Shadow half-dragon commoners as main enemies?

[id143910]

First thing, English is not my first language, but I couldn't find a good place to ask this questions in french.

I joined a d&d club recently and I asked to DM a campaign myself. The DM said yes and some players were interested including the current DM. I read a lot about it on the internet and I'm ready to create my first d&d campaign. However, there was a certain topic about which I couldn't find many answers. It was concerning half-dragon. I was searching for low level enemies and I saw that. From what I read this is a template that you can apply to pretty much any humanoid. The example in the mm is the veteran who is in the same section as the commoner.

So my first question is: Can I create half-dragon commoner npc with 4 HP and a fire breath of 24?

It sound like a fun thing to try. :)

Also, a dragon need shapechange in order to be able to "create" half-dragons. I searched and the only dragons with shapechange are the metallics one and they are all good in alignment. This is sad because the bronze dragon would fit perfectly with the setting of the campaign.

My other questions are: Can a shadow bronze dragon still shapechange into a human? If they do so, would the half-dragons keep the shadow appearance and the cool necrotic breath of their father? Do they also have the repulsing one?

If yes, it would be amazing. I would have half-dragon commoners and bandits when the PC are low level.
What about an aarakocra half dragon? Do they keep their wings?

If the answers to all my questions are yes. I could continue making npc with stronger humanoid until the PC could beat an adult shadow bronze dragon.

What are your thoughts on that?

[DragonSorcererX]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4R9Y9bYfFo

[Erys]

So my first question is: Can I create half-dragon commoner npc with 4 HP and a fire breath of 24?

Just be mindful, breath weapons are remarkably strong against low level parties.

[MasterMercury]

Honestly, sounds good. Also, don't let pesky rules or written stuff get in the way of your vision.

[Toadkiller]

What they said. You don't need a dragon from a book that does what you want. Just adapt the ones to fit the story. You can make an evil metallic dragon or a shadow dragon that can shape change. It's your world.

But as also said above, be careful with area of effect attacks like the breath weapon. It can be fun to knock one character out to make things scary (though not too often or the players don't have anything to do). But if one attack takes out the whole party, that's no fun.

Maybe they run into novices at first with a weak breath weapon and then, as they level up, start finding some folks who are stronger (likely still mixed in with the mooks.)


By the way - you're English is pretty good! Better than my French!

[Zorku]

There's a section in the DMG for creating custom monsters that would probably give you a much better sense of what the challenge rating should be for these half dragons, with whatever configuration of breath weapon attacks you decide they should have (personally if I really wanted to let it have both I'd put the breath attacks on the same cooldown, but I can't think of any abilities in the MM that work like that, so your call.)

The equation breaks a little bit at low levels, especially with something like a breath weapon, since it's got the potential to one hit total party kill, especially if the commoners are just swinging their fists the rest of the time (the offensive rating is based on the average damage over 3 rounds, though thankfully the chart also gives you the expected save dc that should go on effects like these, so it's much easier for the party to take half damage from the attack.)

You might want to consider the really low level versions of these half dragons a CR step higher than they are, since there's a chance you will roll really high with that attack and maybe catch more than 2 party members in the cone, but going off of pure average rolls you wouldn't wipe a level 1 party with 1 half shadow dragon commoner- though you'd mess them up real bad (likely kill half of them) before it fell apart like wet paper.

More broadly speaking, it's a bad idea to drop the tank of the party in fewer than 3 hits. There's some wiggle room for that kind of thing once in awhile, but you and your players probably won't be happy if the average fight knocks them around harder than that. The first two levels don't really work this way since people don't have many abilities and have very little hp, but unless you really like throwing character sheets away those levels should be treated like a tutorial anyway.

[Estrillian]

As others have said, if you want Half-Dragon Commoners then go for it, but they won't keep the very low CR that other commoners have. That means that you'll want other things to fill in for your weakest enemies at low level. Kobolds are an ever-popular answer (they revere dragons, and I am sure half-dragons would count), or you could have a bunch of actual commoners who flock around the actual half-dragons - attaching cloth wings to their backs, painting themselves black, and generally trying to pretend to be draconic.

Then your players can start off encountering the (rather comic) cultist commoners, and fight them with fair ease (not that easily of course, because they are level one) and get a real shock when they face the actual Shadow Half-Dragon Commoner as their first boss at level 2. After that you can add the templates to Guards, Bandits, Cult Fanatics and the like, with some Dragonborn mixed in for spice perhaps.