D&D General Making the Verisimilitude Dragon

[MichaelSomething]

So a while back I said I write up a Verisimilitude Dragon if a post got seven likes, and it did so here I am. I guess I should lay some guidelines...

When people commonly desire "verisimilitude" they usually want mechanics to specifically represent lore and for that lore to be fully explained.
Ease of use and readability are going to reduced in order to accommodate those objectives.
This will require inventing several subsystems.

Questions
What edition are we basing this off of?
What lore do people want reinforced?

What I'm imagining so far.
Bringing back the 3E size mechanics. One of a Dragon's advantages is simply being much bigger then an adventurer. To portray that we'll need to have size modifiers; like a lot of them. Affecting damage, grapple, HP, and other combat things to reflect that.
Mega HP. The RiFTs system had mega Hit Points, to represent that toughness scales up a lot. Maybe dragons need a similar system??

 

[Vaalingrade]

It has to scream 'magic' every turn to remain in the air while flying or use its breath weapon. Only as a non-human, it has animal intelligence so it can't speak a language.

 

[Incenjucar]

Climbing onto monsters, improvised weapons rules for when the dragon smacks a hut at you, surface/structure weight support rules, breath weapons that aren't a glorified energy damage flash light...

 

[Alzrius]

This will require inventing several subsystems.

It might not be appropriate for a post on a public forum, but there are a lot of sub-systems already out there for 3.X/PF1, most of which are Open Game Content.

For instance, if you want to climb a creature much larger than you are, use the rules given in Kobold Quarterly #3 (pg. 53-54). If you want rules for how targeting certain parts of a gigantic creature do very little damage, while targeting other body parts causes them more serious injuries, use the rules from Necromancers of the Northwest's Cinematic Dinosaurs Volume II (though this technically also has rules for climbing on creatures, but I like KQ's better; as it is, I personally recommend getting the bundle with all three volumes, as each one has several great optional rules), etc.

There's no need to reinvent the wheel when there's already so much good stuff out there.

Please note my use of affiliate links in this post.

 

[Alzrius]

It has to scream 'magic' every turn to remain in the air while flying or use its breath weapon. Only as a non-human, it has animal intelligence so it can't speak a language.

Verisimilitude is not realism (where "realism" is "functions according to real-world physics/logic"); go back and re-read the example in the OP of the other thread.

 

[Incenjucar]

Maybe port in some of those 1E dragon subdual rules.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Climbing onto monsters, improvised weapons rules for when the dragon smacks a hut at you, surface/structure weight support rules, breath weapons that aren't a glorified energy damage flash light...

What DOES a breath weapon do then???

 

[Incenjucar]

What DOES a breath weapon do then???

Ongoing effects, filling space that can curve, interacting with terrain and objects, being partly modifiable by the dragon, having pressure that can push....

 

[J.Quondam]

Ongoing effects, filling space that can curve, interacting with terrain and objects, being partly modifiable by the dragon, having pressure that can push....

... face-melting halitosis....

 

[Incenjucar]

You could treat older dragons a bit like old school artifacts, with special abilities, disastrous effects on the environment, and special weaknesses.