A friend of mine wants to play one and wont be playing our home game but once every other game or so. He will mostly lvl with the party but may lag behind on wealth and such a bit. Should i strip the racial hd or leave them? Im honestly not sure.
30 pb 2 half orcs one barb the other scarred with doc. A Xeph soulknife. And a half giant life oracle.
2nd lvl right now may be third soonish.
As far as the end lvls. Ehhh. Whenever we get bored of the plotline. I.E. I cant come up with anything else or they want to try something new. So atleast 10 lvls could be more.
Wealth will be close to standard however i do roll for treasure so sometimes it may be up a bit sometimes down. Normally not more than say 8% variance. As for spending it. Well that depends on them. If they wanna take the time to track down a specific item i will let them but the plot timmer keeps counting. That said i do try to make sure some wants find their way in every now and again. The basic tree though will be fairly easy to aquire. Its just the weird custom stuff they like sometimes they will have to hunt for.
Knowing him wizard... with a lizard familiar. That he will most likely teach to play wizards and lizards.... yes the joke is cheese as it sounds. Possibly psion though. He seems interested in the nomand here lately.
Eh just some feat tax cleaning. Everyone can power attack cbt expertise, wpn finesse, and some other stuff. Mainly helps the fighty guys.
Note none of these guys are by any means optimization players. The barb has a 16 int cause he likes skills. His wife the witch refused to take sleep hex cause it didnt fit the view of her character... not that i mind but its why im so generous with the point buy.
First off, I would not allow it as a GM, because there is no built-in way to balance this race against the other races the party is playing. However, you have already OK'd it, so...
You should leave the psuedo dragon's racial hit dice in place, especially if you want to keep it's special abilities like blindsense, flight, telepathy, spell resistance, and poison. Have the player begin play when the party reaches 3rd level. The dragon will already have 2 hit dice and then be able to have 1 level in something. Let the player to rearrange all of the dragon's skill points and retrain Weapon Finesse, if desired. If you want to make somewhat of an attempt towards game balance, don't allow the poison and spell resistance to improve unless it continues to acquire racial hit dice.
I'd still prefer to play a normal PC, but just a plain pseudo dragon with extra hit dice might be fun for a part-time player. Another thing to do would be to use the race builder rules to make new 10 RP pseudo dragon that is balanced against the other races, but it might not be very pretty when you're done.
EDIT: never mind using the rules to create a new race. The number of RP would be extraordinarily high. Just being a dragon makes it 10 RP, making it tiny is 4, and that doesn't account for a single one of their abilities. A normal race comes to 10 RP total.
Ask him what about playing a pseudodragon appeals to him. Then, see if we can engineer a custom race. For example, if he didn't care about the blindsense, spell resistance, and the like, it could be feasible to create a custom PC pseudodragon race without those abilities.
What class is he interested in playing as this character?
That was the plan unless he leveled as "dragon" was no increases to the special abilities. I was just wondering if I should have him keep the first two and count them as levels. And as for party balance the other players are the one who brought the idea to me. So im not too worried about them being upset by this as it was their idea.
And yeah i looked at the Arg first and was like well that bites. Plus he is only going to be there part time and has stated that he wants to be able to make the rest of the party stronger. So im thinking wizard or sor with buff spells right now. Or would arcanist be better for that? I have book havent looked at it yet.
And thanks for the advice guys.
Oh and as for what he wants out of being a pseudodragon is he wants to be a tiny adorable dragon. He thinks they are like the cutest things in the world which is a bit odd but whatever.
Oh and as for what he wants out of being a pseudodragon is he wants to be a tiny adorable dragon. He thinks they are like the cutest things in the world which is a bit odd but whatever.
I ask because you can accomplish that without making him an actual pseudodragon with racial hit dice. You could make a custom Tiny dragon race with flight and maybe a little breath weapon. This would be race stronger than typical PC races (18 RP), but not so powerful to require adjusting his XP. This way, he can play an adorable little dragon and take class levels without having to worry about level adjustments and racial hit dice.
Sorcerer with the draconic bloodline would fit really well. Or an arcanist that takes the blast exploits and reflavors them as little breath weapon attacks.
Oh and as for what he wants out of being a pseudodragon is he wants to be a tiny adorable dragon. He thinks they are like the cutest things in the world which is a bit odd but whatever.
At 1st level, mechanically it's a big deal. As you level up, it's less so. There are also some mechanical drawbacks with the pseudodragon race, though they don't apply as much for a wizard as say... a barbarian.
Since you've already cranked the uber up to 11 by allowing 30-point buy, you might just let it slide though. I mean, yeah, you're looking at a 1st-level wizard with over 20 hitpoints and and excellent Fortitude save who's untouchable by most enemy casters 55% of the time.
On the other hand, you - the DM - and the player need to remember that SR is always on unless you drop it. So if this wizard gets hurt, he needs to take a standard action to lower it or else something like cure light wounds will require his friendly cleric buddy to make a caster level check to overcome it. Doesn't apply to channel positive energy, but hey. Same goes for every buff he doesn't cast on himself, until the party hits 11th level and can penetrate SR 12 on a roll of 1.
Being Tiny, he's going to get grabbed a lot, if enemies can find him. The DC on the poison is good at 1st-level, on par with casting sleep on one target. After 1st it too will diminish.
Basically, if you're looking for a low-fantasy, gritty and hard campaign, this isn't the right approach. If you're comfortable with the idea that this wizard won't be in real danger very often for the first five levels or so, it's not the end of the world.
FWIW, I kind of have experience with this. I ran a DMPC in my Slumbering Tsar campaign. He was a pseudodragon fighter 15 by the end, while the party made it up to 24th level with two mythic tiers. At no time did he outshine anyone. He gave me a voice, and he kept up most of the time (only died once), but when it came to actually doing damage or impacting the foes, not so much. But again, he was a fighter in a massively suboptimal chassis. Wizard or psion would be very different.
But wait. There's more. I have current experience with this. In my current player campaign (Wrath of the Righteous), I've got a human psion 8 / overmind 2. His Leadership cohort is a faery dragon warder 6 (Dreamscarred's Path of War). Yeah, she kept her racial hit dice, but has zero equipment. She's not a front-liner by any means, but does entertaining enablement activities with the warder maneuvers. If the party was dead, there's no chance she could win the fight. 1d3+4 damage per round just won't ever get there. But "I bite 'im for... 6 damage AND everybody get extra 2d6 damage for next round", she's pretty cool.
She's also the pseudodragon's half-sister. Long story.
Don't let the rule of cool be overwhelmed by too much worry about balance. By mid-level the CR1 abilities of the pseudodragon won't matter at all compared to the wizard levels.
Okay just as a note on the pb. The barb has a 16 int and a 14 cha these people do not optimize that much if at all. He is also using a axe and shield. The witch doc has a 16 con which just blows my mind. But hey it makes them happy lol. Also as i said they are second soon to be third lvl. So the worries about him out preforming a lvl one arent an issue.
And he plans on doing buffs for the party mainly so hes not really gonna outshine them so much as make them shine more. The last wiz he did as a support didnt have a single offensive spell till like lvl 6 cause he was too distracted by shiney buffs. He would fuss at the fighters for not holding still long enough for him to cast all of the buffs by 5he ejd of the game (in character there. In reality he was done) everyone laughed their butts off.
Okay just as a note on the pb. The barb has a 16 int and a 14 cha these people do not optimize that much if at all. He is also using a axe and shield. The witch doc has a 16 con which just blows my mind. But hey it makes them happy lol. Also as i said they are second soon to be third lvl. So the worries about him out preforming a lvl one arent an issue.
And he plans on doing buffs for the party mainly so hes not really gonna outshine them so much as make them shine more. The last wiz he did as a support didnt have a single offensive spell till like lvl 6 cause he was too distracted by shiney buffs. He would fuss at the fighters for not holding still long enough for him to cast all of the buffs by 5he ejd of the game (in character there. In reality he was done) everyone laughed their butts off.
I reiterate... it's not a game-stopper. Personally I'd likely allow it. I run games with 25 point buy precisely because I want to allow well-rounded PCs. Same as yours, not over-optimized monsters.
I've had a lot of fun with the DMPC pseudodragon and the new cohort faery dragon, frankly. There's a lot of roleplay potential in truly non-humanoid "characters". The pseudodragon was basically a very testosterone-driven cat. He loved to practice pouncing on mice, and absolutely didn't see himself as small. So, sort of like a yippee dog (Shi-Tsu), he was more than willing to get in a fight, or do something risky. Brave. Reckless. The new faery dragon is playful, manipulative, frisky. She likes to ride the fighter types' shoulders and make fun of the enemy. Likes puns and word-games.
Sure, you can do those things with dwarves/humans/halflings, but when you throw in a Tiny character, it gets absurd, and funny. And I don't like "stunt-casting" when it comes to characters. Almost everything I run is human, personally.
Let your player go for it, I'd say. It's only CR1.
Pseudodragon oracle?
Oh he might like that... what thing though. And what curse?
I hardly ever play humans. But i also tend to play the odder races. And odd concepts rp wise. Like my orcish witchdoc healer he worshipped odin in his darker aspects and ended up being more a meat shield than the party fighter but he was always ready to heal and and help the party and shield someone from a blow. The other players said he was creepy but the loved him lol. Being something small like that eh... no thanks. I like weapons and armor and stuffs lol.
Thing? You mean revalation? Show the list of mysteries and see if anything tickles his fancy. But since you asked, the Bones, Occult, and Waves mysteries (and probably some others) all have a revalation that allows the oracle to conjure a suit or armor. Might be handy for a tiny dragon.
For the curses its the same thing. Show him the list. They all have a hinderance, but I think they are also another opportunity to role-play.
I was thinking which was better for support and yeah mysteries couldnt think of the term and was at work.
Why not keep the stats as is and have him level as a familiar or animal companion?