Not sure if anyone has answered this question before...
I'm making a Great Wyrm White Dragon as the final Boss of my campaign, and I've come into a bit of a snag. As dragons increase in age,they also increasing in size. This also causes a dragon's dexterity to plummet. If I give the dragon a dexterity feat (like dodge) that it would have had at, say, 7d12 hit dice (a young dragon), then would it lose access to this feat due to the fact that its dexterity score is 8 when it reaches Great Wyrm status? Any help is appreciated.
I'd say skip dodge, because your dragon is already gonna have ridiculously high AC anyways because of natural armor.
Focus on his fighting prowess, give him all this nice vital strike, critical, fly by attack etc feats.
Unless of course your trying to get one of the dodge feat chains, in which you may want to do something else: give him a higher Dex than average, but lower str or constitution a little. Or you could give him I nice belt of dexterity or something.
Remember as a em you can rewrite Any rules you want to make the encounter what you want.
First is the goal to add 1 Dodge to its touch? Or just 1 ac? If its adding 1 to touch account it wont help a lot if you just want him to have one more account there is imp natural armour.
If you really want him to have a better Dec you could build him on point buy 20 pt buy is +1 credit though I don't regimens this just to have a nimble dragon. Just letting you know the option is there.
Technically, yes.
However, to steal a phrase, "Silly GM, rules are for players!" You want him to have Dodge, he has Dodge.
Or do the typo I just did, and give him Doge. Such evasion. Much miss. Wow.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
If he's so powerful and cares enough to stay limber, he can afford to buy a +6 dex belt.
Edit: I realize I didn't say it explicitly, but I'm with Zhayne and Darksol. If there's something you're really interested in, don't feel bad about fiating the Dex requirement. Probably not worth it for Dodge, though.
Berinor wrote: If he's so powerful and cares enough to stay limber, he can afford to buy a +6 dex belt. Dragon belts...there's an oxymoron in there somewhere.
Anyway, I agree with Zhanye; GM FIAT would allow you to simply give him an effect of the feat without meeting the pre-requisites. It's not a bad idea to give Dragons some character class levels to counteract; a couple levels of Ranger could net you this I think, or Monk. But I do look at it this way:
The Dragon is colossal size. Getting the Dodge feat is silly when he has a -8 (-4 modifier) to Dex, since his Touch AC is going to be so low in the first place. As others have said, if he needs feats that require Dexterity for more useful gains, he should look for ways to get the feat without needing to meet the pre-requisites.
However, most Dexterity feats are something a Dragon has little to no use for anyway, so I am quite baffled as to why this question came up...
He can always retrain Dodge with the UCamp rules ;-)
The penalties don't apply to prerequisites because they are equivalent to ability damage.
PRD wrote: For every 2 points of damage you take to a single ability, apply a –1 penalty to skills and statistics listed with the relevant ability. If the amount of ability damage you have taken equals or exceeds your ability score, you immediately fall unconscious until the damage is less than your ability score. The only exception to this is your Constitution score. If the damage to your Constitution is equal to or greater than your Constitution score, you die. Unless otherwise noted, damage to your ability scores is healed at the rate of 1 per day to each ability score that has been damaged. Ability damage can be healed through the use of spells, such as lesser restoration.
Some spells and abilities cause you to take an ability penalty for a limited amount of time. While in effect, these penalties function just like ability damage, but they cannot cause you to fall unconscious or die. In essence, penalties cannot decrease your ability score to less than 1.
There are, in essence, three ways to reduce stats: Damage, Penalty, and Drain. Damage reduces your effective modifier when applied to rolls and DCs mainly (and a few other specifically called out rules elements), but the base stat remains the same. So if you have 16 Dex (+3 modifier) and suffer -2 Dex Damage, you still have 16 Dex, but your effective modifier drops from +3 to +2. This means that it won't disqualify you from fulfilling prerequisites and any feats or abilities reliant on having at least 16 Dex won't be turned off. Penalty functions exactly like Damage except that your "equivalent" stat value can't drop below 1. This means that, even if you have a Dex of 2, you can't be paralyzed by an Enlarge Person spell. Drain affects the stat itself so your 16 Dex will actually be dropped to 14 if you suffer -2 Dex Drain.
Also, keep in mind that Dragons don't follow the normal size stat progression but instead link it to Age. A Wyrm age Dragon is base+4 size and has base-8 Dex while a Great Wyrm is base+5 size but still has base-8 Dex. Check the Dragon Abilities chart under the bestiary entry for detailed progression, keeping in mind that those values are in place of normal changes for size increases.
So say your Dragon started with 13 Dex to qualify for Dodge. At the Wyrm age, it suffers -8 penalty to Dex which means a reduction of 4 to its effective Dex modifier. So instead of a +1 Dex mod, it has an effective -3 Dex mod, but still 13 Dex which qualifies it for Dodge. Furthermore, even if this Dragon had only 7 Dex (-2 mod) to start with, the -8 from growing to Wyrm size will only apply a max of -6 effective damage (-3 reduction to mod) which brings you down to an "effective" -5 Dex mod, but still 7 Dex; the dragon won't be paralyzed just because it grew too big.
Size modifiers change the stat, they are not a penalty, damage or drain.
He would have the feat, but it would be inactive. But, as mentioned, you can ignore that and have it operate as you wish.
Kazaan wrote: The penalties don't apply to prerequisites because they are equivalent to ability damage. Aging doesn't cause ability damage--your stats actually decrease/increase.
Just give the dragon the feat, if you like, or adjust ability scores to make sense. Monsters cheat!
Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Honda Saikō wrote: Not sure if anyone has answered this question before...
I'm making a Great Wyrm White Dragon as the final Boss of my campaign, and I've come into a bit of a snag. As dragons increase in age,they also increasing in size. This also causes a dragon's dexterity to plummet. If I give the dragon a dexterity feat (like dodge) that it would have had at, say, 7d12 hit dice (a young dragon), then would it lose access to this feat due to the fact that its dexterity score is 8 when it reaches Great Wyrm status? Any help is appreciated.
A Great Wyrm isn't going to be bothering with Dodge or any of the feat trees. Instead he's simply going to be sitting on quite possibly several of your players due to his well nigh inescapable Crush maneuver.
It's a Reflex save of vs being Pinned. Once they're pinned, they're going to have to beat a CMD of 51 to escape as long as the Dragon maintains the Crush.
Crush (Ex): A flying or jumping Huge or larger dragon can land on foes as a standard action, using its whole body to crush them. Crush attacks are effective only against opponents three or more size categories smaller than the dragon. A crush attack affects as many creatures as fit in the dragon's space. Creatures in the affected area must succeed on a Reflex save (DC equal to that of the dragon's breath weapon) or be pinned, automatically taking bludgeoning damage during the next round unless the dragon moves off them. If the dragon chooses to maintain the pin, it must succeed at a combat maneuver check as normal. Pinned foes take damage from the crush each round if they don't escape. A crush attack deals the indicated damage plus 1-1/2 times the dragon's Strength bonus.
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