Dragon Campaign

[Greatman32]

The campaign i have been running for a couple months has reached its zenith, it was excellent and my players after a few months hiatus want to play again. I pitched to them the idea of a setting where all the player characters start as young dragons in a dragon society of sorts. They would then go on appropriate adventures and quests and such as dragons. This sounded really great when I thought of it but, after further inspection I am starting to see a problem.

4e the game system I am now most familiar with my players having ditched 3.5 fairly early in my DMing career, which is as far as I can tell completely not set up for this sort of thing. So i would have to house-rule A TON of stuff to make it work.

Now I sort of have an idea of how I would like to do it. I would either make new races for the different dragons and then create "Dragon Classes" that would be appropriately strong. Or sort of tweak the monster dragons to work.

If anyone here has any tips on how I should probably set about this they would be welcome. Also if there is already a home-brew or official PC dragon campaign setting even if its not 4e it would probably save me a lot of work.

Thanks for reading and if you know anything that can help I would be much obliged .

 

[mac1504]

I'm not sure about the house rules to achieve the end you are looking for, but are you familiar with Council of Wyrms? If not, it sounds like it may be a good source of material.

 

[Quickleaf]

How is your power scaling going to work? How strong is a young adult dragon PC compared to a young red dragon solo? An orc? A 1st level human Mage?

Part of the appeal for your players has got to be playing the ultimate nemesis of adventurers, ancient enemies feared and revered. Simply put: "Rawr I'm a monster" is fun. My suggestion is to retain that with as little work / house rules as possible.

Maybe create a young dragon racial write-up for each color of dragon? Then let the PCs gain classes and use powers as normal?

For example, all would get extra hit points, fly speed, breath weapon, resistance, and dragon fear.

 

[Greatman32]

Dragon campaign decision

I have decided to give PC dragons 20 in all stats base. Then let them pick two stats to give +6 in. They can pick a class and gain all of its benefits. Their "Claws" will be equal to what they would get as a weapon. In addition each dragon can assume a humanoid form disguise and has a breath weapon of their elemental choice like a dragon born, and have dragon fear. They hit points would also be doubled. They would receive one more power based on the color of their dragon. As they level they would also receive various benefits "yet to be decided" and grow to Large at lvl 10 and Huge at lvl 20 and Monstrous at lvl 28.

Anything seem problematic with that.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=6671003]Greatman32[/MENTION] Sounds good, only problem is finding minis

This should make an individual PC on par with an elite of their level, so I'd double your encounter design XP values. An "NPC" solo dragon would be worth a couple PCs, so dragon fights would be against 2 or 3 solos.

And you'll need to seriously think about impacts of all-party flight all the time. Though I do find the idea of a "1st level" dragon adventure being how to fly somewhat charming.

They start at medium size, so they're wyrmlings? Then become young/aduly at paragon, and adult/elder at epic?

 

[Greatman32]

Yes sort of they would start at baby wyrmling stage straight out of the egg and move on to the higher ones at the various tiers. playing around with the stats a bit more I found 20 everything at the start to be a little much even for a young dragon. So i decided to lower it to 14 everything to start with +6 to two chosen stats and x2 hit points. Then Dragon PCs get +1 to each stat every even level.

Also I will start their fly speed at 2 and make them do endurance checks to fly any significant distance. Their fly speed will increase every even level and the DC's for the endurance checks will be reduced and eventually removed except for ridiculously long flights without stops, or when carrying a heavy load.

Also I have started making a list of 10-20 traits and powers that my players can select at 1,5,10,15,20,25,30. They are all useful at all levels and generally are more for the cool factor then combat practicality to emphasize their uniqueness.

EX
Mind Control
Daily
Reliable Note (cant be used on same target twice)
(stranded action) range 20
+attribute + 1/2 lvl vrs will

Hit- you are stunned until you chose not to be. While you are stunned you have full control over the targets action as long as they do not put the target into peril at the DM's discretion. If you attempt and action the puts the target into peril the target can make a saving throw against this effect.

The dragons in my campaign can innately transform into a humanoid counterpart, I believe this would be useful while they are attempting to do things without attracting notice to themselves.

 

[Greatman32]

I have also been working on the opening story and think I have got a fairly interesting setup to a cool campaign.

The players start off by hatching out of their eggs to behold before them a dank ruin were a group of kobolds with their backs to them, are viciously fighting a group of five humanoids "A party of adventurers." their passive insight tells the PCs these kobolds seem to be defending them. For entertainment value I plan on having the group of adventurers be identical or else very similar to their party makeup at lvl one where they were ironically raiding a ruin with kobolds ruled by a young dragon.

*If the party helps the kobolds and they stay alive their wyrmpriest will explain to the party that the kobolds found their eggs many years ago, and have been guarding them in hopes they would hatch. He will also say it is fortuitous that the dragons have hatched when they did, since his great tribe has been under assault by a fairly new settlement of humans, with many of his people being killed and enslaved. He will beseech the party for aid, pledging the service of himself and his remaining people, their home, and treasure horde to the party.

*I never railroad I simply provide a setting and characters with motivations if my players don't wish to help the kobolds the kobolds will simply die and they can come up with a different plot line which will probably be just as cool.

That is my plan for the start of the campaign I have vague ideas of dragon slayer parties and rounding up armies and treasure and epic mid-flight battles but ill see how my players go about being dragons before I set anything into the setting beyond the first starting Vally. I also hope my players decide to use the starting area as a base of operations of sorts. Ill let them know they can stockpile their gear there and enhance it however they like.