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DragonHunter
2015-05-17, 09:50 PM
Okay so this is my first post here, sorry for any newbness. I like draconic humanoid characters, but I do not like the penalties and major LA they come with. So I came up with this. It is designed to be used as a race or a template. I want some feedback about the LA, and/or any tweaks the Lesser Half-Dragon may need. Please remember that regular Half-Dragons have +8 Str, +4 Con, +4 Natural Armor, Bite and Claw attacks, Breath attacks, a 6d8 daily breath weapon( and an official feat string that will eventually let them use it as often as a dragon, and that make them more powerful). They also have 60ft Darkvision, full immunity to Sleep, Paralysis, and the element of their dragon parent, and have an LA of +3. If the Lesser Half-Dragon had a +2 LA, it really wouldn't be worth playing it verses a regular Half-Dragon.

Lesser Half-Dragon(Race or Template)

+ 2 to Strength, Constitution, Intelligence, and Charisma: Lesser Half-Dragons are much physically weaker then Half-Dragons but are just as mentally adept.
Natural Armor: +2: Lesser Half-Dragons scales are not as hard or as numerous as normal Half-Dragons
Size: Race - Medium, Template - same as base creature
Speed: Race - 30 ft, Template - same as base creature
Automatic Languages: Race - Common, Draconic, Template - Same as base creature plus Draconic
Bonus Languages: Race - any expect secret languages, Template - same as base creature
Darkvission: 45 ft
Saves: +2 to saves against Sleep and Paralysis
Damage Reduction: 5/- DR against element type of draconic parent
Bite and Claw: Lesser Half-Dragons have noticeably pointy teeth and sharp, hard claws, but they are not enough to do any real damage. Bite and Claw attacks are treated as if Makeshift Weapons, thus receive a -4 to the Attack Roll. Damage: normal for size -2
LA: 1
Special Text: At the DM's or GM's discretion, a player making a Lesser Half Dragon using the Ability Point Buy system may have to use a 15 or 20 point buy, verses the normal 25 or 30. This is to balance what some DMs may consider high racial ability modifiers.

AmberVael
2015-05-18, 12:13 AM
This template strongly overlaps the existing Draconic Creature template, differing only in a few points here or there. You can find it in Races of the Dragon, page 74. The same book offers the +0 la dragonborn template, and the Spellscale race, both of which are also relevant.

If you're still interested in making something like this though, I'd be willing to offer critique and suggestions. Though I'd probably advise altering it significantly just so it'd fill a different niche than draconic.

DragonHunter
2015-05-18, 09:28 AM
Okay so I looked up the Draconic Creature template and found it mostly fluff and totally not worth the +1 LA. As far as modifying what I have to make it fit a different niche wouldn't be hard, just change or remove the name, saves, damage reduction, and Natural Armor and then it could fit just about anything. Might have to add a -2 Dex or remove another mod, depending on what you want character type you want.

AmberVael
2015-05-18, 03:36 PM
Okay so I looked up the Draconic Creature template and found it mostly fluff and totally not worth the +1 LA. As far as modifying what I have to make it fit a different niche wouldn't be hard, just change or remove the name, saves, damage reduction, and Natural Armor and then it could fit just about anything. Might have to add a -2 Dex or remove another mod, depending on what you want character type you want.

Er. Draconic Creature offers slightly less stat boosts and natural armor than your proposal, but also grants normal claws, a better bonus against sleep and paralysis, darkvision and low light vision, as well as the nice dragonblood subtype. The difference between your template and it is so small as to be negligible, so any criticism leveled at it can be equally leveled at your own work. So when I said changing it to fit another niche, what I meant is differentiating it mechanically rather than in terms of fluff. Since it is so similar, there's not much point of it at the moment.

Most of the criticism I see on the draconic template is that it offers very few attractive special abilities. It might be interesting to make a dragon type template that focuses on the spellcasting of dragons, which rarely gets explored in that capacity. You might also consider giving it things like wings or a breath weapon but in the style of the dragonborn template- heavily basing it on scaling so that it doesn't make the template too powerful early on, but gives good benefits as you go. This kind of stuff could help it be worth taking and also make it a little more unique.

Now, there are a few things that need correcting though.
First, offering 45ft darkvision is just... odd. Its not necessarily horrible, but just odd and there isn't a ton of point to it. Normally you see darkvision at 60ft, or other multiples of 30ft. Seriously, just bump this up to 60ft, it'll be fine.
Second, damage reduction has nothing to do with energy damage, and can't in fact block it at all. You're thinking of Energy Resistance, so you should be offering Energy Resistance 5 rather than Damage Reduction.
Third, the improvised weapon penalty on the claws is bizarre. I've never seen a mechanic like this, and I can't say I think its a good one. You should either give them a benefit or not, don't use this really strange half measure. Personally I would suggest removing them to make room for more unique abilities, because natural weapons can be picked up all over the place.

DragonHunter
2015-05-18, 08:15 PM
Sorry I didn't know there was a difference between damage reduction and energy resistance, sounds like they do the same thing so why overcomplicate things and have them as separate things. Anyway I see the other points you brought up are rather good. My knowledge of D&D was corrupted by a bad DM who strongly favored a couple players and magic classes and put mega restrictions on the other players(particularly players who used melee classes), and with how OP( I mean putting the lvl 6 party against mature dragons, large groups of lvl 12 fighters, and 50 mutant gnomes) he made the enemies we have to make new characters almost every session. So I experimented in trying to make my character stronger, so I used the normal half dragon template on a basic two weapon ranger elf. My DM's response to that was making the Half-Dragon template have an LA +6, have to roll a percent die every time you wanted to use the breath attack, have +4 STR and +2 CON. Even after him sending some Ebrron super death bot after my specific character I still managed to kill it and survive. After that I left that game and said goodbye to that group.

So what I was trying to do was make a race/template that was strong enough to play in those type of games while being weak enough to not have a huge LA. I was trying to deduce the power of the Half-Dragon by about 60%, and from research most of the H-G's LA came from its resistances, natural weapons, and breath weapons. So I took those away for the most part.

Solaris
2015-05-19, 09:00 AM
AmberVael's already voiced most of my issues with this template, except for one.


Special Text: At the DM's or GM's discretion, a player making a Lesser Half Dragon using the Ability Point Buy system may have to use a 15 or 20 point buy, verses the normal 25 or 30. This is to balance what some DMs may consider high racial ability modifiers.

Unless this is in lieu of the level adjustment, this is simply killer. From a mechanical standpoint, the dramatically reduced ability scores don't compensate for the abilities and features gained.


Sorry I didn't know there was a difference between damage reduction and energy resistance, sounds like they do the same thing so why overcomplicate things and have them as separate things. Anyway I see the other points you brought up are rather good. My knowledge of D&D was corrupted by a bad DM who strongly favored a couple players and magic classes and put mega restrictions on the other players(particularly players who used melee classes), and with how OP( I mean putting the lvl 6 party against mature dragons, large groups of lvl 12 fighters, and 50 mutant gnomes) he made the enemies we have to make new characters almost every session. So I experimented in trying to make my character stronger, so I used the normal half dragon template on a basic two weapon ranger elf. My DM's response to that was making the Half-Dragon template have an LA +6, have to roll a percent die every time you wanted to use the breath attack, have +4 STR and +2 CON. Even after him sending some Ebrron super death bot after my specific character I still managed to kill it and survive. After that I left that game and said goodbye to that group.

So what I was trying to do was make a race/template that was strong enough to play in those type of games while being weak enough to not have a huge LA. I was trying to deduce the power of the Half-Dragon by about 60%, and from research most of the H-G's LA came from its resistances, natural weapons, and breath weapons. So I took those away for the most part.

Well, there's your problem right there: Your balance point is over in crazy-land with your homicidal DM.

The half-dragon's level adjustment is too high in the Monster Manual. It's just barely this side of unplayable, really (bumping the Con up to +4 and making the breath weapon scale with the half-dragon's level would improve it at its +3 level adjustment; as it is, it's really around a LA +2 especially once you get into later levels where +8 Str and 6d8 energy damage as a standard action gets to be whoop-de-doo. There's also fact that while 6d8 damage sounds cool for early levels, it's still no better in practice than any other attack that kills CR-appropriate enemies in one hit - like a raging barbarian power-attacking with a greatsword - and the Reflex save it allows is one of the easiest to employ). WotC deliberately inflated LA because they had some grognards on board who really loathed the idea of monstrous PCs, and the tradition just kind of stuck in the game. They also dramatically over-valued certain things (such as the Strength score and spell resistance; just look at the half-orc and the drow). While I can't blame them too much for messing it up (after all, they didn't have the benefit of a decade of playtesting that we do), we certainly don't have to repeat their mistakes.

Personally, if you want a lesser half-dragon that's worth taking over the regular half-dragon, I'd look into a flight/wings capability somewhat along the lines of the raptoran's instead of natural weapons. Flying is a genuinely useful capability that's worth a level adjustment, and if you add in a scaled flight mechanic with other useful-but-not-too-useful racial features then you've got something that's worth a class level and stays worth a class level throughout the game.

DragonHunter
2015-05-19, 09:58 AM
So this is what I got from y'alls suggestions and advice. May also add a breath weapon that does 3d6 damage and that increases by 1d6 every 3 levels.

Lesser Half-Dragon(Race or Template)

Character Type: Dragon blooded
+ 2 to Strength, Constitution, Intelligence, and Charisma: Lesser Half-Dragons are much physically weaker then Half-Dragons but are just as mentally adept.
Flight: Starting at level 3, the Lesser Half-Dragon's wings are strong enough to hold him or her aloft, and gains a flight speed of 40 ft( Good Maneuverability ), flight speed increases to 60 ft at lvl 6( Good Maneuverability ).
Natural Armor: +2: Lesser Half-Dragons scales are not as hard or as numerous as normal Half-Dragons
Size: Race - Medium, Template - same as base creature
Speed: Race - 30 ft, Template - same as base creature
Automatic Languages: Race - Common, Draconic, Template - Same as base creature plus Draconic
Bonus Languages: Race - any expect secret languages, Template - same as base creature
Darkvission: 60 ft
Saves: +2 to saves against Sleep and Paralysis
Elemental Resistance: 5/- ER against element type of draconic parent
LA: 1