D&D General What if every dragon was unique?

[Corinnguard]

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?"

Unless they were a polymorphed metallic dragon that was merely pretending to be the illiterate 25-year-old resident of a fictitious medieval village. Remember the metallic dragons do like taking on non-assuming, non-draconic forms. Even the father of all metallic dragons does it.

As for wanting to mix it up for the players, you can always use the dragons from a 5e-adjacent source or homebrew some dragons based off of an anime series like the Dragon's Blood Dota 2.

Eldwurms from Dragon's Blood Dota 2

 

[bedir than]

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.

Unique personalities, but all with the same abilities. That's not unique in a game where the rules define combat extensively.

 

[Minigiant]

I once proposed a setting where each dragon rolled for scale color, eye color, and horns.

Scale color determine immunity
Eye color determine breath weapon
Eye shape determines breath shape
Horn determine role

 

[kermit4karate]

Unless they were a polymorphed metallic dragon that was merely pretending to be the illiterate 25-year-old resident of a fictitious medieval village. Remember the metallic dragons do like taking on non-assuming, non-draconic forms. Even the father of all metallic dragons does it.

As for wanting to mix it up for the players, you can always use the dragons from a 5e-adjacent source or homebrew some dragons based off of an anime series like the Dragon's Blood Dota 2.

Eldwurms from Dragon's Blood Dota 2

I definitely play my ancient dragons that way, almost deifying them. The point I was trying to make was that I customize and take liberties with ALL my monsters and species/races because I HATE when the players at the table roleplay based on their certainty of an official stat block. That makes zero sense to me, and I loathe it on multiple levels.

The characters aren't all anthropologists, zoologists, ethologists and sociologists. Why would a young adventurer from a small village on the outskirts of the realm know how many hit dice a troll has, or its AC, or how you have to cauterize its wounds with acid or fire if you don't want it to regenerate? Why would they know what a beholder's eye stalks do? Why would they know how vampirism works or lycanthropy? All but a select few characters should have no knowledge of these things, so I take the knowledge they do think they have away from them in the interest of maintaining their fear of the unknown.

They shouldn't know what they know about monsters, IMO. So that's ultimately why I change my monsters.

 

[Celebrim]

They shouldn't know what they know about monsters, IMO.

It's not at all clear to me that that is true.

Why would a young adventurer from a small village on the outskirts of the realm know how many hit dice a troll has, or its AC, or how you have to cauterize its wounds with acid or fire if you don't want it to regenerate?

Well, because he has spent more time as child hearing stories of trolls, and as a young man swapping tavern tales at the bar, heard more tales of heroism and of daring, than any player of D&D has spent reading the monster manual. He lives in a world were trolls are real, and so that world is filled with stories about them, and warnings about them, the way your life was filled with stories to not play with matches or run out in front of traffic and so forth.

When Bilbo, a gentle hobbit of leisure from a landed family with no education or profession to speak of, first sees a troll he doesn't need anyone to tell him what a troll is or that trolls turn to stone when exposed to sunlight, even though there hasn't been a troll in the Shire in centuries. Because he's been told all about them in travelers tales and folk lore, in rhymes and lore poems and song. He's knows that he's seeing trolls. Likewise, when he talks to Smaug, there hasn't been a dragon in the Shire in centuries, but he knows what sort of beast that they are, how to flatter them, not to give his name to one, and so forth. He's not ignorant of the ways of dragons despite coming from the most sheltered background possible in middle earth.

Why would they know how vampirism works or lycanthropy?

Because he lives in a world where those things are real and not merely stories in books. He lives in a world were knowing how to recognize the signs of those things or defend from those things is essential skills for all culture. He knows as much about the monsters and dangers of his world as the average young man knows about sports. If these things exist, the common lore of the day, the songs he sings, the folk stories that he has heard since he was a child, the talk of the old men of the village is filled with all of these things. Imagine a vampire or a zombie invasion actually happened in the real world, wouldn't you expect most people to immediately recognize these things just from their place in movies and literature? So how much more so would you expect that those who live where vampires and zombie invasions aren't merely hypothetical would know at least as much as the average person?

 

[kermit4karate]

It's not at all clear to me that that is true.

You can disagree.

Well, because he has spent more time as child hearing stories of trolls, and as a young man swapping tavern tales at the bar, heard more tales of heroism and of daring, than any player of D&D has spent reading the monster manual. He lives in a world were trolls are real, and so that world is filled with stories about them, and warnings about them, the way your life was filled with stories to not play with matches or run out in front of traffic and so forth.

I don't see it that way, but you're free to.

When Bilbo, a gentle hobbit of leisure from a landed family with no education or profession to speak of, first sees a troll he doesn't need anyone to tell him what a troll is or that trolls turn to stone when exposed to sunlight, even though there hasn't been a troll in the Shire in centuries. Because he's been told all about them in travelers tales and folk lore, in rhymes and lore poems and song. He's knows that he's seeing trolls. Likewise, when he talks to Smaug, there hasn't been a dragon in the Shire in centuries, but he knows what sort of beast that they are, how to flatter them, not to give his name to one, and so forth. He's not ignorant of the ways of dragons despite coming from the most sheltered background possible in middle earth.

Cool story, bro.

Because he lives in a world where those things are real and not merely stories in books. He lives in a world were knowing how to recognize the signs of those things or defend from those things is essential skills for all culture. He knows as much about the monsters and dangers of his world as the average young man knows about sports. If these things exist, the common lore of the day, the songs he sings, the folk stories that he has heard since he was a child, the talk of the old men of the village is filled with all of these things. Imagine a vampire or a zombie invasion actually happened in the real world, wouldn't you expect most people to immediately recognize these things just from their place in movies and literature? So how much more so would you expect that those who live where vampires and zombie invasions aren't merely hypothetical would know at least as much as the average person?

I get it. You don't see it the same way.

 

[Celebrim]

I get it. You don't see it the same way.

Yep.

My only point is the idea that your way of seeing things is just a natural, obvious and logical conclusion of the setting is false.

We see things different ways not because it follows inevitably from imagining what the real game world is like if it were "realistic", but because of different things we wish players to experience at the table. "They shouldn't know what they know about monsters..." isn't the result of logically working out what the game universe is really like, but the result of what you personally want the game to be like. In your case it's not really about the player character's knowledge, but about the player's knowledge. As you said yourself, " I HATE when the players at the table roleplay based on their certainty of an official stat block." Everything else is just rationalizing your hatred for that.

I'm rather the reverse. I hate that my players don't have the advantage of the knowledge of the decades of life their characters would have spent growing up in the game universe. It bugs me that because of my limitations as a GM virtually every NPC in the imagined game universe should know vastly more about it than I do as that universe's creator. It bugs me that the 100's of thousands of tomes of lore that exist in the game universe aren't available for the players to read, and that every one of their literate characters should have read dozens or hundreds of them to say nothing of being able to sing scores of original songs native to that universe and tell at least in a vague way hundreds of tales of history and myth from that universe just as I am able to about this universe. I hate that the players are robbed of all the rich knowledge that they should have through their characters so that they can't roleplay those characters in a way that is truly natural to that universe.

A monster manual in this game universe is a bestiary that contains the tiniest fraction of the knowledge of what is known about those creatures in the imagined game space. There are inevitably tomes in my homebrew world that would give the reader vastly more insight into the nature and character of common and even uncommon monsters in my homebrew universe than the monster manual of this universe does.

 

[kermit4karate]

Yep.

My only point is the idea that your way of seeing things is just a natural, obvious and logical conclusion of the setting is false.

Oh, I get it. You can't just disagree with me. You also have to delegitimize my opinion. I get it. I am a frog, but I ain't stoopid.

We see things different ways not because it follows inevitably from imagining what the real game world is like if it were "realistic", but because of different things we wish players to experience at the table. "They shouldn't know what they know about monsters..." isn't the result of logically working out what the game universe is really like...

 

[bloodtide]

Unique personalities, but all with the same abilities. That's not unique in a game where the rules define combat extensively.

Maybe someday WotC will put out a Draconomicon: The Book of Dragons for 5.5E.........................

 

[Voadam]

Rather than the major chromatics being a species of dragons and collection of those that grow from egg to ancient wyrm, could D&D instead be a space where every dragon has different abilities, different temperaments and different looks?

Sure, you'd still have a red -- Smaug like, hoarding of treasure, breather of fire, bad at riddles.

But may Themberchaud isn't red. Instead they are the little sparky fires, hoarder of rich foods, gluttonous, willing destroyer.

Another may be like the jaculus. They like baubles and jewelry, a thief that breathes lightning.

Mythmakers, spell thieves, spell builders (like Strixhaven's), ale drakes, paper dragons, and more -- all singular. A book of dragons would be a dictionary of these massive creatures that grew of a spark of hoarding into a vast being who exists everywhere.

This is easy to do using standard D&D. Five chromatics and five metallics gives you 10 unique dragons for your campaign/setting.

That is before getting into the dragon turtle, the planar dragons, the gem dragons, the linnorms, the lungs, and all the oddball dragons in various editions and sourcebooks.

Just using one of any type of dragon you can still have a lot of uniques with most everything already done out for you already.