Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kaodi" data-source="post: 3990977" data-attributes="member: 1231">I would say that it was to make something a little more " realistic " , and perhaps to hew a little closer to the basic idea of the dragon as a big, fire-breathing " lizard " . Hence no spellcasting, though unlike some I am not opposed to spellcasting dragons. On the side of realism, I thought that wyrmlings should be weak, weak enough to be killed one on one with your average warrior. But, that is why they do have massive strength gains in the first few categories, because they grow quickly. At the other end of the spectrum, while the older dragons keep getting bigger and stronger, their constitution actually starts going down, ending at 21 for the wyrm and greatwyrm from a peak of 25 for the mature adult. I had some other ideas for abilities too, like acidic spit, weather control and things like free deafening roar and tempest breath feats, as well as an earthquake ability, but I left those out of this draft. Also, the wyrm has a fire resistance of 30, and the great wyrm of 50, so that using their breath weapon on rival dragons is not as effective, but not completely useless either. Frightening presence was cut down to 5 + 1/2 HD + Cha because with the older wyrms extremely hefty charisma modifiers, it was perhaps getting a little out of hand. No breath weapon at youngest ages because I didn't think they ought to be able to breath right out of the shell. In any case, they are not an average of the chromatics. The sizes are the same as the white dragon, the strength for the wyrmling I got from looking at the strength of a cat of the same size and adding 2, then I used my own progression from there. Same way I decided to give the wyrmlings the same dexterity modifier as a cat. I don't think I completely derived any of the stats from the white dragon, though. In terms of challenge, I was hoping that the oldest of these would be a more suitable challenge for a non-epic party than their RAW counterparts. Also, I guess I should explain the DR I gave them. Initially, my thought was to give them just DR/dragonbane, as a flavour issue, but dragonbane weapons of course already do +2d6 damage. The DR N/- is to foil the extra damage a bit so that the damage done will be closer to the pure damage of the weapon. But since their damage resistance is also supposed to be because of the extreme hardness of their scales, I thought that adamantine ought to overcome at least some it. If that makes any sense at all. This was mostly an experiment because of the discussion currently going on about the kind of dragons there are going to be in 4e. When they first showed the picture of the four adventurers and the green dragon, I was really hopeful that 4e was going to kill the sacred cow of colour coded dragons, but it was not to be. Not that I despise the coloured ones, but I think that there are other, vastly superior distinctions that could be made. Instead though of just averaging out the dragons, though, I thought I might try to make something a little bit different, to see what people thought of it. Ideally, I would try to add in some 4e style powers and rituals perhaps as well, to give it more options.</blockquote>

Verification