D&D (2024) Check Out The New Monster Manual’s Ancient Gold Dragon

Wizards of the Coast has previewed (part of) the stat block for one of its iconic monsters on social media. Take a look!

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I think just fron from this part that the Ancient Gold Dragon would have a hard time fighting the Empyrean.

Guided Bolt would not work well again the Empyreans resistances, Empyrean has longer range on its attacks, deals more damage, faster swimmer and walking, slower flight, but can hover. Empyrean can knock the Dragon prone. But we can't see the Dragons weakening breath yet, nor the Dragons other spells, although we know it's includes banish, although the Empyrean can planeshift.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I think just fron from this part that the Ancient Gold Dragon would have a hard time fighting the Empyrean.

Guided Bolt would not work well again the Empyreans resistances, Empyrean has longer range on its attacks, deals more damage, faster swimmer and walking, slower flight, but can hover. Empyrean can knock the Dragon prone. But we can't see the Dragons weakening breath yet, nor the Dragons other spells, although we know it's includes banish, although the Empyrean can planeshift.

We can't really judge it from seeing only part of the statblock.

 

[dave2008]

I think just fron from this part that the Ancient Gold Dragon would have a hard time fighting the Empyrean.

Guided Bolt would not work well again the Empyreans resistances, Empyrean has longer range on its attacks, deals more damage, faster swimmer and walking, slower flight, but can hover. Empyrean can knock the Dragon prone. But we can't see the Dragons weakening breath yet, nor the Dragons other spells, although we know it's includes banish, although the Empyrean can planeshift.

It does have 200 HP more than the Empyrean.

That rend damage is very poor though. Ripe for a dave2008 improvement!

 

[Dr_Sly]

Beautiful art!

 

[Seramus]

Got some lion mixed into his DNA!

 

[Parmandur]

Got some lion mixed into his DNA!

Well, yeah:

 

[Vael]

It does have 200 HP more than the Empyrean.

That rend damage is very poor though. Ripe for a dave2008 improvement!

Hard to say until we see the spellcasting and weakening breath. This looks like more of a controller (to use 4e parlance), less damage, but more ways to inhibit enemies. The video on dragons says that the Gold Dragon has Banishment on its spell list, blinking out a Fighter before laying down those rend hits means it's still dealing a lot of damage, just in making some HP irrelevant.

 

[dave2008]

Hard to say until we see the spellcasting and weakening breath. This looks like more of a controller (to use 4e parlance), less damage, but more ways to inhibit enemies. The video on dragons says that the Gold Dragon has Banishment on its spell list, blinking out a Fighter before laying down those rend hits means it's still dealing a lot of damage, just in making some HP irrelevant.

While I agree it might work from a CR perspective, it is, IMO, a bad look to have a Gargantuan dragon deal 19 damage on its rend attack. I was really hoping they would correct that in the 2024 books, but I am up to the task of fixing this travesty!

 

[the Jester]

While I agree it might work from a CR perspective, it is, IMO, a bad look to have a Gargantuan dragon deal 19 damage on its rend attack. I was really hoping they would correct that in the 2024 books, but I am up to the task of fixing this travesty!

28 with fire. And multiply that by three, since it's attacking three times.