Epic Dragon PC

[AvatarVecna]

Putting together a high-epic character (mostly for my own amusement), but I'm finding myself frustrated with a lack of LA for dragons beyond juvenile for most true dragons. Is there perhaps some source where such LA is listed that I'm just not finding? If there isn't, are there guidelines the community finds are generally reasonable levels of LA for older dragons?

[Ganorenas]

Dragons beyond the ages with level adjustment are usually not attained by players during a campaign (which is assumed to go up to lvl20, as the epic rules were not printed during the level adjustment assignment of the core dragons).

As for my suggestion for a way to create a level adjustment:
For specifically green dragons, they have LA+5 until Juvenile, which has LA+6 (followed by LA-). This could be taken to mean that you add an extra LA every 10 or so HD.
Wyrmling 6-7HD+5LA -> Juvenile 15-16HD+6LA.

This is by no means a perfect or fully thought out quick fix, as the other dragons have differing levels of power, I selected green for my example because it is considered the middle power of the 5 Chromatic dragons. I'll come back to this thread later with more information, but I wanted to quickly toss in my 2 cents.

Best of luck, stating really old dragons can be a lot of fun!

[WhamBamSam]

The Dragon PC rules in Draconomicon essentially abdicate responsibility for anything beyond ECL 20. The ELH does list ECL for a few examples of Epic Dragon Varieties and an advanced Red Great Wyrm from which you could extrapolate LA (all given examples are LA+0). There isn't anything ironclad or general though, so you're going to be stuck hashing it out with your DM.

[J-H]

Waive LA if you're taking straight dragon RHD. Dragon RHD is like taking levels in a Tier 2.5 class; they get sorc casting (but behind), monk defenses (but not as good against Touch), a good physical attack routine (but a Warblade or Barbarian can probably do better), and good RHD/skill points.

Take a 17HD Young Adult Green (since we're talking greens):
It has decently good HP, but not too far above what a typical melee class will have
STR 23 is nothing to brag about at level 17; a level 17 PC orc samurai will probably be pretty close.
The rest of the stats aren't great.
10d6 breath weapon? The wizard could do that 7 levels ago.
To-hit of +22 on the attack routine? The level 17 orc samurai has a +23, and he can enchant his attacks more easily.
Frightful presence is nice, but not particularly overpowered.
SR 5/magic, SR 19? Useless against even-level opponents.
Sorc caster level 3? I guess you can use True Strike.
The fly speed is nice, although maneuverability is not very high.

If you add 6 LA on top of those 17 RHD, the dragon is being compared against 23rd-level characters, and is completely outclassed by all spellcasters (including bards and paladins) and likely even by the fighter & barbarian. Only a few of the utility classes (rogue? warlock?) might not be able to take it head-on, and even then they probably will have a few tricks that will work (darkstalker, go invisible, sneak attack twf for 50d6 vs AC25?).

You have to get all the way up to 38HD (Great Wyrm) for a Green to even get 9th-level spells.

Greens are a weaker variety, but the same generally holds true - just play straight dragon HD as your levels and you'll be fine.

[FearlessGnome]

The Epic Leadership feat offers a few examples of Epic Dragons. They are horribly not worth it, but they are there to look at.

The dragons:
Dragon, ancient silver Lawful good 42nd ---- 34 RHD, LA+8
Dragon, wyrm brass Chaotic good 42th ---- 34 RHD, LA+8
Dragon, ancient green Lawful evil 40th ---- 32 RHD, LA+8
Dragon, wyrm white Chaotic evil 41th ---- 33 RHD, LA+8

From there you'll have to extrapolate. Dragon kinds that have higher LA than the Core versions at low levels should probably have it at higher levels too. Those with less, less.

[Mato]

Take a 17HD Young Adult Green (since we're talking greens):
STR 23 is nothing to brag about at level 17; a level 17 PC orc samurai will probably be pretty close.
The rest of the stats aren't great.
An orc gets +4 str, -2 int, -2 wis, -2 cha for racial modifiers.
The dragon gets +12 str, +8 con, +4 int, +4 wis, +4 cha for racial modifiers (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monstersAsRaces.htm#abilityScoresforMonsterPCs).

It has decently good HP, but not too far above what a typical melee class will have
For some reason this comes across like a warblade/barbarian value that includes a full set of items where the dragon does not because it's extremely hard to come close d12s & a +8 racial bonus to constitution if you are crusader, fighter, paladin, ranger, hexblade, or duskblade.

To-hit of +22 on the attack routine?
The level 17 orc samurai has a +23, and he can enchant his attacks more easily.
Racial modifiers aside the dragon has six natural weapons to the orc's four attacks or
Dragon: +22/+17/+17/+17/+17/+17.
Orc: +23/+18/+13/+8.

10d6 breath weapon? The wizard could do that 7 levels ago.
For a very limited number of uses per day and no metabreath abuse, the dragon gets feats too.

Frightful presence is nice, but not particularly overpowered.
The -2 penalty imposed on saves is great but you can replace it with fatiguing presence which prevents creatures from charging you. And it also works great with a 150ft/rnd speed since you can effectively prevent creatures from entering melee with you unless you choose to.

SR 5/magic, SR 19? Useless against even-level opponents.
Most non-outsider non-epic creatures cannot bypass magic damage reduction unlike PCs. And you forgot about the immunity to acid and water-breathing.

Sorc caster level 3? I guess you can use True Strike.
With wyrm of war that's enough to pick up white raven tactics or iron heart surge. You may not be a great caster but you're already better than the melee and now you have spells and maneuvers as a free addon.

The fly speed is nice, although maneuverability is not very high.
It still 60,000gp less than buying a cloak and the dragon also has a swim speed.

If you add 6 LA on top of those 17 RHD, the dragon is being compared against 23rd-level characters and is completely outclassed by all spellcasters
Actually the dragon's CR is 11 meaning it's meant to be compared to 11th level characters in combat which as you can see from it's actual combat stats it even better than 17th level mundanes.But yes, level adjustment hurts and nothing is better than epic spellcasting.

Officially the LA lists don't go into the epic range but there three very limited exceptions. Draconomicon page 144 contains two examples, one for the howling and the other for gold, that do mention their next expect epic LA range. And on page 158 of the epic level handbook it says an old prismatic dragon's ECL is 58, since it has 58 HD that would mean it's LA is +0.

You could purpose a theory that the dragon's quickly increasing non-casting abilities and breath weapon abuse are the main reasons it's LA increases so suddenly. However as the game goes on those traits depreciate, becoming less useful and it's quite on to scale of other mundane epic monsters, and epic spellcasting almost becomes mandatory the LA decreases until it vanishes.