Malapterus
2018-11-07, 11:29 PM
This is the beginning of an idea for a class that summons dragons the way a druid or wizard summons creatures. The core of the class would be a modified Summon Monster spell, although I will have to work the first few levels a bit because wyrlmings are on par with summon monster 3-5 so I need something for the first few levels. Maybe i could find some low-CR reptile and you can summon it with the half-dragon template as some sort of mocked-up minor drake.
Looking at d4 or maybe d6; you're a dragon-wannabe, not the real deal.
Wizard BaB, you're relying on abilities and magic.
There are no alignment restrictions, but it goes as follows:
If you are Good, you can summon naturally Good or Neutral dragons. You get a bonus to summoning Good dragons, Good dragons love you, Evil dragons hate you.
If you are Evil, you can summon naturally Evil or Neutral dragons. You get a bonus to summoning Evil dragons, Evil dragons love you, Good dragons hate you.
A Neutral character picks at character creation whether he can summon Good or Evil, and he cannot change this choice without some drastic life-changing event. He can always summon Neutral dragons, but doesn't get a bonus to anything. As a side note, dragons of all alignment acknowledge your existence (a great honor) but have no predisposition to you either way.
Part of the lore is that this relationship does benefit dragonkind, especially a specific dragon who you'll bond to that will benefit from maturing and growing faster as it shares in your experiences. As such, summoned dragons fight by your side and obey respectful, reasonable commands, and do not fear death as they know that since they have been summoned, deadly damage just sends them home.
Dragons by color and age category are all over the place, but per my research I have found that dragons by hit die scale pretty evenly (no pun intended) and that scale also rides well with the Summon Monster/Summon nature's Ally power level, if you accept dragons as being a little better because they can fly. Therefore, the 'Summon Dragon' spell that comes with this class will be caster-level based. "Summon Dragon II, summon any dragon of HD equal to your hit die, maximum 3 HD." It'll be written better to indicate you are summoning a generic pre-statted Monster Manual dragon and not a specific dragon you happen to know of. I think I might skip out on using a higher-level spell to summon a bunch of lower-level dragons like you can with Summon Monster; that could be a good balancing act, and/or I might make it so you can only have one Summon Dragon spell active at a time and can't cast it again till you've finished your broccoli your existing summons have gone home.
It gets a little tweaky, wizard style. A few things you can do will increase the maximum Hit Dice of monsters you can summon. For example, a Good character can probably summon Good dragons one hit die higher than the spell allows for dragons in general. Down the road a ways, you can lock it down further.
"I only summon Chaotic dragons"
"I only summon Chromatic dragons."
"I only summon Green dragons".
These are optional and come in as you level up, but the more you limit yourself the stronger the dragons you summon are and you might be getting 25-hd dragons at level 20, even though said dragons will not vary much.
I mentioned a specific dragon earlier. Early on you'll get a baby baby tiny cutisie pootsie dragon that is your buddy. It lives with the other dragons, so you have to summon it. It sticks around a little longer and has its own uses-per-day to be summoned. This dragon will be a little stronger, it will know and care about you, and you get to guide its development. You are now attuned to that particular type of dragon, a trait that will follow you always.
Leveling up, you get the special abilities of your dragon, as well as some arcane abilities based on the dragon such as a phantom claw attack or a temporary Fly speed. More exciting dragons like Reds have better abilities and domain spells than a 'lesser' dragon like a White does at the same HD, but a White dragon will be bigger so your phantom attacks will do more damage and your Fly speed will be faster, so i think that evens out.
As you go on you'll get some special abilities to pick from. "Summoned dragons will let you ride them." "Summoned dragons can summon other creatures per their creature entries; creatures summoned by summoned dragons vanish when the dragon does." "You may apply a template to a summoned dragon by summoning it with reduced hit dice" "Your personal dragon gets a couple of class levels"
There will be some extremely minor arcane spellcasting to go along with the class since it's dragons and all; probably an evocation-heavy pre-set spell list with lots of stuff like "This is Fireball but it can also do the energy damage of the breath weapon of your summoned dragon bla bla", and some utility spells.
Once summoned, the dragon does what you want it to do if you give it orders, but if you don't give it orders; I mean, it's a dragon. It knows what to do. The only limit is your DM can say "I don't think your dragon would do that if you didn't tell it to" if you're trying to get a red dragon to hide or a white dragon to do anything but scream. If you play the dragon as a friendly dragon, then your Dragomancer and the summoned dragon each get a full turn to do as they please. Ordering your dragon around uses up some of your action, but gets it to do more specific things. There is, however, a third option!
As a Dragomancer, as you level up you will get abilities to harmonize with your dragon and help to guide it and aide it in combat. This does not allow for actions as specific as ordering it or as complex as perhaps letting it do it on its own and generally uses up some or all of the Dragomancer's turn, but it gives your summoned dragon sizeable bonuses to whatever cooperative measures you are doing. Like, maybe you cast one of your Fire spells into your gold dragon's cone of flame to maximize the damage of said breath weapon, or maybe you add your BaB to its next attack, or some stuff like that.
I'd need to hammer out exactly how you use the Domain spells, if your chosen dragon gets them, and come up with some cool options for each dragon type (so many dragons) like; an easy special to pick up is that your dragon can do his breath weapon as either a line or a cone; but if it's a red dragon maybe he can also emit it as a modified Scorching Ray, machine-gunning out little jets of flame at multiple targets, or maybe your green dragon can spit his out as a ranged burst with a lingering effect, or your amythest dragon can do whatever it is that gemstone dragons do, I don't know.
So, a little bit wizard, a little bit druid, a little bit paladin, a little bit sorcerer. I think by only letting you have one active summoning at a time, and/or not letting you summon multiple dragons.
You start off scampering around with crested felldrakes and half-brass-dragon toads and level up to hiding behind your copper dragon buddy as your 20 HD Celestial Gold Dragon torments your foes. I think it would be balanced but a lot of fun.
Any critiques or suggestions?
Looking at d4 or maybe d6; you're a dragon-wannabe, not the real deal.
Wizard BaB, you're relying on abilities and magic.
There are no alignment restrictions, but it goes as follows:
If you are Good, you can summon naturally Good or Neutral dragons. You get a bonus to summoning Good dragons, Good dragons love you, Evil dragons hate you.
If you are Evil, you can summon naturally Evil or Neutral dragons. You get a bonus to summoning Evil dragons, Evil dragons love you, Good dragons hate you.
A Neutral character picks at character creation whether he can summon Good or Evil, and he cannot change this choice without some drastic life-changing event. He can always summon Neutral dragons, but doesn't get a bonus to anything. As a side note, dragons of all alignment acknowledge your existence (a great honor) but have no predisposition to you either way.
Part of the lore is that this relationship does benefit dragonkind, especially a specific dragon who you'll bond to that will benefit from maturing and growing faster as it shares in your experiences. As such, summoned dragons fight by your side and obey respectful, reasonable commands, and do not fear death as they know that since they have been summoned, deadly damage just sends them home.
Dragons by color and age category are all over the place, but per my research I have found that dragons by hit die scale pretty evenly (no pun intended) and that scale also rides well with the Summon Monster/Summon nature's Ally power level, if you accept dragons as being a little better because they can fly. Therefore, the 'Summon Dragon' spell that comes with this class will be caster-level based. "Summon Dragon II, summon any dragon of HD equal to your hit die, maximum 3 HD." It'll be written better to indicate you are summoning a generic pre-statted Monster Manual dragon and not a specific dragon you happen to know of. I think I might skip out on using a higher-level spell to summon a bunch of lower-level dragons like you can with Summon Monster; that could be a good balancing act, and/or I might make it so you can only have one Summon Dragon spell active at a time and can't cast it again till you've finished your broccoli your existing summons have gone home.
It gets a little tweaky, wizard style. A few things you can do will increase the maximum Hit Dice of monsters you can summon. For example, a Good character can probably summon Good dragons one hit die higher than the spell allows for dragons in general. Down the road a ways, you can lock it down further.
"I only summon Chaotic dragons"
"I only summon Chromatic dragons."
"I only summon Green dragons".
These are optional and come in as you level up, but the more you limit yourself the stronger the dragons you summon are and you might be getting 25-hd dragons at level 20, even though said dragons will not vary much.
I mentioned a specific dragon earlier. Early on you'll get a baby baby tiny cutisie pootsie dragon that is your buddy. It lives with the other dragons, so you have to summon it. It sticks around a little longer and has its own uses-per-day to be summoned. This dragon will be a little stronger, it will know and care about you, and you get to guide its development. You are now attuned to that particular type of dragon, a trait that will follow you always.
Leveling up, you get the special abilities of your dragon, as well as some arcane abilities based on the dragon such as a phantom claw attack or a temporary Fly speed. More exciting dragons like Reds have better abilities and domain spells than a 'lesser' dragon like a White does at the same HD, but a White dragon will be bigger so your phantom attacks will do more damage and your Fly speed will be faster, so i think that evens out.
As you go on you'll get some special abilities to pick from. "Summoned dragons will let you ride them." "Summoned dragons can summon other creatures per their creature entries; creatures summoned by summoned dragons vanish when the dragon does." "You may apply a template to a summoned dragon by summoning it with reduced hit dice" "Your personal dragon gets a couple of class levels"
There will be some extremely minor arcane spellcasting to go along with the class since it's dragons and all; probably an evocation-heavy pre-set spell list with lots of stuff like "This is Fireball but it can also do the energy damage of the breath weapon of your summoned dragon bla bla", and some utility spells.
Once summoned, the dragon does what you want it to do if you give it orders, but if you don't give it orders; I mean, it's a dragon. It knows what to do. The only limit is your DM can say "I don't think your dragon would do that if you didn't tell it to" if you're trying to get a red dragon to hide or a white dragon to do anything but scream. If you play the dragon as a friendly dragon, then your Dragomancer and the summoned dragon each get a full turn to do as they please. Ordering your dragon around uses up some of your action, but gets it to do more specific things. There is, however, a third option!
As a Dragomancer, as you level up you will get abilities to harmonize with your dragon and help to guide it and aide it in combat. This does not allow for actions as specific as ordering it or as complex as perhaps letting it do it on its own and generally uses up some or all of the Dragomancer's turn, but it gives your summoned dragon sizeable bonuses to whatever cooperative measures you are doing. Like, maybe you cast one of your Fire spells into your gold dragon's cone of flame to maximize the damage of said breath weapon, or maybe you add your BaB to its next attack, or some stuff like that.
I'd need to hammer out exactly how you use the Domain spells, if your chosen dragon gets them, and come up with some cool options for each dragon type (so many dragons) like; an easy special to pick up is that your dragon can do his breath weapon as either a line or a cone; but if it's a red dragon maybe he can also emit it as a modified Scorching Ray, machine-gunning out little jets of flame at multiple targets, or maybe your green dragon can spit his out as a ranged burst with a lingering effect, or your amythest dragon can do whatever it is that gemstone dragons do, I don't know.
So, a little bit wizard, a little bit druid, a little bit paladin, a little bit sorcerer. I think by only letting you have one active summoning at a time, and/or not letting you summon multiple dragons.
You start off scampering around with crested felldrakes and half-brass-dragon toads and level up to hiding behind your copper dragon buddy as your 20 HD Celestial Gold Dragon torments your foes. I think it would be balanced but a lot of fun.
Any critiques or suggestions?