Author Topic: Being Bahamut-Oslecamo's guide for DM use of dragons  (Read 7526 times)

Offline oslecamo

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Being Bahamut-Oslecamo's guide for DM use of dragons
« on: April 11, 2014, 08:14:30 PM »
Dragons are the iconic D&D monster, but it seems like quite a bit of DMs have trouble using them effectively, which is understandable since the basic MM doesn't provide example dragons ready to use. Dracomicon had some of them, but they're somewhat poorly made, so I decided to do something to fill this gap.

Index plan
1-Dragons general strengths and weaknesses.
2-Dragon spells.
3-Dragon gear treasure.
4-Dragon feats
5-Dragon lairs
6-Dragon minions
7-Dragon plots and personalities.
8-Sample ready to use dragons.

I was planning on doing this on my general guide to DMs, but ended up deciding it may work better as its own handbook.

Dragons General Strengths

The main advantage of dragons is that they pack an exceptional number of different abilities at the same time.  By no particular order, those are:
-Extremely high fly speeds. Even your average wyrmling can move up to 150 feet with a single move action, and they get faster as they grow up. This basically means a dragon can choose the field of battle, because he can escape pretty much any combat, intercept enemies at distance, and quickly approach fleeing enemies.
-Breath weapon. Those come in all forms and colors depending on the specific dragon. Some dragons have more than one. Most of them are good attacks on their own, some are amazing, in particular breaths that inflict status effects, they all can be further buffed with metabreath feats. They have great synergy with a dragon's high fly speed when combined with Flyby attack, allowing him to close in, breath, and then fly away on the same turn. More on that later.
-Magic! Dragons get both SLAs and sorceror spellcasting. Alas, those come in a somewhat delayed manner compared to everybody else, so no dragon can rely just in magic alone. It can be used for great support if applied properly.
-Great quality and quantity of HD. Dragons get a d12 for HP with all good saves and good Bab and 6 skill points base. And they get loads of them,  always pushing above their CR. This gives dragons great base numbers overall. Lots of HD also means lots of feats, and once they're above 20 of them, they can start grabbing epic feats for what it's worth.
-Great ability scores. Except for Dex. And not so great during the younger ages, but old dragons have some pretty good base stats, that further enanche their raw numbers.
-A nice array of other defenses, between Spell Resistance, high natural armor, elemental immunities depending on type, DR/magic, and don't forget the basic immunity to paralyzis and sleep.
-Good sensory abilities, between Blindsense 60 feet and Keen Senses for darkvision 120 feet and double range lowlight vision, spot and listen are base class skills, dragons are hard to surprise.
-Lots of natural attacks. Even wyrmlings have a bite and two claws, and older dragons eventually full attack with 6 natural weapons.
-Triple treasure. Dragons can afford a lot more fancy items than most other monsters.
-On a more metagame note, dragons have quite a bit of specific support material in the form of draconic and metabreath feats, alternate dragon features, and some other nice extras scattered across splatbooks.

Wow, that's quite a bit to track of! I guess that's why I decided to start this guide. Specific dragons may have further abilities, in particular extra movement modes like Swim and Burrow.

Dragon Genreal Weaknesses

Despite all of their advantages, dragons pack some key weaknesses that you should always take in mind:

-Low Dexterity score. Wyrmlings start with 10 Dex, and it never gets better. This means that by default dragons have pretty low Initiative and touch AC, which just get worst as they grow.
-Horrible flying maneuverability, that also gets worst as they grow. This isn't as bad as the above, since massive fly speed helps a lot to make up for it, but can be tricky if the dragon is fighting in enclosed spaces.
-Syndrome of Jack of All Trades, master of none. In isolation, whatever single ability a dragon has, there's some other monster of the same level that does it better (with the exception of some of the specific save-or-die breath weapons, but those are isolated cases). To make a dragon shine, you have to go for synergetic combinations of his abilities.

So basically, dragons have lots of strengths, but also some important weaknesses to take in accounts. Luckily, if you play your strengths well, you'll be able to make up for the weaknsses, and unlock all kind of synergetic abilities that justifies the reputation of dragons.
« Last Edit: April 20, 2014, 08:29:41 PM by oslecamo »

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Being Bahamut-Oslecamo's guide for DM use of dragons
« Reply #1 on: April 11, 2014, 08:14:46 PM »
2-Dragon spells.

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Re: Being Bahamut-Oslecamo's guide for DM use of dragons
« Reply #2 on: April 11, 2014, 08:15:24 PM »
3-Dragon gear treasure.

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Re: Being Bahamut-Oslecamo's guide for DM use of dragons
« Reply #3 on: April 11, 2014, 08:17:21 PM »
4-Dragon feats

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Re: Being Bahamut-Oslecamo's guide for DM use of dragons
« Reply #4 on: April 11, 2014, 08:17:33 PM »
5-Dragon lairs

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Re: Being Bahamut-Oslecamo's guide for DM use of dragons
« Reply #5 on: April 11, 2014, 08:17:44 PM »
6-Dragon minions

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Re: Being Bahamut-Oslecamo's guide for DM use of dragons
« Reply #6 on: April 11, 2014, 08:17:56 PM »
7-Dragon plots and personalities.

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Re: Being Bahamut-Oslecamo's guide for DM use of dragons
« Reply #7 on: April 11, 2014, 08:18:07 PM »
8-Sample ready to use dragons.

Note: Unless otherwise noticed, those dragon statistics already take in account any magic items they have equipped. When an ability score shows up on brackets, that means the dragon's original ability score whitout its gear.


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« Last Edit: April 26, 2014, 09:47:59 AM by oslecamo »

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Being Bahamut-Oslecamo's guide for DM use of dragons
« Reply #8 on: April 15, 2014, 03:07:14 PM »
8.2 Sample blue dragons
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« Last Edit: April 26, 2014, 09:48:28 AM by oslecamo »

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Re: Being Bahamut-Oslecamo's guide for DM use of dragons
« Reply #9 on: April 20, 2014, 08:22:04 PM »
8.3 Sample Brass dragons
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« Last Edit: April 26, 2014, 11:34:53 AM by oslecamo »

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Re: Being Bahamut-Oslecamo's guide for DM use of dragons
« Reply #10 on: April 20, 2014, 08:24:27 PM »
8.X Classed Dragons (will move this post further down as I post new true dragons)


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