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.