Customer Reviews

Draconomicon: Chromatic Dragons (D&D Rules Expansion)

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If you are playing a character in DnD who looks to the dragon as a sorce of inspiration and power, you may be tempted to get this book. Don't. There is no useful information in here for PC characters. No feats. No powers. No paragon paths, or epic destinies. In other words, there is quite literally nothing that your character would find useful in this book.

On the other hand, if you are a DM who is anxious to put their low level players against some dragon or dragon-like figures, but who knows that the dragons in the MM would destroy them in two rounds. You WANT THIS BOOK! It has dragons and dragon-like monsters in here of every level, from the White Dragon Wyrmling, to Tiamat himself. It also has set ups for dragon lairs, and everything else you need to build dragon encounters that your party will not soon forget. By all means, buy this book!

The 4e revamp continues, and as with previous editions, ranges from the good to the indifferent to the downright dippy. In brief order:

The Good:

Art values, binding and layout are again high. This is a handsome book and the production teams deserves kudos for aesthetic design and plain readability.

The old Orbs of Dragonkind reappear here, rather than sized by age category, now color coded for your convenience. Only the Blue Orb is described, but it's a lengthy description, and any DM worth their salt can swap a color and an energy type and have all the different orbs, and this is even suggested. Far better use of space than cut-and-pasting huge swaths of the same boilerplate.

The Orb is part of a large section on treasures, explaining how to build a dragons hoard, with useful tables such as the latest iteration of the old Art Objects table which was included in neither the Dungeon Masters Guide nor the Adventurers Vault.

There is also some nice logical reimagining. For example, the old lightning-breathing blue dragon is now also known as the storm dragon and gets a camouflage bonus when flying against a cloudless sky, something that makes sense from both an evolutionary and aesthetic perspective. And the new brown dragon takes the blue's old niche as the desert dragon, with a magical sandblasting breath weapon, which again makes sense. It's a useful dragon and makes as much sense as any of the old chromatics.

Also on the "makes sense" end, the old faerie dragons and the newer mirage dragons have moved to the Feywild, the old shadow dragons and the newer blight dragons have moved to the Shadowfell, there's a wonderful profusion of undead dragon types to warm the heart of any evil wizard who can't choose between being a necromancer or a dragon cultist--you can be both!--and finally there's the wonderfully named "squamous thing," which is what happens when dragons get corrupted by the Far Realms.

The Indifferent:

Chapter 3 is "Dragon Lairs" and it takes up 75 pages. They're prettily designed with maps and everything and range from low to high level, but if you're the type of DM who likes to design his own, they're rather a waste. On the other hand, if you like having prefab adventure settings, they're great.

The Draconic Rituals of False Aura and Aura Mask are lovely reimaginings of the old 1st ed standbys, Nystal's Magic Aura and Nystal's Undetectable Aura, and are now things that any wizard would be proud to have in his spellbook. But what particular use are they to dragons, especially when the ritual component is a silk blindfold to make it the most useful? One can't really imagine a dragon going to the bazaar to buy scarves or even demanding them as tribute: "And, my lord, the dragon stipulates that the sacrificial virgin not only be nubile and comely, but she must be wearing a silken blindfold worth at least 100 GP and nothing else. Kinky." In other words, they're nice wizard rituals shoehorned in with the dragon stuff because they didn't have room for them in the PHB, and they'll eventually be reprinted with the inevitable Big Book of Magic Stuff (with a better title).

The Gray Dragons, the second of the promised Three New Chromatic Dragons, also go in the Indifferent pile: They're the old Fang Dragons, but now elevated to full stepchild status by Tiamat, with the old dumb fang dragons being killed. Of course the new Gray Dragons breathe acid slime which at higher levels can petrify victims. Which is okay, but not as iconic as fire or ice or even burning sand. They're your B-list dragons.

The Dippy:

Purple dragons. You heard me, purple dragons. The third of the dire prophesied chromatic wyrms are Purple Dragons!

The artist does a nice job of making them look cool and sinuous, and the intro text has them living in the Underdark, and describes them as looking black in the shadows. But then you get to psychotropic breath weapon and it's time to queue the sitar music.

Yes, this is the Opium Dragon, if opium got to exist in D&D instead of tepid made-up drugs. Admittedly they're the evil dragons from a bad opium trip, but if you run into a bunch of stoned adventurers in the Underdark who say they're "chasing the dragon," it's not just a metaphor.

It gets dippier. The dragonspawn (who were never a good idea to begin with, unless you really liked furries with scales) now have the Purplespawn Nightmare, who from the description is a cross between a purple dragon and a drow, are culturally filled with shame over this (and well they should be, except it will be roleplayed as drow angst), and moreover have a "compulsive need to steal." That's like...oh, the Kender. They're a cross between purple dragons and drow, with the mental patterns of bad Kender, and will--as soon as they convert to Bahamut, and I know there are players planning this now--become the characters of choice of a certain stripe of gamer.

What could be dippier? Try the Frostforged Wyrm, which admittedly has a cool name, but the reality is somewhat of a letdown: It's a white dragon that went to Hell (here called by the Abyss, to avoid offending fundamentalists) and got locked into a cross between spiked armor and an iron maiden, and is driven mad with pain because even if it manages to scrape the armor off, it's immediately bolted back into place by a riveting crew of tiny demons and no, I am not making this up. Someone else did, but I didn't.

Of course the musical dragon hookah from 3e was left back in Song & Silence, so I suppose there is some small improvement over the previous edition.

Summation:

As with previous editions, there's some very good stuff, some rather indifferent stuff, and some incredibly dippy stuff. It's a book for DMs rather than players, except of course those players who want the slim list of rituals, which will be a lot of them.

So, as with many things, a mixed bag.

As a DM, I always love books that are for *DMs*. This book is, and I love it. There are no contrived player feats or other such fluff filling these pages - it is all dragons, all the time. There are new chromatics like the gray and purple, and there are wyrmlings for all chromatic types, in case the youngest of the MM aren't quite low enough for you. Additionally, there are a bunch of planar type dragons, undead dragons (not just 1 or 2 types like in previous editions), and a few surprises. If you're into dragonspawns there's a few of those as well.

There are a few lairs detailed out, much better than the lairs that were in the 3e draconomicon.

All in all, this is one of the best 4e books I've had so far.

I'm fairly selective about the D&D supplements I purchase, so what made me want to buy this Draconomicon? First, a frustration over having played D&D for two years and the closest I came to a dragon was fighting a dragon-like creature. I wanted dragons to make frequent appearances in my own campaign. However, when I put in a dragon encounter, it was memorable mechanically, but didn't have the roleplaying feel I would have liked.

Second, I had stranded my PCs in the Shadowfell without a clear direction on how to accomplish their quest. I needed to introduce two important NPCs that I wanted to be dragons: a mentor and a BBEG.

This book helped me answer some important questions in fleshing out these two long-running characters. Why would a dragon mentor a group of humanoid adventurers? How might the Shadowfell specifically affect dragons? How do I make a dragon who is a threat to adventurers and even other dragons, yet ultimately with weaknesses that make him defeatable? What would those weaknesses be? What kind of social arrangements might exist between the mentor and the BBEG, or between them and powerful non-dragon characters like the Raven Queen?

Sure, there are some good mechanics presented in the book, with some new monsters, new rituals, alternate abilities, and lair maps that I will likely use, but for me the best reason to get this book is for the fluff.

This is an excellent and extremely fun book for the DM! Although it does not include more actual stats for the 5 colors of dragon that were already listed in the first Monster Manual, it provides the same sets (young, adult, elder, ancient) for other chromatics (brown, purple, etc.). It also goes in-depth into dragon lore, including what each kind eats, lifespan, physical make-up, treasure types, etc. Not only this, but it includes several dragon-oriented adventures (including maps and monster stats and all) for all levels, and goes so far as to suggest some dragon-based campaign ideas. There are also stats for dragon-related monsters (wyrmlings, etc.).
Lastly and what I appreciated greatly, there are some new artifacts. Of the six 4e books that I own, this is the only one that has any new artifacts after the original DM Manual, so that was very exciting for me.
All in all, an excellent resource for DMs, especially when playing with groups who love dragons. Just be sure not to let your players peek at it!

Quickly: For some reason I really loved reading this one. Great resource.

Summary:
This is a 255 hardcover supplement for Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition. I would consider this a DM only product mainly, though I suggest letting the players either read the Dragon Lore section or slowly giving out that information in game.

The Book is divided into 4 chapters.

The 1st chapter talks about Dragon Lore. This goes into Physiology, life cycle, outlook, religion and more. Each chromatic dragon type is looked at in great detail including physical characteristics like wingspan and tail length.

The 2nd chapter is information for DMs. This contains Combat encounters, social encounters (including two fleshed out examples) and dragonic traps. Adventure seeds and hooks are listed including 6 fleshed out story arcs. Suggestions for Draconic patrons are given. Two campaign suggestions are listed. An entire section is devoted to Dragon Hordes. The chapter is finished off with new Artefacts, rituals and components as well as some Famous Dragons.

Chapter 3 includes 3 lairs for each tier of play. These are fully mapped out and each includes two fully detailed encounters.

Chapter 4 is the last half of the book and includes New Monsters. The non-standard Chromatic dragons (Purple, Gray and Brown) are statted out along with Wyrmling versions of your standard Chromatics. Many planar and Undead dragons are given as well as some creatures associated with Dragons (including Kobolds and Dragonborn). There are full stats for some famous dragons, including probably the most famous of all: Tiamat. The chapter finishes with a couple of templates and then some Alternative Powers.

The Good:
If you've read my Open Grave review the above structure will seem very familiar. What's odd is that I didn't like it in Open Grave but didn't mind it at all in this book. I found this one a much more enjoyable read and even liked reading the Dragon Lairs (which was the section I thought could have been omitted from Open Grave). I don't know if I just like Dragons more then Undead or what. This was a great book, I really enjoyed reading it and was inspired by each chapter to add something to one of my home games. The initial chapter on Outlook will have me running dragons completely different in every game I run going forward and I think my games will be more memorable and better for it.

The Bad:
As with open Grave, the section of Lairs was a bit long. For some reason or another I found it more enjoyable to read. I think mainly because the dragon lair is such an icon of fantasy, seeing 9 of them fully fleshed out was pretty cool. Still I doubt I will use many and definitely not all of these in my games, 3 per Tier is a bit much.

The Ugly:
I wasn't a fan of the Dragon Components section of the book. It just felt forced. It's like they know that it's a tradition to have wizards wanting dragon bits, but then don't actually want players to just be dissecting every dragon they find and I don't think they managed to find the right balance in this book either. I don't plan on adding any of that section to my games.

Overall
I found this to be a very well written easy and enjoyable read that has already influenced how I run Dragons in my game. There's some great stuff here. Overall the books pretty much just an expansion to the Monster Manual but I didn't mind that at all. I found myself inspired by nearly every section. Maybe there are a few too many lairs and I didn't like the idea of draconic components but that doesn't stop me from recommending this one.

I was pleasantly surprised by the Draconomicon (volume 1). It has good background on dragons and how they are envisioned in 4e. It contains lots of new monsters and fills in the age gaps for dragons left out of the Monster Manual. I did not agree with some of the art for a couple of the dragons, and was disappointed that there are no stats for metallic dragons (yet...I guess volume 2 will have that...yay! WotC marketing!).

At least, though WotC is changing its paradigm it seems by adding more fluff in their products to evoke a feel rather than a bunch of stat blocks for monsters, magic, and powers. I would point out that the book is better suited for the DM rather than a player (IMO).

This is another expansion book which greatly expands dragons for 4th edition. There are numerous sections which explain their heritage, source of power, growth and society.

Their is advice to make a horde of items with basic items (beer/wine/artwork/jewelry/etc).

There are about 15 set encounters of varying level with 2-3 encounters as samples which can be added anywhere for quick adventures.

The great part of the book is the vast number of dragons included. Not only are there only the normal white, black, green, blue, and red dragons. There are undead (skeleton, zombie, wraith, vampire) dragons, elemental dragons (tempest), fey (faerie) dragons, the brown and purple dragons. Wyrmlings are included to let low level characters fight babies even.

There are also unique dragons for white, blue, green, black, and red dragons, and even Tiamat (lvl 35 solo).

So a very good book for dungeon masters to fill dungeons.

This book retails for 39.95 in stores, so it goes without saying if you get this book get it on amazon, you can pick it up for 6-11 easy. It packs a big punch of information, the book itself is hefty. Give one everything they need to build a campaign with or around dragons in it. Its great to have as a dragon enthusiast too, it has a lot of good solid art work of dragons and great lore.
Definately Recommended

A great source book on dragons. Though some of it can be dry, a lot of it is interesting. It also provides you with a great boss to end a destiny quest: Tiamat, goddess of evil dragons.