Made a 4ft tall tabaxi who the party found sealed into a cavity in the wall of a museum behind a painting after they heard scratching, on the verge of having starved to death in there.

Anyways she only had 4sp on her, and she used 2sp to buy the party some flowers after they took her back to the inn to help her recover. Also she looks up to the artificer as a father figure.

(She also has a Highly Extensive tragic backstory that the players are in the process of discovering, but basically the BBEG previously kidnapped her and attempted to brainwash her into unconditionally loving him and only him, because she used to hand out flowers to everyone and he thought that meant she was propositioning him. Incel Wizard moment.)

Ayy dragon waifu

Also this is like, 9th level play at most. There are still greater heights to look forwards to!

Breath of ‘Hey, you know what would be really funny to use in an environment that’s been pitch black the whole adventure’

AYYYY PURPLES

Glad to see they’re not forgotten (Unless they got added back in one of the new books?)

Roll Deception.

The joys of making a homebrew class and telling your playtester to try and break it as much as possible (Including any magic items he wants, to be fair) so that you know what to buff and nerf and otherwise adjust is that I actually do have to ask him if a 28 hits, because thanks to his build… it doesn’t always do that (Has between 22 and 33AC).

That was honestly one of the best movies I’ve seen in quite a long time, I’d definitely love another Give me more dragons and let them have agency in the plot

Dragon Master

Very good. Excellent.

Not a bad list. It definitely operates on a different train of thought to mine (and mine was admittedly influenced by the bad advice regarding these items’ prices in the DMG)

My principle form the DMG was that Uncommon items cost between 100 and 1,000, Rare items are between 1,000 and 10,000, and so forth.

My secondary philosophy is that every extra effect on an item costs exponentially more than the last. Mostly to prevent people from making uberweapons on the cheap.

In any case, feel free to reshuffle my prices.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eFc2qQTY9P3ym9fyMNYHC_mIogpt9kNrOdm5n_yj1cs/edit?usp=sharing

Most people don’t care, so I try not to force the matter. You asked, here you go. Still playtesting it and doing some rebalancing, but it should be reasonably good to play.

There are probably going to be a couple of overpowered things in there and it operates by throwing a couple of 5e design principles out of the window (For example the whole template is intentionally designed to be very Multi Stat Dependent, so it has a whopping +8 Racial ASI compared to the normal +3.)

It has some pretty good stuff for beginner players. Early 5e stuff is some hot garbage (Tyranny of Dragons isn’t even a dragon-focused adventure, for fuck’s sake. And don’t even talk about Descent into Avernus and Curse of Strahd.), but more recent stuff like Dragons of Stormwreck Isle is actually pretty well-made, decently written with interesting character templates, and comes with some solid resources for walking beginners through how to play.

It probably skews my opinion that the only pf2e adventure I’ve tried to play was Strength of Thousands, which was just… Unfathomably low-stakes and dry. The system really excites me for all the balance improvements and much tighter mechanics, but if there’s one thing that really just kills a group dead in a matter of two or three sessions, it’s being boring. For all its’ flaws, 5e adventures, homebrew or premade, are not boring.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/15je74qMiYxSEnF43zp2UkEoSk3LqRymMbxruPVGQ-i4/edit?usp=sharing

I’ve got you. So there are two things you need to understand.

1. Official magic items are probably THE worst balanced and designed thing in 5e. It’s like WotC didn’t really want them to be part of the game and REALLY didn’t want you to be able to craft them. Official item balancing is complete trash and should be wholly ignored, including rarity tags. (Case in point: Ring of Warmth [Uncommon] is a directly better Ring of Cold Resistance [Rare], Flametongue is Rare while Frostbrand is Very Rare, Ioun Stones suck major dick, etc)

2. The most important thing for pricing your magic items is to ask how much a plain +1, +2, and +3 weapon costs. Those are very basic items with clearly defined power levels, and you can determine the value of other items by comparing them to those basic weapons. In my games, a +1 weapon is 500gp, a +2 weapon is 6,000gp, and a +3 weapon is 80,000gp. That means that not only can I give all my other items fair prices, but if I compare my pricing to say, OneDnD where a +1 weapon costs 800gp, then that means I know that to maintain intended balance for a OneDnD adventure I should increase all prices by 60% (One of my friends runs the OneDnD prices for their low magic world, so this trick can be really helpful).

Anyways that document there has about 200 items that I’ve been making whenever I’m bored, so feel free to look around and steal some stuff.

Enlightened DMing is to simply set up all the pieces of the BBEG’s plan on the world stage in your head or documents, and throw the players at it. Obviously, ensure that the plan is something the players have enough tools and resources to overcome, and prepare for what their decisions will likely guide them towards in the next session, but…

Any old video game can run you through a story. Few video games give players choices. And no video game can be truly derailed.

Understanding that getting derailed is arguably the entire point of DnD, is DM Ascension.

Precisely. 5e’s greatest strength is its’ simplicity. A player who’s never touched a TTRPG before will have a much easier time picking up 5e than a more niche system (although PF2e is definitely not bad on that front, 5e is just super simple and even has resources for absolute beginners)

But that simplicity is also 5e’s greatest weakness. Once you’re beyond the starting phase and understand how to play, then you realize how much stuff 5e is missing, you start noticing how some of the rules are oversimplified and unclear, and you REALLY notice how the game starts to get dysfunctional at levels 13 and above due to Quadratic Wizard and the fact that AC doesn’t keep up with hitrate.

But 5e at its’ core is a simple, robust system that’s dead easy to homebrew for. So covering that weakness (and being able to keep finding players for your games) is entirely within the realm of possibility. And hey, unlike trying to mod an actual game, if you decide that at all costs you want to play an Actual Dragon? Fuck it, we Homebrew.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eFc2qQTY9P3ym9fyMNYHC_mIogpt9kNrOdm5n_yj1cs/edit?usp=sharing

Here you go. It’s still a work in progress, I’m trying to make something fairly tightly balanced and I want all the classes to be equally powerful (Linear Fighter Quadratic Wizard can suck it as a philosophy for a team game), but as you can imagine fully testing something of this size will take me quite some time.

Different facets of the same greater whole. She didn’t always have five heads, you know…

Oh, you know what I think they might benefit from for you, then?

In past editions of DnD, aside from damage resistances, then it was also possible to get abilities that would reduce all damage taken by a flat amount. And this would be perfect for your dragons, because normally a key problem with 5th edition is that the deadliest encounter in the game is 50 town guards.

But, if you give your dragons the trait that they reduce all incoming damage by 10 points…

A) They can now just ungabunga charge into a town and destroy it without instantly getting slaughtered by the town guard as soon as they go into melee (Normally dragons in 5e get their asses handed to them in melee just because of the Action Economy and the fact AC at high levels doesn’t function, it’s why tactics are so important to a good dragon encounter). A 10 point reduction means even the mightiest blows from a guard are only going to deal 1 or 2 points of damage.

B) Flat reductions are also something much more easily overcome by players- ESPECIALLY players that have a magical high damage sword. While a resistance gets better the more damage you take from each attack, a flat reduction can quickly become irrelevant.

He definitely sounds like a great encounter to run- don’t forget that you can also reflect his increased intelligence in his lair design, making passageways more orderly, having guards with an organized rota and good training (as well as the equipment taken from those scores of fallen heroes), and traps that are better thoguht out. Of course, the key is to be challenging but fair, so if that would be impossible for your players to beat, perhaps they’ll find all his minions in the process of upgrading the lair to do that.

But there’s the other critical aspect- how are you going to roleplay your boy? Is diplomacy a viable solution (probably not because there are three paladins in the party)? Does he want anything in particular? Does he have Plans that he’d like to talk about? Perhaps he might even set his sights on taking control of the nearby nation! Or maybe he wants to capture those paladins alive, to see if he can steal the secrets of divine knowledge from them… Or he’s still a white dragon at heart, and just really wants to find a dragoness to have ‘private time’ with.

Yeah, dragon spellcasting (which is absolutely NOT optional if you want to run great dragons) has three components:

-Their Spellcasting Ability is Charisma, and they also have a number of spellslots equal to their Charisma Modifier

-Their spell slots are of a level equal to 1/3rd or their Challenge Rating, rounded down. Like the warlock, all their slots are the same level (and I refresh them on a Short Rest, dragons are meant to be magical after all)

-They can learn spells from the Sorcerer spell list by default. Personally I use different spell lists for different dragons, but Perennias was a straight up sorcerer.

In any case she would have had to actively tone down the spell she’d use for a giga AoE to 7th level so that her Ring of Maximum Power could actually trigger, because yes, all her spells were otherwise 8th level by default.

And yes! You get it! You understand! The essence of a great magic item loadout is to have a strategy. Think about what the dragon wants to act like. At base, they’re not as good at fighting as a Fighter and not as good at spellcasting as a Sorcerer, but their magic items can allow them to surpass their rival PCs and become truly terrifying.

Crown of the Vengeful Dominator is also a really sweet drop for Warlocks, since normally spells upcast incredibly inefficiently, making a warlock’s spells from each previous level suck compared to the new spells they get. But with that crown, their old spells don’t get outdated nearly so badly.

Well, how about this set…

Perennias (Ancient Red Dragon)

Head: Crown of the Vengeful Dominator (Attuned) Chest: Insignia of Claws +2 Forelegs: Bracelet of Chromatic Conversion Right Paw: [Legendary] Ring of Maximum Power (Attuned) Back: Orange Drifting Cloak (Attuned)

Crown of the Vengeful Dominator (Rare, requires Attunement)

This crown of twisted black metal has several shards of Obsidian floating around it, and originally belonged to one of the more powerful Obsidian Dragons before it was lost during battle. Replicas have since been painstakingly crafted by other evil entities.

While wearing this crown, all of your spells’ Saving Throw DC and/or Hit Rolls gain a +1 bonus for every level a spell is upcast by. (For example, casting Fireball at 4th level increases its’ save DC by 1, and casting it at 9th level increases its’ save DC by 6)

Value: 9,500gp

Bracelet of Chromatic Conversion (Uncommon)

An item that came directly from the Dragon Queen’s workshop, this gold bracelet is set with a Levin Opal that has been suffused with an unsuccessful Chromatic attempt at copying the technology of Crownovi- but even failures have their uses.

Conversion: As an action, you can sacrifice one 3rd level spellslot to the bracelet, giving it one Charge (max 1). You can expend this charge as a free action to turn one instance of Fire, Lightning, Poison, Acid or Cold damage that you can see into Fire, Lightning, Poison, Acid or Cold.

Queenly Adornment: This item is worth an additional 5,000gp.

Value: 5,350gp

Ring of Maximum Power (Rare, Requires Attunement)

This golden ring has a smooth exterior, but it’s set with a band of rough translucent diamonds that are normally dull, and occasionally flash with a juddering surge of energy. While many cultures craft these rings on special occasion, they can initially be traced back to the prominent order of Storm Sorcerer Aarakocra who fought alongside Strata in the war of unification.

The ring serves as a +1 Arcane Spellcasting Focus, with the following abilities.

Latent Power: While you are at 50% health or less, and you cast a spell of 3rd level or lower on your turn, you can treat all the spell’s damage/effect dice as having rolled their maximum value. Once you have used this ability, you cannot use it again until you complete a Long Rest.

Value: 7,700gp

(Very Rare version)

The ring functions as a +2 Arcane Spellcasting Focus.

Calamitous Power: While you are at 50% health or less, and you cast a spell of 5th level or lower on your turn, you can treat all the spell’s damage/effect dice as having rolled their maximum value. Once you have used this ability, you cannot use it again until you complete a Long Rest.

Value: 35,000gp

(Legendary Version)

The ring functions as a +3 Arcane Spellcasting Focus.

Apocdictic Power: While you are at 50% health or less, and you cast a spell of 7th level or lower on your turn, you can treat all the spell’s damage/effect dice as having rolled their maximum value. Once you have used this ability, you cannot use it again until you complete a Long Rest.

Value: 135,000gp

Drifting Cloak (Uncommon to Rare, requires attunement)

This cloak’s exterior is plain, but the inside has a curious diamond pattern.

When you Dash while wearing the cloak, you move an additional 30ft and do not provoke Opportunity Attacks.

Orange: The radius or width of any AoE you produce is extended by 5ft.

Base Value: 300gp Orange: +4800gp

Perennias was an important lore figure to one of my campaigns, a red dragon that mostly focused on her sorcery. She was originally a pretty unusual Red Dragon because she tended to be more of a defender than an attacker, focusing on keeping people out of her territory. Then she got more exceptional, because she started using her volcanic powers to enrich the soil in her territory, turning it into a sweltering yet lush jungle so she could have effectively unlimited food to raise her wyrmlings with, rather than a barren wasteland intended to starve out attackers. Anyways, when she was about 600, she was approached by a Gold Dragon who’d lost all hope in humanity and gotten almost-blackout drunk, and the two of them ended up in a relationship that started to move Perennias closer to Neutral than Evil, even approaching Good. However, after she ended up firmly falling for him, he went to go and try to help humanity again, and this time, he ended up being killed for his association to her, which sent Perennias into a dreadful enough rage to destroy the very kingdom that her mate wanted to aid and protect.

She was an optional superboss (as you can tell by her insane loadout and backstory), but as you can see it focuses primarily on spellcasting. The idea is that she can enter the fight by dropping onto the party in an ambush (thanks to all that thick jungle in her territory that she can hide in), either kill or grapple the party’s squishy mage on her ambush turn, and then either fly off with the mage and murderize them, or brawl in melee for a turn or two before her health gets low, at which point she can combine the powers of her crown and her ring to drop an absolutely disgusting max-damage AoE spell. Normally offensive spells are terrible and useless for dragons because they have their Breath, so this should very easily catch players off guard. After she drops her AoE spell, she can back off and retreat to her lair to heal and get ready for a second attack, if the party somehow survived.