D&D 5E My Five Favorite Things From Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons

Even though the release of Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons has been slightly delayed by the ongoing shipocalypse, Wizards of the Coast still got preview copies out on time. What did I enjoy most on my first pass through the book?

A Gem of an Ancestry​

The first chapter features a lot of cool player options such as dragon themed subclasses, spells, feats and magic items. Of the things you can use in an ongoing game, I liked the Draconic Gifts. These feat-like abilities can be given to characters by dragons or possibly taken, Highlander-style, by a slayer, depending on how the Dungeon Master wants to use them. But my top choice is the Gem Dragonborn Ancestry. Telepathic communication, some personal flight at fifth level and breath weapons that deal out some of the more exotic damage types? This is my new obsession when I make random D&D Beyond characters for fun.

Custom Built Dragons​

Chapter 3 discusses the details of dragons and how they fit into your game. Much like Van Richten’s Guide To Ravenloft contained discussions of the horror genre, this book is focused on building dragons that are a part of your world. What roles can they fit, like rules and crime bosses? How do they reproduce? Do they fit in with the gods or are they rivals? This section is filled with charts, hooks and discussion empowering the Dungeon Master to make unique dragons for their table.

Dragon Type Toolboxes​

One of my favorite bits from Mythic Odysseys of Theros were the god write-ups and how they focused on actionable information rather than pages of lore. The dragon type writeups in the book follow a similar format. Each dragon type is given a selection of personality traits, adventure hooks, connections to other creatures and unique treasures for slayers to take home. The dragons introduced in the volume get a little bit of lore, while those dragons already covered get more lair actions to customize big boss fights. Some famous dragons are mentioned in scattered sidebars, but if you’re looking for deep dives on dragon trivia, this is not that book.

Dragon and Dragon Related Accessories​

The bestiary has the usual writeups for the new dragons, monsters related to dragons and Draconians for fans of Dragonlance. The ones I found most interesting were creatures that were connected to specific parts of the dragon. Equip a master spellcaster dragon with an animated breath to do some elemental bidding. A dragonblood ooze combines dangerous elements of its namesake. Dragonflesh grafters have tried to integrate the magical parts of a dragon into their own body with twisted results. Entries like this broke up the grand dragon stat blocks and offered some smaller challenges to use with players.

Fizban’s Commentary​

I’ve always been a sucker for asides in gaming books since I cut my teeth on Shadowrun 30 years ago. Many of the comments in this book from the titular wizard had me laughing out loud as I read the book. They were authored by Amy Vorpahl, who also wrote the zany “Kandlekeep Dekonstruction” in Candlekeep Mysteries. Her writing injects a fresh sense of silliness that D&D needs every once in a while.

Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons releases on October 26th.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Dragonlance already has draconians created from chromatic dragon eggs. They are known as noble draconians, and are the brainchild of Dragonlance game designer Jamie Chambers.

The idea is that towards the end of the War of the Lance, the Dragonarmies were running low on metallic dragon eggs to corrupt and transform into draconians. So they started using chromatic dragon eggs. The problem was that the Laws of Balance came into effect, and the noble draconians tended to be good aligned.

The five types of noble draconians are flame (red), frost (white), lightning (blue), vapor (green), and venom (black). There's some cool art by Jason Engle for them too.

You can find out more information on noble draconians in the Bestiary of Krynn and Dragons of Krynn.

This version of Draconians appear to have no relation to the Noble Draconians, they are mechanically exactly alike no matter whether they came from Chromatic, Gem or Metallic Eggs, no change in alignment even. Gem Dragons weren't even a thing in Dragonlance. I think these Draconians are intended to be setting neutral.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

One thing I noticed about the Deep Dragon, no sunlight damage, it's CR goes up by 1 in its Lair if it's Legendary, it has slow spell Lair action, and the weirdest thing is the Adult and Ancient versions appear to be the strongest shape shifters of any of the Dragons. Normally Dragons are restricted to medium and small humanoids and Beast with shape changing, but Deep Dragons can shape change into ANY medium or small creature. That means they can take the form of Hags, Nymphs, Succubi, Astral Devas, Fairies, Harengon, Cheetah, Elves, Autognomes, Sworrowsworn, Gold Dragon Wyrmlings, a Mindflayer, a Vampire, Weretiger, a Drow Priestess, a Gargoyle, a Modron, an awakened shrub, etc...

 

[Marandahir]

Love the Gem Dragons, Moonstone Dragons, and Deep Dragons (nice new take on Purple). Love the player options. Love the Greatwyrms - the Chromatic ones feel like what I was looking for from Catastrophic Dragons in 4e - forces of nature almost as deadly as the Tarrasque, representative of severe climate change condensed into a malevolent force.

I'm deeply missing Sand/Brown Dragons, as well as Grey, Iron, Steel, Adamantium, Cobalt, Mercury, Orium, and Mithral Dragons.
I get that there's some narrative conciseness of focusing on 5 core types for each group of Dragons, and then having outliers like Moonstone or Deep Dragons that don't have a colour/metal/crystalgem in their name to differentiate, but I miss these narrative draconic concepts that flourished in 4e and other past editions.

Also, I feel like Kobolds were unjustly cut out from this book so that they're reprinted in fixed form in Mordenkainen Presents and there's less overlap, but that makes me sad for this book being the fundamental Dragon book…

 

[Ixal]

They didn't do that, but Dragonborn do have tails now.

Actually they don't. Hasbro modified all MTG art used in Fizban and removed the tails.