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Message: <blockquote data-quote="77IM" data-source="post: 6602366" data-attributes="member: 12377">Well Legendary Resistance is pretty powerful even at 1/day. I'm comparing it to the fighter's thing where he gets to reroll a save 3/day -- Legendary Resistance is automatic success so it's only 1/day.Lair is supposed to be "fun" but not useful, if that makes sense. That said I LOVE the idea of making this an alternate reward system. I'm thinking that acquiring lair and regional effects requires you to have $X0,000 gp in your lair, and this gives dragon PCs a mechanical reason to hoard treasure and magic items.The real "capstone" abilities are the level 17 archetype abilities (Huge, Cataclysm, and Pythian Oracle) although they vary in effectiveness.Regarding the MAD on this class -- I am kind of a fan of MAD. Or rather, I hate classes like the wizard where you max out one single stat and then nothing else matters. I prefer classes like cleric, paladin, monk, or even fighter, where you have 2-3 stats that you have a clear trade-off between, maybe with 1 stat that is primary and the others are nice-to-have.In the case of dragons, I think you can play it several ways. I think all 3 paths want Strength. Apex Predator probably wants Str and Con for the HP, but can dump Cha because Frightful Presence is nice but not essential. Force of Nature wants Con for the breath weapon save DC but I think there is a reasonable trade-off between that and Strength, which is granting melee attack/damage and AC. And the Great Serpent can actually go full-Strength too and dump Charisma if he buys only buff/utility spells -- the advantage is he can turn into a humanoid with ridiculous Strength and bludgeon people to death with a quarterstaff, which seems fun to me. But it's also reasonable for the Great Serpent to max out Charisma and still have slots left over for Strength increases.Actually in my original draft of this class instead of Maximum Strength there was simply a Strength Bonus (+2 at 2nd level, +4 at 11th level, +6 at 17th level -- nothing at 5th level because that is when you get Extra Attack) which was meant to make up for the lack of smite, fighting styles, rage, magic weapons, etc. I changed it to Maximum Strength increases because I was worried it was too powerful to just give those bonuses for free. I'm really worried about things like Tail Slap which are hard to judge just how effective they will be.Personally I think Tail Slap is one of the best things any of the archetypes get because you can use it any time you get attacked in melee, the DC is Strength-based, and it does half damage even on a successful save. So that and a further +2 Strength help the Apex Predator a lot I think. By comparison the Force of Nature's Devastation ability is not a super lot of damage, and it's only a reaction to getting hit, not all attacks. It basically gives the dragon a ranged attack that is not very good. And the Cataclysm ability looks impressive, but it requires the dragon to save against its own attack (ouch) which uses up some of the hit points they get from having a high Con.You are right that Mighty Bite is lame. Originally I had it initiate a grapple but that is way too powerful because the dragon could grapple and then fly up into the air and drop the victim. That is still kind of a problem with Extra Attack but I guess the dragon is only going half speed? I may change the Mighty Bite to just deal more damage so that it is competitive with claw+claw.The Great Serpent's warlockish spell casting is nice, but they get fewer spell slots and lower caster level than a warlock at most levels, and very few spells known. It's sort of a warlock "half-caster." I used sorcerer spell list because they are traditionally associated with dragons, and I think the sorcerer list is suitably constrained so that there shouldn't be too many abusive spells on there. I haven't really scrutinized this, though. All I know is, I was having real trouble deciding how many spells/day they should have, until I said, "Ahah! Spells replace breath weapon usage!" And then it was just a matter of making sure spell slots weren't too far ahead of breath weapon damage. (I am not sure I succeeded there and may reduce the maximum spell level they get from 5th level down to 4th or even 3rd, just to keep them noticeably weaker than the warlock and encourage more claw-claw-bite solutions to their problems.)Overall though, while I tried to balance individual class abilities, it's really hard to figure out the power level of the class as a whole. I also worry that it would be too easy to build a gimped dragon by, say, maxing Dex and dumping Str, because it might not be obvious that this is a bad idea. I should really build some dragons at high level and pit them against a tarrasque or something and see how they do.</blockquote>

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