Dragon Cohort Feat

[Greenfield]

We have a player in the game who wants to take the Dragon Cohort feat (Draconomicon, Page 104). It lets him pick a Dragon type from a table (Page 139) to have as a Cohort, like the common Cohort available through the Leadership feat.

Unlike Leadership, the character doesn't get Followers (a number of 1 or 2 level NPCs that are loyal friends). He just gets the Dragon. The rules area bit different, in that the ECL of the draconic creature is treated as if it were three lower than normal.

The PC in our case is a total level of eleven, though two of that is ECL adjustment for his race. The ECL is one point of character adjustment and one racial dice, so he's probably 10th level.

My question is, do you get a Draconic creature straight from the book, or do you build him like a character, with Draconic racial modifiers?

He wants a Wyvern, which has a listed Intelligence score of 6. He wants to do a 32 point buy (the same standard we do for PCs, so he can apply a -4 INT modifier and still end up with an 11 or 12.

The Feat says:

DRAGON COHORT [GENERAL]
You gain the service of a loyal dragon ally.
Prerequisites: Character level 9th, Speak Language (Draconic).
Benefit: You gain a cohort selected from Table 3–14: Dragon Cohorts (page 139), just as you would by selecting the Leadership feat. However, you may treat the dragon’s ECL as if it were 3 lower than indicated.
See Dragons as Cohorts, page 138, for more information.

So it's a bit unclear.

Any advice on how the Cohort should be statted?

 

[Celebrim]

I would say that you get one straight from the book. A monster that has an Elite stat package - such as your 32 point buy - is effectively higher CR and ECL than the ones in the book.

If the player wants an elite monster as a cohort, at the least make him pay for it. The rules are vague on how increasing to an elite ability array increases ECL, but it certainly bumps CR by 1.

On a related note, how is this guy still playing? And I'm surprised this feat is considered available considering what I understood about the setting you guys normally played in.

 

[Greenfield]

To be clear: This guy isn't getting the feat, he just wants it.

First, it's from Draconomicon, a source book we don't use, so it would require group approval.
Second, the Wyvern he wants is ECL 12 by the book, minus three for the Feat, is ECL 9. He's a 10th level character, so level 8 is as big a cohort as he can get.
Third, he's misreading the Feat, possibly intentionally. He thinks that because the Wyvern is liste as ECL 12 that he gets to advance the seven hit dice, CR 6 Wyvern to 9 dice, or maybe 12.

So I was pretty much asking how people would rule on the fuzzy parts of the rules.

The Feat says the character gets a dragon type from the table as a Cohort, just like the Leadership feat grants.

Normally a Leadership-type Cohort has to be statted and built, just the same way a PC does, so he's presuming that he gets to roll or point-buy stats, then apply racial modifiers.

On the face of it, that is pretty much what the rules imply, but it tends to create the greatest uber-dragons the game world would ever see.

 

[Ranes]

If I were DM, I wouldn't agree to the 32 point buy, at least not without consideration to the point Celebrim makes about it above. The DMG's notes on its NPC builds specifically state they're average, like the monsters in the MM, not elites. So, I'd recommend the standard or non-elite array with racial mods as required.

I think you're absolutely right on the wyvern's ECL and HD advancement points.

That's my take on the rules. This is my take on the rationale. Cohorts, as noted in the DMG, tend to want to take a subservient role. Creature X, gifted with uber-stats, seems an unlikely candidate when said creature is perfectly suited to carving its own destiny. (Of course, this is no more than subjectivity. I accept that exceptions could exist.)

 

[Greenfield]

Well, the Wyvern is listed as a CR 6, 7 HD monster, but a total ECl (Equivalent/Effective Class Level) of 12.

Such a creature taking a subservient role to a PC two or three levels lower than itself is indeed hard to justify, in terms of story.

In our game world, there was a time when every great army/empire counted some form of drake or dragon within the ranks of the armed forces.

Giant Eagles and Owls were good as scouts and messengers, but for combat the dragons owned the skies.

Then, about fifty years ago there was a major problem in the world, and it turned out that at least one of the factions behind the issue was the "Lord of Dragons". When this was discovered, dragons within the ranks rebelled and broke loose. They are now listed among the default enemies of all civilized races.

A Wyvern is a dragon type, but just stupid enough to be raised and trained as a war mount. Even that is risky, because they're brighter than animals (INT 6), so they aren't just trained beasts. They could be spies, they might turn on their riders or those training them.

This player wanted to bring in a PC whose backstory was that he had been a Wyvern rider, and had been allowed to leave the service, taking his mount with him.

Kind of unlikely that the Roman army would part with such a rare and valuable creature, since their main aerial combat beasts were now history.

In any case, once we ran the numbers we saw that, because he'd taken some lizard type with a +2 ECL, he wouldn't have the levels to have a Wyvern as a cohort, no matter what.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The Feat says the character gets a dragon type from the table as a Cohort, just like the Leadership feat grants.

Normally a Leadership-type Cohort has to be statted and built, just the same way a PC does, so he's presuming that he gets to roll or point-buy stats, then apply racial modifiers.

On the face of it, that is pretty much what the rules imply, but it tends to create the greatest uber-dragons the game world would ever see.

Just looking at the SRD rules for Leadership, it doesn't actually say that they are statted and built the same way a PC is. Certainly, you can try to recruit a cohort of a specific race and class, and it comes with level-appropriate gear (using NPC wealth guidelines), but it doesn't actually say whether to use point-buy or the elite array or whatever. Personally, I would probably be inclined to give them the standard array.

If you're letting other players stat out their humanoid cohorts, then it's only fair to let this player do the same with the dragon cohort. Sure, it might create the greatest uber-dragon that the game world has ever seen, but not to a degree greater than the PC wizard is already the greatest uber-elf that the game world has ever seen. All NPCs (and monsters) should show natural variation within the 3d6 range, even if that's normally ignored for ease of gameplay.

 

[Ranes]

This player wanted to bring in a PC whose backstory was that he had been a Wyvern rider, and had been allowed to leave the service, taking his mount with him.

Hm, yeah.

"I used to be a fighter pilot. When I left the RAF I was allowed to keep my Typhoon FGR4."

It is a big ask, isn't it?

 

[Greenfield]

Not quite the same.

A Wyvern isn't just a dumb animal, nor is it a machine. With an INT of 6 it's quite reasonable to think that the rider and mount might share a bond, and that it might not let itself be ridden by anyone else.

Still, the player has already said he's going to switch to a different concept., so the issue is strictly academic at this point.

 

[N'raac]

Hm, yeah.

"I used to be a fighter pilot. When I left the RAF I was allowed to keep my Typhoon FGR4."

It is a big ask, isn't it?

Yet a lot of cinematic fiction sees characters who have aircraft. Not, perhaps, the above story, but obtained through some source which is at least semi-plausible in the campaign. If we analogize the Wyvern to the warplane, perhaps the Wyvern was not freely given, but both PC and mount chose to depart. Similarly, perhaps the character restored a crashed fighter jet, has black market connections, won it in a card game*, etc.

* OK, not a modern game precedent - but from the same source, how come Luke got to fly off to Dagobah with the Rebellion's X-Wing Fighter?

Or, perhaps we accept that Wyvern warmounts bond with a single rider, so the mount would have to be put down if its rider were no longer available. Maybe the wyvern was getting too old for service, especially if it would have to re-train with a new rider. Or perhaps the character's backstory is more extreme - perhaps he performed some specific heroic acts which resulted in his superiors allowing him, and him alone, to retain the mount on departure from the service. All of these seem perfectly plausible.

Meanwhile, however, if either the warplane or the warbeast would prove unbalancing in game, logically both would be disallowed for that reason alone - logic trumping playability is rarely fun.

 

[Celebrim]

how come Luke got to fly off to Dagobah with the Rebellion's X-Wing Fighter?

a) Technically, he stole it. R2-D2 even objects, but Luke keeps the controls on manual to prevent R2-D2 from returning the ship to the rebellion.
b) Luke gets away with it because he's Luke. You aren't about to cashier or court martial the veritable living symbol of the Rebellion, the guy that destroyed the first death star, and who - by being a Jedi Knight - ties your rebellion back to the Old Republic and lends it legitimacy over a single snub fighter.
c) In addition to the reasonable in world justification, Luke gets away with it because he's a PC and enjoys plot protection. PC's can get in trouble over things, but no GM that stays a GM for long forces a character to retire over as minor of an issue as going AWOL in the aftermath of a chaotic battle when any sort of reasonable in world excuse (see b) exists to avoid it. The golden boy may get chewed out by his CO just to remind the player he's in a coherent world, but ultimately you aren't going to stop the story over something like this.