Dragon rant

Quote from Wtfdndad >>

 Can you tell me why Dragons are just boring stat blocks? To me anything without any background lore or substantial information is just boring stat blocks.

They're boring stat blocks because they're mostly one trick ponies. Background lore isn't even part of the stat block, so its presence or absence is not relevant to whether the stat block itself is boring. A good stat block needs two things:

1. If the monster is supposed to be more than Monster of the Week, it needs things that indicate how it's supposed to actually function as a mastermind. Most chromatic dragons don't actually have abilities particularly suited to be anything but Kaiju of the Week. As a DM you can certainly give them a bunch of extra abilities that aren't on their stat block, but they don't come built in.
2. If the primary purpose of a monster is in fact to be a signature boss fight, it should have a stat block that can carry the weight. That means more than "It uses its breath weapon then spams claw/claw/bite/tail until its breath weapon recharges".

It's certainly possible to create dragons that do the job in one or both categories. For example, the dragon encounters in Where Evil Lives do a decent job of epic dragon battles (they don't really have particularly mastermind suited stat blocks).

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

Quote from Wtfdndad >>

 Can you tell me why Dragons are just boring stat blocks? To me anything without any background lore or substantial information is just boring stat blocks.

They're boring stat blocks because they're mostly one trick ponies. Background lore isn't even part of the stat block, so its presence or absence is not relevant to whether the stat block itself is boring. A good stat block needs two things:

1. If the monster is supposed to be more than Monster of the Week, it needs things that indicate how it's supposed to actually function as a mastermind. Most chromatic dragons don't actually have abilities particularly suited to be anything but Kaiju of the Week. As a DM you can certainly give them a bunch of extra abilities that aren't on their stat block, but they don't come built in.
2. If the primary purpose of a monster is in fact to be a signature boss fight, it should have a stat block that can carry the weight. That means more than "It uses its breath weapon then spams claw/claw/bite/tail until its breath weapon recharges".

It's certainly possible to create dragons that do the job in one or both categories. For example, the dragon encounters in Where Evil Lives do a decent job of epic dragon battles (they don't really have particularly mastermind suited stat blocks).

I mean, are you accounting for Lair Actions and regional effects in this assessment? An Adult Black Dragon in 2014 is primed to make seemingly innocuous terrain features into control hazards during combat and specifically fouls water sources so that "Enemies of the dragon that drink such water regurgitate it within minutes". Right there I've got a surprise straight from the book to spring on a party during a fight that forces them to consider positioning and an easy hook for a BBEG- dragon fouls the source for a village or somesuch and can either directly run an extortion play from it or use proxies to style this as either a divine punishment or a problem that it as a "god" or similar figure may then solve, but only for the worthy or true believers or whatever angle it wants to use. All that before we even account for the 2014 spellcasting sidebar.

Quote from The_Ace_of_Rogues >>

I mean, are you accounting for Lair Actions and regional effects in this assessment?

Yes? A dragon poisoning the water for a village isn't master villain stuff, it's "early game side quest" type stuff. It's fine for a single chapter in a larger adventure, but that's kind of what a "monster of the week" is.

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

Quote from The_Ace_of_Rogues >>

I mean, are you accounting for Lair Actions and regional effects in this assessment?

Yes? A dragon poisoning the water for a village isn't master villain stuff, it's "early game side quest" type stuff. It's fine for a single chapter in a larger adventure, but that's kind of what a "monster of the week" is.

What, do I have to write the entire plot for you? You've got a being running a fake god scam on a community that doesn't even throw up one of the obvious meta "we all know what's doing this" flags. If you can't parley that into more than "walk into the dungeon and kill the monster", that's not because the potential isn't there.

Quote from The_Ace_of_Rogues >>

What, do I have to write the entire plot for you? You've got a being running a fake god scam on a community that doesn't even throw up one of the obvious meta "we all know what's doing this" flags. If you can't parley that into more than "walk into the dungeon and kill the monster", that's not because the potential isn't there.

It's causing problems for a village. That's a classic tier 1 problem. Of course, power-wise an adult dragon is generally a tier 2 final boss, a tier 3 miniboss, or a tier 4 elite. For defining my terms:

1. A final boss is the focus of an entire campaign. It should be creating problems on a scale that's appropriate to the tier of the campaign, and its presence should be felt for the entire campaign. The vast majority of 5e D&D adventures are basically tier 2, and thus feature regional threats.
2. A miniboss is a stepping stone in a larger campaign. Minibosses don't have to be affecting the world much at all directly, they're a side objective, and if they are affecting the world they're generally causing problems that are a step lower.
3. A sidekick is a notable hazard, but it's likely to be an incidental encounter or a side threat in a larger encounter.

To give an example, in Curse of Strahd

• Strahd von Zarovich is the final boss. He's present and active through the entire campaign, and everything focuses on defeating him.
• Baba Lysaga is a miniboss. She's got her own town and a chapter dedicated to her and some mentions elsewhere in the module, but you're probably only going to be thinking about her for a couple of sessions.
• Baba Lysaga's Creeping Hut is an elite. It's dangerous, but it's really just a monster.

The abilities of adult and ancient dragons are generally reasonably appropriate for miniboss status -- they are dangerous and complicated enough to make a decent encounter and be the focus of an arc, but they don't naturally become omnipresent throughout the adventure. They're a bit overcomplex to use as elites. Wyrmling and Young dragons generally only have elite level stat blocks.

Oddly enough, there don't seem to be any published adventures for 5e that use an adult or ancient dragon as a final boss. Dragons of Stormwreck Isle uses a wyrmling, Dragon of Icespire Peak uses a young dragon, and Rise of Tiamat uses Tiamat. There are a bunch of dragon minibosses, such as all of Dragon Delves.

You’re nitpicking an offhand choice of words- for all practical purposes a DM can affect any population center they want with this effect or expand its scope as needed for the campaign. The point is that within the statblock there’s something I can easily turn into an adventure hook/plot point in a number of different ways.

hi,  

first of i think there are many interesting Dragons even in 5e 

Now to the reason I Posted in this thread, I´m actually researching old D&D Settings at the moment and encountered  the "Council of Wyrms"-setting, if my research is right it is still owned by Wizard of the Coast, it is a Setting that has a Government of Dragons  (it was also an old setting that let you play as Dragons), if for some reasons the D&D Team decide to revive that setting (like they did with Spelljemmer or Radiant Citadel) that would give Dragons an interesting boost i think.