Building Better Monsters | Dragons

I had started to feel the same about dragons a couple years ago. Them losing a lot of their fear and mystery made me replace them all together with "Murders" in my campaigns, colossal crow-like monsters. It's kind of like a reskin with a few twists but I think it gets the job done. Anybody I've ran campaigns for will consider how to kill a dragon or just attack it head on, but throw a colossal monster they've never seen or heard of before and they start to be more cautious of it

I believe strongly that weird, powerful creatures (like dragons) should never be "already known" by the PCs, like they waltz in and know how much damage the breath weapon does or its HP or whatever. Ghost vomiting and other fresh new interesting abilities are exactly the right sort of direction!

I quite liked Hellboy's (the animated movie's) take on dragons. Specifically, it's more like a title for REALLY big and scary god-like monsters. And considering how weirdly diverse dragons are in mythology, I think it fits that all you need to be called a Dragon is to be the baddest fucker in the immediate area.

When you got to the body type section, it suddenly struck me: this is very Dwarf Fortress (which is *great*). "The dragon Ngotol Ôggon has come. It is large and flightless. It has the body of an Emu, and its wings are small and feathery. Beware its ghost puke!"

I give my dragons an aura of fear they can disable at will in order to interact with lesser creatures. If my PCs ever witness a dragon in full glory and it doesn't have its aura suppressed, I secretly roll a Wisdom save for them to see if they're afflicted by fear. I assume any NPCs in the area roll a 10 and if that plus their modifiers isn't high enough, they become so terrified it resembles madness. Horses will kick off and trample their riders to escape, wolves will kill their pups out of a horrific mercy, small animals become so frightened they straight up die as their palpitating hearts burst in their chests, and humanoids become screaming, sobbing wrecks who claw their own eyes out or outright kill themselves to escape the sight of this living nightmare. Even other powerful monsters give dragons a wide berth; frost giants consider the arrival of a white wyrm to be the ushering of the end of days, not an opportunity for a big game hunt. The players only get "regular" frightened because to me the PCs and other "adventurer" characters are inherently special. People who know they're going to have to fight a dragon take special drugs to nullify their emotions, drugs which can sometimes be permanent, and even then it isn't a guarantee; even creatures immune to fear make this save, albeit at advantage. Only truly mindless beings, like undead and constructs, are unaffected by dragonfear. This applies to ALL true dragons, from green to gold, and the DC and radius are based on the color and age category; a red wyrm with an active fear aura will drive an entire city to fear-induced madness, with the survivors being half-mad slaves mentally broken and desperate to appease it. Dragons of any description are beings so powerful they stand outside the natural order of things; as creatures of half-flesh and half-primordial spirit they are akin to deities in and of themselves. To look upon a truly ancient dragon in its true, terrible splendor is to witness the barely contained end of all things and to know on the most primal level that before its horrible wonder your fleeting, pathetic mortal life is utterly without value. THAT, in my mind, is how to put Dragons back into Dungeons and Dragons.

Something I love about monsters from Anglo-Saxon/Germanic/Norse myth such as dragons is how vaguely described and depicted they all are. Often, physiologically they aren’t described at all - Grendel for example, from Beowulf only has a couple of physical descriptions, yet everyone has an idea of what they look like. As for dragons, as you say, everyone has an idea of what a dragon looks like and how they act, even though they are informed by a myriad of sources. One of the tropes I like the most about dragons is the shapeshifter - where dragons turn out to be a wealthy noble, or even a political leader. I tend to subvert this by turning them into different monsters instead, or into non-corporeal aspects such as “doom” and “creeping dread”. As for lower level dragons that can actually be confronted by PCs, I find the How to Train Your Dragon series provides great inspiration! As per usual, great video, great artwork, can’t wait for the next one!

The one thing WotC did with 3e that always annoyed me was codifying dragon appearance. Black dragons have skull-like heads, coppers have the wings that stretch their whole body, etc. There was more imagination in dragon art earlier than this, and even a couple Dragon Magazine articles with lots of ideas for making a dragon look even more singular--like your wonderfully goofy emu here. The problem is that, by codifying it systemically, it locks down the imagination of a lot of DMs and players. "This is official, so this is the only way," is a common rut to fall into, especially for newer players of the game.

My Dragons bleed gemstones, this adds great lore elements like a volcano where an immortal dragon bleeds rubies. And the gemstone varies based on the dragon🙂

A few years ago my party and I stumbled across an interesting Dragon; Doremifaso, the ancient of songs. He was a five headed dragon-turtle who taught the bards of old long before time had a name. To this day I think back on that session every time a dragon pops up in a campaign I’m in.

Totally agree, bringing fresh character to re-mystify dragons is so important for over-laboured monsters. I recently created a "runt of the litter" type dragon that was scaleless and breathless. Instead, out of pride it built its lair to be laden with an open network of pipes that connect to a captured fire elemental. every time a pipe spews fire the dragon would leap beside it to make it seem as though it was breathing fire itself. my players haven't reached it yet but I'm excited to see how it turns out.

I got a Roleplaying set up where the creature that are called "Dragon" are ancient human that began to absorb other creature to become stronger. Like absorbing bird to have wings, lizard to have scales etc etc, until they're not human anymore but really strange hybrid violent creature. And none of them really is a "classical dragon", one is like tower-shaped, an another is mix of arthropoda, and stuff like that ! Your video is so inspiring it really motivates me to create interesting and creative dragon. Thanks for opening my mind. I can't express how good it feels.

"Let dragons be tragedies" Eastern Culture: "No, I don't think I will."

Bro.. Your "dragopukish" example was ridiculously creative, and I'll be lifting it like an artist to see how my table responds :)

Your thoughts on dragons reminded me of that old adventure where every creature in a dungeon was half-dragon cuz the actual dragon liked to... you know 👀 I mean, they are as much supernatural beings as they are powerful beasts, and it made me think about creating stuff like "Freddy Krueger, but a dragon" or something like that. Adding "unnatural" traits to a monster like them, as you said, could be fun and change the whole perception of a story. Actually, Ravenloft as a campaing setting had a whole lot of twists similar to that, but I don't remember any dragon -- Dragapushkk (?) could have their own Domain there, btw 😅

Some dragons that I really like and that are very unique are the dragons from Monster Hunter. In which they have more than just one type of dragon. They all for the most part have different abilities and have reasons for existing in the land they live in.

I think the "normal" dragons are already plenty scary. It's already suggested to add spells and really it's all about how the DM plays the dragon. They're one of the few monsters that, when played skillfully, can tpk a party appropriate to their CR. But I agree that it's always nice to put a twist on the dragon's abilities.

I am a big fan of Dark Souls dragons. You know about the everlasting dragons and their power yet every one of those you fight is either a distant cousin of the OGs or they are deeply corrupted.

The funny thing about Dragons is that majority of Dragons from mythology and folklore from around the world are nothing like those from dnd. Actually, there are very few like that, as 90% or more of them are serpentine. And very few Dragons can breathe fire. Both things that are very common in more modern day things, but are very uncommon in the traditional material.

Okay, so there's a big thing I want to note for those who like to write, that is the context you're creating. This is nothing to say for the video, it's honest, good advice, in the somewhat indirect sense. The context you have hugely varies how a creature turns out. Let's say the context is where, keeping on brand with dragons, dragons are fairly common, in this case, classifying them makes sense, dragon researchers will come about and want to study them. So making details on species and varying behavior may be of benefit, especially if the story is on the end of someone who is, or closely tied to, draconic research. And how about a different context, dragons aren't common, not rare, but they're around, you may commonly see one in the skyline somewhere, of course there'd be the occasional researcher who's curious, but it ups the mysteriousness. And then there's the context where they're rare, not many subjects to turn to for research so much is unknown, therefore, it's entirely possible to make the dragons very mysterious and outright otherworldly. Ofc in any context, there's going to be, most likely, at least a few that are legendary, somewhat out there, no matter how well known, these legends could be drastically different than the rest, making them unique. It's all about context, so for any encounter with a dragon, be it in games, stories, shows, whatever, just note that the context will depend on the sort of information presented. There's also the benefit of subversion, many have associated certain things with dragons, so if you were to make use of contexts that we may know and twist it around, that makes for interesting design as well. Let's make a simple example, red dragons almost exclusively breath fire, so what if, instead, they don't breath fire and breath ice, the opposite of what you'd expect from common knowledge, because that's knowledge relating to writing trends, not the actual story at hand. This is just general advice for people who want to come up with creatures, at the end of the day, don't worry about norms as much as what you want to write. There's no wrong answers in creativity, only ideas. So, to say the least, just have fun. The advice of the video is great btw, it's good to make somethings just as they are, as mythical, and with dragons, there's a few contexts, quite a few, where it's a great idea to have dragons as more a set of characters rather than a collective species. But note to never take an idea or person's opinions as set in stone, form your own ideals based on what you hear and what you think for yourself. Just remember to enjoy yourself, and do as you please. Writing is more about the self rather than others, or it ought to be. Sure, many of the versions of dragons we have today are fairly cookie cutter standards, but if you like that, then please, enjoy it as much as you'd like. Remember, in creativity, there are no wrong answer, just have fun, no matter what others may think, ofc outside of getting yourself into trouble lol.

That dragon looks like an ostrich fused with my sleep paralysis demon. Amazing