodied brains of Elder Gods who had become trapped in the Far Place and were now under the thrall of that dimension.

*...and an advanced Draeden did bite the dust when my character led out the Norse Pantheon to fight it, although only 2 deities made it back in one piece.

paradox42 said:

For my own game, I've actually decided as an exercise in pure game mathematics to stat up a Draeden closer to the original miles-long creature; I settled on a number of 4 feet of length per hit die, and 55,000 HD for the base creature (i.e. before advancement). I sincerely doubt I'll ever actually use one, but it's amusing to make uber-monsters anyway.

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This was the problem I initially faced. However, I chose to reflect its power rather than size. The original was roughly in and around the power of Intermediate Deities/Greater Deities, so I sort of made it akin to a relatively weak Greater Deity.

I think if you were to give it 55,000 Hit Dice then you are probably looking at a bare minimum of CR 20,000. Which means you are only going to be able to use it against Ridiculous(TM)-level PCs.

paradox42 said:

To the OP, is your intent with this thread to generally discuss the beasts, or to try figuring out which entities in the D&D metaplot might be Draedens?

As an aside, I have no idea what this "Ulgurashek" is.

I can suggest with fair certainty that the Serpent in Nessus (which is supposedly Asmodeus's true form) is not a Draeden, because it closely resembles an enormous snake or dragon, and Draedens don't look remotely dragonlike. Sure, the Immortals monster description suggests that some mortals see them "as dragons," but that's an illusion. A Draeden falling onto ground would not leave a spiral track, nor would it sit nursing its wounds for countless millennia in all that material- Draedens hate anything but perfect vacuum, so a Draeden falling as Asmodeus did would eat everything around it until Hell was just gone.

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Apsu from the Pantheons of the Megaverse book could be a Shadow-Draeden?

Ah, I wondered how long this thread would hide from U_K.

Upper_Krust said:

This was the problem I initially faced. However, I chose to reflect its power rather than size. The original was roughly in and around the power of Intermediate Deities/Greater Deities, so I sort of made it akin to a relatively weak Greater Deity.

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Fair choice. In my case, I had rules for expanded sizes before your Bestiary came out, and among the higher adjectives was "Cyclopean" which corresponds (after I made the changes to convert to your system) to between 25 and 49 miles in size. That's Macro-Titanic, to use the Bestiary definitions (note that the mileage I gave above doesn't precisely match yours, because I opted to refigure the table based feet and on powers of 2, and then round off to the nearest mile for each).

My reasoning was this: I was on a Cthulhu kick at the time I completed the first version of the table, and as a result I simply had to have a Cyclopean monster somewhere. When I thought about beasts that could possibly match such an enormous size, I made the connection to the original Draeden, and started thinking. My version is actually about twice the size of the original, but given the general changes 3E made over OD&D, I didn't feel that was inappropriate- nor was its power level going up by many orders of magnitude.

Upper_Krust said:

I think if you were to give it 55,000 Hit Dice then you are probably looking at a bare minimum of CR 20,000. Which means you are only going to be able to use it against Ridiculous(TM)-level PCs.

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Of course- like I said, it's not something I really think I'll ever use, though it might be cool to stage a fight between one and en entire pantheon of deities and overgods someday.

But I will note that this precise problem meant I left the statting project in limbo for a couple of years, and only recently picked it up again- my original main difficulties were figuring out its skills, feats, and CR. The IH Bestiary showed me the Omnicompetent ability (which neatly cuts out the skill problem); when Fieari statted up Lavos, I saw how the feat problem could be circumvented by using stackables like Armor Skin and Damage Reduction to just inflate abilities to ridiculous levels; and when Fieari called for help to estimate the CR for A'Tuin the Star Turtle, and I took up the challenge, I discovered that it actually is possible to arrive at reasonable values for uber-monsters.

So in the last month or two I started again, and this time am plowing forward. I haven't gone ahead with a CR estimate yet, because I'm currently thinking about what special abilities to give it exactly (besides its basic stats and spellcasting ability of course). It's an interesting conundrum, and one I likely will end up using the Dvine and Cosmic powers in IH Ascension for in the end.

Upper_Krust said:

Apsu from the Pantheons of the Megaverse book could be a Shadow-Draeden?

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Well, the wikipedia entry on Apsu suggests that it might be more appropriate to call it a Water Draeden, but that's probably quibbling. Certainly, a Draeden vaguely resembles a beast that evolved in water, so postulating that an ancient, never-described (except by being a creature made of water) entity is in fact a Draeden probably isn't far off the mark.

hamishspence said:

I assume the Draedens can vary a bit in looks.

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Not by the original fluff (they all looked like the vast, tentacled beasts Cthulhudrew described above), but if you want to say for your own edification that one or more of them permanently changed shape to look like something else, then go ahead- nothing says your game has to follow the original fluff.

But in Neth's case, this may be irrelevant, since in fact the Immortals Rules description of a Draeden is of the being seen from the outside. Neth is never seen from the outside, since it's an entire plane in and of itself, so in theory it could look like anything if ever merged back into the multiverse proper. The description given of it being "a continent-sized membrane folded back on itself" is vague enough to cover virtually any form, and since our own bodies contain truly ridiculous lengths within (example, if you took all of an adult human's blood vessels and laid them out end to end, they'd circle the entire planet Earth more than once) it's not hard to imagine that Neth's giant membrane could shrink in apparent size down to only a few tens of miles if properly scrunched.

One interesting idea regarding Neth as a Draeden is that Neth knows nothing about itself; it's apparently young in cosmic terms, and trying to discover a place in the cosmos. It also is clearly not Chaotic (as Draedens in the Immortals Rules are postulated to be, which also matches the Abyss forming around Ulgurshek), and that must mean that if it is a Draeden it hasn't had any contact with others of its kind. Neth may actually be a baby Draeden, not yet fully formed; their life cycle has never been detailed in any product I'm aware of. Its demiplane may be a kind of egg for it, and when the egg hatches it will be shunted into the Astral Plane, or another reality entirely. That strikes me as a pretty cool hook.

hamishspence said:

The one thing any surviving Draedens should have in common is size (layer, demiplane, and, if one wishes to squeeze Far Realm megaentities into that category, continent sizes)

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Draedens in the original fluff are not said to be planes in and of themselves- they are creatures. That said, the mention of Ulgurshek as an Abyssal layer does point out that Draedens are in fact large enough to be planes by the Immortals Set definitions: no Draeden could fit into a plane from that set of Picoplane or smaller size, and in fact if one speculates on Draedens containing planes within themselves then a Draeden would typically be a Nanoplane. Re-engineering them for the modern edition of the game could make them much larger if that's desired, of course; certainly the largest dragon sizes have greatly inflated from OD&D.

hamishspence said:

I've only got 3rd/3.5 Ed material, so I probably don't have the full picture.

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I would advise trying to find a copy of the original entry from the gold-box Immortals Rules set if you want to be completely accurate with regards to the original information on Draedens. Of course, as newer products have arrived on shelves over the years, they've contradicted and retconned older ones, so perhaps the information in the original gold box rules is incomplete or incorrect in some detail. It's ultimately a question of how much of the original material you want to retain in a merge with newer stuff.

The Inner Planes, page 72, describes "an ancient and venerable race" that "roamed the planes before any other species were born. Indeeed, a few even speculate that these creatures cause the multiverse itself to come into existence."

They're currently asleep in glaciers in the Paraelemental Plane of Ice. "...the Sleeping Ones apparently inspire a sort of brain-shattering awe, and the sight of their numbing graveyard is supposed to rip a weak-minded fool of his sensibilities - literally. Still, if these beings are as big as some claim (many, many miles long), it could be that plenty of travelers have seen them from a distance but mistook them for oddly shaped mountain peaks."

Anyway, they aren't named or described in detail, but they're meant to be Lovecraftian (cyclopean!) beings as old as the multiverse. They sound like draedens to me.

They sounded like draedens to me, too. i was thinking specifically of that reference when I wrote the bit about Ulgurshek being curious about the fates of others of his kind.

--Erik

Interesting. I remember that reference well (that book was jam-packed with cool ideas), but never connected it to the Draedens before. I had always pictured the enormous shapes in the ice as being vaguely humanoid, but really, why? Their shapes are simply not described, and if the beings are actually Draedens, then most travellers finding them would see different things anyway.

So, if Neth is a baby Draeden, did these Sleepers make it somehow, or was it made by one or more Draedens that somehow stayed unfrozen?

paradox42 said:

So, if Neth is a baby Draeden, did these Sleepers make it somehow, or was it made by one or more Draedens that somehow stayed unfrozen?

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You may not be able to ascribe our concepts of procreation to something that alien. Look at some alternate methods of creation -- dust bunnies don't reproduce, each one accretes slowly, not unlike pearls or stalactites.

Erik Mona said:

They sounded like draedens to me, too. i was thinking specifically of that reference when I wrote the bit about Ulgurshek being curious about the fates of others of his kind.

--Erik

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*grinning* That entire book was thirty one flavors of awesome, the material about the 'sleeping ones' in Paraelemental Ice included.

Suggesting them to be remaining/imprisoned Draedens is really interesting (in a good way of course). In my own stuff I ended up using the 'sleeping ones' as the forgotten and imprisoned (or martyred) NG progenitor race, opposites of the Baernaloths, that created the Guardinals before themselves accepting a fate that their children would, in later eons, mimic in their use of Belarian (willing self-sacrifice and dilution of purity on behalf of others).