Goodman Games

I made this up this afternoon. I dig how dragons have some old rules I remember from the red box. The tables really got the creative juices flowing. Might turn this into a 1pg Dungeon.
Anyone else wanna submit dragons they make, or demons?

Dunzagron the Old Bronze Steamer, an Ill-Tempered Erudite Chaos Dragon
HD 5 (small house size)
Initiative +5 All Saving Throws +5 Speed 50’
AC 20 HP: 30
Attacks 4d20 +8: Claws(d8+5), Bite(d12+5), Tail Slap(d20+5)
Dive Bomb: +12; 2 Claws 2d8+5 or Bite 2d12+5
Steaming Breath: dmg 10; Fort DC15 for half
2/day; Cloud 1d4x10’ radius, range 60’
Spells: d30+6
Reptile Charmer: 100’
Ekim’s Mystikal Mask
Animal Summoning (Reptile)
Patron Bond: Bobugbubilz
Invoke Bobugbubilz
Detect Good
Nythuul’s Porcupine Coat
Ray of Enfeeblement
Slow
Runic Alphabet, Fey

Dunzagron lives in the Sunken Temple of Frood, unearthing and studying the runic tablets that are continually lost and found again by his slow-witted servitors. Occasionally he holds seances with three Devil Frogs that can last for months.
His treasure is a horde of tarnished silver coins, and elven arms piled in the offerings basin of the great frog idol (which he unconsciously resents) in the chapel. He steams cleans the creeping muck regularly.

What the Dragon is doing when found:

• In a sussurating trance state
  Steam cleaning himself while perched atop the frog idol
  Debating with the Devils Frogs of Frood
  Steam cleaning his treasure
  Sleeping while hanging from the ceiling
  Directing a lizardman work crew
  Interviewing a talking elf skull
  Out hunting

Nice. I love the "steam cleaning his horde" bit - and the interviewing of a talking elf skull.

goodmangames wrote:Nice. I love the "steam cleaning his horde" bit - and the interviewing of a talking elf skull.

Very cool.

I've taken a different approach with dragons -- there are "beast dragons" that are called wyrms in my campaign world, and then the "true dragons" called Il'fait.

The beast dragons are various forms of semi-intelligent ground wyrms (tatzel) and flying wyrms (w'yvre). Within each group are various species (varied HD and special qualities). A third variety is the Wyrm, a rare, but very large flying dragon with various special qualities.

True dragons are native shapeshifters (ala Malazan) -- probably going to have them as "protectors of the world" from demonic/otherwordly incursions. This may take the form of benevolence, but will more than likely be seen as malevolent in the eyes of the regular joe. Super powerful Il'fait can also be patrons -- and they always work behind the scenes. Direct encounters with adventurers (where they know their dealing with a true dragon) are almost non-existent.

I think this gives me a variety of unique threats in a "class" of monster and a few plot-hook / patron / wheels-within-wheels stuff to keep things interesting.

I'm tempted to post my randomly rolled dragon, but I'm not sure how to calculate the damage of the breath weapon. I'm not sure I follow what "As dragon’s hit points or half with save," means.

My dragon is Ancient. He has 9 HD (d12). On Table II it lists '8' under "HP per HD." Does this mean that he has 72 hit points (8 hit points x 9 HD)?

For his breath damage, do I roll 9d12? Or is it a fixed number "as dragon's hit points?"

Finally, this is likely a point of preference, but would you roll the dragons breath weapon dimensions ahead of time or on the fly, in game?

I think the breath weapon damage rule is meant to be the same as it was in (non-advanced) Dungeons & Dragons: the breath does damage equal to the dragon's current HP, half on a successful saving throw. It is the whole reason that dragons used to always try and start off their offense with a breath weapon, it would get harder for them to muster such potent breath as the fight wore on.

I know that I will be doing things that way, and love that Dragons have listed flat-values of HP per hit die as that makes sure that if you roll up a dragon it is guaranteed to be a tough fight that your party is likely to remember - helps prevent the "well, that was easy! Let's hunt dragons from now on!" mentality I have seen form after dragon encounters in other games also.

As for breath dimensions... as another throwback to D&D, I would roll up dimensions for each different type of breath at the time of creating the dragon - some of the oldies had a cone of this or a line of that, some had both, and some had three different types of cone that were all the same size.

It'd probably be too much hassle for me, personally, to remember to roll up dimensions of the breath in the middle of battle.

Their HP seem way too low! A stupid bugbear has 4 HD. My 1st level party of 5 took down a 4 HD Ogre without being hit in 2 rounds. (they were a bit lucky though). Remember Dragons tend to be solo monsters. They should have to hold up for at least 5 rounds. Even a low level party can do 20 damage a round. I recommend 8-12 HD just to make 'em last.

ShaggyCan wrote:Remember Dragons tend to be solo monsters.

Maybe when they are house-sized and larger, but even then I have seen plenty of times where a pair of dragons - or even an entire family unit of a few parents, their "teenage" kids, and a slew of new hatchlings filling a cave - make just as much sense to encounter as the lone dragon.

It seems pretty intuitive to me that if a monster isn't impressive enough to be used alone (like the smaller dragons) that you should simply not use it alone, rather than artificially make village-destroying baby monsters.

Personal preference combined with pet peeve - yes, throwbacks to old-school D&D are great (I like throwbacks), but blindly adhering to stereotypes formed by old-school D&D (most often preventing fighters from having neat tricks, in this case Dragon = Solo) is unbearable for me to read when talking about a game (DCC) which could be so much more than just "another D&D."