[B]Dragonwrought Kobold Dragon Druid Madness!![/B]

[Ratharyn]

Sup guys,

So I am making a new character for a highly optimised series of sessions starting at CL15. Druid was my first love and I've been wanting to build a new, fully buffed dragon themed druid for a while.

My plan originally was to find a way to qualify for the epic dragon wildshape feat by level 15 but I have been unable to find a way to do this so far due to the prereqs and skill ranks needed to get there.

Am I missing something with DWK, besides the favourable mental stats does this race really add much for druid?

[Ratharyn]

Also, 300,000gp starting gold, all books available to use and abuse. I'm not doing planar shepherd cheese because that cheese to too strong for me.

[Threadnaught]

Venerable, don't forget to be at least 121 years old.

You do qualify for several Epic Feats, two of them involving Wild Shape.

And Bloodlines can mitigate the Skills issue, if your DM is allowing them, allows you to make your own custom version, or one you find online and is going by the rules as written, rather than one of the interpretations that make them Class Levels that only increase your ECL.


I have one just for the purpose of playing a Kobold Druid who transforms into other Dragons. If you want it, I can message it to you.

[Ratharyn]

That would be incredibly, I'd appreciate you doing that.

Are the two wild shape feats your referring to the gargantuan and colossal wild shape? My issue with those two is that I can't find many creatures that would fit within a 15-19HD limit.. =/

[Asrrin]

Dragons (Not just True Dragons) automatically qualify for Epic feats even if they don't meet the prerequisites, per RAW. The DM is entirely in his purview to houserule this away for DWK's, but that's how people grab the epic feats.

[Ratharyn]

Where is that written though? I know in the draco-nomnomnomnomnom-onicon it states that certain aged dragons qualify for epic feats even if they hold no class levels but surely that doesn't exclude the prerequisites for the feats?

[eggynack]

If you do end up lacking on the epic feat front (which you probably will, because it looks like most good epic feats are inaccessible at this level even if you're bypassing the epic requirement), I would advise against kobold. The basic idea behind the race, by my understanding, is to use dragonwrought to pick up venerable without stat loss, thus making your stat array -4 str, +2 dex, -2 con, +3 int, +3 wis, +3 cha.

It's a good stat array, or at least a reasonable one, but it just doesn't hold up to the competition, especially when you consider the fact that you have to spend a feat on it. Yeah, there are other benefits of dragonwrought, but just look at what you're running up against. Particularly, consider the dragonborn anthropomorphic bat. -4 str, -2 dex, +2 con, and above all, +6 wisdom.

That's way better than dragonwrought already, with penalities to only dump stats and bonuses to your main stats, and you still haven't even seen all of the benefits. Pick up mind as your trait, and suddenly you're copying all of those nifty secondary benefits of dragonwrought, and when you factor in the anthro-bat's flight, you're even copying improved flight, again without taking a feat. Finally, being an anthropomorphic bat grants access to fangshields druid substitution levels, which grant strict wild shape hand based benefits over a normal druid at the very least, and other stuff if you want it (you probably do).

So, lotsa stuff. If you can get the epic feat thing past your DM, and if you find some stuff to actually do with them (probably something not druid specific, which means possibly worse than regular druid feats like greenbound summoning or aberration wild shape), then that could be worth it. However, without that, you're mostly looking at a race which provides lesser benefits in almost every way than a dragonborn anthropomorphic bat, and you're spending a feat to accomplish it.

Also, it looks like epic dragon wild shape might only grant access to the really basic MM dragons, which means that it might be worse than regular dragon wild shape. So... yeah. You keep your dragon theming through dragonborn too, so that's neat.