I have been working on copying over the Prismatic Dragon from 3.5 to 5e, I'm not even sure if it will go through based on copyright or if I'll have to conjure up some other clever name for it but I digress.
Because of the way 5e scales compared to 3.5 you really can't have the most ancient of Prismatic Dragons, they just don't fit seamlessly into the fold because of how insanely they scale, so instead I've been designing an Adult Prismatic Dragon that would be comparable to the Ancient Metallic Dragons, even stronger even because that's how they scaled in 3.5, these things were stupidly powerful.
Unfortunately because you can't scale down some creatures in 3.5 so they fit you lose certain things while trying to be true to the original design, in this case I've given the Prismatic Dragon innate spellcasting 3x per day the spell Sunbeam as it originally had in 3.5, the spell however has been buffed so I might knock it down to 2x per day to balance it, more powerful and ancient Prismatic Dragons could use stronger spells like Sunburst and Prismatic Walls but from here you can't really scale up without breaking the game, you'd have a normal dragon more powerful than Tiamat, a god. It doesn't make sense from a design standpoint.
It would be cool if for Homebrew content you had a sort of notes/footnotes section, I know they plan to eventually add monster scaling so you can add Younger/Older versions of your designs but the notes section would be for giving DMs some flavour options if they so desire without having to create an entirely new/duplicate monster/item/etc. I'd be able to include options for the DM like replacing 3x Sunbeam innate spellcasting per day for 1x innate Sunburst or Prismatic Wall innate spellcasting per day as an example. DMs could conjure these up themselves but offering them some variant options on the same page would be pretty neat.
You can 100% create it, but I'm pretty certain you would not be able to publish it because it is not your own creation, even if you name it something else. Reskinning is also not allowed. They only want published homebrew to be completely made up in the mind of its creator and not made from other people's content. That being said some probably slip through the cracks.
ANYWAYS, to your main point: I believe a feature exists similar to what you're requesting. When you create a new homebrew item, you could use whichever Prismatic Dragon you 1st created as a template, and then change what needed to be buffed for increasing the dragon's age or debuffed for decreasing the dragon's age. That seems like the way to do it, at least currently. I'm not sure if they would add that change specifically since it looks like there's a variation of that feature already in place.
@SquigsTheTruth Ah, yeah then some has definitely slipped through the cracks, that was why I was under the impression reskinning was fine in the first place, by exploring the other Homebrew content that was available.
I would have imagined reskinning from official content only would have been allowed because a guide was even published on how to transfer content from older versions of D&D to version 5e by the creators.
I'm also curious what the extent of the definition of reskinning would be as most of the content being "reskinned" already exists in 5e, most of the design choices for the Prismatic Dragon were based off of The existing Ancient Metallic Dragons in version 5e as well as Tiamat's stats and description. Similarly to other Homebrewed Dragons.
@SquigsTheTruth Ah, yeah then some has definitely slipped through the cracks, that was why I was under the impression reskinning was fine in the first place, by exploring the other Homebrew content that was available.
I would have imagined reskinning from official content only would have been allowed because a guide was even published on how to transfer content from older versions of D&D to version 5e by the creators.
I'm also curious what the extent of the definition of reskinning would be as most of the content being "reskinned" already exists in 5e, most of the design choices for the Prismatic Dragon were based off of The existing Ancient Metallic Dragons in version 5e as well as Tiamat's stats and description. Similarly to other Homebrewed Dragons.
I'm not actually sure of the limits of reskinning older content. There are moderators that look through these forums like Stormknight, Filcat, among others, maybe either of them can explain this a little?
I have been working on copying over the Prismatic Dragon from 3.5 to 5e, I'm not even sure if it will go through based on copyright or if I'll have to conjure up some other clever name for it but I digress.
Because of the way 5e scales compared to 3.5 you really can't have the most ancient of Prismatic Dragons, they just don't fit seamlessly into the fold because of how insanely they scale, so instead I've been designing an Adult Prismatic Dragon that would be comparable to the Ancient Metallic Dragons, even stronger even because that's how they scaled in 3.5, these things were stupidly powerful.
Unfortunately because you can't scale down some creatures in 3.5 so they fit you lose certain things while trying to be true to the original design, in this case I've given the Prismatic Dragon innate spellcasting 3x per day the spell Sunbeam as it originally had in 3.5, the spell however has been buffed so I might knock it down to 2x per day to balance it, more powerful and ancient Prismatic Dragons could use stronger spells like Sunburst and Prismatic Walls but from here you can't really scale up without breaking the game, you'd have a normal dragon more powerful than Tiamat, a god. It doesn't make sense from a design standpoint.
It would be cool if for Homebrew content you had a sort of notes/footnotes section, I know they plan to eventually add monster scaling so you can add Younger/Older versions of your designs but the notes section would be for giving DMs some flavour options if they so desire without having to create an entirely new/duplicate monster/item/etc. I'd be able to include options for the DM like replacing 3x Sunbeam innate spellcasting per day for 1x innate Sunburst or Prismatic Wall innate spellcasting per day as an example. DMs could conjure these up themselves but offering them some variant options on the same page would be pretty neat.
You can 100% create it, but I'm pretty certain you would not be able to publish it because it is not your own creation, even if you name it something else. Reskinning is also not allowed. They only want published homebrew to be completely made up in the mind of its creator and not made from other people's content. That being said some probably slip through the cracks.
ANYWAYS, to your main point: I believe a feature exists similar to what you're requesting. When you create a new homebrew item, you could use whichever Prismatic Dragon you 1st created as a template, and then change what needed to be buffed for increasing the dragon's age or debuffed for decreasing the dragon's age. That seems like the way to do it, at least currently. I'm not sure if they would add that change specifically since it looks like there's a variation of that feature already in place.
Published Subclasses
@SquigsTheTruth Ah, yeah then some has definitely slipped through the cracks, that was why I was under the impression reskinning was fine in the first place, by exploring the other Homebrew content that was available.
I would have imagined reskinning from official content only would have been allowed because a guide was even published on how to transfer content from older versions of D&D to version 5e by the creators.
I'm also curious what the extent of the definition of reskinning would be as most of the content being "reskinned" already exists in 5e, most of the design choices for the Prismatic Dragon were based off of The existing Ancient Metallic Dragons in version 5e as well as Tiamat's stats and description. Similarly to other Homebrewed Dragons.
Published Subclasses