Heavy Metal Dragons Rock the Draconomicon
He's just looking for a wizard who can cast "Summon Lime-Away."
The first edition of the Draconomicon gave us all the inside info on chromatic dragons for D&D fourth edition. What about the good guys? The latest Draconomicon fleshes out the gold, silver, brass, bronze, copper, orium, iron, steel, mercury and other metallic dragons. Beware: they’re not as noble as you might remember them.
I’m a sucker for any book with “-nomicon” in the name. Wizards of the Coast should just call all their books Somethingnomicon. Zombienomicon. Player’s Handbooknomicon. Adventurer’s Vaultnomicon. I’m going to write a cookbook called the NomNomNomicon.
Anyway, here’s the thing about the new metallic dragons: Golds and Silvers are pretty nice as far as dragons go, but this book goes out of its way (to the point where you might roll your eyes a few times and say, “Ok, I get it already!”) that dragons are complex beings with plans and motivations that span centuries and are largely beyond human comprehension. If a Gold dragon has a plan and needs to wipe out an elven culture or two to move it forward, well, you can’t make an omelette without committing a few genocides now, can you? And when it comes to some of the other metallic dragon types — Mercury and Iron in particular — some of them are just downright mean.
Draconomicon — Metallic Dragons starts with a section of player information, which is mostly pure fluff so you can’t metagame with any statistical knowledge you ought not to have. There’s info about dragon religions, the personalities of the different types and even an abbreviated section on dragon physiology (they direct you to the chromatic Draconomicon for more details).
More than 75 percent of this book is filled with info for DMs. You get the expected stat blocks for each dragon type in several age categories, plus some interesting encounters and lairs. There are special hazards commonly found in dragon lairs, lists of organizations related to or involving dragons, and a handful of draconic artifacts. Following the pattern of all recent 4E books, Draconomicon offers some adventure hooks revolving around dragons, as well as entire campaign outlines with a draconic focus, with suggestions for each of the three tiers. You get a lot of fun ideas to mess around with and entwine with your own storytelling.
This book offers further boons to DMs, with advice on creating multi-creature encounters with dragons (you can easily downgrade them to elites instead of solos). There’s a bunch of dragon-related creatures to throw into your lairs and encounters too, like couatls, drakkensteeds and even the long-awaited 4E appearance of Draconians. There are new Draconians based on the new metallic dragon types, complete with their bizarre death attacks. If you’d rather stick with real dragons, you can still customize them with alternate powers. How about a Brass dragon that can make your blood boil inside your body?
Are the new dragon types any good? Mostly they’re excellent, offering a nice variety in terms of personality, motivation and typical terrain (and of course, I realize that with D&D’s long history of endless supplements, few of these are truly new). I like Cobalt dragons, which are sort of the metallic equivalent of White dragons, living in cold climates, but ruling over barbarian tribes instead of just holing up in an ice cave. Mithrals are radiant dragons with majestic, unfathomable powers. Steel dragons lair in cities and are the dragons most likely to live as humans (there’s been one in a position of power in Waterdeep for a long, long time). Orium dragons are a metallic red color, based on an ancient magical metal that’s quite rare today. They live in (and renovate and excavate) ancient ruins, often in jungles — imagine Indiana Jones as a dragon.
Bottom line: this one of the better 4E books to come out lately, with a lot of useful, but flexible information that puts a heavy focus on the game’s headline creature. It also manages to take metallic dragons from their usual roles as powerful NPCs that often lived at the edges of the story to complicated beings with many reasons to come into direct conflict with your adventurers. The move from set-dressing to antagonist is radical and highly needed. You can pick up a copy at TrollandToad.com, along with the Chromatic version.
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December 7th, 2009 11:16 PM
Finally people will stop sweating me for killing all those Gold Wyrms.
December 8th, 2009 1:32 PM
I was telling my wife about this book. I prefaced it with something like “In D&D and many fantasy worlds, colored dragons (red, blue, green etc.) are evil…” And she interrupted to say, “Yeah, and the metallic ones are good.” So hot.
December 8th, 2009 2:55 PM
I would like to take a look at this book. Pity my DM isn’t big on Dragons.
December 8th, 2009 5:53 PM
Not big on dragons! That’s horrible! I’ve started collecting them (sort of).
December 8th, 2009 7:41 PM
I thought the 3.5 Draconomicon was great but I am glad to see it broken out this time into more volumes with more room for the varied species of dragons.
Ed I would totally buy your NomNomNomicon, you should get a permanent +5 to profession: cooking just for thinking up the name.
December 9th, 2009 12:06 PM
Ed, if you don’t make that cook book I’m going to be sorely disappointed. I don’t even like to cook, and I’d buy the NomNomNomicon.
Gavin, I think Gary Gygax was racist. Why do the colored dragons gotta be evil? Cracka-ass cracka… but it is hot that your wife knows that, if I may refer to something your wife does as hot without offending.
Anyways, it’s great that they’re trying to put dragons more towards the foreground. Someday I will have a character who defeats a dragon, and flies around on its back, all awesome, and stuff. It’s gonna happen.
December 9th, 2009 12:39 PM
I’m seriously contemplating pitching the NomNomNomicon to a publisher. It could be a gamer-focused cookbook! Things that are easy to eat while rolling a D20.
December 9th, 2009 2:55 PM
I would buy it.
December 10th, 2009 1:12 AM
You missed out Eric. The dragon taming sessions were in the last campaign.
December 11th, 2009 9:21 PM
I say look into it, Ed. Might be worth the effort.
And just you wait, Ryk. I WILL ride upon the back of a mighty dragon! We shall sail through the clouds on wings made from a mutual bond of respect, and a desire to crush those lesser than we!