D&D General What if every dragon was unique?

[kermit4karate]

Tweak the stats and reskin everything. Best of both worlds.

Big fan of reskinning creatures.

 

[Maxperson]

Did you ask them, "Why would an illiterate 25-year-old resident of a fictitious Medieval village know the detailed biology and ethology of a rare monster that you, nor anyone you know, have never seen before?"

No. This was a player issue, not a PC issue. We had all been playing since 1e and this was during 3.5e sometime. It's just hard to get past color = alignment and breath weapon.

 

[Azzy]

I like the idea i theory. It would be helpful if D&D had more robust rules for creating and altering monsters than it presently does to facilitate this.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Yes! I much prefer "monsters" to be akin to the creatures of mythology. I have never liked the idea of "monsters" being natural. They should be strange and unworldly, creations of magic or dark powers, not part of the natural ecosystem.

Yes!!! They really ruined Dragons when they made them "run of the mill" and easily defeated by a small party of heroes. Dragons should be a campaign ending foe, not a "monster of the week" feature.

Counterpoint: if I want dragon-riders to be a major thing in my campaign, then dragons can't be much rarer than warhorses.

But trying to make one kind of dragon fill both roles isn't going to work well.

 

[bedir than]

I was just at half-price books. They had a big stack of "The Game Masters Book of Legendary Dragons" which is basically a bunch of unique dragons with backstories and unique abilities. Sounds like your sort of thing.

I have this! The whole line of "Game Masters Book of..." does wonderful work with random tables and such. I'll dive back into this one this week.

 

[Celebrim]

Did you ask them, "Why would an illiterate 25-year-old resident of a fictitious Medieval village know the detailed biology and ethology of a rare monster that you, nor anyone you know, have never seen before?"

I have never have a PC who was a 25-year-old illiterate from a medieval village.

The last illiterate PC in my game was a barbarian from an island full of rare monsters, who'd left and became a pirate.

One of my general rules is to assume that every intelligent inhabitant of a D&D campaign world knows more about monsters than any player who could possibly be at the table. Even the illiterate villagers know more about things like fairies, werewolves, undead, and dopplegangers than the players, by virtue of living in a world where such things actually exist and are as important to know about as planting crops or reading the weather.

I'm never playing "gotcha" with my players. I don't depend metagame trickery to make encounters challenging. Very rare or unique monsters exist yet if those monsters were famous, I'd expect most people (and certainly educated people which most PCs are) to have some idea about how to recognize them and what they can do. It's the things that are neither famous nor common that they might not recognize on and know something about.

 

[kermit4karate]

I have never have a PC who was a 25-year-old illiterate from a medieval village.

The last illiterate PC in my game was a barbarian from an island full of rare monsters, who'd left and became a pirate.

One of my general rules is to assume that every intelligent inhabitant of a D&D campaign world knows more about monsters than any player who could possibly be at the table. Even the illiterate villagers know more about things like fairies, werewolves, undead, and dopplegangers than the players, by virtue of living in a world where such things actually exist and are as important to know about as planting crops or reading the weather.

I'm never playing "gotcha" with my players. I don't depend metagame trickery to make encounters challenging. Very rare or unique monsters exist yet if those monsters were famous, I'd expect most people (and certainly educated people which most PCs are) to have some idea about how to recognize them and what they can do. It's the things that are neither famous nor common that they might not recognize on and know something about.

OK.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I like to walk a different line here.

I have this conception of dragons-are-angels-are-dragons. Originally, you had two broods and a bunch of non-brood dragons. Dead Io, the Source from which the universe springs, produced many divine children, but Tiamat and Bahamut were the two greatest, and they spawned the Prismatic and Metallic broods. Their divine siblings have their own children, but those dragons are more or less just lesser copies of their parents, not distinct the way the Progenitors' children are. The two were created to be one another's opposite number, the perfect match, which would eventually produce the successor to Io--the dragon that is and contains all things, who will carry the torch on to the universe that comes after.

But something happened, something stole the Egg that was Promised, and Tiamat went mad trying to find it--to the point that she struck Bahamut and fled. Her fall, when she was meant to be Child-Hunter-Ruler (e.g. Son-Hunter-King/Daughter-Huntress-Queen), has broken the world itself. Bahamut, as Sibling-Teacher-Priest, cannot truly rule the cosmos properly; he can guide, inspire, and protect, but he cannot rule the way Tiamat could. And when Tiamat fell, she took her brood with her, creating the fallen Chromatics, so there are no more Ruby dragons, no more Diamond dragons, only Red and White etc. (And none know where the Topaz nor Amethyst went; not even Tiamat, whose shattered mind does not even manifest Yellow nor Purple heads!)

But all their siblings? Pearl and obsidian and opal and tektite, and on and on? They too have their children, albeit few in number, who attend to other aspects of creation.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Everyone saying this "wouldn't be D&D" understands that this was how dragons worked in Birthright back in 2E, right? No chromatics or metallics, just dragons, all with a unique selection of powers.

 

[JamesLFlowers]

Dragons are already unique. Just because two dragons are "red" doesn't make them the same. It simply makes them come from the same base. If every red dragon is the same, that's just lazy DM not a D&D issue. Intelligent creatures develop their own personalities, quirks, and abilities.