Canonfire!

Thu Jan 10, 2008 11:07 pm Dragons from the Worlds and Monsters Book

Bits and Pieces from Worlds an Monster preview book:

Like other monsters, dragons have roles they are to play; blue are described as artillery, white are brutes, reds are soldiers.

Dragons have fewer abilities with the focus put on the iconic abilties in order to fit WOTC "continuing theme" for monsters. It was said that dragons can still do more than other monsters in a round and can even do some things when it isn't their turn to act.

Dragons do not have specific alignments, apparently chromatic dragons are "wild" and metallic dragons like to be in control. My understanding is that what we know as good dragons do not have to be good any more and evil dragons do not have to be evil.

They added to new dragon types, the iron and adamantine, bronze and brass are out of 4th edition (at least for now); Green dragons breath poison.

More information can be found here:

http://www.enworld.org/index.php?page=4e#rules
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Eileen of Greyhawk, Prophet of Istus, Messenger of the Gods

Fri Jan 11, 2008 4:03 am

Well Iron dragons are just non-setting specific Greyhawk dragons . Disappointing about the loss of the others. I could never bring myself to make a metallic dragon evil but more neutrally aligned dragons means that pcs can no longer be sure about the motives of dragons, which might be fun.

There is a rumour that some monsters may be allowed access to rituals so that, while their combat options will be reduced to their most iconic abilities, they may still be able to access other powers for use in the wider plot. Looks very promising.

Fri Jan 11, 2008 2:19 pm

I don't see that there are any real changes except that certain dragon types are being left out.

Sure, 3e/3.5e alignments might be listed as "always" good or "always" evil, but no one - including WotC - has ever stuck to that. Anybody remember Lashonna? the silver dragon from AoW? NOT good-aligned!

As far as monster roles are concerned, those have always been dictated by a monster's abilities and attack forms - no significant change there except that presumably monsters' non-combat-oriented abilities are now being ignored or otherwise swept aside.

Access to rituals? That's nothing more than a mechanical reworking of 3e/3.5e's practice of adding templates and class levels to standard monsters. Again, no change there.

I keep waiting for 4e to follow through with it's promise to allow me to do something I couldn't do before. So far I'm still disappointed. IMHO, it seems they're stifling flexibility and creativity more than they're enhancing it. I'm beginning to think the only reason they're sacrificing all of D&D's sacred cows is because somebody in R&D has developed a taste for blood. Or perhaps has developed a taste for pissing people off...