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Let's Read the 4e Monster Manual 3: Dragon, Earthquake
Copyright 2010 Wizards of the Coast This post is part of a series! Click here to see the others.
Earthquake dragons were created by Balcoth, the Groaning King. The petitioners who approached this Earth primordial were terrified by the death of Io, and were willing to swear loyalty to anyone who could protect them. Balcoth agreed, and fulfilled his promise by swallowing the dragons up and keeping them inside his furnace-like belly, where they “cooked” and were changed by his essence.
Balcoth would vomit up a few earthquake dragons when he needed their service. When the primordial was beheaded and slain during the Dawn War, the rest of his dragons escaped through the wound and into the world.
Generally speaking, Earthquake dragons are extremely into the whole “living disaster” thing. When they settle down somewhere, the surrounding region is soon wracked by tremors of increasing intensity and duration. The dragon feeds on the people killed by these tremors, and will sometimes destroy a city on purpose just because they can. They lair in the ruins for months, digesting their prey and enjoying the view of the ruins until they grow tired of them and fly away to look for another place to devastate.
Unlike their blizzard cousins, earthquakes are not team players. They’ll form temporary alliances with inedible creatures (mostly earth-themed), and can sometimes be bribed into service by mortals, but these arrangements never last long.
These dragons aren’t great fliers, but they can swim through earth and rock as if it was water. They hunt by suppressing their earthquake aura and stalking their prey from underground. When they attack, they make a spectacular entry and fight with all of their powers, though they usually retreat back underground rather than fighting to the death.
The Numbers
Earthquake Dragons follow the same general plan as Blizzards. They’re Elemental Magical Beasts with the Dragon and Earth keywords. They have Darkvision, Tremorsense, and both burrow and clumsy flight speeds that are about half of their ground speed.
Earthquake Dragon Wyrmling
This is a Medium Level 4 Soldier with 58 HP, representing the youngest dragon that can be a threat in combat. Their speed is 6 (burrow 2, clumsy flight 2). They project a Quaking Earth aura (1) with a very “soldierly” effect: if an enemy inside the aura makes an attack that doesn’t include the dragon as a target, the enemy falls prone and takes 5 damage.
The wyrmling’s bite and claw basic attacks do physical damage without riders, and Wyrmling Fury allows it to make both attacks in the same action while it’s bloodied.
Finally, they have a Sudden Quake ability that triggers when they’re knocked prone or subjected to forced movement. It knocks all enemies inside the dragon’s aura prone.
Young Earthquake Dragon
Young dragons are Large Level 9 Elite Soldiers with 206 HP. Their ground speed increases to 8, their burrow and flight speeds to 4. They have all the same abilities as a wyrmling, with bigger numbers. They replace Wyrmling Fury with a proper Double Attack and add two new powers.
Earthen Maw (recharge 6+) is a melee attack that does more damage than a basic bite and restains the target (save ends). After the first save the target is instead petrified! A save still ends this, but the target is entirely unable to act until they make that save.
Their “disaster” power is Rising Tremors, which follows the same pattern seen for blizzard dragons. When it’s activated with a minor action, it increases the dragon’s aura size to 3. At the end of the next turn, the aura increases again to 5. And at the end of the turn after that, the dragon makes a Close Burst 5 attack vs. Reflex. This one deals physical damage, knocks targets prone, and prevents them from standing back up (save ends). After the attack, the aura resets and this power recharges.
Other Age Categories
Adults are Level 14 Elite Soldiers with 288 HP, and have all the same abilities with bigger numbers.
Elders are Huge Level 19 Elite Soldiers with 374 HP, and again have all the same abilities with bigger numbers.
Ancients are Level 24 Elite Soldiers with 456 HP, and gain Threatening Reach 3. They once again have all the same abilities as younger dragons with bigger numbers.
Final Impressions
I’m surprised the dragons in this entry are still marked as Unaligned despite being a lot more actively destructive and cruel than blizzard dragons. I’d have thought “I exist to satisfy my twin urges to destroy and devour” would rate a Chaotic Evil alignment. Of course, you can go the other way and give them more flexible personalities and more varied motivations.
Mechanically, earthquake dragons are very good at knocking people down and keeping them down, so they pair really well with melee lurkers and skirmishers whose attacks are more powerful when they have combat advantage.
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Let's Read the 4e Monster Manual 3: Dragon, Blizzard
Copyright 2010 Wizards of the Coast This post is part of a series! Click here to see the others.
Blizzard Dragons were created by Umboras, Lord of the Rimefire. The dragon petitioners who approached this primordial were the coldest-hearted among their number. Umboras took them to the coldest reaches of the Elemental Chaos and entombed them there for a year and a day while he worked his magic on them. When they emerged, they were blizzard dragons.
Umboras had a specific goal in mind when he did this. He had been an ally of the winter goddess Khala, who shared with him the goal of freezing the world solid. However, the Raven Queen had just usurped Khala and claimed the domain of winter from her, so Umboras was out for revenge. He created blizzard dragons to help transport his troops to the Raven Queen’s new home of Letherna.
The Queen, however, was smarter than him. She retreated to the labyrinthine astral domain of Pandemonium, and used its twisty little passages (all alike) to separate Umboras from his main forces and lock him in one of the domain’s empty vaults. He’s still there!
The blizzard dragons scattered after their master was imprisoned. Some stayed in Pandemonium, some returned to the Elemental Chaos, some even went to the coldest places of the world. For obvious reasons, though, you’ll rarely find one of them in the Shadowfell.
Blizzard dragons don’t usually have grand plans of their own, and are usually content to freeze and sculpt their territories. However, they’re surprisingly good team players and can often be found allied to other creatures of compatible disposition, helping them achieve their goals. This varies from the usual frost giants and ice archons to liches or winter fey, depending on the individual. And they’re always down for breaking a primordial out of prison.
The Numbers
Blizzard dragons are Elemental Magical Beasts with the Cold and Dragon keywords. They have Darkvision, Ice Walk, and a clumsy flight speed. All of their attacks do cold damage, even the bites and claws.
Blizzard Dragon Wyrmling
Wyrmlings are Medium, making them the smallest dragons I’ve seen in my Let’s Read so far. They’re Level 2 Controllers with 38 HP. They have ground and air speeds of 6.
Yeah, that’s right, wyrmlings are regulars. This means they’ll almost always be found cooperating with a sizable group of other monsters. The most obvious candidates are their clutch-siblings, but they’re smart enough to strike an alliance with lots of other people.
They are surrounded by an aura (1) of Freezing Wind. Enemies that end their turn inside are slid 1 square. When hit by a cold attack, the wyrmling reacts with Sudden Flurry, immediately sliding all enemies inside its aura 1 square.
Their bite immobilizes, and their claws slide the target 1 square on a hit. While they’re bloodied, Wyrmling Fury allows them to spend an action to attack with both.
Young Blizzard Dragon
Young’uns grow to size Large, and become Level 7 Elite Controllers with 166 HP. Their speed increases to 8.
They have all of the wyrmling’s abilities with a few differences and additions. The simplest one is that Wyrmling Flurry is replaced by a standard Double Attack ability, and their claws slide 2 squares.
Unlike other dragons, blizzards don’t have a breath weapon. Instead, when they’re hit by a melee attack, a high-pressure blast of frozen liquid bursts forth from the wound. This is written as a reaction named Chill Rebuke, a Close Blast 5 vs. Fortitude. It deals cold damage and slows on a hit (save ends).
This is also where the “living disaster” mechanic kicks in. Here it’s an ability named Rising Winds. Once this is activated as a minor action, it causes the size of the dragon’s Freezing Wind aura to grow to 3. At the start of the dragon’s next turn, it automatically expands again, to 5. And at the start of the following turn, the dragon makes a Close Burst 5 attack vs. Fortitude, with a hit dealing cold damage, slowing, and blinding the targets. Once the attack is resolved, the aura returns to is initial size of 1 and Rising Winds recharges.
Adult/Elder Blizzard Dragon
Adults and elders are identical to young’uns, with bigger numbers. Adults are Level 12 Elite Controllers with 252 HP, and Elders are Level 17 with 338 HP.
Elders are Huge and can move at speed 10. They can slide enemies 3 squares with their claws and 2 squares with their auras. Their Rising Winds attack restrains instead of immobilizing.
Ancient Blizzard Dragon
Ancients are Huge in size, and are Level 22 Elite Controllers with 422 HP. They’re almost idendical to elders, with bigger numbers. They also have a new encounter power named Deep Freeze that works kinda like a breath weapon, though I guess it’s more of a high-pressure blood ejection, since the dragon must be bloodied to use it.
This ability attacks enemies in a Close Burst 5, targetting Fortitude. A hit deals cold damage, immobilizes, and imposes a -5 penalty to Fortitude (save ends both). A miss deals half damage and imposes the same penalty for a single turn. All of the dragon’s non-basic attacks target Fortitude, so this penalty makes it a lot more dangerous while it lasts.
Final Impressions
Blizzard dragons feel like they slide into the exact same niche as white dragons, with a similar cold theme and a similarly unpleasant personality. Blizzards are smarter and not technically evil, but they still make for terrible neighbors.
Mechanically, they feel like dragons and like cold themed creatures without actually using any of the signature mechanics for either! This is a dragon that does not have a breath attack or a fear aura, and a cold creature that is not immune to cold. It’s fascinating!
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Let's Read the 4e Monster Manual 3: Dragon, Catastrophic
I’ve talked a lot about dragons, and why I like their 4e implementation, over the course of these book readings. Sometimes it feels like no big D&D bestiary is complete without introducing a new dragon subtype.
The Monster Manual talked about the classic chromatics, which were then updated on the Monster Vault. You can see what I wrote about them here.
The Monster Manual 2 talked about the equally classic metallics, and you can read what I wrote about them here.
The Monster Manual 3 introduces the much less famous and much newer Catastrophic Dragons. I believe they are new to 4e, though they might also have shown up in some late supplement for a previous edition. You might already have noticed I’m a bit lazy when it comes to researching monster publication histories.
What I’m sure about is that these are the first 4e dragons that have the “correct” math from the start. They’re also notable for being generally weaker than chromatics and metallics despite the impressive name. Your typical catastrophic dragon is an Elite monster rather than a Solo.
The Lore
As we saw in previous articles about dragons, when the god Io was split in two during the Dawn War his followers also split along ideological lines based on which of the two new deities they preferred: Tiamat the greedy or Bahamut the just. I imagine the initial decision was easy for most of them.
For most, but not for all. Some of Io’s orphaned followers were gripped by fear when they saw how easily their lord had been slain, and they decided that the best way to survive would be to beseech the Primordials for protection and join their side of the Dawn War. These turncoats were transformed by the “blessings” of the Primordials into the first catastrophic dragons.
When the Primordials were defeated most surviving catastrophics scattered across the multiverse and turned to their own selfish purposes. The typical catastrophic in the present day is somewhat less formidable than a chromatic, but more outwardly destructive. They tend to live in extremely hostile environments that befit their individual natures, and from the point of view of surrounding civilians their behavior looks a lot like that of a natural disaster: they occasionally emerge to wreak havoc and destruction on people and their environment, and then return to their lairs for an unknown amount of time.
Legends and myths dating back to the Dawn War tell of catastrophic dragons of immense size and power, capable of sinking continents and destroying entire astral domains. No one knows whether these stories are true, and even the gods refuse to tell.
The Dragons
This entry is structured a lot like previous dragon entries, with each type of dragon presented getting stat blocks for all of its age categories. That’s about where it stops, though. Catastrophic dragons are more like personified natural disasters than like the traditional dragons we saw in previous books.
The ones we see here are clumsy fliers, and even lack the traditional breath weapon! Instead, they’re surrounded by an aura that’s like a miniature version of the disaster they embody. During a fight, this aura grows in size as time passes and then explodes in a, well, catastrophic manner before returning to its initial size and beginning the cycle anew.
Despite having bodies largely made up of elemental matter, these dragons lack any elemental resistances. Instead, damage of their associated type triggers a reaction ability that punishes the attacker in some form. I would however say that they are immune to environmental damage of their associated type even though that’s not made explicit in their stat blocks, because it just wouldn’t do for a blizzard dragon to die of frostbite.
The last major mechanical difference between these dragons and their predecessors is that catastrophics are Elites instead of Solos. Whether this is just bad luck or a punishment from the gods, it means that fights against them will include a bigger supporting cast of other monsters.
There are more age categories here than in the previous books: Wyrmling, Young, Adult, Elder and Ancient. Wyrmlings are Medium in size, and are regular monsters instead of Elites. Young’uns and Adults are Large, and the last two are Huge. I guess a wyrmling isn’t quite a “baby dragon”, but I’d still be a bit wary of placing them as enemies, as I commented earlier.
Despite their thematic link to natural disasters and their destructive demeanor, catastrophic dragons are typically Unaligned, which says interesting things about their mindset.
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Let's Read the 4e Monster Manual 3: Devil, Vizier
Copyright 2010 Wizards of the Coast This post is part of a series! Click here to see the others.
I don’t remember seeing these specific devils in earlier editions, but that might just mean they were from a late 3e book.
The Lore
This is not the first silver-tongued manipulative devil we’ve seen, not by far, but it seems to be the most specialized one. Vizier devils are rarely found in the Nine Hells - they’re always out in the world serving and tempting ambitious mortals.
Like all other MM3 devils, the lore text on this one is a bit obsessed with sin and with the idea that sinners going to hell and becoming devils is a natural occurrence, which isn’t really something that was present in earlier 4e monster books. As we saw in previous readings, in 4e Hell is a cosmic aberration. Devils don’t come from sinners, and they get their souls either by having mortals sign contracts or through force. Those souls get used as currency, fuel, and magic item ingredients, not to make new devils.
This makes these creatures members of Hell’s sales department, just like imps. The main difference is that viziers are stronger, smarter, and bolder in their suggestions. I imagine having a bound vizier devil instead of a mere bound imp is a major status symbol among deluded diabolists.
If you’re into the sin thing (which was the standard in 3e and maybe earlier), they you can go with the lore in this entry that says that vizier devils are genuinely helpful at first but then begin to steer their “masters” down more evil and sinful paths with the goal of making them go to Hell after they die.
If you prefer the standard 4e lore, then the main difference is that vizier devils will try to get their masters to sign a soul contract either as a pre-condition to their service, or as an “upsell” in exchange for greater power or greater hellish support at some point after they begin their work as advisors.
A 4e-style, contract-based vizier devil is ironically less treacherous than the temptation-based 3e-style one. Their mortal bosses are likely to already be evil in the first place, so they need little tempting. And after the contract is signed there is even less need for deception, as the devil already got what it wanted and only needs to fulfill its part of the bargain.
Vizier devils look like tieflings with slightly exaggerated fiendish features, and that actually makes them good at blending in. In combat, they’re spellcasters with a repertoire focusing on fire and charm magic. They always have a contingency plan or two to escape if the fight goes against them, and never fight to the death if they can help it.
The Numbers
Vizier devils are Medium Immortal Humanoids (devils), and Level 7 Controllers (leaders). They have Resist Fire 10, Darkvision, a ground speed of 6, and a teleport speed of 4. That’s more or less the same set of traits as a legion devil, so maybe they’re related.
They wield Scepters that work as implements and can be used to bash people in melee. This does physical damage and slides the target 1 square on a hit. Their basic ranged attack is a Helfire Bolt that does fire damage and forces the target to grant combat advantage for a turn.
They can also use a Word of Command at will, which lets them choose a creature within 2 squares, slide it 3 squares and have it make a free melee basic attack against another creature of the devil’s choice. The text says “a creature”, which means this can target either an ally or an enemy with this. And the thing is an effect, not an attack, which means it works automatically.
Word of Command does require a standard action, but it’s still a good choice if the vizier is accompanied by big bruisers or if the party includes PCs with good basic attacks. It’s even better if the party includes some of those Essentials martial classes, since they’re all about having awesome melee basic attacks with all sorts of special riders.
The vizier’s leader-ish abilities are Hellfire Enchantment and Infernal Advice. The first is a minor action that grants an ally within 5 squares a +5 fire damage bonus to all its melee attacks until the end of its next turn. The other is a reaction that allows an ally to reroll a missed attack with a +2 bonus. Hellfire Enchantment is an awesome ability to use on allies that have multiple attacks on their turns! All of them will get the bonus.
Final Impressions
I’m not gonna lie, these devils feel a bit redundant. Their concept is exactly the same as all the other sly manipulators, and the only difference is their power level. They’re the “level 7 sly manipulator”, where imps are “level 3” an the others are stronger. I also don’t like the emphasis on sin in this book, because it’s a 3e-ism.
That said, a vizier devil’s stats make it an interesting monster to fight and they can easily be reskinned into infernal warlord types. They go really well with melee bruiser monsters that can make multiple attacks. Those can be part of the entourage of their mortal bosses, or other devils.
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Let's Read the 4e Monster Manual 3: Devil, Swarm
Copyright 2010 Wizards of the Coast This post is part of a series! Click here to see the others.
This is another devil that breaks the “morphology” guidelines, but it’s kind of unavoidable this time. After all, they’re associated with Baalzebul, Lord of the Flies.
Each swarm devil is a singular mind controlling the bodies of an entire swarm of acidic fiendish flies. According to the book, they’re formed when an angel is caught lying to its divine master and is torn apart as punishment. The angel’s soul falls to the Hells and the bits of its body become flies. They roam the stagnant pools of Maladomni, the Seventh Hell, eternally starving but unable to die. They can only leave when their master orders them on a mission, which makes them very happy because it allows them to fly free and eat people for the duration. It helps that “eating people” usually is the mission. It’s what swarm devils do best, after all.
Swarm Devils fight by just kinda walking into enemies’ spaces and letting their flies do the work, and by spewing flies at people they can’t easily reach that way. As swarms, they’re hard to fight unless you have area-effect weapons and spells.
The Numbers
These creatures are Large Immortal Magical Beasts (Devil, Swarm) and Level 18 Skirmishers with 174 HP. They have Darkvision and a flight speed of 10 (hover), and 20 acid resistance.
They also have the standard swarm traits on top of that: half damage and immunity to forced movement from melee and ranged attacks; Vulnerable 10 to close and area attacks; a swarm aura; the ability to occupy the same space as other characters; and the ability to squeeze through small openings without slowing down.
Their Swarm Attack aura (1) deals 10 acid damage to enemies caught inside. I think being in the same space as the swarm also counts as being inside the aura. Their basic Slams do no immediate damage, and inflict 10 ongoing acid damage.
They can channel Acidic Curses through their acid, targetting someone taking ongoing acid damage with a ranged attack that deals psychic damage and inflicts a -2 penalty to attacks for a turn. Twice per encounter they can Spew Flies in a Close Burst 3, inflicting ongoing acid damage and forcing targets to grant combat advantage (save ends both).
The “just walking into people” tactic is represented by Swarm Shift (recharge 5+), in which it shifts its speed and deals 15 acid damage to anyone they pass through.
A good tactic for them is to move in, hit a few people with the slam or spew, use Swarm Shift to move out of the scrum and keep flinging curses at anyone who’s melting. Reapply the acid as necessary.
Final Impressions
Fly-themed fiends for the Lord of the Flies, nothing unexpected. The acid/psychic damage mechanic is mildly interesting.
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