Draken - degenerate dragons

[SuedodeuS]

First of all, let me just comment here in my first post that what I've seen here so far has impressed me greatly, so I thought maybe some of you might be able to lend me your wisdom with these little buggers.

The concept behind the draken (singular and plural) is that they are evolutionary throwbacks of true dragons. They have weaker breath weapons, they are physically weaker and more frail, they have rather short lifespans, and their intelligence is only marginally above that of an animal. They aren't meant is random encounters for the PCs - instead, they serve as mounts for the elite drakenreitters of a country in my campaign setting. Essentially, I wanted to make something that would make these drakenreitters a force to be reckoned with without massively overpowering them - and as a side bonus, I was able to have dragon mounts without making either country in the war good or evil.

I've set the "tables" up similarly to the ones for dragons from the Monster Manual, so they should be easy enough to follow.
[edit: There, my requisite first post blunder. Apparently, this forum condenses any number of spaces into just one, so my nice tables are perfectly illegible. They've been replaced by something a bit more readable.]
[edit2: Thanks a lot, freyar. I think these tables are much more readable than what I had earlier.]

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Draken	Size	HD	Str	Dex	Con	Int	Wis	Cha	Breath (DC)
Type 1	S	7	13	10	12	3	7	6	2d6 (14)
Type 2	M	10	15	10	14	3	9	8	3d6 (17)
Type 3	L	13	18	10	16	5	11	10	5d6 (19)
Type 4	L	16	22	10	18	5	13	12	6d6 (22)
Type 5	H	19	26	10	20	7	15	14	7d6 (24)

Draken	Ground	Fly	Init	Natural Armor	Special
Type 1	40	100	+0	+4		Immunity, Weakness, Movement
Type 2	40	150	+0	+7		
Type 3	40	150	+0	+10		DR 5/magic
Type 4	40	150	+0	+13		
Type 5	40	200	+0	+16		DR 10/magic

Feats
1	4	flyby attack, hover, improved natural attack, lingering breath
2	5	adroit flyby attack
3	6	large and in charge
4	7	spit breath
5	8	quicken breath

Draken are descended from chromatic dragons. Therefore black, blue, green, red, and white draken exist. The type of dragon determines immunities, weaknesses (if any), and any movement special abilities. It also determines the type of breath weapon.
Draken do not speak, but they understand Draconic.

Attacks: Draken should have the same available attacks and damage as a true dragon of their size. However, the improved natural attack feat causes them to deal damage as a dragon one category larger (available attacks remain unchanged).

Breath weapons: Breath weapons for draken follow the same rules as for true dragons. Use is a standard action, draken must wait 1d4 rounds between uses, etc. The type of draken determines what type of breath weapon it uses. Black: line of acid. Blue: line of electricity. Green: cone of acid. Red: cone of fire. White: cone of cold. The length of the line/cone is the same as for a dragon of the same size.

Immunities/weaknesses: Like dragons, draken are immune to the elements of their own breath weapons. In addition, red and white dragons, with their fire and cold subtypes, are vulnerable to ice and fire, respectively.

Movement: Almost all draken have the same movement rates over land and while flying. However, each draken also has a special movement ability. Black and green draken have waterbreathing as an extraordinary ability, and both have swim speeds equal to their land speeds. Blue draken have a burrow speed equal to half their land speed. Red draken have a spiderclimb effect in warm and hot environments. White draken have the icewalking extraordinary ability.

Maneuverability: All draken have poor maneuverability while flying, regardless of size. However, when encountered a draken tends to have average maneuverability, due to the advantages of the drakenreiter prestige class.
Spit Breath: Draken are trained from hatchlings to be more useful to their owners. There is no feat where this is truer than Spit Breath. This is a special feat that allows draken to condense their breath weapon into a single ball of energy, then "spit" this at a distant target, detonating the ball on impact. This requires a ranged touch attack. A target struck by this takes full breath weapon damage, but can make a reflex save for half (same DC as normal). In addition, any other creature within the blast radius takes half breath weapon damage (reflex save half, thus 1/4). Type IV draken spit breath at a range of 100 feet and have a 10 foot blast radius. Type V draken spit breath at a range of 120 feet and have a 15 foot blast radius. When using this feat, add 4 rounds to the amount of time the draken must wait before using its breath weapon again.
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Any advice or comments would be greatly appreciated. As can be seen, I haven't worked out what skills the draken will have (although I know spot will be one of them). I also haven't figured out the CR for these little beasts, either. If anyone's curious, the drakenreitter prestige class is just the dragonrider prestige class (from Draconomicon) with a few small tweaks.

 

[freyar]

Welcome to EN World and the CC forums!

These look fairly interesting, and I especially like the spit breath feat (or maybe it should be a special ability?). Are the types meant to be age categories, like I think? It didn't sound like they correspond to colors...

Feel free to contribute to the creating new dragons thread, if dragons are your thing! I'm still pretty much a novice at critter-making, but I think I'm learning some tricks just by participating.

 

[freyar]

Oh, I meant to add a hint on the tables: if you use the [ code ] [ /code ] tags (without the spaces), anything in between will be output exactly as you type it, with all the spaces you want for formatting purposes, and all characters/spaces take up the same amount of space.

 

[SuedodeuS]

The code trick worked like a charm. Thanks a lot.

As for Spit Breath, I actually designed it as a Metabreath feat. Here it is in that form, in case you were curious.

Spit breath (metabreath)
You can condense your breath weapon into a single ball, which you then spit at one or more foes.
Prerequisites: Con 17, breath weapon, size large or larger
Benefit: You gain the ability to use your breath weapon as a ranged touch attack, although the target can still make a reflex save for half damage. In addition, your breath weapon explodes on impact, causing a spread effect. This spread deals 1/2 normal damage and allows a reflex save for half (1/4 normal) damage. Only enemies not struck by the initial ranged touch attack are subject to the spread effect.

 Size		Range	Radius
 Large		100	10
 Huge		120	15
 Gargantuan	140	20
 Colossal	160	25

When you use this feat, add +4 to the number of rounds you must wait before using your breath weapon again.
Note: This looks very much like extend spreading breath, but without the prerequisites. This can be rationalized in terms of story if spit breath is only available to draken, since such could theoretically be taught to shape their breath weapon into this conformation without knowing how to change it from cone to line (and vice versa), or how to change it into a true spread effect. In terms of balance, the size requirement, high cost (in terms of additional rounds), and low damage should be sufficient.