Mythic Monsters 13: Dragons (PFRPG)

Dragons. The name spawns images in my mind of massive beasts with wings flared, facing off against tiny-looking adventurers who quake in terror at their absolutely evident awesome power. One of my favourite-ever pieces of roleplaying art was the cover of the old D&D Companion Set, which had an armoured warrior with a massive magical sword, on a clifftop, facing a rearing dragon that just looked ready to rip him to pieces. Hell yeah.

The Good
Mythic feats for dragons. Want to have your red dragon no longer vulnerable to cold? Done. Have a black dragon bypass foe immunity to acid damage? We can do that. Extra bite damage (and plenty of it) because adventurers are crunchy and taste good with ketchup? Yum.

Not just dragons. While the primary focus of the book is on the chromatic dragons, there's a decent sprinkling of other creatures with the dragon type (mostly drakes, but the pseudodragon and tor linnorm get a going over, too).

The dragons. Sorry, I'm about to have a nerdgasm. The dragons are amazing. Full-blown, no-holds-barred, mythiced up to the nines, and there's some judicious use of the giant simple template to really beef things up. Every power, every ability, I get butterflies in my stomach at how amazing they are. When I can read a statblock (oh, mythic great red wyrm, where have you been all my life?) and cringe in sympathy for any characters unfortunate enough to meet one, I know I've found something special.

The Bad
If you've read any of my previous reviews, you're probably expecting me to start ranting about creatures with large numbers of abilities at high level being more complex than they need to be... and while that's still true, we're looking at dragons here, and they should be awe-inspiring.

So my one gripe? Only one of each chromatic dragon colour. Yep, that's it: I want more. These dragons are such... brilliant, wonderful, beautiful dragons that I want more variety of each dragon type.

The Conclusion
I imagine you can see why I've given this the rating I have. The non-true dragons are a nice to have, but the chromatic dragons are everything I want to see when I think of a dragon: terrifying, powerful, and I can picture any of them, wings flared, facing off against tiny-looking adventurers who quake in terror at their absolutely evident awesome power. Yep. Repeating that for emphasis.

This installment of the Mythic Monsters-series clocks in at 34 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page blank inside front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, 1 page ToC, 2 pages of introduction/how-to use, 1 page advertisement, 1 page inside back cover, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 24 pages of content, so let's take a look!

As has become the tradition with Mythic Monster-supplements, this one also offers us some supplemental pieces of content, this time in the guise of 10 draconic mythic feats - these allow the dragons in question to suppress energy vulnerabilities - and I really like these - with e.g. empowering effects, added negative conditions or added dispel effect, they felt like a neat nod towards the metabreath feats provided in 3.X's Draconomicon. Beyond these, feats to prevent escape from the claws of dragons and truly lethal bite attacks are possible as well - great feats to make these dragons deadly indeed - though it should be mentioned that Con 19 and breath weapon are the main requirements here, so other monsters can potentially benefit from these as well. Personally, I think the feats should be kept out of the hands of players with breath weapons, even in a mythic game.

But enough about that, let's check out these dragons, shall we? At the lowest end of the spectrum, at CR 2/MR 1, we are introduced to the mythic pseudodragon are able to tap into the collective unconsciousness of dragonkind to unearth secrets and treat dragons as favored enemy. A prime example that even MR 1 mythic creatures can be damn cool!

Fans of drakes will have a field day here - At CR 7/MR 3(Flame Drake), CR 6/MR 2 (forest drake), both coming with vastly increased speed and auras of soot/forest mastery, they are solid, but fall behind their CR 10/MR 4 Frost Drake brethren, who gets a unique modification of their breath weapon to have it linger AND duplicate a miniature blizzard - cool! The CR 8/MR 3 Sea Drake also receives a cool modification that clouds targets of their breath with St. Elmo's fire and they also receive additional electricity charges with their tail attacks.

At CR 8/MR 3, the mythic dracolisk receives a cool ability that allows them to truly effectively destroy petrified foes. The smallest of the true dragons provided would be the Giant mythic juvenile blue dragon at CR 13/MR 5 -and how awesome is this guy - breath into the floor to animate the ground into an array of swarms of construct snakes? Heck YES! Bending breath weapons in degrees up to 90°? Yeah! What about tremorsense plus superb stealth on sand? Worthy of a dragon indeed, even before the literally thundering charge!

The Green Dragons are represented in the adult category at CR 16/MR 6 and receive poisonous spittle, mind fog-inducing gas and essentially are the masters of negative conditions stacking via breath weapons - as they should be: Fear the breath weapons, puny adventurers! Of course, there are also true apex predator dragons, worthy of campaign endgames - Ancient Blacks clock in at CR 21/MR 8 and exude a debilitating stench, can add entangle effects to the breath, receive reflexive spines that damage those trying to hit them and they even may use mythic power to inflict diseases on foes bitten. Interesting - summoned forth creatures can be made into a kind of living shield for the dragon...nasty!

At CR 23/MR 9, the Great Wyrm white dragon also adds nasty conditions to their breath, receive a freezing, deadly variant of acid fog and their walls of ice are truly massive - and that, before imprisonment ice tombs. Have I mentioned that their scales are so cold, they may shatter weapons or that their tramples may literally cause avalanches when erupting via burrow speed? What about an alternate, beam-like breath weapon that may ignore immunities via mythic power and offers no save - ouch!

Finally, as is the tradition - the king, ladies and gentlemen, at CR 27/MR 10 - the Great Wyrm Red can eliminate fire resistance/immunities, ignores ability damage/negative levels etc. up to an extent due to draconic fortitude, force mortals to do his bidding with nary a glance and has, due to jewels and gold in the coat, a mythic fortification effect going - oh, and his gaze can be a true seeing/faerie fire-combo and the breath may melt rock, creating lava. Yeah! Glorious, deadly, awesome!

The CR 26/MR 10 Tor Linnorm also belongs into this emperor-level class of foes - reflexive fast healing, remaining active until -390 hit points (!!!), animating magma as deadly elementals and searing scales etc. make for a cool, surprisingly different build for such a fire-.based draconic brute - kudos here!

As always, we also receive a unique, new creature with the Fell Drake at CR 12/MR 5 - these drakes evolved in the realms of necromancer kings long gone, adapting to working with undead and ghosts and would make for superb mounts for the Nazghûl or similar undead - those that rouse the ire of the creatures can easily be driven from the saddle, though and synergy between e.g. frightful moans of mount and rider make for a cool idea.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good, I didn't notice any significant glitches. Layout adheres to Legendary Games' 2-column full-color standard for the series and the module's 2 pieces of original artwork are nice. The pdf has no bookmarks, but at least a hyperlinked ToC, which is still a comfort detriment compared to proper bookmarks.

Jason Nelson's dragons have probably the hardest legacy to hit a creature type can have - I'm a vocal friend of the notion that dragons ought to be truly frightening, deadly and make the PCs shake their boots. Dragons should never be disposable...or bland. Thankfully, the true, massive dragons are just...glorious! They are beauties, with superb, unique abilities, massive, huge statblocks and just style and panache galore. While the drakes are also nice, they fall behind the full-blown dragon's in style and coolness - and know what? For once, I'm very much okay with that. Why? Because, in my opinion, it's intentional. It is obvious that Legendary Games mastermind Jason Nelson can make those glorious abilities - he literally plastered the true dragons with them. The thing is - drakes are supposed to be the smaller, less awe-inspiring brethren of the true dragons and while the new abilities reflect that, they still are iconic and cool - and as such, I consider the distinction well wrought. The new creature will see much use in different tables, though personally, I have to admit the fluff etc. feels more like a template than a creature to me.

Oh well, the scaly lord is eyeing me right now and I already have these colored flames dancing on me, so I better wrap this up before he incinerates me... These dragons are awesome. their builds are deadly and massive and while I would have loved one book on dragons, one on drakes, one on linnorms, one cannot always have everything, can one? Since I found at least one, often more components in each creature I really, really loved, I'll settle on a final verdict of 5 stars + seal of approval, in spite of the missing bookmarks.

Endzeitgeist out.