Favored enemy (dragon)!?

[KrazyHades]

I'm a GM, and one of the players in my group (currently low level) is a ranger with his first favored enemy the dragon type. I'm wondering whether I should advise against it and allow him to repick his favored enemy (because he's inexperienced at DnD) or not. If I don't I'll do what I can to have him face dragon type creatures more often than I would normally use, but I do not want to do that too often, because of that hefty 300% treasure that dragons have. I could always just rule that "this is a poor dragon", but I don't want to mess with the flavor of the game like that. Dragons have hoards, and changing that takes away that wonderful feeling of taking it.

Advise on either whether to let him switch or how to incorporate it into the game?

 

[Kunimatyu]

I'm a GM, and one of the players in my group (currently low level) is a ranger with his first favored enemy the dragon type. I'm wondering whether I should advise against it and allow him to repick his favored enemy (because he's inexperienced at DnD) or not. If I don't I'll do what I can to have him face dragon type creatures more often than I would normally use, but I do not want to do that too often, because of that hefty 300% treasure that dragons have. I could always just rule that "this is a poor dragon", but I don't want to mess with the flavor of the game like that. Dragons have hoards, and changing that takes away that wonderful feeling of taking it.

Advise on either whether to let him switch or how to incorporate it into the game?

Monster Manual 3 has a number of Dragon-type creatures that aren't actually true dragons.

Ambush drake, dracotaur, dragon eel, and rage drake all come to mind, and I think there's a yuan-ti halfbreed dragon too.

 

[crazy_monkey1956]

The Monster Manual itself also has a few critters of the Dragon type that aren't True (and rich) Dragons, specifically Dragon Turtles, Pseudodragons (good for low levels), and Wyverns. Creative use of the half-dragon template (which gives the base creature the dragon type) will also net you any number of "dragons" to throw at him.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Draconomicon and Dragon Magic also have a number of weaker dragon types, as well.

I'd throw him a bone and give him some more dragons. Clearly, it's what he's hoping to see in the game.

 

[Heckler]

There's plenty on "non-dragon" dragons his bonus would apply to.

Off the top of my head there are:

Pseudo and Faerie Dragons

in Races of the Dragon, I believe anything "Dragonblooded" counts as a dragon

there are several dragon-descended creatures in Dragon Magic

Letting him switch to something else isn't a bad idea either.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Maybe he thought that because the game is called Dungeons & Dragons, there would be dragons. The noob.

 

[amethal]

This thread makes me all nostalgic for my first 3rd edition game.

We captured a white dragon in the Sunless Citadel. No treasure.

In our next adventure we drove off the blue dragon in the Moat House. No treasure.

Ignore the treasure bit, if its giving you problems.

Drop the player a few hints about the best favoured enemy choices. But be prepared for him to ignore them, if his character concept revolves around dragons.

 

[ruleslawyer]

Lower the treasure, but raise the XP awards, would be my take for true dragons if you want more of them in your game.

Dragons are already intentionally under-CRed (I never agreed with the logic there, but whatever). They're over-treasured to compensate. Just bump up the CR (raising the XP) and lower the treasure value.

 

[KrazyHades]

I like these ideas. I could spice things up a bit, but I don't want them to become old. Maybe if I took some quasi-dragons like you've all been suggesting, and to spice things up once in a while gave them class levels (if intelligent) or perhaps templates. Could make for some fun times. I guess its partly a question of how often to have dragon type creatures show up, because over-doing it is bad. After all, I want to give the PCs chances to shine without making it seem as if I'm setting them up to fulfill their goals. They like it more when it seems like they did it without any (or much) GM assistance, or worse, railroading. So I don't want to cater TOO much to his favored enemy, but give him occassional tough guys or bunches of smaller ones to use it on. Could work well.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Make there be a reason for dragon-types showing up. The Spawn of Tiamat, for all they get a lot of crap from people not interested in them, work well this way. If you have a draconic overlord type (Dragon Magic is useful here), having all these dragon-types becoming increasingly active as the campaign goes along makes sense. Have the draconic overlord planning on wiping out the starting region of the campaign on his way to conquering the continent and you've got a plot that'll last you a long time. (And let you run Red Hand of Doom at the appropriate levels quite easily.)

If you just want to pick up random modules instead, Goodman Games has quite a few Dungeon Crawl Classics modules with dragon-types in them, and the first few of WotC's Adventure Path modules do as well.