Labored, rattling breaths echo throughout the cavern as the band of adventurers cautiously press into the darkened tunnels, the light atop the wizard’s staff parting the shadows. However, the feeble light is not enough to reveal the source of the pained gasps that morph into strangled coughing and retching. Something splashes against the stone ahead, like a waterfall pouring across the ground that grew in volume. The wizard had already taken several steps back before the rest realized what was happening. They turned even as a tide of blood carrying organs, bone shards, and other innards flooded towards them, followed by the lumbering, misshapen form of the cancer dragon that spewed it.
Art by Vildevitus#2346
I received inspiration for this creature after somebody made a passing comment on the Discord and I just ran away with it. I wanted to make something big - something that could stand next to other true dragons so I set the highest CR for an original monster that I've done at CR 19. A lot of the abilities I gave it are based off of the abilities possessed by other true dragons - dragon senses, crush, tail sweep, and the damage on its bite attack. I wanted the cancer dragon's theme to be all about regeneration, so I went with a much lower health than normal - almost 60 points less - and gave it regeneration seen on very few creatures. This might need further fine-tuning, but I didn't get a chance to test it out to much. Its survivability is further helped by its amorphous ability, which I gave to this creature off of the idea that it has all these extra organs that its body just drags into place when one fails. Normally the cancer dragon's regeneration is unstoppable, but I thought it would be fun to give a very niche way to stop it - so radiation is able to temporarily halt its regeneration.
As mentioned, a number of its special attacks come from being a true dragon. I did give it a cancerous breath for a fun ability where it initially seems to benefit the heroes - but has a much sinister effect as their body goes rampant. Its organ eruption effectively fills the role of the breath weapon that other dragons wield, but can also leave people sickened as they are hit with the wave of blood and innards. Finally, its survival instincts empower when it gets low even when it would rather die, driving it to fit on with greater vigor. I might have been able to put this in Defensive Abilities and maybe I will if I go back to edit this sheet because abilities like frenzy usually end up there. For its spells, I looked at the stuff that dragons at similar levels get and then tried to pick stuff that seemed appropriate with a slight focus on necromantic spells. I could absolutely see a cancer dragon with a heavier focus on wielding magic that swaps out some of its feats, such as Hover and its critical feats, for stuff like Spell Focus and some of the metamagic feats. As it is right now, its feats are pretty standard for what it is. The Vital Strike line so that we can move around and still deliver devastating attacks, some critical feats to make our bite deadlier, and similar stuff. The cancer dragon's final ability is adaptive regeneration, allowing its body to rapidly grow and react to the damage it takes to protect though not without limit. This was another ability that I think could be in Defensive Abilities, but I saw a similar power in the SQ of another creature put out by Paizo.
Pathfinder 1e:
Not too much changed in the 2e version aside from the inclusion of the Overwhelming Limbs ability. I did think about making it a three-action ability since it received four attacks on it, but I felt making it so that each attack had to be against a different target was an acceptable compromise and brought it more in line with the Draconic Fury seen on most true dragons. Designing its Rabid Cancer was fun but I did have to find a workaround for how it damaged PCs since ability damage isn't a thing in Pathfinder 2e. I ended up picking the drained condition since that has a similar effect to Con damage and I think maybe I should have added another stage to it - maybe somewhere between Stage 2 and Stage 3 where they have fast healing 10 and drained 3. For its actual stats, I looked at the low HP for a creature of a lower level than the cancer dragon and then gave it super high regeneration, hopefully balancing between it not getting oneshot in one turn with how much it can heal. Adaptive Regeneration nets it some decent resistance - I went middle of the road with the amount it gives because while I didn't want the resistance to be easily ignored, I didn't want it to overwhelm players. Its spells are pretty basic though when I first started picking spells for the Cancer Dragon Spellcasters, I was doing from the whole list of spells before I realized that I should only do it from the arcane spells, so I had to restart that whole list.
Pathfinder 2e:
Blue's D&D 5e:
ENCOUNTER HOOKS
Warped Flesh and Mind: The heroes are infiltrating a drow city to put a stop to their burgeoning war efforts before they can make a move on the surface world. While hiding between making tactical strikes to disable the drows’ efforts, the heroes discover one of their greatest allies – a cancer dragon who is using the drows’ research on fleshwarping in an attempt to fix its condition. He dwells in a vast prison where he turns the prisoners kept there into twisted, fleshwarped monstrosities while also running intense experiments upon them. The heroes can attempt to release the prisoners and turn them upon their tormentor before they become too broken or confront the dragon directly and eliminate him, taking out the way he bolsters the drow.
Tumor One More: When a strange affliction begins spreading through the country, the royals turn to their nation’s heroes to devise a means to save them. A sage suggests visiting a cancer dragon who is well known as a repository of vast medical knowledge though the trip is arduous and tests the heroes. Their journeys are further waylaid by cultists who believe the plague is a divine scourge, but when they finally arrive to the cancer dragon, it refuses to entreat with them initially and they must devise a means to convince it to deal with them. Offering to fight it until its survival instincts kick in to help relieve some of its body’s stress from its regeneration could be one way to do so, but some parties might devise other methods.
This is an idea that I've had for a while that I didn't think I was going to get a chance to post this week. But despite being busy, Vilde pulled through and gave me this awesome art for the creature! I went a little wild with its description, which was honestly kind of fun to do. It's not something I always get to do based on how big the stat blocks get.
Next week is gonna be a Monster Hunter classic that I honestly should have posted already and after that is another original critter I already have art for. Future plans beyond those two weeks will be when I start getting into the new Rise monsters - I'm still waiting for the PC version before I pick it up, but I've been watching about some of the monsters and am super eager to start designing them. If you want to join in on the discussion of those builds or just talk about general homebrew ideas, consider checking out the blog's Discord where I have something a little special planned when we get to 100 people. You can also follow us on Twitter where we try to post teases for upcoming monsters and builds.
Have a Monstrous Monday!
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