Monday, November 22, 2010

A new take on the Gold Dragon

I've had my eye on Papo's fairly new "Dragon of the Rising Sun" figure for a while now.  I've never really been a fan of AD&D's styling the Gold Dragon after the oriental 龍*.  I'd always imagined them as winged dragons, just like the other dragons in the Basic Set.  But it would scratch my itch to have a Gold Dragon figure to plop on the table, and would serve double duty for when I run OA campaigns.

But today I noticed that Papo has also now released their two headed dragon model (which I was considering to fill the Black Dragon niche) in gold.

Now, according to the Basic Set, Golds have a 100% chance to speak and cast spells, and a mere 5% chance to be caught napping. 

A dragon with two heads would be much less likely to be caught fully asleep.  One could rest while the other kept watch.

A dragon with two brains would be more intelligent, one would assume.  More likely to speak and be able to use magic.

A Gold dragon has two forms of breath weapon--fire and chlorine gas.  One type from each head!

A Gold dragon is lawful, and a two-headed intelligent dragon would need to have both heads operating in harmony to function.  Seems like a fairly lawful mindset to me.

The only thing that doesn't fit by the book would be that a Gold only has one bite attack.  But then at 6d6 damage, that's fairly nasty just for one bite.


I don't know that I'd actually re-envision Gold Dragons in my campaign to all be two-headed just because I may buy the figure.  If I do get the black two-header, I definitely won't be applying this logic to Black Dragons.  But it was fun to think about.


[Pimping Michigan Toy Soldier Company in my links, because I've always got great service from these guys.]

*"long" in Pinyin, "lung" in Wade-Giles for those of you who don't read Chinese.

4 comments:

  1. But a 10% chance of having a stupid argument and thus not noticing adventurers.

    Two-headed dragons so seldom seek couples counseling out of pride and stubbornness.

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  2. That's a pretty cool take on the gold dragon. I may have to steal that idea.

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  3. That's a very cool idea... if you get the dragon in gold, why not use it?

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