Well, I can't help you with any 5E rules coz I know virtually nothing of anything beyond 2E.
So what I can say may or may not be relevant to 5E, but here goes.
First, I've always found the author's suggestion that the canines of any dragon can be used for creating dragon warriors to be a bit steep. IMO, teeth that can be used for this purpose should be a "magic item" but I guess that's for each DM to decide?
Well I doubt he meant someone could yank a fang out of the dragon's mouth, shout it's name and hey-presto you've got a Dragon Warrior.
My thinking was the original monster was clearly some sort of one-use magic item analogous to a disposable
figurine of wondrous power, some of which had limited uses (i.e. a
goat of terror only functioned three times then "loses its magical ability forever" per the 1E
Dungeon Master's Guide.
So I'd say they are magic items made from the canines of a dragon, so no more than four can be made from one dragon.
Furthermore, I don't think that a casting of Identify can reveal the name of the dragon in question (in 2E), especially since the teeth aren't described as being magic items per se.
Well an
identify might just give the caster the knowledge of the command word that activates the fang rather than the proper true name of the dragon. It's just the command word defaults to some casual or use-name of the dragon in question.
The 5E version of
identify says "If it is a magic item or some other magic-imbued object, you learn its properties and how to use them" so should provide the name that activates the dragon warrior's fang.
The Armor Class of 2E dragon warriors can be rather a lot better than the author may have wanted (because 2E MC1 dragons).
Well Dragons did get a significant power boost in the switch from 1E to 2E so that's hardly surprising. In the 1977
Monster Manual all age categories of dragon had the same Armour Class, so a Red Dragon was AC –1 whether it was a wyrmling and a great wyrm. In 2E AD&D, a Young dragon has the same AC as a 1E dragon, but younger and older dragon's have better or worse AC based on their Hit Die Modifiers.
Annoyingly, the Dragon, General entry of the Monstrous Compendium and Monstrous Manual are very bad at explaining this, and the example in
MC1 - Monstrous Compendium Volume One (1989) got its sums wrong: a juvenile Brass Dragon is AC 0 and a Very Old one is AC –5 not the –4 it claims, since Very Old is 5 age categories better than Juvenile. The Dragon, Brass entry in MC1 shows the correct ACs for all a 2E Brass's age categories.
For our conversion I'd either give them the AC of one of the lower age ranks, like Wyrmling or Young, whichever we feel is appropriate.
Let's see, in In 5E those are:
Dragon | Wyrmling | Young Dragon |
---|
Black | AC 17 | AC 18 |
Blue | AC 17 | AC 18 |
Green | AC 17 | AC 18 |
Red | AC 17 | AC 18 |
White | AC 16 | AC 17 |
Brass | AC 16 | AC 17 |
Bronze | AC 17 | AC 18 |
Copper | AC 16 | AC 17 |
Gold | AC 17 | AC 18 |
Silver | AC 17 | AC 18 |
So either 16 or 17 if we use a Wyrmling or 17 or 18 for a Young Dragon. I'd lean towards the latter.
That does raise an issue. It seems more trouble than it's worth to have ten Dragon Warrior entries, one for each of the ten 10 standard types of Dragon (i.e. a Black Dragon Warrior, Red Dragon Warrior, et cetera.) so I'm rather fold them all into one entry.
Which means it'd need something like:
Armor Class 18 (natural armor) if black, blue, bronze, gold, green, red or silver; 17 (natural armor) if white, brass or copper
Damage Immunities acid if black or copper; cold if silver or white; fire if brass, gold or red; lightning if blue or bronze; poison if green
And finally, that dragons warriors are also going to be tough cookies if you were to use what the 1E/2E rules for various constructs/automatons seem to imply (comprehensively grouped for the first time in 3E, I think). At the very least they would be immune to a whole lot more than just "sleep, charm, and hold".
So perhaps dragon warriors should not be seen as constructs/automatons of any kind, but rather flesh-and-blood entities (sort of) with only the immunities of the original - because... magical creations?
My preference would be to stat them up as a monster of some kind and have the "dragon warrior's fang" be a single use magic item that just summons, creates or conjures a dragon warrior for X period of time.
Not sure what type would make the most sense for them. Humanoid might work, as would Monstrosity, but other types don't feel quite right.
Don't want to go overboard on the immunities. These are comparatively low-powered critters and I'm not convinced they are constructs, so I wouldn't support giving it immunity to charmed, exhaustion, frightened, paralyzed, petrified, poisoned like a 5E
Flesh Golem
Also, these are comparable to a
figurine of wondrous power and the creatures those figurines create don't have any extra immunities: a
bronze griffon is just a
Griffon, for example. The only 5E figurine in the SRD with immunities is the
obsidian steed, but that's because it turns into a
Nightmare and those monsters possess fire immunity.
The original's immunity to sleep, charm and hold was one of the standard immunity sets of undead or constructs. Most constructs and undead don't have many immunities in 5E. A standard
Skeleton, for example, is just immune to poison and exhaustion.
The 5E
sleep spell doesn't affect creature immune to being charmed, and the
hold spells cause the target to be paralyzed. So if we gave them:
Condition Immunities charmed, paralyzed; plus poisoned if green
Then that'd roughly duplicate the immunities of the original Dragon Warriors. It's worth noting that Dragons had immunity to paralysis in some editions of D&D.