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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[Jensaarai]

I kinda like the white dragon's design to be honest.

There's something vaguely polar bear-ish about it.

 

[dave2008]

It's this one.
This image right here is probably the thing that kills the design for me the most. It's gone past muscular brute and well into bobblehead, and the main culprit is probably the two-tiered jaw. It would still look stocky and intimidating if its head was half that wide (as in, if it followed that first upturn of the jaw below the eye as the end of the jaw, and didn't add another head's worth of jaw to either side).

Like I said, we will have to agree to disagree on the white. Personally, I think you are taking any one image to literally. In this image the appearance of the oversize head is in large part due to perspective. If you look at the image of Tiamat, the reference design, or the image from the PDF, the head is not that big. For me, it is adequately sized for the theme of the dragon. For you it is not. That is OK.

PS - I just checked the PDF and per the reference art the white skull is no larger than the rest of the dragons. There is a nice little scale in the PDF so it is easy to check

I'm not certain what you think I'm saying there - I want different dragons to take different sets of inspirations from different sets of animals, and would prefer that they didn't overlap too much in which inspirations they put where. I did misinterpret you saying you thought avian was a mistake for the white as you thinking avian was a mistake period, I apologize for that.

I prefer each dragon take inspiration from multiple animals, as that is there mythology precedent. However, I am not opposed to a more streamline inspiration. The green is heavily inspired by serpents and that works just fine.

I think there is something similar, with the way their long, skinny snout flares/rounds out at the tip. I could see some possible vague spinosaurus inspiration here.
View attachment 390642
...Although that could just be eel inspiration converging on a face that's good for catching fish, depending on where one sits on the heated (no I'm not kidding) "did spinosaurus primarily eat fish" debate in paleontology.

Yes, this is some inspiration there. The head is more spinosaurian or crocodilian than snake like that is for sure.

 

[dave2008]

I kinda like the white dragon's design to be honest.

There's something vaguely polar bear-ish about it.

I agree!

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

It's this one.
This image right here is probably the thing that kills the design for me the most.

I would suggest you don’t take any one image as the default standard. Many artist work these books and each one’s a different style or take on a creature. One image doesn’t reflect the design of the whole.

 

[Queer Venger]

why am I feeling like the new MM is going to have baddies that finally kick ass and take names???

Oh, Hi Uni!!!