RangerWickett
Legend
I got a playtest copy of the draconomicon from a friend, who said I could post a synopsis as long as I didn’t mention his name. The version is somewhat old, so a few things might not match the current version of the book, but here's my overview.
The Draconomicon
The Draconomicon comes to a total of 224 pages, and it will probably be hardcover when it comes out, just like Manual of the Planes.
Chapter One: The Dragon’s Role
This chapter starts the book off on firm ground with exciting, well-researched information on dragons and dragon-like creatures from around the world throughout history. It spends about a page each on Europe and Asia, then another page to run through Africa, Australia, and the Americas, concluding with a general overview of the philosophy behind using dragons in fantasy gaming. This is some really nice stuff, like why dragons work particularly well if they’re tied to religion, and why most religions and mythoi involve dragons of some sort; or various different ways to help you set the level of metaphorical power of a dragon: are they just great monsters that everyone fears for their power, or are they a personification of some great force in the world. For instance, in Christianity, the Dragon is a representation of the destructive power of evil, but it could just as easily represent the noble restraint of those with great power, like the Pendragon of King Arthur’s standard. Unlike the pedantic clichés presented in the opening chapter of, say, Masters of the Wild, this stuff kicks ass.
Oh, and there’s a few extra bits, like a bunch of adventure ideas for how to use dragons in different ways, and I’m not just talking about different combat encounters. My personal favorite is “A dragon music afficionado secretly assumes the identity of a famous noble, and hosts hundreds of bards and performers, hoping to find one worthy of recording his life.”
Chapter Two: Draconic Races
The first chapter really got my standards high, so this one was a bit of a let-down, since it focuses on stuff that’s become rather cliché, namely the default types of dragons in D&D. We’ve got the five chromatics, the five metallics, the five gems, the lungs presented in Oriental Adventures, the linnorms in (was it MM2 or MoF?), and shadow, mist, mercury, fang, and deep dragons, plus dracoliches, that hellfire thingy that’s epic-power, and so on. All of the dragons that aren’t in the core MM are presented again here, so this ends up being a pretty huge chunk of the book devoted to duplicate material. One cool thing, though, is that supposedly the final draft will include a version of each of the ten classic dragon types at each age category, complete with stats, personality, and hoard. Not quite as long as the old ‘Wyrms of the North’ articles in Dragon, but still it’s a lot of information.
Also, they do include four new types of dragon. The kaliya is a multiheaded dragon whose necks can detach into huge snakes to attack from different angles. The beholder dragon is a hideous abomination that combines the nastiest traits of beholders and dragons; it has ten eyes circling the crown of its head, it flies with innate telekinesis, and it has a breath weapon that shoots a cone of dispel magic. The canopy dragon is a jungle half-plant dragon that can phase into and out of trees, traveling through the canopy of a forest with a huge rustle of leaves and creaking of branches before it drops down onto its prey. Finally, the dreammother dragon is a psychically powerful dragon whose dreams create psychic entities that are fiercely loyal to their ‘mother.’ These entities are almost like weak ghosts, but each dragon’s dream monsters take on slightly different shapes. Of course, since it gets one or more of these entities each night, even a young dreammother dragon has a huge army of defenders. All of these four dragons start out around CR 8 and go up to around CR 40 for great wyrms.
In addition to stats for dragons, all the dragons presented have a quarter page devoted to culture, customs, and typical idosyncratic behaviors. Finally, there’s a table of 1d1000 possible events that could’ve happened in the history of a dragon. You’re encouraged to roll a few of these, up to one for every 10 years of the dragon’s life, to come up with a nice history for a creature that is hundreds of years old.
Chapter Three: Draconic Characters
This chapter has the greatest amount of crunchy bits in the entire book. First it starts with equivalent character levels for all the different ages and races of dragon, and then it gets into new draconic feats and skill uses. For instance, Tumble handles all kinds of stunt flying maneuvers (which is important, as you’ll see in a sec), and a good Intimidate check can give your foes a –2 penalty to their saves against dragonfear.
The new feats include obvious ones like breath weapon feats (like metamagic feats; for instance, quicken breath weapon lets you breathe as a free action, but you have to wait 1d4+4 rounds before doing it again, instead of the normal 1d4 rounds; maximum breath weapon is truly evil, since you really only need to use it once to win a fight), Fierce Bite (lets you swallow whole creatures up to three size categories smaller than you) and Snatch Mastery (lets you snatch creatures of up to three sizes smaller than you, instead of four sizes), to really exotic ones like Sentient Familiar (lets you gain a humanoid as a familiar) and Heartbond (you infuse a bit of your soul into another, and as long as either of you are above 0 hit points, the other gets a +4 bonus to Fortitude saving throws). Then there’s all kinds of cool draconic combat feats, like Thrash (helps keep annoying humans off your back), Knockback (uses your strength and size to knock foes far away), and Breathe Haze (which lets your breath weapon form around your entire body as an aura).
Then there’s the human feats intended to go against dragons, with things like Skindancing (a dangerous fighting style where you get inside the space the dragon occupies, so it gets penalties to attack you, but it can always crush you), Ridgeback Combat (gives bonuses to holding onto a dragon so you can fight it even if its flying away), and Experienced Slayer (to let you resist dragonfear more easily).
Next we have draconic prestige classes.
Banescale – A draconic martial artist who can sharpen the scales across its body to slash with any attack, or can through their scales like giant shuriken. They can also channel ki through their breath weapon to stun foes, or use breath weapon activations to power ki abilities, like abundant step. It’s amazing what a dragon can do with a flurry of blows.
Blazewing Ace – Remember the abovementioned rules for aerial stunts? Well, this is the class that is best at them. If you ever wanted a dragon to be able to swoop through narrow streets and alleys to hunt your PCs, you’ll love this class.
Council’s Voice – A warrior loyal to the high council of wyrms, who works as a sort of super secret agent. They are master shapeshifters and skilled inflitrators, and can channel their dragonfear into more productive, persuasive energies.
Eyemaster – This draconic wizard prestige class gains multiple familiars of different species and types, using them to spy in nearly any region. They can also tap into the senses of creatures not even their familiars.
Lifeblood Egoist – Spanning time, the lifeblood egoist can partially draw upon how powerful his body will be in the future to empower himself now, or he can assume the body he had in his youth, such as if he needs to get some place smaller. They can also heal their bodies faster than usual, or remember things from the future.
Roarwarden – These ‘druids’ use their own blood and magic to transform their animal companions into half-dragon creatures. They also can wildshape into different species of dragons, and have powerful roar attacks that are sonic. I ask myself, why didn’t they give the green dragon a sonic breath weapon?
Singer of the Eclipse – This bardic dragon class is truly terrifying to behold. Their dragonfear can strike foes blind and deaf, and the fear they evoke is so great that they can use their suggestion powers on huge numbers of cowering creatures. Imagine a dragon that seems so large that its wings not only blot out the sun, but extinguish the entire sky, casting the world into shadow. That’s what it is like to fight a singer of the eclipse.
Then there’s the standard set of humanoid prestige classes for dragon slayers, dragon riders, and dragon masters.
All in all, I’m quite pleased with the version I’ve seen. Unfortunately, I made this all up a few months ago, and never got around to posting it until now. When I first came up with it, it wasn’t a lie, just speculation. Sorry if I tricked anyone.
The Draconomicon
The Draconomicon comes to a total of 224 pages, and it will probably be hardcover when it comes out, just like Manual of the Planes.
Chapter One: The Dragon’s Role
This chapter starts the book off on firm ground with exciting, well-researched information on dragons and dragon-like creatures from around the world throughout history. It spends about a page each on Europe and Asia, then another page to run through Africa, Australia, and the Americas, concluding with a general overview of the philosophy behind using dragons in fantasy gaming. This is some really nice stuff, like why dragons work particularly well if they’re tied to religion, and why most religions and mythoi involve dragons of some sort; or various different ways to help you set the level of metaphorical power of a dragon: are they just great monsters that everyone fears for their power, or are they a personification of some great force in the world. For instance, in Christianity, the Dragon is a representation of the destructive power of evil, but it could just as easily represent the noble restraint of those with great power, like the Pendragon of King Arthur’s standard. Unlike the pedantic clichés presented in the opening chapter of, say, Masters of the Wild, this stuff kicks ass.
Oh, and there’s a few extra bits, like a bunch of adventure ideas for how to use dragons in different ways, and I’m not just talking about different combat encounters. My personal favorite is “A dragon music afficionado secretly assumes the identity of a famous noble, and hosts hundreds of bards and performers, hoping to find one worthy of recording his life.”
Chapter Two: Draconic Races
The first chapter really got my standards high, so this one was a bit of a let-down, since it focuses on stuff that’s become rather cliché, namely the default types of dragons in D&D. We’ve got the five chromatics, the five metallics, the five gems, the lungs presented in Oriental Adventures, the linnorms in (was it MM2 or MoF?), and shadow, mist, mercury, fang, and deep dragons, plus dracoliches, that hellfire thingy that’s epic-power, and so on. All of the dragons that aren’t in the core MM are presented again here, so this ends up being a pretty huge chunk of the book devoted to duplicate material. One cool thing, though, is that supposedly the final draft will include a version of each of the ten classic dragon types at each age category, complete with stats, personality, and hoard. Not quite as long as the old ‘Wyrms of the North’ articles in Dragon, but still it’s a lot of information.
Also, they do include four new types of dragon. The kaliya is a multiheaded dragon whose necks can detach into huge snakes to attack from different angles. The beholder dragon is a hideous abomination that combines the nastiest traits of beholders and dragons; it has ten eyes circling the crown of its head, it flies with innate telekinesis, and it has a breath weapon that shoots a cone of dispel magic. The canopy dragon is a jungle half-plant dragon that can phase into and out of trees, traveling through the canopy of a forest with a huge rustle of leaves and creaking of branches before it drops down onto its prey. Finally, the dreammother dragon is a psychically powerful dragon whose dreams create psychic entities that are fiercely loyal to their ‘mother.’ These entities are almost like weak ghosts, but each dragon’s dream monsters take on slightly different shapes. Of course, since it gets one or more of these entities each night, even a young dreammother dragon has a huge army of defenders. All of these four dragons start out around CR 8 and go up to around CR 40 for great wyrms.
In addition to stats for dragons, all the dragons presented have a quarter page devoted to culture, customs, and typical idosyncratic behaviors. Finally, there’s a table of 1d1000 possible events that could’ve happened in the history of a dragon. You’re encouraged to roll a few of these, up to one for every 10 years of the dragon’s life, to come up with a nice history for a creature that is hundreds of years old.
Chapter Three: Draconic Characters
This chapter has the greatest amount of crunchy bits in the entire book. First it starts with equivalent character levels for all the different ages and races of dragon, and then it gets into new draconic feats and skill uses. For instance, Tumble handles all kinds of stunt flying maneuvers (which is important, as you’ll see in a sec), and a good Intimidate check can give your foes a –2 penalty to their saves against dragonfear.
The new feats include obvious ones like breath weapon feats (like metamagic feats; for instance, quicken breath weapon lets you breathe as a free action, but you have to wait 1d4+4 rounds before doing it again, instead of the normal 1d4 rounds; maximum breath weapon is truly evil, since you really only need to use it once to win a fight), Fierce Bite (lets you swallow whole creatures up to three size categories smaller than you) and Snatch Mastery (lets you snatch creatures of up to three sizes smaller than you, instead of four sizes), to really exotic ones like Sentient Familiar (lets you gain a humanoid as a familiar) and Heartbond (you infuse a bit of your soul into another, and as long as either of you are above 0 hit points, the other gets a +4 bonus to Fortitude saving throws). Then there’s all kinds of cool draconic combat feats, like Thrash (helps keep annoying humans off your back), Knockback (uses your strength and size to knock foes far away), and Breathe Haze (which lets your breath weapon form around your entire body as an aura).
Then there’s the human feats intended to go against dragons, with things like Skindancing (a dangerous fighting style where you get inside the space the dragon occupies, so it gets penalties to attack you, but it can always crush you), Ridgeback Combat (gives bonuses to holding onto a dragon so you can fight it even if its flying away), and Experienced Slayer (to let you resist dragonfear more easily).
Next we have draconic prestige classes.
Banescale – A draconic martial artist who can sharpen the scales across its body to slash with any attack, or can through their scales like giant shuriken. They can also channel ki through their breath weapon to stun foes, or use breath weapon activations to power ki abilities, like abundant step. It’s amazing what a dragon can do with a flurry of blows.
Blazewing Ace – Remember the abovementioned rules for aerial stunts? Well, this is the class that is best at them. If you ever wanted a dragon to be able to swoop through narrow streets and alleys to hunt your PCs, you’ll love this class.
Council’s Voice – A warrior loyal to the high council of wyrms, who works as a sort of super secret agent. They are master shapeshifters and skilled inflitrators, and can channel their dragonfear into more productive, persuasive energies.
Eyemaster – This draconic wizard prestige class gains multiple familiars of different species and types, using them to spy in nearly any region. They can also tap into the senses of creatures not even their familiars.
Lifeblood Egoist – Spanning time, the lifeblood egoist can partially draw upon how powerful his body will be in the future to empower himself now, or he can assume the body he had in his youth, such as if he needs to get some place smaller. They can also heal their bodies faster than usual, or remember things from the future.
Roarwarden – These ‘druids’ use their own blood and magic to transform their animal companions into half-dragon creatures. They also can wildshape into different species of dragons, and have powerful roar attacks that are sonic. I ask myself, why didn’t they give the green dragon a sonic breath weapon?
Singer of the Eclipse – This bardic dragon class is truly terrifying to behold. Their dragonfear can strike foes blind and deaf, and the fear they evoke is so great that they can use their suggestion powers on huge numbers of cowering creatures. Imagine a dragon that seems so large that its wings not only blot out the sun, but extinguish the entire sky, casting the world into shadow. That’s what it is like to fight a singer of the eclipse.
Then there’s the standard set of humanoid prestige classes for dragon slayers, dragon riders, and dragon masters.
All in all, I’m quite pleased with the version I’ve seen. Unfortunately, I made this all up a few months ago, and never got around to posting it until now. When I first came up with it, it wasn’t a lie, just speculation. Sorry if I tricked anyone.
