Dragons of Bestiary 6

Mighty fine dergins.

Havoc can also be taken as a confusion or disorder, things brought by the fey or the azata. Paradise can also be taken as an utopia, and I'm sure this is what the Archons are seeking.

Perhaps havoc could apply for the fey but I don't think confusion and disorder apply for the Azata. True their chaotic but that isn't the only aspect of their nature. They love freedom and despise tyranny and injustice. As for Paradise and Archons, while I can see how Archons would like to make the perfect benevolant society with no suffering I've also kind of received the impression the Archons are more about righteousness and smiting evil with divine power while possibly leaving the more benevolant aspects of Heaven to the Angels.

Havoc Dragon

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD! FLOOFYLORD!

I'm kinda glad the rift dragon doesn't look that much like the rift drake

Havoc Dragon

That is seriously cool. Like a faerie dragon on steroids! :D

These are definitely an improvement to the Outer and Esoteric dragons, they aren't just the dragon repainted. But it's still depressing hom much potential these had. Dragons based on the planes, the very idea sounds exciting. They could have been breathtakingly beautiful/cool and unique. Not to be rude, but the art seems a bit...uninspired. :/ There are several fantastic dragon "cousins", but the True dragons get so little love.

Hooray for Exemplar dragons!! Always felt that Silver were paladins and now we're gonna have true ones.

I am curious if these are gonna count as dragons, outsiders or both.

I gotta wonder, what age categories are we seeing portrayed in the artwork? Based on what we've seen in previous bestiaries I'm guessing young or juvenile.

I gotta wonder, what age categories are we seeing portrayed in the artwork? Based on what we've seen in previous bestiaries I'm guessing young or juvenile.

In bestiary 5, all of the dragons were ancient, while in Bestiary 1, the majority were ancient, while some were adults, like the Gold and the Red dragon. You should look at their pawns size, and related them to the dragon's age category size. ;)

I'm sure that those are meant to be adults or ancient.

Quote:

Havoc can also be taken as a confusion or disorder, things brought by the fey or the azata. Paradise can also be taken as an utopia, and I'm sure this is what the Archons are seeking.

Perhaps havoc could apply for the fey but I don't think confusion and disorder apply for the Azata. True their chaotic but that isn't the only aspect of their nature. They love freedom and despise tyranny and injustice. As for Paradise and Archons, while I can see how Archons would like to make the perfect benevolant society with no suffering I've also kind of received the impression the Archons are more about righteousness and smiting evil with divine power while possibly leaving the more benevolant aspects of Heaven to the Angels.

You should talk with an archon about the azata, and ask than about the azata aspect of havoc. According to their lore on bestiary, the Archon are:

"(...) often find themselves the unwilling enemies of chaotic good creatures, particularly the azatas. To an archon, an azata's nature seems whimsical and impatient—in striking swiftly against an enemy without bothering to think through the implications of their sudden act, it's possible to do more harm than good. Still, while opposing the chaos of an azata is a necessary step, the archon takes no pleasure in such opposition, and does its best to minimize the length of such a conflict."

Now, speaking about the dragons.

I think we can relate the dragons to the other creatures of heaven and Elysium, specially the outsiders. But these dragons are still dragons, and they aren't part of the celestial hierarchies, they have their own "ecology and society".

Fighting against evil is sure a "step" needed to rise the archon's utopia, but the Paradise dragon seems to be more concerned about reshaping our world/the material plane into his perfect "paradise", and not fighting evil itself. So, fighting is an Archon thing.

I know we all where expecting an "Angelic Dragon" or a "Demonic Dragon" while thinking about the planar dragons, but that's not what they are. They aren't the knight-like archon, or the feathered angels. They are more than "dragons from the outer planes", as James himself has explained. Earlier I was also saying things like the Crypt dragon being more like a creature from the Abyss, but them I released that they aren't outsiders, they are dragons, and that a completely different category, and just them I could see that its skinny appearance makes it look like something between life and death.

Maybe if one day we got an article for the dragons, even if it is in an article in the Adventure Path line, the dragons will be easier to understand.

As a fan of the planar blending idea, I hope the dragon's unique ability will function as such. It'd be nice to have some kind of mechanic to go with the lore.

As a fan of the planar blending idea, I hope the dragon's unique ability will function as such. It'd be nice to have some kind of mechanic to go with the lore.

If it doesn't have a unique ability, the lore would be abit nonsensical.

Hooray for Exemplar dragons!! Always felt that Silver were paladins and now we're gonna have true ones.

I am curious if these are gonna count as dragons, outsiders or both.

It's possible to make them dragons with the archon, azata, evil, demon, and psychopomp subtypes. But I think they are sticking to the extraplanar subtype dragons.

Lorewalker wrote:

As a fan of the planar blending idea, I hope the dragon's unique ability will function as such. It'd be nice to have some kind of mechanic to go with the lore.

If it doesn't have a unique ability, the lore would be abit nonsensical.

Indeed.

Maybe they have abilities that actually reshape their territory or something like that. Different frightful presence effect is also a common thing. I was really expecting these dragons special ability would be granting spells as quasi-deities, but I'm afraid they will not.

Milo v3 wrote:

Lorewalker wrote:

As a fan of the planar blending idea, I hope the dragon's unique ability will function as such. It'd be nice to have some kind of mechanic to go with the lore.

If it doesn't have a unique ability, the lore would be abit nonsensical.

Indeed.

Maybe they have abilities that actually reshape their territory or something like that. Different frightful presence effect is also a common thing. I was really expecting these dragons special ability would be granting spells as quasi-deities, but I'm afraid they will not.

"Instead, they're dragons that you'll normally encounter on the Material Plane, after migrating there via portals or other methods with a singular goal—to reshape a material plane lair to reflect their home planes."

That's exactly what I'm hoping for from this quote.

Does the rift dragon even have back legs?

Yeah, not a lot of archons have feathered wings but I haven't seen any with bat wings so that argument is meaningless.

Does the rift dragon even have back legs?

Yeah, not a lot of archons have feathered wings but I haven't seen any with bat wings so that argument is meaningless.

Not really since the Paradise Dragon has dragon wings, not bat wings.

By that logic then faerie dragons have dragon wings as well even if they are butterfly-like. There is plenty of room for dragons with feathered wings and this was a missed chance for an interesting one.

Heaven in Pathfinder doesn't equal Heaven from renaissance art... there's no real reason for Paradise dragons to have feathered wings, there's more of a reason for Crypt dragons to have feathered wings for godsake.

I suspect that any feathered dragons we get won't be part of a five-fold clade of "true" dragons.

I'm open to being proven wrong, especially since we're going to keep getting dragons whether we'll ever use any of them or not...

By that logic then faerie dragons have dragon wings as well even if they are butterfly-like. There is plenty of room for dragons with feathered wings and this was a missed chance for an interesting one.

... wut? That's not even close to... what?

The Paradise Dragon has the standard scaly draconic wings.

These all look awesome.

The Paradise dragons have the standard scaly draconic wings (by Rysky), and maybe that is because their archon neighbors have no real "iconic wing feature". But the Havoc dragons have fey-like wings, and that may also be the case of reflecting the outsider race of their plane, the azata, who are said to be fey-like since their first flavor text.

I'm close to sure that the outsiders of the planes were taken into consideration while creating the design for this dragons, but I could be wrong.

My bronze cousin, Mr. Jacobs himself has said that the planar dragons aren't the sole dragons form the outer planes. Maybe there will be a breed for "Celestial Dragons" and them a breed for "Fiendish Dragons", but right now, the good aligned dragons have no feathers...

These all look awesome.

If you put them together in the same image they will look even better. Specially with the addition of the havoc dragon. This is a really original and distinct design - better than repainted dragons...

I would be fine with crypt dragons having black feathered wings and even a mask like formation on their head. But as it stands they just look like the yellow dragon some people have been asking for, just like the rift is the purple one.

... =.='

I will have to agree that the rift dragon is the most average out of the four.

EDIT:

Hey, now, I wouldn't mind if the Nirvana, Abaddon, Axis and Maelstrom dragons where added in an adventure path bestiary (Obviously, illustrated by Leesha Hannigan as well)... ;)

Hey, now, I wouldn't mind if the Nirvana, Abaddon, Axis and Maelstrom dragons where added in an adventure path bestiary (Obviously, illustrated by Leesha Hannigan as well)... ;)

Or maybe Bestiary 7 along an alternative neutral dragon ;)

One of my goals for NOT including a dragon for every alignment was not just to have a group of 5 (although that's very important)... it's to more or less NOT imply that these are the ONLY dragons on the outer planes. Had we done one dragon for every alignment, the implication and interpretation everyone would make is that each outer plane has one dragon type associated with them, and that's a ridiculous concept—especially given there are already so many associated with the Material Plane.

There can ABSOLUTELY be new categories of true dragons associated with the outer planes. The only thing that I can guarentee is that they'll be introduced, IF THEY ARE INTRODUCED, in groups of five.

A group comprising a NG, NE, LN, LE, and N set of dragons would make for a compelling group.

A group comprising 5 CE dragons (or 5 of any alignment category) from a single plane would make for a compelling group.

And any other classic grouping of 5 could well be used to build any group of true dragon, regardless of home plane.

But we don't have room for more than one group of true dragons per Bestiary (and we barely have room to do them in the first place due to the way we've traditionally presented dragons with barely any room for flavor text, but that's a different conversation!), but one of the great things about the way we've named our bestiaries is that we're in no danger of running out of numbers, and thus running out of opportunities to do groups of true dragons, any time soon.

Yeah ... here's to Bestiary 666 *raises a glass* ... I really hope there will be any devils in 666 ...

Any chance for any sort of a solution to that whole "barely any room for flavor text" issue that dragons have? A Campaign Setting book that focuses on flavor text for all the true dragons so far introduced, maybe?

Any chance for any sort of a solution to that whole "barely any room for flavor text" issue that dragons have? A Campaign Setting book that focuses on flavor text for all the true dragons so far introduced, maybe?

Focused on the Esoteric, Imperial, Planar, Primal and Outer dragons, right? No need for more flavor to the classic dragons... I would love it if there was room for all of them, but I hope to have more on Pathfinder true dragons.

If you think that's best. I don't really know a lot about dragons. Did the classic dragons have more extensive Bestiary flavor sections? Or did they receive a more extensive treatment somewhere?

If you think that's best. I don't really know a lot about dragons. Did the classic dragons have more extensive Bestiary flavor sections? Or did they receive a more extensive treatment somewhere?

There's Dragons Revisited ... and Dragons Unleashed ... and Dragonslayer's Handbook ... and Legacy of Dragons ...

Yeah, why put it all in one book when they could sell us FIVE? :-$

At this point, Revisited needs a whole new coat of paint - as far as I knew, large chunks of it were no longer considered canon. (I may be confusing it with the Dragons of Golarion article from AP#4, though.)

Unleashed was a bunch of sample dragons, and the Player Companions are PC options rather than any real insight into dragons themselves.

So... I don't know that it's been addressed to the same extent as, say, 3.5's Draconomicon. (Whether we actually need something like that is its own issue.)

The classic dragons have gotten more then enough love.

If you think that's best. I don't really know a lot about dragons. Did the classic dragons have more extensive Bestiary flavor sections? Or did they receive a more extensive treatment somewhere?

Well, Samy.

Kalindlara has a point regarding Dragons Revisited, its been too long since its release. If there was enough room, I'm not against "re-revisiting" the classic chromatic and metallic dragons.

But, we already know than pretty well, and Paizo has lots of other new an cool true dragons for us to explore. I would give the Esoteric, Imperial, Planar, Primal and Outer dragons priority, as we have close to nothing about them.

Yeah, why put it all in one book when they could sell us FIVE? :-$

AKA: If you like things we do, I don't think it's unreasonable for you to reward us with money?

If spending money on a hobby you enjoy is not worth it to you, perhaps you need a different hobby.

Ravingdork wrote:

Yeah, why put it all in one book when they could sell us FIVE? :-$

AKA: If you like things we do, I don't think it's unreasonable for you to reward us with money?

If spending money on a hobby you enjoy is not worth it to you, perhaps you need a different hobby.

Haha, if that were unreasonable, than I'd be considered quite the insane individual! (And it's doubled in size since that photo was taken.)

I was just joking. Sorry if it didn't come across as such. I really do appreciate all the hard work you guys put into your products. It has really made a difference for the better in my life.

Samy wrote:

If you think that's best. I don't really know a lot about dragons. Did the classic dragons have more extensive Bestiary flavor sections? Or did they receive a more extensive treatment somewhere?

Well, Samy.

Kalindlara has a point regarding Dragons Revisited, its been too long since its release. If there was enough room, I'm not against "re-revisiting" the classic chromatic and metallic dragons.

But, we already know than pretty well, and Paizo has lots of other new an cool true dragons for us to explore. I would give the Esoteric, Imperial, Planar, Primal and Outer dragons priority, as we have close to nothing about them.

I'll just say that without more evocative flavor, I have precious little reason to use anything but the original ten species (and not even all of them, truth be told), and mmmmmmmmaybe the Umbral and Imperial Dragons right now...

This bunch is the first Pathfinder-specific draconic addition to directly offer something specific (planar colonization) to kick around using that I can't just pull a Red, Black, or Blue dragon out to roll with.

The Gold Sovereign wrote:

Samy wrote:

If you think that's best. I don't really know a lot about dragons. Did the classic dragons have more extensive Bestiary flavor sections? Or did they receive a more extensive treatment somewhere?

Well, Samy.

Kalindlara has a point regarding Dragons Revisited, its been too long since its release. If there was enough room, I'm not against "re-revisiting" the classic chromatic and metallic dragons.

But, we already know than pretty well, and Paizo has lots of other new an cool true dragons for us to explore. I would give the Esoteric, Imperial, Planar, Primal and Outer dragons priority, as we have close to nothing about them.

I'll just say that without more evocative flavor, I have precious little reason to use anything but the original ten species (and not even all of them, truth be told), and mmmmmmmmaybe the Umbral and Imperial Dragons right now...

This bunch is the first Pathfinder-specific draconic addition to directly offer something specific (planar colonization) to kick around using that I can't just pull a Red, Black, or Blue dragon out to roll with. I

Good to know what you don't need. I myself am a lover of diversity.

Yeah, I've been getting use of all the dragons so far except for occult (and that's more just a matter of my players not reaching the astral plane part of my campaign yet).

Good to know what you don't need. I myself am a lover of diversity.

Without flavor, how much actual diversity is there, though?

A quadrupedal winged reptile with a breath weapon that covets treasure is pretty much all we get for most of them.

So, forgive me, but I'm not actually saying what I don't need.

I'm voicing a desire for what I do need- give me a reason to use this statblock over that one. GIVE me the Big Book of Draconic Culture.

Dragons Unleashed made me far happier than it did some others here because it gave concrete purpose to several species and age categories I would have never cobbled up on my own. I'd like to see it done on more of a macro-scale.

No one can deny the need for more information about the true dragons, with that I will always agree.

I would love anything that could help us build our adventures around them, be it a Revisited 2 or an Unleashed 2, or the book of my dreams, a Draconomicon-like book by paizo... Even an adventure path article for each family of five would be enough.

Unfortunately I don't see paizo doing anything like this any time soon... =/

I would also like to see such a book that covers all the Pathfinder specific true dragons. But I also doubt we will see such a product anytime soon.

Indeed dragon... =/

Now, back into the topic.

It came as a surprise to me the fact that almost all the true dragons were previewed. I was expecting the preview to talk about the True Dragons, the Elder Wyrm and another dragon.

I'm pleased to know the true dragons better, but I'm curious about the other dragons in the book.

Mr. James could be kind and give us at least the CR of the most challenging dragon in the book... ;D

I feel for you there. The fact that the format we chose for our dragons limits us to only a very short section of flavor for them is very unfortunate... but it's a format we're more or less stuck with. I did my absolute best to get as much flavor text into the books for these five dragons, but that best is pretty much the same as all other dragons—only a few lines of text. (I considered at one point only providing one stat block for all five dragons—for the ancient version of each, but abandoned that idea pretty soon for reasons).

There may be too much history to change the existing format now, but it has always seemed to me that it should be possible to do abbreviated stat blocks showing just the unique features for the different age categories.

That is, most of each dragon stat block can be constructed from the base age tables, the 'starting values' for each dragon type, and the 'progression notes' for each type. Indeed, this is how all but the three sample ages must be prepared. If all of that information were removed from the samples then all which would be left would be a few unique items like skill, feat, and spell selections. Such abbreviated stat blocks would allow more room for descriptive text.

That said, 'ecology' type books for the various dragons (and many other creatures) would also be a welcome solution.

Unfortunately, those sample stat blocks are of great importance for published adventures. While that full stat block could be presented within the adventure, that's a lot of text spent on numbers that could be used for more adventure content.

Infernal Dragon

=O

I have no words to say how much this dragon is impressive...

Planar Dragons Set

*fainted*

Dawwwwwwww! Infernal needs tummy wubs!

Snuffles - Crypt

Cuddles - Paradise

Waffles - Infernal

Sparkles - Rift

Floofylord - Havoc

SQQQQQQQQUUUUUUUUEEEEEE!

You have no idea how happy I would be if we got a Pathfinder Dragonomicon. That was one of my favorite DnD Books, and would go a long way to making the post Bestiary 1 dragons more usable.

I agree with some of the earlier comments: Without more flavor text, it can be hard to really figure out how to work with the newer dragons, and how distinct there conceptual niche is.