User:MisterSinister/Bestiary

Dragon Types, or Why We Need Fewer of Them
Taste the rainbow.'

The number of types of dragon hypothesised by official DnD material is, for lack of a better term, fucking insane. There are ten types of true dragon in the MM1 alone, which already stretches people's conceptual space to near-breaking point unless they are a raving dragon fanboy, and with all the extras added by subsequent Monster Manuals, the Draconomicon, and other sourcebooks to boot, makes keeping track of them all far, far too complex. To make matters even worse, a lot of them have identifying features which quite frankly, I have trouble making any sense of (to this day I have no idea how copper dragons and brass dragons differ). There are planar dragons, environmental dragons, colour dragons, metal dragons, psionic dragons, incarnum dragons, shadow dragons, truename dragons, epic dragons, your mum dragons, and everything else. This is madness, as nobody who isn't a rabid dragon fanboy can make any sense of it.

This all has to stop. Instead, we're gonna have five dragon types. Yes, only five. Because this is about the upper limit on things people actually care to remember offhand without a sorting algorithm to back them up. Additionally, we're gonna distinguish dragons by where they live, rather than anything else. That way, people will instantly know the difference between them, and know what to expect from them (unlike the brass/copper problem above), as well as where to find them (again, copper/brass comes to mind here!).

So, what will these types of dragon be? We're gonna have Cloud Dragons, Lava Dragons, Sand Dragons, Snow Dragons, and Swamp Dragons. And nothing else. Ever.

Dragon Sizing, or Why Dragons Need to Be Bigger than my Dog
You can have any size you want, as long as it's too small.

When we picture dragons, we often picture them as huge. Not necessarily Huge (that's only something like 8 metres tall or long, which is tall, but not Longcat tall), but just generally very big. However, once again, dragons of CRs people will actually see in an average game that doesn't begin at high level are... pathetically small. Even having one big enough to ride on can potentially take you into CR X territory, and that's straight-up unacceptable. The logic given for this is that we need to incorporate dragon ages from 'just hatched' to 'older than your mum's mum's mum's mum's mum'. This is also in itself pretty retarded - we don't have stats for baby goblins or baby giants, so why the fuck would dragons be an exception? Of course, dragon wankery.

So this nonsense stops right here. The smallest dragon you will find in here is Huge. Literally nothing smaller will even be considered. If you want a game where baby dragons have stats, go back to the Draconomicon. Frankly, it's written just for you.

Dragon Aging, or Why Too Much of a Good Thing is Bad
''Since you were significantly different at 10 as compared to 9, the system should model this by dramatically changing your stats, and making you do even more work. '' For realism.

The fact that dragons go through eleven age categories is crazy-go-nuts. This is too much granularity to keep track of, considering that the first half or so of that scale can be safely ignored. Again, this is done to facilitate those people who believe in 'realism' or are dragon wankers, and thus, has no place here. Instead, we're going to have five categories of age that we do care about - Young, Adult, Old, Ancient and Elder. The last of these represents truly unusual, long-term survivors of dragonkind, and thus, there will be five of them. Only. Once you survive that late, you are an important NPC on a par with a Demon Lord or Archangel, and are thus going to be treated as such.

Dragon Magic, or Why Worshipping Dragon Cock Leads to Ultimate Power
Chickens on heads are so ''yesterday. The cool new thing is dragons in the'' anus.

For some strange reason, it was decided a while ago that dragons, in addition to having stats made of gold, the ability to fly, more combat damage than your mum, and a fire (or some other thing) breath, also desperately needed to have built-in spellcasting as well. With this came the idea that being related to dragons made you a better sorcerer, then a better caster, and then a better everything. All this did was feed the dragon cock fantasies of the fanboys, and has created an environment where dragons have too many abilities, fanboys have too much wank material, and I have too many headaches. This idea is as inane as it is corrosive, and thus, won't be featured here - dragons are giant flying lizards, after all.

Dragons do, however, have some unusual powers, which are worth preserving, but in a fashion that's easy to understand and doesn't require you to dumpster-dive a half-dozen sourcebooks like a caster would. As a result, each type of dragon has a sphere, which provides appropriate abilities for it. And nothing else.

In a similar light, this sourcebook will vastly cut down on the 'I'm a dragon X, therefore I am better' stuff. Frankly, you need two classes for dragon stuff - a class that loves dragons, and a class that hates them. Seriously, that's all you need.

Dragon Physiology, or Why Studying Biology Before Writing About Biology is a Good Idea
Dragon biology is ten kinds of what the fuck, as it has been written (mostly) by people who never seem to have passed first-year biology. 'They're scaly, lay eggs, but aren't cold-blooded, because their third lung that breathes whatever it is they breathe keeps them warm' is a retarded set of explanations - if dragons only breathed fire, this would almost work, but what about those that breathe shadows? Ice? Some other thing?. Dragons living in caves also makes no sense, as the kind of wingspan that would allow them to fly is so huge that housing them in a cave would be impractical at best - explained away by them flying magically somehow. This also seems to further substantiate that the authors, aside from being failures at biology and colossal dragon wankers also happened to fail first-year physics. And Google.

So we're gonna set down some more sensible biology for our scaly friends. Namely, one that doesn't fly in the face of common sense and established principles, as well as one players can understand (and, of course, exploit). Explaining away why dragons need piles of treasure's kinda cool as well - and we'll do that too. In a way that's convincing, naturally.

1000 degrees is the magic number - so its body would be about that hot. Fire at 1000 degrees....will burn wood and animal fat easily, and warp metal - so it's very hot indeed.