Comparing Fizban's Treasury of Dragons and The Game Master's Book of Legendary Dragons

[@SupergeekMike]

Which feature in either of these books sounds the most interesting to you? Thanks so much to OnlyCrits for sponsoring this video! Visit www.onlycrits.com/supergeekmike and use the promo code SUPERGEEK at checkout to save 12% off of your order! www.onlycrits.com/supergeekmike

[@PeterFendrich]

I'm a huge dragon fan, So so I snagged the collector's edition of Fizban's Just out of a matter of wanting to give my dollar towards anything that gets more high quality dragon content out there. But, I actually wasn't expecting all that much as I've been underwhelmed by WotC's official content for a long time, not to say that there's not good parts in pretty much every book that they've brought out, but just overall there haven't been a whole lot of books that have just really sold me cover to cover. Fizban's actually became that book. This is probably one of the few official WotC 5e books that as I was reading through it, I felt like, it doesn't matter what system I'm playing, or what addition of D&D is out, this book has stuff I can use in it... Obviously it's designed for 5th edition D&D, but so many of these charts and game running tools are so compelling and so useful, I keep this book at the table with me when I'm running a Fantasy AGE, GURPS, etc game... Anything that has the potential for a dragon showing up, this book has immediate gamemable information in. For me it was easily one of the few "must own" official 5th edition books.

[@SmilingTomatoes101]

Everything needs more dragons. Flying dinosaur guys. Tiny scaley pets. Politicians hiding their lizardness. Love them all.

[@2g33ksgamingttv3]

I have both and also The Draconomicon (a 5e reprint from DMs guild) which has a bunch of new spells and magic items, it has some cool dragon lair traps and hazards, additional combat options like adding swallow attacks, tables for dragon minions, lists of suggested innate spellcasting spells for different themes of dragons, and a bunch of information on everything from dragon eggs to religion to how to properly prepare meat from different types of dragons, and even a bunch of dragon related truth and rumor tables. All three books have really helped expand the potential of dragons in my campaign

[@inspirationfollows9692]

I really like this style of video, being able to compare strengths and weaknesses of both official WotC books and 3rd party products. Hope to see more like this in the future!

[@coolgreenbug7551]

My favorite monster(s) from Fizban's are the Dragonflesh Grafter and Abomination. I love the idea of someone trying to become a dragon, not by using polymorph or that one clone spell hack you hear online, but by attaching dragon parts to themselves or eating dragonflesh and coming out wrong

[@andyspillum3588]

I love it, when I was a kid (late 70's-80's) we always had at least one dragon in every campaign. Though I did always want to do a specific dragon gang/group as the BBG's campaign that's why I totally, actually shed tears, when I figured out what "Vox Machina" was about.

[@Temudhun]

2:11 There's actually a third Jet Li in the One, not mentioning those that don't appear on screen.

[@Zr0din]

OMG a Comparison Video!! Thank you!!! This is what we need! So many overlapping books that don't work together! WHY don't more of you KZbinrs do this! This is really important. There is a lot of (expecially 3rd party stuff) that we can't see at our local book store or FLGS! Too many of us are being told to buy BLIND!!! Campaign Builders: Cities and Towns (Kobold) vs Spectacular Settlements (Nord) - Campaign Builders: Castles and Crowns (Kobold) vs StrongHolds and Followers (MCDM) - Game Master's Book of Traps and Puzzles (Media Lab) vs Treacherous Traps (Nord) - Scarlet Citadel (Kobold) vs Dungeon of the Mad Mage (WotC) vs Rultmoork (AAW) - Dangerous Destinations (Nord) vs Fantastic Locations (SlyFlourish) - At least 20 different major monster books So many options. Please continue this activity! Sorry, this is a long running rant with me.

[@93techie]

I picked up Game Master's Book of Legendary Dragons and one of the things that stood out to me was the CRs of some of the dragons do not match their flavor text in the slightest. For example: Xylaarion, the Shackled Queen is described as "a dragon so terrifying she birthed all other dragons" and "the godmother of all evil that has ever been willed into the world". Surely this monster must be represented by an absolutely epic CR, I say to myself. Then I flipped the page and saw... "Challenge 24 (62,000 XP)". Surely that can't be right, I think to myself, and flip to the monster manual to compare to that, only to find that the "godmother of all evil" is apparently no more powerful than your bog standard Ancient Red. That alone made me put the book down and walk away from it, so I'm glad you're making this video so I can be motivated to look at it again.

[@jasonreynolds423]

I'm a huge fan of dragons and giants. It makes me so sad that we only get like 2 subclasses of each and very little magic from both.

[@mcinc.1003]

Fun fact, the black cat is a reference to a Thor myth. Uthgrad loki I believe.

[@dolphin64575]

I've only ever used the main 3 D&D books, but rolling for plot on this dragon adventure is so cool! Watching you make connections makes me want to do it, now.

[@ALusty]

I forgot I had these books! I’m starting a very dragon oriented campaign and absolutely need to use them. What blows my mind is that I accidentally named one of the higher status dragons one or two letters off from the mummy dragon!

[@RyanZibell]

My local public library happened to have the game masters book a couple weeks ago and I've been loving the artwork!

[@SupergeekMike]

The art in that book is so incredible 🔥

[@WonderfulWorldofDarklord]

Thanks for the comparison! There's so much 3rd party stuff it's hard to get a handle on it, and this is a great, focused product presentation in the context people would want it for their games. I *love* that so many of the plot hooks and factions include "why did this get active all of a sudden," and I need to remember that for my own world building. As for the "Dragons having echos in the multiverse" thing in Fizbans, it has the obvious benefits of allowing Dragons and dragon accessories to be switched around from setting to setting, but I think its also to be able to answer the question "Are Takhisis and Paladine from Dragonlance the same as Tiamat and Bahamut?" With the answer "yes, and also no."

[@mkang8782]

I appreciate the information and broad(ish) strokes of both books. Listening to you discuss the "Legends" book brought to mind both the "How to Train Your Dragon" movies (especially with the variety), but, also a movie from the 80's, "Dragonslayer". Both are fantastic sources for campaign bits.

[@magnusflodberg6162]

Fizban's also say you can bathe the weopon in the dragons blood after slaying it to increase it's power...just saying...

[@Neophoia]

Having played in campaigns where we players play as dragons, and the wild shifting in morality between dragon to dragon is something I feel is very fun. I've seen many people (outside of said campaigns) play chromatic dragons as simply pillaging and burning things to ground villains, while they play metallics as goody-two shoes with little depth. I didn't really feel that Fizban's was good at explaining the fact that dragons don't share human morality. We've had a lot of fun going for the "ok but what does my dragon prefer to eat. Do they have something they refuse to eat? Does humanoids giving tribute to them result in them getting offended when it's a thing they don't enjoy? How does getting offended cause the dragon to react?" questions. So many times we see in popculture how cultists offer up some other humanoid/s to the dragon as food, but what if said dragon refuses to eat anything that has a spoken language. Or refuse to eat anything that is land dwelling. There are even dragons that might not eat organic matter at all, instead consuming only minerals such as metal or gemstones. Oh and all dragons that have been played in campaigns like this have then been delegated to be able to use by DM's (me and another person in group co-dm stuff. Reduces risk of one person being "forever dm") in any other campaign we want to use them for. But since we've had hours of either seeing somebody play said dragon, or played them ourselves, we have gotten far more interesting ones that actually feel alive. Oh and we literary have family trees of dragons. which is really fun world building.

[@pimpbisquick7036]

😅😅😅😊😊😊😊

[@wolfox7776]

As a friend of mine always says: Dragons make everything better. And honestly, I can only agree.

[@TimonSaarneva]

I have legendary dragons and, despite being cool i found the dragons given at the start were more worldbuilding/lore than something a party would fight. as for the draken, it is a cool idea but shouldn't be a playable race, depending on your mutation rolls you could end up outshining the party in every way or being the annoying character who needs rescuing every 5 seconds.

[@FrostSpike]

As an aside, in Glorantha, the Runequest setting, mundane dragons i.e. the dreadful physical forms that people would generally encounter, are merely the dreams of sleeping true dragons (in much the same way that beholders dream others into being in D&D) which are the size of small mountain ranges. You don't hunt them. The Dragonkill Wars are named for what the dragons did, not what they suffered. (If you like detailed fantasy settings, take a look at Glorantha.)

[@ilmari1452]

I'm definitely a fan of Fizban's. I bought it for a bit of material for a homebrew campaign in the forgotten realms setting (a rare foray into official material, but the campaign was a tribute to the old Icewind Dale games). I ended up using a whole lot more than I expected - there was a whole side plot of a deep dragon who recruited the party to rescue her child from Illithids, and they ended up forging a real friendship that saw her helping out in the final conflict (against a black greatwyrm, of course). Love those lair and horde tables as well. Fizban's is lending to a new canpaign now, too, with the party's biggest benefactor secretly being an ancient dragon turtle that doesn't want its home island destroyed by human conflict, but doesn't want to draw attention to itself and its horde by acting openly. Fizban's guide really gives a lot of ideas and tips for featuring dragons as neutral or even allied actors in a campaign.

[@SummerOtaku]

Hate to age myself but does anyone under 30 know what nails on a chalkboard sound like? I know I grew up with a chaulkboard but I do think they were switching to whiteboard/wipeboards by the time I hit college in the early 2000s. Talk about generational healing! No log on internet noise, no nails on chaulkboard unless they watched Sister Act 2…

[@Cassapphic]

I really like the way ffxiv handles a semi take on space dragons way more than dnd's version fist world stuff. In ffxiv dragons come from a different planet known as the dragonstar, the planet was ravaged in a war with omicrons, a colonial expansionist race of space robots, most of the dragons died there or gave up trying to fight, while one dragon, midgardsormr, took his clutch of eggs and fled, flying across the rift of space to find a safe planet to land, he picks Etheirys the planet the game is set on, and raises his clutch there who are known by the people as the first brood due to all being descended from the father of all dragons on this planet, it succeeds in giving dragons this aspect of alien otherworldliness while still allowing them to just be dragons and the game does a lot with both angles.

[@DesignatedTank]

“Semi spoilers for Campaign 1” My character in a current running campaign has a maul from Vorugals horde using Fizbans. Backstory for getting it is he fought a band of mercenaries who were collecting items in the ruins of Draconia and he got it at its current stirring state. Not sure how I plan to get it stronger but I love the narrative of it.

[@Cassapphic]

5:40 I was rewatching this video while I was doing a few other things and heard this and had an idea for how to justify this, tie it to the eastern myth of dragon inverse scales. In places like japan and china, as part of their dragon myth, dragons have a weak point in one scale pointing the opposite direction from the other scales they have that if yu touch will either drastically harm and/or anger them depending on depiction. The platinum scarf could have 3 scales embedded in the opposite way so that they are mroe loose and able to be removed, and the enchantment on those scales has them regrowing overnight.

[@Lurklen]

I really like Fizbahn's! It feels light compared to earlier works in previous editions, but it had lots of good stuff (with some notable gaps as you point out). But one big thing I felt was missing, was a table in each dragon's section where I could roll up likely minions. Would save me a lot of time and puzzling.

[@JazzyBassy]

A few of the connected creature charts are flavored as minions or allies, but yeah, I think they should have made standalone allies, minions, and rivals charts

[@Lurklen]

@@JazzyBassy It feels very in line with the purpose of the book, and it's just handy to have a list to roll off of or riff on instead of pouring through the hoards and hoards of monsters and creatures and pondering what monsters would work best. Rivals is a great add I hadn't thought of, but that would be super helpful.

[@Miss_Functional]

I have owned both these books for quite some time and I do enjoy both of them greatly! I will say fizban's generally fits my gming style more (I dont tend to just drag and drop npc, monsters, plots into my games) but I love Legendary Dragons cause it lives up to it name by making all the dragons in the book LEGENDARY! Also as a side note I also hate the multiverse plotline in fizban's. It feels even weirder that it is trying to imply that whatever world we make is also a part of it like why?

[@manueltorresart2345]

This is the kind of content that hooks us to add more dragons. There aren't enought dragons in my campaign. That demon king now it's a dragon!!!

[@bsparky01]

Sorry, just had to do it.. (in the cadence of the Canadian national anthem) Oth-kan-a-dusk! A mighty dragon fiend! True anxiety at the sight of its command. With scales of green we see thee rise, Above the trees and flee! From far and wide, Oth-kan-a-dusk, we stand on guard of thee!

[@SupergeekMike]

Lol as soon as I finished editing I realized what it sounded like 😂

[@dsfdotnet]

cool. wasn't sure which one I wanted to use and adapt to my game definitely getting the game masters book.

[@tymemaster]

I bought fizban's for the dragon monk but I'm always looking for more dragon books

[@2g33ksgamingttv3]

I do find it interesting mike that you said you dont like psionics which is 100% fair but one of the dragons you specifically called out as liking, Naghi the stone dragon has psionics

[@andyspillum3588]

Wholly Blank Blank! That Flail! Man my please please list for my GM's getting huge, when I actually find one, I'm going to have to either drip feed, like every time I see them, or just dump them all up front with presents (like maybe a couple used dragon books I saw in a video)

[@andyspillum3588]

^^ and dice, always dice ^^

[@bernadmanny]

''Jet Li in _The One_ the bad Jet Li, not the good Jet Li'' now that's a deep cut 👍

[@starscream71288]

I have to say, the segues to your sponsor ads just keep getting better.

[@tomjordan1170]

Personally I enjoy gem dragons for their unpredictability, not conforming to either the generally good or evil natures of metallic or chromatic dragons, respectively, whilst still having high intelligence and danger.

[@mileslugo6430]

I find the dragon stuff for Eberron kind of lacking so Fizban's sounds like a good supplement.

[@coolman4202]

I love dragons! This is an exciting video thanks for making it!

[@SLorraineE]

Do I have any intentions of buying these books? No. Have I ever actually played D&D? No. Do I enjoy watching these videos anyway? Absolutely!!!

[@Stephen-Fox]

...At least with D&D's more restrained set of player abilities - particularly for starting characters - it's unlikely any player's going to take the 'all worlds span out of the first world, even your homebrew game world' too literally and insist they come from an alternate world, which is my fundamental problem with GURPS Infinite Worlds meta-setting. But it comes way too close to that for me to have as charitable a position on it as you have. 7:55 - Who doesn't enjoy getting into Dragons

[@urktheturtle2988]

I dont think the idea of items becoming magic from being in a dragons horde, and dragons seeking out magic items, are mutually exclusive concepts... I think that it depends on the item, and the dragon. And I could certainly see magic items being corrupted by a dragons presence. The better way of having an item level up from interacting with dragons though, is simply to touch a dragons blood I would think... And even benevolent dragons could in some way bless these same weapons I would think.

[@TheAwsomeKing77]

7:46 I’m actually doing something similar to this though not tied to dragons As a part one of the players started with this lance wich was later revealed to be a piece of a god and as the players find more pieces of the god the lance can do more things

[@DJBlackNGold]

Played Hold My Beer. Actually pretty fun.

[@Vaati1992]

"There are two Jet Lis in The One" is just such a sentence of all time. Anyway, commenting early, this is a good concept for a video on its face, and I totally get not having a detailed feel for balance. In fact thanks to looking into the OSR "movement" (and not agreeing with a sizable chunk of it, even beyond the social reactionaries and free speech absolutists that inhabit parts of that "movement"), I really noticed how balance is actually not a thing you can account for. At all. All while recognizing that CR in Fifth Edition is still a broken tool because it fails at even the attempt of encounter balance that is being made.

[@SummerOtaku]

I bought the second book in anxious anticipation for our local DM saying he was going to start a dragon rider campaign and referenced the book. Man I started making a character and backstory but the game has no sign of starting yet 4 months later 😅 by the time this game gets going I’m prob going to want to try a totally different character and reread the book. That said getting the book just for the class feels a little weak since I suspect he’s going to home brew some things anyway and the info isn’t that many pages or all that interesting to read. 😅

[@scotmcpherson]

Thinking actually, could be either jet li, or both of them.

[@f.a.santiago1053]

Thanks for the review.

[@SupergeekMike]

My pleasure!

[@isoknis]

I use both a lot, I love them.

[@bristowski]

This is a good channel. I like Mike.

[@FrostSpike]

20:13 No-one has any control over the circumstances of their birth. Apart from reincarnating godlings, perhaps.

[@SupergeekMike]

Lol I thought about that as I was working on the video. I still think the point stands about the fantasy players can fulfill with this ancestry, but it is sort of an obvious thing about MOST people lol

[@tymemaster]

I mean the dragon lore of fizban is very Alduin from skyrim

[@tkp3751]

Wait... so you don't like it when items in direct contact with a dragon, being in its horde, become magical because of the dragon's inherent magic, but you love it when people within the regional effects do become half-dragons for the same reason? I think you have a contradiction there that you need to consider. I could understand if you didn't like how horde items are implemented, or you suggested that more people are naturally draconic sorcerers, but "items because proximity bad, half-dragons because proximity good" does really work out well.

[@SupergeekMike]

I think it’s mainly because the act of putting items you’ve already got into a hoard after you’ve killed a dragon feels so unnatural. It’s the kind of thing a character would only do because they know that putting a magic item in a hoard for 8 hours makes it more magical, even if the dragon just died. The fact that it players can do it for a few hours after the dragon dies also gives me big “this technically still counts!” energy. On the other hand, if the influence of a dragon’s lair is wide enough and they live somewhere long enough, someone nearby is going to have a baby, that’s a very natural thing to happen. And the depiction of that as an unforeseen side effect of living near a dragon also opens up a lot more story potential for GMs and players. I mean, you’re obviously right that it’s somewhat arbitrary, but that’s my rational behind why one feels more interesting and compelling than the other.

[@optimus2200]

I laughed so hard that the dragon name was karen XD XD XD

[@PharaohofAtlantis]

I've always liked dragons being large, magical, scaly cats. I'm not a huge fan of them being shapeshifting wizards and power leaders being secret dragons. I also kind of think Dragonborn are dumb! ...this is why I homebrew my stuff, I have strong opinions on fantasy.

[@ItMeansSun]

I prefer these vids over the critical role demystified, just putting it out there

[@SupergeekMike]

I’m glad to hear it! I love making both types but I’m obviously glad to hear that not everyone is just here for CRD ☺️

[@coolgreenbug7551]

I have no game, and I have both books

[@urktheturtle2988]

wtf are poitns of light XD

[@bryanduncan6954]

Oh no if you don’t like psionics the new phandilin book must be a let down for you

[@SupergeekMike]

Lol I haven’t picked it up yet, and I DO like mind flayers and I know they’re in the book, but yeah we’ll see how I feel whenever I read the full adventure 😂

[@RottenRogerDM]

My review of fizban. Group Buy or Dragon lovers only 3 out 5 stars For Adventure League people, just buy one copy for the group. The new lair actions are interesting but some things came close to padding. Dragon x. lair map some charts. Dragon y same thing. If you do love dragons or are a new homebrew DM this is must buy. Otherwise it a Christmas present for someone who loves dragon.

[@RottenRogerDM]

Using dragon parts as material components, Lawerence Watt-Evans Ethshar series book 4 The Blood of a Dragon has an interesting take on dragon hunting. The Esthar series is generally Jr High school level reading.