Creating new dragons!

[RavinRay]

Why 1/4 ? Rake attacks and secondary attacks always deal 1/2 the Strength Bonus.

I took a look at the rake attacks of the five cats in the SRD, the dire lion, dire tiger, leopard, lion, and tiger. The "+n" for the rake attacks is half that for the regular claw attack, rounded down. Since claw attacks already use half the Str modifier, half of that is 1/4.

 

[freyar]

Time to jump-start this thread...

I think the Rake line is more streamlined now, as I kept it consistent with the rake ability of other monsters. It actually does less bonus damage (1/2 of 1/2 of the Str modifier (than regular claw attacks). But if we want the trade-off of lacking wing-based attacks for greater claw damage we can stick with ripping claws and finalize the damage dealt.

I'd like to offset the lack of wing attacks a little, so I vote for the ripping claws. (No ulterior motive here! )

Let's move on to other stats:
Natural AC: HD -1, or should it have harder scales?
Other psi-Like abilities:
Class Skills:
Movement: Should it also have a swim speed like other gem dragons?

Natural AC bonus sounds good.

I like fiery discorporation for psi-like, but that's just b/c it sounds cool and fits the fire subtype. I guess 1/day on that one. Compared to SLAs on other dragons, maybe we should add another one or two?

For skills, I suggest Hide and Move Silently along the lines of a great cat. For the last one, Climb could work, but if we're thinking of plains, maybe something else would be better. I'd pick either Jump, Intimidate, or Listen.

Grasslands don't seem like the best place for a swim speed, but I'd up the burrow speed to 40 like we did for the Aluminum. However, if all gems have a swim speed for some reason, sure we can add one.

 

[RavinRay]

Good point on the Ripping Claws. As it is the strongest of the new gem dragons it only makes sense. The only other flightless true dragons, the brown dragon and rattelyr, do not have special melee attacks aside from that common to true dragons, but they're push-overs compared to the peridot dragon.

I'll add fiery discorporation, all we need to do now is figure out uses per day and age category. The higher level powers should be acquired at older ages. It should have a slow swim speed (even the fire-subtyped obsidian dragon has a swim speed, which I suppose is useful for navigating in the seas of magma in the Elemental Plane of Fire), and a bumped-up burrow speed. Speaking of Elemental Planes, should it have a favored plane?

 

[freyar]

Ok, these PLAs are pretty high-level, I guess. Maybe make fiery discorporation old, true venom very old or ancient, and energy ball wyrm? Control air seems kind of light-weight, so maybe adult?

Umm, I'm not sure what a favored plane is, but the elemental plane of fire would make sense, I suppose, if not the material.

 

[SuedodeuS]

Wow, this dragon looks a lot better than my typical half-assed attempts. Looks like you haven't tossed tremorsense into the statistics block yet, though. If you want my two cents, I'd say only let it use tremorsense while burrowed.

You might want to consider giving it track as a bonus feat. I know that most of the big cats don't get this feat, but they tend to have a decent feeding ground, and also can stay within fairly close proximity to their prey without being very visible, thanks to the dense jungle (for tigers) or high grass (lions). I don't really see any feeding ground being able to sustain one of these guys once they get too big, and grass can only grow so high. Even if, once they get too big, these dragons only hunt while burrowing, they'll still need to find the area their prey is in while above ground (being deep enough underground not to freak out anything above ground would mean that the tremorsense radius would be good for pinpointing prey, not finding it initially). Because they won't be able to get close enough to see their prey (if it can see the prey, the prey can likely see it), they'd need to rely on tracking it down to get a general idea of where it is. While you're at it, you might want to toss on the scent extraordinary ability (I don't think dragons usually have this, but it would be a great idea for a ground hunter-type dragon).

 

[RavinRay]

I thought of giving it psionic scent (always active) as an (Su) ability some time back; I just haven't gone back and editted the stat block. All I need to do now is plug in the ability scores, then we can come up with the CRs and LAs.

 

[Aeolius]

It's interesting to notice how much overlap everyone seems to have, when creating dragons. For example, I devised coral, pearl, and abalone dragons for use in my undersea games. They were created long ago by an eccentric dragon turtle who felt nothing but resent for the "true" dragons, in his quest to create a "true" dragon turtle that could sire half-dragon offspring.

 

[RavinRay]

The peridot dragon is now almost complete, with ability scores and CR edited.

I really wanted aquatic members of the chromatic, metallic, and gem dragon families because I find it hard to believe that Tiamat, Bahamut, and Sardior would just ignore the aquatic realms. In fact, Keith Strohm created an aquatic deputy for Bahamut, Medrinia; but what's the point of being his deputy if she has no set of distinct draconic followers?

 

[freyar]

Peridot is looking pretty good now. Maybe to go with the cat idea, we should note that they are often very curious. But it seems about done...

 

[JiCi]

The Peridot looks good.