My armor is like tenfold shields. My teeth are swords, my claws spears. The shock of my tail a thunderbolt! My wings a hurricane! And my breath!? DEATH!!
OH MY GOD. The idea of a dragon carrying a magical sword from an ancient battle carved into its back is FANTASTIC. You describe to the players how (even though they're dealing damage) nothing seems to really pierce or damage the scales. And then they notice the sword with a faint glow between the wings of the dragon. One PC decides to "waste" a turn to get there. When they want to grab it you make them roll for a WIS check, and then when they grab the hilt, they're flooded with memories of a hero, fighting a one on one battle with the dragon. It's all quick-cut flashes of the sword's history, and a glimpse to its capabilities. Dawnbreaker, the Bringer of Light, forged to slay Qazyldrath. Thematically *and* mechanically, a good counter to some of Qazyldrath's abilities. Bonus action cast Daylight on the sword, and now you can break the magical darkness. Something like that. F-ing cool. I'm so gonna use this for my games.
i love that style of dragons, i remember making one around that idea (though it was for a story) it was a race that grow swords on their body and then they wield them if they polymorph, as they age they tend to enchant and carve those sword into masterpieces, they can also eat the materials that may go into the production of said sword (so they can basically "steal" someone blade to grow it on their back)
I had the pleasure of running all of the dragons during the second round of playtesting and Qazyldrath was also my favourite! An absolutely murderous, deadly beast that felled many a Player Character and had (in my opinion) the most interesting combat kit out of all of the dragons. The personality and extra juice you give them through this video is delightful!
That's awesome!! Thank you for the kind words!! I haven't had a chance to run em yet! Did I represent the power synergies well?? Did you have the darkness from the breath block line of sight, or was the dragon too large for that to be a concern?? So curious!!
@@mapcrow 100%. Had to work with the angles but you can definitely use the shadow breath to block los, especially in complex lairs with a lot of hard cover that can act as funnels (which you can conveniently block off with darkness, forcing players to adapt). It also gave great opportunities for Quazyldrath to create their own advantages for when their breath weapon was on recharge. The difficulties come when the party can fly as well. Makes it mucb harder to utilise the shadows to the dragon's benefit!
The format of this book is honestly genius, so often with idea generation tools it feels as though I'm entirely at the mercy of the dice, but the fill-in-the-blank nature of this in combination with the excellent art and keen insights about tropes and conventions really makes my mind spin with ideas!
In case you missed it, check out the lore entry for the Hallowed Dark villain party at the end of the book. Spoilers: They're trying to reawaken Qazyldrath!
Dark Souls 1 + 2('s DLC) play into the Ageless Scales trope in the same way. Both feature a dragon which when airborne is completely unmatched, but when brought down to the ground and handicapped in some way is actually beatable. It conveys that idea of dragons beig so powerful that you have use every advantage at your disposal for even a chance to beat them
I'm Romanian, the words Dragon and Dracula don't just 'share etymological roots', they are very directly related. Dracul means 'the devil', it's where Dracul + a comes from, it's also the nickname of a famous king we had, Vlad Țepeș, which he got because of his exploits. This dude was also part of his father's military organization club thing called 'The Order of The Dragon' (that's the translation of it).
Oh! That's a really fun idea, looking at one of the Where Evil Lives preview lairs! I think I'd like to run it before I did a video on it, but that's a real fun idea! Thanks!!
Flee Mortal was suuuch a good buy! :D It's an amazing book and I personally like how the different presented humanoid races feel different! Been loving your videos as of recent, especially the one on better monsters and on better dungeons. Though especially your video on Jayquasing the dungeon has taught me to make meaningfully different paths throughout my dungeon and also have meaningfully different entrances. Cheers for all that helpful advice!
Heya! Crow, this video is going to help me a lot now that I'm working on my setting dragons. Thanks to some specifics, I can use basically everything here, specially the "stuck ancient weapon" one, my martials will be salivating to rip it out.
Love your video as always Mapcrow! (Just on a side note: The Norse Wolf that devours the sun is called: ‘Fenrir’) But that a side, Awesome video and thanks for always inspiring me!
@@mapcrow Aussie creatures don't get much love in fantasy. If you run out of creatures to draw bunyips, yowies, drop bears, and rainbow serpents need love.
Even Smaug runs from angry Emu's = those are some scary birds.... Might even be worse than Canadian Cobra Chickens.... maybe.... I wouldn't want to be in the room when they both throw down... :D :D :D :D
Im losing my mind ive looked across the intire internet what does the company name stands for???? MDCM (its probably something obvious but i cant seem to figure it out)
I could be wrong, but I've always thought it meant "Matt Colville Dungeon Master." He has always seemed playful about not answering directly though. Haha
I really like having dragons in my settings being closer to a demigod like being that could destroy whole cities if it wanted to. Having them be the awkward power level they are in vanilla dnd just feels weird to me, as well as the way that the dragon color/alignment thing is handled is just icky. Would love to have a chat with the person whos idea it was lol
I agree with the sentiment here. But keep in mind that 1E did all this stuff for the first time, and back then it was new and exciting! It's only boring now because people (including the current rights holders) have been copying them for 50 years! Haha! Cheers!
Ha! Well put! I'm really looking forward to the new MCDM game sorting out 10 levels of character progression in a way that makes me feel more confident to run the end game!!
That was wonderful!!! I got the beginnings of some new ideas to start playing with as I was listening. Though I did have a bit of a 404 error moment with the scales of dark matter and eating a phase of the moon, but I am an astronomy nerd so. *shrug* lol As always great video. Inspiring ideas. 🌟
I was in the same place, I believe. How would one "eat a phase of the moon"? What would that mean functionally? He blotting it out ala a lunar eclipse? But the moon's reflection(s) are so potent/harmful that he has to wait ~n years between each event to heal/recharge?
Ive got an obsession with encorperating ancient dragons into my world. Terra, electrum dragon and ruler of the ringed city in Titan's grave. Red death, an ancient red dragon and tyrant king of the norhern mountains. All must pay tribute or it shall be taken ten fold. Artor vias alucium. Paladin of the platinum dragon. The slumbering forge under the Dwarven city of dargrough. Golden fang. Grey dragon and guardian of the singing mointan, othia. I have more, but this comment is already long.
@@mapcrow I'd want to hold onto it too lol. But When I asked I didn't realize it would be in the book, so even if I can't get the original I will be happy to enjoy it on the page, along with the wonderful content you've created.
Grounded in reality dragons always tickles my fancy. I don't want the dragons to be creatures of fantasy. I want the dragons to feel like real life animals but SO much better. Imagine a gigantic dinosaur that's so innately intelligent and powerful they never developed industrial technology. Just a group of sky lizards where each individual can independently discover calculus and THEN you add the magic. Now you're dealing with ginormous flying dinosaurs that has an innate graps of technology and can make a modern day pc from scratch, breathe magical fire, AND they're souls are entwined with magic itself allowing them to cast both sorcerous and wizardly spells.
