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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pawsplay" data-source="post: 4162464" data-attributes="member: 15538">Something I've never quite gotten about dragons in 3e. The developers have stated several times they wanted to make dragons more dragonish and less like very large spellcasters with scales and claws. So why were they built that way in the first place?In previous editions, many dragons were non-spellcasting. Only golds and reds were nearly always casters. If you throw in a few spell-like abilities, you have all the magic you need. I'm kind of curious why they didn't simply state that gold and red dragons often advanced as spellcasters, particularly sorcerers. If sorcery is so tied to dragon nature, why were only about half the dragons spellcasters in previous editions? It seems that part of it was a snowballing effect from the decision to suggest that sorcery itself has a draconic origin. But it doesn't follow; even if dragons have sorcery in their blood, they aren't all skilled in spellcasting, and it's hardly a given that sorcery from magical ancestry means your ancestor was specifically a sorcerer. After all, sorcery is hinted as sometimes coming from infernal or celestial ancestry. I don't know if someone was overthinking, or if the spellcasting dragons simply came about because the new sorcerer class made it seem cool. I'm also curious about SR... I don't remember dragons having antimagic in previous editions. I'm also not sure about DR... for all their toughness, dragon hide is basically natural. In The Hobbit, Bard shoots a chink in the dragon's armor. I'd rather it were simply highly rated. For most characters, it's irrelevant anyway, since by the time you're slaying dragons, you have magic weapons. They seem like excellent subjects for lots of hit points, impressive saves, and good attack routines, with damage output somewhat high for their CR. It seems like the designers simply have dragons everything good, rather than assuming people would use appropriate CR dragons in their games. The result is an interesting blend of unnecessary complexity and polymathy with a general mediocrity.</blockquote>

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