Which edition had the best dragons?

[darkwillow]

I was reading my old monster manual 1e and looking at the dragons I was confused as to where the damage was for the breath weapon.
Then I found it, the damage is supposed to be equal to the dragons current hit points.
WOW I do not remember that at all, and I feel like I should have. But I vaguely remember the party being terrified of fighting them.
Which edition do you think had the best dragons, the ones that were the most fun to encounter?

 

[GuyBoy]

The number 96 sticks in my mind as maximum breath damage from an Ancient Gold Dragon in 1e.
That was serious damage when even fighter HP maxed out at 9 dice and then added 3 per level. In 5e that's barely a scratch...Ok, slight exaggeration but the point remains.
Dragons were scary.....though they could be subdued!

 

[Grogg of the North]

Dragons were scary.....though they could be subdued!

Dragons should always be scary, especially played smartly. Why is your dragon in a 20x20 featureless room and why would it fight fair?

I like how in PF1 the dragons get more abilities as they age, including spellcasting. And that their abilities varied by the type of dragon.

In the last 5E game I played in we ran into a few dragons and I recall being underwhelmed with them. Basically big lizards with lots of hit points and a breath weapon. Is this the norm for 5E? No spells or special abilities beyond lair/legendary actions?

 

[RuinousPowers]

Dragons got a big buff between 1e and 2e, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing. I feel like it made DMs a lot more cautious to use these "boss monsters", making them more rare than I think they were intended to be in 1e.

 

[BrokenTwin]

4E introduced the catastrophic dragons, which were always my favorite, so that's where my vote is going. Mechanics-wise they had problems (as did pretty much every solo monster until way too late in the 4E design cycle), but thematically and visually? Yes please.

 

[cavalier973]

The 4e Essentials dragons could act twice in the first round. They rolled initiative, then added 10, so they probably acted first, no matter what.

The personality descriptions in the Monster Vault were also nice. White dragons were tough, but kind of dumb. Blue dragons were the most vain, but also probably the most reasonable of the chromatics. Black dragons were maliciously cruel and tricky. Green dragons were avatars of deceit. Red dragons were vindictive masterminds.

And that’s why 4e Essentials dragons are so great.

 

[billd91]

Interesting question. I think the dragons probably hit their apex of interesting for me in the 3e family, particularly in PF. But I think I might say that 2e was where dragons were at their best. For one thing, 2e recognized that dragons were far too weak in 1e and gave us more options at higher power levels. But evasion was also a lot harder to get in 2e than in the 3e family and that made their breath weapon more effective.

The dragons in 5e, I think, have dialed back a little too much. They can still be fun, but I think they could stand a few more resistances, particularly as they age up.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Then I found it, the damage is supposed to be equal to the dragons current hit points.
WOW I do not remember that at all, and I feel like I should have.

All the D&Ds up to 2e (so oD&D, AD&D, and the basic/classic line) had this. The dragons didn't have the HD and impossible ACs (at the upper end) as 2e and 3e, but the breath weapon still made them incredibly frightening. Upper age category 2e dragons, honestly, those were 'engage these creatures in some way that doesn't involve your actual stats'-type enemies (sick them against each other, hire some giants to help, collapse the dungeon upon them, etc.).

In the last 5E game I played in we ran into a few dragons and I recall being underwhelmed with them. Basically big lizards with lots of hit points and a breath weapon. Is this the norm for 5E? No spells or special abilities beyond lair/legendary actions?

5E -- presumably having taken a lesson from all the big-bads that have to have a high CR because of all the things they can do but get ganked by a party of CR-appropriate level because they still can only do one of them per round -- did a lot of paring down of monsters with massively multiple special abilities that can't all be used in the same turn. Dragons are big combat bruisers that can fly and have a breath weapon, and then the boss ones get lair/legendary actions (nullifying the action economy issue). Note that I believe it is the MM that mentions DMs adding spells to dragons to be a good strategy where appropriate. But yes, the general attitude of 5e is that if you want a bruiser enemy with spellcasting in the mix, you add a spellcasting enemy to fight alongside them.

 

[James Gasik]

While 3e gave us the Draconomicon with some really great dragons, I think overall, Dragons benefited from 4e and 5e the most- giving us legendary actions and lair actions, so you could have the solo battle against a dragon that other editions sometimes failed to give you.

Due to action economy, if the dragon didn't play to it's strengths (at which point, it won't fight fair and the party dies, lol*), or if the party has prepped sufficiently, the dragon would be dead in short order.

This often required dirty tricks on the part of the DM, such as Dragon Mountain, where the dragon sets up a "fake dragon" for the party to waste all their best moves on before the real fight begins.

But with the introduction of rules for "solo" monsters, that have abilities that allowed them to overcome this action economy deficit, fights were less than a "level check" to see if your survived the breath weapon. Sadly, however, I still feel legendary actions are a bit hard to swallow from a narrative standpoint, and I much prefer lair actions.

*a good example of this comes from 4e, where a blue dragon was statted up as an artillery-style monster that simply shot lighting at the party from a safe distance. When asked how on earth a party could fight such a monster, it was admitted that, at some point, the dragon is going to land and face the party, because otherwise, it would win unless the players ran away.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

For variety, 2e. For depth, 5e. Adding Lair and Legendary actions makes those battles into real showpieces.

I overused dragons way too much in 2e, though, to the point that I pretty much went the entirety of 3e using no more than 1-3 dragons in all of my campaigns.