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View Full Version : You are an adult brass dragon ... (3.5)



Balor01
2010-09-03, 08:34 AM
Living in a warm, rather desolate plains where you can find an enjoyable home in a ruins of long forgotten semi-desert city.

Being a rather eminent and powerful creature, several kobold tribes appear over months you spend there. Some are mostly neutral, but most tribes are of evil alignment.

What would you do, as a brass dragon? All these minions could be somehow used to make your hoard of shiny things, they could bring interesting strangers to meet and talk to, but on the other hand, in case say, a blue dragon appeared, kobolds under your protection would be slaughtered like cattle.

Would you equip your minions? Train them? And how would you deal with evil tribes, looking for a job in your lair?

I am a DM, making such an NPC and would like some hints :smallsmile:

Tyndmyr
2010-09-03, 08:42 AM
Evil can be fixed, in time. Aggressive other dragons can be fixed with violence.

As for equipping...they're kobolds. They can eat almost anything and live almost anywhere. It should be easy. However, trying to teach them to be a productive, peaceful society should be entertaining.

First off, there's that love of lethal traps.

Serpentine
2010-09-03, 08:50 AM
Depends on the personality of the dragon, really. Assuming I can make the personality whatever I want... I would welcome the tribes, and try to be a good influence. "Lay down the law" on what they are and are not allowed to do while under my care, maybe set up a (re)education program. New additions would be expected to adhere to these. Anyone caught violating the rules will be punished accordingly - probably by exile rather than corporal punishment. This might be more appropriate for a copper (or was it bronze?) dragon, but I could consider getting them to adapt their traps for harmless humour, rather than fatalness.

hamishspence
2010-09-03, 08:51 AM
Going by Races of the Dragon, Kobolds love to serve dragons- any dragons- and while Usually Lawful Evil, there are nonevil kobold communities- which typically follow Io, Neutral God of Dragonkind.

So- would not be that difficult for the dragon to win the kobolds over.

Lysander
2010-09-03, 08:59 AM
You could help the kobolds pursue agriculture. The dragon's Speak with Animals would make it easy to easily herd dairy cattle, and any other animal you're not going to butcher.

JeminiZero
2010-09-03, 09:01 AM
Nothing wrong with lethal traps. Even good types use them occasionally to protect the Ancient-Holy-Artifact-which-we-can-barely-use-but-which-evil can-use-to-call-the-Apocalypse.

Anyway training them to change alignment is good and all, but there are ways to speed up the process. Remember that Half-Dragons take on the alignment of their progenitor dragon. :smallwink:

Also: Lycanthropy. Intentionally infecting them with particular strains can shift their alignment. The first generation won't be able to control their forms, but their children will have full control. Although this tends to wreck Havoc on CR calculations. You can infect them with animals between tiny and medium. Use Eagles if you want flyers or Black Bears if you want tanks. Both are suitably noble creatures that will change your minions for the better.

As a Dragon you have sorcerer spells. Start taking levels in Mage of the Arcane Order or something, or buy Runestaves to increase your reportaire, especially for utility downtime spells like Wall of Stone and/or Iron. Raise a fortress in the Desert!

hamishspence
2010-09-03, 09:10 AM
Anyway training them to change alignment is good and all, but there are ways to speed up the process. Remember that Half-Dragons take on the alignment of their progenitor dragon. :smallwink:

Usually rather than Always, if you take the MM sample half-dragon as a guideline.

A CG being might see forcibly changing the alignment of beings as "a violation of free will" though- so may prefer more subtle methods.

Zaydos
2010-09-03, 09:10 AM
So a Chaotic Good dragon. I'd say you'd tolerate their presence, talk to them, discourage them from being evil, but not rule per say. If they actively wanted you to rule them you'd probably protect them in exchange that they didn't do evil, built traps for your lair (preferably ones that are not directly lethal as you may wish to see who is coming into your lair before killing them), and listened to your stories.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-03, 09:12 AM
You could help the kobolds pursue agriculture. The dragon's Speak with Animals would make it easy to easily herd dairy cattle, and any other animal you're not going to butcher.

Them too, if you have bluff. It's gotta be pretty easy to bluff a cow.

kamikasei
2010-09-03, 09:13 AM
Brass dragons are chaotic, so might prefer not to have tribes "under her protection". How much responsibility she'd be willing to accept for their safety would vary quite a bit depending on the dragon's personality and especially on dragon society in general - if minions are considered fair game she has more responsibility the closer she ties herself to them, while if the draconic rules of engagement designate your kobold servants as noncombatants and spoils of victory then she can pretty much leave them be and she'd be fighting to keep them from having to serve a worse master rather than to prevent them from being slaughtered.

I could see a chaotic good dragon having a standoffish relationship to the various tribes, letting them settle so long as they don't go where she doesn't want them to, and setting fairly loose restrictions on their behaviour. Evil tribes who can't comply with the basic stipulations she simply drives off and they're someone else's problem.

I don't think kobold society would need much changing. If they're occupied trying to please a dragon, and if the dragon keeps them from being run off their land or screwed over by drought or famine, there's no reason they couldn't get along peacefully with neighbours and travellers. It's not like they have to stop trapping their lairs to hell and back if only invaders and thieves will fall afoul of them.

So in short: I'd imagine a tsundere dragon who denies that the kobolds are anything to do with her, but quietly enjoys their antics and does a little to keep them comfortable. A handful of tribes are spread throughout the area where she's the biggest boss around, and they maintain their own warrens where they mine out valuables and produce crafts to send her in tribute. She lets them trade with their neighbours to get everything else they need to support themselves. Maybe they can send their best craftskobolds to maintain her personal lair; she treats this as her doing the tribes a favour by giving their promising students an opportunity to better themselves by working on the Best Lair Ever (obviously). Neighbours and travelers know that the region is inhabited by kobolds under the sway of a benevolent dragon and that you can trade with them and obtain passage so long as you don't misbehave, and that tribes that become aggressive will find disfavour and be driven out.

Serpentine
2010-09-03, 09:15 AM
Not so much "rule", as "if you want to stay with me, I will need you to do these things. Otherwise, I will have to ask you to leave."
Also, a totally receptive audience? That would be pretty hard for a brass dragon to resist...

Tetrasodium
2010-09-03, 09:31 AM
give them a chamber for keeping their eggs safe (kobolds lay eggs right?) and start working on civilizing them. More reason for them to be interested in making sure said dragon is happy and shifty looking adventurer's are guided away. Plus there's the whole "I'm sooooo hungry... it's so good that you are here to distract me from that hunger while we talk little egg tender kobold" aspect.

Some simple magic items with plant growth (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Plant_Growth)'s enrichment option and a less drastic customized control weather for rain and such will help make sure they get a good start with the whole agriculture thing. Using wall of stone will help give them a bit more defense from invaders and beasties if you have enough time to surround villages. A warded fallout shelter type thing they can hide in would be another good option for helping protect from invaders if you don't think they are going to feasibly protect themselves and a wall around their villages is too much work. It would probably be easier for a wizard to do some of this than a sorcerer though... granted it's probably not that tough to find a wizard or a wizard with a friend willing to trade some work for a favor from a dragon or just buy some of this stuff custom.

Set up trade, people are less likely to attack a tribe of kobolds that they trade with regularly on good terms. Try to get some nearby blacksmiths/weaponsmiths/armorsmiths or whatever to accept a kobold apprentice or two, offer to trade the occasional dragonbreath for forging special weapons/armor/tools... it has to be a component to making some kind of specialty enchantment even if it's just a bigger number on the pricetag to say it's forged with dragon's breath, use that earlier mentioned wizard to make it one if not. Granted the payoff is fairly minor immediately, but in a year or two of game time you have some blacksmiths coming back to the kobold tribes :).

Gavinfoxx
2010-09-03, 08:04 PM
One of my character's backstory involves this:

http://www.roguepenguin.com/castellar/profiler/view.php?id=5466

go to "Other Notes" and start reading from "History:"

Drogorn
2010-09-03, 08:36 PM
Using wall of stone will help give them a bit more defense from invaders and beasties if you have enough time to surround villages. A warded fallout shelter type thing they can hide in would be another good option for helping protect from invaders if you don't think they are going to feasibly protect themselves and a wall around their villages is too much work.

Walls? Kobolds live underground, and they're legendary trapmakers, to boot.

Marnath
2010-09-03, 09:47 PM
A handful of tribes are spread throughout the area where she's the biggest boss around, and they maintain their own warrens where they mine out valuables and produce crafts to send her in tribute.

Neighbours and travelers know that the region is inhabited by kobolds under the sway of a benevolent dragon and that you can trade with them and obtain passage so long as you don't misbehave, and that tribes that become aggressive will find disfavour and be driven out.

This is how I would do it. I'd have a couple tribes living in my valley/ruined city. One or two to operate mines, one to maintain the ruins, and another to clean my lair and make stuff for trade. I would make a few learn to be bards and tell me stories and talk to me(think Deekin) and most of all, I would make the dwarves and people trade with my kobolds instead of me directly just to make the dwarves lives difficult. :smallbiggrin: Oh, and woe to you if you hurt one of my kobolds, hehe. Best of all, who better to protect a horde than kobolds? They're vicious >.>

Crasical
2010-09-03, 11:06 PM
I'm amused that the line of advice in this thread seems to be 'Rule them' 'Serve as a role model' and then wildly swerves to 'Hump wildly, breed new race of good-aligned half-dragon kobolds'.

Zaydos
2010-09-03, 11:15 PM
I'm amused that the line of advice in this thread seems to be 'Rule them' 'Serve as a role model' and then wildly swerves to 'Hump wildly, breed new race of good-aligned half-dragon kobolds'.

Well it started out Lawful, and shifted towards CG and you know from chaotic good its only a small step to Chaotic Neutral. And once there it's time to PARTY!!!

Although normally I associate breeding programs to get loyal half-dragon servants with LE dragons and Red Dragons (then again important red dragons in my games tend to be the 1 in a 1000000 red dragon that is Lawful).

Shalist
2010-09-03, 11:26 PM
Brass dragons consider themselves such gifted conversationalists that they simply cannot bear to allow any sentient being to miss the benefit of their company...

...Many brass dragons create vast networks of confidantes and informants, including djinn, jann, sphinxes, and various humanoids. The dragons use these networks to keep apprised of local events and to stay in remote communication with distant brass dragons...

...Brass dragons would rather talk than fight. If an intelligent creature tries to leave without engaging in conversation, the dragon might force compliance in a fit of pique, using suggestion or a dose of sleep gas. A creature put to sleep may wake to find itself pinned or buried to the neck in the sand until the dragon’s thirst for small talk is slaked. When faced with real danger, younger brass dragons fly out of sight, then hide by burrowing into the sand. Older dragons spurn this ploy but still prefer to have the advantage in combat.

I just don't see Papa Brass getting all midevil on the kobolds, especially if they're playing nice. It's not like dragons have a continuous use 'detect evil' stick permanently implanted up one of their orifices like certain classes, after all.

I doubt he'd be above using them as a source of income though, if they were willing, but I doubt he'd even bother to get all tyrannical about it.

This guy might be pushing his luck a bit, though:

http://images.elfwood.com/art/a/n/andersson/SciFi.Fantasy.The-Roasting-Nose-Tickle.Suicidal-Little-Kobold-01-the-roasting-nose-tickle.jpg.rZd.121775.jpg (http://andersson.elfwood.com/The-Roasting-Nose-Tickle.3560706.html)
Livoxdrinacepsek
Old Brass Dragon

Livoxdrinacepsek is a Huge dragon with a Colossal personality.
Every movement of his enormous body is exaggerated—
he punctuates his loud, loquacious speech with flamboyant
gestures, paces back and forth when he speaks, and brings
his gigantic face deafeningly close to his audience to really
drive a point home. His speech is melodramatic and histrionic,
and he expects appreciation if not applause for his
every action. Some creatures—particularly humans of a
similar temperament—find his company delightfully entertaining,
while many others find him overwhelming or terribly
irritating.

edit: spoiler tag for the image, and an example brass from the book that might be suitable to yours.

edit 2: regarding blues, and fighting:


When faced with real danger, younger brass dragons fly out of sight, then hide by burrowing into the sand. Older dragons spurn this ploy but tend to avoid pitched fights unless they have some tactical advantage.He's old enough that he'd take on encroaching dragons, hands down, though I dunno if he'd use the kobolds...certainly not as meat shields, at least.

Jothki
2010-09-03, 11:31 PM
They're kobolds. Rule them, that's what they're there for.

cdrcjsn
2010-09-03, 11:59 PM
I'm amused that the line of advice in this thread seems to be 'Rule them' 'Serve as a role model' and then wildly swerves to 'Hump wildly, breed new race of good-aligned half-dragon kobolds'.

Well, where else do half-dragon trolls, orcs and ducks come from?

I can't believe I said duck.

Gavinfoxx
2010-09-04, 12:31 AM
Would everyone be okay if I just reposted the written backstory that was relevent to what happened with my character's history? Only the parts that have to do with the actual brass dragon though... would that be okay?

Dr.Epic
2010-09-04, 12:36 AM
Eat them. You never mentioned where, I, a big dragon am getting food from.

Gavinfoxx
2010-09-04, 12:36 AM
Well, doesn't Draconomicon sometimes say that dragons get sustenance not always from hunting things the normal way, being very magical creatures?

Crasical
2010-09-04, 12:40 AM
That template really gives dragons a bad rap. You should know by now that whenever that kinda stuff comes up, that "wizards did it." I mean, you should see some of the frat parties they throw over at the transmutation schools--Beer + wizards + polymorph + more beer = fun, pure and simple.

Wizards -> Beer -> Someone polymorphs into a Nymph -> Fort saves! -> Bunch of hung over, ashamed wizards waiting outside the local church of Cure blindness.

Shalist
2010-09-04, 02:26 AM
The Draconomicon's take on dragon metabolism and diet in general, and brass in particular.

METABOLISM

Laypeople, and some scholars, are fond of the terms “coldblooded” and “warm-blooded” to describe ectothermic and endothermic creatures, respectively.

An ectothermic creature lacks the ability to produce its own heat and must depend on its environment for warmth. Most ectothermic creatures seldom actually have cold blood, because they are able to find environmental heat to warm their bodies.

An endothermic creature doesn’t necessarily have warm blood. What it has is a body temperature that remains more or less steady no matter how hot or cold its surroundings become.

All true dragons are endothermic. Given their elemental nature, they could hardly be otherwise. A dragon’s body temperature depends on its kind and sometimes on its age.

Dragons that use fire have the highest body temperatures, and dragons that use cold have the lowest. Acid- and electricity using dragons have body temperatures that fall between the two extremes, with acid-users tending to have cooler bodies than electricity-users.

Fire-using dragons literally become hotter with age. Likewise, cold-using dragons become colder as they age. Acid- and electricity-using dragons have about the same body temperature throughout their lives, with younger and smaller dragons having slightly higher temperatures than older and larger ones.

Unlike most endothermic creatures, dragons have no obvious way to shed excess body heat. They do not sweat, nor do they pant. Instead, the draconis fundamentum extracts heat from the bloodstream and stores the energy. In a sense, then, a dragon can be considered ectothermic (because it can use environmental heat).

However, when a dragon is deprived of an external heat source, its metabolism and activity level do not change. Unlike a truly ectothermic creature, a dragon can generate its own body heat and is not slowed or forced into hibernation by exposure to cold.

DIET
Dragons are carnivores and top predators, though in practice they are omnivorous and eat almost anything if necessary. A dragon can literally eat rock or dirt and survive.

Some dragons, particularly the metallic ones, subsist primarily on inorganic fare. Such dining habits, however, are cultural in origin.

Unfortunately for a dragon’s neighbors, the difference between how much a dragon must eat and how much it is able to eat is vast. Most dragons can easily consume half their own weight in meat every day, and many gladly do so if sufficient prey is available.

Even after habitual gorging, a dragon seldom gets fat. Instead, it converts its food into elemental energy and stores it for later use. Much of this stored energy is expended on breath weapons and on the numerous growth spurts (see below) that a dragon experiences throughout its life.

tl;dr: They can eat anything--even rock, though they'd need lots of it, and it taste bad. Also, all their excess heat is removed from the bloodstream and stored in some magic spleen thingy, which works just as well at storing excess environmental heat, though this doesn't put a dent in their appetites.


Brass dragons can and will eat almost anything if the need arises, but they normally consume very little. They seem to understand that the desert is a fragile environment, and they live lightly upon the land. They are able to get nourishment from the morning dew, a rare commodity in the desert, and they go forth at dawn to gently lift minute beads of dew off plants with their long tongues.

http://i702.photobucket.com/albums/ww30/123456laughs/Brassmug.jpg

So brass dragons are essentially vegans, and can apparently grow from tiny to gargantuan just fine by licking a few drops of dew off of plants here and there. I suspect their scales double as highly efficient solar cells, or something.

edit: @ Crasical: Heh, I guess their parents were right--it really does cause blindness!

@Gavinfoxx: Sure, as a dragon fanboi, I'd love to see the background.

Gavinfoxx
2010-09-04, 02:41 AM
Okay, I hope this isn't TOO off topic... but I'm soooo posting my story thing... cause I think it's relevant, and I'm proud of it! Also, I think I might be slightly drunk. I'll snip it down to just the first part though. It's FR centric, for what it's worth...

"Well over a hundred and fifty years ago, in the Anauroch Desert, there was a tribe of Kobolds. They were pretty average Kobolds, adapted as the desert variety, raiding, scavenging, fighting for scraps, stealing, committing acts of banditry, cannibalism and murder, and always at the edge of starvation. All of that changed when the great Brass dragon Ardonerlyx landed in the middle of their camp, challenged their leader to a duel for leadership of the tribe, did so and promptly dispatched the chief, and thereby obtained ownership of the tribe.

It turns out that Ardon, as he liked to be called, was the best possible thing to happen to this tribe. As a young Brass dragon, he liked to talk, and knew a great many things, but one of the things he had managed to pick up in his travels was something very rare for a dragon - Religion. Fortunately for a Brass Dragon, he also learned another valuable skill -- to be able to work as he simultaneously carried on a conversation. As he talked to the tribe about his plans for the tribe, how he was going to lead them out of starvation and into the light of Io, Bahamut, Aasterinian and Hlal, he was doing things, things like casting spells that created magic food, some of which healed them, or spells that directly stopped their hunger or thirst, but also, as he talked, he cast a spell to find water, walked to it, and dug a well, something that desert kobolds, which don't mine, never thought to do, and started digging some irrigation and agricultural ditches, putting seeds of desert citrus fruit, olives, figs, desert loving millet, a desert loving corn, then summoning a giant wave of water that was funneled down the irrigation ditch into the crops, always explaining what he did as the kobolds watched with rapt attention.

For weeks he talked and worked, sometimes resting for a few hours, but never stopping talking, even apparently in his sleep, explaining about morality and the good dragon gods and how their dark gods never really improved their lives, did they? Otherwise they would know how to do this sort of thing, and wouldn't have to eat their dead, right? And for those weeks the tribe started helping him, not because he asked, for he didn't, but this was going to be something very very big and very very important.

Within days, the tribe had stopped raiding for food, temporarily relying on his magic to feed them.
Within weeks, the first buds of the quick growing crops were coming up, to the tribe's amazement.
Within a season, they had their first harvest. It was a joyous occasion, and all were thankful... and it was the night of the first harvest, many of the females offered themselves to him, in the knowledge that even if they died appeasing him, it would be for the good of the tribe. To their surprise, he cast a spell that changed him into a very strange, very very large, winged brass kobold, and a spell that made them bigger for a short time, and partook without harming them at all!"

LordShotGun
2010-09-04, 08:54 AM
@Gavinfoxx I followed the link and read the whole history thing and I really like the backstory.

It reminds me of a novelette I have half writen about the life of a DnD dragon(more like a journal considering its writen in first person).

Gavinfoxx
2010-09-07, 02:10 AM
@Gavinfoxx I followed the link and read the whole history thing and I really like the backstory.

It reminds me of a novelette I have half writen about the life of a DnD dragon(more like a journal considering its writen in first person).

Oh, why thank you! =D =D

I do want to eventually play that character again... that game didn't 100% work for me, and I LOVED the character of Dee, the know it all, always talks about everything Brass Dragonwrought Kobold! She was lots of fun to roleplay...

Now I just need to get the OP to read the backstory thing, hehehe..

pingcode20
2010-09-07, 02:46 AM
Set the kobolds to work hollowing out a massive library and working on your collected sayings.

Send them out under your protection to spread your teachings to the world!