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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Laurefindel" data-source="post: 7843617" data-attributes="member: 67296">I redesigned dragons for two different settings. Each had a very different approach, but in each case the first question I asked myself was whether I wanted a more biologically-consistent design, or whether I didn't care about that.In the first world dragons were different species of the same genus, meaning that they mostly shared the same physical characteristics with environmental/specialised variations (i.e. lion vs tiger). They had physical differences, but those were designed after the new abilities I gave them  rather than the other way around. (I wanted to vary the options of Actions for dragons without making stat blocks too heavy, so one or two different ability for each colour was more manageable).[SPOILER="Off-topic dragon characteristics"]Dragons They were all reptiles, all had scales, all had the same number of limbs, all had roughly the same skeleton etc. The chromatic categorisation was the base for each specie but even the colour differences were toned down. Most were green or brown with specific colour variations (reds had a distinctive red underbelly, blues had a blue-ish ridge and spines on the back, blacks had distinctively dark scales on its back, greens had stripes and paterns, whites were actually brown in colour but with a recessive albino gene mutation, etc).Dragons had only three types of "breath": fire, caustic bile (spitters), and venomous bite (which greens developed the ability to "breathe out" by exhaling violently. They were resistant to their own energy type but not immune to it; young red dragons would use their fire breath in territorial/mating disputes for example.[/SPOILER]In the second world, dragons was a catch-all word for reptile/avian-ish monsters that had a breath weapon of some sort à la How to Train Your Dragon or the Dragon Hunter movie. Not all had the ability to fly, some had scales, feathers, fur, or a mix of the three. There the stat blocks were mostly left intact, sometimes with an ability/action copied from another monster tacked on. The general approach was far more whimsical and and magical where physical variations (even within the same colour entry in the MM) were mostly cosmetic, . For that world, the goal was to vary dragon encounters (which were central to the setting) to avoid the "yet another young blue dragon" syndrome. One could be a colossal boss fight against one of the "sons of the thunder storms", the other a skirmish against a dozen over-excited lizards discharging static electricity shocks at random, etc.TL;DR: How far are you willing to take aesthetic variations, and do you care about biology?</blockquote>

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