So, the Ancestry request thread shows lots of people would be interested in playing true dragons. It seemed obvious that the new Ancestry paradigm should better enable playing big strong creatures, but how exactly?
Personally, I would like to see as much as possible built into the ancestry itself via ancestry feat progression. For example, a dragon could start small, then take a feat at X level to get large, or get better flight, or some other useful dragon feature.
What I find, however, is that there are far too few Ancestry feats to let this make any sense. Dragon feats would have to be jam-packed with bonus features or the dragon player wouldn't feel very dragony later on.
Considering the power of lots of the Dragon features, like flight, natural weapons, breath weapons, innate spells, energy resistance, and more... it seems like by necessity Class will have to take some of the balance load. This would align with the method in previous editions of offsetting high powered races with level adjustments, effectively giving you "levels" in your ancestry.
Furthermore, given that the combination of dragon features would be very hard to balance if they were all fully available to pick and choose from a "Dragon" archetype, and the fact that dragons lean hard into a weapon selection (bites and claws etc) which is in the purview of a full class's kit, I would hazard that we would need a full Dragon class, which can only be taken by those of the Dragon (or half dragon?) ancestry. (A dedication archetype into Dragon would be a good Dragon Disciple, though.)
I would also like it if these types of characters could be balanced against regular ancestries, so that you don't have to ask the GM to run a specific high-power campaign just to play some cool monsters.
This could work pretty well, but runs the risk of flooding Paizo with requests for custom classes for every other monster in the bestiary. This could be less of a problem, though, if the need for a monster class is only necessary for monsters that have different versions that span many levels like dragons' age categories.
It also blurs the lines between the ABCs, which Paizo might be strongly averse to.
What do you think? How would you go about making playable powerful ancestries?
Might I suggest mechanically, you make it start out as young dragon, the weakest and smallest of dragon ages. This doesn't change (because campaigns rarely last years).
You create the various powers, balanced by character level. And write a rule that says you can spend class feats to gain these ancestry feats.
So very similar to what you're thinking, but working more within existing confines I think. Basically you just spend more class feats to become more dragony.
I see two routes (though they could be blended).
1. There's a dragon Ancestry that balances with PC-Ancestry power levels, as do their feats. So likely no flying until 9th (infrequently), improved at 13th (frequently). The trouble with this isn't that one couldn't keep the power levels balanced, it's that dragons have so many iconic abilities that would require feats: senses, breath, flight, natural attacks, etc.
2. There's a dragon Class. There are already many dragon-themed abilities out there that demonstrate how such a ladder could work. Growth (except maybe one step) & aging would still remain off the table (unless perhaps adding a dragon-themed campaign separate set of mechanics). There could be a lot more powers, except the problem is it's odd to be unlocking what are one's natural abilities. Yet it might be balanced enough for other Ancestries to take, which could be cool. (I'm not much into monster races, but they have their times.)
Of course, there could be a dedicated sub-system created, but starting at a higher level might be able to mirror what's desired without resorting to that (unless age & excessive size became involved). I think it'd be up to 3rd parties to do anything so niche.
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OT: In 3.X, player had a 10th level Barbarian get Reincarnated when there was that minimal chance of becoming a random monster, which yes, arose. Rolled d1000 (yes, 1000), then I counted through the Monster Manual, ending up exactly on a 10 HD Dragon. Brass or Copper, I think, but one of the good ones. The stats & alignment matched so well, it seemed like destiny. He was stupider, but a dumb dragon's pretty funny.
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I think this would be nigh impossible to balance in a satisfying fashion. When someone wants to play a dragon, they want to be a DRAGON, not a hatchling that never grows up. And not a version of the creature that's been scaled back to be balanced against humanoid PCs.
The only solution I would see is a sourcebook entirely about campaigns where the PCs are dragons. Council of Wyrms 2: Electric Boogaloo.
One possible way to do it is through an ancestry paired with a single archetype or multiple archetypes that require the ancestry, maybe even like the hell knight archetypes that build on each other. So a dragon ancestry with a young dragon archetype, adult dragon archetype, and ancient dragon archetype.
Really the challenge here is that in the fiction progression is supposed to take a very long time. You really should not become an ancient dragon in the span of a couple years.
One possible way to do it is through an ancestry paired with a single archetype or multiple archetypes that require the ancestry, maybe even like the hell knight archetypes that build on each other. So a dragon ancestry with a young dragon archetype, adult dragon archetype, and ancient dragon archetype.
Really the challenge here is that in the fiction progression is supposed to take a very long time. You really should not become an ancient dragon in the span of a couple years.
On the flipside, like with more standard ancestries, adventurer dragons are pretty unique relative to their peers. Most dragons spend time chilling with their hordes, hunting their meal of choice. They fat and lazy, like me.
Adventurer Dragons, though, are Important™ and advance more quickly because they are constantly testing themselves against ever-increasing odds.
Yeah, I don't really have a problem with advancing through the younger categories of dragon ages via experience. If you keep it to one category difference, it is even somewhat plausible. A 15 year old medium dragon could age up to large at 16 within the PF1 age category guidelines.
I *think* most people would be okay with playing a large dragon for most of their career, then maybe have an option to increase further using magic or something.
What's more important to me is that they get the iconic dragon abilities without outshining other PCs. So if you have to wait until 9th to really use your wings, then so be it. If we keep player dragons to lower ages it frees up a lot of the burden of trying to balance around gargantuan beasts with all kinds of legendary abilities.
So something I've found when converting certain creatures is you can often create something fairly similar to it when you combine all of the PC creation tools. For example, if I'm building a Morlock then a goblin with clave climber and sudden leap as a class feat is already most of the way there.
A dragon is simply not something that should ever be defined by it's class, IMO, but by being a freaking dragon. As such I'd probably craft a custom progression for it that subsumes both ancestry and class. This actually seems pretty doable using the various levels of dragons as a guide for when new abilities can become available.
Leave them with the normal skill feat progression and they wind up having some personality rounding them out, too.
Dragon Class, with a progression that defines what it is at different levels. You could potentially allow it to then spend a few Class feats to Multi-class into another class to get some of their flavor.
Alternately, for balance reasons, you have the Dragon Class, and offer Gestalt rules, so that the human (or other monster ancestry/class) can choose and merge two classes together and benefit from both, and be roughly similar in power between them all.
But it is worth noting, even a baby dragon might be more than a 1st level being. Just because it is the start of it's life and adventuring career, doesn't mean that they are 1st level.
More than likely a fire-giant kid, as a PC, starting out, might not be starting as a 1st level character. If you want to start them out with all the minimum stats/abilities of a young giant monster and gestalt them up (allowing a chosen class to begin at 1 and advance abilities up until they start passing their natural starting abilities) that could be an option. But in such a case, as they adventure as 1st level adventurers, they will need to face opponents that are set at a level appropriate for their native/natural starting level, and would likely continue fighting such opponents until their class level surpassed their monster base level.
Once we see options for Gestalt play, this seems more viable. And I imagine such options will vary from free multi-class dedication and/or extra feats every 2 levels to gestalt combination of best of two different classes/sources.
Yikes this got moved to homebrew. That feels super terrible considering how this is all about how we hope Paizo will make official monster ancestries.
Move us back to general!
Yikes this got moved to homebrew. That feels super terrible considering how this is all about how we hope Paizo will make official monster ancestries.
Move us back to general!
"How would you go about making playable powerful ancestries?"
Welcome home(brew)!
Yikes this got moved to homebrew. That feels super terrible considering how this is all about how we hope Paizo will make official monster ancestries.
Move us back to general!
"How would you go about making playable powerful ancestries?"
Welcome home(brew)!
Yeah but I want Paizo to read these ideas! XD
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well, how in the company of dragons booklet does it might give us some insight.
basically, have it so you can take ancestry feats to get higher levels of bigness with improved flight and natural attacks as riders. other feats would have to do with natural draconic resistances and the like. so you can focus on being really big, or staying smaller and gaining more abilities you'd imagine a dragon to have.
THEN also have a draconic archetype that in essence trades some class feats for access to more ancestry feats, and then also the dedication could have some average skills attached to it you might expect the average dragon to be good at. and then also it should have some of the more powerful dragony options tied specifically to the archetype.
that's how I hope they do it anyway.
basically in company of dragons has some archetypes that can be applied to almost all base classes and then also had a few class specific ones, and then also a class specifically for dragons, but i feel with ancestry feats with an optional dedication, you can cover all your bases.
this basically allows someone to play a small sized dragon their whole career or go full super deadly breath attacks and colossal size, while doing crazy imperial dragon stuff if they want, etc.
although in the company of dragons had this malleability because they made "true" true dragons, that are less permanent and more effected by their ego than normal true dragons. so if they have a lot of "experiences" they get bigger and more confident if they want to, etc.
Any suggestions on how to determine a creature's character level? I don't think creature level is necessarily going to be the same as character level.
They should be roughly equivalent, depending on what you mean by "creature".
I think the best idea would be to offer a special mechanical package that consumed the power budget of both class and ancestry.
I think I might write something up later, a dragon ancestry seems easy enough to do if i can get my head around 2e dragons.
This kind of thing might be worth revisiting when (if?) Paizo get around to secondeditioning mythic rules.
I could see mythic being just another tag (applied to feats, ancestries, etcetera as appropriate). That way dragons don’t have to balance against other regular ancestries but can be balanced against lich, titan, veiled master....or whatever the mythic ancestries end up being.