D&D 5E Fizban's Treasury Dragons Ranked By Challenge Rating

WotC has been sending out previews of Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, due out next month, to folks on Twitter. Amongst those are art pieces and other items.

By Challenge Rating the dragons in the book are:

• Ancient crystal (19)
• Ancient topaz (20)
• Ancient emerald (21)
• Ancient moonstone (21)
• Ancient sapphire (22)
• Elder brain dragon (22)
• Ancient amethyst (23)
• Ancient dragon turtle (24)
• Gem greatwyrm (26)
• Chromatic greatwyrm (27)
• Metallic greatwyrm (28)
• Apects of Bahamut and Tiamat (30)

Interestingly, it appears that the great wyrm category is divided into three -- gem, chromatic, metallic -- rather than by each dragon type.

There's also an alphabetical list of all 20 dragon types in the book:

• Amethyst
• Black
• Blue
• Brass
• Bronze
• Copper
• Crystal
• Deep
• Dragon turtle
• Emerald
• Faerie
• Gold
• Green
• Moonstone
• Red
• Sapphire
• Shadow
• Silver
• Topaz
• White

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I don't think fairy dragons are the equivalent of shadow dragons. Wouldn't that be the moonstone dragons?

That's kind of my point. There isn't a Shadowfell equivalent of a Faerie Dragon and there's now a Feywild equivalent of the Shadow Dragon (the "Moonstone Dragon", whose name is a bit misleading). It just makes me think that it would've been better to have Shadow Dragons and Faerie Dragons be opposite-equivalents from the beginning.

 

[Micah Sweet]

They've been "prankster dragon-cats" for literally decades longer than there's been a Feywild. There's room for a Feywild-equivalent to a shadow dragon, but the designers eliminating a long-established creature just to steal its name for a completely different concept would be gratuitously insulting to the existing fanbase.

Didn't they do exactly that with the eladrin back in 4th ed?

 

[Sword of Spirit]

They've been "prankster dragon-cats" for literally decades longer than there's been a Feywild. There's room for a Feywild-equivalent to a shadow dragon, but the designers eliminating a long-established creature just to steal its name for a completely different concept would be gratuitously insulting to the existing fanbase.

As a fan of the original 2e eladrin, I can confirm this.

Example Couatls, low CR, but packing more magic spells, powers, shape shifting ability, then creatures far, far higher in CR then it.

The couatls CR is off. It doesn't stack up to the rules. In fact, the attack bonuses for its bite and constrict actually need the proficiency bonus to be +3 to add up!

My personal opinion is that they initially figured it out correctly (somewhere in the proficiency bonus +3 range), but they needed a better summoning option for conjure celestial than the CR 2 pegasus, but they didn't want it to be able to summon the CR 5 unicorn for some reason. So they just dropped the couatl from CR? to CR 4 for purposes of the spell.

(If I were a betting man, I would bet small amounts of money on that being the case.)

 

[Henadic Theologian]

As a fan of the original 2e eladrin, I can confirm this.


The couatls CR is off. It doesn't stack up to the rules. In fact, the attack bonuses for its bite and constrict actually need the proficiency bonus to be +3 to add up!

My personal opinion is that they initially figured it out correctly (somewhere in the proficiency bonus +3 range), but they needed a better summoning option for conjure celestial than the CR 2 pegasus, but they didn't want it to be able to summon the CR 5 unicorn for some reason. So they just dropped the couatl from CR? to CR 4 for purposes of the spell.

(If I were a betting man, I would bet small amounts of money on that being the case.)

Of you use a higher slot you can summon a Unicorn with the spell.

I suspect they just knew that they wanted the Coualt to be a high powered, but low CR summon, more utility then combat prowess, but realized it still needed to be able to hit things with its attack so it wasn't completely useless in Combat at high levels, so they pumped up its attack bonus.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

That's kind of my point. There isn't a Shadowfell equivalent of a Faerie Dragon and there's now a Feywild equivalent of the Shadow Dragon (the "Moonstone Dragon", whose name is a bit misleading). It just makes me think that it would've been better to have Shadow Dragons and Faerie Dragons be opposite-equivalents from the beginning.

The ship sales long before 5e.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

so they pumped up its attack bonus.

They don't do that. The designers follow the Proficiency + Ability mod math exactly in monster statblocks, which makes any anomaly stand out like a sore thumb.

 

[Bolares]

That's kind of my point. There isn't a Shadowfell equivalent of a Faerie Dragon and there's now a Feywild equivalent of the Shadow Dragon (the "Moonstone Dragon", whose name is a bit misleading). It just makes me think that it would've been better to have Shadow Dragons and Faerie Dragons be opposite-equivalents from the beginning.

Well, that couldn't happen. The duality about a shadow plane being the opposite of a fairy plane came only in 4e (yes, shadow planes and faerie planes did exist before, but they were not opposite) and this dragons are waaay older than that. I get the want for stuff to be mirrorred in those planes, but I think there isn't a need for EVERYTHING about shadows and faeries to be mirrorred.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Picture from twitter of the elder brain dragon.

The fairy dragon was canon from lot of time ago in the previous editions. And too "toyable" (to be sold as toy) to be forgotten.

The shadow dragon also was canon, and even the cobra-dragon (perfect to be the leader of a yuan-ti cult) appeared in Dragon Magazine.

Now I wonder about the dragons from Pathfinder RPG by Paizo, availables in the SRD. Could other company to sell dragon toys based in the creatures from the Paizo's SRD?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Could other company to sell dragon toys based in the creatures

It would be very difficult to demonstrate a copywrite infringement on anything dragon.

 

[Rabulias]

Could other company to sell dragon toys based in the creatures from the Paizo's SRD?

IANAL, but I believe they could. But I also believe they could not base the toys' appearance on the illustrations of the creatures in Paizo's books. They would have to create a different "look" for the dragon toys, even if they use the same name and stats.