Creature by Poll #7 - Dragon Discussion!

VirgilCaine said:
Because it hungers to close the portal (it's skin) and become permanently on one plane or the other?
Or perhaps the reverse: it longs to leave it's astral body behind and live solely as a rift between the planes?
It consumes living material?
That still leaves the question of *how* an incorporeal dragon consumes living material! Perhaps it's bite sucks life energy out of creatures?

I think it would be interesting if our rift dragon also consumed gate and/or planar magic items. Just to hose the PC's some more if and when they land on the Astral plane. (By that time they'll likely have some spells to deal with planar travel anyway.) Here's a list of items that may look quite tasty:

Bag of Holding
Candle of Invocation
Cubic Gate
Efficient Quiver
Handy Haversack
Portable Hole
Ring Gates
Robe of Stars
Rod of Security
Sphere of Annihilation (YUM!)
Staff of Passage
Well of Many Worlds
...
Heck, just destroying Portable Holes and Bags of Holding alone could create a major hassle for a high-level party.

As for treasure... it should probably include a large number of items which are not actually of any *use* to the dragon, it just likes to hoard them (like gems and gold for a regular dragon).
 

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That still leaves the question of *how* an incorporeal dragon consumes living material! Perhaps it's bite sucks life energy out of creatures?

Not creatures--it sucks the energy out of matter--thus the disentegration [whatever]!?

Heck, just destroying Portable Holes and Bags of Holding alone could create a major hassle for a high-level party.

Yep.
 
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VirgilCaine said:
Not creatures--it sucks the energy out of matter--thus the disentegration [whatever]!?
But then wouldn't it spend it's time munching on rocks instead? ;)

I think it would have to be a direct threat to the denizens of the Material plane, if only for dramatic reasons. We could do *living* matter, but then we might still get a vegetarian dragon... Interesting concept, but it does lose a little in fearsomeness, no?
 

OK, I've expanded stats and background a bit, and attached the new version.

One thing that you propably have noticed - this dragon will have a quite low armor class throughout its life. I'm tempted to leave it that low - the beast is quite powerful already, so we propably shouldn't up the power level even more.


Tell me what you think! :)
 

Looks pretty good. I like how you worked in "they could satiate them on disintegrating rocks, but living matter is more nutritious, and intelligent living matter even more so."

A couple more refinements:

(1) To avoid confusion about the breath weapon, I think it may be worth copying some stuff from the Disintegrate spell:

"Any creature reduced to 0 or fewer hit points by this spell is entirely disintegrated, leaving behind only a trace of fine dust. A disintegrated creature’s equipment is unaffected.

When used against an object, the ray simply disintegrates nonliving matter up to a depth of 10 feet. Thus, the spell may disintegrate only part of any very large object or structure targeted. The breath weapon affects even objects constructed entirely of force, such as forceful hand or a wall of force, but not magical effects such as a globe of invulnerability or an antimagic field."

For esthetic purposes, we might as well follow the Disintegrate spell and scale the breath weapon in d6's, topping out at 40d6 (140 avg) instead of 24d10 (132 avg). Start at 7d6, add 3d6 per age category. (It's also more likely that DM's will have a bunch of d6's at hand than d10's.)

(2) We could have "Nullifying Breath" come into play only when the target would have other wise been totally disintegrated, i.e. reduced to 0 or fewer hit points. Makes perfect sense, and it's just a *little* less nasty...

(3) Semi-Astral: I would rephrase it as "While xxxs are living in the astral plane, their constant connection to the Material Plane allows them to..." (or maybe better "... subjects them to...")

(4) Auto-Quicken looks good, but I woulf prefer copying some of the Astral Plane language:

"Because the XXX exists on the Astral Plane, it may use all its spells and spell-like abilities as if they were improved by the Quicken Spell feat. Already quickened spells and spell-like abilities are unaffected, as are spells from magic items. Spells so quickened are still prepared and cast at their unmodified level. As with the Quicken Spell feat, only one quickened spell can be cast per round. A XXX is considered to have..."

(5) Multiplanar Rift: how exactly do you see this working? Could use some more explanation here. My interpretation was that it would shift its "rift" to the interface between the Astral and a different plane. It would still be a rift *to* the Astral, just *from* a plane other than the Material. Your wording would allow it to send creatures from, say, the Material to an Elemental plane. That means it's "skin" would be on the Material-Elemental interface, while its body is still on the Astral, which seems a little less consistent...

(6) I think we still need some additional benefits for the XXX on the Astral Plane itself. Right now it seems more efficient on the Material (better maneuverability, and can "suck" opponents towards itself). Why would it bother shifting opponents to the Astral? We also need to work out its non-breath-weapon attacks. Does it do disintegrating damage with it's claws and bite as well? I can't think of any incorporeal creatures that do regular physical hp damage...
 
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Conaill said:
Looks pretty good. I like how you worked in "they could satiate them on disintegrating rocks, but living matter is more nutritious, and intelligent living matter even more so."
:D
Just noticed an error, though, I should have written "themselves".

Conaill said:
(1) To avoid confusion about the breath weapon, I think it may be worth copying some stuff from the Disintegrate spell:
Yep, may be worth it.

Conaill said:
For esthetic purposes, we might as well follow the Disintegrate spell and scale the breath weapon in d6's, topping out at 40d6 (140 avg) instead of 24d10 (132 avg). Start at 7d6, add 3d6 per age category. (It's also more likely that DM's will have a bunch of d6's at hand than d10's.)
Well, doing that would break a pattern common to dragons (XdY damage per age category), but it wouldn't make it much more powerful, and it is more consistent. Meaning that this may happen.

Conaill said:
(2) We could have "Nullifying Breath" come into play only when the target would have other wise been totally disintegrated, i.e. reduced to 0 or fewer hit points. Makes perfect sense, and it's just a *little* less nasty...
You mean about:
Nullifying Breath (Su): When a creature suffers damage equal to its normal maximum hit points from the breath weapon of a XXX of wyrm or elder age, it risks being fully nullified, removed from existance.
I'm not sure... it might work, but the text above seems a bit clunky (but then again, it's late here, so there propably is a way to phrase it better).

Conaill said:
(3) Semi-Astral: I would rephrase it as "While xxxs are living in the astral plane, their constant connection to the Material Plane allows them to..." (or maybe better "... subjects them to...")
OK. I see that my phrasing makes it sound like being on the Astral would be a temporary thing for the dragon.

Conaill said:
(4) Auto-Quicken looks good, but I woulf prefer copying some of the Astral Plane language:
Yep, will be done.

Conaill said:
(5) Multiplanar Rift: how exactly do you see this working? Could use some more explanation here. My interpretation was that it would shift its "rift" to the interface between the Astral and a different plane.
Admittedly, that is not very well defined yet. But yes, it would about work that way, from the Astral to a different transitive plane (ethereal and shadow only).

Conaill said:
(6) I think we still need some additional benefits for the XXX on the Astral Plane itself. Right now it seems more efficient on the Material (better maneuverability, and can "suck" opponents towards itself). Why would it bother shifting opponents to the Astral? We also need to work out its non-breath-weapon attacks. Does it do disintegrating damage with it's claws and bite as well? I can't think of any incorporeal creatures that do regular physical hp damage...
Natural attacks could be "disruptive". They still deal the normal amount of damage, but it is neither energy nor weapon damage.
You're right on the Astral vs Material strengths. Possibly the astral body deals more damage with its attacks... Maybe someone has an idea?
 

Knight Otu said:
You mean about:
Nullifying Breath (Su): When a creature suffers damage equal to its normal maximum hit points from the breath weapon of a XXX of wyrm or elder age, it risks being fully nullified, removed from existance.
I'm not sure... it might work, but the text above seems a bit clunky (but then again, it's late here, so there propably is a way to phrase it better).
If we add the language from the Disintegrate spell to the Breath Weapon (Su) section, we could just have the following for Nullifying Breath:

"Any creature reduced to 0 or fewer hit points by the XXX's Breath Weapon is Nullified, rather than simply disintegrated."

That way it would work entirely similar to the Disintegrate spell, in the sense that the dragon would only have to do the last few hps in damage with his breath weapon for the target to be affected by the nullification. I definitely wouldn't want to keep track of the total amount of damage done by the breath weapon during the course of an encounter.
 

Conaill said:
If we add the language from the Disintegrate spell to the Breath Weapon (Su) section, we could just have the following for Nullifying Breath:

"Any creature reduced to 0 or fewer hit points by the XXX's Breath Weapon is Nullified, rather than simply disintegrated."
Erm, unless I mistyped something, that's pretty much how it works already...:confused: Except that the disintegration has to kill the victim, not merely bring it down to 0 hp. (for some reason, I thought disintegrate would have to bring creatures down to -10, too, and the 0 would only apply to objects. Guess that is where part of my confusion comes from...)

Conaill said:
I definitely wouldn't want to keep track of the total amount of damage done by the breath weapon during the course of an encounter.
That wasn't my idea anyway. I though you wanted it to work only when a single blast from the weapon would kill the victim.
 

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