This is literally keeping me up at night and I can't find an answer anywhere.
The number of damage dice that Monsters do is directly affected by the size of the monster. Medium and smaller do one die, Large creatures do 2x, Huge creatures do 3x, and Gargantuan do 4x.
Why does this not apply to dragons? They cap out at two dice.
And I know, the challenge of dragons comes from the breath weapon and not melee, but if you can survive that they become incredibly underwhelming. I played as a high level barbarian and was actually relieved when the monster we fought turned out to be an ancient dragon, because I was afraid it was a purple worm. But no, just a dragon, I've got hundreds of hit points so I'll tank the breath weapon and then it won't be able to do shit because I resist it's ogre-like damage.
This became even worse with Fizban's. Greatwyrms, who have lived for centuries and absorbed consciousness from multiple realities, still somehow don't do any more dice of damage than young dragons.
It's really starting to stress me out, guys. Does anyone know why they made this weird decision to nerf dragons in a game called Dungeons and Dragons?
My best guess... it's to make Dragons easier to fight so DMs can throw dragons at the players and not TPK the party and everyone can have a good time feeling nice and strong after defeating one half of the game's title, presumably after getting through the first half.
The number of damage dice that Monsters do is directly affected by the size of the monster. Medium and smaller do one die, Large creatures do 2x, Huge creatures do 3x, and Gargantuan do 4x.
I'm not sure where you've gotten this idea from. A quick glance through the monster manual has found me at least a dozen creatures where this does not apply. From small creatures having two dice, to large creatures having one dice and everything in between.
A Death Tyrant is a large creature and their bite attack is 4d6
A Needle Blight is a small creatures and both claws and needles do more. 2d4 and 2d6 respectively.
A Drider is a large creature and their bite does 1d4 plus 2d8
It varies wildly between all the monsters and I wouldn't think too hard about it. It is all balanced with creatures other attacks and abilities, your barbarian might be able to just tank the damage, but your wizard companion might be taken out in a single turn and then it's up to you to try and save them. Pure damage numbers are not the only threat of a creature.
They also get legendary actions (so more attacks not on their turn), and legendary resistances. and a fear aura. and they can all fly and many have other movement types. So yes, if you're just slugging it out with them on the ground, your barb will be doing great. but if the dragon decides it want to be 35 feet off the ground, just waiting for the breath to recharge, you're left hucking javelins at it, hope you brough a few extra. (And the paladin can't smite. And the rogue can't sneak attack.) And if it has a burrow speed, it just goes underground and you can't even use the javelins. If it has a swim speed, it dives underwater, and now your ranged attacks don't work beyond normal range. Dragons using their movement to the best of their ability are much scarier than if they just stand there like a breath weapon turret, waiting for a recharge. They have a lot of tools, and a lot of hp, and can wear a party down over time. If the DM wants to be a real jerk, and considering how smart many dragons (not all, but most) are, while waiting for breath to recharge, it would be a reasonable tactic to fly away for a minute and wait for bless and other 1-minute buffs to wear off before coming back.
Several components go into monster stat design, expected damage output is one of them, but it is viewed more holistically than by just damage die size. And dragons can output solid damage, even if the number of dice is small per hit.
Lets look at an adult black dragon, CR14, he gets an aoe fear effect plus 3 attacks. but, then he also has 3 legendary actions and those call all be tail attacks. That's 6 attacks per round, or alternatively, and aoe breath weapon and then also the 3 tail attacks. So, even if they only are breath weaponing against a single target, lets look at these totals if all those attacks are at the same target?
Either:
Bite/2Claws/3Tails= Avg 88 damage.
Or Breath/3Tails = Avg 99 damage.
That isn't small damage! They can push out good damage numbers, especially with that +11 to hit.
This is literally keeping me up at night and I can't find an answer anywhere.
The number of damage dice that Monsters do is directly affected by the size of the monster. Medium and smaller do one die, Large creatures do 2x, Huge creatures do 3x, and Gargantuan do 4x.
This is false. You're thinking of the rules for scaling weapon damage up, like a fire giant wielding a greatsword. Dragons aren't wielding scaled-up weapons of any sort, so the multiplier rule doesn't apply.
Why does this not apply to dragons? They cap out at two dice.
And I know, the challenge of dragons comes from the breath weapon and not melee,
The CR of dragons is calculated assuming they're melee monsters, I can tell you. There are multiple outliers because the MM is full of monsters whose CR doesn't match their own statblock per the guidelines, but the majority of dragons calculate correctly for their own CR under some assumptions, and one of those is that they're melee creatures (which impacts how their Fly speed impacts their CR).
but if you can survive that they become incredibly underwhelming. I played as a high level barbarian and was actually relieved when the monster we fought turned out to be an ancient dragon, because I was afraid it was a purple worm. But no, just a dragon, I've got hundreds of hit points so I'll tank the breath weapon and then it won't be able to do shit because I resist it's ogre-like damage.
The weakest ancient dragon I can think of is an ancient white. That's this much damage:
On turn: Breath weapon: 72 (save for half) or Bite+Clawx2: 58
Legendaries: Tailx3: 51
Lair: 10.5
So 133.5-119.5-119.5-repeat, on average, just summing up the average damage totals assuming everything hits. That's perfectly credible damage. Dragon statblocks could do with some upgrades, in my opinion - for example, it's bizarre they can't swallow people - but pure damage is about the last way I'd upgrade them.
This became even worse with Fizban's. Greatwyrms, who have lived for centuries and absorbed consciousness from multiple realities, still somehow don't do any more dice of damage than young dragons.
That's just false.
Young white:
Bite: 3 dice, Claw: 2 dice, Breath: 10 dice
White greatwyrm:
Bite: 4 dice, Claw: 2 dice + autograpple + autorestrain (which is better than adding dice of damage), Tail: 2 dice + save or prone, Breath: 12 dice
It's really starting to stress me out, guys. Does anyone know why they made this weird decision to nerf dragons in a game called Dungeons and Dragons?
Even in a whiteroom, I'm astounded you think greatwyrms are that weak. I'd love to see your assumptions, because a metallic greatwyrm especially is dangerous business for a barbarian. The sapping breath has a 55% chance of ending your rage right now and you can't get it back up until your second turn after losing to it.
To confirm a couple of points, I played in a party with a bunch of paladins, so we had several passive buffs that helped our survivability and saving throws not to mention the sheer amount of damage that even a couple of paladins can pump out at higher levels (plus Legendary magic items on top). So, the situation isn't as straightforward as me saying "dragons are just weak" because we had loads of extra abilities, but that should already be factored into calculating threats at higher levels.
If you play these monsters intelligently then they become more dangerous - thank you Xalthu for pointing out flying, swimming and burrowing as the easiest example of increasing the challenge of monsters - but it still feels like they should be equally dangerous on the ground. I don't know - I saw some comments about greatwyrms cheesing the automatic grapple to fly up and drop enemies, and it made me think that something like a greatwyrm shouldn't have to do something so banal to keep up the damage against powerful foes.
So I think my argument comes from a role-playing perspective, so let's take a red dragon - arrogant in its power, refuses to back away once blood has been drawn, absolutely certain that it's the baddest mother ****er in the room. It feels a little bit out of character that it would feel the need to hover out of reach and wait for its breath weapon to recharge so that it doesn't need to take a load of hits from a party of adventurers. The dragon has to take out 3-6 enemies but the party can all pile on one.
Like I said, my perception is probably skewed from playing in a party full of paladins who do ****loads of damage at once, and it feels to me at least that increasing dragon melee damage would help even the playing field. Maybe I'm wrong but I'm seeing a lot of average damage calculations. Anybody got any experience of high-level play fighting one of these things and getting your asses kicked?
Edit: not necessarily a greatwyrm, any adult - ancient dragon will do.
quindraco is right that this "rule" is for weapons wielded by creatures of a specific size category, not any of their attacks.
Also small correction the challenge of fighting a dragon doesn't come just from their size. Many people forget about the variant rule from the Monster Manual. If the Dragon statblock is too boring or underwhelming for your needs I highly recommend using it.
VARIANT: DRAGONS AS INNATE SPELLCASTERS
Dragons are innately magical creatures that can master a few spells as they age, using this variant.
A young or older dragon can innately cast a number of spells equal to its Charisma modifier. Each spell can be cast once per day, requiring no material components, and the spell’s level can be no higher than one-third the dragon’s challenge rating (rounded down). The dragon’s bonus to hit with spell attacks is equal to its proficiency bonus + its Charisma bonus. The dragon’s spell save DC equals 8 + its proficiency bonus + its Charisma modifier.
That means an ancient Red Dragon can cast 6 spells of level 8 or less!
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I've never encountered a forum where I got this many "talking to a wall" impressions as this one...
To confirm a couple of points, I played in a party with a bunch of paladins, so we had several passive buffs that helped our survivability and saving throws not to mention the sheer amount of damage that even a couple of paladins can pump out at higher levels (plus Legendary magic items on top). So, the situation isn't as straightforward as me saying "dragons are just weak" because we had loads of extra abilities, but that should already be factored into calculating threats at higher levels.
If you play these monsters intelligently then they become more dangerous - thank you Xalthu for pointing out flying, swimming and burrowing as the easiest example of increasing the challenge of monsters - but it still feels like they should be equally dangerous on the ground. I don't know - I saw some comments about greatwyrms cheesing the automatic grapple to fly up and drop enemies, and it made me think that something like a greatwyrm shouldn't have to do something so banal to keep up the damage against powerful foes.
So I think my argument comes from a role-playing perspective, so let's take a red dragon - arrogant in its power, refuses to back away once blood has been drawn, absolutely certain that it's the baddest mother ****er in the room. It feels a little bit out of character that it would feel the need to hover out of reach and wait for its breath weapon to recharge so that it doesn't need to take a load of hits from a party of adventurers. The dragon has to take out 3-6 enemies but the party can all pile on one.
Like I said, my perception is probably skewed from playing in a party full of paladins who do ****loads of damage at once, and it feels to me at least that increasing dragon melee damage would help even the playing field. Maybe I'm wrong but I'm seeing a lot of average damage calculations. Anybody got any experience of high-level play fighting one of these things and getting your asses kicked?
Edit: not necessarily a greatwyrm, any adult - ancient dragon will do.
Did you fight other high CR creatures that were harder?
It's pretty common knowledge that at high levels you need to go way beyond the suggested CR to really challenge a high level party. This is not an issue exclusive to dragons at all.
"Why don't monsters do higher damage?" is a much more valid question, at least beyond tier 2.
The size of manufactured weapons affect the number of damage dice used in attacks, not natural weapons. For example a greataxe wielded by a medium creature does 1d12 + str mod, whereas a Frost Giant wielding a greataxe does 3d12 + str because its weapon is 2 sizes larger. In Storm King's Thunder you can find a giant's dagger that deals 3d4+str damage. To make medium martial humanoids more threatening they generally have traits like 'Brute' or 'Sneak Attack' to increase the damage they deal per attack. Some more recent statblocks like Loup Garou ignore this however and just let their creatures have extra damage dice on their sword attacks without any special trait.
Natural Weapons are... something else. To put it in perspective, the medium sized Red Abishai does 25 more damage with its bite than an Ancient Red Dragon, it even does more physical damage incredibly. If an Ancient Red Dragon made attacks with 4 damage dice per physical attack, it's effective damage a round would be 198 compared with 163 currently. I'm not sure whether an extra 35 damage a turn matters that much to most parties capable of fighting one so it admittedly might not make much difference.
To confirm a couple of points, I played in a party with a bunch of paladins, so we had several passive buffs that helped our survivability and saving throws not to mention the sheer amount of damage that even a couple of paladins can pump out at higher levels (plus Legendary magic items on top). So, the situation isn't as straightforward as me saying "dragons are just weak" because we had loads of extra abilities, but that should already be factored into calculating threats at higher levels.
If you play these monsters intelligently then they become more dangerous - thank you Xalthu for pointing out flying, swimming and burrowing as the easiest example of increasing the challenge of monsters - but it still feels like they should be equally dangerous on the ground. I don't know - I saw some comments about greatwyrms cheesing the automatic grapple to fly up and drop enemies, and it made me think that something like a greatwyrm shouldn't have to do something so banal to keep up the damage against powerful foes.
So I think my argument comes from a role-playing perspective, so let's take a red dragon - arrogant in its power, refuses to back away once blood has been drawn, absolutely certain that it's the baddest mother ****er in the room. It feels a little bit out of character that it would feel the need to hover out of reach and wait for its breath weapon to recharge so that it doesn't need to take a load of hits from a party of adventurers. The dragon has to take out 3-6 enemies but the party can all pile on one.
Like I said, my perception is probably skewed from playing in a party full of paladins who do ****loads of damage at once, and it feels to me at least that increasing dragon melee damage would help even the playing field. Maybe I'm wrong but I'm seeing a lot of average damage calculations. Anybody got any experience of high-level play fighting one of these things and getting your asses kicked?
Edit: not necessarily a greatwyrm, any adult - ancient dragon will do.
I get your perspective, but arrogant doesn't mean stupid, and staying out of reach is just plan smart. Using your advantages is not fleeing from a fight. An ancient red, with its 18 int, is going to be smarter than probably everyone in the party, save the wizards or artificers. Even if its angry, that doesn't mean it's going to fight with one talon tied behind its back. Dragons are as comfortable flying as walking. In fact, since the fly speed is faster than the walk speed, I could argue they are more at home flying, why would they bother to land -- walking is for those lesser species that can't fly. And in your paladin party example, it's lived for a few centuries; it's going to know a paladin when it sees one. It's probably eaten a few of them. It's going to know that it has a 10- 15- and 20-foot reach, while all these sword and board fools with their oaths have five feet, so it only has to strafe them from 10 feet up, while the pallys can do nothing but shake their fists. And if one of those pallys has a reach weapon, well then it flys up to 15 feet and spams its tail and bite attacks. If the pally is a high enough level that they have a pegasus, and start some air-to-air combat, fly up high, away from the rest of the party, then a breath weapon, or just melee the pegasus and let the pally enjoy some fall damage.
And while it does have to take on multiple opponents, that's why it has legendary actions. It can attack on its own turn, and it can attack 1-3 more times on other creature's turns. And if you were fighting an ancient, it should have had lair actions, too. Unless you caught it out of its lair, in which case, good on you.
Its more about a DM using all of a creature's abilities than it is about the abilities being weak.
To confirm a couple of points, I played in a party with a bunch of paladins, so we had several passive buffs that helped our survivability and saving throws not to mention the sheer amount of damage that even a couple of paladins can pump out at higher levels (plus Legendary magic items on top). So, the situation isn't as straightforward as me saying "dragons are just weak" because we had loads of extra abilities, but that should already be factored into calculating threats at higher levels.
If you play these monsters intelligently then they become more dangerous - thank you Xalthu for pointing out flying, swimming and burrowing as the easiest example of increasing the challenge of monsters - but it still feels like they should be equally dangerous on the ground. I don't know - I saw some comments about greatwyrms cheesing the automatic grapple to fly up and drop enemies, and it made me think that something like a greatwyrm shouldn't have to do something so banal to keep up the damage against powerful foes.
So I think my argument comes from a role-playing perspective, so let's take a red dragon - arrogant in its power, refuses to back away once blood has been drawn, absolutely certain that it's the baddest mother ****er in the room. It feels a little bit out of character that it would feel the need to hover out of reach and wait for its breath weapon to recharge so that it doesn't need to take a load of hits from a party of adventurers. The dragon has to take out 3-6 enemies but the party can all pile on one.
Like I said, my perception is probably skewed from playing in a party full of paladins who do ****loads of damage at once, and it feels to me at least that increasing dragon melee damage would help even the playing field. Maybe I'm wrong but I'm seeing a lot of average damage calculations. Anybody got any experience of high-level play fighting one of these things and getting your asses kicked?
Edit: not necessarily a greatwyrm, any adult - ancient dragon will do.
I get your perspective, but arrogant doesn't mean stupid,
...sometime it does actually lol. If someone is overconfident, they view threats as.... well, not threats. And that is a mistake non-arrogant creatures might call stupid.
and staying out of reach is just plan smart.
But also cowardly, which a dragon never is.
Using your advantages is not fleeing from a fight. An ancient red, with its 18 int, is going to be smarter than probably everyone in the party, save the wizards or artificers. Even if its angry, that doesn't mean it's going to fight with one talon tied behind its back.
No it is going to fight with 2 talons buried into your cleric's chest, killing your healer. They don't back down, but they do attack aggressively in smart ways.
Dragons are as comfortable flying as walking. In fact, since the fly speed is faster than the walk speed, I could argue they are more at home flying, why would they bother to land -- walking is for those lesser species that can't fly.
It can land, it can fly, really depends on the area. Ideally it'd be flying and then close in on whomever it feels is the biggest tactical target. Likely the key player of the team, whoever is buffing/healing or otherwise enabling the party.
And in your paladin party example, it's lived for a few centuries; it's going to know a paladin when it sees one. It's probably eaten a few of them. It's going to know that it has a 10- 15- and 20-foot reach, while all these sword and board fools with their oaths have five feet, so it only has to strafe them from 10 feet up, while the pallys can do nothing but shake their fists. And if one of those pallys has a reach weapon, well then it flys up to 15 feet and spams its tail and bite attacks. If the pally is a high enough level that they have a pegasus, and start some air-to-air combat, fly up high, away from the rest of the party, then a breath weapon, or just melee the pegasus and let the pally enjoy some fall damage.
This, is actually accurate. Once the threat is identified as an actual threat worth taking seriously, their tactics would resemble this approach. But a brave, arrogant, and proud dragon might not take caution initially, when he thinks these walking tincans are a meal, not a threat.
And while it does have to take on multiple opponents, that's why it has legendary actions. It can attack on its own turn, and it can attack 1-3 more times on other creature's turns. And if you were fighting an ancient, it should have had lair actions, too. Unless you caught it out of its lair, in which case, good on you.
Its more about a DM using all of a creature's abilities than it is about the abilities being weak.
Dragons are very powerful as written, and when piloted by a DM who believes in dragons using superior tactics they can be outright TPKers.
That's not quite true. Before arguing how dragons are supposed to act people should probably read up on dragon personalities in the Forgotten Realms first. In this case the brass dragon specifically.
Brass dragons very rarely engaged in combat, preferring to talk rather than fight. If they considered a creature threatening, they would subdue it with their sleeping gas. In the face of true danger, a younger brass dragon would have most likely flown away and hidden in the sand. It would have fought and used its fire breath only as an absolute last resort. Older brass dragons preferred to avoid combat but would fight if they had the tactical advantage
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I've never encountered a forum where I got this many "talking to a wall" impressions as this one...
That's not quite true. Before arguing how dragons are supposed to act people should probably read up on dragon personalities in the Forgotten Realms first. In this case the brass dragon specifically.
Brass dragons very rarely engaged in combat, preferring to talk rather than fight. If they considered a creature threatening, they would subdue it with their sleeping gas. In the face of true danger, a younger brass dragon would have most likely flown away and hidden in the sand. It would have fought and used its fire breath only as an absolute last resort. Older brass dragons preferred to avoid combat but would fight if they had the tactical advantage
Yeah all the posts been about like red dragons, if you wanna switch it up and chat about friendly metallic dragons that's a whole different convo. They're better off as allies than enemies like 99% of the time. So.
As mentioned before, an ancient red dragon has an intelligence of 18. It has also lived for over 800 years. You are not the first high level paladin it has ever seen. Hell unless you just got here from another continent it's probably had minions scouting you for weeks. Unless you want to play it as grossly incompetent - or the party has taken extensive measures to misrepresent their capabilities - the dragon should have a pretty good idea of what a party of high level adventurers can do.
Or hey, play it like it hatched yesterday and complain when it dies in 1 round. It's your game.
As mentioned before, an ancient red dragon has an intelligence of 18. It has also lived for over 800 years. You are not the first high level paladin it has ever seen. Hell unless you just got here from another continent it's probably had minions scouting you for weeks. Unless you want to play it as grossly incompetent - or the party has taken extensive measures to misrepresent their capabilities - the dragon should have a pretty good idea of what a party of high level adventurers can do.
Or hey, play it like it hatched yesterday and complain when it dies in 1 round. It's your game.
In your games do character's roam around with level indicators above their heads like a video game?
That's not quite true. Before arguing how dragons are supposed to act people should probably read up on dragon personalities in the Forgotten Realms first. In this case the brass dragon specifically.
Brass dragons very rarely engaged in combat, preferring to talk rather than fight. If they considered a creature threatening, they would subdue it with their sleeping gas. In the face of true danger, a younger brass dragon would have most likely flown away and hidden in the sand. It would have fought and used its fire breath only as an absolute last resort. Older brass dragons preferred to avoid combat but would fight if they had the tactical advantage
Yeah all the posts been about like red dragons, if you wanna switch it up and chat about friendly metallic dragons that's a whole different convo. They're better off as allies than enemies like 99% of the time. So.
I mean then phrase your post as if talking about red dragons as well. You just generalized dragons and that's not how things work, really. You didn't say "which a red dragon never is" you said "which a dragon never is" so your statement was simply not correct.
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I've never encountered a forum where I got this many "talking to a wall" impressions as this one...
As mentioned before, an ancient red dragon has an intelligence of 18. It has also lived for over 800 years. You are not the first high level paladin it has ever seen. Hell unless you just got here from another continent it's probably had minions scouting you for weeks. Unless you want to play it as grossly incompetent - or the party has taken extensive measures to misrepresent their capabilities - the dragon should have a pretty good idea of what a party of high level adventurers can do.
Or hey, play it like it hatched yesterday and complain when it dies in 1 round. It's your game.
In your games do character's roam around with level indicators above their heads like a video game?
Dishonest rhetorical question, you should know better.
Ancient Red Dragons didn’t live hundreds/thousands of years by just arrogantly attacking everything assuming it’s a low-level villager. If you want to play your Red Dragons like a bloodthirsty savage go for it, but I usually leave those traits to White Dragons.
What’s more arrogant than killing an entire party without ever landing, making it not even worth your time to land?
As mentioned before, an ancient red dragon has an intelligence of 18. It has also lived for over 800 years. You are not the first high level paladin it has ever seen. Hell unless you just got here from another continent it's probably had minions scouting you for weeks. Unless you want to play it as grossly incompetent - or the party has taken extensive measures to misrepresent their capabilities - the dragon should have a pretty good idea of what a party of high level adventurers can do.
Or hey, play it like it hatched yesterday and complain when it dies in 1 round. It's your game.
In your games do character's roam around with level indicators above their heads like a video game?
Dishonest rhetorical question, you should know better.
Ancient Red Dragons didn’t live hundreds/thousands of years by just arrogantly attacking everything assuming it’s a low-level villager. If you want to play your Red Dragons like a bloodthirsty savage go for it, but I usually leave those traits to White Dragons.
What’s more arrogant than killing an entire party without ever landing, making it not even worth your time to land?
To be fair, white dragons aren't bloodthirsty savages either. White dragons just don't care much about the whole trappings. Traditionally they hunt whatever lesser creatures to eat them, not to play around with them or asking questions or whatever. Arguably red dragons are much more ferocious.
As for staying out of reach and killing the adventuring party without landing, that's closer to playing it smart and aloof than actual arrogance. Arrogance would be to land and laugh them into their face while they struggle to desperately take you down. Taking their hits because you can. Staying out of range would mean you're weak.
Also the good 'ol Draconomicon had this to say about red dragons amongst other things:
Red Dragons believed that they were the pinnacle of draconic nature and that all other species were impure. They valued vengefulness, rapaciousness, avarice, and ferocity above other traits and recognized these traits in themselves with pride.
[..]
They would often burn down only half a village or let a single adventurer flee from a battle so that word of their power spread throughout the region. Not only would this anger other red dragons but it was also like a shining beacon to adventurers and treasure hunters.
Red dragons despised weakness among their own kind. If one ever found out that another of their kin demonstrated any signs of fragility, either by getting badly wounded or if they were becoming senile in old age, then local red dragons would descend on the lair, stripping it clean and usually killing the owner.
They are arrogant to a fault. So much that it borders on being stupid. Think Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z.
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I've never encountered a forum where I got this many "talking to a wall" impressions as this one...
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This is literally keeping me up at night and I can't find an answer anywhere.
The number of damage dice that Monsters do is directly affected by the size of the monster. Medium and smaller do one die, Large creatures do 2x, Huge creatures do 3x, and Gargantuan do 4x.
Why does this not apply to dragons? They cap out at two dice.
And I know, the challenge of dragons comes from the breath weapon and not melee, but if you can survive that they become incredibly underwhelming. I played as a high level barbarian and was actually relieved when the monster we fought turned out to be an ancient dragon, because I was afraid it was a purple worm. But no, just a dragon, I've got hundreds of hit points so I'll tank the breath weapon and then it won't be able to do shit because I resist it's ogre-like damage.
This became even worse with Fizban's. Greatwyrms, who have lived for centuries and absorbed consciousness from multiple realities, still somehow don't do any more dice of damage than young dragons.
It's really starting to stress me out, guys. Does anyone know why they made this weird decision to nerf dragons in a game called Dungeons and Dragons?
My best guess... it's to make Dragons easier to fight so DMs can throw dragons at the players and not TPK the party and everyone can have a good time feeling nice and strong after defeating one half of the game's title, presumably after getting through the first half.
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Just keep making bigger and meaner dragons until you have one big enough and mean enough for you.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I'm not sure where you've gotten this idea from. A quick glance through the monster manual has found me at least a dozen creatures where this does not apply. From small creatures having two dice, to large creatures having one dice and everything in between.
A Death Tyrant is a large creature and their bite attack is 4d6
A Needle Blight is a small creatures and both claws and needles do more. 2d4 and 2d6 respectively.
A Drider is a large creature and their bite does 1d4 plus 2d8
It varies wildly between all the monsters and I wouldn't think too hard about it. It is all balanced with creatures other attacks and abilities, your barbarian might be able to just tank the damage, but your wizard companion might be taken out in a single turn and then it's up to you to try and save them. Pure damage numbers are not the only threat of a creature.
They also get legendary actions (so more attacks not on their turn), and legendary resistances. and a fear aura. and they can all fly and many have other movement types. So yes, if you're just slugging it out with them on the ground, your barb will be doing great. but if the dragon decides it want to be 35 feet off the ground, just waiting for the breath to recharge, you're left hucking javelins at it, hope you brough a few extra. (And the paladin can't smite. And the rogue can't sneak attack.) And if it has a burrow speed, it just goes underground and you can't even use the javelins. If it has a swim speed, it dives underwater, and now your ranged attacks don't work beyond normal range. Dragons using their movement to the best of their ability are much scarier than if they just stand there like a breath weapon turret, waiting for a recharge. They have a lot of tools, and a lot of hp, and can wear a party down over time. If the DM wants to be a real jerk, and considering how smart many dragons (not all, but most) are, while waiting for breath to recharge, it would be a reasonable tactic to fly away for a minute and wait for bless and other 1-minute buffs to wear off before coming back.
Several components go into monster stat design, expected damage output is one of them, but it is viewed more holistically than by just damage die size. And dragons can output solid damage, even if the number of dice is small per hit.
Lets look at an adult black dragon, CR14, he gets an aoe fear effect plus 3 attacks. but, then he also has 3 legendary actions and those call all be tail attacks. That's 6 attacks per round, or alternatively, and aoe breath weapon and then also the 3 tail attacks. So, even if they only are breath weaponing against a single target, lets look at these totals if all those attacks are at the same target?
Either:
That isn't small damage! They can push out good damage numbers, especially with that +11 to hit.
I got quotes!
This is false. You're thinking of the rules for scaling weapon damage up, like a fire giant wielding a greatsword. Dragons aren't wielding scaled-up weapons of any sort, so the multiplier rule doesn't apply.
The CR of dragons is calculated assuming they're melee monsters, I can tell you. There are multiple outliers because the MM is full of monsters whose CR doesn't match their own statblock per the guidelines, but the majority of dragons calculate correctly for their own CR under some assumptions, and one of those is that they're melee creatures (which impacts how their Fly speed impacts their CR).
The weakest ancient dragon I can think of is an ancient white. That's this much damage:
On turn: Breath weapon: 72 (save for half) or Bite+Clawx2: 58
Legendaries: Tailx3: 51
Lair: 10.5
So 133.5-119.5-119.5-repeat, on average, just summing up the average damage totals assuming everything hits. That's perfectly credible damage. Dragon statblocks could do with some upgrades, in my opinion - for example, it's bizarre they can't swallow people - but pure damage is about the last way I'd upgrade them.
That's just false.
Young white:
Bite: 3 dice, Claw: 2 dice, Breath: 10 dice
White greatwyrm:
Bite: 4 dice, Claw: 2 dice + autograpple + autorestrain (which is better than adding dice of damage), Tail: 2 dice + save or prone, Breath: 12 dice
Even in a whiteroom, I'm astounded you think greatwyrms are that weak. I'd love to see your assumptions, because a metallic greatwyrm especially is dangerous business for a barbarian. The sapping breath has a 55% chance of ending your rage right now and you can't get it back up until your second turn after losing to it.
I appreciate the well-explained responses, guys.
To confirm a couple of points, I played in a party with a bunch of paladins, so we had several passive buffs that helped our survivability and saving throws not to mention the sheer amount of damage that even a couple of paladins can pump out at higher levels (plus Legendary magic items on top). So, the situation isn't as straightforward as me saying "dragons are just weak" because we had loads of extra abilities, but that should already be factored into calculating threats at higher levels.
If you play these monsters intelligently then they become more dangerous - thank you Xalthu for pointing out flying, swimming and burrowing as the easiest example of increasing the challenge of monsters - but it still feels like they should be equally dangerous on the ground. I don't know - I saw some comments about greatwyrms cheesing the automatic grapple to fly up and drop enemies, and it made me think that something like a greatwyrm shouldn't have to do something so banal to keep up the damage against powerful foes.
So I think my argument comes from a role-playing perspective, so let's take a red dragon - arrogant in its power, refuses to back away once blood has been drawn, absolutely certain that it's the baddest mother ****er in the room. It feels a little bit out of character that it would feel the need to hover out of reach and wait for its breath weapon to recharge so that it doesn't need to take a load of hits from a party of adventurers. The dragon has to take out 3-6 enemies but the party can all pile on one.
Like I said, my perception is probably skewed from playing in a party full of paladins who do ****loads of damage at once, and it feels to me at least that increasing dragon melee damage would help even the playing field. Maybe I'm wrong but I'm seeing a lot of average damage calculations. Anybody got any experience of high-level play fighting one of these things and getting your asses kicked?
Edit: not necessarily a greatwyrm, any adult - ancient dragon will do.
quindraco is right that this "rule" is for weapons wielded by creatures of a specific size category, not any of their attacks.
Also small correction the challenge of fighting a dragon doesn't come just from their size. Many people forget about the variant rule from the Monster Manual. If the Dragon statblock is too boring or underwhelming for your needs I highly recommend using it.
That means an ancient Red Dragon can cast 6 spells of level 8 or less!
I've never encountered a forum where I got this many "talking to a wall" impressions as this one...
Did you fight other high CR creatures that were harder?
It's pretty common knowledge that at high levels you need to go way beyond the suggested CR to really challenge a high level party. This is not an issue exclusive to dragons at all.
"Why don't monsters do higher damage?" is a much more valid question, at least beyond tier 2.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
The size of manufactured weapons affect the number of damage dice used in attacks, not natural weapons. For example a greataxe wielded by a medium creature does 1d12 + str mod, whereas a Frost Giant wielding a greataxe does 3d12 + str because its weapon is 2 sizes larger. In Storm King's Thunder you can find a giant's dagger that deals 3d4+str damage. To make medium martial humanoids more threatening they generally have traits like 'Brute' or 'Sneak Attack' to increase the damage they deal per attack. Some more recent statblocks like Loup Garou ignore this however and just let their creatures have extra damage dice on their sword attacks without any special trait.
Natural Weapons are... something else. To put it in perspective, the medium sized Red Abishai does 25 more damage with its bite than an Ancient Red Dragon, it even does more physical damage incredibly. If an Ancient Red Dragon made attacks with 4 damage dice per physical attack, it's effective damage a round would be 198 compared with 163 currently. I'm not sure whether an extra 35 damage a turn matters that much to most parties capable of fighting one so it admittedly might not make much difference.
I get your perspective, but arrogant doesn't mean stupid, and staying out of reach is just plan smart. Using your advantages is not fleeing from a fight. An ancient red, with its 18 int, is going to be smarter than probably everyone in the party, save the wizards or artificers. Even if its angry, that doesn't mean it's going to fight with one talon tied behind its back. Dragons are as comfortable flying as walking. In fact, since the fly speed is faster than the walk speed, I could argue they are more at home flying, why would they bother to land -- walking is for those lesser species that can't fly. And in your paladin party example, it's lived for a few centuries; it's going to know a paladin when it sees one. It's probably eaten a few of them. It's going to know that it has a 10- 15- and 20-foot reach, while all these sword and board fools with their oaths have five feet, so it only has to strafe them from 10 feet up, while the pallys can do nothing but shake their fists. And if one of those pallys has a reach weapon, well then it flys up to 15 feet and spams its tail and bite attacks. If the pally is a high enough level that they have a pegasus, and start some air-to-air combat, fly up high, away from the rest of the party, then a breath weapon, or just melee the pegasus and let the pally enjoy some fall damage.
And while it does have to take on multiple opponents, that's why it has legendary actions. It can attack on its own turn, and it can attack 1-3 more times on other creature's turns. And if you were fighting an ancient, it should have had lair actions, too. Unless you caught it out of its lair, in which case, good on you.
Its more about a DM using all of a creature's abilities than it is about the abilities being weak.
...sometime it does actually lol. If someone is overconfident, they view threats as.... well, not threats. And that is a mistake non-arrogant creatures might call stupid.
But also cowardly, which a dragon never is.
No it is going to fight with 2 talons buried into your cleric's chest, killing your healer. They don't back down, but they do attack aggressively in smart ways.
It can land, it can fly, really depends on the area. Ideally it'd be flying and then close in on whomever it feels is the biggest tactical target. Likely the key player of the team, whoever is buffing/healing or otherwise enabling the party.
This, is actually accurate. Once the threat is identified as an actual threat worth taking seriously, their tactics would resemble this approach. But a brave, arrogant, and proud dragon might not take caution initially, when he thinks these walking tincans are a meal, not a threat.
Dragons are very powerful as written, and when piloted by a DM who believes in dragons using superior tactics they can be outright TPKers.
I got quotes!
That's not quite true. Before arguing how dragons are supposed to act people should probably read up on dragon personalities in the Forgotten Realms first. In this case the brass dragon specifically.
I've never encountered a forum where I got this many "talking to a wall" impressions as this one...
Yeah all the posts been about like red dragons, if you wanna switch it up and chat about friendly metallic dragons that's a whole different convo. They're better off as allies than enemies like 99% of the time. So.
I got quotes!
As mentioned before, an ancient red dragon has an intelligence of 18. It has also lived for over 800 years. You are not the first high level paladin it has ever seen. Hell unless you just got here from another continent it's probably had minions scouting you for weeks. Unless you want to play it as grossly incompetent - or the party has taken extensive measures to misrepresent their capabilities - the dragon should have a pretty good idea of what a party of high level adventurers can do.
Or hey, play it like it hatched yesterday and complain when it dies in 1 round. It's your game.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
In your games do character's roam around with level indicators above their heads like a video game?
I got quotes!
I mean then phrase your post as if talking about red dragons as well. You just generalized dragons and that's not how things work, really. You didn't say "which a red dragon never is" you said "which a dragon never is" so your statement was simply not correct.
I've never encountered a forum where I got this many "talking to a wall" impressions as this one...
Dishonest rhetorical question, you should know better.
Ancient Red Dragons didn’t live hundreds/thousands of years by just arrogantly attacking everything assuming it’s a low-level villager. If you want to play your Red Dragons like a bloodthirsty savage go for it, but I usually leave those traits to White Dragons.
What’s more arrogant than killing an entire party without ever landing, making it not even worth your time to land?
To be fair, white dragons aren't bloodthirsty savages either. White dragons just don't care much about the whole trappings. Traditionally they hunt whatever lesser creatures to eat them, not to play around with them or asking questions or whatever. Arguably red dragons are much more ferocious.
As for staying out of reach and killing the adventuring party without landing, that's closer to playing it smart and aloof than actual arrogance. Arrogance would be to land and laugh them into their face while they struggle to desperately take you down. Taking their hits because you can. Staying out of range would mean you're weak.
Also the good 'ol Draconomicon had this to say about red dragons amongst other things:
They are arrogant to a fault. So much that it borders on being stupid. Think Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z.
I've never encountered a forum where I got this many "talking to a wall" impressions as this one...