Should'nt dragon stuff be absurdly common?

[The Jack]

I am kinda creeped out by this topic. Mass killing of sentient creatures for their skin sounds really disgusting especially when there are complains about how not enough it is gained in the process.

Most of them are objectively evil tyrants who want to destroy your homes and horde your gold so that they can sleep on it.

[Lord Raziere]

Most of them are objectively evil tyrants who want to destroy your homes and horde your gold so that they can sleep on it.

That is an assumption not supported by any edition of DnD whatsoever. DnD often says that its a world of adventure and conflict, but never says that evil outnumbers good. that is something people assume for conflict purposes then conveniently ignore the implications of it so that they can have more encounters to fight.

At least half the known species of dragons are outright good, therefore at least half the dragons in the world are good. there is no canonical assertion or explanation for why evil dragons would be more numerous.

therefore we can safely assume reality: selflessness is actually more beneficial in the long term to survival than selfishness. selfishness is only beneficial to survival in the short term. why? because a person who makes friends is soon surrounded by allies while a selfish person who consistently does acts to tick people off soon finds themselves outnumbered.

therefore it is actually more likely that good dragons are more numerous than evil ones.

[Keltest]

That is an assumption not supported by any edition of DnD whatsoever. DnD often says that its a world of adventure and conflict, but never says that evil outnumbers good. that is something people assume for conflict purposes then conveniently ignore the implications of it so that they can have more encounters to fight.

At least half the known species of dragons are outright good, therefore at least half the dragons in the world are good. there is no canonical assertion or explanation for why evil dragons would be more numerous.

therefore we can safely assume reality: selflessness is actually more beneficial in the long term to survival than selfishness. selfishness is only beneficial to survival in the short term. why? because a person who makes friends is soon surrounded by allies while a selfish person who consistently does acts to tick people off soon finds themselves outnumbered.

therefore it is actually more likely that good dragons are more numerous than evil ones.

To say nothing of the fact that "theyre evil, therefore its ok to torture and exploit them" is still a morally indefensible position.

[The Jack]

To say nothing of the fact that "theyre evil, therefore its ok to torture and exploit them" is still a morally indefensible position.

You say that, but most settings have civs with a lot of kill-on-sight rationales for a lot of creatures and they're still thought of as largely good. If you let that red dragon live, she's going to hurt a lot of people.


And no, it's not an indefensible position. People have often justified atrocity and convinced others it was morally justifiable. Cue a thousand real world examples that we can't talk about here. But the fact is that if people can justify the institutional harm of others, what chance do monstrous dragons have?

[PhoenixPhyre]

To say nothing of the fact that "theyre evil, therefore its ok to torture and exploit them" is still a morally indefensible position.

Yeah. Killing them when they encroach (or even more proactive measures) may be appropriate, but farming them for their skins, especially using the frankly stomach-turning means suggested earlier (the name of the spell mindrape should give away the fact that it's not a good thing to do, not to mention the "regenerate so we can skin it over and over"), is morally wrong by any sane standard.

Edit: @The Jack--

Just because people have justified their atrocities does not make them right. It makes those atrocity-defenders evil as well. And we're going well beyond "kill on sight", you're suggesting active genocide, torture, and mutilation for personal gain.

[Keltest]

Yeah. Killing them when they encroach (or even more proactive measures) may be appropriate, but farming them for their skins, especially using the frankly stomach-turning means suggested earlier (the name of the spell mindrape should give away the fact that it's not a good thing to do, not to mention the "regenerate so we can skin it over and over"), is morally wrong by any sane standard.

Edit: @The Jack--

Just because people have justified their atrocities does not make them right. It makes those atrocity-defenders evil as well. And we're going well beyond "kill on sight", you're suggesting active genocide, torture, and mutilation for personal gain.

Indeed. Its one thing to see a red dragon flying over the horizon and take steps to keep it from killing you and smashing your town, another thing entirely to capture it, tie it down, mentally rape it into submission, then flay it alive over and over again for a suit of armor that isn't notably better than steel.

[awa]

Well lets look at it evil groups might try to justify it but they will be opposed by good groups because they are monsters and they will be opposed by dragons and any groups allied with dragons because duh.

So your premise that dragon armor would be incredibly common is deeply suspect if only a small subset of the most evil societies even attempt to harvest dragons on any large scale.

The funny thing is this idea assumes that dragon armor is so obvious that it would be more common than metal and yet every aspect of the argument has at the very least met with resistance.

The morality of the act, the availability of dragons, the ease of harvesting, the amount gained from any given kill, the quality of the acquired material, i dont think any of your assumptions at all have been simply accepted.

In some editions extremely high level magic can be used to partial mitigate the problem at the cost of greatly increased evil and just begging for undead and corruption, but you could use much lower level magic to acquire metal armor in far greater number with dramatically reduced risk.

[The Jack]

Just because people have justified their atrocities does not make them right. It makes those atrocity-defenders evil as well. And we're going well beyond "kill on sight", you're suggesting active genocide, torture, and mutilation for personal gain.

What about 'greater good let's kill terrorists' kinda thing?


An adult red or black dragon is an atrocity maker capable of repeat 9/11 scale terrorism. It is inherently domineering, wicked, sadistic and it cannot be trusted, it's one of the most malevolent living things of the material plane. The dragon is the product of centuries of suffering for thousands of sentient victims directly or indirectly victimized by the dragon.

There's no moral 'we should let this live even if we have the capacity to stop it' it's a power-fueled monster aligned with chaos and evil. Even if you make a deal with it, it's inherently inclined to betray you.



Then there's the moral argument that it's right to punish the wicked. Red/Black dragons are unbelievably wicked, so a harsher treatment is justifiable if you agree with crime and punishment.

[hamishspence]

Torture goes beyond "acceptable punishment of the guilty" for good-aligned characters, according to most D&D sources that discuss it.

As to how evil a chromatic dragon is - going by some D&D novels, they're not any more evil than the average evil mortal - they're just more powerful.

[MoiMagnus]

What about 'greater good let's kill terrorists' kinda thing?

Doesn't work well in a world were good and evil are Objective things instead of Subjective or related to moral ones.
I mean, if that kind of stuff happen, it may mean "literally every citizen of this empire ends up in hell", which indirectly mean "literally any servant of good aligned deity (and a lot of neutral ones) will oppose this empire in order to prevent such catastrophe from happening".

But anyway, even if it worked, you clearly enter the domain of "non-standard setting". In the same way that if you add steam-power and railroads to the world (under the reasonable assumption that magic is far more complex to master than steam-power), you ends up in a "non-standard setting".

(Note that if you go further in the "dragon farm" idea for your world-building, an interesting follow up is "pandemic magical diseases", because most dangerous real world diseases come from cows/chicken/...)

[Max_Killjoy]

Doesn't work well in a world were good and evil are Objective things instead of Subjective or related to moral ones.
I mean, if that kind of stuff happen, it may mean "literally every citizen of this empire ends up in hell", which indirectly mean "literally any servant of good aligned deity (and a lot of neutral ones) will oppose this empire in order to prevent such catastrophe from happening".

But anyway, even if it worked, you clearly enter the domain of "non-standard setting". In the same way that if you add steam-power and railroads to the world (under the reasonable assumption that magic is far more complex to master than steam-power), you ends up in a "non-standard setting".

(Note that if you go further in the "dragon farm" idea for your world-building, an interesting follow up is "pandemic magical diseases", because most dangerous real world diseases come from cows/chicken/...)

No one wants to catch dragon pox...

[Keltest]

No one wants to catch dragon pox...

Mad Dragon Disease, the scourge of [insert world name here]

[GreatWyrmGold]

when you are a murderhobo you consider more easily that fighting stuff is a good way to solve problems and so you get more encounters because if you solve one problem by talking you avoid having further problems while if you solve it with murder then you will get extra problems(and thus more encounters).
So the one going around solving its problems with murder is likely to progress faster because it will have more encounters than a person that talks.

And how does an official program for getting non-murderhobos to fight powerful monsters make this worse? You're not looking at a problem which consistent adventuring contracts cause, you're bringing up a problem that potentially exists in all D&D worlds in an attempt to avoid admitting that you said veterans would turn into psychopaths.

Also I assumed that dragons rushing the kingdom from all the directions would hit the civilians a lot and risk to be not manageable by armies but better survivable by a few strong people that kills dragons with ambushes or whatever and flee when too much big groups for their strength comes.

That's not a bad argument. (It relies on an unclear set of assumptions on where dragons are and how much, say, black and red dragons get alone, but it's not bad.) Why didn't you bring it up earlier?

Remember, the size is how much space it controls, not how much it occupies.

That's space, not size. Size is absolutely how big a creature is.

And a wyrmling is explicitly only about the size of a small pony or large dog (talking about the body). It's Medium only because of the wings.

...Ponies and large dogs are also Medium. And they don't have wings.

And only the body would provide usable materials, and much of that would not. Which is only a small fraction of the volume.

But it would be a reasonably consistent fraction. Dragon art doesn't show their proportions changing much as they age, beyond having slightly larger heads/eyes as wyrmlings.

You can't simply assume that there's a direct scaling between the size category and the actual physical size of the creature. For example, all the giants are Huge, but they range in height and size tremendously.

In 3.5, at least, there were plenty of Large giants. Can't say I've checked the heights of 5e giants, I'll admit.
And while there's a range of sizes within each size category, the ranges for each size category are consistently much larger than the next smaller one. On average, a Large creature is twice the height and eight times the volume of a Medium one.

As a note: a leather jacket takes something like 45 sq feet of leather. That's about 1 standard cow. A wyrmling is way smaller than a cow in actual body size, more like a sheep. A young dragon is about the size of a cow. But due to the body shape, you're unlikely to get as much hide from a dragon as from a cow. Especially since you have to cut/burn/destroy large patches of it to kill the thing in the first place. Plus, a suit of armor is going to need much more hide than a leather jacket, especially since it's going to have scales on it that make it difficult to work around.

See, this is the argument you shoulda lead with. Ideally leaving out that stuff confusing size category with space.

Look, It has a natural AC even at low levels. What's good enough for it is good enough for you, even when it's a wyrmling. Now, it might be better to double up on wyrmling hide than not, but it's still got +5/6/7 AC from just one layer of hide and scales. This 'but it doesn't work like that for cows' stuff is nonsense.

1. The "but it doesn't work like that for cows" isn't just "cow leather is weak and flimsy," it's "big animals like cows produce less leather than you'd think".
2. Just because dragonhide gives a dragon decent AC doesn't automatically mean anything made out of it would. By that logic, shouldn't all metal armor give you the same AC bonus? There's more to armor than material.

Spoiler: Tangents

Show

While no substance with all of those properties exists, the "metal" version--a corrosion resistant, silver colored metal that is both lighter and stronger than steel--accurately describes titanium and many alloys thereof.

I've always heard that mithril was basically fantasy aluminum.

I am kinda creeped out by this topic. Mass killing of sentient creatures for their skin sounds really disgusting especially when there are complains about how not enough it is gained in the process.

That's what happens when entire species are designated as Always Chaotic Evil. (Or Lawful Evil, or Neutral Evil, or whatever.) It's accepted as baseline that you can kill them and whatnot without regret; finding reasons to question that is the deviation. Which is also true of Usually/Often Evil creatures, come to think of it.
Combine that with the weird liminal state dragons exist in, where they're as intelligent as people (if not more so) but still look and often act like wild beasts, and throw in literary precedents for dragonhide armor...

That is an assumption not supported by any edition of DnD whatsoever. DnD often says that its a world of adventure and conflict, but never says that evil outnumbers good. that is something people assume for conflict purposes then conveniently ignore the implications of it so that they can have more encounters to fight.

Regardless of why evil dragons show up more often than good dragons, evil dragons show up more than good dragons. Maybe they're less common because they're in constant conflict, and the good dragons are always busy doing nothing in particular; maybe evil dragons' nature as r-strategists means that there are always a bunch of semi-feral chromatic dragons roaming about.
There's nothing said either way in the rules. Not that evil outnumbers good, not that good outnumbers evil, not even that good and evil are equal in number. Your assumptions are assuming as much as everyone else's.

[Quertus]

Somewhere along the line the edition changed to 5e, where you can't do it to a captive dragon. You can turn into a dragon and do it to yourself, but again, why would you do that? And you can't turn back and will lose your most powerful spells.

Why would you? How about, so that you can outfit your Legion of Doom with Dragon hide armor in preparation for your return to a good edition of the game? That seems like a good reason to me.

To say nothing of the fact that "theyre evil, therefore its ok to torture and exploit them" is still a morally indefensible position.

It's... almost the basis of the game (and a lot of things IRL).

Yeah. Killing them when they encroach (or even more proactive measures) may be appropriate, but farming them for their skins, especially using the frankly stomach-turning means suggested earlier (the name of the spell mindrape should give away the fact that it's not a good thing to do, not to mention the "regenerate so we can skin it over and over"), is morally wrong by any sane standard.

Hopefully, it's sufficiently morally wrong that those wealthy loot stacks known as "adventurers" will bring their XP my way.

Besides, if I have the spell slots available, and they fail their saves, I may Mindrape them into being my lieutenants, and going out and getting me more loot, rather than inefficiently disposing of them like the previous evil overlord would have.

Indeed. Its one thing to see a red dragon flying over the horizon and take steps to keep it from killing you and smashing your town, another thing entirely to capture it, tie it down, mentally rape it into submission, then flay it alive over and over again for a suit of armor that isn't notably better than steel.

That second one is called "forethought". Especially when combined with time travel edition hopping conquest.

More importantly, the second one is a deterrent. Do you really want to mess with the guy who can and will do that to a Dragon?

So your premise that dragon armor would be incredibly common is deeply suspect if only a small subset of the most evil societies even attempt to harvest dragons on any large scale.

From what I've read, it sounds like "would be" is overstating things a bit (outside of, say, Dragonlance). But "could be" seems rather reasonable to me in most systems.

[Keltest]

And now that somebody has started to defend the merits of slavery and torture, I think I shall bow out, at least until that particular train of thought dies down.

[Bohandas]

You say that, but most settings have civs with a lot of kill-on-sight rationales for a lot of creatures and they're still thought of as largely good. If you let that red dragon live, she's going to hurt a lot of people.

Conversely, most settings also have the Blood War

[Quertus]

And now that somebody has started to defend the merits of slavery and torture, I think I shall bow out, at least until that particular train of thought dies down.

It's a Role-playing game. How can you include an evil overlord, if you cannot role-play their point of view?

[Max_Killjoy]

And now that somebody has started to defend the merits of slavery and torture, I think I shall bow out, at least until that particular train of thought dies down.

Yeah, it's not been an easy thread to read, especially when certain posters are blurring their own thoughts on the matter with in-character thoughts such that it's hard to tell where what they're seriously advocating ends and what a hypothetical character is willing to do begins.

And then other people are just seriously advocating hunting fully intelligent creatures and wearing their skin as clothing like it's no big deal.

It's a Role-playing game. How can you include an evil overlord, if you cannot role-play their point of view?

Save the RP for RP threads.

[Willie the Duck]

Maybe not, but Steel-Alloys with Titanium alloyed into it on the other hand... There's no strict given limit on how much lighter or stronger it has to be than regular steel. Maybe some titanium chips folded into the steel as it's being forged or a shell of one metal around a core of the other

Titanium, although lighter per unit strength, also requires a larger cross-section than steel to achieve the same strength. So a titanium core sword is going to look significantly different, if nothing else. There's a reason the stuff is used as structural component for fighter craft and only really for corrosion-proof diving knives and the like. Still, imaginative gamers will rise to the challenge.

Yeah, it's not been an easy thread to read, especially when certain posters are blurring their own thoughts on the matter with in-character thoughts such that it's hard to tell where what they're seriously advocating ends and what a hypothetical character is willing to do begins.

At least people are generally reacting such that it seems they realize that the other people in-thread are likely suggesting that such actions might possibly be justified by the residents of the D&D world, and are not IRL advocates of torture or species cleansing.

[JoeJ]

Besides, if I have the spell slots available, and they fail their saves, I may Mindrape them into being my lieutenants, and going out and getting me more loot, rather than inefficiently disposing of them like the previous evil overlord would have.

Or they'll just add you to their undead army.

[The Jack]

Torture goes beyond "acceptable punishment of the guilty" for good-aligned characters, according to most D&D sources that discuss it.

As to how evil a chromatic dragon is - going by some D&D novels, they're not any more evil than the average evil mortal - they're just more powerful.

You give a bad person power and they'll only get worse. Dat dragon be evily evil.

[Willie the Duck]

You give a bad person power and they'll only get worse. Dat dragon be evily evil.

Is that in response to the idea that red dragons are 'not any more evil than the average evil mortal,' or a justification for torturing them?

[DaOldeWolf]

Most of them are objectively evil tyrants who want to destroy your homes and horde your gold so that they can sleep on it.

I am fine with killling an evil dragon in self defense. Now, mass hunting of them for personal gain with the justification of them being predisposing for evil….. that is still pretty creepy.

[Forum Explorer]

That is an assumption not supported by any edition of DnD whatsoever. DnD often says that its a world of adventure and conflict, but never says that evil outnumbers good. that is something people assume for conflict purposes then conveniently ignore the implications of it so that they can have more encounters to fight.

At least half the known species of dragons are outright good, therefore at least half the dragons in the world are good. there is no canonical assertion or explanation for why evil dragons would be more numerous.

therefore we can safely assume reality: selflessness is actually more beneficial in the long term to survival than selfishness. selfishness is only beneficial to survival in the short term. why? because a person who makes friends is soon surrounded by allies while a selfish person who consistently does acts to tick people off soon finds themselves outnumbered.

therefore it is actually more likely that good dragons are more numerous than evil ones.

See this is demonstrably false. One of the common traits between all of the dragons (or nearly all) is the presence of minions. And they are certainly evil, and yet they still have minions. Why? Well logically because there is some advantages to working for a dragon, even if it's evil. Let's try and figure some of these out:

1. The Dragon is on your side (or more accurately, you're on its side). This is likely a massive boost to your survival rate. Dragons typically lair in very dangerous locations. None of them have 'sunny plain' or 'happy valley' as lair locations. No, it's deserts, mountain tops, arctic plains, swamps, deep forests (which trust me, is a lot less hospitable then people think). Working for the local dragon means that not only do you not have to defend against the strongest monster in the region, but likely it will, inadvertently, protect you from the other scary monsters by allowing you to live near its lair.

2. It might even proactively protect you. The dragon enslaved you sure, but that also means you belong to it. Now it might not care at all if something happens to you. On the other hand, some dragons will lose it if even a single coin is stolen from their horde. So how angry will it be if someone attacked its favorite scale polisher or musician?

3. It may even provide for you. It might kill something big, eat its fill when its fresh, and give the remainder to its minions. Or even just giving you the scrap bones and gear that aren't valuable enough to enter its horde. Blue dragons are specifically called out as actively rewarding minions that do well.

4. Playing the odds. Yeah, you might get killed and/or tortured by the dragon in a fit of rage or boredom (or hunger), but odds are that won't happen to you. It'll happen to another minion (because statistically speaking if it's a random event, odds are it won't happen to you but someone else), and the better you serve the better your odds. While not serving the dragon means opposing the dragon, which means you are almost certainly going to die.

5. No where else to go. Things that serve dragons are stuff like Kobolds, Ogres, Orcs, and other intelligent monsters. Or particularly evil people. Point is these people aren't really welcome in your local town or community. They are on their own, and they can't beat the dragon on their own. Can't run, can't hide, and can't beat them. So join them. <= This one, I feel, is the biggest factor. Taking a kobold for example, you are smaller and significantly weaker than the average human. You also aren't welcome in any of the human's territory. They'll actively prosecute you, and you likely can't win in a fight against them. So you are driven out into the wilds which are full of dangerous monsters that are even worse then humans, and are likely inhospitable to boot. But there is a local dragon. So you enter its service because really, what choice do you have?

Why would you? How about, so that you can outfit your Legion of Doom with Dragon hide armor in preparation for your return to a good edition of the game? That seems like a good reason to me.

Because, and stay with me now, you can't trust your minions. You getting skinned leaves you vulnerable. I don't think it's possible to do without taking massive damage, and until you heal you are really weak. You've also got multiple minions with blades literally at your throat during the whole operation.

So pain aside, it seems like a really good way to get yourself killed. And before you suggest mentally dominating them so they can't, dragons don't have enough spells to pull that off. Turning into a dragon removes a lot of your spells.

And you can't do it yourself, pain aside, you lack the fine finger control needed.

Not to mention as an evil Overlord you can't really afford to be taking so much damage before (or between) having to fight off the inevitable adventuring groups trying to kill you.

[awa]

not to mention all your minions watching your transformed dragon self weeping in agony as they carve bits off their edge lord master is not going to do wonders for your image.

[Lord Raziere]

Forum Explorer, your still thinking short term.

Being allies with an evil dragon doesn't protect you from the evil dragon. thats why they're evil. competence has nothing to do with this. your dead no matter how stupid or smart the evil dragon is about their evil, its just that you die for different reasons, because they don't value your life either way- anything you can do for them can probably be replaced. the protection of an evil tyrant is a short term, inherently frail thing for it always requires another threat to be protected from (real or imagined and often the latter), and once that threat is gone, the new big threat is the thing that rules you, and suddenly simply being protected from an outside threat isn't enough to satisfy living your life under the internal one. thus does tyranny fail, sure in the case of an all-powerful dragon it more often fails in a way that leads to them living and all their minions dying to their flame breath, but still it fails. and the minions are often the stupidest beings on the face of the planet with the kind of cultures that say betrayal is great as long as you get power out of it when it often just leads to their death.

really, minion races like goblins, orcs and ogres and so on should've darwined themselves out of existence long ago. through falling into tactically bad situations that any decent human commander could bait them into, if nothing else. "raaawwr, we're orcs lets all charge the enemy!" human commander: "alright, form the phalanx." orcs dead.

[Forum Explorer]

Forum Explorer, your still thinking short term.

Being allies with an evil dragon doesn't protect you from the evil dragon. thats why they're evil. competence has nothing to do with this. your dead no matter how stupid or smart the evil dragon is about their evil, its just that you die for different reasons, because they don't value your life either way- anything you can do for them can probably be replaced. the protection of an evil tyrant is a short term, inherently frail thing for it always requires another threat to be protected from (real or imagined and often the latter), and once that threat is gone, the new big threat is the thing that rules you, and suddenly simply being protected from an outside threat isn't enough to satisfy living your life under the internal one. thus does tyranny fail, sure in the case of an all-powerful dragon it more often fails in a way that leads to them living and all their minions dying to their flame breath, but still it fails. and the minions are often the stupidest beings on the face of the planet with the kind of cultures that say betrayal is great as long as you get power out of it when it often just leads to their death.

really, minion races like goblins, orcs and ogres and so on should've darwined themselves out of existence long ago. through falling into tactically bad situations that any decent human commander could bait them into, if nothing else. "raaawwr, we're orcs lets all charge the enemy!" human commander: "alright, form the phalanx." orcs dead.

That's only if the outside threat actually goes away. Besides the monsters, bad climate, and just being weak, there's the so called 'forces of good', which are more then a match for the minions, and may have driven them out to the dragon's lands within their lifetime. That's why I called out #5 as being the most important. And it's not like the dragon can destroy those threats either, because of the PCs and failing them, other dragons, both good and evil.

Yeah, the dragon is bad. But life in its service is still life, which is more then you get without the dragon. And you know it because everything tells you so. Parents, history, mythology, religion, your own experiences. And the very existence of the dragon is proof that the world is an unfair place, and you are at the bottom of the heap.


It's R-strategists vs K-Strategists really. The R-strategists actually do better in harsher terrain with more monsters, while those same monster (including dragons) make it risky to actually counter attack and wipe them out. Particularly since the good races aren't actually all that good, so weakening your own military in permanently exterminating the gobinoids is a good way to get invaded by your neighbor, or overthrown by the local necromancer and what not.

[noob]

Goblins are not a naturally minion race it is just that by being small they get enslaved easily.
If goblins were provided with the means to start a nation not based on being enslaved by the strong people then they might become scarily efficient thanks to fast population growth and the ability to live with low amounts of food and them not having an intelligence penalty means that they can actually start researching interesting stuff.
It is just that goblin nations does not happens because everybody likes to kill goblins or enslave them.

[Lord Raziere]

okay whatever, keep defending the merits of being desperate stupid raiders who need a giant magical lizard to live, I'm going to do something else that I find more worthwhile.

[Keltest]

okay whatever, keep defending the merits of being desperate stupid raiders who need a giant magical lizard to live, I'm going to do something else that I find more worthwhile.

I mean, certainly being subjugated by the superpredator is going to give you a better life expectancy overall than being in competition with it. Yeah, it will suck for a few random individuals every year, but on the whole your tribe or clan or whatever is going to be much better off than if you motivated the dragon to just kill all of you to get you out of the space.