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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FourthBear" data-source="post: 3987634" data-attributes="member: 55846">Actually, it sounds as though the vast majority of your complaints would be solved not by giving all dragons spellcasting power, but giving all dragons Alternate Form into a humanoid form.  If you feel that humanoid mastermind villains don't need to have spellcasting powers, just allow all dragons to become humanoid.  It's a much more elegant solution that giving all dragons sorceror levels or such, IMO.As to issues with minions, again, if spellcasting makes a character so potent that they are now to be considered the BBEG, even if they're working for a dragon, then spellcasting is far, far too potent.  All BBEGs should be spellcasters, if that's the case.  The game should be explicitly designed that way.  I hope 4e works to eliminate this, frankly.No, actually my point is the exact opposite.  You *don't* need to balance off combat abilities in a monster or NPC.  You can just add these abilities to them as your world building sees fit.  Because they don't influence their immediate power during a combat confrontation, there's no need for them to be detailed in the stat block or detailed the same way the combat relevant power need to be.  This is why I don't feel they need to be made standard for all dragons in the Monster Manual.  If they are there to justify plot points and world-building  issues, then they should be left up to the DM.  If you declare that all dragons are spellcasters, then you've just bloated up the stat blocks for every dragon generated in your campaign for your entire future work.  The reason I am concerned by the number of magical abilities that are named that are "necessary" for dragons to be masterminds is power and stat bloat.   Further, as noted by others in this thread, there are a fair number of people whose world building *doesn't* include having dragons as spellcasters.</blockquote>

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