Dragon resitrictions too rigid?

[Celebrim]

"And about the lawful good zombies, how would that work... I gues there are a couple ways, but they're undead, and undead are pretty much always evil."

But that is in itself a campaign based assumption that tries to draw lines around what is good and isn't in a way that is irrelevant to actual behavior. And it is normally, behavior that we use to define good and evil.

Mind you I'm not suggesting that it isn't a useful assumption, and for the record, IMC, all zombies are evil as is the act of thier creation.

But, you could quite easily suggest that zombies are not evil and that there is nothing about there behavior that is intrinsicly evil, and that they could be created in a fashion that was not evil, and then you could have Lawful Good temples guarded by heroic undead soldiery. Just be prepared to handle in ambiguities that might arise because of that.

For instance, again IMC, not all 'undead' are actually evil. Actually that's splitting hairs, because not all 'undead' are undead. Ghosts aren't 'undead' in my campaign, although they are. Undead normally refers to something which has by some unnatural fashion gained unnatural life after death, albeit life of a different order than natural life, so that they have become 'walking dead'. But not everything that is dead but is present in the world is their as the result of some process that is deemed unnatural and evil. Some ghosts have returned or tarried for entirely benevolent and noble reasons which the gods of good do not oppose. You can think of them as being like 'Ben Kenobi' in SW, or the spirit of Jasla in dragonlance. As such, I have good aligned 'undead'.

"But why make the evil gold dragon not a gold dragon at all?"

You don't have to, but I tried to explain some of the reasons why you might not. And in fact, if we want to be really mature about this, the gold dragon doesn't even have to evil in order to oppose the PC's. You could easily get into a situation that the gold dragon feels that for various reasons it must slay the humans, and the humans in turn feel they must slay the dragon - and both sides could feel this is a terrible tragedy. And of course we can have situations where the path of an evil being and the path of a good PC temporarily are going in the same direction, though probably neither side would be entirely comfortable about it (and some Paladins would probably have to balk at an alliance).

 

[Corlon]

but no matter how much we argue

I think we both think that it's really up to the GM, and can be neat for plot developement.

 

[Xarlen]

I have to agree with the above poster. Nothing in my campaign is *always*, and I do mean always, unless it's an outsider defined by it's plane. Celestials, Fiends, Rakshasa, Slaad, etc.

Dragons are Often of the aligment associated with their color, but not *always*. A neutral red dragon isn't undoable, or a Neutral/Lawful Evil one.

And, of course, White dragons aren't always stupid (I always hated that).

Then again, I've had the party Save a gnoll tribe from being sacrificed by some dragon-worshiping Lizardfolk. The party was thusly honored by the gnolls. I've had a Kobold trapmaster work For the party.

I have nothing against playing with aligment issues.

As for dragons with alternate breathweapons, I *like* it that way. I prefer a white dragon to a boring ol' Red. Cold is cool. But one thing I *did* change: Green dragons breathe an acidic cloud, like Acid Fog. Not Chlorine gas; if it was gas, and thus poison, it would do Con damage. This stuff melts things.

 

[Kilmore]

Monster Manual: An optional resource.

In my campaign's Varmint Volume, I made all new dragons. I have dragons like the Southern Patternback, the Blue Sea Dragon, and the Greater Fire Dragon, among others. Some are savage and beastial, and others are wise and refined. In many ways, the dragon's breed affects it's behavior, but that isn't a firm rule.

 

[ranix65]

Kilmore, where would this Varmint Volume be available(mine is strewn across my room in various hand-written notebooks, it gets worked on around the same time as some other projects, that is, whenever I get the chance)?

 

[Kilmore]

It's in full color glossy print in my mind right now. None of my players have guts enough to fight dragons.

 

[Darkness]

I have less problems with dragons' alignment absolutes, but rather with the fact that breath weapons are by color.

Of course, there's the trick of claiming that a given dragon is a white (edit - or whatever, but I've only seen it with whites so far), while it actually isn't...

Variations of this trick that I've heard of:
A wight dragon.
An albino red.
A red disguised as a white.