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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Derren" data-source="post: 3936636" data-attributes="member: 2518">Klaus"Mind Flayers have Charm Monster": Yes, but that doesn't make the target a slave. It still wants to lead an good live. A mind flayer society which is presented in the novels/lore is not possible with Charm spells."Example natural hazards". All those "natural traps" require the active participation of the dragon or are extremely unlogical. Also non of them will alert the dragon of intruding adventurers nor stop serious adventurers. Not to mention that dragons without spellcasting are completely defenseless against scrying and teleportation which makes all those traps useless. How to kill a non spellcasting dragon ofold age? Scry it till it sleeps then teleport in buffed and CdG/kill it."Village Contacting dragon": As others have said, dragons have a fear aura. A Pigeon certainly won't go anywhere near it. And all other methods require the dragon to have line of sight to the village and to actively look for those signs which leaves little time to do anything else."Necklace of lesser races": That item does not exist. Also where would this (and pretty much all other dragons) get this item from?Pants"limited SLAs" That still makes the dragon very predictable and removes a lot of options from teh dragon."No one has time": When you do not have the time to spend half an hour to stat an monster which will keep the PCs occupied for at least a whole evening then I seriously doubt that you have any time to actually play D&D."Classical dragons": Thats also a common argument from the "Dragons should not have spellcasting" crowd so I included it. But it is pretty OT as this thread is about the complexity of creatures not about their mythological accuracy."minions": You need a wizard minions and a cleric minions probably near the same level as the PCs. And as planning for them is much harder than for an unmagical dragon they are the real encounter and not the dragon. Dragons are supposed to be big encounters so it is expected that the PCs prepare for it. And without spellcasting the only thing what you have to prepare for are melee attacks and a specific energy. When this is covered then the dragon combat will be easy and a big letdown as the dragon can't do anything unexpected."dumb brute": What I mean with "dumb brute" are monsters which are unable to do anything else than combat. The Mind Flayers are on the border for this as their Charm Monster ability does give them a little non combat ability but as already mentioned not to the extend that they could actually do what the lore says they do.The Balor on the other hand is a pure combat brute. All its abilities resolve around combat and it isn't really able to do much than direct combat. Also as it has fixed abilities the players will sooner or later develop the perfect tactic against Balors which makes encounters with them very undramatic."More minions" with so many minions which have to do things for the dragon you could say that the minions are the encounter and the dragon is just a big guard dog."Dragons are smart" Yes they are, but thinking of something and doing something are two different things and dragons simply can't do the latter one most of the time except with magic."Dragons not Fear inspiring": The "No" in that sentence was meant only for the humanoid part. I se fear inspiring as a disadvantage when trying to interact peacfully with other races which is required when the dragons wants to get a certain magical items. Not every dragon is a great wyrm and casters who can craft  useful magical items tend to be not intimidated easily as they can always teleport away or live in cities which can defend itself against most dragons.</blockquote>

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