D&D 5E The October D&D Book is Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons

As revealed by Nerd Immersion by deciphering computer code from D&D Beyond!

Spoiler

Fizban the Fabulous is, of course, the accident-prone, befuddled alter-ego of Dragonlance’s god of good dragons, Paladine, the platinum dragon (Dragonlance’s version of Bahamut).

Which makes my guess earlier this year spot on!

UPDATE -- the book now has a description!

D&D 5E - Fizban's Treasury: The Dragon Book Now Has A Description... And A Feat

Courtesy of Amazon, we now have a description for Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, the October D&D hardcover. The book introduces gem dragons, dragon-themed player options, and plenty of draconic lore! This joins September's The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, and November's Strixhaven: Curriculum of...

www.enworld.org

D&D 5E - My guess for the other D&D book this year... Draconomicon!

We know the fifth major product this year will be James Wyatt‘s as-yet unannounced project, and we know it will be coming out this year between Witchlight and Strixhaven. Wyatt co-wrote the Draconomicon for 3E. There have been two recent dragon-themed Unearthed Arcanas — dragon-themed...

www.enworld.org

Fizban the Fabulous by Vera Gentinetta

 

[Disgruntled Hobbit]

We've been through this recently on another thread here on ENWorld. That's simply not true. Draconians were produced in the Dark Temple by transferring the souls of Abishai (lesser Devils) into the corrupted dragon eggs of the metallic dragons. They had no agency to change their moral nature. They were all inherently evil. They are the earthly flesh of devils.

The later so called "noble" draconians may have had that option - but they were not made the same way.

Whatever passage you are quoting is a complete retcon.

Given the dislike for orcs and drow as inherently evil there's no way they're keeping that

And all draconians were created during the war by the same process

 

[Staffan]

There have been options in the Setting books.

Wildemount had about 50 magic items including the Vestiges of Divergence and their evil counterparts. Eberron had about 25, and a large portion of those were non-adventurer items (like cleansing stones, that are basically laundromats). Other than those, there's been like 10-20 here and there. I'm talking about a significant expansion, on par with the DMG section on magic items (which is about 80-100 pages, depending on whether you count intelligent items/artifacts and rules surrounding magic items).

 

[Disgruntled Hobbit]

A dream come true? I know, right?

Easily doable, just using older edition material.

Assuming gem dragons get similar pages to the chromatics and metallics, that's 15 pages
That's 75 to 85 new dragon monsters
Even using older editions, is there enough?

 

[Steel_Wind]

WotC does that all the time. Whatever sells toys and shirts best.

Well, that may be. And if you are trying to justify a non-evil Draconian, that might be one way to do it. Freeing a corrupted soul of its possessor is another. There are many others we could dream up, too.

Nevertheless, the way that draconians were made is not an afterthought to the setting; finding out how it happened and taking steps to stop it from continuing to happen is one of the two climaxes to the original DL story. It's literally the main plotline!

Whatever the case, in a time where we are backing off of races being "inherently evil" (for some good real-world reasons) there is still something useful in maintaining a fantasy race that is the by-product of possession by objectively evil and irredeemable devils. There is great utility in the moral clarity that provides. That's a useful thing in what is ideally used as an introductory epic story like DragonLance to new players of the game.

 

[Faolyn]

Assuming gem dragons get similar pages to the chromatics and metallics, that's 15 pages
That's 75 to 85 new dragon monsters
Even using older editions, is there enough?

Other potential dragons include making the rest of the planar dragons as templates, a la the shadow dragon, and ferrous dragons, lungs, and linnorms.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

We've been through this recently on another thread here on ENWorld. That's simply not true. Draconians were produced in the Dark Temple by transferring the souls of Abishai (lesser Devils) into the corrupted dragon eggs of the metallic dragons. They had no agency to change their moral nature. They were all inherently evil. They are the earthly flesh of devils.

The later so called "noble" draconians may have had that option - but they were not made the same way.

Whatever passage you are quoting is a complete retcon.

I quoted 1d4chan because I largely trust it (and it makes me laugh) but I don't know enough about Dragonlance to verify the accuracy of the quote.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Given the dislike for orcs and drow as inherently evil there's no way they're keeping that

And all draconians were created during the war by the same process

Well, yes and no. Noble Draconians were a 3.5 gloss on the originals -- they were created by corrupting the eggs of chromatic dragons that had died during the War of the Lance. The shtick used to justify them was that after the liberation of the good dragon eggs Ariakus needed more troops. So just as corrupting good dragon eggs turns them evil -- the corruption of evil dragon eggs turned them unexpectedly good. So that the noble draconians of the 3.5 setting could have agency to become good guys (and thus, PC races or friendly NPCs).

It's a 3.5 era retcon ca 2005. I'm not suggesting it isn't. Still, that was the backstory to em.

 

[Dire Bare]

Since alignment is on the outs anyway, I don't think that's the issue. The issue is draconians are made by murdering unborn good dragons.

Anyone remember how the internet collectively lost its mind when Baby Yoda ate some eggs, so much so that Disney had to frantically backseat and say those were unfertilized eggs? Yeah,the old draconian origin is not going to fly for 5E is they are a PC race.

Eggs are not people (or dragons, or space frog-people), fertilized or unfertilized.

The problem with Baby Yoda eating Frog Lady's eggs wasn't that . . . "omigod, they're babies!" . . . but rather, this was Frog Lady's LAST CHANCE to raise children from her partner (and I think, species). It was terrible, but it wasn't murder. The internet did freak out a bit, but I don't remember Disney addressing this at all.

Draconians were originally made by a dark ritual corrupting the eggs of good dragons into draconians . . . but again, not murder. Still very wrong, dark, and terrible, but not at the Frog Lady level . . . it was never explained why the metallic dragons couldn't just, well, lay more eggs (unless I'm forgetting something)! Frog Lady didn't have that option in the Mandalorian.

I love Dragonlance, but . . . it has a lot of stupid worldbuilding baked in, even if you ignore the always-evil-people problem D&D has more generally.

"The minions of Takhisis stole our eggs! If we don't sit out this war, they will destroy them!" "Well, can't we just lay more eggs?"

 

[Dire Bare]

We've been through this recently on another thread here on ENWorld. That's simply not true. Draconians were produced in the Dark Temple by transferring the souls of Abishai (lesser Devils) into the corrupted dragon eggs of the metallic dragons. They had no agency to change their moral nature. They were all inherently evil. They are the earthly flesh of devils.

The later so called "noble" draconians may have had that option - but they were not made the same way.

Whatever passage you are quoting is a complete retcon.

It is true. It's also a retcon. Dragonlance has always been a shared setting, and like all shared settings that have lasted decades, it has developed and changed over time. And that's okay.

Draconians underwent the "Klingon Effect". They started out as always-evil baddies, to be sure, but over time developed into a species with just as much free-will as any other.

The so-called "noble draconians" are a side note in Dragonlance canon. They showed up in one monster book during the D&D 3E era. They fit that original story quite well, but don't fit into the later development of draconians in the Kang's Regiment stories. I'm pretty sure the only place you'll find them is in the 3E "Bestiary".

 

[Parmandur]

Assuming gem dragons get similar pages to the chromatics and metallics, that's 15 pages
That's 75 to 85 new dragon monsters
Even using older editions, is there enough?

Honest to goodness, yes. Variant Dragons are a huge topic of various Beatiary books. I would expect expect lot of Dragonborn and Kobold.stat block types, too, maybe NPC templates.