Dragon kin character?

[Stormingnorman8]

Hello again

Coming up with a new character, wanted a tank and found the dragon kin Race in the draconomicon 3.5; I’m really liking how it’s sounding. Has anyone played this race?? If so how did it go?

Thank you in advance

[Gavinfoxx]

Well, only legal to start in a level 10+ game, to start.

What level is your game starting at?

Us normal people who start at level 1 games usually go a dragonwrought kobold, or a silverbrow human, or a spellscale, or a normal racewith the dragonborn of bahamut template (water orcs are popular for that I hear).

[Kayblis]

As a 9th level character, it's really weak. 7 Monstrous Humanoid RHD, LA +2, it's bad. No wonder it's a CR3 creature. You could technically start off at 8th level with LA buyoff, but that doesn't make it any better tbh.

If your DM allows you to houserule the RHD away and pick all the racial modifiers with just the +2 LA, it's a great base for a martial character, both for the numerical mods and the goodies like fly and 2-4 natural attacks. That's a houserule though, as the monster system doesn't work like that.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I'll second Kayblis and say that it's a weak pick, and probably not as fun to play as, you know, the same thing with some class features. Ask your DM whether you can use dragon type and dragon HD and scrap the level adjustment, and increase the land speed to 40' (which is the standard land speed for Large humanoids). That'll at least let you get some cool skills and use some affinity for dragon-derived abilities. As-is, dragonkin don't even have the dragonblood subtype. From there, you could go with an initiator and build a nice character pretty quickly.


You could technically start off at 8th level with LA buyoff [...]
RHD don't count for buyoff, so it's ECL 9 until you get that 6th class level.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

For a PC, the Dragonkin is pretty bad. It gets nice ability scores, natural armor, flight, natural weapons, and large size, but the loss of nine class levels, even though the HD give full BAB, makes it pretty unplayable in anything but a very low-op game. Edit: Or a gestalt character.

As a monster, it's absolutely amazing due to its high HD to CR ratio, and the half CR increase of non-associated class levels. A Dragonkin Sorcerer 8 is a 15 HD opponent, but it's only CR 7, whereas a Human Sorcerer 8 is CR 8. Plus it can use Practiced Spellcaster to have a caster level of 12, and it's got a +11 BAB, on top of all the Dragonkin goodies.

[Thurbane]

As a CR 3 monster, it's a pretty solid encounter, but as an ECL 9 PC, it's a bit underwhelming. Even if the DM allows LA buy-off, those 7 levels of Monstrous Humanoid just aren't that great, compared to 7 levels in a class that gives you class features.