The Arcane Athenæum

A long time ago (and I mean a looooooong time ago, like well over two years ago) I released a stat block for an ancient brown dragon.  You can see that, as well as my methodology, right here at the jump.  At the time I promised to work on the other age categories for the brown dragon, as well as stat blocks for the gray dragon and purple dragon.  I swore I’d eventually get it done.

Then, once those finally released, I promised to work on releasing a bunch of metallic dragons from earlier editions of D&D; adamantine, mithril, steel, etc. That, unfortunately, took much much longer than it should have. Years longer, I’m sad to say. There’s a lot of reasons for this, and then 2020 ended up kicking my ass a lot more than you’d expect even with a global pandemic going on.

But I did, finally, finish.

So in… “celebration” of what shouldn’t have been such a massive accomplishment, I’m re-posting the Draconomicon on The Arcane Athenæum in a new article. Download it at the jump.

Anything I release through The Arcane Athenæum for D&D will be available completely for free, though you can donate to any project I upload at the “pay what you want” price on DMsGuild if you’d like.  The exception is, well, this particular document; you can’t purchase it for any cost at all for important legal reasons. But if you enjoy my work, consider purchasing another item through DMsGuild. Maybe that Dragon Shaman class?

Downloads

DMsGuild

Changelog

Version 4.0 26Oct2021

• Formatting is slightly different due to using Homebrewery’s updated V3 tools.
• Minor language changes throughout the document.
• Added fire resistence to the brown dragons, and a line in the Sand Walk trait that establishes they are adapted to hot climates.  While historically brown dragons do not have any particular resistence to fire, after a lot of deliberation I decided it was a fair addition to the 5e version of the species and actually very flavorful, as I would expect a species designed exclusively for living in the desert to be naturally resistent to heat in some capacity.  Also, players who choose some kind of ancestry or class based on the brown dragon had to jump through additional hoops with unique features to compensate for this lack of any kind of damage immunity/resistence. Adding fire resistence to the brown dragon provides a natural damage type for these player characters.
• Cobalt dragons were given intimidation proficiency, which I think they always should have had due to their natural habit of intimidating individuals that enter their territory.
• The dragonborn player options were re-written slightly to work with the new variants presented in Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons.

Version 3.1 02Aug2021

• Added the change shape feature to the Adult Adamantine Dragon, which was missing it.
• Fixed some mathematical mistakes for the Cobalt Dragons and Steel Dragons.
• Following WotC’s recent examples, added the proficiency bonus for each stat block in the stat block itself, next to the CR for the creature.
• Fixed some general formatting

Version 3.0 18Mar2021

• Updated with 7 new metallic dragon species; adamantine, cobalt, iron, mercury, mithril, orium, and steel.
• A few of the existing dragons have had their stats slightly tweaked.
• The Character Options at the end of the document have been updated to include the new dragons as further potential choices.

Version 2.01 12Mar2019

• Formatting issue on page 3 for the Young Brown Dragon was addressed.

Version 2.0 02Feb2019

• Document has been updated with the new formatting and cover image typical of our products.
• After some consideration, I’ve decided to make this “The Draconomicon”, no subtitle.  This means that, when the metallic dragons and elemental dragons are ready for release, this document will be updated with those pages rather than making a new document.  I simply think that will be a cleaner, easier method for everyone.

Version 1.3 05Sep2018

• With the changes to Draconic Adaptation now granting darkvision for all dragon shamans, the exact wording of the purple dragon’s Draconic Adaptation has been altered.

Version 1.2 12Jun2018

• Fixed a few typos and mistakes in some of the stat blocks.
• Changed the Player Options to reflect the new changes to the Dragon Shaman (now a full class instead of a Barbarian subclass), and providing an alternate option for Brown Dragonborn due to their lack of energy resistance.