Dragonlance Free Monstrous Compendium Volume II Includes Dragon Highlord Verminaard

Over on D&D Beyond you can grab a copy of Dragonlance Creatures, the second digital official Monstrous Compendium volume. This volume includes entries from the original Dragonlance Chronicles storyline of the 1980s, such as Dragon Highlord Verminaard (at CR 17!) and his dragon, Ember, along with the Forest Master (the unicorn from Darken Wood) and others.

Claim Monstrous Compendium Vol. 2: Dragonlance Creatures now! - D&D Beyond

www.dndbeyond.com

WotC did the same with Spelljammer, with Volume 1 of the Monstrous Compendium.

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[Micah Sweet]

Now that I'm reading the entries more closely - Ember and Verminaard are just a hugely nasty combo! Verminaard is immune to fire, so he can just stand there (well, more likely moving around using Tactical Movement) and bash the group while Ember can fly by using his breath weapon at will without worrying about hitting Verminaard, while Ember can benefit from Verminaard's Draconic Command when not using his breath weapon. Ember can send characters running in fear and knock them prone, and Verminaard can blind them. All the while shrugging off spells with legendary resistance. Any DM could re-skin them very easily to make a truly formidable dual final bosses for a campaign.

They actually state in the novels that despite their mutual animosity, the two make a good team.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Shame it's not a PDF, but I expected that. Time to see if I can find a good way to export (print to PDF is rather subpar).

Copying them offline manually now.

 

[Weiley31]

Ember can also be refluffed as any other Chromatic Dragon if say you needed some Green Dragon boss that breathes Acid. Heck, you can even jack the Dracolich template from the Monster Manual and slap it on Ember to make a Dracolich that can kill something if the victim's HP is reduced to 0.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Quite so. More to the point, it's pretty hard to imagine how a party of ~7th level PCs are ever going to take on Verminaard.

This re-imagning of Verminaard as a CR17 boss is a difficult thing to make work in the classic DL campaign in terms of its power curve. I suppose there are other ways to approach that tale. I'd love to see WotC try.

He was the strongest of the Highlords other than Ariakas. In the novels when he was beaten Ember and him were heavily harmed by another dragon who knocks Verminaard off Ember into a big fall, where the Heroes then ganged up on him.

In the Modules Ember is taken out a bit before Verminaard, and there is a bunch of chaos that involves Verminaard getting hit in the face with hammer and falling into a pit.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Ember can also be refluffed as any other Chromatic Dragon if say you needed some Green Dragon boss that breathes Acid. Heck, you can even jack the Dracolich template from the Monster Manual and slap it on Ember to make a Dracolich that can kill something if the victim's HP is reduced to 0.

I was literally thinking that with a few changes (a sword instead of a mace, lightning breath and immunity, etc.), you could easily make them Kitiara and Skie if you wanted to continue the SotDQ campaign, although you would have to let them survive or something, or really go against canon.

Honestly, when it comes to high level named humanoids, they really should have an alternative "generic" title like (in this case) "Dragonlord", perhaps with customization ideas...

 

[dave2008]

From checking he's Old. Which was a step between Adult and Ancient.

Just curious, where did you check?

 

[Marandahir]

So the first volume came in both a DND Beyond source version and a PDF version.

Has anyone been able to access a pdf version of Vol. 2? I can't seem to find any links. I think it might have been on the Wizards Account page, but ever since the Wizards big website overhaul a few weeks ago that killed a bunch of classic MtG and D&D articles of years past, even the account page hasn't been working right for me…

 

[dave2008]

So the first volume came in both a DND Beyond source version and a PDF version.

Has anyone been able to access a pdf version of Vol. 2? I can't seem to find any links. I think it might have been on the Wizards Account page, but ever since the Wizards big website overhaul a few weeks ago that killed a bunch of classic MtG and D&D articles of years past, even the account page hasn't been working right for me…

IIRC, the spelljammer one was a DnD Beyond exclusive for a bit before it was released as a PDF

 

[Marandahir]

IIRC, the spelljammer one was a DnD Beyond exclusive for a bit before it was released as a PDF

Oh, Thanks!

I had no recollection of that! I guess I was either late to the party to noticing the Spelljammer volume, or else I had just completely forgotten that I had been viewing it on my app first before reviewing the PDF.

It does feel like these monsters are literally the pages cut from the bestiaries in these books to lower the page counts while maintaining the same old book prices due to inflation.

 

[dave2008]

Oh, Thanks!

I had no recollection of that! I guess I was either late to the party to noticing the Spelljammer volume, or else I had just completely forgotten that I had been viewing it on my app first before reviewing the PDF.

It does feel like these monsters are literally the pages cut from the bestiaries in these books to lower the page counts while maintaining the same old book prices due to inflation.

Just to be clear - my memory could be bad! However, I remember people complaining it (spelljammer monsters) wasn't available as a PDF either, and then it was!

These could be lost pages, but none of these monsters are relevant to the adventure as far as I can tell. So it makes sense to release them in a different format IMO.