Time Dragon 3.5

[Imelda Matchett]

5e3eVariousdepictions of time dragons.Time Dragon5e3e5th Edition Statistics[1]Size Wyrmling Medium Young Large Adult Huge Ancient Gargantuan TypeDragonAlignmentTypically neutralChallenge ratingWyrmling5Young11Adult18Ancient263rd Edition Statistics[2]Size Wyrmling Huge Very young Gargantuan Young Gargantuan Juvenile Gargantuan Young adult Colossal Adult Colossal Mature adult Colossal Old Colossal Very old Colossal Ancient Colossal Wyrm Colossal Great wyrm Colossal TypeDragonAlignmentAlways neutralChallenge ratingWyrmling26Very young33Young39Juvenile45Young adult53Adult60Mature adult67Old73Very old70Ancient76Wyrm82Great wyrm90General InformationMovementFlyingVisionBlindsense,[1] darkvision,[1] low-light visionAverage lifespanIndefiniteIntelligenceSupra-geniusLanguage(s)All,[1] DraconicTime dragons were a species of epic dragon, a group of exceedingly rare and powerful dragons. They were sometimes called chronology dragons, ageless dragons, or epoch dragons.[2]

Even wyrmling time dragons were huge creatures, with silvery-white scales that lay close to the body; the lack of ridges made the epoch dragons look unusually smooth. They had a single spike that protruded from the back of the head, nearly doubling the length of the cranium, and two spikes that attached to the end of the tail, giving it a forked appearance. The wings were triangular in shape, with the narrowest points where they attached to the back; fully spread, it gave the wings an hourglass-like shape.[2]

As time dragons aged, their scales darkened to charcoal black, and they developed a black, hourglass-shaped mask over their eyes and twelve black, unevenly-spaced stripes along their body. These stripes gradually moved down the body as the dragon aged, with a new stripe appearing by the mask when one disappeared off the end of the tail.[2]

Like other species of dragons, time dragons spoke the Draconic language and possessed blindsense, low-light vision, and darkvision. They had two breath weapons: a line of "ravaging time" that aged creatures and objects struck by it, and a cone of "time expulsion" that made creatures caught within it disappear for some seconds, even minutes, before reappearing.[2]

Ageless dragons also possessed innate spellcasting abilities: they could cast time stop at will even as wyrmlings and slow thrice each day as juveniles and older, though naturally older time dragons were more skilled with the spells. Even more deadly, time dragons hatched with an innate ability to control time, and could accelerate their own actions as if under the effects of haste for up to a minute each day, an ability that additionally rendered them immune to slow and similar effects.[2]

Time dragons felt they had better things to do than fight, thus using all of their abilities to disable their enemy or end combat as quickly as possible, and were willing to flee rather than fight if necessary. Often, they started with their most powerful spells and then fell back on their breath weapon to weaken those who survived the initial onslaught. They relied on their time stop ability to move around the battlefield quickly.[2]

Time dragons could live anywhere there was air for them to breathe and food for them to eat- and as dragons, they could eat just about anything. Moreover, they could go months without eating, though doing so made them lethargic. They were semi-nomadic and rarely stayed in their lair for more than a few years; such lairs were always in remote locations.[2]

They did not have a society as such, spending their lives largely in solitude. Once every millennium, a group of four to ten epoch dragons would congregate for the purposes of reproduction. As soon as all the females in the group had conceived, they departed from each other.[2]

Unlike many other species, time dragons did not put much effort into their hoards and often abandoned and rebuilt their hoard several times over the course of their lifetime. As with other epic dragons, what they did hoard tended to be less coin and more lore, magic, and exquisite art. However, they most prized and zealously guarded any device in their hoard that measured time, from simple sundials to complex waterclocks.[2]

No significant number of time dragons lived on Toril; in fact, they seemed to shun the Realms for unknown reasons. They had been briefly studied by mages to investigate the effects of their presence on gates, mythals, wards, and certain other long-term enchantments; said effects were uniformly deleterious, making the enchantments unstable, and sometimes triggering built-in reactions meant to respond to certain events that hadn't occurred. These effects were unintentional by the time dragons and due solely to their mere proximity.[3]

Ugh. A week lost because the Oobit was sick; another week lost when my wife and I picked up the same bug, which turned out to be stealth COVID. If only we could rewind the clock to before all that happened. Hey, you know who can do that, though? Time dragons.

Time dragons hew to the same pattern established by chromatic dragons, and in particular, they seem to be modeled closely on red dragons. They have the same Armor Classes; the same numbers of hit points, or close to it (young time dragons are an odd exception, with three more hit dice than young red dragons have); the same speeds and modes of movements; the same saving throw proficiencies; the same senses, with the same ranges; and the same areas of effect on their breath weapons.

Ancient time dragons have all of the above, plus Cycle of Rebirth and Time Gate. Cycle of Rebirth means the ancient time dragon has no fear of death; it will parley when moderately wounded (reduced to 375 hp or fewer), but being seriously wounded has no further effect on it.

Sometimes I wonder whether the designers really think about what it means to fight these sorts of enemies. This time dragon is not as utterly broken as some other incarnations, but it is much more intelligent than any of the characters can be without serious magical enhancement, and if they annoy it, it can go back in time and kill their grandparents (or something equally nasty, if D&D time travel cannot be paradoxical).

Also, in my homebrew setting there is a deity whose whole purpose is watching over timeline, so an ancient time dragon would not be able to cause paradoxes, like affecting the characters by interrupting their past, making the ability a bit more limited.

I also think creating a portal between its horns is a cool way of summoning an army or something else from another place, while making it difficult for opponents to go through it. I now imagine a time dragon having a bunch of magical machines prepared in a remote place, so it could summon the portal on its head and start blasting fireballs and lightning bolts from it.

So, as you can see, Steam launch times are all over the place, but some PC players will get it decently early on Thursday, especially on the west coast of the US. Console players, meanwhile, all get the game at midnight local time on Friday (minus LA) making things a lot more straightforward to remember. There is no preloading on Steam but preloading on console is already live, so you can get started on that if you want to.

We have Aran'gar, who used to be male but got put into a female body. That did not make him start to channel Saidin, which would happen if souls do not have gender as you suggest. He kept channeling Saidar so that mean his soul (or thread) is what is deciding your gender and by that what half of the One Power you channel.

Q: In this same Age, in a different Turning of the Wheel of Time, could it be possible that it wouldn't be Rand's soul that was spun out as the Dragon, but for a different, female soul to take on this role?

RJ: . . . it would have to be. Err, in the differences between the same Age in different turnings of the Wheel, are that.. as for an analogy: imagine two tapestries hanging on a wall, and you look at them from the back of the room to the front of the store. And to look at them, they look identical to you. But as you get closer, you begin to see differences. And if you get close enough, they don't look anything at all alike. That is the difference between the Ages. Between the Age in one Turning and the Age in another. So it's quite possible that someone other than Rand could be the reborn soul of the Dragon Reborn.

RJ: It would be the same soul. That is, that is the belief of the world that I've set up, that it's the same soul. It's a soul of someone bound to the Wheel, which is spun out for the purposes, for the Wheel's purposes really, to attempt to re-balance the Weaving of the Pattern.

. . . so the soul of the Dragon Reborn is always going to be male, just as Birgitte's soul is always born as a woman, just as Ameresu's soul . . . is always born as a woman. There are divisions here, and they are not interchangeable.

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