Another question is whether a dragon counts as being in a city if it frequently flies over a city and occasionally lands in the park.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Blue dragons best dragons <3. They are also some of the most mechanically interesting dragons, rivalled only by ancient reds, adult+ whites and most imperials.
But yeah, shapeshifting and secret fancy lairs in the catacombs/undercity. It cuts down on a lot of unnecessary traffic to the outside that can be easily tracked. But I would expect a lot of different views on the whole "transforming into humanoids" part. Blue dragons are extremely pragmatic, but no less arrogant than other dragons - if you think they look down on other dragons, boy does that have nothing on anything on regular people.
I found it puzzling that "Dragons Revisited" (from 1E) stated that blue dragons can't naturally change their shape and then one of the first APs has a info about a naturally shapeshifting blue dragon XD. For anyone who has seen the pictures - damn that hair looks fancy :D.
Creative Director
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Dragons Revisited is one of the very first books we published. It wasn't even 1st edition Pathfinder—it's a 3.5 product that predates the Pathfinder RPG. There's a fair amount of ideas we posited in there that we stuck with, but a lot that we abandoned once we got our feet under ourselves and were up and running with our own game and more out from under the shadow of Wizards of the Coast and D&D.
One of the things we had a problem with in those early days was a significant staffing issue. We still had to get our books out on a monthly basis, but that meant that the team working on the 100 monthly pages of Adventure Paths (me, Wes Schneider, and James Sutter) had very little time to coordinate with the team working on the 100 or so monthly pages of modules and the earliest world setting books (Mike McArtor, Jeremy Walker, and Jason Bulmahn), so there was a fair bit of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing. We did our best to try to make the two lines sync up, but a fair number of errors crept in.
AKA: The more recent a publication is, the more likely it'll be accurate.
That said, yes, the blue dragons who live in cities are usually ones capable of shapechanging into forms that let them walk among us with ease, but there's also evil cities out there where a blue dragon could just do their thing in their true form.
Yeah, ruling in their true form, having a massive palace built for them, that's the sort of thing that comes to my mind first. Shapeshifted dragons in stories tend to irritate me, why would a powerful creature take on a pathetic form for any longer then it had to in order to get a task done.
Dragons Revisited is one of the very first books we published. It wasn't even 1st edition Pathfinder—it's a 3.5 product that predates the Pathfinder RPG. There's a fair amount of ideas we posited in there that we stuck with, but a lot that we abandoned once we got our feet under ourselves and were up and running with our own game and more out from under the shadow of Wizards of the Coast and D&D.
One of the things we had a problem with in those early days was a significant staffing issue. We still had to get our books out on a monthly basis, but that meant that the team working on the 100 monthly pages of Adventure Paths (me, Wes Schneider, and James Sutter) had very little time to coordinate with the team working on the 100 or so monthly pages of modules and the earliest world setting books (Mike McArtor, Jeremy Walker, and Jason Bulmahn), so there was a fair bit of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing. We did our best to try to make the two lines sync up, but a fair number of errors crept in.
AKA: The more recent a publication is, the more likely it'll be accurate.
That was pretty much what I was figuring. It was still a very interesting read, nonetheless ^^.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Blue Dragons are the best because you get your big monster you gotta fight but there's a hundred hours of political intrigue before you get there. A blue dragon collecting tax revenue as their "hoard" is generally more interesting to me than a red dragon sitting on a pile of gold in a cave.
Yeah, ruling in their true form, having a massive palace built for them, that's the sort of thing that comes to my mind first. Shapeshifted dragons in stories tend to irritate me, why would a powerful creature take on a pathetic form for any longer then it had to in order to get a task done.
Amusement, flying under the radar against would be opponents/rivals/hunters, convenience.
So, the Bestiary says that Blue Dragons often live near or WITHIN cities.
How do they disguise themselves to live within a city? I don't see any ability that allows them to change themself to look like a normal human/elf/dwarf or other typical inhabitant.
For that matter, what spells/abilities would a large or bigger creature use to hide within civilization? Disguise self only lets you change to same size.
I feel like I'm missing something essential about how Blue Dragons (and other monsters that hide in plain sight) operate within civilization.
Thank You
Never mind, I see the "Shape Changing Dragons" ability under Dragons.
What do other large+ creatures do to accomplish this? Illusionary Disguise memorized every day?
The spell you are looking for is humanoid Form:
https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=153
|
Creative Director
|
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
The best way to do this is to simply give the monster you want to be able to play such a role the ability to assume humanoid form. 2nd edition monsters are MUCH easier to adjust in this way, and adding the ability to assume a humanoid form doesn't really do much for a monster's power level once your'e talking things like dragons or other higher level foes—while it DOES widely open up story possibilities. The point of how monsters are built in 2nd edition is that it should be simple to adjust them to fit the needs of your story.
Just plop the "Change Shape" ability on page 104 of the Bestiary onto the monster of your choice, change the word "dragon" in that ability to "creature," and presto, you're ready to go!