Converting True Dragons

[Shade]

Thanks Echohawk!

We'll hit this one as soon as we finish up the paper dragon.

 

[freyar]

We discussed it having a high Dex to account for AC rather than natural. Should we just give it a Dex bonus equal to the pink's natural armor modifier at each category, then assign a Dex score to grant that bonus?

Sounds good to me.

 

[RavinRay]

Mystara MC
-Crystalline
-Jade
-Onyx
-Ruby (Mystara dragon, differs from MMII gem dragons)

OD&D Master Set
-Crystal (Mystara dragon, differs from MMII gem dragons)
-Onyx
-Jade
-Sapphire (Mystara dragon, differs from MMII gem dragons)
-Ruby (Mystara dragon, differs from MMII gem dragons)
-Tiger's Eye (Brown)

Savage Coast MC
-Crimson
-Red Hawk

This just occurred to me, I've been visiting the Vaults of Pandius for a long time, which is considered the Official Mystara Homepage, but I remember that it has 3.0/3.5 conversion of its dragons. You can find them listed here (scroll down to the dragon entries). We can ask the Mystara fans if those stats can be reprinted here or provide a link to them. They're about as "official" as it can get, I think.

The individual dragons are as follows:
Mystaran amber dragon
Crimson dragon
Mystaran crystal dragon
Crystalline dragon
Mystaran jade dragon
Onyx dragon
Red hawk dragon
Mystaran ruby dragon
Mystaran sapphire dragon
Mystaran sea dragon

 

[Shade]

We sometimes enjoy doing our own conversions of things that have already been done by other sites, but we can definitely but those on the backburner to give those not converted anywhere priority.

 

[Shade]

We discussed it having a high Dex to account for AC rather than natural. Should we just give it a Dex bonus equal to the pink's natural armor modifier at each category, then assign a Dex score to grant that bonus?

On second thought, this won't work. The +34natural armor bonus at great wyrm would require a Dex score of 78!

So we need another tactic. I do think they should have decent Dex (at least by dragon terms), maybe swapping the pink's Str progression with Dex (11 at wyrmling to 37 at great wyrm). How does that sound?

For the rest of the AC, we could either give it weak natural armor, a deflection bonus, some combination of the two, or just allow it to have poor AC.

 

[RavinRay]

The yellow dragon (DC Vol 1) has the fastest Dex progression of any true dragon, followed by the mercury dragon, and the 3.0 sapphire dragon (which should not be the case anymore with 3.5 psionics). None of them have Dex in the 70's at great wyrm, so a slower Dex progression for the paper dragon is fair. Add that to the natural AC of +3 per age category would give it a strong total AC when not flat-footed.

 

[freyar]

I'd be most comfortable giving it the highest reasonable DEX progression along with a modest deflection bonus. This thing is made of paper, after all!

 

[Shade]

Here's an idea...give it good Dex and Cha progression, and give it a deflection bonus equal to its age category + Cha modifier. Assuming the yellow's Dex progression and the silver's Cha progression would yield a range as follows:

Wyrmling: 17 (+2 size, +2 Dex, +3 deflection), touch 17, flat-footed 15
Adult: 26 (–1 size, +6 Dex, +11 deflection), touch 26, flat-footed 20
Great Wyrm: 40 (–4 size, +12 Dex, +22 deflection), touch 40, flat-footed 28

Compare to the pink's breakdown:

Wyrmling: 14 (+2 size, +1 natural), touch 12, flat-footed 14
Adult: 26 (–1 size, +16 natural), touch 9, flat-footed 26
Great Wyrm: 41 (–4 size, +34 natural), touch 6, flat-footed 41

That looks pretty close, eh?

 

[freyar]

Looks good to me! Anything else we need for this one?

 

[RavinRay]

None that I can think of. Now we've got a unique AC for this dragon.