Disciple of Sakura |
I'm wanting to have a massive zombie dragon opponent for my PCs to face, but I'm trying to figure out how to get a dragon that still has a breath weapon and other abilities. Obviously, the basic Zombie template doesn't do much of anything with a dragon, but I'm trying to figure out if the Zombie Lord (Bestiary 4) template creates a zombie dragon capable of using its breath weapons or not. The template doesn't directly address Special Attacks or Special Qualities for the templated creature, beyond that it *doesn't* gain the Staggered quality, which leads me to assume that it should.
If the Zombie Lord is unable to obtain the desired attributes, are there any viable templates that would create a zombified undead dragon?
Dasrak |
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The Zombie Lord template does not say it removes any special attacks or abilities, so it doesn't. The Zombie Lord template does not say that you apply any of the modifications of the Zombie template, so those don't apply either. So you keep all special abilities.
The line on the staggered condition is a red herring. The Zombie Lord template does not state it works like the Zombie template, so it wouldn't gain the staggered condition anyways.
Dasrak |
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One caution with the Wyrmwraith is that it's completely shut down by any party that has access to an arcane version of the Death Ward spell. It has no way to deal appreciable damage to living creatures protected by Death Ward, and no way to dispel arcane magic. This means that any party with a Witch can trivialize this encounter. It's a cool monster, but a high CR monster that's completely shut down by a single mid-level spell is very problematic to run.
Saldiven |
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Make it a Lich Dragon instead. Does require the Dragon to have a caster level of 11, though.
"Creating a Lich:
"Lich" is an acquired template that can be added to any living creature (referred to hereafter as the base creature), provided it can create the required phylactery. A lich retains all the base creature's statistics and special abilities except as noted here."
From what I can tell, it appears the dragon-lich would keep just about all of it's special abilities like flight, breath weapon, spell resistance, etc., and gains some pretty strong abilities.
An Adult Red Dragon could become a lich (it's caster level is 17) and would become CR 16.
Edit: hur-hur. The Lich template would give the Red Dragon immunity to Cold and Electricity, on top of it's already possessed immunity to Fire, Sleep and Paralysis, plus all the other immunities granted by the Undead type.
Tarik Blackhands |
One caution with the Wyrmwraith is that it's completely shut down by any party that has access to an arcane version of the Death Ward spell. It has no way to deal appreciable damage to living creatures protected by Death Ward, and no way to dispel arcane magic. This means that any party with a Witch can trivialize this encounter. It's a cool monster, but a high CR monster that's completely shut down by a single mid-level spell is very problematic to run.
Well the thing is still capable of decking people corporeally. Then again the real problem the monster has is explaining why it hasn't created a Dread Wraith apocalypse scenerio as it gathers up a cage of goblins or kobolds or something and makes an encroaching legion of wraiths.
On topic though, I say just make your own template, or just use the zombie template and let it keep its breath weapon. Perks of being the GM at work.