Converting True Dragons

[freyar]

That looks good for 4th level. I could go for 300 ft telepathy.

5th: break enchantment, dispel law, fire shield (D), greater command, mass cure light wounds, mass inflict light wounds, scrying, true seeing ??

 

[Cleon]

That looks good for 4th level. I could go for 300 ft telepathy.

Updating Pearl the Moon Dragon Working Draft.

5th: break enchantment, dispel law, fire shield (D), greater command, mass cure light wounds, mass inflict light wounds, scrying, true seeing ??

Hmm… I'm not sure about fire shield. She's already immune to cold and fire damage so it just does a bit of energy damage, which isn't terribly useful at her CR. How about the Trickery domain's false vision instead?

 

[freyar]

Sure, false vision will be fine.

6th: animate objects, forbiddance, geas/quest, harm, heal, mass eagle's splendor, mislead (D)
Not sure what I think about all of these, but the 6th level choices are somehow not too inspiring. We could swap out something for blade barrier, though.

 

[Cleon]

Sure, false vision will be fine.

Updating Pearl the Moon Dragon Working Draft.

You know I'm having second thoughts about the 5th level mass cure/inflict wounds spells although I guess 1d8+20 healing is not to be sneered at that amount is barely a tickle to a CR-appropriate threat (if they're that fragile she'd have just breath weapon'd them out of existence). So maybe raise dead/slay living make more sense if we want to stick to the "theme"?

6th: animate objects, forbiddance, geas/quest, harm, heal, mass eagle's splendor, mislead (D)
Not sure what I think about all of these, but the 6th level choices are somehow not too inspiring. We could swap out something for blade barrier, though.

I'd swap blade barrier for geas/quest since it seems the most situational, although I considered mass eagle's splendor as an alternative I believe Pearl often hangs with a coterie of dragons who might appreciate that spell.

Actually, how about undeath to death instead of harm if you want to do something interesting? Pearl can easily do 150 hit points of damage at touch range via many other means, including plain old natural weapons. I'd also consider heroes' feast instead of animate objects. She can only animate 20 HD of animated objects, such as a CR 7 Gargantuan and a CR 3 one, although I guess at least those are better than the 6th-level list options from summon monster VI. I think we'd better leave her with a heal spell though.

So either:

6th: animate objects, blade barrier, forbiddance, heal, mass eagle's splendor, misleadᴰ, undeath to death;

or:

6th: blade barrier, forbiddance, heal, heroes' feast, mass eagle's splendor, misleadᴰ, undeath to death;

Note there's no limitation on what creatures can participate in a heroes' feast. I liked the idea of Pearl sitting around a giant table eating, drinking and gossiping with her "girl pal" dragons.

 

[freyar]

Let's go with the 2nd choice, I like the logic for that.

At 7th level, I'd probably go with spell turning for the domain spell, since it's not a cleric spell otherwise and isn't one of her SLAs. For the other five spells, what about destruction, ethereal jaunt, greater restoration, greater scrying, regenerate? Oddly, I don't find most of the 7th level spells very inspiring/appropriate, except for the ones she already has as SLAs.

 

[Cleon]

Let's go with the 2nd choice, I like the logic for that.

Updating Pearl the Moon Dragon Working Draft.

At 7th level, I'd probably go with spell turning for the domain spell, since it's not a cleric spell otherwise and isn't one of her SLAs. For the other five spells, what about destruction, ethereal jaunt, greater restoration, greater scrying, regenerate? Oddly, I don't find most of the 7th level spells very inspiring/appropriate, except for the ones she already has as SLAs.

Well ethereal jaunt seems seems pretty useless for someone who has both astral projection and plane shift as at-will SLAs. How about we replace that with repulsion, which is very handy for keeping riff-raff like wannabe dragon slayer adventurers at a distance. Failing that, control weather or refuge are flavourful alternatives although they have little utility in a fight.

The rest of those are acceptable, including the choice from her Domain Spells selection, although I'd also be happy with screen for the latter.

 

[freyar]

Argh, I'm just having a hard time keeping track of all her SLAs, etc. Repulsion is fine. Let's keep spell turning for the domain spell and remember screen for her arcane casting.

Thoughts on 8th level? Antimagic field, dimensional lock, earthquake, firestorm, maybe symbol of insanity sound reasonable to me. Maybe polymorph any object for the domain spell, or perhaps incendiary cloud?

 

[Cleon]

Argh, I'm just having a hard time keeping track of all her SLAs, etc. Repulsion is fine. Let's keep spell turning for the domain spell and remember screen for her arcane casting.

Updating Pearl the Moon Dragon Working Draft.

Thoughts on 8th level? Antimagic field, dimensional lock, earthquake, firestorm, maybe symbol of insanity sound reasonable to me. Maybe polymorph any object for the domain spell, or perhaps incendiary cloud?

Let's see, she already has cloak of chaos as an SLA or I'd throw that in.

I propose greater spell immunity should be in there. Immunity to five specified spells is very useful.

Let's see, antimagic field and dimensional lock are great utility spells.

For the domain spell I'd prefer polymorph any object both because it feels apt for a Chaotic creature and it has way more versatility than the plain 4d6 damage per round of incendiary cloud.

Frankly, that damage is pathetic for an 8th level 20 ft. radius spell. Any mobile creature can usually just walk out of it within a round so the ongoing damage is of limited utility. It either needs to do more damage, have some napalm like "sticky quality" so that it continues to damage targets who leave its area of effect, or cover a vast area to make it useful for crisping armies of mooks.

Now where was I? That's four spells so far.

Don't care for symbol of insanity due to its 10 minute casting time - it's impossible to use in combat and once set it lasts until triggered so there's nothing to prevent Pearl placing them weeks, months or centuries in advance.

How about greater planar ally instead? There are plenty of potent outsiders with 18 HD or less (i.e. the Marilith & Planetar from the SRD which have potent magic for their low HD).

I'd accept firestorm since I can't think of anything I like better, since 20d6 fire damage over forty 10-ft. cubes is tolerably effective. Although it might be more efficient using her 7th level domain slot for that instead (since it's in Pearl's Fire Domain). Come to think of it, earthquake is a 7th level Domain spell for her as well.

So that makes my proposed 8th level cleric spell selection antimagic field, dimensional lock, fire storm, greater planar ally, greater spell immunity, polymorph any objectᴰ;

 

[Cleon]

I noticed a couple of issues with the Pearl the Moon Dragon Working Draft.

The most minor was the "luck bonus" in her Special Qualities had somehow got put in her immunities rather than be a separate ability as it should have been.

That's been fixed.

The other issue is I couldn't remember for sure how we are sorting the greater/mass spells' names.

In some entries it was sorted to ignore the prefix* (i.e. the SLAs had "locate object, greater teleport" while in others it included the prefix in the alphabetization (i.e. "greater teleport, locate object").

*It's not technically a prefix since the greater/mass is a separate adjective, but you get the idea and it helps distinguish it from spells whose names begin with adjectives that don't affect the sorting (like, say, sympathetic vibration - an SRD spell I'd forgotten even existed!).

Presumably "dropping the prefix" sorting was done because published spell lists use the format "SPELL, greater" or "SPELL, mass" in order to keep them grouped together (i.e. "teleport, greater" directly follows "teleport").

Examples in published sources go both ways, or sometimes forget and jumble the order but I'd like us to be consistent!

I've udated the Working Draft to be all-alphabetized since that's what we've been using with the recent spell selection posts, but it'd be simple enough to switch to prefix-ignoring-alphabetized.

 

[freyar]

I'd be happy with that 8th level spell list.

I prefer putting the "greater" spells under the letter "g" as well.

9th level -- time stop[D], mass heal, miracle, soul bind, storm of vengeance, true resurrection ??
Not a lot of choices for this many spell slots!