How to create a Dragon?
 

So I was trying to figure out how to make a red dragon NPC. Seems like the options are limited to Young Adult Blue, and a couple others, none of which are right. I tried to change the type and subtype, but that just adds them, it will not let you remove the original stats and abilities (breath weapon, names of the claw and bite attack, etc.). I tried to create one, which starts easy enough, but you have to add in everything (special abilities and attacks etc.)

Am I missing something somewhere? Can you just pick the creature type (dragon) and modify it to whatever color you want? Those options are laid out in Alien Archive for design. I am not wanting to take the time to create a whole new monster, just an age old one. :confused:

So I guess you can do it using a basic NPC stat block, it doesn't do everything it should, but I guess it's close enough for now. However if one of the dev's see this, sure would be nice if it was a little more expansive, so when you were done it looked like the blue dragon example in the alien archive.

If you are concerned, then use the bug report tool within HLO and report it as a bug. You have a much better chance this way that LW becomes aware of your problem.

I was hoping that I was missing something and it was already enabled. I was very adept at using Herolab Classic and just get frustrated with online because they are so different. If I get time I will try to report something, or make a suggestion for more flexability.

The issue with SF creature creation is it's so open-ended, we try to provide all the pieces but it's really up to the player/GM how they want to use them. Dragons for instance, they give a range of CRs for each age category, but no actual stats for "this is a dragon at this age" so we can't really provide that shell unfortunately. A lot of that is simply based on the array used and the CR chosen. Under Template Grafts on the Race tab you can find all the dragon types they provide, which when placed on a creature with the Dragon type grants the guideline abilities Paizo gives for them. They're still very arbitrary for the user, like the book says "as a gold dragon you get spell-like abilities at CR 7+" but no mention of WHAT spell-like abilities they are, nor do they give statblocks outside their one per dragon category entry. So yeah, I WISH we could do more, because I'm not a big fan of the whole burden being placed on users to create creatures from scratch, but that's the nature of the system as far as I'm aware.

Also if you're wanting it to look like the entry in the book/Vault, don't use Basic Monster/NPC, Detailed gives far more options and should let you recreate what we have 1:1.