Converting True Dragons

[freyar]

That Alternate Form and Awful Presence look pretty good to me. I would agree to changing the "dim and hazy memory" for the awe effect and also prefer the standard fascinated.

I guess I think I'd still fold Wild Shape into Alternate Form. After all, Alternate Form allows animal forms, so Wild Shape as written for the Amber dragon is pretty redundant for Opal.

 

[Cleon]

That Alternate Form and Awful Presence look pretty good to me. I would agree to changing the "dim and hazy memory" for the awe effect and also prefer the standard fascinated.

Updating Opal the Sun Dragon Working Draft.

I also fixed a stray "her" to "his" that got missed from copy-and-pasting Pearl's stats.

I guess I think I'd still fold Wild Shape into Alternate Form. After all, Alternate Form allows animal forms, so Wild Shape as written for the Amber dragon is pretty redundant for Opal.

I'm still inclined to keep them separate as Alternate Form and Wild Shape are different things in 3E.

For a start, there are a whole bunch of Feats that are usable while in wild shape (i.e. Natural Spell) that don't work in alternate forms.

Also, wild shape heals the druid when used.

So I'd give him:

Wild Shape (Su): Opal can wild shape as a 20th-level druid, but can only assume animal shapes of Tiny to huge size. If the Sun Dragon gains the wild shape ability from class levels, the uses per day stack with the 5/day animal forms transformations of his innate ability.

I'd also fancy adding a special rule to Alternate Form (Su):

When in the alternate form of an animal, Opal can use wild feats but does not regain lost hit points as if you had rested for a night like he does each time he uses wild shape.​

Maybe add a note to the SQ line to reflect that, i.e. alternate form [animal wildshape, neutral dragon or humanoid]?

 

[Cleon]

That Alternate Form and Awful Presence look pretty good to me. I would agree to changing the "dim and hazy memory" for the awe effect and also prefer the standard fascinated.

So should we amend the CC's Moonstone Dragon with the dim and hazy memory wording?

 

[freyar]

See, if we're modifying Alternate Form anyway, why not just make all the modifications to include Wild Shape? Just add the line "5 times per day, when Opal takes the alternate form of an animal, he also gains the additional benefits of the Wild Shape ability."

I don't know if I'd necessarily go back and edit the Moonstone Dragon, though I guess you could convince me. I usually like to leave what we have unless there's a definitive mistake.

 

[Cleon]

See, if we're modifying Alternate Form anyway, why not just make all the modifications to include Wild Shape? Just add the line "5 times per day, when Opal takes the alternate form of an animal, he also gains the additional benefits of the Wild Shape ability."

That might work, although I'd rather word it:

Five times per day, Opal can gain the additional benefits of the Wild Shape ability (as a 20th-level druid) when taking the alternate form of an animal.​

 

[freyar]

That sounds good to me, if you'll go for it.

DR/epic without any other possibilities, I think. Opal should probably be a little tougher than Pearl, and I don't really want to go with good/evil or lawful/chaotic. I guess a special material could be ok.

Are SLAs all set? I think we'd agreed on them.

 

[Cleon]

That sounds good to me, if you'll go for it.

Yeck, let's just use that and move on:

Updating Opal the Sun Dragon Working Draft.

DR/epic without any other possibilities, I think. Opal should probably be a little tougher than Pearl, and I don't really want to go with good/evil or lawful/chaotic. I guess a special material could be ok.

It's tricky.

Pearl is "epic or lawful" and presumably diamond is going to be either "epic or chaotic" or "epic and chaotic" so we want Opal to be in between. Making it epic plus any alignment or one of the alignment axes like law/chaos made sense to me.

How about "epic or any two alignments (i.e. chaotic evil, chaotic good, lawful evil or lawful good)" so he's vulnerable to alignment extremes?

If we make it just epic Opal's DR is still harder to piece than Pearl.

Don't like the idea of using a Special Material.

I'll have to think about it.

Are SLAs all set? I think we'd agreed on them.

Afraid not.

Combining the "component neutral dragons" adds to:

Spell-Like Abilities (Neutral Dragons): At will—detect thoughts (DC 23), plane shift (DC 28); 18/day—blink; 3/day—black tentacles, charm animal (DC 22), control water (DC 27), deep slumber (DC 24), entangle (DC 22), false vision (DC 26), greater command (DC 26), hideous laughter (DC 23), hold animal (DC 23), sculpt sound (DC 24), shatter (DC 23), solid fog (DC 25), song of discord (DC 26), suggestion (DC 24); 1/day—blight (DC 26), charm monster (DC 25), commune with nature, contagion (DC 25), control weather, demand (DC 29), dominate animal (DC 24), hallucinatory terrain (DC 25), hold monster (DC 26), irresistible dance, temporal stasis (DC 29). Caster level 20th. The save DCs are Charisma-based.​

However, we need to give him some Dragon Ruler / Demon Price level generic At will SLAs too.

The problem is many of these are alignment-dependent.

Pearl had astral projection, chaos hammer (DC 25), cloak of chaos (DC 29), detect law, greater dispel magic, greater teleport, locate object, plane shift (DC 28), protection from law (DC 22), telekinesis, word of chaos (DC 28).

There's no problem adding in astral projection, greater dispel magic, greater teleport, locate object and telekinesis, but we need alternatives for some of the others.

I'm fine giving Opal both the Lawful and Chaotic versions of detect & protection (i.e. detect chaos, detect law, protection from chaos, protection from law), but the Chaotic hammer, cloak and word SLAs needs substitutes of roughly similar level and effects.

 

[Cleon]

Just noticed we have some More Missing Dragons that somehow got left out from the Creature Catalog, four from Spelljammer and three from Mystara.

All but one are True Dragons with 2E AD&D stat blocks, the exception being the Night Dragon from Champions of Mystara: Heroes of the Princess Ark (1993).

 

[freyar]

I actually like the "epic or two alignments" idea. It's a bit awkward, but it fits.

Hmmm. I can agree with your thoughts about the SLAs. How about one of the power words to replace either the word or the cloak? I kind of like crown of glory at 8th level, so I guess power word blind would work. So that leaves something 4th or 5th level. Wall of thorns would go with some of the druidy ones.

 

[Cleon]

I actually like the "epic or two alignments" idea. It's a bit awkward, but it fits.

That's agreeable, should I include an example as in "DR ##/epic or any two alignments (e.g. lawful evil)"?

Hmmm. I can agree with your thoughts about the SLAs. How about one of the power words to replace either the word or the cloak? I kind of like crown of glory at 8th level, so I guess power word blind would work. So that leaves something 4th or 5th level. Wall of thorns would go with some of the druidy ones.

I like crown of glory as a substitute for cloak of chaos.

Not sure about power word blind. How about greater shout as the substitute for word of chaos?

I'm favoring spike stones as a substitute for chaos hammer over wall of thorns, if only because the thorns don't do any damage to a creature with an Armour Class of 25 or higher, which seems VERY likely for an opponent that poses any threat to the Sun Dragon.

Alternatively, we could invent new spells that are mechanically identical to word/cloak/hammer of chaos but only affect creatures that don't have a neutral component to their alignment For example, an "evoke balance" 7th-level Evocation (Sonic) that works like blasphemy or holy word but kills/paralyzes/weakens/dazes creatures who are chaotic evil, chaotic good, lawful evil or lawful good.