I bet you thought we were done with Gem dragons
this month, but no!
Using my sage powers, I have delved into the deleted archives of Wizards of the Coast and
retrieved from the ether the listing for the 3.5 edition Obsidian dragon, thanks to a few
strident requests from devoted fans.
I will not be covering the unusual dragons related to Silver dragons and also called
Obsidian dragons from the Greyhawk world setting, as they are not related to the gem dragons
and are only found on that world, they are basically just a silver dragon variant, a
mutation if you will.
Finding the real Obsidian dragons is not easy though.
Look in vain for the lair of the Obsidian dragon my friend, for you will rarely find
it on any world of the prime material plane, but the same can't be said for the dragons
themselves, as they can turn up just about anywhere, and on any world, that they care
to, which makes them one of the most elusive of the fabled neutral aligned Gem dragons.
With only a single web article published in 2003, written by Scott Brocius and Mark A.
Jindra to answer our questions, I may have to engage in a little bit of speculation and
spin a few ways to make best use of the Obsidian dragon in the Forgotten Realms, and indeed,
any world you care to place them on, in the entire Dungeons & Dragons multiverse.
Obsidian dragons, while the most intelligent of the gem dragons, are also the most vicious.
Typically of Neutral Evil alignment, they are extremely haughty, anger easily, and like
to toy with their prey before finishing them off.
These are also one of the more powerful psionic dragons, with minds every bit as formidable
as fangs, claws and incendiary breath.
Yes, they breathe fire, but we will talk about that in just a moment, so, make yourself comfortable,
grab yourself a tasty beverage, we are about to get deeply nerdy.
When first hatched from their lustrous, pitch-black eggs, the small wyrmlings have scales that
a grey, rough to the touch and quite well defined, then, as they begin to hunt and explore
the world beyond their hidden nest, their scales become darker and progressively smoother,
seeming to blend together until their remarkable hide appears as smooth, lustrous and pitch-black
as the stone they are named after.
Also, it just so happens that the overlapping scales tend to form razor-sharp edges where
their joints come together, again, another trait of the Obsidian stone is its exceptionally
sharp, glass-like edges.
However, the real edge of this breed of dragons is their minds, even when first hatched they
have an intelligence of 15 and this increases as they age and grow.
By the time they have become adults, their intelligence is an astounding 25, and it doesn't
stop there, while none have ever been observed on the planet Toril, a Great Wyrm Obsidian
dragon could potentially reach god-like levels of intellect, with a score of up to 37...
this is almost indescribably smart, it is intelligent enough to be invited into the
infernal palace of Asmodeus to enjoy a challenging game of wits and perhaps help him with some
particularly complex and difficult schemes in exchange for simply ridiculous mountains
of wealth.
Asmodeus would not even attempt to pull any entrapping contract shenanigans with such
a creature, to do so would undoubtedly backfire on him considerably.
Am I hinting very strongly that a Great Wyrm Obsidian dragon is a nigh unbeatable foe?
No, I am outright telling you this is the case... so, the only way left to beat them,
is to ensure they never live long enough to reach their full potential.
Of course, this occurs to them about three minutes after they are hatched and so, they
immediately make use of their innate ability to pass instantly between the Material Plane
and the Inner Planes, vanishing from the world into the remote and lethal inferno of the
elemental plane of fire.
There they make their way to the Mountains of Coal where great numbers of their kind
establish lairs for themselves and range out from there, across the planar borders into
countless different worlds of the prime material plane, building a mental catalogue of suitable
hunting grounds and interesting locations to seek treasure and magical knowledge.
On prime worlds, they will always gravitate towards volcanic zones, as they are perfectly
able to survive in the extreme environment of a churning caldera, slipping through the
mists of vented gases, often flying just ahead of the devastating lava flows, snapping up
fleeing animals and immolating villages in their path, the lava leaving behind no evidence
the dragon was ever there.
The dragon uses this extreme heat to bring its entire body to nearly incandescent temperature
so that even if you could get within striking distance before its jets of flame breath get
you, the radiating heat will boil your flesh within your armor.
The Great Wyrm Obsidian dragons become so adept at planar travel and their understanding
becomes such that they are able to actually generate their own demiplanes using their
impressive psychic power alone, there are reports from one obscure necromantic skull
tome I listened to, deep in the candlekeep crypts and under the watchful eye of the dragon
spirit down there, which told of a great epidemic of terrible nightmares, where a demonic dragon,
like the heart of star cloaked in the blackness of the night sky seemed to usurp the sleepers
power of imagination, stealing their dreams as it were, to make a nightmare realm all
for itself.
Can you imagine the panic spreading among the living people as they awaken to find they
all experienced the same thing?
In truth, the dragon did enter their dreams, within the color wall of the ethereal plane
located at the boundary of the border and deep ethereal zones.
In such rare cases, this sort of thing will seem like a direct challenge to any gold dragon
in the vicinity of those dreamers, which can result in conflicts, but green dragons, who
may also manipulate the dreams of mortal folks near it's lair, will know better to get involved
and just leave well enough alone.
For whatever reason, invoking the attention of an Obsidian dragon is therefore highly
dangerous, they tend to torment other creatures mostly just to amuse themselves so, my advice
is to seek out some high alpine region or head as far north or south as you can until
you reach the lands of endless ice, as Obsidian dragons have an aversion to the deep cold
of such places, taking double damage from any cold-based attacks and suffering great
discomfort in frigid conditions.
Keep in mind though, this will probably only work with adult dragons or younger, the more
ancient dragons will simply cloak themselves in a magical aura of heat, and plane shift
away the moment they are exposed to the chill directly.
A truly determined foe may use some sort of dimensional anchor enchantment on them to
prevent their escape, at which point, the dragon will erupt into a terrible rage and
fight its captor to the death.
Excellent flyers, the dragon will keep its distance and soften up the target by unleashing
breath weapon attacks in the form of great cones of fire, its eyes blazing red orbs and
mouth incandescently hot just add to its highly intimidating appearance.
It will deliberately set fire to any material that will release great plumes of smoke and
ash it can use for enhanced cover from those trying to target it with ranged counterattacks,
meanwhile, it is hurling fireballs and using its mental power to manifest white fire in
a twenty-foot radius anywhere it can see within around 400 feet from its location.
White fire deals 5d4 fire damage to any who fail a dexterity saving throw and will set
fire to any combustible material, even melting metals with a low melting point such as lead,
gold and such.
if they do manage to break the lock on their planar travel, and are of an ancient age category,
they can simply snatch up a victim and transport them directly to the plane of elemental fire,
retreating to simply watch their victim burn to a screaming crisp in the unquenchable fires.
A good way to introduce the Obsidian dragon to your players is to have them plane shift
from deep within the plane of fire and be so hot, their entire body is glowing brightly,
then as they cool, their hide darkens gradually to the deep, lustrous black, just like lava
freshly flowing from a volcano, or some blacksmiths creation, cooling from the heart of the forge.
Getting anywhere nearer than ten feet of the dragon while it is glowing like that is going
to hurt.. not too much, but it will give the dragon a moment to take stock of its surroundings
without having to worry to much about getting a sudden flurry of critical strikes from a
highly trained monk, for example.
That being said, obsidian dragons do not shy away from combat, but they make quick assessments
of the opposition and determine within a couple of rounds whether they can overpower their
foes easily.
If not, they retreat to formulate an ambush or to avoid very powerful foes.
They also learn as they age, to marshal their most abundant resource... fire elementals,
which they can use unique, alien, extraplanar magic to safely contain within themselves
and unleash like a troop transport by simply breathing them out along with a cone of its
own breath weapon.
You can imagine the shock of the players when the cone of flames leaves behind a small mob
of minor fire elementals, perhaps even creatures like the miscreant magmins, racing about,
happily setting fire to everything they can.
It is a rare tactic for the obsidian dragon to snatch an enemy back to their own demiplane
to fight them, but there will be very good reasons for the dragon to do so, and I would
personally restrict this sort of tactic for when you want to snatch away a nearly dead
player character and hold them captive and alive, rather than just reducing them to a
smoking pile of ash and a pair of scorched boots.
Always provide some means for the other characters to somehow get to the dragon's personal demiplane,
its just another encounter location after all, but if they decide not to, have the player
roll up a new character right away and get them back into the game, or better yet, always
have an NPC on hand that a player can take over for a little while if their character
is cut off from the action for an extended period of time, as nobody likes to sit around
with nothing to do.
Why would the obsidian dragon capture a character rather than kill them outright?
Well, amusement, arrogance, or just a divide and conquer strategy, but it may be that the
hyper-intelligent dragon is conducting horrific experiments to try and create its own force
of elementally infused minions, both to protect its hoard while it is away from the office,
or as a squad of elemental storm troopers that it can effectively gate into its location
whenever it runs into more opposition than it expected.
In combat, the Obsidian dragon makes great use of its psionic abilities, and before you
worry to much about handling this in 5th edition, let me just provide the easiest method to
handle it.
While a number of monsters, like Mind Flayers, have been able to use their psionic abilities
since 5th edition’s launch, this has largely taken the form of being able to cast spells
without material, verbal, or somatic components rather than a discrete subsystem of rules.
I am actually fine with this, it makes perfect sense to me that a spellcaster facing off
against a mind mage is going to have real problems countering the psionic manifestations,
not because they can't dispel or counter spell them, but because they can't see any material,
verbal, or somatic components which clue them into what the psychic is about to unleash,
and when you think about it for a moment, this is exactly the advantage a powerful psychic
should have, the psychic is much more like a stealth sorcerer than anything else, so
play them that way.
Looking at the traditional array of psychic powers the dragon has, they are all easy to
convert to existing spell listings, Ectoplasmic wall is close enough to the Web spell, the
firefall manifestation causes an existing source of flame to erupt in a sudden flare
of power that erupts in a blindingly bright hemispherical plume that requires all creatures
in a 60 foot radius to make a dexterity saving throw or take 5d6 fire damage and catch on
fire, also, creatures within 120 ft of the plume must make a wisdom saving throw or become
blinded for 1d4+1 rounds, save ends.
Just set the save DC based on the challenge rating you want for your dragon, easy peasy.
from a young age, Obsidian dragon can cast fireball so, this just seems like they have
learned how to cause a fireball to erupt out of any available fire in their immediate area,
something a master of flames should be able to do really.
Some of the more obscure psionic powers of the ancient obsidian dragons transform them
into excellent recurring enemies, such as the psychic power called Mind Store, basically,
the dragon manifests a storage crystal that, on its physical death, safely contains the
dragons living mind and essence, this crystal should be located back on the elemental planes,
or within the dragons own demiplane of course, and it prevents the dragon's body being either
resurrected or transformed into something like a dracolich, which will really annoy
the cult of the dragon.
This storage crystal is not inert, it becomes the new body of the dragon, who floats around
in it, very annoyed for a while, still able to use telekinesis and telepathy to interact
with its surroundings as it slowly pulls either ectoplasm from the Astral plane or protomatter
from the Ethereal plane into its location over the next ten days and constructs a new
draconic body for itself to transfer back into, during this process, the dragon is highly
vulnerable though as anything destroying that body will also kill the contained mind of
the dragon, killing it permanently.
So, its a psychic phylactery, easy peasy.
Some good guidelines for quick and dirty use of psychic powers is, they are similar to
magic but almost impossible to counterspell, they can be dispelled if they are ongoing,
they usually have a range no greater than 120 feet or so, they require saving throws
and they are usually just variants of existing arcane or divine spell effects anyway.
Obsidian dragons can cloak themselves in psychic mage armor, manifest scorching rays, lots
of different fire effects, I'll do something I rarely do and put a link in the video description
text below back to the D&D Wiki page which lists all the Psion powers from 3.5 edition
D&D so you can just see what they do and figure out your own conversions, its really not that
hard, just remember to always choose the saving throws and damage limits based on the dragon's
Challenge rating and you can't go wrong.
For physical stats, the Obsidian dragon is most similar in size and power to the bronze
dragon, a red dragon would easily kick their tail if it was nothing but a straight-up physical
brawl, but of course, with the obsidian dragon, they would outsmart the red dragon every single
time and their use of both arcane spells and psychic powers is more than a match for most
other dragons, even gold dragons respect just how dangerous Obsidian dragons can be and
tend to give them a wide berth.
It might be different if the obsidian dragons were more active on prime material worlds,
but since they are not, the gold dragons just tend to deal with the consequences of their
infrequent visits, and not the root cause.
Obsidian dragons keep lairs stocked with whatever tickles their fancy, they are more likely
to rest in a lake of molten gold rather than a pile of treasure, they will mount trophies
of all kinds on moulded plinths of obsidian and of course, favour objects that a completely
immune to fire and heat, so, they are unlikely to keep books and scrolls and other traditional
magic items, in any case, they are intelligent enough to simply memorize whatever they read
once and don't need to ever keep a book or scroll.
If they do, for whatever reason, remain on a prime material world for an extended period
of time, their regional effect manifests as increased seismic activity, so, earth tremors,
geothermal features becoming active after many thousands of years of dormancy, and an
increased severity to any outbreaks of fire in either towns or forests within six miles
of their location.
Certainly one of the more obscure and formidable Gem dragons, thanks for the request, my name
is AJ Pickett and I make videos about RPG lore, monsters and exotic locations in the
D&D multiverse, thanks for joining me and as always, I will be back with more for you,
very soon.