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How Should Dragons Be Handled In 5e
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<blockquote data-quote="Kaodi" data-source="post: 5823673" data-attributes="member: 1231"><p>I am not sure if there has been a thread on this already, so I thought I would start one.</p><p></p><p>There is a fairly strong dichotomy in how dragons are handled in 3e vs. 4E, with Pathfinder bridging the distance. In 3e, outside of their breath weapon and frightening presence, most of a dragons abilities come from their effective sorcerer levels, with some spell-like abilities thrown in for good measure. In 4E, no more spellcasting, but each colour of dragon has new special abilities. In Pathfinder, you get both spell-casting and cool abilities.</p><p></p><p>In this regard, Pathfinder is obviously superior to 3e. But I think some of you might still like to make the 4E argument that dragons should not be spellcasters by default (though I think we could all agree that spellcasting ought to be possible at least for exceptional dragons). </p><p></p><p>One alternative, or compromise, might be to have dragons have their own unique kind of spellcasting, or at least a unique spell list, to sort of keep their magical abilities in the background. I think dragons might work best if all of their "spells" are buffs that are constantly active unless dispelled, debuffs for interfering with enemy magic, and spells that enhance or modify their other abilities, similar to how the in 3e spells that were cast using their breath weapon were developed. This sort of thing would keep out the element of " Why is this dragons twiddling his claws during the battle? " while still leaving them with enough customizability to keep players guessing.</p><p></p><p><span style="color: SandyBrown">~ title modified from '7e' to '5e'. No inflation of edition numbers please: Plane Sailing, Admin ~</span></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Kaodi, post: 5823673, member: 1231"] I am not sure if there has been a thread on this already, so I thought I would start one. There is a fairly strong dichotomy in how dragons are handled in 3e vs. 4E, with Pathfinder bridging the distance. In 3e, outside of their breath weapon and frightening presence, most of a dragons abilities come from their effective sorcerer levels, with some spell-like abilities thrown in for good measure. In 4E, no more spellcasting, but each colour of dragon has new special abilities. In Pathfinder, you get both spell-casting and cool abilities. In this regard, Pathfinder is obviously superior to 3e. But I think some of you might still like to make the 4E argument that dragons should not be spellcasters by default (though I think we could all agree that spellcasting ought to be possible at least for exceptional dragons). One alternative, or compromise, might be to have dragons have their own unique kind of spellcasting, or at least a unique spell list, to sort of keep their magical abilities in the background. I think dragons might work best if all of their "spells" are buffs that are constantly active unless dispelled, debuffs for interfering with enemy magic, and spells that enhance or modify their other abilities, similar to how the in 3e spells that were cast using their breath weapon were developed. This sort of thing would keep out the element of " Why is this dragons twiddling his claws during the battle? " while still leaving them with enough customizability to keep players guessing. [COLOR="SandyBrown"]~ title modified from '7e' to '5e'. No inflation of edition numbers please: Plane Sailing, Admin ~[/COLOR] [/QUOTE]
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