Ah yes the dragon, it easily hybridizes with any animal except for other dragons of course. This trope is actually pretty common in fantasy like with superheroes not being able to have children that have both parents powers. Just certain things don't combine certain things are dominant. And when you consider dragons hybridizing with any other animal dragons would definitely have this magical dominance that allows them to make this hybrid that shouldn't work work. But when it's with another dragon those two magical energies compete with each other and or cancel each other out. I feel like this is what makes the most sense and really fits the world.
I like Draconic Chimera - with varying draconic heads from the standard red / fire breathing type. They are generally one of a kind and make excellent BBEGs or superb NPCs with interesting backstories and esoteric information
This is more about genetics but, there are things known as incomplete dominance and codominance. Incomplete dominance looks like a mix of the two genes, an example being a pink flower coming from a red flower and a white flower. While codominance looks like both genes showing at the same time, an example being a flower with red and white patches coming from a red flower and a white flower. So a dragon of incomplete dominance would be something like dark green dragon being born from a black dragon and green dragon. I would imagine that dragon like this is a perfect fusion of a black dragons incredibly cruel and sadistic nature and green dragon charismatic and articulate nature. A dragon of codominance would be something like a red and blue dragon. This dragon could be insane bipolar monster that is incapable of living with an unparalleled fury and calm and patience mind. Sorry for the bad punctuation
I usually just look at it as dragons genetic recombination being very aggressive. More like a retrovirus than the normal fertilization. Normal creatures have no defense, but this is familiar to dragons.
I had a benevolent Purple Dragon as the High King of a prosperous kingdom located in a volcanic desert region. He inherited his kingdom from his Blue Dragon mother, and she had mated with a Red Dragon who roamed the planet to defend it from extraplanar threats (kinda like Godzilla, in that he wasn’t exactly good, but on the side of having a planet to live on at the least). They ended up being a weird mix of blue and red predilections while also having a bent towards being Lawful Good due to quirks of their own individual personality, and their breath was a badass Radiant Beam of superheated plasma
I played in a campaign in the early 90s that had a red + blue = Purple Dragon as a main evil antagonist. It’s breath weapon was a mix of lighting and fire but had a side effect of also turning you to amethyst. This really brings back great memories
I am running a campaign where the patriarch of a group of blue dragons wheres the neck and head of a white dragon around him like a scarf, but in actuality has grafted a white dragon's head to himself and can use it as though it were his own.
But you might get two or three, as twins or triplets, or even quadruplets from a single egg as a mutation and each of them may be of a single mixed breeding. So, you end up with four siblings protecting a single area as their own. Then you have to account for hybrid vigor, Hybrids tend to be larger than either parent.
I had this idea for a character, an NPC that joins the party. He is the result of a black and green dragon mating. in dragon form, has the size and color of a green dragon (maybe slightly darker green), but the horns and general shape of a black dragon. However, this character is almost always in human form, he favors' mail armor and carries a 2-handed sword on his back, yet casts like a sorcerer. Something seams 'off', about the character, and the ability to cast spells in armor may be the party characters first clue. Any kind of mind reading/telepathy/detection spells may hint at the following :- Whispers from the characters draconic past plague his soul, telling him to control, destroy, and kill. Meanwhile, his sentient mind is telling him to live without torment or evil. He will readily fight for good causes, though sometimes slips into evil methods. he is reaching for the upper planes, while feeling his spirit being dragged to the lower planes. He is searching for a cure for the voices that plague his soul.
In my homebrew setting, the Metallic and Chromatic dragons are descendants of Gem Dragons, which are descendant from a mighty prismatic dragon. A myth in dragon culture states that a metallic and chromatic dragon of similar abilities can create a gem dragon offspring, and eventually this will lead to the reformation of the Prismatic dragon, which will lead dragon kind to rule again. It’s not a commonly held belief of course, since dragons are too prideful to admit they’ll need help from their opposite side. The only exception to this is Unslaad Tor, who is a Ruby dragon disguised as a red dragon.
For the love of bahumut ( or u guess tiamat ?) Please do a deep dive on the dragon spawn and how they relate to other weird dragon hybrids and mutants.
Yes hybrid dragons are rare; due to the infrequency of interbreeding, the likelihood of favoring one parent's side over the other (whether or not if this is genetic or environmental is unknown), high likelihood of parental rejection of their offspring (either abandoning them or outright killing them). Largely depends on the temperament of the parent raising them or the hybrid's ability to survive on their own.
You know how people tease that you rarely get to encounter dragons in Dungeons and Dragons? I think that the old official lore actually overlooked a tremendous opportunity. Instead of downplaying hybrids, I like the idea of Zeus-like dragons having multiple draconic monstrous prodigy that different levels of adventurers can handle. Yes, there may only be one of each. But it is a great excuse to throw so many more dragons into a campaign than just the guarded cunning and decidedly formidable purebreeds.
None of the purple dragons on here? I still think that would be an epic quest: having to discover where some monstrous hybrids have originated. Finding a series of towers with many powerful mages of several classes attempting to perfect a new race of purple dragons. Held in enchanted chains made by storm giants, 20 pairs of red and blue dragons are muzzled unless fed and forced to mate. Once they have laid eggs, the eggs are taken away to magical incubators, in order to help insure the off spring will live. It would be a nice tale to read about, or even play out as a quest.
Purples are their own distinct breed that lives in the Underdark and has psychic powers. They crumble to dust in sunlight like vampires. They are not hybrids but their own breed.
From what I know, that was what they called a hybrid red/blue dragon to. I saw a video that had them on it, and have been slightly obsessed about them since. A dragon with both attributes is awsome!
@@charaznable9209 their are 3 dragons often called purple deep dragon, the psychic purples and the hybrid of red/blue all of which are known in the underdark though assuming young hybrid purples likely only remain till they reach a certain age I'm assuming before taking claim of surface territory
An idea I've had about dragons is that you could have a setting where the only difference between a mostrosity and a dragon is the origins. Dragons are naturally occuring results of magic either mutating animals or creating them from nothing, while monstosities are created by people or gods, purposefuly or accidentally.
As a DM, I'm definitely going with the 'dragon cross-breeding leads to abominations'. Granted; EXTREMELY powerful abominations, but also invariably insane. Reasoning is that, in my world, dragons are less 'fleshy beings with elemental powers' and more the opposite; 'elemental powers in the guise of fleshy beings'. When the elemental energies they have clash, they clash violently, primordially, explosively. This makes them both absurdly powerful (even by dragon standards) as well as completely insane -and likely to explode. However; there is another way to mess with dragon births. Should a dragon of 'opposite alignment' takes the egg of a dragon, they can 'taint' and 'twist' the unborn dragon. Such a thing is considered extremely vile by even some evil dragons (as they wouldn't want to sully their 'magnificent pure lineage' etc) but it is something that can happen and be a likely story hook. I do provide my players leeway to affect a developing dragon's final alignment, but their alignment WILL be reflected in their appearence. Their scales and body WILL change in accordance to what that dragon TRULY is. You might not get a Red Dragon to go Lawful Good (without extreme shenaniganery like the Deck) but you CAN affect them.
What about the old Purple Dragon that was a hybrid of Red and Blue? I imagined those would be a more likely to produce in the event that they did mate, given that there was actual data on it. They sounded like they'd be incredibly OP.
I would imagine that the emergence of Purple dragons, that breed amongst themselves, would start a war with Red dragons. Gold dragons may get involved too just to reinforce the status quo lol
If recall right those purples tended to be innately strong then ether parent so both reds and blues would typically avoid mating just to avoid major competition btw where was the info on them be trying to find it again for awhile
There's also melanism that's like albinism but reversed. There's examples of deer and foxes with this. I think that different kinds should be more possible considering how dragons in strange realms are possible and changed due to their environment like Pandemonium.
Turns out when a Drake grows into a Dragon the act of killing a Dragon is just a troll by a creature that has been alive for tens of.thouxands of years.
Any ideas on how to balance a creature with two breath weapons? If we go by Etin logic each head could act independently and a single breath weapon is already hard to deal with. Any time both recharged at the same time would be pretty devastating.
The D&D 80s cartoon did that with a more beast-bright dragon, one half was white, one half was red. I think its name was "Demo-dragon". If you can find a video for that it would be great inspiration for you.
@@Dandamayn I'd just go with it can use one or the other to spend the recharge between them. Or if you want to make things more interesting, perhaps have a dominance roll at the beginning of its turn where you might have which part of its nature is dominant so, if you have a Red/White, you might have a shift in immunities, resistances, and weaknesses, and the breath weapon available is the same or opposite
finally some one addressed this also i imagine that metalic dragons would refer to metalic abominations as slag dragons or just slags as its just what happens when etal is improperly mixed
Finally an answer. I guess I'm going with "mad wizard experiment" for my darklord dracolich then. I didn't design him with any particular type of dragon in mind, I was just thinking "death dragon" and designed him based on that, but I have considered making him a hybrid. Either that or I keep his type a mystery, with his current body being frankensteined from other dragon corpses.
That vampiric cloud breath weapon is interesting. I feel like if you fail the save by 5 or more then it should heal the dragon for half the damage it inflicted on you. If you fail by 10 or more it takes you straight to 0 hit points.
Dungeon Dad did a video on them in witch he converted the ability in this manner: fail a con save then you roll a d8 and that's how much you lose from your con score.
Aj years ago your original dragon series inspired me to start my first campaign and now 3 years later its still going strong. This video is like the keystone to the end game events of the campaign that is coming soon and my players are still eager to play. Thank you for all the lore, insparation and work it took to bring it to us. You are truly a gentleman and a scholar
Hmmm… If Albinism in Dragons exists, so to should Melanism. A Gold Dragon that is colored Black would cause wonderful confusion and consternation for your campaign. Though I’d make sure to mention that their scales were exceptionally reflective and luminous with a good roll. And a book on dragon slaying be available somewhere. As well as a Dragon Slaying Order from a distant land, with a neglected and unloved Chapter somewhere reachable. They’d want to kill it, and show huge ignorance about the kind it is. But with proper questioning, or poking around The Chapter House I’d leave something the could learn it from. Like the knowledge of Albino Dragons existence. I’d also make sure to note at some point that this area is known for its Black Wool. Having certain flocks dedicated to it, because it makes distinctive, unstaining black garments.
@@AJPickett I wouldn’t call it that to the players. I’d figure out another description besides piebaldism. Vitiligo and piebaldism are distinct, however also very close conditions. And look much the same. As for the Dragon itself, it’d probably be described as having the coloring, but in a more appealing pattern than a horse with the condition. Concentrated white coloring on the chest, that sort of mixes into the black colored scales on its back, upper legs and neck. Black down to its tail. An occasional tiny patch of white or black spots bordering, and radiating from the main color patches. Perhaps white patches around the mouth, and both eyes having the area around them being white spots. Black wings, with White tips. And if I was feeling adventurous, describe it’s feet being white also dissipating towards the joint of the leg. (Like those mittens dogs and cat get sometimes. Though I’d only call them mittens, if a player suggested it. And I’d suggest the character refrain from allusions of the sort.) Either the eyes would be the color of the lineage it’s breath weapon comes from. Something about the essence of that power staying the mutation on its scales, from changing its eye color.
So, in my homebrew setting, dragons are a bit different, more like Ebberon in the way they act. My twist is that crossbreeding is, relatively, common, due to the circumstances of thier birth. The new egg type is irrelevant to the types that produced it. The actual environment is what dictates what the egg is. So, a White, and a Blue could mate in a primeval forest, and lo, the egg is Green. The one thing is that Cross types are vanishingly rare (chromatic, gem, metallic), as they are true hybrids regardless of environment. The only case the players discovered in lore was called a Purple dragon, just because it was chrome red in color, offspring of a Red and a Silver.
In most of my campaign settings, this answer is much, much simpler to answer because of a key aspect of the lore I use for my dragons. Namely, that there are really only two main dragon types (Chromatic and Metallic) and the specific color is determined by the environmental conditions that the egg is subjected to after it is laid. So if an egg from a White dragon is treated to the same conditions as a Green dragon egg, the embryo will develop into a Green dragon. As for Chromatic/Metallic hybrids, that really depends on the specific setting in question; but typically such a hybrid would be incredibly weak and frail, even by humanoid standards, and culturally is seen as an abomination by both chromatics and metallics
The long and short of it is, if you're going to make a half-dragon, then think long and hard about if it is unique or a successful population. Next you must think of a reason why it/they been allowed to exist/propagate by the draconic power(s) in the region. [In the setting I'm working on the yuan-ti are all draconic and that is because the chromatic dragons on my world are more accepting of alliances and consolidating power than they are in the standard power schemes established by the official lore (they all have a bit of blue in them). The draconic hegemony wanted a vast population of thralls and the yuan-ti were more than happy to submit themselves to artificial experimentation (their perverse gods have no influence in this remote world and they badly needed/wanted substitutes). Their ritual to transform humans into tainted ones has been perfected with the help of their masters to produce a random, fiercely loyal chromatic dragonborn. The yuan-ti and their dragonborn servitors are very real threat to the existence of the good-aligned races in the setting even before you get anyway near knocking out the draconic hegemony.] I dig the official hydra half-dragons. New breath weapons and spell toolkits go a long way to making the draconic beasts memorable.
Considering that Dracohydra's, Dragonflesh Golems and Dragongrafts exist, hybrids are entirely fitting into the lore of the Forgotten Realms. Just not in the sense of "red + blue = purple".
I saw a post in a Facebook group that I saw you commented on that probably sparked this video haha. It was something about a dragon and a wyvern I think? I thought you answering just "no" was hilarious
I have a wizard thats under mindflayer control. He is technically a silver dragon that's been infected while in humanoid form. The mindflayers don't know the "wizard" is a dragon. They made the wizard cast an illusionary spell to make an area look like a ruined castle but is a cover for recovering mindflayer hive. The party of 4 adventurers lvl 13-14 started to explore a ruined village with a ruined castle off in the distance. As they delve down, and maybe save the wizard, he will join them and attempt to kill the elder brain w/ them. Once down the wizard will climb in the elder brain pool to "harvest" some of it for spells components. and starts to eat it, uncontrollably as it devours it fast than a human should be able to. As tentacles blow out his face and shape changes into a flayer dragon. Can't wait to see how the party will react. Goes down tomorrow.
I don’t know if this really fits the lore but I’ve always loved the idea of a two headed conjoined hybrid dragon. Like, say, gold and red (!), where the two halves of its nature conflict so hard that its body barely stays together. Split down the middle between chromatic and metallic. Less so a hybrid and more an almost tragic freak of nature. Or maybe frankenstein’s monster.
One of the things I like about the Dzalmus is the breath weapon. Dragon Breath Weapons are the spice of the encounter, especially if it's a homebrewd monster and the players don't know what it can do. Keeping the pc's guessing what horror they'll witness when the jaws open is fun. Be it a cone of invisible force, a cloud of dust that causes sleep or a 100 ft. line of insanity. My favorite is a cone of lesser summoning, like a Shadow Dragon with a breath weapon that summons shadows and wraiths.
Its good that the hybrid dragons are not only rare, but most of the time unique. Can you imagine if factions of dragons started to spring up? OH WAIT...IDEA! Factions of Chromatic dragons, perhaps factions of Metallic dragons. The great rage is over and we have Gem dragons back; what if they are back just in time for a Draconic civil war? What's worse, a draconic civil war or a renewed war with the Giants? I'd go with a little bit of A, a little bit of B.
remember coming across a pink dragon that has a bubble breath weapon , also heard all 3 dragons referred to as purple (deep, purple and hybrid) all often are found in the underdark also heard the hybrid purples one other reason for their rarity is they often are innately stronger then ether parent so a additional reason why reds and blues likely would avoid mating or letting offspring from such a mating live i also could see dragon types that have more interaction of a friendly nature more likely to create hybrids like metallics are more likely to be friendly with each other then chromatics tend to be with each other or whites that were adopted/mentored by a crystal and taken after their one time guardian might get along with crystals more then their own kind or similar ideas as to what might result in the rare occurrence of a hybrid or half dragons mating with one another of two different types on the rare occurrence they do meet and have kids
Most of the time I've kind of had hybrids as more of a situation where they might be slightly off of what a normal dragon would be. Mainly back from 3.5 stuff when it was rather easy to handle making one, the only modification was scaling the breath weapon by the way the main dragon type did, but still limited as the half-dragon template as an additional option. I think I ended up using that with 3 dragons, one of which they knew was a hybrid rather quickly. None of them in Faerun...two in Ebberron, and the 3rd in Ghostwalk. The Ghostwalk one was the one I'd actually spent the most time on and ended up being taken over by one of the players there...that one was half steel/half green, and his birth is kind of what had both parents actually discover that the other was a dragon when both infiltrated the wizards guild in the city. The players ended up working for both parents for a while, and when their son was abducted by Yuan-Ti in their subplane there that the players infiltrated and one died later int he campaign, they were at about the right level for the player to use for the rest of the adventure and onward. I miss ghostwalk...it was fun and crazy there.
If i am not mistaken there's a dracolitch who's working on creating a new dragon spieces that has the abilities of all chromatic dragons, so an idea to incorporate hybrid dragons in your campaing is that your players are actully facing off against one the dracolitch's experiments.
Also, imagine that the hybrids are akin to cancer, they reproduce far quicker but are so much more vulnerable to chemo and radiation (not as tough when attacked). I mean, there are mammals, and there are rats... and rats, like humans, are mammals. Who generally evolves to thrive and explosively breed more than humans in human-built cities. Clue: It's not humans, they die per capita faster than rats.
The big one I would want is a red+gold dragon. The potential power by the two sides balancing each other out creating a personality closer to Azgorath would be incredible. Anyway, I'd been looking for this video forever. . .not what I was hoping for XD.
@@lukem2402 that works to the idea as it would balance out in the children. Again, aiming for a dragon closer in power to Asgorath, combining these two would give you a neutral neutral set up.
true neutral dragon that has a hot temper and a thirst for knowledge, that sounds like ambition incarnate. A dragon that reaches the peak of its kind or dies trying.
I like to play it like this. Chromatic + metallic/gem = chromatic colored metallic/gem (hybrid of abilities/ecology favouring one). Metallic + gem = variant gem (whatever a gem turns into when introduced to certain metals). The former I get a little more creative with. I like to keep metallics + chromatics fairly straightforward but metallics + gems I go more freeform but will base abilities and ecology still on a hybrid of both. Looking into the geology of geodes usually helps with inspiration.
In Dragonlance there is a description of hybrid green & sea dragons which are basically giant, scaled, poisonous toad creatures. I found the reference in the back of a novel years ago and thought it would be cool if ever used.
This would be a GREAT genesis for a Dragon with an interesting alternate breath weapon I thought of: The Oil Slick Dragon, being the offspring of a Black & Green dragon it is mostly black but with a strange rainbow sheen that tends towards the green like gasoline in a rain puddle. It still breathes acid, like a Black Dragon but it's not a Strong acid like hydrochloric acid instead it is a FAR physically weaker acid that is also poisonous. It breathes a cone of Lysergic Acid diethylamide which appears naturally in some real world fungi, this acid is not instantly deadly & better known by it's initials LSD. Physical damage would be low, I'm thinking 3D4 but if they fail a constitution save difficulty determined partially by how much exposed skin they have they begin to WILDY hallucinate after 10 rounds. Usually they will sneak up on their prey use their breath weapon, they quickly fly away & attack once their prey is disoriented, if something else should eat their prey first, they will begin to hallucinate thus giving the dragon a bigger prize. This works as on Adventurers as it does on animals in the bayou. The stealth of the Oil Slick Dragon pales in comparison to the Ultra Violet Dragon which is invisible to many any species eyes that can't see into the Ultra Violet range & attacks with a powerful beam of Ultra Violet light that, while again invisible to most humanoids without magical aid, will cause them to have terrible blisters that result in sun poisoning & exhaustion.
Always enjoy your shorter videos let’s us get to sink our teeth on some concept or idea quickly. As a new dm (yes I’m finally running a game) I’m happy to say your videos have had a great effect on my game ideas and how I homebrew my settings
The Vishap seems like it'd be a cool addition to a story, a talking non flying monster lizard with an inferiority complex always shakes things up. Do the Vishap still hoard treasure I wonder? Maybe give one a talisman of flying just for fun lol
Imagine a Zakharan dragon breeding with kobolds. Suddenly the little buggers have the strength to rip your arm out of its socket and no wings or breath weapon to be able to see that it’s different from the garden variety of kobold.
@@almitrahopkins1873 I'll be content with trying NOT to imagine anything breeding with a kobold, let alone something many times larger than it, that would be like an alligator trying to breed with a chameleon, if the chameleon had the ability for limited speech so you could kinda understand what it was screaming during the process.
I ran a campaign where the BBEG was a half-Illithid Purple (Deep) Dragon trying to open a portal to the Far Realms and let C'thulu (God of Illithids) through. Party fought it in middle of the ritual atop a mountain in an arcane observatory/orrery. It ate two of their brains but was felled before completing its ritual. Fun times.
Speaking of obscure dragons, there's something I've been wondering about. Metallic Dragons are Good, Chromatic Dragons are Evil, and Gem Dragons are the Neutral in-between. And then the Ferrous Dragons are Lawful. So, given that, do the Ferrous Dragons have a Chaotic counterpart? Is there a second set of Neutral Dragons that are Neutral the other way?
Transuranic Dragons? Lanthanide Dragons? Salt dragons... I don't know, folks seem pretty keen to make these alignment and element divisions, but, 3.5 and 4th edition demonstrated to me that there doesn't have to be a themed version for everything, we don't really need a radiant ooze, for example... unless we do, in which case, go for it,!
In 3.5 there had been the lore kind of setup between Paizo and WotC for the original setup was that Vorel was Neutral, Bahamut was Lawful, Sardior was Good, Tiamat was Evil, and they had another sister who fit Chaotic. Tiamat murdered both Vorel and the other sister and the sister's remaining dragons which were based off of Tiamat's chromatics were basically enslaved under them with the Orange, Yellow, Grey, Brown, and Purple (Different than the other ones, they were the pinnacle of flight capability in dragons though less combat capable and very much glass cannons). Bahamut and Tiamat started their eternal war, with the Ferrus dragons getting formed to counter the dead sisters dragons that had ended up in the fight, and Sardior was horrified about losing family members and that his remaining siblings were outright attempting to kill the other went into isolation and neutrality. That shifted the alignment balance to Bahamut LG, Sardior TN, and Tiamat CE... Then WotC went to 4e and ended their relationship with Paizo and we never got the full story that was being built up there with so many plot threads tossed away.
There's a couple of official (appeared in a Dragon Magazine article) hybrid dragons, though it's mostly between Chromatics. Purple dragons are Red + Blue, Orange dragons are Red + Yellow, Gray dragons are Black + White, Brown dragons are Orange + Blue, Pink dragons are White + Red, and the first Green dragons were actually Blue + Yellow. The reason Purple, Pink, and Orange dragons didn't become as prevalent as Green dragons is because Red dragons see themselves as the epitome of what it means to be a dragon, and don't tend to be keen on having kids with any of the "lesser" types. They're already exceedingly picky about mating amongst their own kind, after all. Gray dragons aren't very common because swamps and cold don't have much overlap. It can happen (Siberia has 2% of all the peat bog area on earth) but it's not common. Brown dragons are so exceedingly rare because Orange dragons don't happen very often and there is minimal overlap between desert and jungle. In theory, there could be shades and tints of the chromatic dragons, as demonstrated by the existence of Pink dragons. Though what Crimson (red + black), Indigo (blue + black), Cadmium (yellow + black), Azure (blue + white), and Chartreuse/Cream (yellow + white) dragons would be like I can't say.
My party fought Ebondeath and freed Claugiyliamatar, so she has been in my campaign for a while. I had also subtly introduced a Steel Dragon transformed into a human paladin quest giver. Definitely considered what would happen if they... Met up. Now I have some good context! Thanks for your awesome content.
We use to just combine their breath attacks. For example: Red + Green = Fire + Acid So we gave the Hybrid a Napalm Breath that continued damage for 1d4 turns.
Nice concept but the problem is green dragon breath weapon has been called a chlorine gas since AD&D2ndE, and from playing around with chemistry I learn chlorine gas is explosives. We ran plenty of games where a green dragon hits a location with its gas attack, waits a few rounds till the gas spreads out to mix with the right amount of surrounding air/oxygen and the red dragon or wizard rider Fire Ball sets the area off with a flaming sonic boom. Then there is the grade school teenager joke about seeing or just hearing another person starts vomiting. Follow with other people start vomiting due to the sound of the first person plunking or the .. smell .. of the stomach acid and chew up food. a.) strength of said dragon stomach acid when it vomits on PC group. b.) Magic dragon spell to increase the stomach acid dmg strength. c.) Can the dragon stomach acid be set on fire ? d.) How slick is dragon stomach acid ? Cause I have slip on wooden floors and concrete after a very bad drinking moment. Cleaning up wet carpet after your teenage brother has thrown up isn't any fun. e.) I had to clean up a few messes after a great Dame vomit on the living room carpet, it made my eyes water/tear up and my noise burn.
All the base ten true dragons at huge size are a minimum of 41.25 feet long and a max of 68.75 feet long. Also, adding the half dragon template to a dragon is very much in line with the dominant color bit. It is still a full fledged green dragon with all the green’s abilities but with a smaller, more limited acid line breath weapon from a black dragon parent. Furthermore, if the base five chromatic dragons are actually descended from Tiamat, they can simply be a triple half dragon as half dragons can manifest anywhere down the family line, not just from the direct dragon offspring.
So many dragon types and honestly I feel like we just got only half of them We gone need a hour long vid or some shit cause son The type of draconic beings is insane and I honestly want more
When DMing Eberron's continent of Argonessen, a setting where dragons are more coordinated, to the point of having a 50.000 strong dragon army of both chromatic and metallic dragons, I had to do my homework on the matter, and 3.5e's Draconomicon is an almost mandatory book. It goes into great detail about dragon physiology, psychology and customs, to the point of even dissecting them and displaying how their bodies function. On the matter of dragon hybrids. They're not so impossible as long as both dragons want the offspring, since whether or not the egg will hatch depends on the parents will, not the mating act itself. Then, the egg will resemble one of the parents and take its hatching conditions. Warm sand for a blue egg, swamp water for a green one and so on. Once the wyrmling hatches, it will resemble mostly it's predominant parent characteristics, but could sport different color scales in some areas or have some of its other parent abilities, like stronger claws that allow it to burrow or being amphibious, or even a red dragon that could polymorph due to a golden dragon parent, resulting in stronger dragons. The only bad point about this is that hybrid dragons are sterile and incapable of having offspring.
Okay in all seriousness I do have a question for AJ after watching this video. Does this mean that Purple dragons (Red and Blue dragon parents, that amazing beast 😆😊), is not a hybrid dragon? Not because of the word hybrid, but because of how hybrid is used in the lore when describing a kind of dragon?
A dragon with a distinctive appearance is often more famous with humans and easier to track and target. Luckily, Thunders of dragons are rare but it is harder to camouflage
My hybrid dragons are fully possible, but incredibly rare. Most of my chromatic dragons hate each other in general (aside from green, who are all about family), and generally feel even more so towards dragon's of different colors. However, I do have some hybrid true dragons however when very specific pairings happen to meet up. My Pink dragons are a hybrid with a steam breathe akin to dragon turtles. I actually have two variants of purple dragons, the natural deep dragons and red/blue hybrids. They look starkly different, and act very different. The hybrids spew a blast of plasma and are very interested in their innate sorcerous magic and honing it. I have a few others, but haven't really fleshed them out that much. Once again, very VERY rare. The odds of encountering them are as such that not one have my parties have actually come across any. Yet, at least. I should do that at some point.
The possibility of magically created draconic hybrids is an interesting one, justifies why more than one could exist in a particular region. Also means even less likely possibilities like metallic chromatic mixes could be more likely to exist which presents an interesting possibility for a creature who's sanity is likely stretched pretty thin.
I heard a rumor that the original dragon god asgorath originally made bahamut and tiamat with the intention of them breeding into an ultimate dragon type. So I had an idea that the hybrid of a metalic and chromatic type would be insanely powerful
Speaking of weird dragons, think you’ll ever do an ecology video on the Beast Dragons of the Beastlands? I think they’re a very unique dragon, with their half-cold/half-electric breath weapon and their signature gore attack. Or, failing that if there’s not enough lore to justify a video, one about the extraplanar dragons as a whole?
in Greek mythology you have three hydra. A ladon that guard the serect apple of the gods, the hydra that's that's Guard the gate of Tartarus and the hydra the Hercules had slayed
In 2e the draconomicon has rules for hybrid dragons. This includes mentioning how they look like a mix of their parents so a red+white=pink and so on but their are variationseven in a clutch of eggs. It also says chromatic and metalics mate rarely and that any and all hybrids are starile. I actually just used those rules this morning to make a dracohydra+brass dragon hybrid for a 2e game I'm planning to run in greyhawk.
The spawn of tiamat would be interesting. I know they were a very large part of 3.5's Monster Manual 4, though the later MMs are not celebrated much. A video on dracotaurs would be cool too
@@AJPickett I'm personally only familiar with the 3.5 MM3 version (creature & sort of playable race, but +5 level adjustment is hard to work around), who were rather underdeveloped. They were practically identical to lizardfolk from a culture standpoint, albeit nomadic. I'd be interesting to look at how the different dracotaur species contrast across settings
@@AJPickett there are Dracotaurs in The Lost City of Mezro 5e adventure module, so they do seem to be present in the Forgotten Realms, although Chult is admittedly an anomaly within that setting in many respects (sort of its own demi plane on Toril almost.)
could see a gold and a red hybrid having similar coloration to the orium which has a redish gold coloration or silver gold is electrum which i think has stats somewhere
As a general concept, the chaotic nature of the Chromatic dragons (Tiamat's influence perhaps) results in random mutations more often (within that 10% of matings that actually produce offspring), so it is very, very rarely a new breed of true dragon, its almost always going to be a Spawn of Tiamat.
I won't lie, when you were mentioning some of the combinations of the metallic and chromatic dragons in previous videos the idea of combining them all came to mind.
@@dragonturtle2703 Personally, I imagined this the goal of a particularly evil and power mad lich, likely working (at least at first) with a young black dragon. Dragons typical disdain for hybrids made me think none would willingly work for an organization actively trying to make a super mutant monster in their eyes. However, black dragons natural cruelty and love of power might tempt them to accept the boons and magical items an old lich might posses (presuming an ancient and intelligent creature has likely squirrelled away a great many items that can't just be stolen from his liar or off his corpse) and the dragon would likely love the implication of "forcy happy fun time" with the metallic dragons. The end goal of the lich I imagined was to develop a way to permanently possess this penultimate dragon should he succeed. It's already an epic level adventure with the idea of a black dragon (even if it's young) supped up with magical gear and an equally supped up lich hiding in a liar of hybrid dragon monsters, adding in a lich with a dragon possession contingency spell might take it overboard, but it makes me smile when I think of the look on my theoretical players faces. I also like the idea of the players foiling this lich's plot, but forgetting to destroy the draconic eggs (or missing some) and the havoc that might be accidently released with the lich no longer containing his abominations.
I kind of imagine chromatic dragons more likely to cause hybrids dragons, it can't all be about breeding, what about asserting dominance and humiliating your rivals and enemies. I can see chromatic dragons being into that. Like a Red having to show a Blue dragon her place one the totem pole. Also assuming that valuable offspring is rare I could see this as a way different types of dragons control the other's population. Like a the Red could be able to fertilize the blue's eggs so a male blue dragon can't, but the eggs would also likely die before going to term or the Blue know it's the Red's destroys them after laying.
To be honest, I think artificial dragon hybrids seem like the best way to go. In the back of my mind I'm always thinking of the Blackwing Lair in WoW and the experiments of Nefarion there. My favorite experiment was a mighty blind dragon with super enhanced hearing... who gained this power when an Alchemist gave him an experimental potion that went wrong. Instead of making a weak whelp strong, it turned him blink and sensitive to sound. But he was allowed to life and turned into a living weapon Sounds simple, but made for a nice bossfight. 😎👍
I prefer the idea of dual-color dragons being the result of intentional breeding. A new dragon species based on a dual-breeding would, and should, cause waves across the draconic world.
While I see the practical importance of having dragons favor singular types so that the stat blocks are logically representative of the majority of dragons rather than dragons eventually all becoming hybrids due to their low numbers, I gotta say that speckled-scaled, mix-breath dragons are just too goddamn cool to not include - rarity be damned. I mean, what kind of psychopath wouldn't find red/black dragons with napalm breath cool? Pink (or R/W speckled) dragons that exhale cold fire or scalding steam? Blue/red dragons that exhale plasma? Green/black dragons that melt you from the inside out? You can get really damn creative with this stuff and it's just too cool an aesthetic not to include as a special feature to any dragon-centric campaign, maybe even as a rogue dragon ally that has much to gain from gaining allies against the rest of dragon-kind.
Mantis dragon, been their done that. Giant mantis eggs fertilize by a dragon. Problem is mantis are known to eat each other so you can't or still can through a few dozen half dragon giant mantis at your players PCs. Just add +2CR to giant mantis using 3.5e rules. Don't forget once a dragon is old enough they can cast Polymorph Self, so they can look like anything they want. Also you can start a campaign off where a juvenal 25 year old dragon is polymorphed into a human and they earn 8 levels as a wizard or sorcerer. Then they can shape change as much as they like, leaving a trail of half dragons wherever they have been.
Your timing is almost uncanny. My group are currently planning on how to deal with a dragon that is a hybrid of blue and white, the Lightning Blizzard.
Been working on something like this for my campaign for a while now. Dragons are a bit more "open minded" and slightly less inherently murder-hoboish(in the case of chromatic varieties) in my world, which means mutts. While its not openly accepted, it's also not frowned upon. I'm leaning more towards the imperfect combinations. My only two non-tpk creations thus far are the Emberstorm(Red and Blue) and the Thunderfrost(Blue and White).
I think i recall you talking about dragon hybrids in some of your other videos, something about that if there was a dragon hybrid most commonly one of the parents would be a black dragon, something about black dragons would be the ones who most commonly would be down to mating with a non-black dragon or something like that. Some examples you've listed i think included was a hybrid between a blue and black, a black and gold (which resulted in what could be described as a nightmare dragon or at least nightmare-like abilities/spells), a blue and red which resulted in a purple dragon that basically had a plasma breath weapon and immunity to both lightning and fire, and so and so forth. Or at least from what i remember at the top of my head. You're allowed to correct me on this.
@@AJPickett I mean, most of the things i just mentioned was from some of YOUR dragon videos, like the video you did on black dragons. I'm just surprised you didn't mention any of these examples or anyone else like them in this one, since it's literally titled "hybrid dragons".
@@heimko3618 In this video I thought it was important to define what the lore from the creator of the setting actually IS, because it is the source of a lot of confusion on the subject.
@@heimko3618 Because I am learning as I go, and I did tend to speculate and work on what I knew at the time, this is why I update and remaster my videos from time to time. As a sage, its my job to constantly read and piece it all together, and then present both canon lore and workable options and inspiration for DMs where I find gaps and contradictions.. this means I do contradict my older video content often, I would not be doing my job right if I didn't :)
I've come up with a Winter Demigod which is a Snow serpernt which is part dragon part linnorm The albino Serpentes Mallorinus Titanus, it's a snake dragon with a split personality and control of winter weather and some sneaky snake cloning and stealth assassinations. It's a fun villain. Has a euphoric venom and paralytic breath. Ambush predator also auto coil with a freezing time limit to escape the grasp.kiling it Regensburg the other personalities head.
Just outta curiosity, the first hybrid dragon that was mentioned specifically, I'll just call it the tri-headed dragon. Does each head have it own unique personality & intelligence or do the three heads form a combined mind & intelligence?
green is the hybrid chromatic with yellow and blue. it had this whole chemistry thing going on salt gets broken down into chlorine gas. yellow dragons breath salt blue dragons breathe hot electrcitiy.. guess what the breathe of a green dragon is yep chlorine
@@AJPickett But, but, . if the red dragon hunts like a white dragon during winter the party members will not even see what attack them. Also if the dragon is old enough to cast Cone of Cold, rumors surrounding the said dragon will throw people off with what they are fighting. Also my group games always give dragons their first 2nd-level sorcerer spell : Alter Self, so the given dragon can increase its size for intimidation bluff defense. Or make themselves smaller to get through locations to escape from larger dragons chasing them. Besides demi/humans are honey badgers/ porcupines bullying lions/dragons. So unless a dragon has healing spells, no lion in their right mind wants to mess around with a porcupine. Not saying dragons fight like cowards, but if you are going to live a few hundred years, you just don't take any chances.
@@krispalermo8133 if I remember right the party was mid level and I thought about the size difference, so I made it a younger red. On top of that we were teenagers so nobody even thought about the environment it was in.
Thank you for posting this. I always enjoy your dragon and outer plane videos! I would really like to see the lore around ferrous dragons and their kin revisited since we finally got an update at least in part with the gem dragons. I know they were trying to keep things in fives but would have like to have seen an update for the obsidian and amber dragons. I would not mind a fresh coat of paint on the orange, yellow, brown, and grey dragons since we got the deep (purple) stats in Fizban’s.
Honestly I do dragons as unique, there are no dragon "types" and not all of them start out life as a dragon. Now I can use a stat bock of existing dragons, but I will change things and its appearance.
I can see combinations based on locales, black and reds could be chance encounters in volcanically active swamps as an example. I agree that they should be exceedingly rare, but not impossible by any means
Green/red dragon hybrid, .. green dragon female, up town high class girl. red dragon, low town bad boy. Seen this with humans more than enough times. Age of mating, juvenal or young adult.
Brown sand dragon. Bam! OR another dragon dietys chromatic dragon type. Crossbreeds inside different dragon types should officialy be allowed and viable, balanced by that its uncommon due to well, not comfortable with it or pride. Red + blue = purple, white + black = gray, orange + yellow = green ( yes Tiamat have one main head green so dosent makes half sense, BUT her body have all colors ) guess this would make to much sense for Wiz or lore writers.
@@odinulveson9101 Dragons gain spellcasting level pre age category, starting with Alter Self following with Polymorph Self/Other. So in my last gaming groups at our local gaming shops, dragons Adapt to their environments to best blend in. Other than medieval/ modern fantasy writers trying to create entertaining stories for profit, many science test have shown a lot of animals do not See .. red .. the same way humans do. Although few retiles are known to have red scales. So having a black dragon looking like a black cat with white sock feet and a white spot on their forehead is up to the DM and player group amusement. From having house cats and seeing how " playful " they can be along with how murderous they are when it comes to birds & mice, any dragon with cat like behavior weighting in at a few tons would be scary even without a breath weapon.
How to truly destroy your players. The party receives the confusing news of a white dragon in a sandy desert region. The locals have been terrified of it for years. It only comes out under the cover of darkness and has plagued livestock for years, they struggle to spot it in the darkness and it is too fast to be caught. They have hired to no avail hunters and knights to track and kill it. And it has been chased away on multiple occasions as it has been known to try and sneak into the local fortresses when large gathering and festivals have been on causing the tribal celebrations to have been halted for the last 37 years. The party try to track it down and upon finding the lair and sneaking in towards it they discover a large white dragon with pale red eyes. without the correct perception/knowledge checks it is clearly a white dragon. Queue suprise attack from party where they try and kill the creature, which fights back. If they manage to murder the beast it will be uncovered upon finding the treasure horde a room filled to the brim with scrolls. Some of them are useful like schematics for creating weapons and armour or some spells, or some maps or artwork etc.. But they are mostly a meticulously well kept diary of a terribly lonely albino brass dragon. It cannot travel or hunt in the daytime due to the sun. It cannot successfully hunt in the dark due to it's bad vision so has to prey on livestock which is usually grouped together (they feel awful about this, because although as a dragon it is there right, they know how important the animals are to people) it has tried to join in with the festivities when parties are ran as it looked like fun, but they were chased away by the town. Whenever anybody visited the lair they were trying to kill it so they have had to defend themselves, really lay it on how much this dragon wants a friend and how lonely they are. Imagine the devastation when they realise what they have done.
@@sabrinakod yeah, sorry about that. Brass dragons are super social, so it seemed the perfect fit from a narrative standpoint. Day 21476 The desert folk have been painting the ramparts ready for the festival of the moon, I love the moon and I get so excited at this time of the year. The thumps of the goat skin drums echo into my chamber like a pulse in the earth. It feels to me like I am hearing the love of a community thudding in my soul. This year is the time I will finally join in with the music and frivolity that I yearn for. What should I bring as a gift? I want them to understand that I am a friend. I've tanned some of the hide that I've had to sustain myself on to make some more parchment for my diaries but I fear this may be in bad taste. Perhaps some of the armour or weaponry from the cave robbers that invaded last week? I'm honestly so nervous that I will scare them again like last festival, and the one before that, and the one before that. Wings crossed. - Paragon the Brass Day 21482 I am such a fool, over indulged myself again and went in tooth and claw and scared the tribe just as the crescendo to the moon music started, knocked over a market stand with my tail and started a fire. I dont know what hurt more, the embarrassment and shame of ruining things again or the elf in the fancy robes white hot Sunbeam spell that scoured my legs. I must remember to make a note of the components he used and write it down for my collection. These magic men are very clever. If only I could share some of my knowledge with them, we would have so much to talk about. - Paragon the Brass
After the updated blue dragon video, it struck me that there'd probably be subspecies of each type of dragon: desert vs. seacliff blues, for example. These would be slightly different and (awesomely) adapted to each habitat yet be able to produce viable offspring. Very happy with his take on interspecific mating...when you shot that down, I felt as though a million snowflakes cried out as one then were silent. On the other hand...what would happen if you COULD get the equivalent chromatic/metallic pairs to produce offspring (black x copper, etc.)? There's something very Dark Crystal in the prospect of what you might create.
As mentioned, I just report the lore, I certainly don't use it 100% as is in my games and I wouldn't expect anyone other than an official RPGA adventure module to do so either! We take great liberties with Dragon breeding, all species really... and that is fine.
Hybrid dragons is such an untapped source of some of the most brutal dragons you could ever encounter, imagine a profane hybrid of a black and gold dragon with scales the color of oil and a breath weapon of toxic flames, or the purple dragon of older editions, or even a hybrid involving the returned gem dragons like various gem dragons trying to breed with reds to create a new ruby dragon
I actually had an idea to use a black gold hybrid (never used it though) Called it a Napalm dragon as you can guess it's breath weapon would have been a sticky burning liquid
Ah yes the dragon, it easily hybridizes with any animal except for other dragons of course. This trope is actually pretty common in fantasy like with superheroes not being able to have children that have both parents powers. Just certain things don't combine certain things are dominant. And when you consider dragons hybridizing with any other animal dragons would definitely have this magical dominance that allows them to make this hybrid that shouldn't work work. But when it's with another dragon those two magical energies compete with each other and or cancel each other out. I feel like this is what makes the most sense and really fits the world.
I like Draconic Chimera - with varying draconic heads from the standard red / fire breathing type. They are generally one of a kind and make excellent BBEGs or superb NPCs with interesting backstories and esoteric information
This is more about genetics but, there are things known as incomplete dominance and codominance. Incomplete dominance looks like a mix of the two genes, an example being a pink flower coming from a red flower and a white flower. While codominance looks like both genes showing at the same time, an example being a flower with red and white patches coming from a red flower and a white flower.
So a dragon of incomplete dominance would be something like dark green dragon being born from a black dragon and green dragon. I would imagine that dragon like this is a perfect fusion of a black dragons incredibly cruel and sadistic nature and green dragon charismatic and articulate nature. A dragon of codominance would be something like a red and blue dragon. This dragon could be insane bipolar monster that is incapable of living with an unparalleled fury and calm and patience mind.
Sorry for the bad punctuation
I usually just look at it as dragons genetic recombination being very aggressive. More like a retrovirus than the normal fertilization. Normal creatures have no defense, but this is familiar to dragons.
@@anthonybernard8819 there is also pleiotropy
In 3.5 nothing was stopping half dragon from being applied to a dragon.
I had a benevolent Purple Dragon as the High King of a prosperous kingdom located in a volcanic desert region. He inherited his kingdom from his Blue Dragon mother, and she had mated with a Red Dragon who roamed the planet to defend it from extraplanar threats (kinda like Godzilla, in that he wasn’t exactly good, but on the side of having a planet to live on at the least). They ended up being a weird mix of blue and red predilections while also having a bent towards being Lawful Good due to quirks of their own individual personality, and their breath was a badass Radiant Beam of superheated plasma
What was the red dragon's name, and what were his powers, if I may ask?
I played in a campaign in the early 90s that had a red + blue = Purple Dragon as a main evil antagonist. It’s breath weapon was a mix of lighting and fire but had a side effect of also turning you to amethyst. This really brings back great memories
I am running a campaign where the patriarch of a group of blue dragons wheres the neck and head of a white dragon around him like a scarf, but in actuality has grafted a white dragon's head to himself and can use it as though it were his own.
That is creepy AF and I am stealing it.
@@AJPickett I agree on both the creepy and worth stealing.
Ever thought about running another contest like you did with the Lich Items?
'The most creative Hybrid Dragon?'
But you might get two or three, as twins or triplets, or even quadruplets from a single egg as a mutation and each of them may be of a single mixed breeding. So, you end up with four siblings protecting a single area as their own. Then you have to account for hybrid vigor, Hybrids tend to be larger than either parent.
panicked Skyrim guard: *"Dragons?!"*
@@rachdarastrix5251 No.
I do not know who took your sweet roll.
I had this idea for a character, an NPC that joins the party.
He is the result of a black and green dragon mating. in dragon form, has the size and color of a green dragon (maybe slightly darker green), but the horns and general shape of a black dragon. However, this character is almost always in human form, he favors' mail armor and carries a 2-handed sword on his back, yet casts like a sorcerer. Something seams 'off', about the character, and the ability to cast spells in armor may be the party characters first clue. Any kind of mind reading/telepathy/detection spells may hint at the following :-
Whispers from the characters draconic past plague his soul, telling him to control, destroy, and kill. Meanwhile, his sentient mind is telling him to live without torment or evil. He will readily fight for good causes, though sometimes slips into evil methods. he is reaching for the upper planes, while feeling his spirit being dragged to the lower planes.
He is searching for a cure for the voices that plague his soul.
In my homebrew setting, the Metallic and Chromatic dragons are descendants of Gem Dragons, which are descendant from a mighty prismatic dragon.
A myth in dragon culture states that a metallic and chromatic dragon of similar abilities can create a gem dragon offspring, and eventually this will lead to the reformation of the Prismatic dragon, which will lead dragon kind to rule again.
It’s not a commonly held belief of course, since dragons are too prideful to admit they’ll need help from their opposite side. The only exception to this is Unslaad Tor, who is a Ruby dragon disguised as a red dragon.
A perfect video for coffee time.
For the love of bahumut ( or u guess tiamat ?) Please do a deep dive on the dragon spawn and how they relate to other weird dragon hybrids and mutants.
Yes hybrid dragons are rare; due to the infrequency of interbreeding, the likelihood of favoring one parent's side over the other (whether or not if this is genetic or environmental is unknown), high likelihood of parental rejection of their offspring (either abandoning them or outright killing them). Largely depends on the temperament of the parent raising them or the hybrid's ability to survive on their own.
You know how people tease that you rarely get to encounter dragons in Dungeons and Dragons? I think that the old official lore actually overlooked a tremendous opportunity. Instead of downplaying hybrids, I like the idea of Zeus-like dragons having multiple draconic monstrous prodigy that different levels of adventurers can handle. Yes, there may only be one of each. But it is a great excuse to throw so many more dragons into a campaign than just the guarded cunning and decidedly formidable purebreeds.
Good point
None of the purple dragons on here? I still think that would be an epic quest: having to discover where some monstrous hybrids have originated. Finding a series of towers with many powerful mages of several classes attempting to perfect a new race of purple dragons. Held in enchanted chains made by storm giants, 20 pairs of red and blue dragons are muzzled unless fed and forced to mate. Once they have laid eggs, the eggs are taken away to magical incubators, in order to help insure the off spring will live.
It would be a nice tale to read about, or even play out as a quest.
Purples are their own distinct breed that lives in the Underdark and has psychic powers. They crumble to dust in sunlight like vampires. They are not hybrids but their own breed.
From what I know, that was what they called a hybrid red/blue dragon to. I saw a video that had them on it, and have been slightly obsessed about them since. A dragon with both attributes is awsome!
@@charaznable9209 their are 3 dragons often called purple deep dragon, the psychic purples and the hybrid of red/blue all of which are known in the underdark though assuming young hybrid purples likely only remain till they reach a certain age I'm assuming before taking claim of surface territory
An idea I've had about dragons is that you could have a setting where the only difference between a mostrosity and a dragon is the origins. Dragons are naturally occuring results of magic either mutating animals or creating them from nothing, while monstosities are created by people or gods, purposefuly or accidentally.
As a DM, I'm definitely going with the 'dragon cross-breeding leads to abominations'. Granted; EXTREMELY powerful abominations, but also invariably insane. Reasoning is that, in my world, dragons are less 'fleshy beings with elemental powers' and more the opposite; 'elemental powers in the guise of fleshy beings'. When the elemental energies they have clash, they clash violently, primordially, explosively. This makes them both absurdly powerful (even by dragon standards) as well as completely insane -and likely to explode. However; there is another way to mess with dragon births. Should a dragon of 'opposite alignment' takes the egg of a dragon, they can 'taint' and 'twist' the unborn dragon. Such a thing is considered extremely vile by even some evil dragons (as they wouldn't want to sully their 'magnificent pure lineage' etc) but it is something that can happen and be a likely story hook.
I do provide my players leeway to affect a developing dragon's final alignment, but their alignment WILL be reflected in their appearence. Their scales and body WILL change in accordance to what that dragon TRULY is. You might not get a Red Dragon to go Lawful Good (without extreme shenaniganery like the Deck) but you CAN affect them.
What about the old Purple Dragon that was a hybrid of Red and Blue? I imagined those would be a more likely to produce in the event that they did mate, given that there was actual data on it. They sounded like they'd be incredibly OP.
I would imagine that the emergence of Purple dragons, that breed amongst themselves, would start a war with Red dragons. Gold dragons may get involved too just to reinforce the status quo lol
That’s a Prestige Class isn’t it?
If recall right those purples tended to be innately strong then ether parent so both reds and blues would typically avoid mating just to avoid major competition btw where was the info on them be trying to find it again for awhile
There's also melanism that's like albinism but reversed. There's examples of deer and foxes with this.
I think that different kinds should be more possible considering how dragons in strange realms are possible and changed due to their environment like Pandemonium.
I have an idea for a red dragon with partial melanism based on the cross fox
Turns out when a Drake grows into a Dragon the act of killing a Dragon is just a troll by a creature that has been alive for tens of.thouxands of years.
*blink*
Now I want to make a two headed dragon that's all one color down the left and another on the right.
Do it :)
Any ideas on how to balance a creature with two breath weapons? If we go by Etin logic each head could act independently and a single breath weapon is already hard to deal with. Any time both recharged at the same time would be pretty devastating.
The D&D 80s cartoon did that with a more beast-bright dragon, one half was white, one half was red. I think its name was "Demo-dragon". If you can find a video for that it would be great inspiration for you.
@@Dandamayn I'd just go with it can use one or the other to spend the recharge between them.
Or if you want to make things more interesting, perhaps have a dominance roll at the beginning of its turn where you might have which part of its nature is dominant so, if you have a Red/White, you might have a shift in immunities, resistances, and weaknesses, and the breath weapon available is the same or opposite
finally some one addressed this also i imagine that metalic dragons would refer to metalic abominations as slag dragons or just slags as its just what happens when etal is improperly mixed
Finally an answer. I guess I'm going with "mad wizard experiment" for my darklord dracolich then. I didn't design him with any particular type of dragon in mind, I was just thinking "death dragon" and designed him based on that, but I have considered making him a hybrid. Either that or I keep his type a mystery, with his current body being frankensteined from other dragon corpses.
That vampiric cloud breath weapon is interesting. I feel like if you fail the save by 5 or more then it should heal the dragon for half the damage it inflicted on you. If you fail by 10 or more it takes you straight to 0 hit points.
Dungeon Dad did a video on them in witch he converted the ability in this manner: fail a con save then you roll a d8 and that's how much you lose from your con score.
@@nicolaezenoaga9756 thanks! I'll go find that. Dungeon Dad does great stuff.
As a touch of role play the dragon breathes out the horid gas sapping your vitality. It then deeply inhales the gas and heals itself
Ill keep saying it. Youre the most slept on and underrated dnd creator on TH-cam
Slow and steady wins the race.
Aj years ago your original dragon series inspired me to start my first campaign and now 3 years later its still going strong. This video is like the keystone to the end game events of the campaign that is coming soon and my players are still eager to play. Thank you for all the lore, insparation and work it took to bring it to us.
You are truly a gentleman and a scholar
I am overjoyed that you have been inspired and shared your love of the game with others!
Hmmm… If Albinism in Dragons exists, so to should Melanism. A Gold Dragon that is colored Black would cause wonderful confusion and consternation for your campaign. Though I’d make sure to mention that their scales were exceptionally reflective and luminous with a good roll. And a book on dragon slaying be available somewhere. As well as a Dragon Slaying Order from a distant land, with a neglected and unloved Chapter somewhere reachable. They’d want to kill it, and show huge ignorance about the kind it is. But with proper questioning, or poking around The Chapter House I’d leave something the could learn it from. Like the knowledge of Albino Dragons existence. I’d also make sure to note at some point that this area is known for its Black Wool. Having certain flocks dedicated to it, because it makes distinctive, unstaining black garments.
Which means Piebald Dragons could theoretically exist too. Which is actually awesome.
It's called vitiligo. Piebald is ... It doesn't feel right.
That's a great catch.
@@AJPickett I wouldn’t call it that to the players. I’d figure out another description besides piebaldism. Vitiligo and piebaldism are distinct, however also very close conditions. And look much the same.
As for the Dragon itself, it’d probably be described as having the coloring, but in a more appealing pattern than a horse with the condition. Concentrated white coloring on the chest, that sort of mixes into the black colored scales on its back, upper legs and neck. Black down to its tail. An occasional tiny patch of white or black spots bordering, and radiating from the main color patches. Perhaps white patches around the mouth, and both eyes having the area around them being white spots. Black wings, with White tips. And if I was feeling adventurous, describe it’s feet being white also dissipating towards the joint of the leg. (Like those mittens dogs and cat get sometimes. Though I’d only call them mittens, if a player suggested it. And I’d suggest the character refrain from allusions of the sort.)
Either the eyes would be the color of the lineage it’s breath weapon comes from. Something about the essence of that power staying the mutation on its scales, from changing its eye color.
So, in my homebrew setting, dragons are a bit different, more like Ebberon in the way they act. My twist is that crossbreeding is, relatively, common, due to the circumstances of thier birth. The new egg type is irrelevant to the types that produced it. The actual environment is what dictates what the egg is. So, a White, and a Blue could mate in a primeval forest, and lo, the egg is Green. The one thing is that Cross types are vanishingly rare (chromatic, gem, metallic), as they are true hybrids regardless of environment. The only case the players discovered in lore was called a Purple dragon, just because it was chrome red in color, offspring of a Red and a Silver.
In most of my campaign settings, this answer is much, much simpler to answer because of a key aspect of the lore I use for my dragons. Namely, that there are really only two main dragon types (Chromatic and Metallic) and the specific color is determined by the environmental conditions that the egg is subjected to after it is laid. So if an egg from a White dragon is treated to the same conditions as a Green dragon egg, the embryo will develop into a Green dragon.
As for Chromatic/Metallic hybrids, that really depends on the specific setting in question; but typically such a hybrid would be incredibly weak and frail, even by humanoid standards, and culturally is seen as an abomination by both chromatics and metallics
The long and short of it is, if you're going to make a half-dragon, then think long and hard about if it is unique or a successful population. Next you must think of a reason why it/they been allowed to exist/propagate by the draconic power(s) in the region.
[In the setting I'm working on the yuan-ti are all draconic and that is because the chromatic dragons on my world are more accepting of alliances and consolidating power than they are in the standard power schemes established by the official lore (they all have a bit of blue in them). The draconic hegemony wanted a vast population of thralls and the yuan-ti were more than happy to submit themselves to artificial experimentation (their perverse gods have no influence in this remote world and they badly needed/wanted substitutes). Their ritual to transform humans into tainted ones has been perfected with the help of their masters to produce a random, fiercely loyal chromatic dragonborn. The yuan-ti and their dragonborn servitors are very real threat to the existence of the good-aligned races in the setting even before you get anyway near knocking out the draconic hegemony.]
I dig the official hydra half-dragons. New breath weapons and spell toolkits go a long way to making the draconic beasts memorable.
Considering that Dracohydra's, Dragonflesh Golems and Dragongrafts exist, hybrids are entirely fitting into the lore of the Forgotten Realms. Just not in the sense of "red + blue = purple".
I saw a post in a Facebook group that I saw you commented on that probably sparked this video haha. It was something about a dragon and a wyvern I think? I thought you answering just "no" was hilarious
That was one of the incidences, yes. 😄
I have a wizard thats under mindflayer control. He is technically a silver dragon that's been infected while in humanoid form. The mindflayers don't know the "wizard" is a dragon. They made the wizard cast an illusionary spell to make an area look like a ruined castle but is a cover for recovering mindflayer hive. The party of 4 adventurers lvl 13-14 started to explore a ruined village with a ruined castle off in the distance. As they delve down, and maybe save the wizard, he will join them and attempt to kill the elder brain w/ them. Once down the wizard will climb in the elder brain pool to "harvest" some of it for spells components. and starts to eat it, uncontrollably as it devours it fast than a human should be able to.
As tentacles blow out his face and shape changes into a flayer dragon. Can't wait to see how the party will react. Goes down tomorrow.
It has been a month, how did your players react ?!
Please post the good juicy bits.
I don’t know if this really fits the lore but I’ve always loved the idea of a two headed conjoined hybrid dragon. Like, say, gold and red (!), where the two halves of its nature conflict so hard that its body barely stays together. Split down the middle between chromatic and metallic. Less so a hybrid and more an almost tragic freak of nature. Or maybe frankenstein’s monster.
One of the things I like about the Dzalmus is the breath weapon. Dragon Breath Weapons are the spice of the encounter, especially if it's a homebrewd monster and the players don't know what it can do. Keeping the pc's guessing what horror they'll witness when the jaws open is fun. Be it a cone of invisible force, a cloud of dust that causes sleep or a 100 ft. line of insanity. My favorite is a cone of lesser summoning, like a Shadow Dragon with a breath weapon that summons shadows and wraiths.
Its good that the hybrid dragons are not only rare, but most of the time unique. Can you imagine if factions of dragons started to spring up? OH WAIT...IDEA! Factions of Chromatic dragons, perhaps factions of Metallic dragons. The great rage is over and we have Gem dragons back; what if they are back just in time for a Draconic civil war? What's worse, a draconic civil war or a renewed war with the Giants? I'd go with a little bit of A, a little bit of B.
remember coming across a pink dragon that has a bubble breath weapon , also heard all 3 dragons referred to as purple (deep, purple and hybrid) all often are found in the underdark also heard the hybrid purples one other reason for their rarity is they often are innately stronger then ether parent so a additional reason why reds and blues likely would avoid mating or letting offspring from such a mating live
i also could see dragon types that have more interaction of a friendly nature more likely to create hybrids like metallics are more likely to be friendly with each other then chromatics tend to be with each other or whites that were adopted/mentored by a crystal and taken after their one time guardian might get along with crystals more then their own kind or similar ideas as to what might result in the rare occurrence of a hybrid or half dragons mating with one another of two different types on the rare occurrence they do meet and have kids
Most of the time I've kind of had hybrids as more of a situation where they might be slightly off of what a normal dragon would be.
Mainly back from 3.5 stuff when it was rather easy to handle making one, the only modification was scaling the breath weapon by the way the main dragon type did, but still limited as the half-dragon template as an additional option.
I think I ended up using that with 3 dragons, one of which they knew was a hybrid rather quickly. None of them in Faerun...two in Ebberron, and the 3rd in Ghostwalk.
The Ghostwalk one was the one I'd actually spent the most time on and ended up being taken over by one of the players there...that one was half steel/half green, and his birth is kind of what had both parents actually discover that the other was a dragon when both infiltrated the wizards guild in the city. The players ended up working for both parents for a while, and when their son was abducted by Yuan-Ti in their subplane there that the players infiltrated and one died later int he campaign, they were at about the right level for the player to use for the rest of the adventure and onward.
I miss ghostwalk...it was fun and crazy there.
If i am not mistaken there's a dracolitch who's working on creating a new dragon spieces that has the abilities of all chromatic dragons, so an idea to incorporate hybrid dragons in your campaing is that your players are actully facing off against one the dracolitch's experiments.
Very cool. This has inspired me to play an albino dragonborn for my next character.
Imagine a setting where the common types are rare, and all the hybrids and such are the more common types...
Also, imagine that the hybrids are akin to cancer, they reproduce far quicker but are so much more vulnerable to chemo and radiation (not as tough when attacked).
I mean, there are mammals, and there are rats... and rats, like humans, are mammals. Who generally evolves to thrive and explosively breed more than humans in human-built cities. Clue: It's not humans, they die per capita faster than rats.
The big one I would want is a red+gold dragon. The potential power by the two sides balancing each other out creating a personality closer to Azgorath would be incredible. Anyway, I'd been looking for this video forever. . .not what I was hoping for XD.
The only issue being one is lawful good and one is chaotic evil 😂
@@lukem2402 that works to the idea as it would balance out in the children. Again, aiming for a dragon closer in power to Asgorath, combining these two would give you a neutral neutral set up.
Yeah that's true
@@lukem2402 but imagine the power of a red+gold dragon?
true neutral dragon that has a hot temper and a thirst for knowledge, that sounds like ambition incarnate. A dragon that reaches the peak of its kind or dies trying.
I like to play it like this. Chromatic + metallic/gem = chromatic colored metallic/gem (hybrid of abilities/ecology favouring one). Metallic + gem = variant gem (whatever a gem turns into when introduced to certain metals). The former I get a little more creative with. I like to keep metallics + chromatics fairly straightforward but metallics + gems I go more freeform but will base abilities and ecology still on a hybrid of both.
Looking into the geology of geodes usually helps with inspiration.
In 3e, you can model a hybrid dragon by slapping the half-dragon template on a dragon.
Have to be careful how you describe that however. I told them human sized red dragon with white dragon features. They heard red and white dragonborn
@@Orncaex "It is literally a dragon the size of a human, what do you not understand?"
"Big sexy reptile man occupies my thoughts."
In Dragonlance there is a description of hybrid green & sea dragons which are basically giant, scaled, poisonous toad creatures. I found the reference in the back of a novel years ago and thought it would be cool if ever used.
There is at least two oceanic hybrid dragon breeds on Toril.
This would be a GREAT genesis for a Dragon with an interesting alternate breath weapon I thought of: The Oil Slick Dragon, being the offspring of a Black & Green dragon it is mostly black but with a strange rainbow sheen that tends towards the green like gasoline in a rain puddle. It still breathes acid, like a Black Dragon but it's not a Strong acid like hydrochloric acid instead it is a FAR physically weaker acid that is also poisonous. It breathes a cone of Lysergic Acid diethylamide which appears naturally in some real world fungi, this acid is not instantly deadly & better known by it's initials LSD. Physical damage would be low, I'm thinking 3D4 but if they fail a constitution save difficulty determined partially by how much exposed skin they have they begin to WILDY hallucinate after 10 rounds. Usually they will sneak up on their prey use their breath weapon, they quickly fly away & attack once their prey is disoriented, if something else should eat their prey first, they will begin to hallucinate thus giving the dragon a bigger prize. This works as on Adventurers as it does on animals in the bayou.
The stealth of the Oil Slick Dragon pales in comparison to the Ultra Violet Dragon which is invisible to many any species eyes that can't see into the Ultra Violet range & attacks with a powerful beam of Ultra Violet light that, while again invisible to most humanoids without magical aid, will cause them to have terrible blisters that result in sun poisoning & exhaustion.
OSD is LSD?
Always enjoy your shorter videos let’s us get to sink our teeth on some concept or idea quickly.
As a new dm (yes I’m finally running a game) I’m happy to say your videos have had a great effect on my game ideas and how I homebrew my settings
The Vishap seems like it'd be a cool addition to a story, a talking non flying monster lizard with an inferiority complex always shakes things up.
Do the Vishap still hoard treasure I wonder?
Maybe give one a talisman of flying just for fun lol
"Monstrous Draconic Mutation"... or what Kobalds lovingly call their offspring.
Imagine a Zakharan dragon breeding with kobolds. Suddenly the little buggers have the strength to rip your arm out of its socket and no wings or breath weapon to be able to see that it’s different from the garden variety of kobold.
@@almitrahopkins1873 I'll be content with trying NOT to imagine anything breeding with a kobold, let alone something many times larger than it, that would be like an alligator trying to breed with a chameleon, if the chameleon had the ability for limited speech so you could kinda understand what it was screaming during the process.
I ran a campaign where the BBEG was a half-Illithid Purple (Deep) Dragon trying to open a portal to the Far Realms and let C'thulu (God of Illithids) through. Party fought it in middle of the ritual atop a mountain in an arcane observatory/orrery. It ate two of their brains but was felled before completing its ritual. Fun times.
Bless the GlueStick
...Dzalmus is now my new favorite monster in DnD.
*ima have some fun preparing stuff around it*
Love you're vids dude I especially like the dragon meat story and your characters history,it's nice hearing in world stories from time to time
Speaking of obscure dragons, there's something I've been wondering about. Metallic Dragons are Good, Chromatic Dragons are Evil, and Gem Dragons are the Neutral in-between. And then the Ferrous Dragons are Lawful. So, given that, do the Ferrous Dragons have a Chaotic counterpart? Is there a second set of Neutral Dragons that are Neutral the other way?
There are yellow and orange dragons. I am pretty sure he has a video on them
@@bluebird3281 Those are Chromatic Dragons.
@@dracorex426 when you asked about a chaotic counterpart, I read chromatic by mistake.
Transuranic Dragons? Lanthanide Dragons? Salt dragons... I don't know, folks seem pretty keen to make these alignment and element divisions, but, 3.5 and 4th edition demonstrated to me that there doesn't have to be a themed version for everything, we don't really need a radiant ooze, for example... unless we do, in which case, go for it,!
In 3.5 there had been the lore kind of setup between Paizo and WotC for the original setup was that Vorel was Neutral, Bahamut was Lawful, Sardior was Good, Tiamat was Evil, and they had another sister who fit Chaotic. Tiamat murdered both Vorel and the other sister and the sister's remaining dragons which were based off of Tiamat's chromatics were basically enslaved under them with the Orange, Yellow, Grey, Brown, and Purple (Different than the other ones, they were the pinnacle of flight capability in dragons though less combat capable and very much glass cannons).
Bahamut and Tiamat started their eternal war, with the Ferrus dragons getting formed to counter the dead sisters dragons that had ended up in the fight, and Sardior was horrified about losing family members and that his remaining siblings were outright attempting to kill the other went into isolation and neutrality.
That shifted the alignment balance to Bahamut LG, Sardior TN, and Tiamat CE...
Then WotC went to 4e and ended their relationship with Paizo and we never got the full story that was being built up there with so many plot threads tossed away.
There's a couple of official (appeared in a Dragon Magazine article) hybrid dragons, though it's mostly between Chromatics. Purple dragons are Red + Blue, Orange dragons are Red + Yellow, Gray dragons are Black + White, Brown dragons are Orange + Blue, Pink dragons are White + Red, and the first Green dragons were actually Blue + Yellow.
The reason Purple, Pink, and Orange dragons didn't become as prevalent as Green dragons is because Red dragons see themselves as the epitome of what it means to be a dragon, and don't tend to be keen on having kids with any of the "lesser" types. They're already exceedingly picky about mating amongst their own kind, after all.
Gray dragons aren't very common because swamps and cold don't have much overlap. It can happen (Siberia has 2% of all the peat bog area on earth) but it's not common.
Brown dragons are so exceedingly rare because Orange dragons don't happen very often and there is minimal overlap between desert and jungle.
In theory, there could be shades and tints of the chromatic dragons, as demonstrated by the existence of Pink dragons. Though what Crimson (red + black), Indigo (blue + black), Cadmium (yellow + black), Azure (blue + white), and Chartreuse/Cream (yellow + white) dragons would be like I can't say.
My party fought Ebondeath and freed Claugiyliamatar, so she has been in my campaign for a while. I had also subtly introduced a Steel Dragon transformed into a human paladin quest giver.
Definitely considered what would happen if they... Met up. Now I have some good context! Thanks for your awesome content.
We use to just combine their breath attacks.
For example: Red + Green = Fire + Acid
So we gave the Hybrid a Napalm Breath that continued damage for 1d4 turns.
Nice concept but the problem is green dragon breath weapon has been called a chlorine gas since AD&D2ndE, and from playing around with chemistry I learn chlorine gas is explosives. We ran plenty of games where a green dragon hits a location with its gas attack, waits a few rounds till the gas spreads out to mix with the right amount of surrounding air/oxygen and the red dragon or wizard rider Fire Ball sets the area off with a flaming sonic boom.
Then there is the grade school teenager joke about seeing or just hearing another person starts vomiting. Follow with other people start vomiting due to the sound of the first person plunking or the .. smell .. of the stomach acid and chew up food.
a.) strength of said dragon stomach acid when it vomits on PC group.
b.) Magic dragon spell to increase the stomach acid dmg strength.
c.) Can the dragon stomach acid be set on fire ?
d.) How slick is dragon stomach acid ? Cause I have slip on wooden floors and concrete after a very bad drinking moment. Cleaning up wet carpet after your teenage brother has thrown up isn't any fun.
e.) I had to clean up a few messes after a great Dame vomit on the living room carpet, it made my eyes water/tear up and my noise burn.
Aasamar/Gem dragon is a fun mix. Thanks again for the best lore.👍
All the base ten true dragons at huge size are a minimum of 41.25 feet long and a max of 68.75 feet long. Also, adding the half dragon template to a dragon is very much in line with the dominant color bit. It is still a full fledged green dragon with all the green’s abilities but with a smaller, more limited acid line breath weapon from a black dragon parent. Furthermore, if the base five chromatic dragons are actually descended from Tiamat, they can simply be a triple half dragon as half dragons can manifest anywhere down the family line, not just from the direct dragon offspring.
So many dragon types and honestly I feel like we just got only half of them
We gone need a hour long vid or some shit cause son
The type of draconic beings is insane and I honestly want more
When DMing Eberron's continent of Argonessen, a setting where dragons are more coordinated, to the point of having a 50.000 strong dragon army of both chromatic and metallic dragons, I had to do my homework on the matter, and 3.5e's Draconomicon is an almost mandatory book. It goes into great detail about dragon physiology, psychology and customs, to the point of even dissecting them and displaying how their bodies function.
On the matter of dragon hybrids. They're not so impossible as long as both dragons want the offspring, since whether or not the egg will hatch depends on the parents will, not the mating act itself.
Then, the egg will resemble one of the parents and take its hatching conditions. Warm sand for a blue egg, swamp water for a green one and so on.
Once the wyrmling hatches, it will resemble mostly it's predominant parent characteristics, but could sport different color scales in some areas or have some of its other parent abilities, like stronger claws that allow it to burrow or being amphibious, or even a red dragon that could polymorph due to a golden dragon parent, resulting in stronger dragons.
The only bad point about this is that hybrid dragons are sterile and incapable of having offspring.
Okay in all seriousness I do have a question for AJ after watching this video.
Does this mean that Purple dragons (Red and Blue dragon parents, that amazing beast 😆😊), is not a hybrid dragon? Not because of the word hybrid, but because of how hybrid is used in the lore when describing a kind of dragon?
Oh crap, that's a good question.
I asked this question mounths ago never expected a full vidio thanks AJ
A dragon with a distinctive appearance is often more famous with humans and easier to track and target. Luckily, Thunders of dragons are rare but it is harder to camouflage
My hybrid dragons are fully possible, but incredibly rare. Most of my chromatic dragons hate each other in general (aside from green, who are all about family), and generally feel even more so towards dragon's of different colors. However, I do have some hybrid true dragons however when very specific pairings happen to meet up. My Pink dragons are a hybrid with a steam breathe akin to dragon turtles. I actually have two variants of purple dragons, the natural deep dragons and red/blue hybrids. They look starkly different, and act very different. The hybrids spew a blast of plasma and are very interested in their innate sorcerous magic and honing it. I have a few others, but haven't really fleshed them out that much. Once again, very VERY rare. The odds of encountering them are as such that not one have my parties have actually come across any. Yet, at least. I should do that at some point.
What about the natural non-deep purple dragons?
The possibility of magically created draconic hybrids is an interesting one, justifies why more than one could exist in a particular region. Also means even less likely possibilities like metallic chromatic mixes could be more likely to exist which presents an interesting possibility for a creature who's sanity is likely stretched pretty thin.
Nice pondering orb!
I heard a rumor that the original dragon god asgorath originally made bahamut and tiamat with the intention of them breeding into an ultimate dragon type. So I had an idea that the hybrid of a metalic and chromatic type would be insanely powerful
Strange draconic religious doctrine from the World of Nerath. Take these things with a grain of salt.
Speaking of weird dragons, think you’ll ever do an ecology video on the Beast Dragons of the Beastlands? I think they’re a very unique dragon, with their half-cold/half-electric breath weapon and their signature gore attack.
Or, failing that if there’s not enough lore to justify a video, one about the extraplanar dragons as a whole?
Signature Gore Attack, new metal band name, lol.
When you think you're about to fight a white dragon and then get hit by a cone of fire
Love your vids, I share them w my D&D group whenever I find something interesting
in Greek mythology you have three hydra. A ladon that guard the serect apple of the gods, the hydra that's that's Guard the gate of Tartarus and the hydra the Hercules had slayed
In 2e the draconomicon has rules for hybrid dragons. This includes mentioning how they look like a mix of their parents so a red+white=pink and so on but their are variationseven in a clutch of eggs. It also says chromatic and metalics mate rarely and that any and all hybrids are starile.
I actually just used those rules this morning to make a dracohydra+brass dragon hybrid for a 2e game I'm planning to run in greyhawk.
@Ciaran Eldrett thank you. I picked 2 that would most likely have a very striking offspring.
@Ciaran Eldrett thank you very much
@Ciaran Eldrett no I haven't. But I'm always finding "new" ones I haven't seen yet. What's it about
@Ciaran Eldrett I'll definitely have to pick that up it'll be great in my ad&d games or for inspiration for gurps
@Ciaran Eldrett cool where
The spawn of tiamat would be interesting. I know they were a very large part of 3.5's Monster Manual 4, though the later MMs are not celebrated much. A video on dracotaurs would be cool too
I have a lot of requests for Dracotaurs... did you want the monstrous demons from the Abyss, the Spelljammer playable race or something else?
@@AJPickett I'm personally only familiar with the 3.5 MM3 version (creature & sort of playable race, but +5 level adjustment is hard to work around), who were rather underdeveloped. They were practically identical to lizardfolk from a culture standpoint, albeit nomadic. I'd be interesting to look at how the different dracotaur species contrast across settings
@@AJPickett there are Dracotaurs in The Lost City of Mezro 5e adventure module, so they do seem to be present in the Forgotten Realms, although Chult is admittedly an anomaly within that setting in many respects (sort of its own demi plane on Toril almost.)
Can you have a chromatic and metallic hybrid, that would be awesome. Gold and blue! Green tinged bronze ! Topaz silver
could see a gold and a red hybrid having similar coloration to the orium which has a redish gold coloration or silver gold is electrum which i think has stats somewhere
As a general concept, the chaotic nature of the Chromatic dragons (Tiamat's influence perhaps) results in random mutations more often (within that 10% of matings that actually produce offspring), so it is very, very rarely a new breed of true dragon, its almost always going to be a Spawn of Tiamat.
Thanks AJ
I won't lie, when you were mentioning some of the combinations of the metallic and chromatic dragons in previous videos the idea of combining them all came to mind.
Tiamat and Bahamut want to know your location to stop you
Why isn’t there an order of mad wizards doing just that?
@@dragonturtle2703 There is.
@@dragonturtle2703 Personally, I imagined this the goal of a particularly evil and power mad lich, likely working (at least at first) with a young black dragon. Dragons typical disdain for hybrids made me think none would willingly work for an organization actively trying to make a super mutant monster in their eyes. However, black dragons natural cruelty and love of power might tempt them to accept the boons and magical items an old lich might posses (presuming an ancient and intelligent creature has likely squirrelled away a great many items that can't just be stolen from his liar or off his corpse) and the dragon would likely love the implication of "forcy happy fun time" with the metallic dragons. The end goal of the lich I imagined was to develop a way to permanently possess this penultimate dragon should he succeed.
It's already an epic level adventure with the idea of a black dragon (even if it's young) supped up with magical gear and an equally supped up lich hiding in a liar of hybrid dragon monsters, adding in a lich with a dragon possession contingency spell might take it overboard, but it makes me smile when I think of the look on my theoretical players faces.
I also like the idea of the players foiling this lich's plot, but forgetting to destroy the draconic eggs (or missing some) and the havoc that might be accidently released with the lich no longer containing his abominations.
@@theirDevil blacks are known to be the most open of the chromatics to hybridization.
Thanks for the video AJ! Been having a hard week. This video helps alot!
I kind of imagine chromatic dragons more likely to cause hybrids dragons, it can't all be about breeding, what about asserting dominance and humiliating your rivals and enemies. I can see chromatic dragons being into that. Like a Red having to show a Blue dragon her place one the totem pole. Also assuming that valuable offspring is rare I could see this as a way different types of dragons control the other's population. Like a the Red could be able to fertilize the blue's eggs so a male blue dragon can't, but the eggs would also likely die before going to term or the Blue know it's the Red's destroys them after laying.
"what about asserting dominance and humiliating your rivals and enemies" through mating? Yeah, not at my table thanks. I get your point though.
To be honest, I think artificial dragon hybrids seem like the best way to go. In the back of my mind I'm always thinking of the Blackwing Lair in WoW and the experiments of Nefarion there. My favorite experiment was a mighty blind dragon with super enhanced hearing... who gained this power when an Alchemist gave him an experimental potion that went wrong. Instead of making a weak whelp strong, it turned him blink and sensitive to sound. But he was allowed to life and turned into a living weapon Sounds simple, but made for a nice bossfight. 😎👍
I've pondered White (Ice) and Blue.
Fun to imagine
White Lightning
I prefer the idea of dual-color dragons being the result of intentional breeding. A new dragon species based on a dual-breeding would, and should, cause waves across the draconic world.
I didn't think you would make this video, thank you
While I see the practical importance of having dragons favor singular types so that the stat blocks are logically representative of the majority of dragons rather than dragons eventually all becoming hybrids due to their low numbers, I gotta say that speckled-scaled, mix-breath dragons are just too goddamn cool to not include - rarity be damned.
I mean, what kind of psychopath wouldn't find red/black dragons with napalm breath cool? Pink (or R/W speckled) dragons that exhale cold fire or scalding steam? Blue/red dragons that exhale plasma? Green/black dragons that melt you from the inside out? You can get really damn creative with this stuff and it's just too cool an aesthetic not to include as a special feature to any dragon-centric campaign, maybe even as a rogue dragon ally that has much to gain from gaining allies against the rest of dragon-kind.
9:52 That's awesome art, wouldn't want to find or battle mantis dragons in the jungle.
Mantis dragon, been their done that.
Giant mantis eggs fertilize by a dragon. Problem is mantis are known to eat each other so you can't or still can through a few dozen half dragon giant mantis at your players PCs. Just add +2CR to giant mantis using 3.5e rules.
Don't forget once a dragon is old enough they can cast Polymorph Self, so they can look like anything they want. Also you can start a campaign off where a juvenal 25 year old dragon is polymorphed into a human and they earn 8 levels as a wizard or sorcerer. Then they can shape change as much as they like, leaving a trail of half dragons wherever they have been.
Your timing is almost uncanny. My group are currently planning on how to deal with a dragon that is a hybrid of blue and white, the Lightning Blizzard.
Couldn't think of anything clever to say cause I was just enjoying the video, haha. Thanks, Professor Pickett
My pleasure!
Been working on something like this for my campaign for a while now. Dragons are a bit more "open minded" and slightly less inherently murder-hoboish(in the case of chromatic varieties) in my world, which means mutts. While its not openly accepted, it's also not frowned upon. I'm leaning more towards the imperfect combinations. My only two non-tpk creations thus far are the Emberstorm(Red and Blue) and the Thunderfrost(Blue and White).
I think i recall you talking about dragon hybrids in some of your other videos, something about that if there was a dragon hybrid most commonly one of the parents would be a black dragon, something about black dragons would be the ones who most commonly would be down to mating with a non-black dragon or something like that. Some examples you've listed i think included was a hybrid between a blue and black, a black and gold (which resulted in what could be described as a nightmare dragon or at least nightmare-like abilities/spells), a blue and red which resulted in a purple dragon that basically had a plasma breath weapon and immunity to both lightning and fire, and so and so forth. Or at least from what i remember at the top of my head. You're allowed to correct me on this.
That all sounds like fun.
@@AJPickett I mean, most of the things i just mentioned was from some of YOUR dragon videos, like the video you did on black dragons. I'm just surprised you didn't mention any of these examples or anyone else like them in this one, since it's literally titled "hybrid dragons".
@@heimko3618 In this video I thought it was important to define what the lore from the creator of the setting actually IS, because it is the source of a lot of confusion on the subject.
@@AJPickett If that is the set/true lore, then why did you mention all of those other ones in previous videos if they weren't canon or "real lore"?
@@heimko3618 Because I am learning as I go, and I did tend to speculate and work on what I knew at the time, this is why I update and remaster my videos from time to time. As a sage, its my job to constantly read and piece it all together, and then present both canon lore and workable options and inspiration for DMs where I find gaps and contradictions.. this means I do contradict my older video content often, I would not be doing my job right if I didn't :)
I've come up with a Winter Demigod which is a Snow serpernt which is part dragon part linnorm The albino Serpentes Mallorinus Titanus, it's a snake dragon with a split personality and control of winter weather and some sneaky snake cloning and stealth assassinations. It's a fun villain. Has a euphoric venom and paralytic breath. Ambush predator also auto coil with a freezing time limit to escape the grasp.kiling it Regensburg the other personalities head.
Just outta curiosity, the first hybrid dragon that was mentioned specifically, I'll just call it the tri-headed dragon. Does each head have it own unique personality & intelligence or do the three heads form a combined mind & intelligence?
One individual with multiple heads.
I always wanted to see a silver dragon, black dragon hybrid that look kinds like a steel predator
I saw this pop up in my notifications and I've never clicked on a notification so fast lol
Purple
Orange
And one other
Are Hybrid Chromatic Colors.
They do exist in DnD
Just not 5e
All of them are canon as Chromatic Hybrids too
They just don't appear in 5e for some reason
green is the hybrid chromatic with yellow and blue. it had this whole chemistry thing going on salt gets broken down into chlorine gas. yellow dragons breath salt blue dragons breathe hot electrcitiy.. guess what the breathe of a green dragon is yep chlorine
Can anyone imagine a group of adventures going to kill a white dragon but woops its just an albino red
I actually did that to a group playing 2nd addition back in the early 90s.
The size would be a dead giveaway... Reds are massive compared to white dragons.
@@AJPickett But, but, . if the red dragon hunts like a white dragon during winter the party members will not even see what attack them.
Also if the dragon is old enough to cast Cone of Cold, rumors surrounding the said dragon will throw people off with what they are fighting.
Also my group games always give dragons their first 2nd-level sorcerer spell : Alter Self, so the given dragon can increase its size for intimidation bluff defense. Or make themselves smaller to get through locations to escape from larger dragons chasing them.
Besides demi/humans are honey badgers/ porcupines bullying lions/dragons. So unless a dragon has healing spells, no lion in their right mind wants to mess around with a porcupine. Not saying dragons fight like cowards, but if you are going to live a few hundred years, you just don't take any chances.
@@krispalermo8133 if I remember right the party was mid level and I thought about the size difference, so I made it a younger red. On top of that we were teenagers so nobody even thought about the environment it was in.
Thank you for posting this. I always enjoy your dragon and outer plane videos!
I would really like to see the lore around ferrous dragons and their kin revisited since we finally got an update at least in part with the gem dragons. I know they were trying to keep things in fives but would have like to have seen an update for the obsidian and amber dragons.
I would not mind a fresh coat of paint on the orange, yellow, brown, and grey dragons since we got the deep (purple) stats in Fizban’s.
Honestly I do dragons as unique, there are no dragon "types" and not all of them start out life as a dragon. Now I can use a stat bock of existing dragons, but I will change things and its appearance.
I can see combinations based on locales, black and reds could be chance encounters in volcanically active swamps as an example.
I agree that they should be exceedingly rare, but not impossible by any means
Green/red dragon hybrid, ..
green dragon female, up town high class girl.
red dragon, low town bad boy.
Seen this with humans more than enough times.
Age of mating, juvenal or young adult.
Brown sand dragon. Bam! OR another dragon dietys chromatic dragon type. Crossbreeds inside different dragon types should officialy be allowed and viable, balanced by that its uncommon due to well, not comfortable with it or pride. Red + blue = purple, white + black = gray, orange + yellow = green ( yes Tiamat have one main head green so dosent makes half sense, BUT her body have all colors ) guess this would make to much sense for Wiz or lore writers.
@@odinulveson9101 Dragons gain spellcasting level pre age category, starting with Alter Self following with Polymorph Self/Other.
So in my last gaming groups at our local gaming shops, dragons Adapt to their environments to best blend in.
Other than medieval/ modern fantasy writers trying to create entertaining stories for profit, many science test have shown a lot of animals do not See .. red .. the same way humans do. Although few retiles are known to have red scales.
So having a black dragon looking like a black cat with white sock feet and a white spot on their forehead is up to the DM and player group amusement. From having house cats and seeing how " playful " they can be along with how murderous they are when it comes to birds & mice, any dragon with cat like behavior weighting in at a few tons would be scary even without a breath weapon.
How to truly destroy your players.
The party receives the confusing news of a white dragon in a sandy desert region. The locals have been terrified of it for years. It only comes out under the cover of darkness and has plagued livestock for years, they struggle to spot it in the darkness and it is too fast to be caught. They have hired to no avail hunters and knights to track and kill it. And it has been chased away on multiple occasions as it has been known to try and sneak into the local fortresses when large gathering and festivals have been on causing the tribal celebrations to have been halted for the last 37 years.
The party try to track it down and upon finding the lair and sneaking in towards it they discover a large white dragon with pale red eyes. without the correct perception/knowledge checks it is clearly a white dragon. Queue suprise attack from party where they try and kill the creature, which fights back. If they manage to murder the beast it will be uncovered upon finding the treasure horde a room filled to the brim with scrolls. Some of them are useful like schematics for creating weapons and armour or some spells, or some maps or artwork etc.. But they are mostly a meticulously well kept diary of a terribly lonely albino brass dragon. It cannot travel or hunt in the daytime due to the sun. It cannot successfully hunt in the dark due to it's bad vision so has to prey on livestock which is usually grouped together (they feel awful about this, because although as a dragon it is there right, they know how important the animals are to people) it has tried to join in with the festivities when parties are ran as it looked like fun, but they were chased away by the town. Whenever anybody visited the lair they were trying to kill it so they have had to defend themselves, really lay it on how much this dragon wants a friend and how lonely they are. Imagine the devastation when they realise what they have done.
😳🥺😢😭
The level of sadness and despair in this post, makes me feel like im hearing the thoughts of a BBEG
@@sabrinakod yeah, sorry about that. Brass dragons are super social, so it seemed the perfect fit from a narrative standpoint.
Day 21476
The desert folk have been painting the ramparts ready for the festival of the moon, I love the moon and I get so excited at this time of the year. The thumps of the goat skin drums echo into my chamber like a pulse in the earth. It feels to me like I am hearing the love of a community thudding in my soul. This year is the time I will finally join in with the music and frivolity that I yearn for.
What should I bring as a gift? I want them to understand that I am a friend. I've tanned some of the hide that I've had to sustain myself on to make some more parchment for my diaries but I fear this may be in bad taste. Perhaps some of the armour or weaponry from the cave robbers that invaded last week?
I'm honestly so nervous that I will scare them again like last festival, and the one before that, and the one before that. Wings crossed.
- Paragon the Brass
Day 21482
I am such a fool, over indulged myself again and went in tooth and claw and scared the tribe just as the crescendo to the moon music started, knocked over a market stand with my tail and started a fire. I dont know what hurt more, the embarrassment and shame of ruining things again or the elf in the fancy robes white hot Sunbeam spell that scoured my legs. I must remember to make a note of the components he used and write it down for my collection. These magic men are very clever. If only I could share some of my knowledge with them, we would have so much to talk about.
- Paragon the Brass
The nine hells called, they are impressed and want to give you a job.
After the updated blue dragon video, it struck me that there'd probably be subspecies of each type of dragon: desert vs. seacliff blues, for example. These would be slightly different and (awesomely) adapted to each habitat yet be able to produce viable offspring. Very happy with his take on interspecific mating...when you shot that down, I felt as though a million snowflakes cried out as one then were silent.
On the other hand...what would happen if you COULD get the equivalent chromatic/metallic pairs to produce offspring (black x copper, etc.)? There's something very Dark Crystal in the prospect of what you might create.
As mentioned, I just report the lore, I certainly don't use it 100% as is in my games and I wouldn't expect anyone other than an official RPGA adventure module to do so either! We take great liberties with Dragon breeding, all species really... and that is fine.
Hybrid dragons is such an untapped source of some of the most brutal dragons you could ever encounter, imagine a profane hybrid of a black and gold dragon with scales the color of oil and a breath weapon of toxic flames, or the purple dragon of older editions, or even a hybrid involving the returned gem dragons like various gem dragons trying to breed with reds to create a new ruby dragon
I actually had an idea to use a black gold hybrid (never used it though) Called it a Napalm dragon as you can guess it's breath weapon would have been a sticky burning liquid