For a campaign I'm writing, I intend to introduce a prismatic dragon NPC who will be serving a prominent role in the campaign. Stat conversions from 3.5 material is easy enough, but translating its abilities is proving more difficult. I've seen a couple of homebrews for it across the net, but apart from staggering stats, the majority of the ones I've seen haven't been very true to the original. In other words, they mostly follow the pattern of the official 5e dragons (mulitattack, bite, claw, tail, breath weapon). Most brought back the dragon's shifting immunity, and all brought back the prismatic spray breath weapon. But for the most part, they were official 5e dragons with beefed up stats.
I've been toying with two ideas, one of which was present in the 3.5 material (namely: giving the dragon caster class it can use in addition to its standard monster abilities). The other one I was toying with was the ability to grant itself and use Inspiration.
Any ideas for what spells it should be able to cast? or any other ideas to make it a truly epic monster?
So hopefully I can be of help (I'm a fairly new DM and I've been toying with creating monsters for awhile) and I'll do my best to give good ideas! My first thought is that unfortunately I am not familiar with versions before 4 so I can't say I will stay true to the source material. Here are a few ideas I have:
First, all dragons are going to have the "multiattack, claw, bite, tail, breath" attacks because that's just their anatomy, they'll always have those. However, you can switch it up a bit and have the NPC not use those attacks unless either absolutely necessary or if they're affected by an intelligence dampening spell, such as Feeble Mind.
As for the breath attack, while Prismatic Spray makes the most sense right away, it could also be that the dragon can choose it's breath attack between the elements, as part of its prismatic nature. It would still have to recharge, but when it has the chance to use the breath it can choose between fire, cold, lightning, acid, poison, maybe even force (fus ro dah?!) and necrotic? It would be cool too if, as part of its personality, the dragon had a preferred element that it defaulted to when threatened.
Another idea is to give it a "wing beat" attack as a legendary action (cost of 2 actions) that has the same effect as Color Spray; blinding any creatures caught in the radius that fail their saving throw. Or give the dragon the ability like a Flail Snail, able to emit a bright light from its scales that blinds any creature within a certain radius, giving them disadvantage on attacks.
For resistances, I have a couple thoughts. First, you could have it resistant to all types of elemental damage, or maybe even immune to its favorite type of element. Another interesting idea would be to have the dragon immune to all physical damage, and only be able to take damage from the prismatic elements.
As for spells, it's always an interesting turn of events when a dragon gains spellcasting ability, and a whole lot more fun. Just be sure to have a backstory prepared that your players can investigate, because that would be fun! For the spells, it would really depend on the CR of the dragon, but since it's a prismatic dragon I'm going to assume it's at least a CR of 17 or above. So for spells, you could use the following;
5th Level (2 slots): Teleportation Circle, Cone of Cold
6th Level (1 slot): Disintegrate
7th Level (1 slot): Prismatic Spray
Of course, this is dependent on the alignment of the dragon as well, if it's meant as an enemy or if it's going to help the party at some point, in which case you could change the spells to be more utility and support based. I hope some of these ideas helped, happy homebrewing!
I believe the MM has a sidebar somewhere in the Dragons section about giving them levels as a spell caster. I don’t remember it offhand though, unfortunately. Hopefully that helps still!
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I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
For a campaign I'm writing, I intend to introduce a prismatic dragon NPC who will be serving a prominent role in the campaign. Stat conversions from 3.5 material is easy enough, but translating its abilities is proving more difficult. I've seen a couple of homebrews for it across the net, but apart from staggering stats, the majority of the ones I've seen haven't been very true to the original. In other words, they mostly follow the pattern of the official 5e dragons (mulitattack, bite, claw, tail, breath weapon). Most brought back the dragon's shifting immunity, and all brought back the prismatic spray breath weapon. But for the most part, they were official 5e dragons with beefed up stats.
I've been toying with two ideas, one of which was present in the 3.5 material (namely: giving the dragon caster class it can use in addition to its standard monster abilities). The other one I was toying with was the ability to grant itself and use Inspiration.
Any ideas for what spells it should be able to cast? or any other ideas to make it a truly epic monster?
Current Projects: The Mimic Book of Mimics :: SHARK WEEK
Completed Projects: The Trick-or-Treat Table
My Homebrews: Races :: Classes :: Spells :: Items :: Monsters
So hopefully I can be of help (I'm a fairly new DM and I've been toying with creating monsters for awhile) and I'll do my best to give good ideas! My first thought is that unfortunately I am not familiar with versions before 4 so I can't say I will stay true to the source material. Here are a few ideas I have:
First, all dragons are going to have the "multiattack, claw, bite, tail, breath" attacks because that's just their anatomy, they'll always have those. However, you can switch it up a bit and have the NPC not use those attacks unless either absolutely necessary or if they're affected by an intelligence dampening spell, such as Feeble Mind.
As for the breath attack, while Prismatic Spray makes the most sense right away, it could also be that the dragon can choose it's breath attack between the elements, as part of its prismatic nature. It would still have to recharge, but when it has the chance to use the breath it can choose between fire, cold, lightning, acid, poison, maybe even force (fus ro dah?!) and necrotic? It would be cool too if, as part of its personality, the dragon had a preferred element that it defaulted to when threatened.
Another idea is to give it a "wing beat" attack as a legendary action (cost of 2 actions) that has the same effect as Color Spray; blinding any creatures caught in the radius that fail their saving throw. Or give the dragon the ability like a Flail Snail, able to emit a bright light from its scales that blinds any creature within a certain radius, giving them disadvantage on attacks.
For resistances, I have a couple thoughts. First, you could have it resistant to all types of elemental damage, or maybe even immune to its favorite type of element. Another interesting idea would be to have the dragon immune to all physical damage, and only be able to take damage from the prismatic elements.
As for spells, it's always an interesting turn of events when a dragon gains spellcasting ability, and a whole lot more fun. Just be sure to have a backstory prepared that your players can investigate, because that would be fun! For the spells, it would really depend on the CR of the dragon, but since it's a prismatic dragon I'm going to assume it's at least a CR of 17 or above. So for spells, you could use the following;
Of course, this is dependent on the alignment of the dragon as well, if it's meant as an enemy or if it's going to help the party at some point, in which case you could change the spells to be more utility and support based. I hope some of these ideas helped, happy homebrewing!
I believe the MM has a sidebar somewhere in the Dragons section about giving them levels as a spell caster. I don’t remember it offhand though, unfortunately. Hopefully that helps still!
I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
I'm not sure if this helps (or if you can follow these links), but I made some iterations of a Prism dragon for a campaign I was running a while back.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/89427-jokun-young-prism-dragon
https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/85508-jokun-adult-prism-dragon
Have they been published yet? When I click the links, It gives me a 404.
Current Projects: The Mimic Book of Mimics :: SHARK WEEK
Completed Projects: The Trick-or-Treat Table
My Homebrews: Races :: Classes :: Spells :: Items :: Monsters
They have not. Joining this campaign link should enable you to see them though.
https://ddb.ac/campaigns/join/1199423430200504