So, as we know, dragons are being revamped. The big question that lingers, however, it's what's being done to the existing dragons that are lore- important? What happens to the ruler of Hermea, or the Warlord Kazavon?
Are we just going to never hear from them again, much like the former drow, or are the old metallic and chromatics still existing, just less talked about? Is Dahak still red?
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Yeah, Dahak is depicted as a dark red dragon. Also definitely lots of spikes. The 1e campaign setting book, Inner Sea Faiths, alone has like three pictures of him. There might be a depiction of him in Age of Ashes somewhere.
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Dahak will still be a dragon that is red, but it will not be a Red Dragon.
To the above: This is true, but it matters in the setting. If Golarion has only Infernal, Mirage, etc dragons, then by what frame of reference do they classify Kazavon, Dahak, Mengkare, etc, if not by their colour?
If dragons are tied to magic traditions, what tradition is Mengkare? What is Kazavon? Are they unique entities separate from the biology of their species? I feel like it almost makes it MORE complicated than just keeping the old dragons along with the new.
Perhaps the Arcane Dragons are going to be Metallic and Chromatic to keep from having some significant retconning of campaign-centric (if not world-centric) entities. Drow into Ayndilar is simple enough to just rename and reflavor as needed, but removing entire established species is going to be a pretty awkward thing to swing in-setting.
Creative Director
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We'll eventually figure out how to remaster and re-present the OGL dragons, I suspect, but that's not a day-one goal of Monster Core and the rest of the remaster project.
In the meantime, any in-world dragon who has a name, such as Kazavon, stays the same. We won't be telling stories involving them right away, but their historical and canonical roles are unchanged. If/when we stat them up, we'll do so as bespoke stat blocks that don't include OGL elements, but still allow them to function as they always have in the setting.
Over the course of 1st edition, we introduced dozens more dragons beyond the OGL classics. The ones in Monster Core follow that tradition; they aren't REPLACING anything that's come before in the setting, but we're taking advantage of the remaster to re-focus all of our content, including dragons, on our own creations.
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Awesome! Thanks for the reply, that makes a lot of sense. I was stoked to see the primal dragons stuck around and got referenced in RoE so I was pretty curious about the original flavors.
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One thing I hope is that by not having alignments we can get away from the chromatic == evil and metalic == good but have dragons be their own interesting characters.
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One thing I hope is that by not having alignments we can get away from the chromatic == evil and metallic == good but have dragons be their own interesting characters.
Getting away from the d20 nature of 'good = metallic' 'evil = chromatic' does sound interesting. Pre-D&D lore is already full of fire-breathing dragons, so those would seem 'safe' to adapt, although the many, many 'D&D ism' would need at least some tweaking. (Not every dragon makes sense to be a sorcerer, for instance, and those that are, should perhaps have actual levels in a spellcasting class.)
I am intrigued by the notion of more myth and lore based dragons, like 'ice dragons' that are actually made of ice (and melt when slain), instead of 'white dragons that breathe cold.'
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One thing I hope is that by not having alignments we can get away from the chromatic == evil and metalic == good but have dragons be their own interesting characters.
I mean, they already did that kind of what with Mengkare turning out to be a villain despite being a Gold Dragon. What will be nice is that people will no longer have an assumption of "how friendly or reasonable the dragon is" by looking at it from a distance.
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Yeah people sometimes forget that bio-essentialism being removed should apply to other material-but-magical beings too. While extraplanar entities who are born of pure evil (Devils, for example) make sense in a metaphysical sense, dragons, while magical, are flesh and blood.
It follows that they should also have diversity of thought and being.
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One thing I hope is that by not having alignments we can get away from the chromatic == evil and metallic == good but have dragons be their own interesting characters.Getting away from the d20 nature of 'good = metallic' 'evil = chromatic' does sound interesting. Pre-D&D lore is already full of fire-breathing dragons, so those would seem 'safe' to adapt, although the many, many 'D&D ism' would need at least some tweaking. (Not every dragon makes sense to be a sorcerer, for instance, and those that are, should perhaps have actual levels in a spellcasting class.)
I am intrigued by the notion of more myth and lore based dragons, like 'ice dragons' that are actually made of ice (and melt when slain), instead of 'white dragons that breathe cold.'
That last part reminds me of the cold dragon from Rolemaster's Elemental Companion's introductory story. Its blood was like liquid nitrogen. It froze its killers dead.
That book, by itself and among other things, made Rolemaster's dragons far more frightening than the DnD ones at the time.