Mess With the Dragon, Get the Horns!

Friday, March 1, 2024

Hola! It’s me, Luis Loza! I’ve been taking you through a grand tour of all our new dragons, such as our look at the fortune dragon last time. This time things are a little different. You’ll see what I mean once I start to tell you about the horned dragon. Let’s have a look!

Concept art for the horned dragon. This dragon has a powerful body covered in naturalistic plating reminiscent of leaves, as well as two prominent horns atop its snout

Illustration by Kent Hamilton


One of the challenges with the update to the Second Edition remastered rules was having to leave a lot of old favorites behind. In addition to classic spells, notable magic items, and other memorable mechanics, we also had to leave behind some monsters. Unfortunately, in some cases, a variety of reasons makes leaving behind strigiform-ursine hybrids or cuboid gels the best option for us. There are other cases where a bit of cleaning up and a makeover leads to something we can still use in the new remastered environment. That’s the approach we took with the horned dragon—a dragon who you might previously remember for its focus on the color green.

Horned dragons are our second primal dragon offering in Monster Core. Like other primal dragons, horned dragons are powerful and more bestial than other dragons. This manifests most notably in the form of their massive, paired horns. In addition to simply striking others with their horns, a horned dragon charges their prey and impales these unfortunate victims on the horn. Once impaled, the prey is stuck and goes wherever the dragon goes until the prey manages to escape impalement.

Beyond that, the horned dragon should feel relatively familiar. Their personalities are relatively the same, their other abilities such as their poison breath and twisting tail reaction are still around, and they still generally live in forested regions and swamps. When updating monsters for the remaster, we wanted to make these changes as unintrusive as possible and allow updated monsters to generally fill the same role they had prior to their update.

We also took these opportunities to update monsters in interesting ways where we could, thus the shift from the dragon’s color to their horn and the addition of their impaling charge. The change in focus allows us to make the dragon more of our own and even opens them for future possibilities. While the horned dragon in Monster Core is green and lives in forests, there’s a decent chance you could see a blue horned dragon that lives in a lake or a tan horned dragon that lives in a desert sometime in the future!

That’s our look at the horned dragon! Make sure to keep an eye out for this dragon and lots of other new dragons when Monster Core releases in March. Stay tuned for more draconic previews in the coming weeks. Next time, we’ll take a look at the majestic empyreal dragons. See you then!

Luis Loza
Creative Director, Rules & Lore

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Tags: Pathfinder Pathfinder Remaster Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Pathfinder Second Edition
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3 people marked this as a favorite.
Kobold Catgirl wrote:
Personally, I think we just need a new owl-themed predator monster. Owls are really underrated scary animals.

Do not attempt to pick the owldrangeas while in bloom.

Or pet the river owltters.
Owllabies, however, are generally safer than their cousins, the big red owlaroos.


4 people marked this as a favorite.

So for Primal dragons we now have the bestial Horned Dragons, and the rocky/metallic Adamantine Dragons previewed back in January. And if we look back at Bestiary 2 (or B4 for PF1e if you really want the origins) we have the Zomok (canonically a Dragon in PF2e), so truly we have Primal Dragons for all 3 starting options of 20 Questions: Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral.

Community and Social Media Specialist

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Well thank you. Now I have Madam Mim in my head.


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So, I'm curious how these new Primal Dragons relate to the classic Pathfinder Primal Dragons. Will they get a rename? Or will all the Primal Dragons be part of the same family, and Primal Dragons will be overrepresented for the time?

(Apologies if this has been answered before, but my search-fu is week).


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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Kobold Catgirl wrote:
Personally, I think we just need a new owl-themed predator monster. Owls are really underrated scary animals.

Doesn't end need to be mashed up with something....

Just make a tall spindly quadrupedal barn-owl looking thing. Give it crazy good stealth ability (because owls are so quiet in flight it's unfair), some kind of grab ability, and let it snatch up shepherds or farmers who get to close to the edge of the forest....

Or just make a regular ol' giant owl and bask in the terror.


Chickarneys are good and creepy, but I think they've already been done.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Jonathan Morgantini wrote:
Well thank you. Now I have Madam Mim in my head.

I thought Merlin was the one who shrunk himself down.

Grand Lodge

Kobold Catgirl wrote:
Editor's Note: "it is not and has never been time for the ManBearPig."

Well, if you're totally serial, then how about the dreaded PuppyMonkeyBaby.


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Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
Jonathan Morgantini wrote:
Well thank you. Now I have Madam Mim in my head.

It might be better (?) than the Major-General from Pirates of Penzance... ("I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral.")


The Shifty Mongoose wrote:

Ooh, this'll be handy for updating the Dragon's Demand to the most current stuff!

That poison breath attack got me looking for something that reduces poison damage. Other than two things that show up in an AP, all you get are things that give you a bonus on saves vs. poison.

lvl 5+ Kineticist can get it, through resist junction on Wood or Earth

At least for the moment, it's possible to get poison resists via being a kobold or Dragon Disciple Dedication as well.


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Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
Dragonchess Player wrote:
It might be better (?) than the Major-General from Pirates of Penzance... ("I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral.")

Songs getting stuck in your head have consequences...

"Pathfinder has your dragons for adventure plot material
Primal dragons vegetable or animal or mineral
Fortune dragons using treasure as jewelry that is wearable
Conspirators shapeshifting in ways nearly unbelievable..."

If anyone wants to have a go with adding lines for mirage and diabolic dragons, feel free. I no longer have the song stuck in my head (thankfully).


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I know it's just concept art, but I'd suggest making the neck shorter and thicker to better give the idea of an animal that charges with it's horns. A long neck would be terrible to ram with. No body support. Don't get me wrong, a short neck dragon would look terrible though! How about some large bull like horns or ram style horns depending on the environment? A highly territorial dragon that uses its horns to protect its territory and fend off mating challenges falls right into the primal feel.


I'm gonna respectfully disagree, actually! It would be terrible for ramming things as big as you, but if you're a dragon, you're probably mostly aiming for littler creatures, and your main problem is going to be aiming that big horn of yours. A long neck gives you more maneuverability.

Grand Lodge

Kobold Catgirl wrote:
I'm gonna respectfully disagree, actually! It would be terrible for ramming things as big as you, but if you're a dragon, you're probably mostly aiming for littler creatures, and your main problem is going to be aiming that big horn of yours. A long neck gives you more maneuverability.

Although, most creatures with horns don't use them for hunting. They use them for defense and fighting others of their kind for territory and mates.


5 people marked this as a favorite.
Aristophanes wrote:
Kobold Catgirl wrote:
I'm gonna respectfully disagree, actually! It would be terrible for ramming things as big as you, but if you're a dragon, you're probably mostly aiming for littler creatures, and your main problem is going to be aiming that big horn of yours. A long neck gives you more maneuverability.
Although, most creatures with horns don't use them for hunting. They use them for defense and fighting others of their kind for territory and mates.

TBF the same thing that makes it better for hunting smaller creatures also makes it ideal for self defense for a dragon. After all, a dragon's greatest natural predator is Adventurers, who tend to generally be size Medium. Lot more likely to need to fight a pack of those than another Horned Dragon.

Liberty's Edge

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Shinigami02 wrote:
Aristophanes wrote:
Kobold Catgirl wrote:
I'm gonna respectfully disagree, actually! It would be terrible for ramming things as big as you, but if you're a dragon, you're probably mostly aiming for littler creatures, and your main problem is going to be aiming that big horn of yours. A long neck gives you more maneuverability.
Although, most creatures with horns don't use them for hunting. They use them for defense and fighting others of their kind for territory and mates.
TBF the same thing that makes it better for hunting smaller creatures also makes it ideal for self defense for a dragon. After all, a dragon's greatest natural predator is Adventurers, who tend to generally be size Medium. Lot more likely to need to fight a pack of those than another Horned Dragon.

Any dragon that sees an adventurer as a predator is not worthy of dragonkind in my book.


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Well, then, they're not predators, they're fun target practice. Either way, adventurers are a dragon's chief source of interesting combats.


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An Adventurer? No. A single Adventurer isn't a problem for a dragon, usually. That said, you rarely encounter just a single Adventurer, they're pack hunters. And a full pack of Adventurers fell Dragons all the time.

Liberty's Edge

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Shinigami02 wrote:
An Adventurer? No. A single Adventurer isn't a problem for a dragon, usually. That said, you rarely encounter just a single Adventurer, they're pack hunters. And a full pack of Adventurers fell Dragons all the time.

I agree, but dragons are so isolated from each other and so prone to underestimating adventurers that they too rarely flee and so they die with no other aware of their plight. Which in turns makes other dragons even more likely to underestimate adventurers because they only hear about the parties defeated by their fellow dragons.

TBT I have NEVER seen a dragon scared of adventurers, even when they should really have been.

This reminds me fondly of that poor young Green dragon who asked us for a tribute because we were crossing the forest of which he declared himself the master. Alas for him, we needed to release our frustration after getting thoroughly beaten and humiliated by Black Magga.

He lasted less than 2 rounds. One more dragon who did not have the opportunity to warn his draconic fellows of the danger of adventurers.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
The Raven Black wrote:
I agree, but dragons are so isolated from each other and so prone to underestimating adventurers that they too rarely flee and so they die with no other aware of their plight. Which in turns makes other dragons even more likely to underestimate adventurers because they only hear about the parties defeated by their fellow dragons.

This also affects dragons' reproduction. There are so few of them and they are so scattered that I seriously considered to make them actually breeding with each other completely independently of their type. And the type of progeny depends on a chance or various circumstances. They are so magical this doesn't feel too far-fetched.

But this doesn't seem like official lore. And the mystery remains.
Linnorms have it much easier it seems as they live much more tightly and have numerous progeny.


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I mean, I'm pretty sure it's Canon (or at least used to be) that dragons can reproduce with anything, even better than humans can, I think because of their magical nature. Pretty sure that would easily extend to other variants of dragons.

Would even be a fun way to introduce an unexpected twist to an otherwise straightforward encounter if it pulled out a surprise ability from a different type of dragon.


The Raven Black wrote:
Shinigami02 wrote:
An Adventurer? No. A single Adventurer isn't a problem for a dragon, usually. That said, you rarely encounter just a single Adventurer, they're pack hunters. And a full pack of Adventurers fell Dragons all the time.

I agree, but dragons are so isolated from each other and so prone to underestimating adventurers that they too rarely flee and so they die with no other aware of their plight. Which in turns makes other dragons even more likely to underestimate adventurers because they only hear about the parties defeated by their fellow dragons.

TBT I have NEVER seen a dragon scared of adventurers, even when they should really have been.

This reminds me fondly of that poor young Green dragon who asked us for a tribute because we were crossing the forest of which he declared himself the master. Alas for him, we needed to release our frustration after getting thoroughly beaten and humiliated by Black Magga.

He lasted less than 2 rounds. One more dragon who did not have the opportunity to warn his draconic fellows of the danger of adventurers.

This reminds me of AD&D 1st Edition days, when after adventurers got some levels, they would come to see Dragons as Tomes of Experience(*). Now a Vampire, on the other hand . . . RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY . . . .

(*)

Spoiler:
WarCraft III reference


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Will there ever be an adventure where an old noble hires a group of adventurers to bring him the horns of a horned dragon before his marriage?


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Tarvi wrote:
Will there ever be an adventure where an old noble hires a group of adventurers to bring him the horns of a horned dragon before his marriage?

I'm imagining that a conspirator dragon put that "remedy" in a book, solely to get rid of one particular horned dragon that was a nuisance to the conspirator dragon.

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