Dragon riders done right?

[Gundark]

I was in a department store the other day and was watching a movie of a game on the playstation 3. The game was a fantasy themed game that involved dragonriders .I think the game was named Lair based off of the Ann McCaffrey Dragonriders of Pern concepts and puts them into a war setting.

Anyhow that got my homebrewing juices going (since I'm in the middle of putting together my howmbrew) I thought having dragonriding PCs would be way cool. Anyhow I'm wondering about balance. Obviously this couldn't be true dragons like Red's, gold's and the like. I'm picturing more beastial dragons (like Wyverns).

Question how to stop the dragon mounts from overpowering low level enounters and still keep them a force to be reconded with in high level play?

 

[Doghead Thirteen]

Question how to stop the dragon mounts from overpowering low level enounters and them a force in high level play?

Simple.

Amp the encounters, and use very definitely sentient dragons with a will of their own.

It'd work best if the riders don't control the dragons - they make suggestions to the dragons. Read a bunch of early Anne McCaffrey, the recent Dragonriders stuff isn't quite up to spec.

Basically, you're gonna hand your players something extremely powerful? Better hand the bad guys something just as hard-hitting. That's the difference between high power gaming and outright power-gaming. High-power gaming has the players being big boys, with a lot of hitting power - but the bad guys have just as much. This kind of characters aren't killing kobolds, they're duelling the God of War. They're not Frodo, they're Gandalf.

Done right, it leads to high-octane gaming that you'll remember for years.

Make it very obvious to the characters that they're dead meat without their dragons, and make it very obvious the dragons know this.

Another good idea would be making it very questionable who's running the show. Like the dragon's not at the character's beck-and-call, the character's at the dragon's beck-and-call.

The primary thing you need is a reason why the dragons want these tiny, squishy beings (that taste good char-grilled with hot sauce) around. A symbiotic relationship is one possibility. Perhaps the dragon, being close to immortal, is involving themselves deeply in a mortal's life to stave off boredom and ennui?

Well, few thoughts for ya.

 

[AbeTheGnome]

IMC, dragons only gain intelligence with age. There are other differences, but the important one is that they start out as stupid beasts. One kingdom raises dragons from hatchlings and trains them for combat. A PrC, members of a prestigious order of knights, is the Dragon Rider. They ride juvenile dragons into combat. When the dragon gets old enough to start gaining true intelligence (and realize they're beasts of burden), it's slaughtered before it rebels. The rules for attaining a special mount are in one of the splats. CW, maybe?

 

[Doghead Thirteen]

IMC, dragons only gain intelligence with age. There are other differences, but the important one is that they start out as stupid beasts. One kingdom raises dragons from hatchlings and trains them for combat. A PrC, members of a prestigious order of knights, is the Dragon Rider. They ride juvenile dragons into combat. When the dragon gets old enough to start gaining true intelligence (and realize they're beasts of burden), it's slaughtered before it rebels. The rules for attaining a special mount are in one of the splats. CW, maybe?

Ye Gods!

At this stage, my players would start throwing spanners in the works - an 'underground railroad' leading escaped dragons from slavery, anyone?

Yup, that's the kind of players I've got. Next thing you know, they've fed the king to a dragon for being a child-slaver... We don't tend to differentiate between species.

 

[Gundark]

IMC, dragons only gain intelligence with age. There are other differences, but the important one is that they start out as stupid beasts. One kingdom raises dragons from hatchlings and trains them for combat. A PrC, members of a prestigious order of knights, is the Dragon Rider. They ride juvenile dragons into combat. When the dragon gets old enough to start gaining true intelligence (and realize they're beasts of burden), it's slaughtered before it rebels. The rules for attaining a special mount are in one of the splats. CW, maybe?

Interesting. I'm thinking of more animalistic dragons. I'm thinking of the coloured dragons being "true dragons" and would only allow something as lowly as a human to ride them in extraordinary cases. The normal dragon mounts are less intelligent cousin.

I know nothing about the Ann McCaffrey novels, just saw the vidoe game trailer and thought it was cool

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Ye Gods!

At this stage, my players would start throwing spanners in the works - an 'underground railroad' leading escaped dragons from slavery, anyone?

Yup, that's the kind of players I've got. Next thing you know, they've fed the king to a dragon for being a child-slaver... We don't tend to differentiate between species.

[sblock]If I tried the AbeTheGnome solution to dragonriders my players would turn it into the "commit genocide on the offensive society" campaign. They've done that before when I pushed the wrong buttons. Their response to Sahuagin raiders was Sahuagin stew after all "what goes around."[/sblock]

Personally I'd recommend you avoid true dragons entirely in favor of lesser dragons. Within the lesser dragons there are enough different flavors to really go to town. If necessary you can pull HD from the low end to make it work and advance them as the level of the PCs go up.

Royal Air Farce-Wyverns (or possibly adjusted elemental drakes) could give an energy spitting capacity to the Wyverns using the same method as poison spitting.
Royal Army-Felldrakes and Rage Drakes are probably the best choices for this as there are many varieties. At the higher end can include landwyrms as well.
Royal Navy-Dragon Turtles and riders wearing necklace of adaptation or similar water breathing magic items. Great opportunity to introduce an underwater campaign with subsurface dogfighting in place of submarine warfare.

 

[Doghead Thirteen]

Personally I'd recommend you avoid true dragons entirely in favor of lesser dragons. Within the lesser dragons there are enough different flavors to really go to town. If necessary you can pull HD from the low end to make it work and advance them as the level of the PCs go up.

The methods of using true dragons I mentioned in my first post are one way of handling things. A true dragon in a 'riders situation has GOT to be getting something from the relationship, or it just doesn't add up - or leads to extremely angry players.

The problem with a bestial or dominated dragon is the power-level thing - a trained animal that's that powerful is a Heck of a tool to put in the player's hands.

I personally prefer the McCaffrey-style symbiotic relationship.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

The problem with a bestial or dominated dragon is the power-level thing - a trained animal that's that powerful is a Heck of a tool to put in the player's hands.I personally prefer the McCaffrey-style symbiotic relationship.

Lesser doesn't necessarily mean either "bestial" or "dominated" most of them have a quite reasonable level of intelligence. Wyverns start off with an unadjusted Int of 6 which is on par with an ogre or hill giant. Drakes, Dragon Turtles, Elemental Drakes, Felldrakes, and Landwyrms all vary between about 11 and 21 by variety which makes most of them on par with the humanoid riders without outclassing them too much. For a mutually symbiotic relationship where both parts are intelligent they need to be at similar levels of intelligence on average or one side ends up using the other.

 

[Doghead Thirteen]

or one side ends up using the other.

Having the dragon being the one doing the using could produce some fascinating roleplaying. It only becomes problematic when it's the PC doing the using, because at that stage the campaign blows the power rating off the chart.

 

[WayneLigon]

Right now I'm reading Spirit Gate, which has reeves that ride on giant hawks. The hawks for the most part act like helicopters; they provide transport but the job of a reeve is to deal with matters of law, like a deputy sheriff. They're physically intimidating but once you seperate rider and mount, the mount doesn't have a lot of effect on the adventure. They're certainly not going to be going into many dungeons or city streets.

I'd say use the Giant Eagle as a template for building the creature; change the type to Dragon, and be done with it. A CR 3 creature isn't going to provide a huge power boost to anyone, not much more than a Heavy Warhorse, which is hardly an overwhelmingly powerful ally when all things are considered. Plus, I'd have the character spend a Feat to be bound to the animal, or be able to understand it, and also cover the unusual training required.