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Neko
2007-06-26, 02:37 PM
Okay there is something I really don't understand about the half-dragon template. Why is it you have to be large size or bigger in order to gain wings? The half-celestial and half-fiend both have wings no matter the size and last time I checked even the smallest dragon had wings and could fly with them. So why is it that if I want to make a medium or small size half-dragon, what most PC chars are... why can't I have wings?

GoblinJTHM
2007-06-26, 02:40 PM
maybe they felt it made PCs too powerful giving the pre-existing bonuses to smaller than large size

Kizara
2007-06-26, 02:41 PM
Because WotC hates you, and you need to buy some kind of splat and take some silly "draconic heritage" feats in order to get your flight.

Seriously, if someone has a better explanation I'd like to hear it.

My advice: present your argument as you have stated it here to the DM, ask him to justify it beyond "the book says so", and when he can't, ask for a weee little houserule saying you can fly. Make sure you mention that it's retarded and nonsensical, because it is.

Neko
2007-06-26, 02:50 PM
To be honest every DM I've talked to said they didn't care if I had wings or not. I mean it is a level adjustment of +3... I don't think being able to fly is that big a deal... the Fey'ri have a +2 or +3 adjust and still have the wings.. Heck I think their manuverability is better too.. I just wanted to know if anyone had a real good reason... cause I don't see one.

Imrix.
2007-06-26, 06:12 PM
Yeah but... Do the Fey'Ri give you +8 Strength, +2 Consitution, Intelligence AND Charisma with no drawback, a hefty dose of Natural Armour, three natural weapons AND a breath weapon?

Because those are some preeeetty hefty bonuses.

Hadrian_Emrys
2007-06-26, 06:17 PM
Yeah but... Do the Fey'Ri give you +8 Strength, +2 Consitution, Intelligence AND Charisma with no drawback, a hefty dose of Natural Armour, three natural weapons AND a breath weapon?

Because those are some preeeetty hefty bonuses.

Bonuses that you get as a large size base for the same +LA. being big may have a +1 attached, but the size is totally worth it on it's own. I'd rule it in.

AtomicKitKat
2007-06-26, 11:44 PM
LA+4 is way overcosted for the Half-Outsider templates as well. I'd just drop all 3 to LA+3, and give wings regardless of size. Dragon wings are pretty crap anyway.

Damionte
2007-06-26, 11:48 PM
Your half dragon could just take a feat to get working wings. Or take a dragon related class that grants them wings. Dragon Shaman* (PHB-II) and Dragon Aspirant (Dragon Magic) both gain flight ability through wings.

*That might not be the name of that class. I tend to forget what it's called.

Fizban
2007-06-27, 12:30 AM
Yeah but... Do the Fey'Ri give you +8 Strength, +2 Consitution, Intelligence AND Charisma with no drawback, a hefty dose of Natural Armour, three natural weapons AND a breath weapon?

Because those are some preeeetty hefty bonuses.

Strength: not important for all classes.

Con, Int, and Cha: minor bonuses for a +3 LA template.

Natural weapons: again, not important for all classes, and have puny base damage to boot.

Natural armor: +4 is pretty good, but not insane.

Breath weapon: the Half-Dragon's breath weapon is a joke. It deals fixed damage 1/day with a DC based on racial hit dice.

And something you forgot: immunity to one energy type. That's the big one, but it's only one type of energy so it's not even that big.

Kizara
2007-06-27, 12:39 AM
Strength is considered by the game to be the single most costly bonus to get, as far as races are concerned.

It goes like: Strength, Con, Dex, Int, Wis/Cha.

+8 Str is huge.
Half-celestial was mildy overpowered in 3.0 at 3 LA, in 3.5 its debatably better (you get DR and Smite but your resistances/immunities are nerfed to hell) and at +4. I say if your going to drop it down to 3, you gotta take something away. DR might be an easy choice.

Zim
2007-06-27, 09:57 AM
I played a half dragon character for about 2 years and it was a blast! We used the savage progression upgrade from the WotC site and then house ruled a feat for flight (this is pre-RotD):

Draconic Flight [monstrous/general] Prereq: Half-dragon size medium or smaller.
Benefit: You may ignore size restrictions for gaining a pair of working draconic wings.

Simple. No insane feat trees. Just an easy to follow rule that allows you to bypass an existing one (like so many feats allow you to do).

Now the headaches of tracking a character in flight are another story. If you can convince your DM to allow you working wings, spend a feat to improve your manoeverability (darn spelling), 'cuz crashing into a wall because you miscalulated your turning ratio is VERY embarrassing. Trust me, I know. :smallredface:

Fizban
2007-06-27, 11:39 AM
Strength is considered by the game to be the single most costly bonus to get, as far as races are concerned.

It goes like: Strength, Con, Dex, Int, Wis/Cha.

+8 Str is huge.

And whoever wrote the "rule" was, frankly, an idiot. It's mentioned, as far as I know, only in the race bulding section of the DMG, is horribly outdated, and is patently wrong. Strength is only important for melee. Caster beats melee. That's pretty much all you need to know. I haven't played any of the older versions of DnD, but I'd bet that it's a relic of those editions where emphasis was put on huge returns from high strength with some wacky percentile system, and blasting magic.

DnD 3.5 does not do this. All stats are equal, even charisma when you look at how most SLA's of monsters are charisma based. There is no reason for the half-orc to have to mental penalties for it's "better" strength bonus.

Now, +8 strength is a very large bonus. There are few comparable in a PC usable race without racial hit dice. But 8 points of strength is not worth 3 levels of BAB, feats, ability points, HD, and class features. In fact, you need a slew of ability bonuses to make up for even 1 or 2 levels, and taking an LA for ability bonuses is usually a really bad idea anyway.

The half dragon trades 3 points of attack (and puts him self 3 levels behind on extra attacks) and gets a +4 to attack and damage, for a net +1 to attack with fewer future attacks, and +4 to damage. Compare to a fighter with power attack (who will have more feats because of his 3 extra levels btw). The fighter can just power attack for 2 with a two handed weapon, and end up with a +2 to attack and a +4 to damage. If the half dragon uses his natural weapons, he gets three attacks, two of which are at -5 and get only half his strength bonus to damage, whoo. The only bonus is using the bite attack with the sword, but it still has a -5 to hit, and will only get half strength bonus to damage in that case. Sure these are narrow examples, but they serve the purpose of showing that high str is not worth a high LA. Note also that power attack is a feat that every fighter takes, and that the half dragon, with his lower BAB, will not be able to use for a good while.

So, here we have the half dragon. High strength bonus, flight if it's large size (which will cost more LA), a crappy 1/day breath weapon barely worthy of the name, and immunity to one energy type. According to Savage Species, a breath weapon is worth +1 LA no matter what (take a look at the mephlings for crying out loud, 1d8 flat forever, why did they even write it down?), so we see where some of that comes from. Unbalanced ability scores for another +1, and the possibility of flight means that they've valued it as if it's getting flight anyway, for another +1. Energy immunity and resistance are effectively "free when you buy X LA" so we can write that off. And now we now why it costs so much:

It assumes the character will be a melee fighter.

It assumes the Character will get the flight ability, without accounting for the fact that being large size to get flight will raise the cost more than flight would be by itself.

It was made with some AD&D mentality where +8 strength and 6d8 damage is huge.

I could keep going, but now I'm just rambling and repeating myself. The point has been made.

Edit:


Half-celestial was mildy overpowered in 3.0 at 3 LA, in 3.5 its debatably better (you get DR and Smite but your resistances/immunities are nerfed to hell) and at +4. I say if your going to drop it down to 3, you gotta take something away. DR might be an easy choice.

The half celestial is tricky. The important part is that it gives scaling benefits, so it retains usefulness into high levels. This makes it's LA both lower and more applicable, as class levels also give scaling benefits. I don't think it's worth +4 by itself, but I agree that +3 is too low. The DR is over magic, by the time you get it, it's practically moot. The SR has a cap on it, but isn't bad until you hit the cap, comparable to the drow's (if you weren't 4 HD behind). It gets stat bonuses across the board, useful flight, and a bunch of SLA's that grant assorted bonuses and non hp curatives that are useful if not stunning at all levels.

The ability bonuses and flight hold it at a solid high 2-3, the energy resistance comes free with that. The SLA's push it to 4, and bring the DR and SR with it for free as well (since they are both negligible).

Neko
2007-07-07, 06:37 PM
Myself, I made a half-blue dragon caster... gave her energy substitusion electricity so I can't be hurt by most of my own attacks, took born of three thunders, hover, and explosive spell as well so I can hover in place and bombard with spells from above since we ruled in favor of wings... and on the Fey'ri front.. gotta remember.. they get some awsome spell like abilities and/or damage reductions

13_CBS
2007-07-07, 07:43 PM
If you don't care about flavor and just want a nice set of wings, a Dragonborn character might not be too bad, I think. Good bonuses to Constitution (penalty to Dex), other stuff, plus, of course, wings. You can't really fly with them until you're fairly high level, but you can always houserule it down the road.

Unfortunately, Dragonborn can't get both a breath weapon and wings (although the breath weapon isn't too bad on Dragonborns either; at least you get to use it every 1d4 rounds).

Yuki Akuma
2007-07-07, 07:46 PM
Completely off-topic, but the thread title sounds like something a closet speciesist would say.

"Flying halfbreeds..."

Webtron
2007-07-08, 12:22 AM
hehe winged gnomes, all dnd needs to be the best game ever

Sornjss Lichdom
2007-07-08, 01:12 AM
talk to your DM and see if you can, through level progresion, get extended powers of flight. exp:

1st lvl: 3 min of total flight time, you cant double this time and become fatigued, or you can tripple this flight time and become exshausted.

and so on and so forth cranking up the time until u get to lvl ten and just be able to fly as long as u want.

also use ur draconic heratige to mask your wings in an illiuson so u can walk into towns with out the whole torches and pitchforks scene.

ull need a flexable DM or sacrafice a feat for a Homebrew type feat.

0oo0
2007-07-08, 05:04 PM
Slightly off topic, but if I wanted to play a character with a descent breath weapon, but no crazy LA, what should I look for? The once a day limit on Half dragons or Talons of Tiamat seems too much for fun breath blasting all day long.

Inyssius Tor
2007-07-08, 05:41 PM
Dragonborn of Bahamut. Five-foot line per HD, you can pick the damage type on each use, usable every 1d4 rounds.

It's meant for characters, so no LA or racial HD. Races Of The Dragon, p.5.

Er, or a Dragon Shaman (character class, PHBII, p.11) you could play a Warlock (character class, CAr, p.5), which is close enough. There's also... hell, just go here for pure win condensed into, uh, text form. (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=662842)

0oo0
2007-07-08, 05:50 PM
Thanks Tor! that is a great list of awesome stuff.