Casimir Liber
Adventurer
Great! I like the idea they are some organic amalgam of tooth and scales.
5E: Converting Monsters from White Dwarf Magazine for Fifth Edition
- Thread starter Cleon
- Start date
Casimir Liber
Adventurer
Also, being warriors gives them a golden opportunity of using some Fighter (BattleMaster) maneuvers like Brace, Riposte etc (maybe the metallic ones are more defensive and chromatic more attackey)
Cleon
Legend
Yeah, I believe I mentioned the possibility of those earlier.
Don't want to pile on too many since it'd throw off the CR calculations, plus it might make it overly complicated to run multiple Dragon Warriors simultaneously, especially if different colours/metals have radically different martial ability.
Parry plus the Chromatics' damage boost, high-ranked Metallics bonus attack and Weapon Mastery's extra damage dice is enough combat flavour for me.
Presumably the "normal monster" Dragon Warriors can learn and develop like most living creatures and some can become high-level fighters with a wide repertoire of maneuvers, but that's more than I fancy doing.
Cleon
Legend
Cleon
Legend
Okay, we still need to decide on type (Monstrosity I tells ya!) and I just realized we hadn't discussed alignment.
Was originally going to make them neutral, but upon reflection unaligned might work too.
Any ideas?
EDIT: I'm swinging towards neutral.
If they can understand language they might be just smart enough to understand lawfulness or evil, and that leaves conceptual space for individual dragon warriors with personality.
I don't fancy them being completely mindless creatures that only act on instinct, despite the original creatures being non-intelligent beings that operated according to the instructions of a magic item's owner.
Was originally going to make them neutral, but upon reflection unaligned might work too.
Any ideas?
EDIT: I'm swinging towards neutral.
If they can understand language they might be just smart enough to understand lawfulness or evil, and that leaves conceptual space for individual dragon warriors with personality.
I don't fancy them being completely mindless creatures that only act on instinct, despite the original creatures being non-intelligent beings that operated according to the instructions of a magic item's owner.
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Casimir Liber
Adventurer
alright! Monstrosity then. Stronger case if free willed and somewhat "organic".
Alignment - could just make "any"
Alignment - could just make "any"
Cleon
Legend
So any alignment?
The original monster was neutral though.
Maybe it should depend on the dragon warrior's Intelligence?
There's considerable flavour about White Dragons being animalistic brutish creatures, so perhaps White Dragon Warriors and other low INT dragon warriors are unaligned and higher INT ones are neutral?
Nah, I'd rather stick to one alignment for them all rather than make the master entry even more complicated.
Besides, the way I've got the INT progressing, if we set the cut off so it includes any Metallic Warriors (who start with INT 5) then all the Chromatic Dragon Warriors apart from the Reds would be unaligned, which doesn't feel right considering the notoriously evil nature of Chromatics. At least neutral leaves open the possibility of an alignment, which would presumably have a tendency towards the source dragon (i.e. a Gold Dragon Warrior might be inclined towards lawful or good more than a Red Dragon Warrior is).
We could put something to that effect in the Description.
Using any alignment just forces the DM to choose a morality and there's nothing stopping a DM saying a normally neutral monster is actually chaotic good, neutral evil or whatever.
The listed alignment is only the default, remember.
Cleon
Legend
Tweaked the Dragon Warrior (Collected) so they all have three odd and three even ability scores.
They did before, but I changed the mental stats to be more in keeping with AD&D dragons which threw off the pairings.
EDIT: Just gave the Copper a slight CHA boost so its modifier is better than the Brass, since Brass Dragons are notoriously boorish in AD&D.
They did before, but I changed the mental stats to be more in keeping with AD&D dragons which threw off the pairings.
EDIT: Just gave the Copper a slight CHA boost so its modifier is better than the Brass, since Brass Dragons are notoriously boorish in AD&D.
ilgatto
How inconvenient
Er... done and dusted?
P.S.: The second quote is from Casimir but I can't get multi-quote to work in edits for some reason.
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ilgatto
How inconvenient
Hmm... I'd say that using "any alignment" would be confusing, for it suggests that a DM can pick any alignment that would take his fancy, perhaps following such reasoning as "why shouldn't there be a chaotic good green dragon?". Coincidentally (not), this has been done before:
From: The Dungeoneer. Adventuresome Compendium of Issues 1-6 (JG, 1979)
Not that this wouldn't be in line with the "modern" approach of D&D but I'd still say that a stat block should be as clear on subjects as possible. So why not make their alignments as per parent dragon (except that it's more work), especially since the 5E DWs seem headed for a strong connection to the parent dragon?
re DW Intelligence: Looking at the scores block in the draft, it seems odd that DWs have such low Intelligence. I can see where this comes from, but wouldn't you agree that a 5E skeleton having INT 6 is a reflection of how it operates rather than its "actual" Intelligence - as in: it has the equivalent of INT 6?
Therefore, shouldn't a 5E DW have the equivalent of the Intelligence of an average Fighter rather than one based on the fact that it once had "non-intelligence"?
As I understand from the below, higher Intelligence would also solve the 5E DWs having an alignment problem?
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