Draconomicon Playtest review

[Gez]

Just for the sake of comparison...

Just got a preview..so I thought I'd share:

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.

Here we see RangerWickett's version first point over WotC's version. It's longer, better punctuated, and with some hints of a film noir intrigue with espionnage, threats, and all that.

OK, I'm (more) serious from now on.

Ch1: All About Dragons

the dragons body
dragon physiology
Dragon life cycles
dragon senses
flight
other modes of movement
combat abilities
Dragon weaknesses
outlook & psychology
dragon society
language
religion
dragons by kind​

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.”

Just one comment: Ryan's version was hardly believable. Not once in any product did WotC devote one whole chapter to real-world mythologies.

Ch2:A DM's Guide to Dragons

Dragons in the campaign
Running a dragon Encounter
Dragon feats
feat discriptions
dragon spells
Spell discriptions
Dragon Magic Items

Lair Wards​

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).

Well... Don't know much about the real feats. I could bet, however, that things like Sentient Familiar, Heartbond and Breath Haze aren't there. I could also bet that the Heartbond idea comes from the movie Dragonheart (which I had not seen, but I seem to recall a blurb about it that was a bit like that).

Dragon prestige classes

bloodscale fury
Disiple of Ashardalon
Dispassionate Watcher of Chronepsis
Dragon Ascendant
Elemental Master
Hidecarved Dragon
Sacred Warder of Bahamut
Unholy ravager of Tiamat​

Advanced Dragons

Sample Advanced Dragon​

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.

I kinda wish the Eye Master, Roarwarden and Singer of the Eclipse were in the true book.

Ch:3 the players Perspective

Fighting a dragon
Feats
New spells
cleric domains
spell discriptions
Dragonhide armor
Dragoncraft armor
Magic items
Prestige classes

Dracolyte
DragonKith
Dragonrider
Dragonslayer
Dragonsong Lyrist
Dragonstalker
Hoardstealer
Initiate of the Draconic Mysteries
Platinum Knight
Talon of Tiamat​

Dragons in the party

Dragons advantages & disadvantages
Dragons as mounts
dragons as cohorts
dragons as special mounts
dragons as familiars​

dragons as player characters​

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).

Then there’s the standard set of humanoid prestige classes for dragon slayers, dragon riders, and dragon masters.

No Dragon Master class!

Ch4 New monsters

abyssal drake
dracolich
draconic creature
dragonkin
dragonnel
elemental drake
faerie dragon
fang dragon
felldrake, spiked
ghostly dragon
golem
half-dragon
hoard scarab
landwyrm

desert
forest
hill
jungle
mountains
plains
swamp
tundra
underdark​

Planar dragons

battle
chaos
ethereal
howling
oceanus
pyroclastic
radiant
rust
Styx
Tarterian​

Shadow Dragon
Skeletal Dragon
squamous spewer
storm drake
vampiric dragon
zombie dragon​

Ch 5: Sample dragons

the 10 basic dragons only​

App 1: The dragon's hoard
app 2: Index of Dragons

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.

Well. I much prefer the real book there. Several things were not believable at all in Ryan's version. The d1000 table, for a start. The massive reprint, for another. And, especially, the 120 complete writeups with lairs.

I must admit, however, that I like the Kaliya and Dreammother. But they're typical Wicketty creations -- I would not expect WotC to come up with these ideas (at least not the dream thing).

Sorry this was hasty, but the managment might find me doing this.... more later hopefully! Sorry about the double post too...damn dailup at work

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.

Both apologize for what they have done.

 

[RangerWickett]

I'll have to bear the 'film-noire' idea in mind for the next one of these I do. And it will be in screenplay format.

"His name, I soon learned, was Lord Kimboat."

 

[Vrylakos]

These actually really annoy me, as I get hyped for a product that doesn't exist, yet which ties itself to the title of an existing product. I then get this eagerness to see the product, but the cognitive dissonance is what's at work, and I end up not liking the book, because it's not the one that 'got reviewed'.

If you didn't mean to trick anyone, don't present them in a deceptive manner. Post it as "RangerWickett's Draconomicon" if you have to. It's nice to see your creativity, but irritating to find out in the last sentence that the product you're now excited about doesn't exist.

Vrylakos

 

[Gez]

Heh... Since Tome & Blood, I expect any "preview" by Ranger Wickett to be a spoof anyway... So I have no problem with it.

Of course, it's like an in-joke. Only the old timers can get it.

 

[takyris]

I'm just so disappointed I could cry. RW's sounds so much cooler. Plus, it used my metabreathweapon feats.

 

[qstor]

I'm kinda mad the steel dragon and the dragons from Dragon magazine (purple, yellow, orange) #248 didn't make it in.


Mike

 

[Gez]

I want the real yellow dragon, not the magazine yellow dragon.

If you want to see the differences, here's the Dragon Magazine #65 Yellow, Orange and Purple dragons.

Attached below is the Yellow Dragon I want to see in book.

And here's its CC (3.0) conversion.

 

[Bloodstone Magi]

Argh~! Ah well...

I'm going to have to use some of that in my game...especially the Sentient Familiar feat, since it just gave me a great idea for an adventure...

Cheers!

 

[Heretic Apostate]

So, RW, did you ever compile the Tome & Blood "previews" into something? I seem to recall it made its way into some d20 publisher's product...

 

[RangerWickett]

I did about half of them for the old Asgard magazine. The remaining ones weren't all that interesting, and I've since moved on to creating much more varied rules systems, to let people make their own fun rules for their games. Like Four-Color to Fantasy, and The Elements of Magic.