The following creature is intended to act as a "draconic mount" for the purposes of my home setting. You'll notice influences from "Pern" regarding the telepathy & imprinting, but that's about it. Overall, I didn't want to use the standard dragons as they're significantly more powerful and the idea of "controlling" one is hard for me to swallow. Add to this I generally do not like the design paradigm of classes based around being a "dragon rider".
Realizing what I have may not be balanced around a CR of 5 (which is the ideal CR for this), I'd appreciate any constructive comments, suggestions, or criticism.
Bump.
It's considerably stronger than a CR 6 creature, the wyvern. I might place this as a low-end CR 8, if it had more hit points; as is, prolly a high-end CR 7.
Creature design is definitely not my strong point, so I appreciate any comments and suggestions.
What about dumping the breath weapon and immunity?
The goal is to reach a CR of 5 and despite the "Undersized Natural Attacks" inclusion and the "Talon or Wing" entries, the damage output is still to high for an average damage expectation of "20". Removing the tail attack altogether dropped the average damage to roughly 26.
Knowing the dragons of pern's flavor, and going off a few tricks I used to use...
Maybe making the 'breath weapon' work more like a scorching ray would work? RT, deal 3d6 elemental damage of appropriate type.
From there, drop the strength to a more suitable 14; as a large creature, it should still have no trouble carrying a rider.
Flight down a step might be useful as well as dropping the int; from what I remember, the dragons of pern weren't exactly -sharp-, but they weren't stupid. Maybe aim for a 9? Dropping some Intimidate this way, as well.
I'd also try to punch the AC down to 16, and then you can probably claim CR 5 with only a few groans over the glazed/astonished looks you'd get now.
I find a strong AoE alone is worth almost a +1 to CR, so I was putting that in my mental estimates.
Dropping the AoE would indeed be high CR6 or low 7, though.
Much appreciated. You know, I completely forgot about the size modifier for carrying capacity. The strength was set as high as it was to insure the creature would be able to carry the rider + his gear, but caused tons of damage output problems. Thank you for reminding me.
Great ideas/suggestions & points. I'm working on making the changes now. Thank you both & I'll post again once they're in place.
Edited to Address:
That said, if a wyvern can't fight with its claws in flight I'm curious as to why one of these can, they look exactly like a wyvern.
A very valid point. The intent was more to mimic a lot of the old school dragons which had talon-tipped wings used to grasp their targets, as well as the various species of bats which have three claws at the tips of their wings. While folded, they uses these as appendages to walk, climb, and so on.
All right, I believe I've made the changes where indicated and while the goal is to shoot for a CR of 5, I'd like to shoot for a CR of 5 "groan-free", so again, all constructive comments/suggestions are welcome. Feel free to be harsh. You're not going to hurt my feelings.
So whats the benefit for choosing yellow over blue, and vice versa?
Edit: different ability modifiers i am assuming.
Yeah, this is looking much closer to a 5. I'd keep intimidate low on the skill points, if you keep it at all; and I don't think the feat options below really work too well balance-wise.
But I can see the monster itself as a CR 5, now.
Yeah, this is looking much closer to a 5. I'd keep intimidate low on the skill points, if you keep it at all; and I don't think the feat options below really work too well balance-wise.
But I can see the monster itself as a CR 5, now.
Excellent and yeah, I might replace Intimidate with either Climb or Swim, depending on whether or not the dragon they're based on swims or not. I went ahead and dumped the feats.
So whats the benefit for choosing yellow over blue, and vice versa?
Edit: different ability modifiers i am assuming.
Definitely different ability modifiers. I'm trying to decide between the following two arrangements:
Arrangement I: +2 Physical, +2 Mental, -2 Physicalor Arrangement II: +2 of one type, -2 of the other type.
The yellow dragon takes the place of the desert dwelling dragon in my setting and normally has a force affect for a breath weapon. The blue was shifted to be the water-dwelling (lakes, seas) and normally has the electricity breath weapon.
At the moment, the electricity breath weapon on the yellow is a placeholder till mechanics for the force & force resist are worked out. I'm considering going with Breath Weapon (Force) and a +2 to + 4 bonus on saving throws against force effects.
I just added in the racial ability modifiers to the Dragon Variety chart and would welcome critique & questions.
I attempted to break down the racial attribute modifiers of the Chromatic dragons to get an idea of their ability score modifiers (subtract 1 from all odd ability scores from the base creature, then subtract 10 from all ability scores), but the scores were spread out too far across the board with no discernible pattern.
I decided to drop the idea of ability modifiers by color, altogether. The variety is now based solely on the abilities gained by the color of the dragon.
Additionally, I dropped the Intelligence and Charisma of the creature by several points to be a little more in line with similar creatures of the same CR. I'm also considering reducing the overall number of possible attacks to a bite & tail attack only.