The Dungeons & Dragons team has revealed Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons, a new sourcebook for D&D 5th Edition focused solely on the famous monsters that serve as the game’s namesake.
Fans of older versions of D&D will likely recognize the titular character, Fizban the Fabulous – who also provides point-of-view commentary throughout the book, similar to the in-fiction author Volothamp Geddarm’s notes in Volo’s Guide to Monsters – from Dragonlance, the AD&D campaign setting and series of novels.
It’s important to note, however, that Fizban’s Treasury isn’t a Dragonlance sourcebook, despite recent releases and announcements for other realms like Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft on this fall’s Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos moving outside the game’s default setting of The Forgotten Realms. “We’re happy to be reintroducing at least some elements of that,” say Ray Winniger, Executive Producer of D&D for Wizard’s of the Coast. “It’s not [a Dragonlance book], it’s really a book about dragons across the whole of the D&D multiverse; it’s not specific to any given D&D world.”
“There’s an idea running through this book that every dragon has echos of itself on other worlds of the Material Plane,” adds James Wyatt, a veteran writer and game designer working on both Fizban’s Treasury and the upcoming D&D x MTG crossover deck. “They don’t come from outside it, they were there when it was made … Dragons are an essential part of the world, which is why we named the game after them.”
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Wyatt says the book consists of three main sections – a bestiary, full of new stat blocks and descriptions for draconic creatures ranging from tiny drakes and wyverns to the massive, godlike Great Wyrms, which dwarf even the ancient dragons that have long sat atop the D&D Monster Manual food chain. “It’s almost like fighting two monsters back to back, both of which are at challenge ratings above 20,” Wyatt says with a laugh. “They’re tremendous forces of magic and nature that bend the world around them and wreak havoc wherever they go.”
The other two sections will consist of some new character options for players and a plethora of DM tools and info. It introduces two new subclasses for the Monk and Ranger – The Way of the Ascendent Dragon and the Drake Warden, respectively – as well as new options for Dragonborn characters who wish to be descended from Gem dragons rather than the classic Chromatic or Metallic.
For Dungeon Masters, Fizban’s Treasury contains a horde of info on not only these Gem dragons – who are notably different from their traditional siblings thanks to their powerful psyonic power and unusual damage types (for example, their breath weapons might deal Radiant or Necrotic damage as opposed to Fire or Acid damage) – but also plenty of options for lore and the character of D&D most famous monsters. “We tried to take a ‘show, don’t tell’ approach when talking about dragons,” Wyatt says. “Rather than talking to you for a while about the personalities of brass dragons, we give you a table of personality traits that you can randomly roll on or you can choose from as you’re creating a brass dragon.”
While the book does contain a considerable amount of Official Lore™, Wyatt says that it’s all about giving players and DMs alike more tools and toys to play with in their own game worlds. “Even as we’re in the final stages of getting it ready to go to the printer, I’m marking up printouts on one side and writing notes for my next campaign on the other.”
Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons will release on October 19, 2021 and features a standard cover available at all online retailers and bookstores, as well as an alternate cover available at your friendly neighborhood game+hobby store.
