New Monster – Dragon Descendant (Template) for D&D 5E

Dragons often seek to “improve” other being by sharing their blood and power with what most of them consider “lesser” creatures.  Once the drconic nature is established, it tends to stick within a bloodline showing up in greater or smaller manifestations:

Dragon Descendant

The blood of dragons is strong and even distant descendants of the mighty dragons sometime inherit part of their strength.  Some dragons gather such distant relations to serve them.  Other with draconic blood make their own way with their enhanced strength and abilities.

Dragon descended creatures are highly prized as guardians and fighting beasts.

“Dragon Descendant” is an inherited or acquired template that can be added to any living corporeal creature (such as a beast, humanoid, giant). It keeps its statistics, except as follows.

Challenge: While the CR for this template is a +0, a DM should considered tossing in a few extra experience points for defeating creatures with this template as they are tougher than the base creature just not +1 CR worth.

Senses: The dragon-descendant gains darkvision.

Damage Resistances: The dragon-descendant gains resistance to a type of  elemental damage: acid, cold, fire, lightning or thunder.

Willful: The dragon-descendant has advantage to saving throws against Fear and Sleep effects.

Imbalanced: The Dragon Descendant or reasons not fully understood, the blood of dragon causes an imbalance that makes those that possess it vulnerable to certain magics.  Choose one elemental damage type and one school of magic, the Dragon Descendant must roll a d4 and subtract the number rolled from a saving throw against either.

Notes: To go with yesterday’s Dogs and Dragons and allow the creation of dragon dogs.  Compare and contrast with the Pathfinder version.

The added defenses of the energy resistance and willful is balanced out by the weaknesses embedded in imbalanced, this is to encourage the research of one’s enemies.

Image D.O.G. by midnightveil found on DeviantArt, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

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