I picked up a hard copy of DragMag #65 today for a buck and was reading the article The Missing Dragons. It "officially" details the yellow, orange and purple dragons. (The orange and yellow dragons had been covered previously as slightly different iterations in the Leomund's Tiny Hut column in issue 38.) For some reason, I was stumped when I saw that the orange dragon's bite does "2-23" points of damage. And it took me a minute to figure it out. I'm so used to the idea of adding extra points of damage (e.g., 2-7 is rolled as 1d6+1) that I sat there for a moment and thought... "How the hell do I roll 1d22+1?" Once I phrased the question like that, it didn't take long to figure it out. If you haven't figured it out yet, the answer is 3d8-1.
I can't say I remember seeing that particular dice indication anywhere else. Huh. Why not just 3d8? Thoughts?
As a side note, the orange dragon from issue #38 does only 2d6 bite damage and is 1HD weaker, but is slightly smarter and has a much higher chance of magic use.
"Purple Dragon" as in "the Purple (or Mottled) Dragon is a rare, flightless worm with a venomous sting in its tail."
ReplyDelete... as described in the Fantasy Supplement of Chainmail?
... that in 0e are just called "Purple Worms"
... and then in 1e emerges as more of a "Dune" style worm than a Draconic creature?
.. or is this a re-conceptualized Purple Dragon?
Re-conceptualized. Pretty much your standard dragon in the color purple. (That's in the actual color... purple; not your standard dragon in "The Color Purple" with Danny Glover and Oprah.)
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