Let's Read the 4e Monster Manual and Monster Vault: Green Dragon
This is part of a series! Go here to see the other entries.
Green dragons are sly manipulators, which makes me think that the first sign you’ll get that one has decided to lair near your village is when it invites you to negotiate its tribute. They like dense forests and places with connections to the Feywild.
They’re excellent fliers and quite agile in the ground as well. Their breath weapon is a cloud of poisonous gas. Some sources describe that as chlorine, but that would be more caustic than poisonous.
Aside from the usual kobold riffraff, their preferred allies and minions are fey creatures. They can also travel in pairs or even in packs. Don’t believe it when a green dragon says it’s alone.
Like all dragons, they’re Natural Magical Beasts with the Dragon keyword. We’ll look at them book-by-book.
Green Dragon (Monster Manual)
The MM green dragons have darkvision, plus training in a wide variety of skills: Bluff, Diplomacy, Insight, Intimidate and Perception. They also have an age-dependent amount of poison resistance. They’re fast runners and even faster fliers.
In all age categories it has two basic attacks: a bite that does physical damage plus ongoing poison damage, and a weak claw that can attack twice as a standard action. It can also perform flyby attacks, flying up to its speed and biting at any point along its movement without provoking opportunity attacks. This recharges on a 5-6.
The Breath Weapon is a Recharge 5-6, Close Blast 5 poison cloud that targets Fortitude, does immediate and ongoing poison damage, and slows (save ends both). There’s also a slow aftereffect, meaning that you need to pass two saves to stop being slowed. I guess that poison is some sort of nerve gas! Unusually, the breath weapon doesn’t do anything on a miss, so it must decay fast.
Aside from the familiar Frightful Presence, the green dragon can also use a Luring Glare, a minor-action charm power that targets Will and slides the target 2 squares. It uses this to pull people into its breath weapon’s area of effect.
For triggered actions, it has Bloodied Breath and a Tail Sweep that targets adjacent enemies that don’t move in their turns. It targets Reflex, does some damage, and knocks prone on a hit.
These dragons don’t have a reason to land as long as they have one of Breath Weapon or Flyby Attack available. With enough luck on the dice they can stay up there quite a while, and will take off again as soon as they can.
Young Green Dragons are Large. They’re Level 5 Solo Skirmishers with 260 HP, Poison Resistance 15, a land speed of 8, and a fly speed of 10 with overland flight 15. Their melee Reach is 2.
Adult Green Dragons still Large. They’re Level 12 Solo Controllers, which doesn’t look right to me as I’d expect the role of a given dragon to remain constant. Anyway, they have 620 HP, with poison resistance 20 and the same speed and reach as the young green dragon. They also have all the same abilities, which confirms that the Controller label is a mistake. On top of those they add Lashing Tail, an Aura 1 that makes its area difficult terrain for anyone other than the dragon while it’s on the ground.
The Elder Green Dragon is basically an up-gunned adult, size Huge. They’re Level 19 Solo Controllers (see above) with 910 HP. Their poison resistance is 25, their land speed is 10, their flight speed 14 with overland flight 18. Their melee reach is 3, the area of their Frightful Presence is 10, and so is their ongoing damage. Everything else is the same.
The Ancient Green Dragon is Gargantuan, a level 27 solo controller with 1250 HP. Its Lashing Tail is an Aura 2, its poison resistance is 30, and its speeds are the same as the elder’s. It has all the same abilities with appropriately increased damage and melee Reach 4, and adds a new one.
Mind Poison is a Ranged 20 charm power that targets the Will of a target taking ongoing poison damage. On a hit, it inflicts a -2 penalty to attacks and skill/ability checks by that character. After the first failed save, the target os also dazed. And after the second failure, the target can no longer act to harm the dragon and the effect becomes permanent until the dragon is slain or a ritual like Remove Affliction is used to cure them. Yay, another gradual doom effect!
Now, it’s not 100% clear to me if the daze and -2 penalties persist once the victim fails the second save. Personally, I’m inclined to say it doesn’t, and that the victim becomes a NPC servant of the dragon who’s able to act with their full capacity. This is an epic power from one of the scariest monsters in the book.
Green Dragon (Monster Vault)
Monster Vault green dragons are skirmishers at all age categories. They have the same senses as their MV counterparts, and their stat blocks drop Overland Flight and add Forest Walk to their land speed, allowing them to ignore forest-themed difficult terrain.
Its bite still does physical and ongoing poison damage on a hit, and does a bit of poison damage on a miss. Its claws are only slightly weaker, and allow the dragon to shift 2 squares on a hit. It can still make two claw attacks on its action, but only against the same target. So it could use the first shift to get around the target, and the second to get away!
The Breath Weapon is largely the same, down to the slow aftereffect. Flyby Attack is still here but no longer forbids opportunity attacks. On the other hand, the dragon can use its breath instead of a bite if it’s recharged.
Luring Glare is still a minor action, and has been turned into a Close Blast 10 that affects one creature. The practical effect of this change is that it no longer provokes opportunity attacks.
Tail Sweep and Frightful Presence are gone, but Bloodied Breath remains. For passive traits we have the usual Action Recovery, plus Poisonous Wounds and Instinctive Flyby.
Poisonous Wounds is an Aura 1 that becomes active once the dragon is bloodied. Enemies take age-dependent poison damage when they enter or start their turns there, and that damage doubles if the enemy is also bloodied. Instinctive Flyby is an automatic flyby attack at 10+rolled initiative, granting a +4 bonus to defenses against opportunity attacks. As usual for instinctive actions, if the dragon can’t perform it due to a stunning or dominating effect then that effect ends.
The Young Green Dragon is a Large Level 5 Solo Skirmisher with 252 HP, 10 poison resistance, land speed 8 (forest-walk) and fly speed 10. It has all the abilities outlined above with Melee reach 2.
The Elder Green Dragon is a Huge Level 19 Solo Skirmisher with 720 HP, 15 poison resistance, land speed 10 (forest-walk) and fly speed 14. It has all the abilities above (with melee Reach 3) plus Cunning Glance, which allows it to use Luring Glare as a reaction to an enemy shifting to a square within 2 squares of itself.
You can use some interpolation to get the other dragon age categories, and I’d be tempted to add Mind Poison to the late-Epic Ancient Green Dragon too.
Encounters
The MM gives us two sample encounters.
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Level 7, a young green dragon and assorted kobold riffraff. Pretty standard.
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Level 13, an adult green dragon and a couple of banshrae warriors. It makes perfect sense that a green dragon would buddy up with evil fey when you think about it.
Final Impressions
From what I’ve seen in published material, it usually feels like green dragons tend to be somewhat ignored by writers. Black dragons live in pretty similar environments and are more outwardly sinister, so they’re a bit more popular.
Still, I think their abilities make them effective as solo encounters, particularly in the MV version, and Mind Poison is a surprisingly scary ability. Personality-wise they’re also cool, since they’re highly likely to talk to the party instead of attacking right away. Sure, they’re lying liars who lie, but it at least makes for some interesting banter.
Adult or older green dragons could conceivably end up joining a fey court. So your party arrives to fight the dragon extorting the nearby kingdom and find themselves drawn into a Feywild court where the dragon is a respected noble with enough connections to make itself immune to a direct assault. Can they convince the other courtiers that the beast is a villain? Would they care if it was?