Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 217 - Monster Series - Dragons 2 and the PF2e Monster Core Review

Episode Date: March 31, 2024

A listener wrote in asking for more details about dragons and I’m happy to oblige.  They are complex creatures that have a lot of abilities and long lifespans for good reason.  In this episode I talk about more draconic features and briefly review the Pathfinder 2e Monster Core Rulebook recently released by Paizo   Resources: Archives of Nethys - https://2e.aonprd.com/  Pathfinder 2e Monster Core Rulebook - https://paizo.com/products/btq02ej4  Remaster Previews - Diabolic Dragon - https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6sial  Remaster Previews - Mirage Dragon - https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6siax  Remaster Previews - Fortune Dragon - https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6sii7  Remaster Previews - Conspirator Dragon - https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6sihv  Remaster Previews - Adamantine Dragon - https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6sihh  Remaster Previews - Horned Dragon - https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6siio  Remaster Previews - Empyreal Dragon - https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6sij4    Cowbell and cow sound effects courtesy of Pixabay

This week on The Taking Twenty Podcast. Evil dragons can look upon shorter lived races as chattel, toys, or lunch. They could view the people in the local town as their property and that they can treat that property as slaves or assets to be used, bought, and sold. Thank you for listening to The Taking 20 Podcast, Episode 217, a rare part 2 of a Monster series, this time focusing on dragons and giving a brief review of the Monster Core from Pathfinder 2E. I want to thank this week's sponsor, Knives.

It took me all day trying to think of a knife joke. I guess that really means I need to hone my skills. To those of you who emailed me about possible pre-recording of items for your campaign, thank you so much for the feedback. I'm still considering it, but if anyone would want to be a beta tester for me and have something I could pre-record, speeches, notices, green text from an area, letters, etc. Send it to me and I'll give it my best shot. Feel free to reach out to me at feedback at taking20podcast.com or via direct message on social media. No cost for the service, I'm just interested to see if anyone would be interested.

It's interesting that I've used the word interested twice. It's not like I earn interest on the word interested in- Shut up, Jeremy. By the way, some of you may be tuning in for my review of the Pathfinder 2e monster core book I get into more detail at the end of the episode But the too long didn't listen version of my review is I bought it on my own I think it's fantastic even for the art alone. I bought it for me. You should too. I originally talked about dragons way back in episode 34,

but that was in August of 2020. Good grief, that's like four years ago. Where's the time gone? I mean I'm officially old now and you kids need to get off my lawn and turn down your rock and roll music and don't make me want to rock doesn't make me want to roll either. Back in my day we listened to music that was overly engineered and auto-tuned to shit and we liked it. Sorry. In that episode I talked about how big dragons get, talked a little bit about their layers and how they defend them in creative ways. They're intelligent, even the dumber ones have a relatively high intelligence score. Many of them have egos that can fill the world and many of them love being worshipped or at least having minions and followers. So what else is there to say

about them? It turns out a lot. Enough to fill another episode. But still, why should I talk about them again? First of all, because a user emailed me asking me to discuss them. So if there's a topic you'd like covered, please let me know. It may only take an email to make that happen. But if you donate to the podcast at ko-fi.com slash taking20podcast and make a suggestion, it bumps up to the top of the queue. Secondly, because there are features of dragons that are almost universal across game systems that I didn't have time to talk about all those years ago. Like what you ask?

Well thank you very much other voice in my head, I'm gonna tell you. If you're going to include a dragon in your game, remember dragons consider themselves superior to the shorter lived races. I mentioned their ego, but even elves seem to be short lived when dragon lifespans can stretch into multiple millennia. A dragon could legitimately say to an ancient elf that's, what, 900 years old? I knew you were a great, great, great grandmother and trust me, you're no Elvanna the Wise. You're more like, I don't know, Darfindel the Lunkhead. Dragons see themselves as superior, but this superiority likely manifests in different ways depending on the dragon.

Evil dragons can look upon shorter lived races as chattel, toys, or lunch. They could view the people in the local town as their property, and that they can treat that property as slaves or assets to be used, bought, and sold. Even if they take a mostly hands-off approach with regard to the local humanoids, dragons can still demand tribute. 10 head of cattle per month for food, thereby eliminating the need for the dragon to hunt for food periodically. Basically turning the local town

into the Faerun version of Door Dash. Mr. Ember Schmelt, your food delivery is here. Thank you for using Barley, buddy, and please consider giving me five stars. No, no, no, no, no tip necessary. Thank you very much. Goodbye. Evil dragons may destroy areas just to revel in the destruction and delight in the fear that they create swooping down on a hapless population laughing at the little two-legged creatures

running from them in terror from a flammable house to flammable house. Yeah, that one burns too, that ain't gonna save you. Meanwhile, good dragons may look upon these races as children that they are taking care of, guiding to a shining future even if they can't see it and maybe don't realize that they want it. These good dragons may dispense wisdom to those who seek it or even walk among them unseen to care for them and nurture them like a doting parent or grandparent. And neutral dragons, well, they just may ignore the humanoids like we do ant hills in the park.

They're there and if we want to take an interest in them, we can observe them and intervene in their lives if we want, but that's probably the exception rather than the rule. So my next tip for you, my beloved DMs out there, treat dragons as you would any other NPC. They have personalities and intelligence, goals and plans, schemes and the lifespan to make sure that their schemes are carried out. They can be subtle or showy, benevolent or bestial, selfish or altruistic. Those plans that they're making could be as simple as hoarding treasure as much as they could

possibly get, or amassing followers, or it could be complex like enslaving a town to complete a project for them. Maybe they're trying to establish a place to store their treasures so others can admire them and, by extension, the dragon. Imagine a dragon, by the way, who owns every piece of art, say, in the Louvre and puts them on display for others to admire. It would massage the dragon's ego even if the visitors don't know that they're doing it. I know it's a very, sorry for the word, shadow-runny version of dragons, but it would make sense that they would gravitate towards positions of power. I'm just scratching the surface of dragon motivations. Just know that they're more intelligent than most humanoids and

will have hopes and dreams just like your average gnome or half-orc or elf or human. They just have more time and power to accomplish those dreams. For example, some dragons can change their shape or polymorph into other creatures. Five e-dragons for example can polymorph themselves into other creatures, some of them at will, and will use that ability to both maneuver into better positions during combat and if necessary retreat to an alternate location to lick their wounds and plot their revenge. Pathfinder 2 e-Dragons have an ability called Change Shape. It's a one-action ability that requires concentration and the dragon takes on the appearance of any small or medium humanoid. It doesn't change their speed, their attack and

damage modifiers with their strikes, but it might change their damage type. So like maybe it doesn't do slashing damage anymore, it now does bludgeoning. Besides that some dragons have some extremely powerful abilities that they use to their advantage. In that last episode I hardly mentioned their breath weapons. A breath weapon for a dragon is a term for any effect used that's produced by the mouth or jaws or throat or that area of the body. This can include any number of magical effects, fire, acid, steam, gas, needles, lightning, boulders. It just depends on the type of dragon

and what type of breath weapon they have. In a world full of magical effects like spells like fireball and the ability to heal diseases with a touch, let's not spend a lot of time discussing the physics of a creature that can produce a cone of super hot fire out of its mouth. Does it have any taste buds left?

Can it use it to clean that last bit of rogue that's caught between its back teeth? And when a dragon burps, does a little bit of breath weapon come out? Honestly, we may never know the answer to these critically unimportant questions. Or my beloved DMs, you can make up the answers yourselves. But Dragon breath weapons are powerful abilities that require time to recharge. In fifth edition, most breath weapons are listed as having a recharge value.

For example, a red dragon whose breath weapon has a recharge listed as five to six means that the DM rolls a D6 at the beginning of the dragon's turn. And if they roll a 5 or a 6, congratulations, dragon has its breath weapon back. Pathfinder 2e is a slightly different set of rules. Most dragons must wait 1-4 rounds after using their breath weapon to get to use it again. And depending on the dragon, their breath weapon could come out in different shapes.

Blue dragons, for example, breathe a line of lightning, red dragons breathe a cone of fire, and there are dragons in older versions that could breathe in a burst around them of smoke or positive energy or radiant damage, etc. Remember, dragons are very intelligent, and they know when they use this nuclear option of dropping a cone of bludgeoning rocks or whatever, they know they're not going to be able to use it again for a certain period of time. So they will maximize their opportunity to use it. Generally you can assume that dragons know exactly what squares on the battle mat will be engulfed in acid or flames when they use this powerful attack. So they will maneuver themselves and their opponents in such a way to maximize the effect

of the breath weapon. They're smart. They're going to look at obvious spellcasters and say you don't have a lot of health or they'll look at that slow moving humanoid and plate mail and they'll say you're not gonna be able to dodge out of the way easily and may use those breath weapons against those creatures. Also, combat occurs in three dimensions so you can always have that dragon fly upward and then breathe that 60 foot cone of fire on the good guys coming to slay the dragon and they will try to maximize that damage and stay out of damage range of this party of

do-gooders as much as they can. In 5e there are good and neutral dragons as well. Not all dragons are evil monsters bent on domination. Some are sages and wise and dispense knowledge to those who ask. I still remember silver dragons in the old days. They were known to polymorph themselves into other forms like humanoids, see previous discussion on that, and even involve themselves in politics and society, guiding and protecting from within. In a campaign I ran a long time ago, a silver dragon had fallen in love with a young king who was naive naive and reckless, but had a pure heart of good.

The party didn't know the queen was anything other than an elf until Act 3 of the campaign, after the king had been slain. God, that was a fun campaign. Anyway, the third reason I wanted to talk about dragons is because there are new dragons in the Pathfinder 2e remaster that have some significant differences from dragons of previous editions. Because of the OGL shenanigans of Wizards of the Coast, Pathfinder 2e has released a 2e remaster edition and one of the monsters that had the biggest set of changes were dragons.

Chromatic and metallic dragons are not in the first monster core rule book of the remaster. And for those, you who don't know what I'm talking about and you don't soak in the D&D world until your fingers get all pruney, chromatic dragons were the color based dragons. Red dragons evil and breathe fire, blue dragons evil and breathe lightning, green, white, black and so forth. Meanwhile metallic dragons were based on metals, gold, brass, copper, silver, and so forth. From what I hear, and I'll be the first to say that I don't have some secret insider knowledge at Paizo, I can't pick up the phone and talk to Jason Buhlmann or anything, but

from what I've read and what I can infer, they're attempting to rework chromatic and metallic dragons and bring them back later, but they'll have to be legally distinct from those used in 5e and the upcoming version of 1D&D. The good news is that if you're running a Pathfinder 2e game at home and love those chromatic and metallic dragons in the first edition of Pathfinder 2e, pull one in and use it. It should work pretty much as is with very little tweaking. Another change they've made in Pathfinder 2e, by the way, dragon connections to spellcasting schools of magic are gone because there are no more schools of magic, so to speak.

Dragons are now defined as arcane, divine, occult, or primal to align them with the remastered spellcasting traditions. I believe the plan is to start with a pair of dragons for each of the four traditions, and I saw one unconfirmed report that they're working on two to three more per tradition. This is exciting and something new for an old fart like me who's very used to chromatic and metallic dragons have been part of RPGs for years. In an interesting twist in the monster core, dragons can be spellcasters or not. The Pathfinder 2e monster core has some default spells you can give to spellcasting dragons, but feel free to customize those lists to meet your campaign's needs. However, each dragon has an option to NOT be a spellcaster. But don't worry, no no, the non-spellcasting dragons in the Monster Core aren't necessarily easier to kill. They have two features that make them extremely dangerous, Draconic Frenzy and Draconic Momentum. With Frenzy, the dragon can make three attacks with two actions, which if it's the size of

a house and it can use two of its three actions in one round to make three attacks, eeeewww. And with Draconic Momentum, they recharge their breath weapon automatically when they score critical hit. Ugh. Whew. Now, in 2023 and early 2024, as a preview, Luis Lozov, Paizo, released some blog posts about the dragons that were coming out in the remaster. He had blog entries about the Diabolic Dragon, which is a divine dragon with ties to hell, and the Mirage Dragon, an arcane dragon with mastery of illusion magic.

A lot of these dragons are detailed in preview blog posts provided by Paizo and I'll put a link to all of them that are out as of this recording in the resources or description of the episode so go check those out. But these dragons are much more fleshed out in the Monster Core rulebook that Paizo just published. Without going into too much detail, and I probably do anyway, Arcane Dragons typically have stronger connections to magic and stronger spell casting capabilities. There's a fortune dragon that embodies direct control over magic, just pure raw magical power and they feed on spells that affect them. Oh yeah, okay I can't wait to fight one of

those. It breathes a cone of magical energy that manifests as force damage. Ow. And some of its treasure is magically attached to their body? Coins and gems and magical items that are just attached like they're magnetic? Interesting. Mirage dragons have iridescent scales that can change color for better camouflage. It breathes a cone of hallucinatory damage that can cast a range of illusion spells. The horde in their lair tends to have items that are polished to a mirror shine so they can look on their own reflections. There's that ego. Divine dragons as opposed to arcane typically have

ties to extraplanar entities and sometimes even draw power directly from deities or the planes themselves. Diabolic dragons have ties to hell as you can imagine. They release a cone of fire so hot it can even burn creatures made of fire. Unique things you can find in their lair are like gems containing trapped souls or maybe even infernal contracts made with mortals. Imperial dragons, that's E-M-P-Y-R-E-A-L by the way, dragons are generally benevolent that have a golden halo above their heads and grants inspiration and aura Around them they can slow enemies heal allies and generally welcome people to their lairs They can breathe a cone of spirit damage that kind of thing

Occult dragons meanwhile like conspirator dragons are a scheme and execute grand plans Sometimes they do it for personal gain, but other times it's just because they enjoy doing it. They can disguise themselves, create replicas, and look like other creatures. They can breathe a poisonous smoke screen, allowing them to escape and that kind of thing. Omen dragons are bound to see the future at all times and have a compulsion to share their visions even if they're kind of nebulous. There are also primal dragons like adamantine and horned dragons. Horned dragons by the way I really like. They're powerful, they have this huge pair of horns that come out and they can use them to impale their foes. They live in

forests and swamps and can breathe a cone of poison. Now if you'll notice by the way if you really get into the details every single dragon in Pathfinder 2e has a cone shaped breath weapon. It's not like the old blue dragons that used to breathe a long line of lightning. Long line of lightning, that's pretty good consonance Jeremy. Anyway, they all breathe cones and the consistency there makes it easier to prep, especially the first time you use one of these creatures. All you have to know is cone breath weapon, got it. This brings me to my final tip about dragons. You may have listened to that discussion of Pathfinder 2e dragons and thought great Jeremy thanks for listing all that but I don't need that shit. I play 5e or Mork Borg or

Delta Green or Shadowrun. That doesn't help me at all. To which I would respond bollocks. And ask you to remember that you can always create and customize monsters in any way you want from behind the screen One phrase I use quite often for GM's out there is borrow borrow borrow steel steel steel If you're running a home game of 5e and a monster from 3.5e or Pathfinder 1e or held Delta green worlds without number homebrew something similar to it Adjust it behind the screen and make sure it's balanced and have fun. I love the idea of a horned dragon for example that can charge foes and impale them on their horns. Oh I love it but oh gosh Jeremy the

green dragon in 5e can't do that. Okay home brew it start with a green dragon give it a horn attack ability to charge make the horn attack, and action. Let's do that. Voila! Now you have one of those terrifying creatures in your game. More details about these dragons, by the way, can be found shortly on Archives of Nethus, which is a site that has all the rules for Pathfinder 2e for free. The site is legitimate. It's not like they're pirating content. It's actually supported by Paizo, and it usually gets the data on the site shortly after the books are published. Speaking of which, I don't usually review products here on the channel because frankly

there are others that review products far better than I ever could and get those products well before I could ever gain access to them. But what I will say is this, having gotten the Monster core, I think it's worth it for the artwork alone. Creatures in the book contain gorgeous artwork depicting monsters from the Aeon to the zombie. It updates previously released Pathfinder 2 monsters to be fully compatible with the remaster and gives you tips for role-playing the creatures and adjusting their statistics to make them stronger or weaker. If you like the bestiaries from Pathfinder 1e, Paizo have really refined and improved everything about the stat blocks they produce and information they present about the various

monsters and creatures. They're tables that let you find monsters by challenge rating, category, and type. It explains the various monster traits and what they mean, and I know the book costs $60 for the hard copy And that's a lot of money these days But if you buy it directly from Paizo, it also comes with a PDF version that's kept up to date So no more post-it notes with errata stuck in your book The monster core is 372 pages of monster information tips for running them and even unique versions of those creatures You can drop into your game. They're not paying me to push this book,

I was just honestly really impressed when I got my hands on my copy. And I do encourage you all to at least take a look at it for ideas about dragons or hundreds of other monsters. If you're a little strapped for cash, again keep an eye on Archives of Nethus because the stat blocks will be there soon if they're not already. Dragons are creatures of legend with lifespans of thousands of years. They're tough combatants and even the feral ones should be played intelligently. Remember their egos? Treat them as NPCs even if they're NPCs the size of a house and can burn all your skin off and turn you into something that looks like a rib roast with a single breath from their mouth. They will make plans that sometimes stretch many years with machinations only they

understand. Be creative in your dragons and use material from other game systems if you want to customize and flavor dragons in your campaign world. If you do, I'd be willing to bet that you and your players would have fun doing it. That is until they die horribly at the hands of Cinder Maw the Undying, but it's not about the destination, it's also about the journey. If you like this podcast, please consider donating to it at ko-fi.com slash taking 20 podcast. Every dime you donate goes back into the podcast and helps keep it going, allowing me to continue to make content for you. So please consider a donation. Tune in next week when I'm going to have a back to basics episode, reminding you

about the power that DM words hold. But before I go, I want to thank this week's sponsor, knives. It really is relaxing to finally figure out a second pun for an episode. Getting that done really kind of takes the edge off. This has been episode 217, a second episode in the Monster series about dragons and briefly reviewing the Pathfinder 2e Monster Core. My name is Jeremy Shelley and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking20 Podcast is a Publishing Cube Media Production. Copyright 2024. References to game system content are copyrighted by their respective publishers.