Draconomicon: The Book of Dragons
By Andy Collins, Skip Williams, and James Wyatt
Wizards of the Coast item code 176680000
288 pages, $39.95
Draconomicon is the first in a new WotC series of books detailing groups of powerful monsters (the only other book we know about at this date is the upcoming
Libris Mortis, which will cover undead), this one, naturally, focusing on dragons. At $39.95, it's on the top end of the standard price range for a hardcover gaming book, but the WotC folks have made sure that you'll get what you pay for.
The cover painting, by Todd Lockwood, is large enough to wrap around both sides of the book, and depicts an adult red dragon looking over some hatchlings (and another, slightly older, dragon offspring from an earlier clutch of eggs) in their lair, while the dragon's mate - over on the back cover - brings a freshly-slain horse in for dinner. This was an excellent choice all around, as the red dragon is arguably the fiercest of the "standard ten" types of D&D dragon, and - speaking from a personal bias here - one of the few whose appearance is still pretty much the same as in previous editions of the game. (I should confess up front here that I'm not a fan of the "butterfly/
manta ray wings" that Todd Lockwood devised as the "3E look" for some of the metallic dragons - I just think they look silly.) Detailing is nice: you can see individual scales on the dragons, and if you look closely you can see the horse is still wearing its bridle and saddle (apparently the horse's rider was a quick snack for the dragon that actually went out to scrounge up dinner). Coloration is nice, with predominant reds (the dragons) and golds (the hoard they're lying upon) blending into deep shadows along the edges of the picture. If anything, the title is almost too subdued, as it cannot be read from across the room; perhaps more of a contrast could have been used.
Todd also supplies the artwork on the inside covers, a double-page spread of dragon heads, five to a page, covering the "main ten" dragon types. The pictures are monochromatic (browns and tans), but are up to Todd's excellent standards of quality. Oddly enough, the dragons are intermingled; I'd have expected the five good (metallic) dragons on one page and the five evil (chromatic) dragons on the other. (That's not a criticism by any means, merely an observation.)
The interior artwork is simply fantastic, with a few sub-par paintings thrown in for balance. In all, we get a total of 113 full-color paintings, 39 monochrome drawings, and 5 diagrams by 22 different artists. Most of these are not only well crafted, but (more importantly to me at least)
accurate as far as meshing up with the descriptions of the dragons involved, although there are a few exceptions here and there. (The brass dragon is described as having a forked tongue, yet the illustration on p. 41 not only gives it a non-forked tongue, but goes out of its way to label the tongue as non-forked. The elemental drakes, illustrated by Rebecca Guay-Mitchell and Matt Mitchell - hey, I wonder if they're married? - are particularly problematic, as many of them are lacking their wings and/or front legs or are the wrong color.) Still, for the most part this is some of the best D&D artwork I've ever seen. There are even some sequential diagrams of various dragons in flight that even got me to accept (begrudgingly, at best) that those silly-looking butterfly/manta ray wings on some of the metallic dragons just
might actually work somewhat feasibly. The diagrams are useful, plotting out draconic movement on a grid-work or mapping out the radii of a dragon's tail and wing attacks (although the diagram on p. 60 accidentally switches the "tail" and "bite, claws, wings, and tail" areas for a Gargantuan dragon). The lair illustrations are well done, but lack a scale or grid squares (of course, they give a reason for this: since each is a "generic" lair for a given dragon type, the scale will have to change depending upon the size of the dragon), so they're more along the lines of DM idea-generators than actual ready-to-use-as-is lair maps.
Draconomicon is laid out as follows:
- Introduction: A one-page explanation about why a book of dragons is necessary to help inspire the wonder and grandeur of dragons in the D&D game
- All About Dragons: Sections covering the dragon's physiology (including anatomical diagrams of a dragon's skeletal and musculature systems and internal organs), life cycle, senses, flight and other methods of movement, combat abilities, weaknesses, outlook and psychology, society, language, religion, and a brief focus on each of the five metallic and five chromatic dragons (in other words, the bulk of the "fluff" in the book)
- A DM's Guide to Dragons: Sections on dragons in the campaign, running dragon encounters, 46 new dragon feats, 26 new dragon spells, 47 new dragon magic items, 8 prestige classes for dragons, and advancing dragons to new "virtual age categories"
- The Player's Perspective: Sections on fighting a dragon, 21 new feats, 32 new spells, 5 new cleric domains, dragonhide armor, 14 dragoncraft items (items made from the body parts of slain dragons), 26 new magic items, 10 new prestige classes, and having dragons in the party (either as mounts, cohorts, special mounts, familiars, or even PCs!)
- New Monsters: 47 new dragons and dragon-related monsters, with representatives of nearly every creature type
- Sample Dragons: 120 fully-statted dragons, 12 (one for each age category) of each of the ten standard D&D dragons (the black, blue, brass, bronze, copper, gold, green, red, silver, and white dragons), each with a short paragraph describing that individual's personality
- Appendix 1: The Dragon's Hoard: Making each dragon's hoard (or any hoard, really) more individualized, with charts to help decide what all it might consist of, and a sample hoard for every Challenge Rating from 1 to 27
- Appendix 2: Index of Dragons: A listing of all WotC dragons published under 3.0/3.5 rules (up to the publication of the Draconomicon, anyway) and what books to find them in, plus charts of true dragons and lesser dragons by CR
Draconomicon is a well written book, covering just about every topic one might expect to find in a book of dragons. The
Monster Manual-like section updates some older creatures from earlier versions of the D&D game (and reprints some - but not all - from other 3E sources like
Monsters of Faerûn), but is mostly made up of some interesting new creatures sure to add new twists into fighting dragons. Of course, there's plenty in here to make combat with even the standard dragons more interesting; I was especially impressed with the concept of the metabreath feat, which allows a dragon to use its breath weapon in a variety of interesting (and PC-surprising!) new ways. The new spells are well thought as well, and seem to be things that a spellcasting dragon would come up with to combat those pesky adventurers that always seem to show up. On the opposite side of the fence, the material for the PCs is equally logical; I even liked the majority of the prestige classes, the parts of these sourcebooks that I usually find the least exciting. (I was particularly impressed in the fact that the selection in
Draconomicon seem to cover all of the character classes; besides the expected combat-oriented dragonslayer types, there are also prestige classes for rogues (the hoardstealer), clerics (dracolyte), and even bards (dragonsong lyrist).) Of course, not all of these are perfect; I was amused by the mental image of a dragonstalker doing nonlethal damage to a Huge dragon (as the prestige class allows) using a sap - that'd have to be a pretty big sap to have any kind of effect!
The spells and magic items are uniformly good, although many of them seem like 3.5 updates to similar spells and magic items from earlier versions of D&D/AD&D. (I could swear I've seen very similar things in past issues of
Dragon Magazine several years back. Likewise, some of the new dragons seem very similar to monsters that have appeared there in the past few years as well, some of them merely sharing the same name - "smoke drake," for one - as different creatures from past issues of the magazine.) Still, whatever their heritage, those that made it to the
Draconomicon are solid choices. I'll be using quite a few of them in my own campaign.
Proofreading and editing were both well done, but then Wizards of the Coast has a much bigger budget than the typical d20 company and can no doubt put a stronger effort toward these areas. Still, there were a few typos that snuck past the four (!) editors: "lvels" instead of "levels," a period that shows up in mid-sentence, "usewd" instead of "used," "partty" instead of "party," a male dragon being described once as "she," one sentence ending in a comma instead of a period, and one instance where the authors put in a placeholder "(see the Dragon Prestige Classes in the Chapter ???)" and nobody went back and filled in the correct chapter number. Still, I suppose that's not too bad in a 288-page book, and at least none of it was difficult to figure out or self-contradictory, as I've seen in some other books.
The biggest chapter, page wise, and potentially the most useful (at least to DMs, who I imagine make up the majority of those who plunked down the $40.00 for this book) is the section detailing the 120 sample dragons. I've already used this section several times since picking up the
Draconomicon, and talk about time-saving! Unlike most other monsters in the
Monster Manual, statting out a dragon is rather time-consuming, given the amount of cross-referencing you have to do between the "generic" dragon info at the front of the dragon section and the "race-specific" stuff in the individual dragon's entry. With the
Draconomicon, all you have to do is flip to the right page and the work's all been done for you. Then, if you want to customize the dragon from there, it's an easy matter to swap out a feat or two or rechoose the spell selection.
On the subject of "flipping to the right page," though, I was disappointed to see that the
Draconomicon didn't have an index at the back. (I'm talking about a regular index of page numbers, not the CR index at the end of this book.) While that would have been a handy feature, at least this book can afford to do without it much better than many other books of comparable size, since the layout of the book is fairly straightforward, and the full-page Table of Contents is sufficiently detailed to almost serve the same purpose.
In a "crunch to fluff" ratio, most of the book falls into the "crunch" side of things, but I at least was particularly impressed with the very first chapter, where things like draconic flight muscles and metabolism are discussed in some detail. Some people see this kind of background info as nonessential (being of the mind that such space could be better devoted to more immediately "useful" information like more feats, spells, magic items, or whatever), but I personally eat this stuff up. Sure, it might not have immediate game use (I doubt if my players' PCs will ever take time out after slaying a dragon to discuss the finer points of its bone structure), but I find it entertaining nonetheless and helps get me in the "mood" - I suppose it makes dragons feel more "real" to me. Anyway, I was glad for that chapter's inclusion, and I hope further books in this series spend as much time on the "fluffier" side of things.
Despite having three separate authors (and in such cases, they usually split the book's sections up and decide who'll write which parts), the
Draconomicon reads like a unified whole; perhaps that's due to having four separate editors smoothing everything together and giving it a unified voice. However it was done, it was done well. I put
Draconomicon at the very peak of the D&D books I've seen thus far; besides the few errors that slipped through, I can't really point to a whole lot of areas where I think there should have been improvements. (Well, maybe drop one or two of the artists: I've never been a big fan of Dennis Crabapple's work - doesn't he (or didn't he) used to go by the name of Dennis Cramer? - and his work here hasn't improved my opinion of his abilities much.)
Draconomicon rates a full 5-star (Superb) rating from me. I eagerly await
Libris Mortis to see if they can do as well with undead as they have with dragons.
