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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Derren" data-source="post: 3934472" data-attributes="member: 2518">Except that to cover all things spellcasting gives you need dozends of SLA and magic items have the tendency to fall into the PCs hands after the fight.And inventing SLAs and balancingthe required magical items with the wealth guidlines for the PCs isn't complicated?And you don't stat a dragon that often. Not everything must be so simple that you can run it out of the book. When you don't even want to spend 20 minutes to prepare such an battle then you are better off to play a freeform RPG with no rules at all.Ohh, how many classical dragons have minions....None. And it probably adds a lot of atmosphere when the big dragon has to rely on his minions for everything. You, wizard minion. Scry those adventurers for me. You cleric minion, summon me an elemental...That way the minions will be the real encounter, not the dragon.The question was more somthing like "Howdoes the dragon contact and give orders to his minions"? Sending carrier pigeons?Yes they are. All of those monsters are incapable to do anything else than pure melee. A Balor simply can't do much intrigue (although his teleportation helps) or build a defensive lair etc. He can only appear and attack. Thats all.Even the Mind Flayers are dumb brutes by the rules because they lack any ability to actually enslave creatures so all this lore about Mind Flayers empires etc. is nice fiction but not possible by the rules. They can only levitate, stun people and eat their brains. And they are a viable encounter on the Astral Plane. But building an empire founded on dominated slaves? No.To their defense, most of those monsters are able to handle tools and are not solitary which means they live in a society which can build something together. Dragons can't do this. They live most of the time alone and are unable to handle most traditional tools.Without the correct tools you can have an Int as high as you want, you simply can't do much.Dragons are especially "worse" in that way. They are not humanoid, fear inspiring, can't hide/sneak and their claws are even unable to hold any tools. Magic is the only way for them to do something productive. Without it they can only sit in a cave and wait for adventurers to come or raid villages. And if they have minions they can only hope that the minions don't realize that they are actually running the show and not the dragon.</blockquote>

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