Loss of Innate Spellcasting (or 'How Dragons Build Lairs')

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

And how does the dragon keep contact with those agents and spies? With carrier pigeons? Or having them constantly go to and from his secret lair and hope that no one will wonder what they are doing there?
No. Sending and Message spells are the answer.

Why not carrier pigeons, envoys and messengers, like people did in our past before the advent of Sending and Message spells telephones, internet and cell phones?
Information in a "pseudomedieval" society doesn't travel fast, but it doesn't need to.
if it's really urgent, the Dragon can fly to a nearby rendezvous points. I mean, he is probably one of the fastest flier in the world!

In this context it is like:
Change: "Dragons can learn 5 rituals of this level...."
Now the player can fill this slots with whatever the dragon needs, ignore it as he doesn't need rituals or change the number of rituals the dragon has.

Make up:" Dragons fight like this.... "
No information about how dragons fit in the world. You have to make that up from the ground.

Overall it looks like.
Change: "This monster might fit into the world this or that way". You might use it or not.
Make Up: No information about ecology, monsters are pure combat stat block. if you want this monster to be something more than a encounter you have to make it up.
When rules for out of combat abilities of monsters exist there is a chance that you won't have to spend that time to make this stuff up or change it. You can pull out a monster from the book and assign it a role in your world. You might also be inspired by those abilities. "hey this monster has 10 ranks in Y. I can use it for..."
Without those rules most players will have no idea how this monster would fit in the world. Is it a monster which likes to corrupt other people? Or does it simply dominate them?. Sure you can make it up, but it will require time and I buy D&D books so that I don't have to spend that time.
And all this for 3-4 more monsters which I probably won't use anyway?

Okay, I think I get it now. But note that the current rules don't tell us anything about these things, either. There is nothing in the Dragon stat block telling us he learns Sending and Message or Guards and Wards instead of Mage Armor and Disintegrate. You just have "Casts spells like Sorceror X at Age Category Y".

These kind of information is part of the "flavor text" of a monster entry. Maybe the D&D 4 team made a horrible mistake and they just noticed that they don't have any of it in their MM, but after the discussions on implied settings, "Golden Wyvern Adepts" and reading the R&C books, I doubt that.

 

[Steely Dan]

Or he might simply walk into the city and meet his agents somewhere.
A dragon can't do those things.

Why does he have to meet his minions in a city, couldn't the dragon meet them at a designated L.Z. or what have you?

 

[FourthBear]

I would appreciate it if you started to think about this issue instead of making this silly list without offering any alternatives or other constructive comments.
Tell me, how would a dragon stay in contact with its agents without compromising them?

They could do so as master villains throughout fantasy literature and D&D itself have done through the ages. They can have networks of highly mobile agents that spread their wishes. They can have magical items that allow for such communication. They can breed creatures that allow for rapid message delivery. They can have slow and inefficient communication, allowing for the PCs to be able to take advantage of. I see no reason for a master villain to be formidable that they need to have supernatural solutions for all difficulties. I see no reason that every time some difficulty for such a character arises, they need to have arbitrary spells or spell-like abilities to solve it.

 

[Derren]

Why not carrier pigeons, envoys and messengers, like people did in our past before the advent of Sending and Message spells telephones, internet and cell phones?
Information in a "pseudomedieval" society doesn't travel fast, but it doesn't need to.
if it's really urgent, the Dragon can fly to a nearby rendezvous points. I mean, he is probably one of the fastest flier in the world!

Why does he have to meet his minions in a city, couldn't the dragon meet them at a designated L.Z. or what have you?

And how would the agent know where and when to meet the dragon? It works for planned meetings, but when something important happens, communication is impossible.
And please tell me how the dragon writes a message and ties it to a pigeon (which probably dies of a hart attack anyway being so close to a dragon). The solution is again minions or magic.

They could do so as master villains throughout fantasy literature and D&D itself have done through the ages. They can have networks of highly mobile agents that spread their wishes. They can have magical items that allow for such communication. They can breed creatures that allow for rapid message delivery. They can have slow and inefficient communication, allowing for the PCs to be able to take advantage of. I see no reason for a master villain to be formidable that they need to have supernatural solutions for all difficulties. I see no reason that every time some difficulty for such a character arises, they need to have arbitrary spells or spell-like abilities to solve it.

How does the dragon contact the agents? Where do the magical items come from? How does a dragon breed other creatures as messengers?
Also the "good guys" likely does include spellcasters, so a BBEG who has to rely on slow, inefficient nonmagical methods is at a disadvantage.

@jaer
See the edit of my last post.

 

[Lackhand]

Dragonfear prevents carrier pigeons and many envoys, unless it can be suppressed (I don't remember).

But the level of machiavellian spymaster that the dragon seems to need is something which I'm glad isn't core anymore. Maybe some dragons are great shadows-behind-the-throne, movers and shakers. Maybe those dragons can change shape (and are no longer Good only. woohoo!)

As for the others? It's a fecking huge scaly lizard whose talons are swords and whose breaths are deaths. Don't try too hard to make them be, out of the box, more than that: they're fantastic as that, and don't need to be more. They lair in swamps and volcanoes, surrounding themselves with hazards both natural and artificial.

How did those artificial hazards get there? The dragon made someone else do it, and then ate them. The dragon bought them from dwarves. The dragon stole them. There are as many ways for the hazards to get there as there are dragons.

Where do dragon hoards come from? That much coinage is... hard to accumulate. Let alone carry, since the dragon, as you say, doesn't have thumbs. It's also fantastically heavy; transporting it there in secret is difficult at best. And Yet, the hoard is there.

A dragon that is a puppetmaster has its dragon statistics coincidental, it seems to me, to how you're using it.

 

[Sitara]

Derren, honestly speaking your argumetns are getting ridiculous. Seriously; if you want them to have those silly spells which, quite frankly don't really make sense for a dragon to have, then go ahead and give them to it in your games. Give them a level of wizard or whatever.

I mean honestly, a dragon should have rope trick now? *rolls eyes*

 

[Derren]

I mean honestly, a dragon should have rope trick now? *rolls eyes*

Dragons "needing" Rope Trick was actually FourthBears idea. I never said or intended that.
And the spells being silly? I guess in your gaming worlds dragons are extinct because every rogue worth his salt can swallow an silence and invisibility potion and kill the unprotected dragon in its sleep and grap the hoard (which no one can explain where it got it from).
The few remaining dragons are used as guard dogs by influental individuals who can use magic or their connections to shape the world around them, either politically or magically.

 

[jaer]

Thanks for the reply. I more fully understadn now.

It seems that what it all really comes down to is the intent the DM has for the dragon.

It is difficult for a dragon to be the Puppetmaster/crimeboss type, but it is not impossible. A dragon has wealth and power, both of which readily attract people. It is not difficult to picture a dragon, for nothing more than fun, attacking a caravan. He's intelligent enough to realize that he is not attacking merchants, but rather some brigands who raided the caravan earlier that day. In exchange for sparing their lives and giving them some of their loot back, the dragon now has minions. Weak ones, but minions none-the-less.

Barring magic, how does he communicate with them? They must know where his lair is. Perhaps a few of them actually stay in the lair to attend to the dragon's needs: writing, trap buidling, message-carrying. The brandits know that they are no match for this creature, so they can't fathom using the information of the lair to their advantage. They can't steal from the dragon, it would know (perhaps some tried and were eaten already). It seems to see all, and knows exaclty every coin in the lair.

However, working with the dragon offers them some protection as well. The dragon is a good schemer and when the wealth is worth it, it personally comes and helps the raids. It is mutually beneficial, and continues to be so as the bandits gain wealth and power. At the dragon's behest, they start bribing and infultrating the local power structure. Soon, the bandits are allied with the local thieves guild and have eliminated the local assassin's guild with the help of the dragon's planning and wealth. Soon the dragon has corrupt politians in its pockets, and it is the mob-lord of the entire area. There are enough locals in power to deter and prevent adventures from taking on the dragon, and it has spies enough to know when someone it making an attempt to find the lair. It has a thieves guild and a bandit camp to help defend it, and surely it has a few new traps in its lair from the thieves guild.

Sure there are plenty of people who could betray the dragon and if they all worked together, they might be able to bring it down, but individually they are weak, greedy, and intimidatable, and they don't all know about each other or trust anyone else. As such, the dragon rules all with fear and wealth without needing to leave it's lair. It's done more easily with magic, yes, but this example has the dragon as the puppet master, it has minions that do not out-shine it, and is plausible why the dragon has a custom, defendible lair.

I think that WotC's intent, however, is to have more Smaug-like dragons: big, power creautres of such destructive force that they don't worry about their presence being known because there is nothing out there they fear (though that does not mean there is nothing out there which cannot kill them; they just arrogantly refuse to believe in the possibility). Most don't need a lair full of traps, they just need a place to sleep and store their gold. They don't spend a lot of time at home, building their home; they spend it outside, flying to high for eyes to see or scouring the land for food, new wealth, or another lair that has more room to fit its growing treasure.

Dragons can be used as masterminds and cunnying campaign opponents, but the intension is for them to be mass destruction given scaley form.

 

[Steely Dan]

It seems that what it all really comes down to is the intent the DM has for the dragon.

Exactly, some DMs might want dragons as nomadic, big flying lizards of prey (no treasure or lairs etc) of below average Int.

Some DMs want dragons to be Sauron-type masterminds.

There's more than one way to skin a dragon.

 

[Derren]

Dragons can be used as masterminds and cunnying campaign opponents, but the intension is for them to be mass destruction given scaley form.

I don't see it that way when you consider how dragons were used previously.
Look at the Wyrms of the North. Some might be cunning beasts, but many of them engage on smaller or larger intrigues, perform magical studies or otherwise interact closely with humans that it requires magic.

Those DMs who do want dragons as pure combat machines can ignore the rituals, or use them to give their dragons a small twist so that the party will be surprised. Without that dragons become very predictable.
Even if it is metagaming, the players will know sooner or later what abilities a dragon has.