Party of Metallic Dragons - What are the party risks?

[Deeds]

Hello Playground! My group of players are excited to finally play a campaign as dragon PCs! While I'm just as excited to run the campaign I'd like to know the problems I'll be facing (and they'll be facing) in the future. During character creation, I told them to reduce their level adjustment for being a Dragon by -2. As an example, a Wyrmling Silver Dragon in my campaign has 7 HD but its LA is reduced from +4 to +2. Their final ECL must be 13.

PC 1) A very young Golden Dragon without any class levels. His 11 Dragon HD and Large size should let him get off an impressive 1 bite, 2 claw, 2 wing, 1 tail attack full attack. Unfortunately, I see this build being a one-trick pony.

PC 2) A very young Bronze Dragon with 2 fighter levels. The bronze dragon doesn't boast the same attack routine as the Gold dragon but he can now afford a few bonus feats: namely Power Attack and Combat Reflexes. He plans to take at least 2 levels in Paladin.

PC 3) A wyrmling Silver Dragon with either 4 Swordsage or 4 Warblade levels. I've ruled that his 7 HD count as half initiator levels: so his initiator level will be 7. I have very little idea on how effective this build will be. This guy's idea of high optimization is adding intelligence to damage (whoa, like +2 damage on every hit with my Swashbuckler!)

PC 4) Another wyrmling Silver Dragon with 4 levels in Kensai. His build is a joke aimed at me, considering I'm always complaining about never having a chance to play Kensai. His claws are +3 Defending claws. Yup.

PC 5) A half-dragon (Bronze) with 12 levels in Monk. He has taken vow of poverty. With a half-dragon. In a dragon campaign. What the hell.
PC 5) Now an Archivist.

My current thoughts: there is no party balance. Without a divine caster or arcane caster, they're gonna be screwed. My current solution is that the VoP monk has donated his ECL 13 wealth to the monastery of Bahamut. Surely the monastery won't mind throwing around a few resurrection spells on their behalf.

All in all, what should I do or suggest to help balance this party? How should I plan encounters and PC interactions?
Edit 1: PC 5, the monk, has changed his mind and has decided to be an Archivist.

[A_S]

This party actually seems pretty balanced: they're all low-op melee. I'd expect the Gold Dragon and the ToB character to be a bit stronger than the others, but nothing fun-ruining compared to if, say, the party included a Loredrake Steel Dragon Sorcerer gish (who would outshine the others).

As for how to run encounters...you have an entire party full of characters who specialize in solving problems by hitting them really hard. Give them lots of problems that can be solved by hitting them hard enough, and everybody should have a good time! Seems like much less difficulty than most party balance situations I hear about.

[WhamBamSam]

The lack of casters poses less of a problem than it otherwise might, as all your PCs, except the VoP Monk, can fly. I'd advise either giving him his Half-Dragon Wings as if he were large, or give him Ride as a class skill so he can hitch a lift on the Gold Dragon's back (a mounted Decisive Strike build is actually not bad, as monks go).

But yeah, otherwise, what A_S said. So long as their problems can be solved by biting face or flying over the obstacle, they should do alright.

The handbook in my sig hasn't been updated in a while, but it still might prove helpful.

[Deeds]

Thanks for the input! Perhaps I'm just underestimating their abilities. Now that I think about it, most encounters could be solved with "we start out strafing run: take out your sling monk." But will they really be able to handle typical CR 13 encounters back to back? Beholders and Adult Green Dragons come to mind.

[Jowgen]

I'm just going to leave this here for no particular reason...


WYRM FEVER
A disease originating in dank swamps, this malady affects only dragons. It is delivered by injury, and the DC for the Fortitude save to resist it is 30. After an incubation period of 1d4 days, it deals 1d8 Str, 1d8 Int, and 1d8 Con every day that the save is failed. The wounds by which the dragon acquired the disease become infected and ooze a sickly green pus. The high fever resulting from the malady causes the affected dragon to hallucinate, seeing enemies everywhere, mistaking friends for foes, and
the like.

[Flickerdart]

The gold dragon has three tricks aside from his full attack routine that you should probably tell him about, just to mix things up a bit.

Breathe'n'strafe - Fly-by breath attacks are a classic dragon tactic. Burn, baby, burn!
Same thing, but with his strength-damaging gas. Teamed up with a Crippling Strike rogue he can very quickly incapacitate physically weak enemies.
Alternate form is ridiculously versatile. ANY animal or humanoid of Medium or smaller. Need stealth? Bat or toad. Burrowing? Badger. Milking poison? Viper. Octopi can be used for ink clouds. Cheetahs have an insanely fast charge, even faster than his flight. Hell, he can turn into a dinosaur and get 5 attacks and pounce (although he doesn't, strictly speaking, need to). The silver dragon and bronze dragon can also do this, and since they have weaker full attacks, might like the dino option.


Provide lots of opportunities for the bronze dragon to talk to animals. They make great scouts and unexpected sources of information.

Between the Strength-draining breath, the paralysis breath, the fear breath, and stunning fist, they should have no problem with non-lethal fights, so throw some of these their way.

Point all of your dragons at the sovereign archetypes from Dragons of Eberron. Since none of them are focusing so much on casting, they should be happy to trade it out for goodies. Wyrm of War even gives initiating! Also check out the dragon psychoses in Dragon Magazine. Just make sure nobody takes Loredrake or Spellhoarding unless you're sure they won't abuse it.


But will they really be able to handle typical CR 13 encounters back to back? Beholders and Adult Green Dragons come to mind.
Probably not. They have action advantage going for them, though. Start with weak-ish encounters and work your way up gradually.

[noob]

One 0 LA priest have the huge tendency of being better than a dragon with the same CR.
(Especially with divine meta-magic and persist spell)
I think it is harder to cheese a dragon for having a powerful reasonable level char than to cheese an humanoid(Those HD are problematic and the casting of a dragon is very poor)

[WhamBamSam]

Between the Strength-draining breath, the paralysis breath, the fear breath, and stunning fist, they should have no problem with non-lethal fights, so throw some of these their way.There's a slight problem here of the alternate breath effects being based on age category, so 2 for the Gold and 1 for the rest (the Gold is, at least, the one who needs the higher age most). A Crown of the North Wind (Dragons of Faerun) will set the age to Young (3) for younger dragons for effects of breath weapons (including damage for the standard fire/acid/electricity/etc breath). It will also give the gold dragon access to the Brass Dragon's sleep breath, and the Half-Dragon access to Bronze Dragon fear breath, though the "extra breath options" part is kind of redundant if you're already starting with the dragon varieties they derive from. You might consider stripping that part out and scaling the price down accordingly so that they get a better deal on buffing their breath weapons to allow for more options outside of the bite/claw/claw rigamarole.

[Enran]

Have you considered allowing them to start at a lower level, or as older dragons, by using the Pathfinder method of monster character creation where their effective ECL is equal to their CR rather than RHD + LA? They'll generally be a lot more balanced against appropriate challenges that way than the regular 3.5 way, even accounting for reduced LA.

[Flickerdart]

There's a slight problem here of the alternate breath effects being based on age category, so 2 for the Gold and 1 for the rest (the Gold is, at least, the one who needs the higher age most).
Why is it a problem? The gold dragon deals 2 STR damage. The silver dragons paralyze for 1d6+1 rounds. The repulsion gas also works for 1d6+1 rounds.

[WhamBamSam]

Why is it a problem? The gold dragon deals 2 STR damage. The silver dragons paralyze for 1d6+1 rounds. The repulsion gas also works for 1d6+1 rounds.Like I said, it's more of an issue for the Gold. If you paralyze or panic someone for 2 rounds, you've beaten them, but if you're actually looking to win a fight with Str damage, and continue doing so into the high levels (which you are if you're starting at ECL 13), 2 points of Str is just not quite enough. That's a whole -1 to a handful of things, which is a tough sell for your standard action, or even for the feat it costs to do it as a free action once per encounter. If you deal 3, it's at least probably a -2, and it saves you a strafing run (so 1d4 rounds of the thing being alive and pissed at you), against most of the things you'd actually try to kill with Str damage.

[Deeds]

Like I said, it's more of an issue for the Gold. If you paralyze or panic someone for 2 rounds, you've beaten them, but if you're actually looking to win a fight with Str damage, and continue doing so into the high levels (which you are if you're starting at ECL 13), 2 points of Str is just not quite enough. That's a whole -1 to a handful of things, which is a tough sell for your standard action, or even for the feat it costs to do it as a free action once per encounter. If you deal 3, it's at least probably a -2, and it saves you a strafing run (so 1d4 rounds of the thing being alive and pissed at you), against most of the things you'd actually try to kill with Str damage.
My players are intimately aware of the strength of a Silver Dragon's paralyzing cone. In a previous campaign, they faced a dragon who reincarnated into a Silver Dragon. The dragon was particularly ashamed of his new silver form so he caked himself in red clay everyday and used disguise self as an additional means to appear like his old self. The dragon, however, didn't mind ending combat on round 1 with his paralyzing breath. :smalleek:

[Flickerdart]

2 points of Str is just not quite enough. That's a whole -1 to a handful of things, which is a tough sell for your standard action, or even for the feat it costs to do it as a free action once per encounter.
It's not about penalties. It's about walking up to a Str 8 rogue or wizard, tooting in their delicate little noses a few times, and then carting them off. 2 rounds of paralysis? Try 14,400 rounds of paralysis. The guys with lots of Str are probably high-Fort types, and are passing the save anyhow.

[WhamBamSam]

It's not about penalties. It's about walking up to a Str 8 rogue or wizard, tooting in their delicate little noses a few times, and then carting them off. 2 rounds of paralysis? Try 14,400 rounds of paralysis. The guys with lots of Str are probably high-Fort types, and are passing the save anyhow.Right, and at 2 Str per breath, it takes 4 strafing runs (4d4 rounds) to actually bring him down that way. It's not something that's going to just work without a bit of optimization.

If he does the minimum and buys a Crown of the North Wind, as I suggested in my earlier post, to tick the Str damage up to 3, it takes 3 runs. And if the target has 9 Str instead of 8? Then it's 3 runs instead of 5.

[TheifofZ]

IIRC, does not leveling as a dragon grant some minor spell progression as well? And I know that dragon levels are required every so often, so even without a primary caster, the party should be capable of minor magic.
Between that and meta-breath feats and some minor majiggering with classes, it might not be the most optimized party, but they should be capable of dealing with most threats.
Don't expect them to handle Batman Wizard's Lair of nefarious spell-warded nefariousness, maybe. But a few minor symbols and the odd curse wouldn't be too big an issue.
But honestly, you have a party that looks alot like a very scaly hammer with a small multi-tool on the end of it. Swing it around abit and see what bits go sproing into a corner, really.

[Sagetim]

Hello Playground! My group of players are excited to finally play a campaign as dragon PCs! While I'm just as excited to run the campaign I'd like to know the problems I'll be facing (and they'll be facing) in the future. During character creation, I told them to reduce their level adjustment for being a Dragon by -2. As an example, a Wyrmling Silver Dragon in my campaign has 7 HD but its LA is reduced from +4 to +2. Their final ECL must be 13.

PC 1) A very young Golden Dragon without any class levels. His 11 Dragon HD and Large size should let him get off an impressive 1 bite, 2 claw, 2 wing, 1 tail attack full attack. Unfortunately, I see this build being a one-trick pony.

PC 2) A very young Bronze Dragon with 2 fighter levels. The bronze dragon doesn't boast the same attack routine as the Gold dragon but he can now afford a few bonus feats: namely Power Attack and Combat Reflexes. He plans to take at least 2 levels in Paladin.

PC 3) A wyrmling Silver Dragon with either 4 Swordsage or 4 Warblade levels. I've ruled that his 7 HD count as half initiator levels: so his initiator level will be 7. I have very little idea on how effective this build will be. This guy's idea of high optimization is adding intelligence to damage (whoa, like +2 damage on every hit with my Swashbuckler!)

PC 4) Another wyrmling Silver Dragon with 4 levels in Kensai. His build is a joke aimed at me, considering I'm always complaining about never having a chance to play Kensai. His claws are +3 Defending claws. Yup.

PC 5) A half-dragon (Bronze) with 12 levels in Monk. He has taken vow of poverty. With a half-dragon. In a dragon campaign. What the hell.

My current thoughts: there is no party balance. Without a divine caster or arcane caster, they're gonna be screwed. My current solution is that the VoP monk has donated his ECL 13 wealth to the monastery of Bahamut. Surely the monastery won't mind throwing around a few resurrection spells on their behalf.

All in all, what should I do or suggest to help balance this party? How should I plan encounters and PC interactions?

Don't forget that all dragons have breath weapons. And if that vow of poverty monk did his job, he'll actually be rather potent (and should hopefully have the half dragon feat that lets him breathe as often as a true dragon).

So, one of these characters is, off the bat, an exalted character. This means the monk is going to be walking the straight and narrow. This does not mean you should be tempting him or actively trying to make him fall. Players can screw themselves up just fine. Rather, it means that any evil opponents he faces down against are going to have to contend with whatever free exalted bonus feats he picked up through vow of poverty he has. Things like Touch of Golden Ice and potent grappling modifiers would be one possible combo a monk like that could pull off. Between that and the bonuses that vow of poverty gives to make up for your lack of magic items, that monk can be deceptively dangerous.

The sword sage/warblade normally has hit dice count for half initiator level as far as I'm aware. This is why, in a thread I made not so long ago statting up a wyvern with 10 hit dice he started at initiator level 7 with his first level of warblade. So that character is going to be able to pick from some rather potent abilities instead of being stuck with Just the lowest level of shenanigans that initiators can pull off. Expect that dragon to be able to dump out a decent amount of damage regularly, especially if he's picked up things like fly by attack or improved flyby attack to make use of his draconic flying speed.


The kensai dragonseems like rather less of a threat. Yes, he has +3 claws, but...they're just +3. They're defending...but that's a +3 to ac at best. For ECL 13, that's just not very impressive if that's the best he has going for him.

The bronze dragon with combat reflexes might be okay at area denial. But unless he's picked up some means to make that useful, like stand still to combo with combat reflexes, I don't expect his attacks of opportunity to be all that effective.

The gold dragon sounds like they aren't going to be particularly dangerous if you are throwing these guys against CR 13 threats.

Bear in mind, I'm operating off of memory rather than looking these dragons up at their age categories, but at ages that young their individual attacks aren't that damaging, are they?

One problem you might run into is players breath weaponing on each other. Not much of a problem for the ones that are immune to each other's elements, but silver dragons are weak to fire, and gold are weak to cold (while halves are immune but not weak to anything). One situation this opens up as a possibility is that the monk could grapple a target and the silver dragon could blast cold breath hitting both, while any of the other dragons would have to aim their aoe's to miss the monk and still hit the target. But that assumes they would bother with team work.

And then I looked at the rest of this thread.

I think dragons start getting spell like abilities rather early on, the gold probably has at least one SLA at it's disposal. But I can't remember if having effective sorcerer levels was a 3.0 thing only, or if it was part of 3.5 as well. I admittedly haven't had to fight dragons that often (and the most memorable time that we had to face a dragon in any dnd party involved the archivist spewing dark secrets about to to keep it stun locked the entire time while the melee heavy party moved in and murdered it in about 2 rounds).

[TheifofZ]

But that assumes they would bother with team work.
Let's be honest here; Most parties have a concept of teamwork that can loosely be defined as "noone gets in eachothers way, people try to keep eachother alive." So this could very well be a rather large sticking point in the near future, but hey. It's all fun. (Just like Dwarf Fortress.)


I think dragons start getting spell like abilities rather early on, the gold probably has at least one SLA at it's disposal. But I can't remember if having effective sorcerer levels was a 3.0 thing only, or if it was part of 3.5 as well. I admittedly haven't had to fight dragons that often (and the most memorable time that we had to face a dragon in any dnd party involved the archivist spewing dark secrets about to to keep it stun locked the entire time while the melee heavy party moved in and murdered it in about 2 rounds).
I'm actually going to crack open my various books to check the rules on this alittle. Because it does seem mildly important.
Okay, so an 11 Dragon HD Gold and two 7 Dragon HD Silvers, and (after a little homework), a 9 Dragon HD Bronze.
The Bronze is Very Young (6 years) and won't gain 1st level spells for 10 years, but gains Speak with Animals out of the box.
The Silvers are Wymlings (0 years) and won't gain 1st level spells for 16 years. They don't gain their first SLA, Feather Fall, for 24 years.
The Gold is actually an ECL 14 (counting the included LA reduction from the DM) if it has 11 HD, is Very Young, and will get 1st level spells in 8 years. A PC gold dragon cannot obtain the first SLA, Bless, without going into epic levels.

So they do not, in fact, have spellcasting, and likely won't for the duration of the campaign. I was wrong in my earlier post. My collective bad.
However, I was not wrong in that the party is essentially a big, scaly hammer.

[Deeds]

However, I was not wrong in that the party is essentially a big, scaly hammer.
Well it was until PC 5 elected to be an Archivist.

[noob]

I find archivists really cool.
Int based casters(so lot of knowledge) and they have divine spells of all the kinds(Really all even paladin spells and all the spells of special PRC who get spells at super low level and all the spells you usually only get from feats or domains or from special classes and all the druid spells(convocation like crazy) and many domain spells and all arcane spells under their divine form(there is a class allowing to learn arcane spells under a divine form and so then to write divine scrolls of arcane spells))
So archivists have all the spells.(this make them sightly hard to manage but in exchange they have less crazy feats and they can not be incantatrixes(in a general way PRCs for divine casters have less uber crazy things))

[SangoProduction]

Let me get this straight: There's a wyrmling, a creature a few weeks old, that has 4 levels in sword sage? OK.

[noob]

Yes and so?
It is the power of LA!
The game devs decided than for learning a class you needed a time proportionally lower as your time in the first age category gets lower and so it means that if there was a specie who reached its first age category in one second then it would learn its class in one fifth of second.
Goblins while not having correct schools for learning wizardry learns it faster than humans and take a ridiculously small time when compared to elves because their first age categories are longer than the one of a goblin.

[Flickerdart]

Let me get this straight: There's a wyrmling, a creature a few weeks old, that has 4 levels in sword sage? OK.
Look again - dragons are considered wyrmlings until they are 5 years old.

But considering that they are born fully independent, it's hardly a stretch that one could start adventuring right away. With 4 encounters per day and 13.3 encounters per level (the standard for an adventuring day and the required number of CR-equivalent encounters to level, in case you can't be bothered to check your books again), the dragon could gain a level twice a week and get up to level 4 in a fortnight.

[TheifofZ]

Well it was until PC 5 elected to be an Archivist.

A vanilla archivist, or some kind of dragon?

Also, you might wish to double check the rules on gold dragons because that guy's sneaking in an extra ECL. He should have 10 HD, because 10 and 11 HD both have a +5 LA attached for Gold Dragons (And I think Red too, as both of those are the strongest of their respective 'group'), meaning +15/+16. -2 For your DM fiat stating dragon ECLs are at -2 LA, that' +13 for 10 HD, +14 for 11. You said in the first post that it must be ECL 13.

Gotcher back, guy.

[WhamBamSam]

Let me get this straight: There's a wyrmling, a creature a few weeks old, that has 4 levels in sword sage? OK.


Look again - dragons are considered wyrmlings until they are 5 years old.

But considering that they are born fully independent, it's hardly a stretch that one could start adventuring right away. With 4 encounters per day and 13.3 encounters per level (the standard for an adventuring day and the required number of CR-equivalent encounters to level, in case you can't be bothered to check your books again), the dragon could gain a level twice a week and get up to level 4 in a fortnight.Well, per Draconomicon, they generally have to take a RHD level when they reach 2 years of age, but your point still stands. A dragon PC can hit ECL 20 by the time a human of the same age is working out self awareness and object permanence without too much difficulty beyond the usual stuff associated with risking life and limb as an adventurer.

I'll also add that there are a number of ways to keep a wyrmling dragon from aging (Smoky Confinement is my personal favorite, Quintessence also works okay if you can make enough of it) if the adventuring ever hits a lull. And if the wyrmling is looking to develop these abilities while it's still young and impressionable (or in game terms, a lower ECL which can earn exp more easily), it might well make use of such things.

[Sagetim]

Well, per Draconomicon, they generally have to take a RHD level when they reach 2 years of age, but your point still stands. A dragon PC can hit ECL 20 by the time a human of the same age is working out self awareness and object permanence without too much difficulty beyond the usual stuff associated with risking life and limb as an adventurer.

I'll also add that there are a number of ways to keep a wyrmling dragon from aging (Smoky Confinement is my personal favorite, Quintessence also works okay if you can make enough of it) if the adventuring ever hits a lull. And if the wyrmling is looking to develop these abilities while it's still young and impressionable (or in game terms, a lower ECL which can earn exp more easily), it might well make use of such things.

I'm pretty sure that if you've gotten coated in quintessence you're time locked and thus immobilized because you have been removed from time. Using that to move through the ages would be a neat trick, but you could also accomplish that with flesh to stone/stone to flesh, the psionic power Crystalize and dispel psionics, or even Imprisonment/Freedom. However, as a dragon you generally want to keep aging as time passes...if only because it's free hit dice and advancement in power. There's bound to be a time when you would want to stay young for an easier time leveling, but...*shrug*.

[Jack_Simth]

Let's see...

You're heavy on melee, lean on casting (one divine caster which, if I'm reading things right,is suffering from 1 LA, so has 12 levels of Archivist - and no Arcane casting).

So unless you make sure to load the Archivist up with the appropriate band-aid spells, anything that imposes long-term status effects will be murder for this party.

Likewise, you don't have anyone to find traps, so I'd suggest making those into obvious puzzles that anyone can potentially solve rather than outright traps.

Edit: Oh yes, and make sure there's a wand of cure light wounds every so often in the loot piles. Half the party can use it, and with a melee heavy party, people will be taking hits.

[Inevitability]

If LA buyoff is allowed, point your players towards it. A few class levels more won't hurt those builds. If it isn't, seriously consider adding it.

[Nifft]

What an interesting problem.

I hope the Archivist is at least a Dragonwrought Kobold.

[lord_khaine]

As for how to run encounters...you have an entire party full of characters who specialize in solving problems by hitting them really hard. Give them lots of problems that can be solved by hitting them hard enough, and everybody should have a good time! Seems like much less difficulty than most party balance situations I hear about.

Very wise words, and i agree completely.

The part mainly seems to be doing variants of "hitting& breaking" stuff, so sending enough big beefy things after them in each encounter that all is likely to get a few kills, and you will most likely have a happy party.

[noob]

Since archivists have access to all the spells then it means that you are going to have some problems handling his vancian casting.
One day of rest and he can have any spell and fix nearly any situation(unless you are one of those GM who prevents its players from buying scrolls of everything which can be cast in every way(which exists if there is artificers you just have to preorder and to pay a good price but at level 12 you will see it means they can buy a lot of spells)).