First Look: D&D 4th Edition, Appreciate A Dragon Day

Welcome to part 1 of our introduction and review of Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition. In future posts we will examine, classes, races, gods, monsters, and what you can expect in 4th edition. In celebration of "Appreciate A Dragon Day", we are going to start with a look at changes to Dragons in 4th edition.

You might wonder why WarCry is posting about a pen and paper game. Well, besides the fact that many MMOs owe their existence to D&D, including an MMO named after it, and I just think its cool, WOTC is actually trying to attract more online gamers to their pen and paper game. With new projects like Gleemax, which offers a type of Myspace for gamers, and a new virtual table top program so people can game with their friends around the world, 4th edition brings many MMO aspects to the pen and paper game.

Lets face it, in a game named Dungeons & Dragons, you better get two things right, and today we concentrate on Dragons. Having played D&D for about twenty years now (yes I realize I am showing my age here) I always worry when they talk about change in D&D. 4th edition is no exception, like many others I worry that my beloved game will be destroyed. That they will get it all wrong, it is with this worry that I started reading up on the new Dragons in 4th edition. I was given a small ray of hope on the first page discussing Dragons in "Worlds & Monsters".

In 3rd edition D&D, telling once dragon from another was sometimes hard. Every dragon, whatever its color or age, had a Dexterity score of 10. A white dragon was just as likely to cast a fireball spell at you as a red dragon was. All Dragons of the same size had the same physical attacks. Considering all the variety of dragons- then dragon colors in the Monster Manual, each with twelve age categories for a bewildering 120 possibilities- there was actually very little differentiation.
When designing 4th Edition D&D. We took the same categories we used to describe the roles of monsters in groups, and applied them (carefully) to dragons. Just as a magma hurler or goblin archer hides behind the front ranks of its allies to pepper you with ranged attacks, blue dragons prefer to stay back and blast you with lightning.
Orcs and hobgoblins are happy forming that front line, orcs dishing out tons of damage before you whittle away their hit points, and hobgoblin soldiers soaking up your attacks. White and red dragons act in similar ways- the whites are more like orcs, the reds more like hobgoblins. In the same way that a mind flayer can bend you to its will, green dragons control the battlefield and can even control your mind, like Cyan Bloodbane in the Dragonlance Chronicles.
Wraiths hide in the safety of solid stone walls before springing out to attack you, and likewise black dragons hide in water or in darkness before leaping out to breathe (as in the Forge of Fury adventure).

This was one of my biggest issues with dragons in 3rd edition. I felt a lot of the flavor was lost in the different types of dragons. The idea that each kind of dragon acts drastically different from the others adds so much more flavor to a dragon encounter. They have also given the dragon many more options in combat. The dragon is considered a solo monster (I told you MMO gamers was their audience). That means, they don't exactly play by the same rules a normal monster does (just as in most MMOs).

Dragons just get to do more on their turn than most monsters do. But they also get to do a lot when it's not their turn. A whole suite of immediate actions makes a dragon a dynamic foe. Depending on what the PCs do on their turns, it might reply with any of a number of surprising and deadly things. Immediate breath blasts and tail slaps, make it dangerous to engage a dragon in melee. A green dragon can poison you simply for coming to close.
With these improvements, fighting a dragon in the 4th edition D&D game has become the epic conflict you always hoped it would be.

I am very interested in seeing how exactly this will play out. If they can deliver on this promise, I believe I would have to kiss some designer on the mouth (yes, somewhere some WOTC employee is very afraid right now).

So WOTC, is changing things up quite a bit, giving dragons a more unique feel, and allowing DMs to create very different experiences when fighting a red dragon as opposed to a black dragon. However there is one other notable change to dragons that will take an old school D&D player some time to get use to. Metallic Dragons aren't all good, and Chromatic Dragons aren't all evil. You read that correctly, 4th Edition gets rid of a lot of alignments (more on that in the next parts) and the dragons have not been spared this change. No longer can a player look at the color of the dragon and know what to expect from it.

Historically, dragons have been tightly linked to alignments, and the 3rd Edition Monster Manual specifies that dragons always have the indicated alignment. The Eberron setting mixed that up, allowing for the possibility of evil metallics and good chromatics. When characters in Eberron encounter a dragon, they need to figure out what its goals are, whose side it's on, what it can do for them or what it wants them to do for it- they can't necessarily judge it by the color of its scales.
We liked the idea that dragons could vary from their stated alignment at least as much as most other monsters. Orcs in 3rd Edition are often chaotic evil, but at least there's room for the occasional nonevil orc. We wanted the same possibility for nonevil chromatic dragons.
Some chromatic dragons have neutral leanings, but they're still mean, sometimes cruel, and always predatory. They're as neutral as a belligerent dire bear- not usually the kind of neutral you try to negotiate with. For the most part, it's safe to assume that any chromatic dragon you see is fair game for your best attacks. But if a dragon calls for parley, claiming its good intentions, it might be worth listening to.

I think it's great that I can now attack that gold dragon without all the goodie to shoes in my group yelling at me. I can now claim he was evil, the group can't prove me wrong. Lets face it, you got to take your XP where you can get it.

Well there you have a brief overview of dragons in the new 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. You can read more about dragons and other monsters you will see in 4th Edition in the new book "Worlds & Monsters". In future updates we will discuss the changes to classes, races, and all the new changes in 4th Edition. Have a happy "Appreciate A Dragon Day", and may all your hits be crits!

While we are all waiting for 4th Edition, make sure to stop by Gleemax and check out all the new stuff headed down the pipe. I personally can't wait for Uncivilized The Goblin Game.