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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Zardoz" data-source="post: 4163420" data-attributes="member: 704">Dragons as spell casters happened at least partly by accident, I think.The starting point is that having Dragons as powerful and magical creatures is a desirable trope to accommodate.  They are ancient, and wise.  Throwing in a few spell like abilities is a good start, but in D&D, if you want to emphasize something as being magical, it tends to end up casting spells.In and of its self, no big deal.  But while the intent may have been to give Dragons access to things like Dispel Magic and Scrying, it opens the door to having every other spell of a similar level added to the arsenal.  Ancient Black Dragon with Dispel magic is just awesome.  Ancient Black Dragon casting Fireball when the chosen iconic power is breathing Acid?  Not so much.The biggest flaw in this that I have noticed is that you tend to end up with dragons being given Armour and Shield spells and kicking the AC up by 8 points.  If your always going to do that, than why not just kick up the AC a couple of points?  Or that you end up with dragons for whom the optimal actions end up having nothing to do with them being massive creatures with sharp claws and pointy teeth that breath fire.I like what I have heard of the 4th edition approach to Dragons.  Rather than giving them a spell selection, they are given powers that they can use in place of a Breath Weapon attack.  This keeps the abilities of a given dragon thematically appropriate.As for why Dragons get more powerful?  It is just power creep written large.  A Dragon is meant to be a powerful and bad ass creature.  For a game as dependent on fantasy combat as D&D, it hardly makes sense that the creature whose name is part of the game would be a push over.Whimsical is essentially spot on regarding the SR and DR though.  It is a way to make the creature more durable in a general sense without giving it so many HP that it takes 36 man hours of rolling dice to kill it.END COMMUNICATION</blockquote>

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