Common Green Dragon

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Common Green Dragon (ThreatCR 13)

Pure Evil - Huge - Dragon
Lore: Know (Arcana)
24 41
Basic DC Full DC
Initiative
Initiative Icon 2.png
26
Perception:
35 +25
Passive Active
Ambush:
10+
on a d20

Senses:

Movement Types:

Defense

AC
Shield Icon 3.png
35
Man Def
Shield Icon 3.png
36
Monster Health
1,008 504 25
Hit Points Bloodied Hit Dice
Saving Throws
Fort: +15
Refl: +16
Will: +15

Strong Against:

  • (Threat Role) Immunity (partial 5): Threats are immune to the first five conditions applied to them during an encounter. If a sixth condition is applied to a threat, it is resolved normally. A 'condition' is defined as any non-instantaneous harmful effect applied to the monster, other than damage, but is most commonly one of the defined Status Conditions (but it doesn't have to be). Statuses related to damage (such as injured, bloodied, staggered, dying, or dead) are not 'conditions', and cannot be negated or avoided with this ability.
  • (Dragon 1) Immune (no effect): magical sleep (drowsy, sluggish, asleep), paralyzed, stunned
  • (Dragon 2) Immune (no effect): sonic (energy, common)
  • (Dragon 3) Immune (no effect): fear
  • Immune (no effect): Poison
  • Immune (no effect): Prone
  • (Detached Tails Only) Immune (no effect): all spells, spell-like, and supernatural abilities that require a Will save.
Weak Against:

Offense

Size: Huge
15 ft. 5 ft.
Space Reach
To-Hit
+20
Sword Icon 3.png
Man Off
+23
Sword Icon 3.png
Action
3
Points

Standard Attack (Melee):

  • 1x Virulent Bite +20 (4d10+29/x2)
    as crushing (physical, common)
  • 1x Serpentine Tail +20 (4d10+29/x2)
    as bludgeoning (physical, common)
    affects all enemies in a 2x2 square area, plus: Lancing Strike and Acidic Tail Stinger

Full Attack (Melee):

  • 1x Virulent Bite +20 (4d10+29/x2)
    as crushing (physical, common)
  • 2x Serpentine Tail +20 (4d10+29/x2)
    as bludgeoning (physical, common)
    affects all enemies in a 2x2 square area, plus: Lancing Strike and Acidic Tail Stinger

Standard Attack (Ranged):

Full Attack (Ranged):

Siege Damage: Not siege capable

Statistics

26
STR
33
DEX
21
CON
22
INT
16
WIS
30
CHA

Skills:

Languages: Draconic, Common, Awnsheghlien

Feats:

Special Abilities

Addling Roar (Ex) Standard Action

As a standard action, the dragon may emit an ear-shattering howl of unimaginable power. This is a sonic-based attack that affects all creatures within 100 feet of the dragon's space. The dragon must have line of effect for this power to operate, but does not require line of sight. This power inflicts 4d8+20 of Sonic (energy, common) damage, with a Fort save, DC 23, for half damage.

Terrible Majesty (Su, Fear) Free Action 1/day

Once per day as a free action, the dragon can exude its Terrible Majesty upon all enemy creatures within 100 feet of the dragon's space, forcing them to make a Will save versus a DC of 23. Terrible Majesty requires line of sight, but does not require line of effect. Affected enemy creatures find themselves in the center of a 3x3 cloud of noxious gas, which blocks line of sight for all visual senses. Those creatures which fail the saving throw suffer 4d8+20 points of acid (energy, common) damage, gain the Trembling condition until the end of the encounter, and the pocket of toxic vapors around them persists until the end of the encounter. Beyond the initial damage, the pockets of gas deal no further damage, but continue to block line of sight for visual senses. Those who succeed on the save take only half damage, and are instead Nervous for one round, and their pocket of noxious gas dissipates immediately.

Neither the Trembling nor Nervous conditions caused by Terrible Majesty can be prematurely ended by moving further away from the dragon; they must either be allowed to expire as described above, or cured through some other means.

Acid Cloud Breath (Su) Standard Action

As a standard action, the green dragon aspirates a long hiss, exhaling a cloud of noxious, acidic gas in a 30-foot cone. Creatures caught in the radius of the breath weapon must make a Reflex save, DC 23, or take 4d8+20 points of acid (energy, common) damage. Those who succeed on the save take only half damage.

Furthermore, the cloud lingers on the battlefield until the end of the encounter, dealing an additional 4d6+12 points of acid damage to all creatures within it at the start of each of the dragon's turns. (GM's are encouraged to add the cloud to the initiative order just before the dragon, to help remember this damage effect).

Last, all creatures inside the cloud gain partial concealment (automatically miss on a natural result of a 6 or less on the d20) against any other creature who relies on sight-based senses for targeting. Because of its blindsense ability, the green dragon ignores this concealment. Green dragons can use this partial concealment to initiate a Stealth stance instead of needing total concealment, though they must follow all other rules for Stealth.

Coiling Roll (Ex) Swift Action 1/Rnd

As a swift action up to once per round, the dragon may use Coiling Roll to move up to double its Walk speed (40 feet) and end its move in a space occupied by one or more creatures, instead of having to end its move in an unoccupied space. Creatures who are in one or more of the spaces where the dragon ends this move action are moved to any square adjacent to the dragon's current space (the dragon chooses which space this is), following the standard rules for Forced Movement, as the dragon twists and rolls in a roiling, serpentine ball. Additionally, affected creatures must make a Reflex save, DC 23, or take 4d6+12 points of bludgeoning (physical, common) damage and be knocked Prone. Anyone knocked prone by this damage (those who failed their save) who wish to resist the forced movement by voluntarily falling prone are Splayed (since they are already prone). Creatures who succeed on their save take no damage and are not knocked prone, but they are still subject to the forced movement.

If a character somehow fully resists the dragon's forced movement and chooses to remain in the dragon's space, neither the character nor the dragon are considered squeezing (see Stepover and Internal Flanking). Note that the Serpentine Tails of the dragon can take advantage of these internal flanks as though they were separate creatures.

The forced move, damage and prone effects only apply to any creatures who occupy one or more of the squares where the dragon ENDS the move action. Furthermore, Coiling Roll can only be used by the dragon if it begins and ends its move on the ground (it may not use Coiling Roll with its Brachiating or Greater Flight movement speeds). Finally, Coiling Roll can never be used more than once per round, regardless of how many swift actions or action points the dragon uses in a given round.

Coiling Roll provokes attacks of opportunity as with normal movement, unless the dragon is stealthed at the time it uses it. If so, the dragon loses stealth at the end of the Coiling Roll action, since Coiling Roll is an attack.

Serpentine Tails (Ex) Special
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Green dragons usually have at least two tails by default, as part of their standard Threat role monster. However, if they are not a Threat, depending on party size, a green dragon may have more or less than two tails, based on the Henchmen rules. A party with four or fewer PCs would encounter a "normal" Threat-class Green Dragon, which has 2 tails, whereas a party of 5 PCs would encounter a green dragon with 3 tails, etc. There is no limit to the number of tails a green dragon could theoretically possess.

Each Serpentine Tail possesses the following characteristics:

  • Each tail contains its own set of sensory organs granting it Blindsense 60 ft.
  • Each tail is treated as a separate creature for purposes of targeting, being targeted, and hit points. Indeed, the hit points of the tails must be tracked separately for each tail, and the dragon's hit points are tracked separately from that. GM's should assign a number to each of the tails during the encounter, to let the players more clearly attack the tail they want.
  • If any tail is damaged while the dragon's body is alive, the tail takes only half damage from the attack (round up), with the other half going to the dragon's body (round down). It is entirely possible to kill one or more of a green dragon's tails before you kill the dragon itself (and, indeed, is actually a great tactic!). Once a tail is detached from its host dragon, it takes full damage from attacks as normal.
  • While the host dragon lives, Serpentine Tails share all of its host dragon's characteristics, such as its senses, movement types, defenses and immunities.
  • Serpentine Tails also share the space of the host dragon until the dragon's body is slain, at which point they are split into distinct, size-large creatures, each with their own independent movement and attacks. (See Detach Tails, below, for details).
  • When a serpentine tail attacks, it is treated as having inclusive reach 40 feet, but only for attacks made during the dragon's (or the detached tail's) turn.
  • Attacks of opportunity, or other attacks made outside of the dragon's turn do not gain the benefit of this inclusive reach, and are instead limited to the dragon's normal reach (5 feet).
  • This inclusive reach is neither movement nor a ranged attack, so it does not provoke attacks of opportunity.
  • When a serpentine tail attacks, it targets a 2x2-square area within its reach, and makes an attack roll against each enemy creature in that area. Damage is rolled only once for all creatures struck by the attack.
  • Successful hits by a serpentine tail can also inflict Acidic Venom, which is injected by the barbed spine on the end of the tail.

Acidic Tail Stinger (Ex, Poison) Automatic after successful tail attack

Any successful attack by a serpentine tail also has a chance to inject a flesh-dissolving venom into its target(s):

Stinger Venom    (Injury vector; Poisoned intensity)
Save: Fort DC 23;     Frequency: 1/round for 3 rounds
Effect: 1d4 DEX Damage, and a 13 point Ruptured as Acid (energy, common) damage
Fruition: Target gains a vulnerability to Acid (energy, common) damage
Fruition Duration: permanent until cured
Acidic Venom is injected any time one of the serpentine tails hits a target, regardless of whether the tail is attached or detached from its dragon host.

Detach Tails (Ex; Threat Role) Auto Upon Death

The first time that the dragon is reduced to zero or fewer hit points, the dragon collapses to the ground and dies. During this time, any damage or status conditions applied to the dragon or its tails deal no damage and cannot inflict new status conditions or ongoing effects. At the start of the dragon's next turn, all of the currently surviving Serpentine Tails are healed to full hit points, and burst from the dragon's body in a gory spectacle, each of them landing in a space anywhere within 50 feet of the dragon's corpse (this is treated as forced movement, and does not provoke attacks of opportunity). The separated tails coil and thrash about, continuing to behave as independent creatures, except with limited mobility. If the dragon was suffering from any status conditions when it was slain, those conditions are immediately cleared from the surviving tails.

Tails which were already slain before the dragon activates Detach Tail remain slain.

Detached tails each have Blindsense 60 ft., ensuring the tails remain dangerous even after the dragon is slain, detaching from the dragon's body and thrashing about with spasmodic abandon and unimpaired accuracy. However, a Serpentine Tail has no mind of its own, so it will indiscriminately attack all non-dragon creatures in its vicinity if the host dragon dies. (Other detached tails are considered dragons for purposes of this targeting.)

Detached tails have the following movement types: Walk 20 ft., Brachiating 20 ft. They lose all of the dragon's other senses and movement types, but retain its other immunities, and additionally become immune to spells, spell-like, and supernatural abilities which require a Will save (since they are mindless).

Detached tails can still attack, making use of their inclusive reach 40' (but only during their own turns, not for attacks of opportunity). They can still also inject Acidic Venom on a successful hit.

When the dragon's body is slain, any unspent action points are lost. Don't let this happen to you!

Optional: GM's looking for a recurring Green Dragon villain could make the Detach Tail ability voluntary (1 swift action per tail), allowing the dragon to leave behind a distraction and escape using stealth and flight. Regrowing a detached tail should take some appropriately long time (at minimum, a full night's rest), giving the dragon plenty of time to fester with rage and a need for vengeance on the party that did this to him.

Common Green Dragon

Common Green Dragon

This creature possesses the Threat role, and therefore counts as 4 monsters for purposes of encounter size, XP award, and treasure.

This monster frequently has the Threat role, but may be set to other roles if desired.

Dragons are so different from every other creature that they have their own unique classification. They have four legs, although the front 'feet' are dexterous enough to serve quite well as hands. They also have two or more completely functional wings, and they are powerful and speedy fliers. They have a large and dexterous prehensile tail, and seeing a monster as big as a dragon hanging from a branch is a sight you will remember for the rest of your life, however long that might be.

Dragons are intelligent and terribly alien. What a dragon considers important is not what other races consider important. They are also frequently, but not always, intensely malign. Some rare dragons may be allies with lesser races (all races are lesser to a dragon, as they see it) or even genuine friends to others. Most dragons, even those traditionally considered "good," are vain and jealous things, consumed with petty grievances and cruel enough to punish every slight, no matter how small or imaginary.

Dragons will hunt at great distances. Due to their powerful and magically enhanced metabolisms, dragons need to eat far less than would seem 'natural' for a beast their size. Rather than a blessing, this is a terrible curse upon the world, because things as awful as dragons should be rare, and, as the name "common red" might imply, they are not. Even worse, since dragons need far less food than is natural, they tend to be horrifically picky eaters, and have been known to kill an entire herd of cows to find the tastiest one, or rampage through an entire town looking for the prettiest maiden.

Dragons also have a tendency to 'play' with their food in most terrible ways. If you want to rescue that prettiest maiden, best to be quick about it. It is often speculated that dragons are deliberately wretched in their behavior, in order to force would-be dragon-slayers into action 'before they're ready', and so increase the dragon's long-term safety. Indeed, many dragons are far too intelligent and clever for their own good. There are hundreds of stories of adventurers taunting dragons into foolish actions, and it is true that, in a battle, it is hard for a dragon to take any 'lesser' race seriously. In a dragon's mind, the only creatures worthy of consideration, much less respect, are other dragons.

The world belongs to the dragons. The rest of us just live here.

Dragons tend to be categorized into loose species-groups based upon their physical appearance and traits. Most common among these are the white, black, blue, green, red chromatic dragons, followed closely by the bronze, copper, silver, gold and platinum metallic dragons. Other species groups exist, such as the earth dragons (brown, gray, yellow, and ocher), the spirit dragons (force, prismatic, empyrean, and tellurian) the gem dragons (crystal, onyx, jade, sapphire, ruby and amber), the drifting dragons (cloud, mist, shadow, sand, and dust), and the tempered dragons (iron, steel, mithril and adamant), to name the most common. In addition there are many odd dragons which defy categorization, such as coiled dragons, nested dragons, radiant dragons, sea dragons, celestial dragons, star dragons, moon dragons, sun dragons, fairy dragons, and many, many more besides.

While the physical appearance of the dragon is the easiest means of distinguishing them from one another, a dragon's coloration isn't a drab monochrome. Green dragons, for example, are mottled with browns, tans and olive colors in addition to their base green color, allowing them to effortlessly blend into flora-rich environments. While they prefer forests and other areas with ubiquitous flora, green dragons can be found nearly anywhere.

Green dragons are unique in several ways from other traditional dragons. First, while they are quite competent fliers, they are also absurdly quick climbers, able to slither through forest branches with terrible grace. Second, they always have at least two tails (and sometimes more than two), each carrying a straight, poisoned barb on the end. While in motion, the tails do not appear disproportionately long, but in combat, they can stretch them to startling lengths attacking distant foes with surgical precision.

Combat Tactics

Like many dragons, green dragons are ambush predators, preferring to hide in trees and surprise their enemies with tail attacks in any surprise round they might get. This sets off their Terrible Majesty aura, and if the creatures run instead of standing to fight, the dragon will stay in the trees, following its prey and kill it with Addling Roar and Serpentine Tail attacks from range.

If its prey stands and fights, however, they will use their first round to breathe their acid cloud to gain concealment, spend an action point to charge their foes, and then use their remaining move action to make a coiling roll attack, now that they're on the ground.

Subsequent rounds will primarily consist of full attack actions whenever possible. The second action point can be spent to expand the area of effect of the acid cloud by breathing a second time, or to use Addling Roar to soften up the prey even more.

Green dragons are smart predators, but vastly arrogant, and unlikely to flee from a battle they are losing. If a fight starts to go poorly, they might use stealth to reposition themselves to better advantage, but they will probably fight to the death, assuming that lesser creatures have no chance of actually accomplishing that.

Out of Combat

Green Dragons are both more solitary and more social than most dragons. Thanks to their coiling semi-sentient tails, they have no need or desire for standard henchmen...which means that they like having people to talk to...sometimes.

Green Dragons will have Maenads or Hags or even Drow and Duergar or some of the various reptilians or ophidians as uncomfortable neighbors, just to have somebody to lord it over. Some green dragons will even start to feel rather possessive toward such 'friends', which can lead to weirdly unprovoked attacks on heroes fighting what seems like completely unrelated monsters.

All of which makes green dragons unpredictable foes, at the best of times.

Rewards

XP: 102,400 (Threat role included.)

Treasure: Sellable Goods worth 88,125 gp. (Threat role and Dragon bonus included, which is 5 greater than normal for this CR.)

Weight: 520 lbs.     Volume: 20.8 cu. ft.

Optional Treasure Rules: Roll a d20 on Table 1 below once per encounter (NOT per creature). Any items discovered are in addition to the normal treasure for the encounter.

Table 1: Remnant(s) Found
1 - 5 Nothing Found
6 - 10 1 Languid Remnant (tier 1)
11 - 14 1 Pale Remnant (tier 2)
15 - 17 1 Bright Remnant (tier 3)
18 - 20 Roll on Table 2
### Nothing to see here!
### Or here. Move along.
Table 2: Remnant(s) Found
1 5 Languid Remnants (tier 1)
2 - 5 5 Pale Remnants (tier 2)
6 - 10 1 Intense Remnant (tier 4)
11 - 14 1 Blazing Remnant (tier 5)
15 - 17 1 Vital Remnant (tier 6)
18 - 20 Roll on Table 3
### Or here. Move along.
Table 3: Remnant(s) Found
1 5 Bright Remnants (tier 3)
2 5 Intense Remnants (tier 4)
3 - 6 5 Blazing Remnants (tier 5)
7 - 10 5 Vital Remnants (tier 6)
11 - 14 1 Prime Remnant (tier 7)
15 - 17 1 Mythic Remnant (tier 8)
18 - 20 1 Empyrean Remnant (tier 9)