Excerpts: Draconomicon: Metallic Dragons: Draconians

[Chris Knapp]

I see they are back to being Reptiles and not Dragons. The DDM stat cards "fixed this" but it looks like Draconomicon 2 changed it back. . .

While on the surface, its a "so what?" moment, for some of Dragonlance's iconic weapons (including the Dragonlance itself) it means that they have to have added text to indicate that they affect draconians (and not any other reptile) as well as dragons.

 

[fireinthedust]

Draconian stats could be a good fix for my current campaign. Dragonborn came from Bahamut, theoretically; so what do you get if tiamat decided to make a humanoid race? Sort of like how Orcs are corrupted elves in Tolkien.

I do want to say that I think horror at seeing a Sivak transform into oneself is a bit silly. Maybe there's some sort of psychic echo causing damage, but otherwise it's not going to fool the person who killed the Sivak; unlike the rest of the world, they are 100% sure that they're not the one slain.
I'd likely change it to a psychic echo that zaps the killer; maybe make it a close burst 3, plus ranged if someone hit them at range. That would be nice & brutal.


Fable 2 has a nifty answer for goblins, in that they're missing children kidnapped by other goblin-critters (namechange, same concept) and morphed into more of the beasties.
I like this, and it's a good reason for why goblinoids like hobgoblins are slavers: they capture humans and transform the adults into hobgoblins. Goblin-goblins are what come out when you take children and put them through the process. The transformation is permanent, and the goblins produced are automatically fully grown adults of the species capable of breeding more of their own kind (thus not all goblinoids slain are humans, whether adults or children; they could be offspring). Like in the move John Carpenter's The Thing, whatever they were is no more, now they're the alien.
Player-character goblins could have some memories of their past lives (usually this is eradicated by the change) and act upon their earlier motives.


Bard Taunting: yeah, I don't know what to say. sorcerer's Chaos Bolt makes sense: it's a bolt of something. Should be Force, but it's Psychic. Making someone embarassed enough not to fight isn't helpful for Solo monsters in a serious campaign, or stone golems... excepting that one scene in Venture Bros.
I'd like an instrument that lets the bard zap them. Seems a bit more realistic than name-calling someone to death.

 

[Dragonhelm]

I think that draconians, and also dragonspawn (the humanoid ones) are a bit redundant with dragonborn. Then again, I've always loved Dragonlance's draconians!

If I were running a Dragonlance game, PC draconians would simply be the dragonborn. Maybe with some sort of heritage feet to represent the different types. Perhaps the NPC draconians could represent the "first generation" which were magically created, and dragonborn could represent the race after they started breeding true.

If I wanted to import draconians into a homebrew game, I'd make then simply special builds of NPC dragonborn. I already do that with humanoid dragonspawn.

You bring up several good points. In Dragonlance fandom, we've discussed quite a bit how dragonborn would fit in with draconians. One major theory, which is similar to yours, is that they're second-generation draconians that breed true. Personally, I like using them as the foundation for player character draconians (much like how dragonborn = dray in Dark Sun).

Of course, if we really wanted to get technical, we have both male and female draconians (with the females having different powers), dragonspawn, and noble draconians. So it can be a bit much to add in dragonborn too, unless you tie them in with an existing race.

 

[Dire Bare]

Of course, if we really wanted to get technical, we have both male and female draconians (with the females having different powers), dragonspawn, and noble draconians. So it can be a bit much to add in dragonborn too, unless you tie them in with an existing race.

It's been a while since I read the draconian novels, much less seen any DL gamebooks. I had forgotten about the noble draconians . . . but, the females had different powers?

Did they ever come up with more draconian sounding names for the noble ones? I never liked that the evil ones had interesting sounding names like "Baaz" or "Sivak" and the good ones had boring names like "Frost" or "Acid".

 

[Dragonhelm]

It's been a while since I read the draconian novels, much less seen any DL gamebooks. I had forgotten about the noble draconians . . . but, the females had different powers?

Yep, though I don't recall what those were at the moment.

Did they ever come up with more draconian sounding names for the noble ones? I never liked that the evil ones had interesting sounding names like "Baaz" or "Sivak" and the good ones had boring names like "Frost" or "Acid".

Flame, Frost, Lightning, Vapor, and Venom draconians.

No, no draconian-sounding names for the various noble species. They were the brainchild of Jamie Chambers, so I'm guessing the names he had come up with for them years before kind of stuck.

To WotC's credit, they at least tried to create some draconian-sounding names for the new draconian species. Although, I'm not quite certain I can get behind "kobaaz." Is that when more than one baaz works together?

 

[Derren]

At lest its not Kobalscale Poisonbreath.

 

[Cam Banks]

Flame, Frost, Lightning, Vapor, and Venom draconians.

No, no draconian-sounding names for the various noble species. They were the brainchild of Jamie Chambers, so I'm guessing the names he had come up with for them years before kind of stuck.

I had some in mind for Dragons of Krynn, where the noble draconians were given full PC-ready treatment, but decided not to during development.

As for an Ecology of the Draconians, I wrote just such an article for Paizo's Dragon Magazine a few years back that would make a great basis for a 4E article. It may even have been on the reference list for whoever it was that wrote up the draconians in Draconomicon II, or it may not.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[Cam Banks]

And yeah, I think I'd have gone with "kobak" for the cobalt draconian, especially since "baaz" was named such because it sounds like a degenerate "brass."

Cheers,
Cam