Kobold Paragon with improved flight as a trade

[Laharal]

Hi,

I'll be running a 3.5 game soon and one of my friends wants to play a kobold paragon (first submitted a custom setup from the web; a bit too much IMO).

Luckily, I've found the official kobold paragon (bottom of the page):
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20060127a

If I want to give the PC improved flight feat (CAd 110 You gain greater maneuverability when flying than you would normally have.), Should I trade it for both special abilities at 1st level (Manual expertise, tunnel defense), one of them or not do this at all?

I don't know how strong and game-affecting this feat might be.

Many thanks playgrounders,

[Laharal]

Any ideas?

[Katana1515]

I am assuming your player is taking levels in sorcerer to start right? If so then the tunnel defence feature may not be very helpful to him and I would see it as a more or less fair trade off if you swap them. In personal experience flight is very powerful but having a high manoeuvrability score doesn't necessarily come up too much (particularly with flight from spells giving access to good manoeuvrability right from the get go). I would keep manual expertise as the bonuses to skills like trap-making and mining open up interesting new options that can lead to novel solutions to scenarios (inventive use of skills can be much more fun than even spellcasting). He is still trading out a precious caster level for the PC so he should get something decent in exchange so the improved flight feat wouldn't be by any means OP or broken :) .

[Xervous]

Where is this kobold getting his flight from?

Dragon wings + improved dragon wings doesn't pose too much of a problem IMO because he is spending two feats on it. Giving him an improvement in maneuverability would grant him the ability to hover, but he won't be staying up for too long prior to level 12.

Compare this to the fly spell which a level 6 sorcerer would have access to at the same time. Later on he will have even more ways to duplicate this. A 10k item also replaces those two aforementioned feats.

I don't see the harm in granting that feat as a replacement.