personalyzing dragons

[King of Nowhere]

I'm about to introduce a few dragons that will have some relevance in my campaing, some friends, some foes, some depends on how the players will act. those are different dragons, with different goals and motives and personalities.

So I would not want them to fight as "generic dragon #115". I would like to differentiate them so that each one of them has a specific style or quirk that the players can associate with him.

the dragons are all pretty old (with one exception), so they have plenty of feats to pick. they have elite array stats, and they may have some class levels, so there is some variability. I'm also open to make stuff that's not 100% rules legal if it's cool.

So far I have the following concepts:

- a dragon with large and in charge, combat reflexes, and improved trip. does battlefield control and is difficult to reach.
I'll probably nerf large and in charge because it could be too frustrating for the players otherwise, but I'm thinking on how I could nerf it exactly that would not make it redundant with improved trip.

- a dragon with improved rapidstrike, does a lot of extra attacks. specialized in divine magic, if several dragons are fighting toghether he's the healer.

- a dragon wizard. Instead of his natural spellcasting as a sorceror, he casts as a wizard, possibly has some hit dice swapped for wizard levels; he fights mostly as a caster.
I don't want to make this guy too strong or too weak, I just like the idea that a dragon decided to actually study arcane magic even if he can do it naturally, so that he would not be limited to the same small selection of spells.

- a dragon that would make some knockdown combo with his tail (say, tail sweep knockdown + whirlwind tail sweep).
can a tail sweep attack exempt allies in the area, or does it strike everyone equally?

- a dragon with a lot of breath manipulation.
as metabreath feats increase reload time and fights tend to be short anyway, how can I make this guy do something special on multiple rounds?

- a dragon with monk training.
that's the dragon that's sensibly younger than the others, and weaker - though much stronger than usual for his age category. If I go by the book, most of that stuff isn't going to stack, but I want to try and have his monk abilities increase his dragon fighting capacity in a way that makes sense.

- a dragon focused on long range offensive spells that keeps his distance with flight and harrasses the enemy

those dragons are also going to have some magic items, though i did houserule that dragons interfere with magic items and get less benefits than normal, because they'd be too strong otherwise - but it wouldn't make sense for them to have huge hoards and not use items in combat. Is there some item I could give a dragon that would make something interesting?

a dragon focused on snatch/grapple/swallow is moot because all the party has rings of freedom of movement.
a dragon focused on snatch/grapple/swallow and that uses antimagic field is stronger than i want to make (though some of them do have AMF, I'll try to use it in ways that can be countered).

what other concepts could I make?
and what kind of feats/spells/strategies could I use to make those concepts work at the right power level?

[Biggus]

For the one with metabreath feats, multiple heads?

[DrMotives]

For the Large & In Charge dragon, the Explosive Spell (Complete Arcane) comes to mind. Ideally, it'd be a metabreath instead of metamagic, but it allows area effect damage spells to push targets to the edges of the AoE at 1d6 damage per 10 feet traveled. On a line breath weapon used against a close range target, even someone immune to the energy form could get hurt bad by being pushed back that far. There is a published metabreath feat that adds high wind effects, which I have to look up the rules on to see how that works.

[Silvercrys]

- a dragon with large and in charge, combat reflexes, and improved trip. does battlefield control and is difficult to reach.

I'll probably nerf large and in charge because it could be too frustrating for the players otherwise, but I'm thinking on how I could nerf it exactly that would not make it redundant with improved trip.You could just remove the bonus from damage? Improved Trip is basically redundant either way by my reading, though, because you can't use it and Large and
In Charge on the same attack. I would just leave Large and In Charge off of the build and use Improved Trip if you're worried about it being too strong for your players.


- a dragon with improved rapidstrike, does a lot of extra attacks.

specialized in divine magic, if several dragons are fighting toghether he's the healer.It sounds like you have access to the Draconomicon, if it weren't for the healing bit I'd say just give this one a few levels of Barbarian and Bloodscaled Fury. As-is, I guess you could make it a Sacred Warder of Bahamut?


- a dragon wizard. Instead of his natural spellcasting as a sorceror, he casts as a wizard, possibly has some hit dice swapped for wizard levels; he fights mostly as a caster.

I don't want to make this guy too strong or too weak, I just like the idea that a dragon decided to actually study arcane magic even if he can do it naturally, so that he would not be limited to the same small selection of spells.Yeah I'd probably just give him straight levels of Wizard if you're worried about overpowering the party... but check out Spellhoarding in Dragon Magazine 313, it basically converts the dragon's Sorcerer casting to Wizard casting and turns their spellbook into runes stored on their scales. Or just give the dragon casting as a Wizard based on its hit dice instead of as a Sorcerer, you're the DM you can do what you want.


- a dragon that would make some knockdown combo with his tail (say, tail sweep knockdown + whirlwind tail sweep).
can a tail sweep attack exempt allies in the area, or does it strike everyone equally?The d20 SRD says it affects all creatures in the area of the sweep, which usually includes allies (this is similar to the wording on targeting spells like "fireball" where it says creatures rather than enemies).


- a dragon with a lot of breath manipulation.

as metabreath feats increase reload time and fights tend to be short anyway, how can I make this guy do something special on multiple rounds?The easiest way would be to give him multiple breath weapons; levels in Dragon Shaman (Player's Handbook II), Dragon Fire Adept (Complete Mage), or Binder (Tome of Magic; bind Amon) will grant an additional breath weapon, as will casting the Dragon Breath spell from the Draconomicon (Sorc/Wiz 3), though these will be a bit weaker than his natural breath weapon. The Dragonfire Adept has a slight advantage in that it has no cool down so you can just spam breath weapons with a +1 metabreath feat (as long as you also have Recover Breath, of course) on them all over the place, but it takes a few levels to deal good damage (starts at only 1d6, increases with DFA levels) and is pretty small (15-ft Cone or 30-ft Line).

Ye olde lists of stuff (www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?454553) has a few more ways to get breath weapons; the best one of these seems to be the Metabolic Fire graft which will straight up give you another breath weapon every 1d4 rounds for a bit north of 50k gold and 6 HP (but you also need another Draconic Graft before you can get this one). It's also probably weaker than the dragon's standard breath weapon (6 dice).

Or, as Biggus said, the Multiheaded template in Savage Species can give it additional heads, with an additional breath weapon per head. Template says that all the heads use their breath weapons simultaneously, but (1) that doesn't really make sense to me and (2) since you're the DM you can do what you want. The CR increases start to rack up here, though, depending on what level your party is.


- a dragon with monk training.

that's the dragon that's sensibly younger than the others, and weaker - though much stronger than usual for his age category. If I go by the book, most of that stuff isn't going to stack, but I want to try and have his monk abilities increase his dragon fighting capacity in a way that makes sense.Well, you have the Hidecarved Dragon prestige class which gives dragons a few Monk abilities like Wholeness of Body but I don't think that's what you meant, heh.

There's no real reason you couldn't just give this dragon monk levels and have it full attack with unarmed strikes + its natural weapons at -5, though. I'm not aware of any way of applying monk class features to natural attacks though one probably exists. Most his abilities like Wis to AC and fast movement should apply to him even though he's a dragon. I think the only thing he doesn't benefit from is that his unarmed damage doesn't increase his natural weapon damage, but it doesn't really need to when he's getting extra attacks from it.

Maybe he's a Silver Dragon or one of the others that often spends time in a humanoid Alternate Form so that's why he takes Monk levels?


- a dragon focused on long range offensive spells that keeps his distance with flight and harrasses the enemyMight give this one a reserve feat from Complete Mage so it can use at-will ranged effects. Or a Wand of Fireballs inside a Casting Glove sized for a dragon, whatever floats your boat.


those dragons are also going to have some magic items, though i did houserule that dragons interfere with magic items and get less benefits than normal, because they'd be too strong otherwise - but it wouldn't make sense for them to have huge hoards and not use items in combat. Is there some item I could give a dragon that would make something interesting?For the dragons to use in combat? I think there are bits of the Draconomicon that have how dragons typically use magic items, I'm not very good at treasure, heh.


a dragon focused on snatch/grapple/swallow is moot because all the party has rings of freedom of movement.

a dragon focused on snatch/grapple/swallow and that uses antimagic field is stronger than i want to make (though some of them do have AMF, I'll try to use it in ways that can be countered).Doesn't have to be an Antimagic Field, necessarily, but fair. If this is a gauntlet or something you could make this the first and easiest dragon, since they're immune to its specialty.


what other concepts could I make?

and what kind of feats/spells/strategies could I use to make those concepts work at the right power level?Well, here's a few off the top of my head:

Split the cleric dragon and have a cleric dragon and a Barbarian dragon that uses natural attacks and rapidstrike.

Dracoliches from the Draconomicon are cool but hard to actually put down... Maybe a Vampiric Dragon or Ghostly Dragon? Pretty sure those are in the Draconomicon too.

A dragon Bard who either has a massive instrument built for its dragon form or simply sings? (If you need good loot on the dragons, the instrument could be magic and resize to its owner + give effects like an Instrument of the Bards or something).

You could have an armored dragon that uses a Skin of Ectoplasmic Armor from the Magic Item Compendium, but I don't know why you would need an armored dragon, mechanically speaking. The skin counts as light armor though so it shouldn't interfere with flight.

You could have an archer dragon... Kind of. You could just allow the dragon to wield a specially crafted Composite Longbow designed to be gripped by claws (similar to how Barding is designed for creatures but otherwise identical to normal armor), or the dragon could learn to use a special Raptoran Footbow from Races of the Wild. The only technically legal option here, though, is the Soulbow from Complete Psionic which will allow the dragon to fire mind arrows out of its claws. If you go with the Soulbow, it's generally stronger to also go Kensai after getting the first +1 ability at level 2 because otherwise your arrows cap at +2 with +3 worth of abilities. You should be able to go Soulknife 2/Soulbow 2/Kensai 10 thanks to having so many racial hit dice though... Obviously reducing the class levels a bit depending on how strong you want the dragons to be.

There are all kinds of not-magic magic systems you can dip into too like Psionics, Incarnum, etc. that usually either have their own dragons or you can just make a new dragon kind using a core dragon as a base and give them manifesting levels or binding levels as a psion or incarnate instead of Sorcerer casting.

Really depends on how powerful your party is in terms of char op and levels, which you didn't mention.

Hopefully I gave you some ideas, though, and you can tailor them up or down to your party's overall power level.

[False God]

- a dragon with large and in charge, combat reflexes, and improved trip. does battlefield control and is difficult to reach.
I'll probably nerf large and in charge because it could be too frustrating for the players otherwise, but I'm thinking on how I could nerf it exactly that would not make it redundant with improved trip.
The biggest limitation is the 0 dexterity modifier most dragons have. Combat Reflexes is no benefit to dragons, so even with Large and In Charge, they still have to pick and choose the best enemy to make that opportunity attack against.

It's mildly annoying, but ultimately not as frustrating in play as it seems up front. Especially if your players are tactical about it.


- a dragon with improved rapidstrike, does a lot of extra attacks. specialized in divine magic, if several dragons are fighting toghether he's the healer.
You can take the Lightkeeper Sovereign Archetype on any regular sorcerer-casting dragon to let it also pull from the Cleric list.


- a dragon wizard. Instead of his natural spellcasting as a sorceror, he casts as a wizard, possibly has some hit dice swapped for wizard levels; he fights mostly as a caster.
I don't want to make this guy too strong or too weak, I just like the idea that a dragon decided to actually study arcane magic even if he can do it naturally, so that he would not be limited to the same small selection of spells.
Loredrake+Spellhoarding=Wizard Dragon. Really all you need is Spellhoarding, but the Loredrake gives a nice caster buff (+2CL) and also the lower HD makes it feel a little more "squishy wizard". Just don't go crazy and stack it on a Tome Dragon or a Steel Dragon. Maybe put it on a dragon whose caster-level is a little behind everyone else.


- a dragon that would make some knockdown combo with his tail (say, tail sweep knockdown + whirlwind tail sweep).
can a tail sweep attack exempt allies in the area, or does it strike everyone equally?
As far as I am aware, it cannot exempt allies. You could always give it a custom ability to do so.


- a dragon with a lot of breath manipulation.
as metabreath feats increase reload time and fights tend to be short anyway, how can I make this guy do something special on multiple rounds?
Ravening dragon psychosis, lets him use breath weapon 3 times before recharge, with no increase in recharge. Yes he has to eat his body weight every day but this is more about creating interesting characters and less about resolving their real-world implications later.


- a dragon with monk training.
that's the dragon that's sensibly younger than the others, and weaker - though much stronger than usual for his age category. If I go by the book, most of that stuff isn't going to stack, but I want to try and have his monk abilities increase his dragon fighting capacity in a way that makes sense.
Actually, Monk stacks impressively well with dragons. The size bonuses to monk damage scales well with dragons, typically doing one or two steps more than their usual claw damage, and their natural BAB overcomes the monks normal reductions in flurry. You might also try the "one punch dragon" and use the monk variant where it only gets a single powerful strike instead of flurry, given their strength bonuses, you'll almost always knock the stuffing out of things. Throw a level of Lion Totem Barbarian in there for pounce, or take Dire Charge so you can make a full attack right away.

Personally though, the 3E monk is pretty sad. I'd really suggest pulling the Pathfinder monk (regular or unchained) out for this guy. The options open to you (such as jabbing style on a dragon, which is HILARIOUS) are much more flavorful and powerful and fun.


- a dragon focused on long range offensive spells that keeps his distance with flight and harrasses the enemy
Tactically speaking, this is how you ought to run a dragon, but fundamentally, a lot of your concepts overlap. As to many dragons by themselves. Aside from color-coding and general level of jerkishness it's often hard to tell one from the other.

I'd make sure to emphasize their personality traits, lifestyle, domains and so forth.


those dragons are also going to have some magic items, though i did houserule that dragons interfere with magic items and get less benefits than normal, because they'd be too strong otherwise - but it wouldn't make sense for them to have huge hoards and not use items in combat. Is there some item I could give a dragon that would make something interesting?
Wouldn't dragons also be aware that "normal" magic items have a hard time affecting them? So wouldn't they construct more powerful magical items that affect them "normally"? I mean I get this is kinda a meta ruling to keep dragons from being "too powerful" but they're dragons.


what other concepts could I make?
and what kind of feats/spells/strategies could I use to make those concepts work at the right power level?
Well I mean there's a TON of concepts out there, but it depends on two primary factors:
1: how much do you want to keep them "by the rules" ie: using only existing feats, classes, magical items
2: how much work are you willing to put into building them "outside the box"?

I custom-build almost all my dragons these days (and really, about 90% of my monsters), rarely pulling anything straight from the book. I give them "special abilities" to do the things I want them to do rather than figuring out what feats they need to have or which classes synergize best with them.

For a sort of rule-of-thumb to "how smart/tough/trained is this dragon?" I give all my dragons class levels equal to 2*age category. And I treat them like they've all read the char-op threads, I mean they're dragons after all, they should be smart enough to have a vast wealth of learning to train from and figure out synergies. Sometimes I just copy-past optimized builds off the boards and slapped them on top of a dragon.

I built a "legendary dragon" based on nearly every named legendary dragon from MTG for example, if you're wondering how far "concepts" can go. I built a dragon based on the Sha of Anger from WoW (never got to use him sadly). But these are not monsters designed by the 3.X rule systems of classes/feats/features because quite frankly, those things break down when you start using Mature Adult Dragons as the "base race", becoming either ridiculously OP, or being a pointless drain. It also requires a LOT of work to put these puzzle pieces together, and frankly I'd rather just say it has "Magical Ability XYZ" and be done with it.

In conclusion, I recommend this thread: The Truest of the True (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?303204-The-Truest-of-the-True-A-Handbook-to-non-Kobold-Dragons-(WIP)) if you're not familiar with it already. It's got some great advice to building dragons, and the nature of dragons being dragons and not humans means that a lot of stuff that's normally not-so-great becomes much better.

Oh also: if you're unfamiliar with this thread: 30+ New Dragons (more true dragons than the draconomicon) (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?169209-30-New-Dragons-(more-true-dragons-than-the-draconomicon)) it has some really great custom dragons, ranging from weak and silly to epic and ridiculous.

[pabelfly]

What about a mindflayer dragon?

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Brainstealer_dragon

Also, Silver Dragons like to take human form but they can still call on their dragon abilities and strenght.

There's a podcast for 3.5 DnD that covered dragons a month or two ago, that had some really good ideas in it.

[King of Nowhere]

Hopefully I gave you some ideas, though, and you can tailor them up or down to your party's overall power level.

yes, you did. I'm going to sift through them after a good night sleep



The biggest limitation is the 0 dexterity modifier most dragons have. Combat Reflexes is no benefit to dragons, so even with Large and In Charge, they still have to pick and choose the best enemy to make that opportunity attack against.

I did mention those have elite stats. this specific dragon has dex 15 (he did qualify for the feat, after all) and a magic item on top of it. He's also the most powerful of the lot by a fair margin. If I'm not careful, I risk turning it into the untoichable whirlwind of death.




Actually, Monk stacks impressively well with dragons. The size bonuses to monk damage scales well with dragons, typically doing one or two steps more than their usual claw damage, and their natural BAB overcomes the monks normal reductions in flurry. You might also try the "one punch dragon" and use the monk variant where it only gets a single powerful strike instead of flurry, given their strength bonuses, you'll almost always knock the stuffing out of things. Throw a level of Lion Totem Barbarian in there for pounce, or take Dire Charge so you can make a full attack right away.

I don't know, I think by RAW if they make monk attacks they can't make their natural attacks; and since monk attacks use all of the body, you can't really argue that you're making monk attacks + claws and wings. Also, monk damage and natural weapon damage do not stack, you only get the highest of them. at higher level spell resistance does not stack.
that's why I'm going to houserule it somehow. I'll have to tinker, because if I just make the bonus stackable then it becomes ludicrous.



Wouldn't dragons also be aware that "normal" magic items have a hard time affecting them? So wouldn't they construct more powerful magical items that affect them "normally"? I mean I get this is kinda a meta ruling to keep dragons from being "too powerful" but they're dragons.


well, my justification is that dragons can do all those things that break physics because they feed on magic fields. but they also drain the items they are wearing, making them less effective. mechanically, any item or buff spell affecting a dragon and giving them a bonus has that bonus reduced by 2. So a ring of protection +5 only gives +3 AC to a dragon, and a ring +2 would have no effect. Aside from that, as they get old they also can carry less items, but i made no hard rule on that. also no hard rules on stuff that does not provide numerical bonuses.
if there is some way to bypass this limitation, nobody's found it yet.

anyway, you also have some good suggestions that I'll have to check tomorrow.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

For the breath weapon dragon, the best way to do it would probably be to give him multiple breath weapons. The Multiheaded template has already been suggested (and has some fun roleplaying applications), but Dragonfire Adept and/or Dragon Shaman would probably be the simpler way to do it. Maybe throw on the Dragonborn (Aspect of the Heart) template?

For the Rapidstrike/healer dragon, I'd definitely throw on a level of Crusader. Martial Spirit (or, if at higher level and good, Aura of Triumph) allow the dragon to heal themself and others with every blow they land, and Furious Counterstrike gives a small but nice bonus to every attack.

For the Monk dragon, I'd recommend throwing on some stealth. The Invisible Fist ACFs are both great (2nd and 9th level), you could refluff Dark Moon Disciple (or leave the fluff the same, if you're fine with an evil dragon) for one of the best stealth powers in the game (Shadow Blend, at level 7). If Dragon Magazine is on the table, use Sidewinder Monk for some lovely Sneak Attack dice without losing anything useful. If you haven't already chosen a dragon type, Shadow Dragon fits very well with these options.

Oh, and unarmed strikes mix very well with natural attacks. It might be worth it for all the dragons to take Improved Unarmed Strike. In a full attack, you make as many unarmed strikes as you can for your BAB, but then you also get to attack with all your natural weapons at -5 to hit, adding 1/2 STR to damage on a hit instead of full STR (note that the default stat blocks already take this -5 into account for all but one of the natural weapons; the primary natural weapon).

[AlexanderRM]

For the wizard dragon, consider the Ultimate Magus (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20061010a&page=3) prestige class which advances both Wizard and Sorceror casting (except sacrificing 3 of the higher-level class' spellcasting) plus some useful class features.

Of course, as the DM you can also just decide to replace his Sorceror casting with Wizard casting (plus replacing some of his HD with Wizard levels as you note) ruling that he's learned to channel his raw magical power into wizard casting instead, but the fluff for Ultimate Magus fits pretty well and gives a reason why a spontaneous caster would want to study prepared magic. You could also houserule to let him access with 2nd level spontaneous casting/1st level prepared casting instead of 2nd prepared/1st spontaneous so as to enter Ultimate Magus immediately and lose no levels of Wizard casting.

[Particle_Man]

How about the dragon with leadership and lots of half-dragon children?

[King of Nowhere]

seeing how many spells are there that affect breath, I'm thinking I may unite the concept of the breathing dragon with that of the wizard dragon.

I have a question about it: by the use of quicken spell, or possibly a contingency, is it possible to apply to breath spells to the same breath? say, a dispelling stunning breath?

[Silvercrys]

I believe the Draconomicon specifies that you expend your breath as part of casting the spell, so you can't apply two breath spells to the same breath attack; I'm not sure whether you can apply metabreath feats to a metabreath spell but my guess is "no" because they already take metamagic feats for enlarging, etc.

[Doctor Awkward]

Or, as Biggus said, the Multiheaded template in Savage Species can give it additional heads, with an additional breath weapon per head. Template says that all the heads use their breath weapons simultaneously, but (1) that doesn't really make sense to me and (2) since you're the DM you can do what you want. The CR increases start to rack up here, though, depending on what level your party is.

Alternatively, an 8 or 10 headed pyrohydra with the half-dragon template. Gets it an additional breath weapon based on it's parent type. The Dragon Breath feat from Races of the Dragon can let you use the template breath weapon every 1d4 rounds just like a normal one.

[DrMotives]

If the dragon parent of the half-dragon hydra is a chaos dragon, the breath weapon will randomly be one of several energy forms. Surprise! Or a tome dragon, which has 4 different breaths, but it picks.

[Arkain]

The xorvintaal dragon template from MM5 may be interesting. What it does is trade away magical abilities for more "draconic" ones, e.g. enhancing the breath weapon by inhaling, roaring to deafen and damage or an energy aura. The fluff is that dragons undergo a ritual and then partake in the great game of xorvintaal, i.e. draconic metaplot chess. Ignoring the admittedly nice take on dragons, maybe it can serve as an inspiration for individual abilities?