The Wyrming Dragon as a PC

[Judging__Eagle]

So, in this upcoming game one of the players is gonna try and be a Gold Dragon Wyrmling.

We've (Me, Brobdingagian and the player) done a bit of finangling to make it 'work'.

Mostly, we grabbed the Gold Dragon Wyrmling; removed any HD that was over 6 and changed it's breath weapon to that of approximately a CR 6 dragon could have (3d10? >_>).

I'm not going to give him any gold to buy gear initially (he'll get some gear soon enough however).

I know that his AC isn't much to write home about (19 at lvl 6) and his breath weapon won't deal boat loads of damage, but should be a decent assistant combater.

Has anyone else here run a dragon PC and any things that they've noticed?

[User3]

It sounds like "dragon" would work better as a 20-level class than as some kind of LA deal.

[Catharz]

This may be a dumb idea, but you can give it bronze dragon stats until the levels go up a bit...

[Brobdingnagian]

Actually, we've talked it over. He's gonna be switching to a Minotaur.

[Judging__Eagle]

ROFL.

Ok?

Actually, Frank wrote up a no LA version of the Mino in RoW that Arturian can use.

Minotaur. Its Base CR is 4, and add +1 for being a PC. Its stat mods are (monster-elite array) Str 19-15=+4, Con 15-14=+0(rounded down) Dex 10-13=-2 (rounded) Wis 10-12= -2 Int 10, Cha 8-10= -2 Int 8-7=+0, for a total of +4 Str, -2 Dex, -2 Int, -2, Cha -2 Wis, which is perfectly reasonable. It’s a level 5 PC with skill rank maxes of 8 and 6 monster HD.

Frankly, it's a warrior class with a little bit of punch from natural armor, small stat mods from its size, and some fun but not good noncombat abilities. It's nothing to write home about as a 5th level character, and that's much more reasonable than the ECL 8 the MM would have you play it at.

I'll just shave down the HD amount to 5 (so his BaB goes down to +5 before classes); replace their size from d8 to d12 and replicate the bugbear in that he gets half of his levels counting as barbarian levels, if he takes levels in Barbarian.

He'll always be behind a straight Barbarian by 3 levels and his saves will be off b/c Monsterous HD give good reflex/will saves (meaning no super high Fort save to power up and replace his ref/will lik most Barbs could do).

I'll do a proper write up centred around how Frank did his Frost Giant, Bugbear, etc. races. So it's an easier read.

Dropping the Wis penalty makes sense to me, I want cunning minotaurs; Barbarian and Druid are favoured classes that I want Mino's to have.

Yes, I'm slightly influenced by Magic the Gathering's take on Minotaurs as being shamanic. There's no appropriate class that I've seen that covers that aspect other than Druid.



Catharz, that's sort of what we doing.

We were literally going to steal stats from different dragons as he leveled up to represent his leveling up.

It's messy and this will be cleaner, imo.

[Brobdingnagian]

Wow, I did the Minotaur off the top of my head and that's almost exactly what I got for it.

[Arturian]

Ok, so no more Minotaur...I think that I'll just go straight base race with some pali or cleric cause lets be honest...Humans Rock (they wrote books about it)...and Clerics can pretty much do it all...

[Brobdingnagian]

Humans are indeed the greatest. That's pretty much the premise of the entire D&D universe.

[Judging__Eagle]

You know what? Fvck it.

Your humans better have a good story. Like, you come from somewhere and are known for having done something.

I guess I'll just use non-human NPCs. I need some way to test out how RoW's method of making monster races into PC-playable options works.