Giving ASIs outside of standard ASI feature (DND 5e)

[Pandamonium]

Hi!
Weird title I know, but hear me out. Novice brewer here.

I am designing (unoriginally) a homebrew race+class to be able to play as a dragon.
The goal is to be on par with a dragon of similar hitdice at each level or slightly below to allow for Invocation type "mutations".

Seeing as how an adult red dragon is CR 17 with 19 Hit Dice I reckon that this class should reach adult status as a capstone.

Following the statblocks through different dragons and challenge ratings in the Monster Manual I see that Str, Con and Cha increases at regular intervalls.
This matches up somewhat with standard ASI but frankly at twice the amount. Where a character at level 12 would get +2 the dragons get closer to +4 or +6 (2 to Str, Con and Cha on average).
A Red Adult Dragon har 112 Attribute points totaled and an average character with standard array, +2 & +1 then following standard ASI's wind up with around 71 Attribute points. Scores totaled.

Following that the class and race would be locked together (not allowing other class choices) I can control how powerful other features are, how "dangerous"/Hard to balance would it be if the class had an Increase to the Strength/Con and Charisma scores apart from the usual ASI's?

My thought is that the class would either grant and additional +1 to Str and Cha at each ASI or every other level you get a +1 to Str or +1 Cha as part of that level.

This to match the progression of a "natural" dragon attribute wise.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

[BerzerkerUnit]

One of the entries in the last base class contest was for a dragon, please have a look for inspiration.

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?624969-D-amp-D-5e-Base-Class-Contest-XIV-Monster-Mash-II&highlight=Monster+mash

[Morphic tide]

The race side shouldn't be strictly better than a standard race if you expect multiclassing to be allowed, but the extra ASIs could be partly handled by the Tiefling model of scaling race features, and with a -2 to Dexterity to "pay for" +4-5 elsewhere starting off.

25 ft. starting Fly might be appropriate for the power budget on the race, as you're trying to fully encapsulate the qualitative nature of being a dragon in it and thus need a Breath Weapon and Natural Attack in addition to the flight. Scaling these functions can be mostly on the racial class, causing it to be high in similarity to Monk.

[Yakk]

I am suspicious that a 19 HD Red Dragon is a good balance point for a level 19 PC however.

But yes, you can get away with handing out more attribute bonuses than the normal schedule permits. Technically fighter do this with extra ASIs, and barbarian 20 even breaks the cap.

[BerzerkerUnit]

In every Homebrew campaign I run I do this:

At level 5 the PCs get a Patron of some kind, the Patron keeps a library and requests the PCs record their adventures after any major arc. They write their own chapters and then receive a bonus ASI. Might be a +1 if an arc was short, might be a feat or even a +2/+1 if it was long or treasure was anemic.

Basically, instead of reading magic books, they write them, becoming “larger then life” in the process. There’s a meta notion that they are actually the imagination of someone from the future reading the tomes they scribed and the boosts are the result of their own exaggerated retelling.

I also run “fire side tales” to introduce new PCs. Basically they tell a story about an adventure from the beginning of their career. Its format is simple like “goblin cave/Worg Hunt” etc but then the challenges are all scaled up (so maybe it’s Ogres or quicklings in goblin numbers) and the new guy is there too.

And when a player says “wait, if this was from level 1, how was Dave’s Wizard Fireballing everything?” I tell them it’s a little self aggrandizement for the drama of the story, like a fish that was “this big.”

Mythologizing their adventures is one of my favorite parts.