Anyone else DMing a dragon campaign? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Anyone else DMing a dragon campaign? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Nahar
02-12-04, 11:53 PM As I held out waiting for many years as a PC for someone to run a dragon campaign, I recently started one myself.

So far it's working great, has anyone else tried it out? I'd love to hear some ideas or problems that other people have had.
SnowbearK
02-13-04, 12:13 AM As soon as I heard the Draconomicon was coming out, I whipped out my boxed and book versions of Council of Wyrms.

:D

So far it's working out beautifully. The biggest problem is the large amount of downtime and what to do in the intervening years.

I took the idea of the Kindred from CoW and am running the two campaigns concurrently.
Nahar
02-13-04, 12:32 AM The downtime is a bit of a problem.

My fallback idea is that they would spend a few months haggling about who gets what bit of treasure from any given haul. I mean, they're dragons. Who gets stuck with the sandstone statue of Grumsh is going to be a tough one.

The other idea my main idea hampster came up with is increasing the time multiplier for making magical items. 1 week per thousand gp means they spend a looooong time on expensive items.
thalious
02-13-04, 12:54 AM I have once ran a party of characters, that had managed to become dragons through various methods. It worked rather well and was a lot of fun. Challenging the party in the prime material plane proved to be more of monster mash (granted this was in 2E). I am thinking of doing a 3E Dragon PC campaign. What HD and Level did you guys have your players begin at?
Kayli
02-13-04, 12:55 AM Creating Long Downtime has it's Drawbacks.

What you Mean it will Take me xx Years to Create that Item? Woo Hoo, I'll Gain a ton of HD and an Age Cat or Two, better Saves, Higher Attributes, Higher SR, Higher DC's Form Breath (which also deals more dmg) and Fear, a couple of Feats, a ton of Skill Points, Go up a Size Cat or Two, Gain more Spells, A few more Special Abilities. The List goes on and on. It's not a good Idea to let Dragons take Down Time that Extends more then a year or too, unlike most PC races they get more powerfull with age, and in fact whant to hit that Next Age Category as soon as possible. This is never more true than if you start them out as Wyrmlings. Playing a Dragon PC campaign can be very fun, I myself am itching to try it. But Never has it been more important to Keep Track of hte Passage of Time. Which seems like it would be a great Headache.

Has any one noticed the extreme lack of Arcane PrC's for Dragons in the Draconomicon? there are just 3 spell casting PrC and they are all devine. Whats Up with That??
Nahar
02-13-04, 01:11 AM Originally posted by thalious
I am thinking of doing a 3E Dragon PC campaign. What HD and Level did you guys have your players begin at?

I really departed from the rules. As metallics are easier (to play), I only worked out ECL's for the five base ones. ECL is just HD + special ECL. I said gold is +3, silver is +2, bronze is +1, copper is +0 and brass is -1. So everyone got 11 'levels' to assign as they wanted, either to advancing HD and age or taking class levels.

The figure was set at 11 as that's the minimum to take a gold wyrmling.

I also did some fudging with the world. It's basically Faerun at DR minus lots and lots, the elves haven't even migrated there yet. It makes the low ECL pretty balanced, they're only fighting outsiders, other dragons, and the nastier abberations, magical beasts and undead. No humanoids at all, I couldn't get them to work.

A big warning: aerial combat is nasty!! Anything with a good or perfect fly speed will kick the dragon's behinds, it came as a real surprise.
Nahar
02-13-04, 01:16 AM Originally posted by Kayli
Creating Long Downtime has it's Drawbacks.

What you Mean it will Take me xx Years to Create that Item? Woo Hoo, I'll Gain a ton of HD and an Age Cat or Two, better Saves, Higher Attributes, Higher SR, Higher DC's Form Breath (which also deals more dmg) and Fear, a couple of Feats, a ton of Skill Points, Go up a Size Cat or Two, Gain more Spells, A few more Special Abilities. The List goes on and on. It's not a good Idea to let Dragons take Down Time that Extends more then a year or too, unlike most PC races they get more powerfull with age, and in fact whant to hit that Next Age Category as soon as possible.

Point taken. The way I saw it, by the time they're a high enough caster level to make anything really sweet, it will be hundreds of years between age cat's anyway. And I really needed something to soak up the years between adventures.
SnowbearK
02-13-04, 01:57 AM Oh yeah, you're absolutely right, what was I thinking, putting in a 6 decade downtime stretch, I mean geez, that's only about 25% of the time it takes to age from Mature adult to Old, good god I must be an idiot, of course it takes a human character a good 20 years or so (the equivelant timeframe) to make the intervening level equivalencies...

:rolleyes:

Seriously, once you hit Young Adult as a Dragon PC, long stretches of downtime become normal, and they get longer as you reach higher age categories. At Mature Adult and above,40-60 years between adventures isn't much beyond a few months to a year or so in equivelant downtime to a human adventurer.

Unless you greatly relish the idea of a Young Adult Dragon also being a 20th level Wizard by the time they reach Adult, there has to be downtime.

I'm not talking about long periods of downtime from the get-go, I've been running my Council of Wyrms game since the Draconomicon came out, and at this point the PC's are at the Juvenile category, ready to hit young adult in the next 9 game years. While their Draconic PCs run around the council aerie and deal with various Clan business, they get to run in the concurrent campaign as Kindred.

Well, some of them anyways. One of the players has taken a Faerie Dragon as his 2nd character, another is running a Half-dragon Ward.
Nahar
02-13-04, 02:29 AM That's how I was hoping it would work.

But I'm too lazy to run a second lot of char's in the space. My PC's are going to get 'It's five years later' :devil:
SpellBinder
02-13-04, 10:05 PM Originally posted by Kayli
Creating Long Downtime has it's Drawbacks.

Has any one noticed the extreme lack of Arcane PrC's for Dragons in the Draconomicon? there are just 3 spell casting PrC and they are all devine. Whats Up with That??

Yea, I knoticed this. I think it's a matter of motivation since most/all dragons get effective sorcerer levels at various ages. Just skimming through the base 10 dragons, I saw 13th level sorcerer as the lowest for the oldest of dragons (great wyrm white). As magical as dragons are said to be, maybe the arcane arts just aren't as spectacular to the draconic races as they are to lesser beings. Most of the base 10 dragons can choose clerical spells, but like 2 or 3 domains only.

I also noticed that these three PrC's convert the dragon's innate sorcerer levels into devine caster levels. Unless they pick up an arcane class as well, dragons that pick up one of these PrC's loose a lot of arcane power.

BTW, anyone see any printing about a favored class for dragons? Is there a favored class or do they just not suffer an XP penalty at all?
SnowbearK
02-14-04, 01:27 AM Like all Monsters with non-specifically mentioned favored classes, a Dragon's favored class is Dragon.
Amaron Blackthorn
04-19-04, 04:23 PM The Council of Wyrms is a great setting, has there been any product support for it?
jagggar
04-19-04, 07:09 PM Dragon Issue 320 is supposed to have it. They're going to have dragon classes from level 1. I anxiously await it.
Arhra
04-20-04, 06:04 AM You could always make them heal a lot slower (from serious injuries at least). That should make them want to stop from trying to destroy that fortified city or whatever so early. In most of the stories for dragons it can take years for them to regain their full strength whereas in D&D they can just chuck off a few heal spells. What's really strange is some of the stories for D&D mention this long down time as well. Also the amount of time being weakened would also encourage them to sit bakc and take the long view. You might want to try and come up with some sort of system for hunting too. That could be quite a memorable thing for the players - the dragons having to survive through a famine.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Nahar 02-12-04, 11:53 PM	As I held out waiting for many years as a PC for someone to run a dragon campaign, I recently started one myself. So far it's working great, has anyone else tried it out? I'd love to hear some ideas or problems that other people have had.
SnowbearK 02-13-04, 12:13 AM	As soon as I heard the Draconomicon was coming out, I whipped out my boxed and book versions of Council of Wyrms. :D So far it's working out beautifully. The biggest problem is the large amount of downtime and what to do in the intervening years. I took the idea of the Kindred from CoW and am running the two campaigns concurrently.
Nahar 02-13-04, 12:32 AM	The downtime is a bit of a problem. My fallback idea is that they would spend a few months haggling about who gets what bit of treasure from any given haul. I mean, they're dragons. Who gets stuck with the sandstone statue of Grumsh is going to be a tough one. The other idea my main idea hampster came up with is increasing the time multiplier for making magical items. 1 week per thousand gp means they spend a looooong time on expensive items.
thalious 02-13-04, 12:54 AM	I have once ran a party of characters, that had managed to become dragons through various methods. It worked rather well and was a lot of fun. Challenging the party in the prime material plane proved to be more of monster mash (granted this was in 2E). I am thinking of doing a 3E Dragon PC campaign. What HD and Level did you guys have your players begin at?
Kayli 02-13-04, 12:55 AM	Creating Long Downtime has it's Drawbacks. What you Mean it will Take me xx Years to Create that Item? Woo Hoo, I'll Gain a ton of HD and an Age Cat or Two, better Saves, Higher Attributes, Higher SR, Higher DC's Form Breath (which also deals more dmg) and Fear, a couple of Feats, a ton of Skill Points, Go up a Size Cat or Two, Gain more Spells, A few more Special Abilities. The List goes on and on. It's not a good Idea to let Dragons take Down Time that Extends more then a year or too, unlike most PC races they get more powerfull with age, and in fact whant to hit that Next Age Category as soon as possible. This is never more true than if you start them out as Wyrmlings. Playing a Dragon PC campaign can be very fun, I myself am itching to try it. But Never has it been more important to Keep Track of hte Passage of Time. Which seems like it would be a great Headache. Has any one noticed the extreme lack of Arcane PrC's for Dragons in the Draconomicon? there are just 3 spell casting PrC and they are all devine. Whats Up with That??
Nahar 02-13-04, 01:11 AM	Originally posted by thalious I am thinking of doing a 3E Dragon PC campaign. What HD and Level did you guys have your players begin at? I really departed from the rules. As metallics are easier (to play), I only worked out ECL's for the five base ones. ECL is just HD + special ECL. I said gold is +3, silver is +2, bronze is +1, copper is +0 and brass is -1. So everyone got 11 'levels' to assign as they wanted, either to advancing HD and age or taking class levels. The figure was set at 11 as that's the minimum to take a gold wyrmling. I also did some fudging with the world. It's basically Faerun at DR minus lots and lots, the elves haven't even migrated there yet. It makes the low ECL pretty balanced, they're only fighting outsiders, other dragons, and the nastier abberations, magical beasts and undead. No humanoids at all, I couldn't get them to work. A big warning: aerial combat is nasty!! Anything with a good or perfect fly speed will kick the dragon's behinds, it came as a real surprise.
Nahar 02-13-04, 01:16 AM	Originally posted by Kayli Creating Long Downtime has it's Drawbacks. What you Mean it will Take me xx Years to Create that Item? Woo Hoo, I'll Gain a ton of HD and an Age Cat or Two, better Saves, Higher Attributes, Higher SR, Higher DC's Form Breath (which also deals more dmg) and Fear, a couple of Feats, a ton of Skill Points, Go up a Size Cat or Two, Gain more Spells, A few more Special Abilities. The List goes on and on. It's not a good Idea to let Dragons take Down Time that Extends more then a year or too, unlike most PC races they get more powerfull with age, and in fact whant to hit that Next Age Category as soon as possible. Point taken. The way I saw it, by the time they're a high enough caster level to make anything really sweet, it will be hundreds of years between age cat's anyway. And I really needed something to soak up the years between adventures.
SnowbearK 02-13-04, 01:57 AM	Oh yeah, you're absolutely right, what was I thinking, putting in a 6 decade downtime stretch, I mean geez, that's only about 25% of the time it takes to age from Mature adult to Old, good god I must be an idiot, of course it takes a human character a good 20 years or so (the equivelant timeframe) to make the intervening level equivalencies... :rolleyes: Seriously, once you hit Young Adult as a Dragon PC, long stretches of downtime become normal, and they get longer as you reach higher age categories. At Mature Adult and above,40-60 years between adventures isn't much beyond a few months to a year or so in equivelant downtime to a human adventurer. Unless you greatly relish the idea of a Young Adult Dragon also being a 20th level Wizard by the time they reach Adult, there has to be downtime. I'm not talking about long periods of downtime from the get-go, I've been running my Council of Wyrms game since the Draconomicon came out, and at this point the PC's are at the Juvenile category, ready to hit young adult in the next 9 game years. While their Draconic PCs run around the council aerie and deal with various Clan business, they get to run in the concurrent campaign as Kindred. Well, some of them anyways. One of the players has taken a Faerie Dragon as his 2nd character, another is running a Half-dragon Ward.
Nahar 02-13-04, 02:29 AM	That's how I was hoping it would work. But I'm too lazy to run a second lot of char's in the space. My PC's are going to get 'It's five years later' :devil:
SpellBinder 02-13-04, 10:05 PM	Originally posted by Kayli Creating Long Downtime has it's Drawbacks. Has any one noticed the extreme lack of Arcane PrC's for Dragons in the Draconomicon? there are just 3 spell casting PrC and they are all devine. Whats Up with That?? Yea, I knoticed this. I think it's a matter of motivation since most/all dragons get effective sorcerer levels at various ages. Just skimming through the base 10 dragons, I saw 13th level sorcerer as the lowest for the oldest of dragons (great wyrm white). As magical as dragons are said to be, maybe the arcane arts just aren't as spectacular to the draconic races as they are to lesser beings. Most of the base 10 dragons can choose clerical spells, but like 2 or 3 domains only. I also noticed that these three PrC's convert the dragon's innate sorcerer levels into devine caster levels. Unless they pick up an arcane class as well, dragons that pick up one of these PrC's loose a lot of arcane power. BTW, anyone see any printing about a favored class for dragons? Is there a favored class or do they just not suffer an XP penalty at all?
SnowbearK 02-14-04, 01:27 AM	Like all Monsters with non-specifically mentioned favored classes, a Dragon's favored class is Dragon.
Amaron Blackthorn 04-19-04, 04:23 PM	The Council of Wyrms is a great setting, has there been any product support for it?
jagggar 04-19-04, 07:09 PM	Dragon Issue 320 is supposed to have it. They're going to have dragon classes from level 1. I anxiously await it.
Arhra 04-20-04, 06:04 AM	You could always make them heal a lot slower (from serious injuries at least). That should make them want to stop from trying to destroy that fortified city or whatever so early. In most of the stories for dragons it can take years for them to regain their full strength whereas in D&D they can just chuck off a few heal spells. What's really strange is some of the stories for D&D mention this long down time as well. Also the amount of time being weakened would also encourage them to sit bakc and take the long view. You might want to try and come up with some sort of system for hunting too. That could be quite a memorable thing for the players - the dragons having to survive through a famine.