Dragon PCs and Dragon monsters

[Ferdil]

Here I am. I am about to run a campaign with dragons as player characters. The story is that a bunch of dragons (the PCs) are sent for mysterious reasons in the real world, in the age of the Crusades. As every dragon, they have to gather a huge treasure to buy their place in the dragon heaven when they'll die, but they discover that in this world people there is much less money and valuable treasures than in the world they come from. They are going to find other dragons that were sent in the "real" world and eventually fight them to obtain their treasure.

Now. First of all DO NOT COMMENT THE PLOT.
Second: DO NOT TELL ME to use dragonborn.
Third: DO NOT TELL ME to make them always go around in human form.

In the beginning I thought that I could simply make a class and a race balanced with the others, but I quickly realized that it would be more difficult than that.
Do you have any ideas? I want to keep everithing as balanced as possible (even introducing new rules would be fine) and also the dragon monsters should have comparable powers and features, because they'll probably have to fight other dragons.

 

[Mort_Q]

So every PC is a Dragon? That makes it a lot easier when it comes to balance. You only need to balance the NPCs.

 

[Ferdil]

So every PC is a Dragon? That makes it a lot easier when it comes to balance. You only need to balance the NPCs.

Yes, every PC is a dragon. Maybe I could change the dragons and some other powerful npc to be like normal monsters, while the others are like minions.

But I would like to keep things balanced, if in the future I will want to have some players with dragon pcs and some others with standard races.

Maybe keterys's rules (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=221551) to convert normal monsters to lower level elites and elite to lower level solos will give a good starting point, if used reversed. Too bad they'll lose all the solo-related abilities like bloodied breath and draconic fury.

 

[Ferdil]

I've actually found a solution.
The Dragon class and race are developed like standard PCs, at the heroic tier you are an adolescent dragon (Medium size), at the paragon tier you are a young/adult dragon (Large size) and at the epic tier you are an elder dragon (Huge size). When you reach your epic destiny you become an ancient dragon and you have accumulated enough treasure to buy your place in the dragon heaven whn you'll die, so you can stop gathering precious items and rest until your death.
To make balanced, non-solo, dragon monsters (if you want them to be fought as standard monsters) there are two ways: just make them the way npcs are done or apply keterys's templates to convert standard monsters to lower level elites and elites to lower level solos, but reversed. This way you'll notice that young dragons converted to standard go from level 12 to 16, adults from 18 to 24, elders from 26 to 31 and ancients from 33 to 39. in fact my approssimation with the three tiers is quite accurate.

When I'm finished I'll release something.

 

[Holden Caulfield]

I'm very interested in this dragon thing. Are you goin' to create a full table of dragon evolution?
It would be great to have something like the 3.5 draconomicon tables.
I suppose it will be a long work, especially for the powers.
Playable Dragons in 4.0 would be great, and your way seems to be balanced.

 

[Khuxan]

In the beginning I thought that I could simply make a class and a race balanced with the others, but I quickly realized that it would be more difficult than that.

What was the problem with this method? It's certainly the one I'd use if I were going to run a campaign like yours. One race for each colour of dragon, one class for each role - hoardkeeper (Defender), princesseater (Striker), firespitter (Controller) and broodmaster (Leader). You might not even need specially-designed classes if the races, racial feats, paths and destinies were robust enough. Then, every paragon path would include an increase in size, as would every epic destiny.

 

[Ferdil]

What was the problem with this method? It's certainly the one I'd use if I were going to run a campaign like yours. One race for each colour of dragon, one class for each role - hoardkeeper (Defender), princesseater (Striker), firespitter (Controller) and broodmaster (Leader). You might not even need specially-designed classes if the races, racial feats, paths and destinies were robust enough. Then, every paragon path would include an increase in size, as would every epic destiny.

That is similar to what I was doing, the problem was to balance the solo monsters, but I have moved to another thread, that discussed of the same thing (after getting too angry for a little thing). Mods, please close this one.

This is the thread I'm on now:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?p=4444549#post4444549