Converting True Dragons

[freyar]

I do wish we at least had some personality or fluff information to go on.

The Luck Bonus is fine, and I guess Detect Gems is nice for a dragon. I like disintegrate, and I might be willing to swap the Sandstorm in for geas/quest. What about that?

 

[Cleon]

I do wish we at least had some personality or fluff information to go on.

The Luck Bonus is fine, and I guess Detect Gems is nice for a dragon. I like disintegrate, and I might be willing to swap the Sandstorm in for geas/quest. What about that?

Yes, the big problem is we don't know much about these dragons apart from their powers.

I'd vote against the sandstorm since these dragons don't appear to favour deserts.

 

[freyar]

No sandstorm, then. But it would be nice to come up with something a tad different than the gold. Summoning something of an appropriate difficulty to replace geas/quest?

 

[Cleon]

No sandstorm, then. But it would be nice to come up with something a tad different than the gold. Summoning something of an appropriate difficulty to replace geas/quest?

Well let's see, I guess we want to keep the spell levels the same as the Gold, so we've got:

1st level spell: bless
6th level spell: geas/quest
8th level spell: sunburst
9th level spell: foresight

We've already decided on disintegrate, which is 6th level, which argues we should swap it with the Gold's geas/quest rather than sunburst.

For our 8th level substitute for sunburst, maybe cloak of chaos, mass charm monster or prismatic wall? Of those I prefer mass charm monster.

I quite like foresight for this dragon, so let's keep that.

Combining those together give us the Gold's luck bonus and detect gems plus:

Other Spell-Like Abilities: 3/day—protection from law (juvenile or older); 1/day—disintegrate (old or older), mass charm monster (ancient or older), foresight (great wyrm).

 

[freyar]

Ahh, yes, that will work well!

Anything else for these mechanically? Class skills maybe? Gold dragons have Disguise, Heal, and Swim, but I'm not sure how I feel about those skills for this dragon. Swim, maybe, but Disguise is mostly useful for dragons with Alternate Form.

 

[Cleon]

Ahh, yes, that will work well!

Anything else for these mechanically? Class skills maybe? Gold dragons have Disguise, Heal, and Swim, but I'm not sure how I feel about those skills for this dragon. Swim, maybe, but Disguise is mostly useful for dragons with Alternate Form.

Hold your horses. The original dragon has ALL the abilities of the BECMI Gold Dragon. BECMI Gold Dragons "can also change their shape, and often appear in the form of a human or animal (Rules Cyclopedia)"

So our Mystaran Amber Dragon has Alternate Form too.

Did I leave it out of the Mystaran Amber Dragon Working Draft? If so, I'd better update it.

That suggests we'd better keep Disguise and Swim.

We can give them something different than Heal if you want to distinguish their skills from the Gold.

 

[Cleon]

Hold your horses. The original dragon has ALL the abilities of the BECMI Gold Dragon. BECMI Gold Dragons "can also change their shape, and often appear in the form of a human or animal (Rules Cyclopedia)"

So our Mystaran Amber Dragon has Alternate Form too.

Did I leave it out of the Mystaran Amber Dragon Working Draft? If so, I'd better update it.

I've updated the Mystaran Amber Dragon Working Draft with Alternate Form and the SLAs we just agreed on.

 

[Cleon]

We did agree on the domains for the sorcerer spell casting didn't we? Currently we've still got "*Can also cast cleric spells and those from the X, Y, and Z domains as arcane spells".

 

[freyar]

Hmmm. How about Appraise for the third skill?

I went back and looked, and there's no discussion of domains. Gold has Law, Luck, and Good, two of which aren't really appropriate. We know Mystaran ambers are chaotic, and I guess I'd go CN for them. So how about Chaos, Luck, and maybe Destruction domains?

 

[Cleon]

Hmmm. How about Appraise for the third skill?

That fits well for a stereotypical treasure hoarding dragon, so I'll agree to Appraise, Disguise & Swim.

I went back and looked, and there's no discussion of domains. Gold has Law, Luck, and Good, two of which aren't really appropriate. We know Mystaran ambers are chaotic, and I guess I'd go CN for them. So how about Chaos, Luck, and maybe Destruction domains?

Hmm... while the Mystaran Monstrous Compendium version is 70% Chaotic Neutral, these are the BECMI version and that ruleset assumes Chaos is malevolent. I'd be inclined to make them CE. They also appear to be an "evil twin" of the Gold Dragon, so giving them an alignment diametrically opposed to the Gold's LG seems appropriate.

I like your proposals for the extra domains.