Review: Draconomicon

For the past three weeks, I've been reading the Draconomicon on and off. It's a big book about dragons for D&D. Here's the review:

The Draconomicon, like all Wizards' books these days, is both hardback and full-colour. This is apparently the first of a series of 'prestige' books, featuring extensive artwork, superior design and the like. Personally, I don't care for such things, and would prefer a lower price, but so be it. The book is about 290 pages long, has five chapters and two appendices. Finally, in terms of quality, the editing of this book is damn-near flawless, as is usually the case with Wizards, Green Ronin and Malhavoc. However, the pages seem bound slightly too close to the spine, which makes reading some of the text a little difficult (but not impossible).

Chapter 1 tells us all about dragons. It covers dragon physiology, psychology, and species, and runs to some 52 pages. I really didn't like this chapter. I didn't find it useful, or interesting, or frankly worth exploring. There are three big problems with it: (1) I could cut both hands off, and still count the number of times I've been asked how a dragon's eyes work while still having stumps left over. I don't really need to know this, and if ever asked, I could just make stuff up. (2) If you're going to make up physiology for fantasy creatures (which is an unnecessary exercise), it needs to bear some relation to real physiology, or at least explain the inconsitencies. For instance, my understanding of the eye is that the pupil is little more than a hole that lets light in. So, how then can there be another, smaller eye embedded in the pupil of the main eye? Also, we are expected to believe that dragons can fly without some magical explanation, which is clearly nonsensical. (3) By tying down things like the lifespan of dragons, their ties to the elements, and so on, the book actually restricts my ability to make dragons fit with my campaign. Or rather, it would if I considered any rulebook authoritative. However, since I now have to throw that material out, I have to question its value in the first place.

Anyway, as a result of my displeasure with chapter 1, I started chapter 2 with some trepidation. This one handles the DM's perspective on dragons, and how to use them in a campaign. This chapter runs to 44 pages. It starts with a brief discussion of the role of dragons in a campaign (as just more monsters, plotters behind the scenes, or overarching campaign villains), and then proceeds to offer some advice on how to stage an encounter with a dragon. This is quite nice. The chapter then has a bunch of feats, spells, magic items and prestige classes tailored especially for dragons.

Sigh. I could have done without yet more of any of these. The feats may prove useful, and some of the magic items (particularly those modifying entire rooms of a dragon's lair) are nice, the spells are pretty dull. As for the prestige classes, I have to ask why these are here? Dragons are already so powerful that they hardly ever get used, so a dragon with a prestige class is unlikely to ever feature in the majority of games. The only game in which I'd expect more than one of these classes to appear would be one played at epic levels. Otherwise, they seem really wasteful.

The chapter ends with a discussion on advancing dragons beyond Great Wyrm. Again, this would be useful for epic-level play, but is unlikely to be useful to most campaigns.

Chapter 3 deals with dragon encounters from the player's perspective. It also runs to 44 pages, and follows the same pattern as the previous chapter. Here, however, the discussion about dragon encounters discusses how to survive them, and the other materials at least have a chance of appearing in the average campaign.

That said, there are still some flaws. Firstly, a lot of the feats and spells are pretty boring. Secondly, while the prestige classes are okay, and rather better than the ones for dragons, most of them read as being "the dragon-flavoured paladin", "the dragon-flavoured rogue", "the dragon-flavoured bard", and so on. They're mostly not that interesting. But the big problem is in some of the feats, which are specially designed to negate a feat or special ability possessed by the target. For instance, there's a feat that allows the user to perform an attack of opportunity on a target starting a grapple, even if they have the Improved Grab ability (which itself specifically removes that attack of opportunity). This strikes me as a really bad idea, firstly because it's of such marginal benefit, but more importantly because it seems designed specifically to hose a player who has made the investment in the ability that has just been negated. Characters should get the opportunity to use their hard-earned powers.

By this point, I was not well-pleased. Chapter 1 was bad, chapter 2 was much better, but of marginal use, and chapter 3 was good but not great. And, for the cost of the book, I'd expected greatness.

Chapter 4 provides new monsters, all of a draconic nature. 45 pages of new dragon-themed monsters. Great.

Fortunately, this chapter is actually good. It covers a bunch of classics, such as the dracolich (there are, as can be seen, some reprints, but these are all conversions from 3rd ed to 3.5, and are also from out-of-print or FR-specific books). It provides undead templates for dragons, allowing the DM to use skeletal, vampiric or zombie dragons. And it has a bunch of new dragons, including planar dragons. Finally, this is another chapter that seems to provide support for epic-level games, which may not be a bad thing.

So, I'm glad to say I found this useful.

Chapter 5 is then composed of sample dragons, and is the single most useful chapter in the book. In 78 pages, it provides a sample dragon of every size in every one of the 10 main colours of dragons. Since the lack of this very feature in the MM is the biggest hurdle to the use of dragons in a campaign, this chapter is a godsend. Furthermore, the chapter also provides advice on customising and upgrading the dragons and provides some sample lair layouts. I like it.

Appendix 1 discusses lairs, providing extensive tables to help the DM transform a lair from a big pile of coins (in even bundles of 100, of course), into proper treasures as befit PCs who manage to kill one of these creatures. Useful, and short.

Appendix 2 then lists all the various types of dragons to appear in any official 3rd edition (or 3.5 edition) source, up to the time of printing. This includes the MM, Forgotten Realms sources, Dragons magazine, and so on. It does not include general d20 products, nor the Kingdoms of Kalamar products (which are not Wizrads' products, but carry the D&D logo due to some deal between the companies). Frankly, this list is not that useful anyway.

And there it is. I think that DMs of epic-level games will find this book extremely useful, as will any DM who hopes to use dragons regularly in his game (for the stuff in chapter 5). For the most part, however, it's probably the case that this book can be left on the shelf without harm.