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]

I'm not sure what middle ground you are looking for, because people who are less willing to alter the mechanics of the attack are not going to alter the mechanics of the attack. But they may be more than willing to alter the flavor and story of the attack. Which can be plenty.

Because sure, the tail has a longer reach than the claws... but is it longer than 15 ft? If not, then all you are really saying is that if the dragon is hitting someone at the edge of their range, they should bite or use their tail. Which is again, just a matter of flavoring. Having a claw attack that does basically the same damage, but only has a reach of 10 ft.... isn't really going to make the fight any tactically different.

Ideally the tail, bite, wings do more different than just minor reach and damage. A tail would have 2x reach (30 ft) and incapcitate and a bite would grapple or swallow. These are harder to add onto a generic attack, but here is the middle ground I came up with: Ancient Green v2

 

[Chaosmancer]

making room. Those traits are unnecessary IMO. battle ready is really only there to explain why it has a 23 on initiative and amphibious is best left to descriptive text, it doesn't belong in a stat block IMO.

I disagree with both of those statements. Battle Ready was the most exciting part of that dragon statblock for me as a DM.

Additionally, you have made that statblock quite confusing. It took me multiple read throughs to understand that I am giving up two attacks to make a single bigger attack. In terms of power... that is a bad trade the majority of the time and weakens the dragon.

And then you did it again with your 40 ft cone tail attack. That takes all three reactions, meaning the dragon cannot use any rend attacks if they use their charming prescence even once. It still has the same trigger, but now it feels like a waste if you have a single enemy hitting you in melee, while everyone else has kept their distance. This will only work if the group stays in a cone for the dragon, who has a much deadlier cone they know to avoid.

You also took out all the references to their buffs from being in a lair, which was incredibly convenient to have in a single statblock, instead of having to reference a lair for changes to the statblock itself.

And for all of that weakening... you added a grapple and a topple.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Ideally the tail, bite, wings do more different than just minor reach and damage. A tail would have 2x reach (30 ft) and incapcitate and a bite would grapple or swallow. These are harder to add onto a generic attack, but here is the middle ground I came up with: Ancient Green v2

The Teeth and Tails trait is better, but the wing attack suffers the same issue as the tail sweep. It won't be used and it causes big problems if it is used. Taking all three reactions limits the dragon far more than it adds any flavor. And even with a 40 ft radius, at high levels you might often still have only a single target in that area. Which means that, say if you are dealing with a single melee opponent, you are giving up hitting six targets with charm monster to instead hit one target with an abysmal attack and getting to move.

I mean, honestly, Barbarian (who could move up to 60 ft without dashing at this level) rushes the dragon and hits it. Dragon potentially deals zero damage to any enemy and moves 40 ft. Which still leaves it vulnerable to archer fire and mage spells with no counterplay options.

If you just have the rend option, now you have two choices from the barbarian's attack, you can hit them with the rend, or cast Charm Monster. Then, if you get hit with an arrow next turn, you can corrosive miasma the group in the back, and then if they blast you with spells, you can corrosive or charm again.

 

[dave2008]

I disagree with both of those statements. Battle Ready was the most exciting part of that dragon statblock for me as a DM.

Additionally, you have made that statblock quite confusing. It took me multiple read throughs to understand that I am giving up two attacks to make a single bigger attack. In terms of power... that is a bad trade the majority of the time and weakens the dragon.

And then you did it again with your 40 ft cone tail attack. That takes all three reactions, meaning the dragon cannot use any rend attacks if they use their charming prescence even once. It still has the same trigger, but now it feels like a waste if you have a single enemy hitting you in melee, while everyone else has kept their distance. This will only work if the group stays in a cone for the dragon, who has a much deadlier cone they know to avoid.

You also took out all the references to their buffs from being in a lair, which was incredibly convenient to have in a single statblock, instead of having to reference a lair for changes to the statblock itself.

And for all of that weakening... you added a grapple and a topple.

Well your jumping into the middle of ideas of WIP discussions. If you read further you see I took things out as an experiment and they got put back in in later stat blocks. Furthermore, the whole point of these is to get feedback, so I do appreciate that. The cutting of things was to see how stripped down I could get it without fundamentally changing the design.

The tail sweep got changed to a wing attack similar to the old 2014 dragons and I reduced to 2 reactions. This gave the dragon a tactical movement option (which it needed IMO). This also fixed the other issue you noted about having no options if it used the tail sweep.

But that is really beside the point. The reason for this statblocks was solely to investigate whether or not Rend, and nothing else, made sense. What I was looking at in the first revision was what would need to be done to keep the same basic size of statblock and replace rend with claw, bite, and tail attacks. It was doable, but lost some in the process. That is OK, that is what I am trying to figure out. Now, I am inclined to make the stat block bigger rather than cut things, but it was an experiment to see what would need cutting.

I am not a fan of wrapping up lair abilities in the statblock. Monsters are often not in their lairs and I don't see the need to burden the general statblock with the info. Also, I can do a lot more interesting things if a put lair info outside the statblock like they were in 2014. I am not going to adopt this change in my 2024 monsters.

 

[Sulicius]

We don’t know if there are still separate lair actions somewhere on the next page. I would not enjoy losing them, but then again, we still have the old DMG and Fizban’s. We can just take the old ones.

I agree that from all that I have seen, a lot of flavor that the 2014 core books had seems to be filed off. A lot of ribbon features are lost, and wordings are more technical.

To me that’s a loss, but I love a small, streamlined stat block a lot. I have played a lot with big, chunky boss stat blocks, and they were a pain to run for me at the table. Now for some it is too abstract, and for others this is still too much. I think they found a nice middle of the road.

 

[dave2008]

The Teeth and Tails trait is better, but the wing attack suffers the same issue as the tail sweep. It won't be used and it causes big problems if it is used. Taking all three reactions limits the dragon far more than it adds any flavor. And even with a 40 ft radius, at high levels you might often still have only a single target in that area. Which means that, say if you are dealing with a single melee opponent, you are giving up hitting six targets with charm monster to instead hit one target with an abysmal attack and getting to move.

To be clear that was supposed to be 2 reactions, I just forgot to change it. That is how I have it in homebrewery now (with 2 reactions)

I mean, honestly, Barbarian (who could move up to 60 ft without dashing at this level) rushes the dragon and hits it. Dragon potentially deals zero damage to any enemy and moves 40 ft. Which still leaves it vulnerable to archer fire and mage spells with no counterplay options.

To be clear, I am looking at one issue with these designs: to rend or not to rend.

In my own version there will be a host of changes that make the dragon more interesting, IMO. For example, its hover speed (which is what it can move with the wing attack action) is 80 ft. it is also resistant to Piercing damage and I am working on trait that helps against magic and replaces Legendary Resistance. All of that covers the issue you pointed out to some extent. I mean we don't want to shut down everything!

If you just have the rend option, now you have two choices from the barbarian's attack, you can hit them with the rend, or cast Charm Monster. Then, if you get hit with an arrow next turn, you can corrosive miasma the group in the back, and then if they blast you with spells, you can corrosive or charm again.

Yes, all those remain options in my updated version, just not ready to post it yet. I am still trying to get more feedback on whether or not Rend makes sense. I think I will make a poll.

 

[dave2008]

I disagree with both of those statements. Battle Ready was the most exciting part of that dragon statblock for me as a DM.

You do realize that battle ready is already included in the stat block under initiative. It is redundant to also make it a trait. Now, if you are rolling initiative sure, it is good to know where that 23 came from, and it interacts with the new surprise rules well, but I hardly think it is essential. That being said, I did keep it in later revisions (mainly because of how surprise works now).

 

[Stalker0]

@Stalker0 , would something like this be a fair compromise? Revised Ancient Green version 2

Yep that style is pretty reasonable

 

[Rabulias]

PS - I also removed the Charisma part of the spellcasting as i think that is not needed as well. Is there a reason we need to know the ability used?

It makes things a little more clear for a DM customizing a monster up or down in spellcasting power, or for a new DM to understand where the numbers on a monster come from.

 

[mamba]

It makes things a little more clear for a DM customizing a monster up or down in spellcasting power, or for a new DM to understand where the numbers on a monster come from.

sure, the information is not useless, but it is not needed. Personally when deciding whether to remove it or not stick to a half-page stat block, I’d choose the latter