Tuesday, October 26, 2021

First Look at Fizban's Treasury of Dragons

 I picked up my copy of Fizban's Treasury of Dragons today.

Dragons are right there in the title of D&D, but many campaigns don't really involve them in a serious way. Mythologically, dragons are the ultimate fantasy monster - there's something particularly iconic about them. I think that might actually be the reason why people are reluctant to use them - they're too obvious.

What Fizban's does is introduce some new lore to dragons, along with plenty of new ideas about dragon-based adventures, dragon stat blocks (there are a lot of dragons to be found here - not just the five types of gem dragons, but a full wyrmling-to-ancient array for Deep Dragons, Moonstone Dragons, Dragon Turtles - counting the existing one in the Monster Manual as its "adult" version - as well as a lot of other dragon-related stat blocks.

If you're looking for high-CR monsters, this has some particularly mythic ones. The Tarrasque now has some new CR 30 contenders in the Aspect of Bahamut (who, among other things, has a breath ability that can restore any number of dead creatures in a 300-ft cone to life with full hit points) and the Aspect of Tiamat (which works differently than her stat block in Tyranny of Dragons). There are also three Greatwyrm stat blocks for Metallic, Gem, and Chromatic dragons (relevant damage types swap based on the type of dragon it is, but is otherwise the same) which range from CR 28 to 26. (Arguably, these represent a sort of higher order than Ancient Dragons, though becoming a Greatwrym takes way more than just living long enough and amassing a large enough hoard.)

Actually, the book goes into a lot of detail describing the reasons for and the things you can do with a dragon's hoard. The book frames the Prime Material Plane as the creation of Bahamut and Tiamat, who are not exactly gods in the same way that folks like Tyr or Gruumsh are. The gods with their humanoid creations flooded into the First World created by the two dragon progenitors (and their first creation, the original Gem dragon Sardior) and the conflict destroyed the First World, its shards becoming other worlds of the material plane and scattering the fractured draconic inhabitants into various echoes of themselves across those worlds.

Essentially, Bahamut made peace with the good-aligned gods, seeking harmony, while Tiamat decided to go homicidal and focus on revenge. But all dragons consider the Material Plane to be fundamentally theirs, with the humanoid races essentially guests (welcome or unwelcome depending on the dragon). Thus, their greed is kind of also just the not unreasonable belief that all the stuff in the world really belongs to them.

Hoards take on a certain magic of their own - one of the coolest ways they do is through new "hoard items," which have a progression somewhat similar to the Vestiges of Divergence from the Exandria setting. Essentially, by default, these items start off in a "slumbering" state that makes them a simple uncommon magic item. They can then be "steeped" in a dragon's hoard, and depending on the power of the dragon, they'll eventually grow in power, with a young dragon's hoard allowing it to become "stirring" (rare), an adult's allowing it to be "wakened" (very rare) and an ancient dragon bringing it to "ascendant" (legendary). While this process usually takes a year, if you kill a dragon, its magic seeps into its hoard for about a day, letting the transformation happen over 8 hours. So, you kill a big dragon boss, stick your sword in a pile of treasure, and take it out after you finish a long rest.

It even describes how if you sufficiently diminish a legendary dragon's hoard without killing it, you can rob it of its legendary properties.

This book is going to be a great basis for a dragon-focused campaign, obviously. If that doesn't appeal to you, I think you can still get some nice things out of it - it has a new and improved dragonborn playable race, along with new Ranger and Monk subclasses. And while a huge chunk of its bestiary is about the Gem dragons and the aforementioned dragons of varying ages, there's also plenty of really cool stuff like Hoard Scarabs (which feel like they'd be great to use in Har'akir in Ravenloft, maybe allowing its dust to let mummies track you rather than a dragon).

One thing I think is really interesting is that there's a lot of emphasis on travel between worlds of the Prime Material Plane. While planar travel is a pretty common thing in D&D campaigns, usually when you say you're doing a "Forgotten Realms" campaign, you aren't going to travel to, say, Krynn (the world of the Dragonlance setting). But thanks to the interconnectedness of dragons with the worlds of the material plane, there are many adventure prompts that encourage you to journey between worlds. Indeed, there's even one scenario in which a group of dragons establish a permanent portal between two different worlds, which could make for a really cool setting overall - two previously unconnected worlds now suddenly in contact.

There's a ton of material here. That being said, I think you would need to structure a fully dragon-themed campaign carefully to avoid a certain degree of monotony. The book's Draconomicon (a chapter that I haven't actually read through yet) goes into serious detail about each type of true dragon (all five of each of metallic, chromatic, and gem dragons,) as well as dragon turtles, deep dragons, moonstone dragons, and I believe dracoliches and maybe shadow dragons as well, which should help in giving these villains (or allies) distinct enough strategies and personalities that you could do very different things with them.

Some mechanical concepts here (like hoard items) would encourage a campaign to focus on tracking down dragons' hoards and slaying the dragons multiple times over a campaign.

Also, this book finally introduces Sea Serpents as a monster, which feels like it should have been there in the Monster Manual (surely Sea Serpents are a more traditional monster than Dragon Turtles?) While the CR even of an ancient Sea Serpent is slightly underwhelming (it's like 10 or 11,) I do appreciate that it can coil around a ship and do significant damage to it (it's a siege monster, so it's all doubled.)

If you want the real nasty stuff, look to Dragonflesh Grafters (humanoids who transform themselves by grafting draconic bodyparts onto themselves) or an Eye Drake (a beholderkin born from a Beholder's obsession with a dragon, with a vaguely draconic form) or, almost certainly the nastiest of them all, the Elder Brain Dragon, which is when a Mind Flayer Elder Brain takes over the body of a dragon, making the usually-immobile horrible brain monster into a flying nightmare that can breathe a blast of ilithid tadpoles all over a huge group of people (thus potentially making a whole bunch of new mind flayers if no one is around to extract the parasites).

There's also a few non-hoard-based magic items, including what I think might be the first Monk-only magic item (a dragonhide belt in +1, +2, and +3 varieties that increases the save DC of your ki abilities and also lets you get back a few ki points once a day). Also, a magic gun! That can let you cast Disintegrate once a day!

Anyway, I'm always happy for more sourcebooks.

As a note, I have not yet gotten the PDF-only Domains of Delight or Minsc and Boo's Journal of Villainy, the latter of which seems to contain a lot of stat blocks for potential high-level campaign bosses (including a couple archdevils that didn't get featured in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes) along with mid-level henchman who can serve as major villains for the earlier parts of the campaign (usually associated with a particular big bad). Domains of Delight is less stat-block oriented, and seems more designed to help you build the eponymous Domains of Delight along the same lines as the instructions on creating Domains of Dread in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft.

I'll likely get those soon and do a write-up.

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