Are any players/gms using elements of the draconomicon, specifically with regard to having dragons involved with a party? If so how is that going, and what is fun/challenging/sucky about that? What kind of dragons or dragon related characters are used? Are the dragon-specific feats made use of at all?
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Are any players/gms using elements of the draconomicon, specifically with regard to having dragons involved with a party? If so how is that going, and what is fun/challenging/sucky about that? What kind of dragons or dragon related characters are used? Are the dragon-specific feats made use of at all?
I am currently in a game where I'm in transformation to half-dragon. I have the Dragonrider prestige class and currently have a Dragonel Mount which will become a gold dragon around 13th level. The mount has caused the GM some grief when he forgets about things like .... flying. But it has saved our butts a couple of times (I'm talking to you Advanced Grell that killed two party members). As for dragon specific feats, I have none. Only having a breath weapon once/day makes the meta-breath feats useless to me. We'll see how things go in the future.
One of my players is currently using the dragon monster class from Dragon magazine #320. She's using the Draconomicon, Dragon Magic, and Races of the Dragon as sourcebooks to round out her character. So far there have been no problems mechanically, and her character is turning out to be one of the more interesting characters in the party.
The only problems have arisen from her relative inexperience with the game. She's only been playing for a few months, so a more experienced player could probably do even better. I wouldn't hesitate to allow the Draconomicon in my game unless I had doubts about the player using it.
One of my players has the Dragon Corhort feat from the Daconomican. Now we have a wyrmling bronze dragon in the group. The character is an 11th level paladin. She took the feat and so I worked the dragon into the game by having the PCs help it's mother gain revenge on those who killed her and stole her treasure. In return, she allowed her young'in to serve the paladin. I am also using the Draconomican a lot to flesh out Dragon Kingdoms in the World of Greyhawk. I think the Draconomican was one of the better 3.5 books to have come out. I would have liked to have seen more like this, such as one on giants for example, would have been nice anyway.
The Draconomicon is a really good book.
But I can tell you that playing a dragon really sucks.
I had a wyrmling copper dragon in a party of about 14th level characters. I couldn't do anything of any use in our game. This was due mostly to my character build. The dragon wasn't meant to be a combat monster (no pun intended). Even though I had the highest HP's in the group (more than twice that of the lowest HP character), I couldn't produce any damage.
YMMV, but the rules needed to keep the dragons from overpowering the party, hinder them almost to the point of unplayability.
Of course, that very reason probably makes them great cohorts.
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For the story I'm building, Dragons are going to play some important roles.
I'm even considering at one point, running two simultanious battles: one with the majority of the party members going up against more common enemies; the other being a battle where two players each control a grown NPC dragon(a pair they will have hopefully befriended) against a single dragon I control(which is older and more powerful, of course).
The basic idea is that if the main part of the party can finish their battle fast enough, they can join in on the dragon-match. And vice-versa if they cannot.
Of course, this is all moot if they piss off their potential allies like they did in Ravenloft...
Andrew Betts: how do you deal with the dragonnel mount when it comes to dungeoning and stuff? Just leave it with the other mounts or what? The pc in my game that has the meta-breath power has said that it is a handy ranged weapon he can use—have you not found that?
Bubbagump: I find inexperienced players can be some of the most creative. I’ve found that now and then it helps to ask the one in my group what she thinks of things, send her ideas via email and stuff like that.
EileenProphetofIstus: Nice use of back story there. And you can also use the adult bronze now and then as an adventure hook or mentor.
Disenchanter: What I thought from reading the book was that playing a dragon character would either be daunting because of how slowly you advance or just plain boring for the same reason depending on the type of campaign.
Cato Novus: that sounds very interesting—kind of like Pern meets Melnibone. :)
I really like the draconomicon—when one of my pcs wanted a dragon companion (this came up because of an encounter of the ‘enemy of my enemy’ type involving a very young blue dragon and some drow that it wanted revenge upon) I got it and was not disappointed in how it helped me flesh out the dragon’s character, gave me ideas for interesting abilities she could have, and so on.
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Yeah, hopefully, if these guys are a bit more diplomatic this time around, one of the two dragons is almost guaranteed to be an ally in the story, due to the fact that they will be taking adventures from him(though they won't know it, right away); while the second is planned for a strong possibility, but a faux pass or two can screw that over for them. But this is all mid-to-late in the campaign's storyline.
In my game players can take the leadership feat but only for creatures since they are much easier to run then a second full fledged character class. Needless to say the charisma based characters almost all take cohorts and Dragons are by far the best options on the table since they are so powerful for their CR (and therefore their cohort level). My house rule allows Cohorts of unusual power. Your cohort does not have to be two levels behind you but can be whatever you can get your leadership up to (without using magic items, I don't allow magic to effect your cohort level as that opens up a can of worms regarding what happens when you take the magic item off ... and also nicely avoids killer rules exploits by my players, they can only get their PCs charisma up so high and taking Half Celestials for the charisma bonus simply results in you loosing levels due to the level adjustment since the table is Level+Charisma Bonus they can only get the table so high and no higher) this is a sop for my nerfing the diplomacy Skill. Still I've not yet faced anything game breaking.
The only real problem I've had with dragons is that the metallic ones can have some pretty impressive non-damage dealing breath weapons and the DC can be made very high with the correct feat choices. The most dangerous of these is probably the sleep breath weapon, but slow is pretty potent too.
Conveniently, for a DM facing PCs with Dragons, the Gold's secondary is strength drain but its pretty paltry considering the level at which players will have Dragons and yet Gold Dragons are the most powerful so players often take them. Even with pretty good feat choices I've basically got a player's cohort that can do 60 points of fire damage (maximize breath weapon on a young Gold a 12th level Cohort in a 12th level party) - but thats really not scaring me that much - 60 points for 12th level is not actually that impressive. Its good but the mages and fighter types can do that kind of damage as well - and they can keep it up longer. So far at least I've not noticed anything thats really damaging my game from the Dragons and only the sleep breath weapon really makes me nervous.
Dragons are cool but their basically bruisers with a breath weapon and most DMs should not have to much trouble handling that from a play balance perspective.
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Andrew Betts: how do you deal with the dragonnel mount when it comes to dungeoning and stuff? Just leave it with the other mounts or what? The pc in my game that has the meta-breath power has said that it is a handy ranged weapon he can use—have you not found that?
The one dungeon we've entered, I was sadly without my mount. I felt like half a half-dragon. As for the meta-breath feats, for my character as handy as it might be, a feat for an ability that can only be used once/day isn't a viable trade off for some of my other feats.
The one dungeon we've entered, I was sadly without my mount. I felt like half a half-dragon. As for the meta-breath feats, for my character as handy as it might be, a feat for an ability that can only be used once/day isn't a viable trade off for some of my other feats.
There's a feat in either Races of the Dragon or Dragon Magic that turns that 1 per day into 1 per 1d4 rounds, I believe.
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We've never had anyone play a full dragon, or even a half-dragon (too high of an LA for our tastes), but we have had a few Spellscales and a Dragon Shaman.
One Spellscale was a Cleric of Obad-Hai with the Fire and Earth Domains, and the Improved Turning, Extra Turning and Dragonfire Channeling feats. Basically he had 24+ Turn / Rebuke attempts per day that he could channel into cones of fire. And he was a fully functioning Cleric, on the side...