I've raised the DC on Euphoria Breath and expanded it to a modest 30 foot cone. It speaks the standard Draconic and Sylvan, but I've added Giant since I suspect such an old creature might have been around when giants ruled the fairy plane. (Ancients have roughly 11 times the hp of wyrmlings.) fly speed to reflect the baby version's crazy mobility and to feed into a hit-and-run fighting style. I scaled these using Black Dragons (Wyrmlings to Ancients) as the guide since they're the most lithe of the ordinary dragons. Scaled up from the default Faerie Dragon, an Ancient has the following ability scores. Even better if they dovetail nicely with its Superior Invisibility skill. So we need attacks and actions that convey the feeling of this dragon being lightning fast and precise, rather than gigantic and powerful. Starting from a tiny creature with 3 strength, even a scaled up ancient is probably going to top out at large or huge with strength below that of your average Fighter of the same level. Replace/abandon the traditional dragon attacks and legendary actions, because they're built on the idea of throwing around your weight and power. Use the existing dragons as a guideline for how their ability scores might scale.Įxpand the Violet Fairy Dragon's innate spellcasting to continue the theme of a powerful magical trickster, but with some options to complement its abilities in combat. Make it feel unique and awe-inspiring rather than just a re-skin of the existing dragons. Make a creature that can stand on its own in combat.
That leaves me with a few challenges and goals:
Unfortunately, our default Faerie Dragons are CR 1 or 2 creatures who mostly exist to be fun nuisance creatures or support casters for an actual threat. I'm doing a Feywild campaign where I want to have a big Faerie Dragon that's grown bloated and powerful hoovering up planar energies pouring through a Fey Crossing.