Here's my first shot at "generic" dragons. These are considerably lower in power than those listed in the M&T or 2nd edition AD&D. They fit in fairly well with 1E power levels (I think! These haven't been playtested yet, nor do I expect them to be for at least another few games).
I'm still fiddling with flight speeds, and working on ideas for spell resistance. Right now I'm thinking about 2 + 2*(HD-6), giving a range of 0-14 SR.
A note on my bias: In my campaigns dragons aren't neatly divided up into 85+ distinct races. There is just one race of dragons, and any sort of dragon can be spawned from an individual litter. They also tend not to be spellcasters, instead occasionally having unique spell-like abilities. Nevertheless, I tried to make sure that they are easily modified to be more useful to those wishing to play AD&D1E & Dragonlance modules with something akin to their original balance.
DRAGON
NO. ENCOUNTERED: 1 or 2-5
SIZE: Varies
HD: 5-12 (see below)
MOVE: 30 ft., 40 ft. (fly, see below)
AC: 19 (plus modifier, see below)
ATTACKS: 2 claws, 1 tail and 1 bite (see below)
SPECIAL: Immunity to breath weapon (see below), darkvision, detect invisible, fear, crush, breath weapon, special powers, spells
SAVES: M, P
INT: Low to Supra-Genius
ALIGNMENT: Varies
TYPE: Dragon
TREASURE: HD+3 (Hoard)
XP:
Small and Average:
5 HD: 400+5
6 HD: 600+6
7 HD: 900+7
8 HD: 1,475+8
9 HD: 2,000+9
10 HD: 3,000+10
11 HD: 3,725+11
12 HD: 4,375+12
Huge:
5 HD: 500+5
6 HD: 750+6
7 HD: 1,125+7
8 HD: 1,800+8
9 HD: 2,500+9
10 HD: 3,750+10
11 HD: 4,650+11
12 HD: 5,450+12
Note: Experience rewards for dragons with multiple breath weapons, special powers, and/or spells should be adjusted accordingly.
Dragons come in many colors, sizes, shapes, and alignments, but they all have certain statistics in common.
Dragon colors typically determine the alignment of the dragon: black, white, brown, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet dragons tend towards the evil alignments, while dragons with a metallic sheen have a tendency towards good or neutral alignments. Other types of dragons exist as well, some made of crystals, shadows or even mist and clouds.
Dragon Senses
All dragons possess excellent vision, equivalent to darkvision (60'), but allowing full perception of color. Their normal daylight vision is twice as good as a human's. Their other senses are likewise very keen. All dragons are able to detect invisible and hidden creatures (unless they remain absolutely still and somehow hide their scent) within 10' per age category.
Dragon Fear
Dragons of adult age or older can cause fear in non-dragons when they fly over them or charge. Creatures with 1 HD of 1d6 type or lower automatically flee until the dragon is no longer in sight, and then for an additional 5d6 turns.
The same holds true for non-aggressive animals and vermin of any size.
More powerful creatures may attempt a charisma save to overcome their fear. Creatures with fewer than 3 HD that fail this save must flee as above; creatures with more than 3 HD will fight at -1 to their die rolls. Creatures with HD equal to or greater than those of the dragon are not affected.
Dragon Combat
Dragon age determines the number of hit dice and base AC of a dragon, while size category determines the type of hit die and damage dealt. Both are used to determine flight speed. Refer to the following tables:
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Dragons attack with two (or four) claws, a tail and a bite. The damage done with each is shown above. Claw attacks must target opponents to the dragon's front, the bite may be used to the front or flank, and the tail attack may only be used to the rear. At the CKs discretion, some dragons may be more flexible and thus able to attack foes all around their bodies with any of their attacks.
To attack with four claws the dragon must be flying. All four claws must be used against the same opponent, and the target must be of the same or greater size than the dragon.
A dragon that starts a round flying may land on and crush a smaller opponent (or opponents, in the case of truly immense wyrms) in lieu of all attacks. In this case, make only one roll to hit. A successful hit will do the same damage as two bites (6d4, 6d6, or 6d8). In addition, the target(s) must make a dexterity save or be pinned beneath the dragon.
Breath Weapon
Most dragons can breath lines or cones of fire, acid, ice, lightning, poison, or even stranger things. These have the following effects:
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A dragon's breath weapon deals a number of dice equal to its hit dice. The exact die type is shown on the table above. A successful dexterity save reduces the damage by half.
A dragon must wait 1d3 rounds after using its breath weapon to use it again. A dragon may only use its breath weapon with the normal damage three times each hour. Any further breath weapon attacks automatically deal minimum damage, and the dragon must wait a further hour after each breath before its breath weapon "recharges".
Some dragons have breath weapons that deliver magical effects instead of or in addition to the damage listed above. Sleep gas, paralyzation gas, blinding clouds, charming mists, blinding crystal sprays, enervating shadows and more have been noted. These are left to the imagination of the CK.
A dragon generally has resistance to its own breath weapons, to the amount of 5 points of resistance per hit die.
Dragon Special Powers
Many dragons have abilities related to their habitat. Aquatic dragons and those from swamps may be able to breathe underwater, a desert or hill dragon may be able to burrow, etc.
A few rare dragons will have innate magical abilities. Good ideas can be found by rolling up a random magic item from Monsters & Treasure and applying the effects as a power of the dragon, or by rolling on the spell generator on p. 149 of Gary Gygax's World Builder.
Dragon Speech and Spells
It known that more than half of all dragons have the ability to speak in languages other than their own. It is believed that some small percentage of these dragons are capable of casting wizard or illusionist spells. Dragons capable of casting divine spells are so rarely hinted at as to be the stuff of legend. Perhaps such creatures only exist on far-flung planes of existance.
A dragon that is capable of casting spells will cast them as a wizard or illusionist of levels equal to their hit dice minus five.
Sources & Inspiration: 1E Monster Manual, Gary Gygax's World Builder, C&C Monsters & Treasure, True Dragons (Lew Pulsipher, The Dragon #50).
Edit: lowered the caster level of spellcasting dragons to bring them more in line with the 1E power levels. Didn't put a lot of thought into the spellcasting, since I tend to avoid it, but I decided to put a spellcasting white dragon into an encounter and it just warped the difficulty far beyond what I'm shooting for.
Generic Dragons
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Dangersaurus
- Ungern
- Posts: 99
- Joined: Mon Jun 11, 2007 7:00 am
Craig C wrote:
My suggestion would be to increase the breath weapon dice to D6/8/10 respectively. I tried D6/HD the other night and was a bit disappointed so have decided on D8+1 per HD of dragon from now on. I like the HD type based on the size of the dragon idea too.
Craig
At first I almost ditched the size thing... until I thought about how funny a medium-sized ancient dragon will be ...or that huge very young dragons can't actually get airborne
I admit I didn't put much thought into the d4/6/8 thing, other than to match die types with the claw/tail/bite routine. I'm a sucker for symmetry...
Anyway, how many HD was your dragon against what level players? We haven't got anyone above 2nd level yet, and I've only got time to run so many mock combats, so this kind of info is really useful to me. I can run most monsters I'm converting through a quick "in my head" combat, but this one conversion covers 24 different power levels, without even considering multiple breath weapons or added powers. I'd love it if anyone could give these dragon stats a spin.
I'm aiming for these dragons to be balanced against PCs who are 0-2 levels under the dragon's HD (depending on size, 0 for huge, 2 for small)... therefore a very young small dragon is intended as a 3rd level encounter, while a huge ancient is a level 12.
I am running DL 1 at present so it was the infamous first ever encounter with a dragon at the well if you are familar with that particular module- giving the 8HD dragon 8D6+8 (the damage I'd decided upon rather than HPs as per AD&D) kind of worked- luckily the fighter/wizard made his save and survived on about 5 hps- but I felt that the damage was a litle light (I think both times the dragon breathed averaged about 30-33 hps but I did roll low) and made me feel that D8 would have been better so will use that from now on instead.
Craig
Craig