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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6068632" data-attributes="member: 2067">Okay, but that still doesn't mean it's easy to sneak up on.Now you're being exclusionary. There's clear and unambiguous precedent for D&D dragons to have keen senses. One could argue that this is one of the salient qualities of D&D dragons for some players. If someone wants to define their D&D dragons as D&D dragons have been long defined, as having keen senses, who are you, and who is 5e, to say they must change their ideas about how dragons work? Why doesn't D&D support the D&D dragons they've been playing D&D with for years already and instead replace them with big boring dire lizards? And really, what do we gain from such a consideration during play? Oh, I guess the rogue's player gets to do the same exact tactics against the dragon that they do against every other monster in the book. How exciting to do the same thing you've been doing. How dynamic. Dragons with keen senses are more interesting as "big encounters" in the same way that dragons with impenetrable defenses are more interesting in the same scenario: they force the players to think laterally to overcome the challenge by neutralizing their most obvious strengths. Rogues can't sneak. Fighters can't hit. Mages can't land magic. Clerics can't heal fast enough. Sure, dragons don't NEED to have them, necessarily. But to say that dragons SHOULDN'T have them as a rule is to fly in the face of good design and previously supported gameplay. Same with the argument that dragons should be "normal" monsters. D&D has plenty of big noisy normal dire lizards that breathe fire characters can fight as normal characters of level X. Dragons, as the vanguards for one of the game's titular threats, probably should not be big fire-breathing lizards.This depends entirely on the assumed divergence from the norm of a 14th level rogue in an individual's game. 14th level might be awesome and legendary, but it might also be just-a-cut-above, or slightly-better. Superhero-genre on high-level play is not a desirable outcome for every game. That said, I'm sympathetic the the idea that a high-level rogue is a mythic badass, but then that 14th level dragon should also be a mythic badass, a villain every bit the equal of that rogue. In fact, to make it an interesting encounter, that dragon should probably be the BETTER of that rogue, so that there is an uphill struggle. Death-by-two-rocks-and-a-hunk-of-metal while flailing mostly ineffectually is not a fight worthy of being called a "dragon-slaying" in my book. It's not a fight worthy of the awesome of that titular threat. The crux of my counter-point here is just to illustrate that your version of what a dragon is isn't necessarily the version that D&D has most famously supported, nor are they the most interesting to play with for a game that is named after them, so to state not just that they should be like this, or that they are like this in your game, but simply that this is what they are, period seems to vastly under-consider the ideas of other people who play the game. This is a game that includes pyrohydras, dragonets, dragonnes, and chimeras. It includes half-dragons and fire lizards. It includes dire lizards and animentals. Dragons should be more than a normal monster, I think.Not that they can't also be a normal monster, too. Just that saying that they are already this, without caveat, is ignoring vast swaths of D&D history, the nature of the dragon as a brand tool for the game, the diversity of the D&D monster milieu, and what could possibly be a lot more fun than a fight "just like every other monster." Dude, did you honestly just argue that a dude with SAINT as a title, and the CHILD OF A GOD are low-magic paragons of badass normal? I mean, if you like a mythic game of saints and godlings, more power to you, but lets not imagine that these are creatures who are non-magical. They exist at the very APEX of magical thinking.</blockquote>

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