Slimmy
2017-08-21, 07:30 PM
With my gaming group, I've been working on what we know call "Dragons of Taldor".
The plot is simple : Adventurers have fallen out of fashion in Taldor, many laws exist that forbid commoners from bearing weapons or magic and many mercenaries have decided to try their luck in neighbouring countries. Add that to the worst bureaucracy on Golarion and it means that when your village has a goblin problem, or a wyvern has decided to eat your children every week, you don't have anyone to turn to. A secret society called the eye of Ozem has decided to take matters into their own hands and protect the people. They managed an alliance with a dragoness (who saw them as an entertaining curiosity before starting an unlikely friendship with their leader), but when they came to give her back the magic sword she loaned them they found her corpse, most of her eggs destroyed and her hoard intact. They found some intact eggs that the attacker missed and decided to bring them back and raise them. What they did not know is that the dragoness had a pact with other dragons, a pact that was sealed by offering some eggs to each others.
So starts the story of our PCs ! A bronze, a gold, a blue, a white and a green dragon !
Of course, making that work is another matter entirely. Thank the gods, racial hit dice work entirely like class level. The true difficulty was making them kind of equal, and making them different enough so that players don't feel like they are all playing the same character (on a mechanical point of view, of course).
So in this topic, if you are interested, I will share the houserules we used to make it work if you want to try a similar concept.
First houserule : Every dragon starts at 6 HD, this is their base HD.
Second houserule : All of them have "base statistics", modified to be slightly weaker than the canonical gold wyrmling while staying true to their character (the white dragon is still a dumbass by dragon standards but he is physically the strongest of the lot). For exemple, the white dragon now has str 17, dex 21, con 16, int 8, wis 11, cha 8, it's extremely buffed because his lack of mental capacity means that he is the heavy hitter of the gang. They have those basics, then they had a +1 because they are above 4 hit dice, and then they get a +2 anywhere they want.
Third houserule : Dragon-path. So, the big problem is, how do I manage things so that players feel they're playing different characters ? I mean, they have different quirks but they are all playing flying characters with two claws, a bite and a magic breath. The only difference is their attributes and feats (and of course the few "things" they get through their dragon type). So, we now have "path" that work a bit like dragon-only classes. They will reach their 7th HD and choose a path amongst the following :
The ravager path boosts their melee attacks, breath range, natural armor and breath damage while giving them a few features stolen from the barbarian class (raging dragons !)
The prophet path gives them divine abilities taken from the cleric, monk and oracle, and the capacity to choose spells from the cleric list.
The draconic overlord is the master upon his domain, he gets features taken from the nature warden prestige class. It's the dragon that says "I'm gonna live in this place" and transforms the place to suit his needs while getting tons of bonuses in it, speaking to the animals... (For those who don't know the nature warden prestige class, it mostly consists of taking the favoured terrain feature and then give it a bunch of steroids)
The breath artist takes his draconic breath and gets it up to eleven. He can shape his breath to create elementals, gets the metabreath feats from the 3.5 draconomicon and can use bard-like abilities to inspire allies.
The puppetmaster is the social specialist. They hate to fight directly and prefer to subtly influence inferior races. They get to take humanoid form earlier than anyone and become shapeshifting masters. They can create a subtle programming inside the mind of their half-dragon children. And they get a bonus to enchantment spells and powers. A good puppetmaster gets his ennemies to destroy each other before they even think of coming for him.
The dragon arcanist studies the mysteries of arcane magic. They collect arcane knowledge, scrolls and tome. They get to cast spells before any other dragon and can change their spells known through a week of study. They are loremasters among dragons and get the draconic knowledge ability that lets them call on the ancestral memories of their kind.
I'm working on the paths right now and I don't know yet exactly how it will work, I only know each path's flavour. If anyone has an idea, a suggestion or question, I'm listening.
The plot is simple : Adventurers have fallen out of fashion in Taldor, many laws exist that forbid commoners from bearing weapons or magic and many mercenaries have decided to try their luck in neighbouring countries. Add that to the worst bureaucracy on Golarion and it means that when your village has a goblin problem, or a wyvern has decided to eat your children every week, you don't have anyone to turn to. A secret society called the eye of Ozem has decided to take matters into their own hands and protect the people. They managed an alliance with a dragoness (who saw them as an entertaining curiosity before starting an unlikely friendship with their leader), but when they came to give her back the magic sword she loaned them they found her corpse, most of her eggs destroyed and her hoard intact. They found some intact eggs that the attacker missed and decided to bring them back and raise them. What they did not know is that the dragoness had a pact with other dragons, a pact that was sealed by offering some eggs to each others.
So starts the story of our PCs ! A bronze, a gold, a blue, a white and a green dragon !
Of course, making that work is another matter entirely. Thank the gods, racial hit dice work entirely like class level. The true difficulty was making them kind of equal, and making them different enough so that players don't feel like they are all playing the same character (on a mechanical point of view, of course).
So in this topic, if you are interested, I will share the houserules we used to make it work if you want to try a similar concept.
First houserule : Every dragon starts at 6 HD, this is their base HD.
Second houserule : All of them have "base statistics", modified to be slightly weaker than the canonical gold wyrmling while staying true to their character (the white dragon is still a dumbass by dragon standards but he is physically the strongest of the lot). For exemple, the white dragon now has str 17, dex 21, con 16, int 8, wis 11, cha 8, it's extremely buffed because his lack of mental capacity means that he is the heavy hitter of the gang. They have those basics, then they had a +1 because they are above 4 hit dice, and then they get a +2 anywhere they want.
Third houserule : Dragon-path. So, the big problem is, how do I manage things so that players feel they're playing different characters ? I mean, they have different quirks but they are all playing flying characters with two claws, a bite and a magic breath. The only difference is their attributes and feats (and of course the few "things" they get through their dragon type). So, we now have "path" that work a bit like dragon-only classes. They will reach their 7th HD and choose a path amongst the following :
The ravager path boosts their melee attacks, breath range, natural armor and breath damage while giving them a few features stolen from the barbarian class (raging dragons !)
The prophet path gives them divine abilities taken from the cleric, monk and oracle, and the capacity to choose spells from the cleric list.
The draconic overlord is the master upon his domain, he gets features taken from the nature warden prestige class. It's the dragon that says "I'm gonna live in this place" and transforms the place to suit his needs while getting tons of bonuses in it, speaking to the animals... (For those who don't know the nature warden prestige class, it mostly consists of taking the favoured terrain feature and then give it a bunch of steroids)
The breath artist takes his draconic breath and gets it up to eleven. He can shape his breath to create elementals, gets the metabreath feats from the 3.5 draconomicon and can use bard-like abilities to inspire allies.
The puppetmaster is the social specialist. They hate to fight directly and prefer to subtly influence inferior races. They get to take humanoid form earlier than anyone and become shapeshifting masters. They can create a subtle programming inside the mind of their half-dragon children. And they get a bonus to enchantment spells and powers. A good puppetmaster gets his ennemies to destroy each other before they even think of coming for him.
The dragon arcanist studies the mysteries of arcane magic. They collect arcane knowledge, scrolls and tome. They get to cast spells before any other dragon and can change their spells known through a week of study. They are loremasters among dragons and get the draconic knowledge ability that lets them call on the ancestral memories of their kind.
I'm working on the paths right now and I don't know yet exactly how it will work, I only know each path's flavour. If anyone has an idea, a suggestion or question, I'm listening.