D&D (2024) Interested in new dragon designs for 5e (5.5e or 6e)?

[Tales and Chronicles]

Not for me, I would keep land wyrms as a distinct type of dragon and keep the 5 chromatic as flying beasts.


Interesting, but I would go the other way. Make them really stormy. Give them the biggest wings and make them the best flyers. Sight build (comparatively) but agile. Make them masters of the sky, not the desert.


I can get behind most of that. I don't know that I want hair on my dragon, but I'm not saying no until I see it. I don't know about heat breath, but there is definitely some logic to it. Maybe the can manipulate the temperature, hot or cold.


I don't like the centipede idea, but I can get behind them being more swampy. I typically want them to have a more snake like build. I have also thought of them a dragon versions of sauropods before.

I think I need to google a little more with color symbology:

• Whites could be clouds/smoke instead of ice. I once had them as Pearl Dragon, aka the sea ones.
• Black I would love as spider-dragon (see in Kobold Press Creature Codex). Poison, webs etc or maybe as lovecraftian-old-ones dragon with a sea/slime theme.
• Blues are my favorite but I just dont know what to do with'em. Maybe give them the sea theme?
• Reds I love as the ''rose dragon'', nature based with a strong fey theme. Could also be rust themed, with an hint toward the destroyer of metallic dragons.
• Greens could be plague related?

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[aco175]

I thought I say in one of the D&D art books that Lockwood modeled dragons on cats to give them the look he wanted. I also see this for How to Train Your Dragon.

 

[DWChancellor]

I thought I say in one of the D&D art books that Lockwood modeled dragons on cats to give them the look he wanted. I also see this for How to Train Your Dragon.

He talks about it a little in Eye of the Beholder too. Him and Sam (Wood?) went back and forth and built up their design from bones through musculature, etc...

I think the care they put into the design shows. Lockwood dragons are distinct even when drawn by artists of wildly varying talents and interest. The 3E Draconomicon has a lot of good "identify dragon by silhouette" stuff in it too that no other design set has surpassed.

I admit to appreciating a few of the more recent dragons in Magic the Gathering art (some of which are Lockwood's!) but overall I haven't seen a better solution to "OMG why are so many dragons D&D cannon and how do I make them look distinct and cool!?!?"

I like some of the ideas about wyrms, but let's be real here, WOTC isn't going to redefine the core concept of "dragons" anymore than they are going to redefine goblins. A dragon in D&D has four legs, two wings, and is a hyper intelligent apex predator stuffed with magic.

A couple of asides:

* Looking back at the 5E dragon illustrations in MM... meh. They're a bit disappointing for such a leading monster.

* Dungeon Crawl Classics has some really odd and off-beat dragons which are very imaginative.

* Warhammer dragons are all snakey and weird. Meh. Count that as my vote for all snakey dragon illustrations!

* Matt Colville's Strongholds & Followers has some interesting dragon additions with a lot of character though maybe too far from D&D's core aesthetic.

 

[Vael]

The Chromatic Dragons are, together with Tiamat, pretty core to DnD as a genre, to me. 4e played with their aesthetics a bit and it didn't really take, I remember the 4e Green Dragon got a lot of flack for its new, spikier appearance. And, admittedly, if you gave me a black and white image, or just a silhouette of a Chromatic dragon, I'd get the Black and Red ones pretty easily, and utterly whiff on the Blue, Green and White.

And, on the subject of Metallic Dragons, I couldn't tell you the differences between the Bronze, Brass and Copper Dragons without looking them up.

Now, I would like to see more Dragons that aren't Chromatic, Metallic (or Gem). I like the more serpentine Asian-style Dragons, I could even see a furry Luck Dragon. But I'd rather add more Dragons than retool the current set.

 

[jayoungr]

Reimagining dragons is fun, but I'm a bit puzzled about the "5.5 or 6E" part of the thread premise. There are plenty of third-party supplements with alternative dragons. (The wind dragon in the Tome of Beasts gave my players fits! ) And any non-FR setting can have any kind of dragons the creator wants. I don't see why this has to be for a future edition, except a desire for everybody to accept the redesigned dragons as the new default, which seems ... well, first, unnecessary, and second, unlikely as long as WotC sticks with the Realms as their main setting.

 

[dave2008]

Reimagining dragons is fun, but I'm a bit puzzled about the "5.5 or 6E" part of the thread premise. There are plenty of third-party supplements with alternative dragons. (The wind dragon in the Tome of Beasts gave my players fits! ) And any non-FR setting can have any kind of dragons the creator wants. I don't see why this has to be for a future edition, except a desire for everybody to accept the redesigned dragons as the new default, which seems ... well, first, unnecessary, and second, unlikely as long as WotC sticks with the Realms as their main setting.

No need to get hung up on that. I was just suggesting WotC isn’t likely to make any changes unless there is a change / new edition.
I’m not talking about what can be done in home games or 3PP settings. Everyone knows we can do whatever we want with those. I’m asking what would you want to see changed with “official” chromatic and metallic dragons. Because of that restraint, I would expect a more reserved set of possibilities.

 

[jayoungr]

PS, I just realized you missed a golden opportunity by not titling this thread "Imagining Dragons."

 

[Ancalagon]

Enjoy!

OSR: Chromatic Dragons

This post is mostly an excuse to use the art of halycon450 . There are hundreds of "dragonomicons" out there. This one is mine. You might fi...

coinsandscrolls.blogspot.com

OSR: Metallic Dragons

The eight Chromatic Dragons were split from one ur-dragon by a giant prism (or something similar) in the dim prehistory of Creation. The ...

coinsandscrolls.blogspot.com

OSR: Dragon Banks

Yellow dragons are Creation's greatest bankers. Silver dragons often try, and copper dragons often set up banks that deliberately fail, bu...

coinsandscrolls.blogspot.com

 

[dave2008]

Enjoy!

Thank you for sharing! Some interesting designs in there. Probably not what I would go with, but a good starting point.

 

[dave2008]

I have added a black dragon redesign image to the OP