Dungeons & Dragons lore!

Oh right, afterlives! Souls don’t linger in the Outer Planes as petitioners (except when they do), but rather pass through the appropriate plane until they move beyond its borders, “past the pale edges of eternity”, and into the Great Unknown.

It’s almost impossible to retrieve spirits from there and no one knows what it’s like, though the gods claim to have dreams of it.

I use a condensed version of the Great Wheel more in line with Pathfinder, with an additional Neutral plane acting as a sort of Limbo/Fugue Plane where the souls wait for their judgement. Outlands and their gate towns are out, and the Sigil equivalent floats on the Astral Plane instead.

Souls don't go anywhere, they just linger near where they died, and particularly strong ones become ghosts.

This has the helpful side effect of making resurrection real easy.

With Planescape I think I would try to adapt the cosmology by making Sigil to be a bit more like the city Cynosure in the 80's comic Grim Jack, which is one of the most extreme Fantasy Kitchen Sinks in fiction. Cynosure is at the exact point where all dimensions and alternate timelines connect, which means that the different city districts follow different physical and metaphysical rules. In some places magic works, in others laserguns and firearms work, while swords work everywhere. This is best kept in mid when movinc across districts. The city has its own militant police-force, who try to keep order and prevent demonic invasion.

I have a Sigil at the center of Limbo, complete with a Lady Of Pain. The difference is that the gods made war against her because letting one angry anti-theist god-thing of indeterminate motive or mind-set control the cosmic hub was considered unacceptable. They forced her to accept the presence of temple-embassies in Sigil.

For the most part, modrons, rilmani and slaadi puppeteer philosopher-gangs to war and debate through the City Of Doors’ streets and alley.

> They forced her to accept the presence of temple-embassies in Sigil.

One does not simply 'Force' the lady of pain..

It did take all of them ganging up on her and a number of other vague considerations.

^^^ Does the lady of pain not already allow temples (proxies even!) in Sigil?

Edited by bobbitwormhobbitwyrm on Oct 3rd 2020 at 6:59:01 AM

There's no point really,she literally won't allow Gods into Sigil itself,anyone even thinking about temple is just asking for trouble.

I'm pretty damn sure that she'd try to do to them that what she did to Aoskar.

Just don't fuck with the Lady of Pain. Like, in-universe and out.

I literally have her act like an all powerful white cell. Or a administrator trying to fix a certain part of her system (Sigil). Just completely and utterly detached.

Don't define her or give her any sort of personality. She should be more like hazardous weather in-universe to those living in the Cage.

I sometimes wonder if she's some sort of construct designed to be a God,hence hating other Gods and acting all aloof

I saw a rather cool drawing of a hybrid between a blue and white dragon. Is it likely for dragons to cross-breed with each other, or are they too spiciesist? Hybrids with other species I know of, usually with humanoids, but I haven't heard of dragon-hybrids.

I don't think they are compatible but yeah personality wise they wouldn't do that because dragons are extra competitive with other dragons and they don't even need to be different colors for that :p

True, dragons are territorial even amongst their own breed. Still, a pair of really deviant Chromatic dragons might get up to something freaky, while I imagine that a pair of Metallics might have it easier to form such a strong bond that they could genuinely become a couple. Then again, there can always be magically created hybrids for a villain's plan to take over the world.

None of my books have any rules for generating a dragon crossbreed, which is a shame, but understandable. Just going with the core 10 dragon species, that'd be... what, 45 potential pairings? That's like a seventh of a Monster Manual. So as much as I like the thought of a red-black hybrid "napalm" dragon spitting globs of flaming acid, it's a lot of work for a rare situation.

Fun fact, the old "Half-Dragon" template can be applied to "any living, corporeal creature," and doesn't specify you can't make a half-dragon dragon. Though that would leave you with a standard dragon that happens to have two elemental breath weapons and two energy resistances, which is more cheese than characterful.

If you wanted to justify the lack of dragon crossbreeds, blame their anatomy. Each true dragon has an organ called the draconic fundamentum attached to their heart, which generates and regulates the elemental energy used in their breath weapons, incredibly efficient metabolism, supercharged wing muscles, etc. A dragon crossbreed could potentially be trying to create a draconic fundamentum from opposing elements like fire and cold, which could make the egg non-viable. Or maybe true dragons are only meant to have one element, so if a gold and silver mated, the resulting egg clutch would have some wyrmlings with the cold subtype, which would turn out silver, and the others would be fiery golds.

...Though this explanation wouldn't preclude the existence of dragon hybrids of matching elemental subtypes, like a red-gold ("saffron?") crossbreed. Which, given its parents' opposing alignments, would either result from a great act of good or a great act of evil.

Edited by Tacitus on Oct 6th 2020 at 2:23:10 PM

Reminds me of Scorpius from Farscape. His biology was a complete mess, as one parent's species had a severely low tolerance for any heat, while the other had a heat-gland in their body that allowed them to project heat-waves against enemies.

I had never before heard about draconic fundamentum before. The conflicting elements could be handwaved if one wants to ignore that organ, but I think there could be ways to justify it to players who don't want to ignore it. I'm thinking of something similar to how some firebenders in Avatar: The Last Airbender could turn their elemental energy into lightning through extreme focus. I don't know if it would work with existing rules to connect red and blue dragons that way, but in a homebrew some dragon species could be made biologically compatible.

I should point out that the 3rd Edition Draconomicon only describes that the draconic fundamentum is a dragon's power source, not that it's keyed to a certain element, that bit's just an idea I had to excuse a lack of crossbreeds. The same book includes to Pyroclastic Dragon of Gehenna, which while lacking the "(fire)" and "(earth)" subtypes is said to embody "the forces of fire, earth, and rumbling thunder that move earth and shape continents." Though you can justify that while including the "elementally-aligned draconic fundamentum" theory by remembering that the Pryoclastic Dragon is an extraplanar creature from a high-magic environment, so it may work differently than a dragon from the Material Plane.

And you could follow that train of thought to make a dual-elemental Material Plane dragon's d.f. into both a strength and a weakness. Like a purple dragon could shoot lightning or breathe fire, and be immune to those damage types, but maybe not both at once. Maybe the crossbreed is constantly Diverting Power during a fight with adventurers, deciding whether to fully-charge one element at the expense of the other. So the PCs can hopefully figure out they need to zap it with lightning the turn after it breathes fire, while if it's using its funky crackling firestream attack, its potential energy immunity has been downgraded to energy resistance. And changing the elemental atunement of your very core may not be as easy as flipping a switch on the control panel, maybe the act creates a window of vulnerability.

Or maybe it's always powered to the max, but at a price, like that extra elemental energy forces it to consume a lot more than an ordinary dragon, meaning it can't afford to curl up on its hoard and sleep for a decade. Maybe it has to seek out high-magic areas to feel comfortable, eats magic items to survive, or is desperately searching for some artifact or lore that will allow it to stabilize its hybrid heart.

Perhaps its attack options become more limited also because it is forced to be very still during a truly devastating breath-attack that combines multiple elements, akin to a Death Star laser? Or this attack simply takes a toll on the dragon's energy reserves, so it can use it again only after resting a minute or so? That would force it to use a more martial strategy when fighting, focusing on everything else a dragon has at its disposal besides the breath-attack.

Belching that much elemental energy at once might just plain weaken it, too. Maybe its wing muscles are no longer supercharged, so it can't fly until it recovers from the attack, and the feedback might temporarily disable its darkvision and/or blindsight. Adult crossbreeds may find themselves unable to take Legendary Actions after a combined elemental breath attack, or use their Legendary Resistance for a time.

And on the subject of 5th Edition monster mechanics - a hypothetical dragon hybrid might have some interesting Lair Actions and Regional Effects. That purple dragon could create swirling clouds of superheated sand that blind and burn victims, and the area around its lair might be marked by hidden sinkholes that dump trespassers into sulfurous water.

The fourth edition Draconomicon does discuss crossbreeds a little bit, incidentally. They're rare - chromatic dragons tend to be pretty insular, and a lot of the eggs that are produced aren't viable - but they do exist.

Admittedly, the rules for this are not particularly detailed. Apart from having the same lifespan as whichever parent is shorter-lived, they're otherwise identical to one parent statistically, although appearance-wise they can present a mixture of physical traits, or even have all the stats of one parent while looking almost identical to the other (so you gear up with fire-resistant stuff to take on that red dragon you don't know is a red/blue cross, and then it hits you with a blast of lightning).

I would personally allow myself a bit more flexibility there as a GM; a lot of the differences between 5e dragons apart from the breath weapon are either lair actions or stuff like ice walk or amphibious, it's not going to break the game if you shift a few things around.

It seems that such a hypothetical dragon would have to rely on ingenuity and dirty tricks to survive, no matter how you slice it. It probably won't be able to be the type of indomitable powerhouse that dragons are supposed to be, which might give other pure-bred dragons an extra reason to loathe and try to kill it, as its perceived weakness reflects poorly on all dragons. So it might focus on living stealthily and avoid combat as much as possible, while making traps like those sinkholes.

I'd prefer any cross-breed dragons to have a mixture of physical traits, at least a little. The artist that got my mind racing has been comissioned to several hybrids, but this blue-and-white looks really cool to me: https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/spacedragon14/blue-and-white-dragon-hybrid

Edited by Mara999 on Oct 7th 2020 at 10:15:22 PM

A little of topic, but it'd be a fun exercise to create a Chocobo style "breeding tree" for Dragon types. Maybe even toss in diet and location into the mix.

Red and Blue, with the location of swamp create Black. Forests create Greens.

Then you get a big in universe discussion of of dragons are different races or species, and not just the one with a super wide variety of environmental phenotypes. It'd have the classic chromatics look down on that more colorful types as "too far from the source", while the hybrids would see the classics as too simplistic.

Ah, to chart the full draconic family tree, work out how far back the linnorums branched off from "true dragons," whether song and silver dragons are related, and what kind of "proto-dragon" was the common ancestor of dragonkind. Assuming they even evolved and weren't intelligently designed by Io.

Having location be a factor in dragon breeding has some interesting implications on just how attuned they are to the natural world (and would handily explain the various Planar Dragons of the Great Wheel and even the regional effects around powerful Material Plane dragon lairs). What would happen, then, if dragons were bred on an utterly generic demiplane? Would the eggs hatch as colorless winged beasts without any elemental association? Or is that where Force Dragons come from?

Yeah, I have a big 4E-shaped gap in my D&D library, which is about 75% 3(.5)E. But it sounds like they went the Elder Scrolls route in terms of crossbreed heritage. Easy to stat, not particularly flavorful, but also easy to spice up with some creative ability-swapping.

Though the "looks like a Red but has stats of a Blue" is just pure dickery. "lol, the players thought they were being smart by stocking up on fire resistance, but I showed them!" Like the proverbial albino red dragon all over again.

So life sucks to be a dragon hybrid. Some fear you for your occasional bursts of power beyond what a normal dragon can accomplish, others despise you for the weaknesses and vulnerabilities tied to that power. This might help explain their rarity - good dragons would be reluctant to let a moment's passion result in such an unhappy creature, evil dragons would be more concerned about offspring that would have powers they lacked. While neutral dragons would...

Oh, that's a whole crate of worms we haven't gotten into, adding gemstone dragons to the set of potential dragon hybrids. Extra-glossy metallics or chromatics with elemental magic, arcane powers, and weird breath effects as well as psychic powers.

I think the simplest option for featuring hybrids in a campaign would be that they are an artificial creation, made by magic and possibly for warfare. If it fits with someone's homebrew lore, then it would be possible to take a page from Wo W in that some rare dragons on the verge of extinction try to create an entire army of new dragons, in an attempt to recreate their species' glory-days.

Or then an exceptionally power-hungry dragon similar to Ashardalon decides that it needs an army of dragons to do its bidding, plus that they need to be "perfect". So instead of recruiting regular dragons, it decides to create hybrids that are an amalgamation of multiple dragons, to cancel out each others' weaknesses. Bonus-points if this same dragon tries to upgrade itself with parts and traits from many species of dragon, perhaps to become like a living avatar of Tiamat.

You're not wrong.