The Homebrewer's Extended Signature

[Baron Corm]

Cormfinder

Generic Class
Generic Race
Modified Weapons and Armor
Redefined Spell Schools
Modified Creature Types
Simpler Combat Mechanics

Demons and Devils

Droxyluth
Carkessera and Syll'guzz
Pituku
Blibix

Other Fun Stuff

Pipsqueak
Gauntlets of Hedged Fate
New and Revised Warforged Body Feats
Therianthropy as Feats

Why Dragonwrought Kobolds are not True Dragons

Dragonwrought kobolds look exactly like regular kobolds, with slightly color-tinted scales. They look completely humanoid and gain no true dragon traits naturally, such as a good sense of smell, wings, or a breath weapon. They can get some of these things with feats, as anyone with dragon heritage can, but it's not a part of them as a race. This point should be enough for anyone who is looking at it from a flavor point of view. Compare a dragonwrought kobold to the ten iconic true dragons, and tell me the kobold belongs with them.

Dragonwrought kobolds don't gain any abilities or power from aging at all, other than the standard mental score increases that all humanoid races get. To a non-rules lawyer, this should prove it to you. The SRD states, "All true dragons gain more abilities and greater power as they age. (Other creatures that have the dragon type do not.)". This could only be twisted by saying "as they age" is different than "from aging", which is true, but the intended meaning is obvious. The rest of the SRD definition says, "They range in length from several feet upon hatching to more than 100 feet after attaining the status of great wyrm", which some have claimed makes the whole thing irrelevant because that doesn't apply to every true dragon. However, the next line reads, "The size of a particular dragon varies according to age and variety", which puts it back as a solid definition. Now onto some reasons even a rules lawyer could appreciate.

• Even regular kobolds have age categories, and they are humanoids, so that obviously has nothing to do with being a true dragon. It's just a description of a life cycle.
• They aren't listed on the list of true dragons in Races of the Dragon (the same book in which they were printed).
• They don't gain spellcasting as they age, which is listed on page 111 of RotD as something all true dragons get, which is just about the best and most recent source of a true dragon quality I can find, and possibly a description of what the SRD phrase could refer to (though personally I believe the SRD refers to the standardized age advancement table with numerous special qualities true dragons get through aging, not just spellcasting). The exception to this rule that I've found, planar dragons, tell you that they're an exception to the rule.
• They aren't specifically listed as true dragons.

There is, in the end, no full and laid out description of what makes a true dragon, no matter how many pieces you try to pull together. My favorite ones were in the previous comments, but even those might be contradicted somewhere. The only way the 3.5 writers have consistently told us what is and what is not a true dragon is by saying it is one in the creature's description. From all flavor descriptions and from a strictly mechanical point of view, dragonwrought kobolds are not true dragons. I personally don't believe the writers of Races of the Dragon even considered they could be, which is why they didn't state it one way or another. If they went through all of that work to deliberately make them qualify as true dragons, they would have stated so.



Table of How to Beat a Wizard, for Players and Annoyed DMs
{table=head]Level of Optimization|What They're Using|What You Can Use
Low|Blasting Spells|Improved Evasion or Improved Mettle of Mountains (goliath rogue ACF, RoS)
Medium|Battlefield Control|Ring of Freedom of Movement and Wings of Flying
Medium|Glitterdust|Raptor's Mask (MIC) or Devil's Sight feat (FCII)
Medium|Mind Control|Third Eye Conceal (MIC)
Medium|Save or dies/energy drain|Talisman of Undying Fortitude (MIC) or Necropolitan template
Medium|Forcecage|Anklet of Translocation/Aporter property (MIC) or be Huge or larger
Medium|Rope trick|Silver key 10 (Dragonmarked, requires dwarf)
Medium|Magic defenses such as displacement or mirror image|Pierce Magical Concealment feat (CArc)
Medium|Illusions/invisibility|Gem of Seeing
Medium|Baleful polymorph|Lycanthrope template, changeling race (ECS), or master of many forms 10 (CAdv)
Medium|Flesh to stone|Warforged race (or others not made of flesh) or Saint template
High|Orb of force, enervation, or other touch spells|Wand or continuous item of ray deflection (SpC)*
High|Astral projection|Githyanki silver sword (must be a githyanki, kill one, or steal one's sword; githyanki warriors of at least level 7 carry one)
High|Celerity|Eternal blade 10 (ToB, requires elf; get Uncanny Dodge so you can always use immediate actions)
High|Foresight/moment of prescience|Spymaster 7 (CAdv) or continuous item of mind blank**
Ridiculous|Hail of stone or certain acid spells|Troll Blooded feat (DR319) or war troll race (MMIII) and Saint template
Ridiculous|Magic buffs such as shapechange or contingency|Scroll of disjunction (if they put it on an item with total cover, do the same)***
Ridiculous|Gate|Scroll of banishment, with tons of things that the creature hates to pump your DC and SR piercing, if necessary***
Ridiculous|Disjunction or dispel|Give items total cover under your armor or something else
Ridiculous|Initiate of Mystra|Argue that per RAW, normal function of a spell in an AMF is to not function.
Ridiculous|"Your character isn't smart enough to do that with only 12 Int. Mine can think of anything with his Int of 30."|War Hulk + Hulking Hurler
Ridiculous|Pun-Pun|Iron Heart Surge him away[/table]
*If you don't want to go the custom item route, optimize your touch AC. Deflective Armor (RoS) and Parrying Shield (LoM) will get it pretty high with minimal investment, but other guides would be better for optimizing this further. Also see the note about moment of prescience and how you can arguably avoid your enemy getting a +25 to his attack roll.
**This is not commonly accepted (yet) as kosher, but my justification follows. Note that this ruling also makes invisible creatures with mind blank undetectable by divination magic, so get some blindsight if you expect to be facing them.

Spoiler

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- Spymaster 7 gives you a fake persona which is detected when any Divination spell is used on you.
- Mind blank protects against all information-gathering divination spells and effects, and goes on to say that scrying targeted on you simply fails. I believe Vecna-Blooded works in a similar way to mind blank.
- Moment of prescience is a divination spell with a range of Personal, that grants you "a powerful sixth sense in relation to yourself".
- I take this to mean that when you attack someone and use moment of prescience, you gain a sixth sense (information-gathering effect) about where I will be in the near future, allowing you to place your blow perfectly.
- Therefore, as a spymaster, you detect where my persona will be in the near future, which is meaningless with regards to my actual self.
- With mind blank activated, you are simply unable to discern where I will be.
- If moment of prescience was not an information-gathering effect and simply enhanced your own ability to attack, it would not be a divination spell, or say that it grants you a sixth sense. You would be sensing nothing, merely having improved in skill.
- "An insight bonus improves performance of a given activity by granting the character an almost precognitive knowledge of what might occur." The bonus you gain is an insight bonus, and this coincides with my interpretation of what is happening.

***If you don't want to "be a wizard to beat a wizard", you can beat shapechange or gate simply by having a mega-optimized melee build. They won't have the same feats and class features as you.

This list is only for a quick fix to these problems. Optimizing your saving throws can allow you to beat many of the effects on this list, most of the time, without needing to be immune to them.

A special mention should be given to the warforged juggernaut prestige class, which gives you immunity to nonlethal damage, critical hits, mind-affecting effects, death effects, all necromancy effects, ability damage, and ability drain, after only 5 levels. The base warforged race already has immunity to sleep, fatigue, exhaustion, poison, disease, sickening, nausea, paralysis, and energy drain. Either of these could go under many of the above headings, but it would have caused clutter... which just goes to show how good they are at stopping mages.

You might have noticed that many of the counterplay options are given by the Eberron campaign setting, while many of the most broken spellcaster options are given by Forgotten Realms, including Initiate of Mystra and Pun-Pun. You can start yourself off on the right foot by simply playing in Eberron instead of Forgotten Realms.