Dragons as spellcasters?

[Ched Greyfell]

It seems weird that the dragons' spellcasting has been dialed back. It was always even said that many sorcerors get their spellcasting blood from being descended from dragons. Weren't dragons always supposed to be some of the original bad mofo spell slingers? These seem more like beasts.
At least the blue dragon entry has options for putting spells on them.
I dunno. It just seemed weird to me.

[Quandary]

I think I have an idea of what may have motivated this, but not sure if I'm down with the results.

[Cloudwalker]

Furthermore adding spellcasting to a dragon weakens its melee proves. Dragons are supposed to be strong in melee AND sorcery. I can appreciate a dial mechanism to make different dragons better at each but a on/off switch isn't the solution.

[gustavo iglesias]

I agree it makes little sense that people who has a small taint of dragon blood in their ancestry became spellcasters because of the magic nature of dragons, but dragons themselves are less magical than ever.

[Terevalis Unctio of House Mysti]

I dont k#+~ this. It needs to be rectified. Dragons should be able to take people apart with tooth and spell.

[Salsmachev]

Personally, I like it. I think dragons are inherently magical enough to justify sorcerers without needing spells. On some level, I feel like dragons using the same spells as humans kind of sullies them. Sometimes, it feels right for them to cast spells, but it should be much more of an extension of that specific dragon's personality and style, like class levels for players, and the essential epicness of dragons should be totally independent of spell-based magic. The dragons presented feel right to me. They have a little spell magic, but it's a few thematic SLAs that feel like real extensions of that dragon type's innate qualities, rather than an unwieldy spell list full of powers that don't really seem appropriate. I'm happy that the default ancient black dragon no longer uses cone of cold.

[CorvusMask]

I'm honestly okay with this streamlining, mostly because you could make every dragon impossibly hard by making sure both shield and mage armor was on their spells known list. They are magical enough to be, well magical, without me having to be like "sigh let's see if there is useful spells written in statblock that tactics say to ignore because tactic says they prefer to go to melee".

(seriously, lot of time with monsters with innate casting they sometimes had spells that didn't help them at all or tactics that didn't even utilize them. As GM they don't really need to have dozens of spells if they only use couple of them anyway.)

I'm also assuming that under new system dragons should be deadlier than in 1e anyway, but I'll have to see that in practice. Still, if they are deadlier than in 1e just because of change of mechanics, they don't really need to have pc level casting on top of it.

[Elegos]

I feel like if you want a dragon to have more spells you as the gm make that edit. Most of the time, the dragon really doesnt need a full spellcasting chart. Which dragon is throwing out acid arrow rather then a breath weapon for example? Its a waste of page space.

[Ched Greyfell]

Elegos wrote:

I feel like if you want a dragon to have more spells you as the gm make that edit. Most of the time, the dragon really doesnt need a full spellcasting chart. Which dragon is throwing out acid arrow rather then a breath weapon for example? Its a waste of page space.

I read your reply, and you make sense. Upon reflection, I think the author's blurb about spells in the sidebar should be more than sufficient.

[sherlock1701]

Ched Greyfell wrote:

Elegos wrote:

I feel like if you want a dragon to have more spells you as the gm make that edit. Most of the time, the dragon really doesnt need a full spellcasting chart. Which dragon is throwing out acid arrow rather then a breath weapon for example? Its a waste of page space.

I read your reply, and you make sense. Upon reflection, I think the author's blurb about spells in the sidebar should be more than sufficient.

Harder to evade a breath weapon when you're in a Reverse Gravity field.

[Dragonborn3]

Harder to get through DR/Magic when the dragon has Antimagic Field.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

In all fairness, dragons didn't always have lots of magic in D&D. BECMI dragons for instance only had a certain percent chance of being casters, and only three age categories too.

The change to 12 age categories and universal casting (generally improved in 3.x) was one I warmly welcomed. As much a fan of the old stuff as I am, sometimes, going back to Basic isn't a good thing.