Removing spellcasting from dragons...

[arscott]

All of my favorite fantasy and mythology surrounding dragons has dragons as being feindishly clever and capable of using magic.

I agree that dragons spending all of their time casting buff spells is annoying, but that's a problem with a DM's choice of spells, not with dragons having spellcasting.

 

[MarkB]

For non-spellcasting dragons, I'd suggest making the following changes:

Give them UMD as a class skill, and the Warlock's Deceive Item ability (always able to take 10 on UMD checks) at around Young Adult level.

Double the number of spell-like abilities.

For every two Sorcerer levels removed, grant them one bonus feat, which can be drawn from the metabreath feats in Draconomicon and the breath-weapon related feats in Races of the Dragon. That frees up their regular feats for the flight-related feats and Ability Focus.

 

[Cam Banks]

Strip dragons of spellcasting and you eliminate the strongest case for sorcerers to be people with dragonblood. Which wouldn't be a bad thing, but I'm just saying - a lot of things in the setting seem to have already been predicated on the concept of dragons as sorcerers.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[S'mon]

I agree - I give dragons improved SR instead of casting, keeps their CR right.

 

[Aus_Snow]

edit --- never mind.

 

[Evilhalfling]

hmm,
+4 NAC, + 4 str, + 6 SR
dragons really only have approx cr+6-8 as spell resistance.

raise blindsense to blindsight at old (or mature adult?) catagory
acclerated healing (x4 HD per day x4 ability damage recovery)
detect magic at will as an adult

no good way of giving them the resist/protection from energy that my dragons normally cast

 

[Shemeska]

Spellcasting is simply part of D&D dragons and removing it makes no sense at all.

Absolutely.

 

[iwatt]

Personally, I'd rather see them just make good use of their "natural" abilities (with various appropriate feats) and leave off the spellcasting by default. Want a spellcasting/invoking dragon? - Take class levels like other monsters...

Agree wholeheartedly. I like beast-like dragons. I like ancient-magic dragons. This solution allows for both. For extra meanness just say that sorceror levels are non-associated to a combat beast like dragons.


On a side note: The most common learnt spell by my dragon's is Duisguise Self. Nothing says RBDM like wasting protections on the wrong kind of energy.

 

[Delta]

My attitude is that having all dragons be spellcasters is a uniquely 3.x design change to D&D. In 1E a minority of evil dragons did (regardless of age), and about half of good dragons could (depending on species). DMs could set up a given dragon encounter either way they preferred.

I agree that dragons are too complicated in 3.x. If you stripped out the standard-everybody-does-it spellcasting, and said "these dragons also commonly add sorcerer class levels, if the DM so chooses", then that would make a lot of sense, and be historically within D&D standards.

 

[Voadam]

I thought in older editions it was half of all dragons spoke and cast spells and half were just big breath weapon predators. It's been a while since I looked at the entries though.

It can work either way for D&D.