Krynn is a war-torn world with a long history of dragons. Though, when Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen kicks off, dragons have been gone from the world for centuries, only to return when the Dragon Queen Takhisis musters her armies to conquer the continent of Ansalon. To bolster her Dragon Armies, dead dragons are resurrected through perverse means and made to serve in her ranks.
Let’s take a look at these so-called death dragons and how to use them in your games!
- What are death dragons?
- How are death dragons different from other dragons?
- Cataclysmic Breath weapon
- Facing off against death dragons
- Using death dragons in your game
What Are Death Dragons?
In Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen, death dragons are created when the skeletal remains of a dragon become infused with magical fires from the Cataclysm. Though death dragons retain some of their former personalities, they are a twisted, malevolent shadow of who they once were.
Greater death dragons retain almost all of their personality and intelligence—however, their sense of self is twisted by the necromantic magics that give them life. Lesser dragons, on the other hand, are feral creatures that may experience flashes of memory but quickly let their rage consume them.
What Do Death Dragons Want?
Most often, death dragons are created by practitioners of the necromantic arts and unleashed upon enemies they want destroyed. While devastatingly effective, those who employ the use of death dragons must be careful. As a death dragon grows in power, they retain more of their former selves. This could eventually result in a death dragon turning against its master in an attempt to regain autonomy.
Death dragons who are successful in this endeavor often seek revenge for the slights they experienced in life. Fueled by hatred, death dragons don't rationalize their feelings of vengeance. For example, they may relate an affront from a particular Knight of Solamnia to all members of the organization and seek to wipe out all the knights they come across. Other death dragons return to collecting and jealously guarding treasure hoards to regain a semblance of their previous life.
How Are Death Dragons Different From Other Dragons?
Being unwilling necromantic recreations, death dragons significantly differ in personality from their living counterparts, as well as other voluntarily undead dragons like dracolichs and hollow dragons. Death dragons are feral and cruel, toting a lower Intelligence than other dragons while also applying vicious tactics. The greater death dragon’s Bite and the lesser death dragon’s Claw attacks can grapple targets, allowing them to lift their victims into the air and drop them from heights.
Greater death dragons—who have a challenge rating (CR) of 14—also gain Legendary Actions, one of them being Cataclysmic Rush. This ability allows the death dragon to immediately move up to half its flying speed without provoking opportunity attacks.
Cataclysmic Rush also damages creatures in the death dragon’s path, though the primary danger will come from creatures that have been grappled, as they’ll now be 40 feet in the air with only an angry undead dragon as company. While lesser death dragons—who have a CR of 10—don’t have access to this ability, they share the greater death dragon’s flying speed of 80 feet, which can still be a big issue for creatures that find themselves in a death dragon’s clutches.
Cataclysmic Breath Weapon
As with any dragon, death dragons have a devastating breath weapon. These undead creatures can unleash a blast of necrotic fire called Cataclysmic Breath, which is about as terrifying as it sounds. When used, the death dragon spews out a cone of ghostly purple flame, which deals 8d8 necrotic damage for lesser dragons and 10d8 necrotic damage for greater dragons. As if this isn’t deadly enough, the breath weapon has a brutal rider effect that will certainly up the stakes of the encounter.
The death dragon's breath weapon automatically kills any creature that is reduced to 0 hit points by the attack, but it doesn’t stop there. Any creature killed by this attack, along with any other humanoid corpse within the area of effect, immediately arises as zombies. This means resurrection and raise dead won’t work on creatures killed by this effect. Revivify will work, but the creature will return as a zombie.
Facing Off Against Death Dragons
When facing off against death dragons, players will quickly learn to take cover whenever possible. They definitely don’t want the death dragon, with its superior mobility, to be able to swoop down and pick their party off one by one.
Though they have immunity to necrotic and poison damage, resistance to piercing damage, and can’t suffer from exhaustion or the poisoned conditions, the death dragon’s Undead creature type provides them with exploitable vulnerabilities. The cleric’s Turn Undead and the protection from evil and good spell can prevent the death dragon from getting too close, and the paladin’s Divine Smite can dish out some extra damage when it does close in for a strike.
Using Death Dragons in Your Game
Whether you’re playing in a Dragonlance setting or not, death dragons are a terrifying monster to throw at your party. Their cruel tactics and deadly breath weapon, combined with their vengeful nature and lack of need for sleep, make these creatures a nightmare to deal with.
Where Do Death Dragons Come From?
If your campaign is set outside Dragonlance, death dragons may be created in a way that doesn’t involve magical fires from a calamity centuries past. Instead, you can roll on the table below for ideas we have homebrewed on how a death dragon may have originated in your world:
d4 |
Result |
1 |
A necromancer uncovered a dragon’s burial place and performed a dark ritual to bring it back to life. |
2 |
A dragon is consumed by hellfire as it battles with a demon, arising as a death dragon after the battle concluded and the demon has retreated to the Underworld. |
3 |
Seeking revenge for their slain wyrmlings, a dragon falls in battle. Its hatred and need for vengeance cause it to return as a death dragon. |
4 |
Tiamat attempts to escape her prison in Avernus by resurrecting an army of death dragons to wreak havoc on the mortal realm. |
Death Dragon Tactics
If your party got on the wrong side of a powerful necromancer or caused the death of a particularly vengeful dragon, they may have a death dragon coming after them for revenge. Immune to exhaustion and able to go without food or sleep, death dragons would tirelessly hunt down their quarry, and once found, they wouldn’t show an ounce of mercy.
Infused with hatred and a need for vengeance, death dragons may not be as plotting as other dragonkin. But, their instincts are to follow the same tactics that other dragons employ to make short work of their victims. Surprise them with a breath weapon, then pick off the survivors one by one by grabbing them and dropping them from on high.
These tactics will be even more devastating with the death dragon’s ability to grapple as part of their Multiattack, rather than committing their entire action to a grapple attempt. This is doubly so for the lesser death dragon, who gets two Claw attacks as part of their Multiattack and can grapple a target in each hand.
Will Your Party Survive?
In Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen, your party will face off against death dragons and other terrifying monsters as they battle for the fate of Krynn. What other dastardly creatures does the Dragon Queen have in store for your heroes? Only one way to find out!
Mike Bernier (@arcane_eye) is the founder of Arcane Eye, a site focused on providing useful tips and tricks to all those involved in the world of D&D. Outside of writing for Arcane Eye, Mike spends most of his time playing games, hiking with his girlfriend, and tending the veritable jungle of houseplants that have invaded his house.
Fingers crossed they will how low enough int for a necromancer to control! That would really make my day. Imagine a level 14 necromancer wizard dominating one of these bad boys? Endless carnage!
Fun way to flavor a Topaz Dragonborn who is an Undying/Undead Warlock.
You know dragonsborns aren't born from dragons, right? Dragonborn are their own seperate race, only distantly related to dragons, kinda like how we are related to monkeys.
It would make sense to simply say revivify cannot convert a still "living" zombie back into a humanoid because the zombie is animated by necromantic energy that cannot be dissipated by this resurrection magic. If the body is permanently tainted by necromantic magic, it makes zero sense to say you can kill the zombie and *then* use revivify to bring it back as a living humanoid, but you cannot do the exact same thing with a much more powerful spell, which is what the article states. D&D is a fantastical game, but I need internal consistency to suspend my disbelief. Also, I think players feel cheated when a lower level spell/feat/feature outperforms what is supposed to be a more powerful option.
I would like to see the ritual/spell to create them be accessible to parties
What about resurrection?
A deathdragon born in an inn... Chromatic dragonborn already catch crap. But a deathdragon born. Let's look at how loose the fantasy needs to get for results of necromancy becoming a level 1 character in an inn somewhere doing silly hijinks.
It'sa dark origin and needs a lot to make it make sense. They're created by necromancers, "toting a lower Intelligence than other dragons" but you can handwave this these days, "The death dragon's breath weapon automatically kills any creature that is reduced to 0 hit points by the attack" but you can just limit it to Necrotic damage but honestly I think this is signature, "they have immunity to necrotic and poison damage, resistance to piercing damage, and can’t suffer from exhaustion or the poisoned conditions" this is more power than any other race in the game.
For sake of the story at your table, this is too much power at level 1. It challenges you the DM to create challenges that don't target necrotic or poison damage. It would be exciting to play to his strengths, but his only challenges would be some of the other status conditions. And this is just the race considerations BEFORE Dragonlance optional rules kick in like, "characters get a feat" at level 1 and 4. I will say aisamar and maybe another volos guide race would feel as overloaded.
Just to take it easy on yourself, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't even add this to the game.
BUT, and this is a huge one, do it yourself and save the money from buying it from WOTC. Use the previous dragonborn designs from fizban as a template, but add what traits in whatever measures from the death dragon to the death dragon dragonborn. And create a simple 3 sentence explanation for how they come to being and have the ability to choose to be good creatures.
I would probably just go with a reborn dragonborn, and give them a necrotic breath weapon instead of those extra skills.
Clearly this dragon needs to be used in a fight with lots of civilians and corpses to turn into zombies.
For low level parties though
CR: 7,000,000
You are why we can't have nice things.
i dont understand why raise dead and basically any resurection spells wouldn'T work or bringing them back from being zombies ?
you do realise that resurection spells bring characters back to life. that means the zombie will not be a zombie anymore, but a living creature, wounds healed up at 1 HP with its own mentality. becoming a zombie do not stop resurection spells from working as intended.
as for paladin divine smites... yeah they do 1d8 more damage because of undead type, but thats not gonna be a devastating effect on vulnerabilities.
unless you think undead are vulnerable to radiant damage, at which case you are thinking of 3rd and 4th edition, not 5th which do not have such vulnerabilities.
though i will agree that zombies themselves cannot revive to 1 hp if hit by radiant attack. so in that regard paladins have that advantage. but not on death dragons. unless you mean to tell me that death dragon have regens except when hit by radiant power, in that case then yes paladin would be awesome. but so would be clerics.
anyway...
without stats block its hard to say if the dragons are that big of a deal. based on what you just told us...
you just described like half the dragons that already exists. thats not to mention that shadow dragons pretty much already do this. so again without stats its hard to say whats really good and whats not. if anything though, based on what you are saying... WotC upgraded the dragons with automatic grapples and breath weapons that do more then just damage. which is something we all been asking for years.
overall, can't wait for this to come out, mainly because tons of dragons in there. i love dragons. but i wish all dragons had more then 1 type of breath weapons. you know like the metallic.
It would be easier to create then you all think... for basically shadow dragons already are like that. i mean the shadowfell is the place of undeath. transforming a dragonborn into a death dragon is as easy as to say he is resistant to necrotic damage and his breath weapon is now necrotic damage. the biggest hurdle peoplehave that do not realise that. is that changing the players type from humanoid to undead. would literally cripple the player way too much. meaning no more healing except goodberries and potions of healings work. the rest do not work anymore. he can still take short rest and heal up with hit dice. but thats still making things hard for him. giving a player immunity to exhaustion is just asking for trouble... your DM will now have a character who do not care about any dangers whatsoever cause he cant have exhaustion...
in any case... i had a player play a shadow dragonborn once. he liked it... and all i did was the resistance change to necrotic and breath being necrotic.
did give him animate dead spell once he reached level 5. so he could breath undead life into corpses. thats really all he asked for.
Ok, Lets try to clear this whole "Why cant they be rezed?" mess up.
You got your Dwarf fighter up front (humanoid creature type), gets riped up by the dragon, is now a corpse (still humanoid tho)
Dragon turns and uses its breath weapon on dwarf corpse and the elf wizard (also humanoid creature type), kills both, come back as zombies (now undead creature type)
While those two players are looking at the DM all slack jawed and about to kick off, the half orc Barbarian (for good measure; humanoid creature type) runs over to the zombies and hacks them to bits because what else is it going to do? Zombie corpses now litter the floor...(Zombie corpses are STILL UNDEAD CREATURE TYPE)
The...i don't know..Autognome Druid? is that a thing? runs over to one of them and casts Revivify on the dwarf zombie, and gets its face chewed on by it, because it wasn't the dead dwarf player character, it was the dead dwarf shaped zombie that revived with 1 HP.
Was this clearing it all up for any one?
You're correct mechanically, however most people replying do not like that because they're not thinking about it in terms of game mechanics they're thinking of it narriatively. The undead is a walking corpse of a creature, you slay it so now the necromantic magic is gone, its the corpse of their friend, so it should be able to be revivified logically. They have no problems that when you slay a vampire and revivify the corpse of the vampire it remains the undead creature type because it narriatively makes sense. This is one of those situations where game mechanics are strictly defined and sometimes clash with expectations about what makes narriative sense.
Short answer, is yes they can and with the Lesser Death Dragon it would not even be hard to do.
As a level 14 wizard necromancer, I cannot wait to true polymorph my simulacrum at level 17.
A Dragon mount and a way to control undead hordes without spellslots is so powerful
INT is 11, and CHA 10 I believe. This is a necromancers wet dream
The lesser death dragon has a 5, it's easier to control than a ghoul and could give you indirect control of a zombie army.