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Draconomicon Excerpts - Brown Dragon


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Mixed opinions.

1. The fluff is mostly good.
2. But if your goal in life is tasty meals, and you're a superpredator, why do you live in the desert?
3. Desert dragons are a cool concept.
4. Chromatic dragons are inherently dumb. See rant here.
5. I'm not sure what I think of it transforming into a cloud of sand. Dragons are already inherently magical, but this is a different type of inherent magic than we usually see. It seems kind of cool, except that its already a big flying lizard, so its not clear that it needed a new way to fly.
 

It's not really a new way to fly IMO. First, the dragon shifts a number of squares = to its speed, not its fly speed, so to me it seems it can't fly with this mode of movement - think of it like a twister that's always touching the ground.

Second, it's a way to shift safely through the ranks of your enemies, wounding and blinding each one as you go, setting you up to sneak attack the :devil::devil::devil::devil: out of them. Use it after you've already burrowed up/flown down on the PCs, then after you've shifted past most of them, turn around and use the breath weapon on them. Breath weapon + sneak attack? Win!

It's far FAR more than another mere mode of movement IMO.
 

I liked the fluff in this excerpt. In fact, I liked that it had fluff AT ALL. So much better than in the Monster Manual, where you had to either be familiar with a creature beforehand, or try to suss out any interesting bits of fluff from the Lore DC tables.

If this is an example, it ought to make the new Draconomicon interesting reading.

Although, it begs the question: will they re-publish OTHER MM creatures in their own fluff-heavy books? A book about giants, say, that re-publishes what we already have, but with a few of the "missing" varieties filled in, and with interesting descriptive and background stuff? Same for demons/humanoids/Illithids, etc?
 

Although, it begs the question: will they re-publish OTHER MM creatures in their own fluff-heavy books? A book about giants, say, that re-publishes what we already have, but with a few of the "missing" varieties filled in, and with interesting descriptive and background stuff? Same for demons/humanoids/Illithids, etc?
That is what I personally would prefer, keep the MM crunch heavy so they can be more easily reskinned and allow more monsters in each book.

But if someone wants more fluff then they can buy really fluff heavy books for individual iconic monsters.
 

2. But if your goal in life is tasty meals, and you're a superpredator, why do you live in the desert?

Perhaps the fact that they live in the desert where they can't always get the food they crave is what drove them to crave it in the first place?
 


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