Playing a dragon

[Erisea]

Hi,

I'm currently running an extended campaign, and I'm introducing a new player shortly. He hasn't played 3.5 before (and only a small amount of 4th edition of any D&D or RPG at all), so I don't want to make a character that's too complex to play, but there are veterans around the table who can help him out.

Narratively, the party have recently freed a silver dragon who was being held prisoner by an evil cult and whose eggs were being perverted in to dragonspawn under the control of the cult. Ideally, I'd have liked the new player to take over the dragon and run her as a PC, but as the party is only 8th level, that's really not feasible for balance reasons. Even a wyrmling is ECL 11 according to Savage Species. So, instead I'm thinking that the dragon managed to protect one of her eggs from the cult and has produced a child of some form that can be played.

My other thoughts are running a dragonborn from Races of the Dragon (ignoring the ritual fluff from that book), converting a dragonspawn of some type in to a playable race or creating a half-dragon. The player is looking for an offensive magic-user, so I was thinking sorceror because it fits narratively so well with dragons and is also relatively easy to play for a newcomer compared to a wizard.

So I was hoping I could get some thoughts from other people on good ways to create this character. Opinions of which option is the best, or other options I haven't thought of, pointers on which dragonspawn to think of converting and some tips on how to do so, or even some home-brew rules people might have come up with before on how I could feasibly play an actual dragon would all be appreciated. If anyone else has tried to do something similar in the past, I would love to hear about it as well.

 

[Nebten]

I recommend not doing it. You said you didn't want to make a character too complex to play, but that is extactly what you are doing. Plus you are forcing a player to play a certian character for his first time out in a mid level campaign. Just because it fits your storyline doesn't mean the guy wants to play dragon-kin right out the gate. Plus if you make a guy composed of a bunch of different books and then lay the sheet in front of him saying, "Here you go, now play," it will be overhelming.

While a sorcerrer is a good starting point since its an easy magic user, he could be tied to the dragons in some other form.

So I would help him go over what he wants and you 2 figure it out instead of getting a bunch of optimizing options here that could hail from numerous books. If he gets overloaded the first game, he may be turned off to the system.

 

[Erisea]

As a further point, he WANTS to play a dragon. When I looked at playing an actual silver dragon and realised it just wouldn't be balanced, I gave him a number of options, and he's still in favour of going more dragony than going with a simple race. I'm leaning towards dragonborn and just treating it as a base race, which has the benefit of being basically stat adjustments and racial abilities, and then forget about it and be a sorceror.

 

[Starbuck_II]

As a further point, he WANTS to play a dragon. When I looked at playing an actual silver dragon and realised it just wouldn't be balanced, I gave him a number of options, and he's still in favour of going more dragony than going with a simple race. I'm leaning towards dragonborn and just treating it as a base race, which has the benefit of being basically stat adjustments and racial abilities, and then forget about it and be a sorceror.

A Dragonborn is a template that is LA +0.
I'd just give him human to be simple with Dragonborn on it.

A Dragonborn human has +2 Con, -2 Dex. Then add Dragonborn abilities.
His favored classes become any and Fighter (yes both, he has two).

So he ignores multiclass penalty for Fighter and highest level non-fighter class. Sorceror works fine. Everyone needs Con.

 

[Dragonwriter]

Yeah, Dragonborn would probably be the best option of those. Any of the other choices and the player will start feeling both overwhelmed and left out, in all likelihood (since the HD+LA will be too large for him to keep up).

If he wants more dragon-style goodness, there are plenty of Draconic Heritage feats in Complete Arcane, Races of the Dragon and Dragon Magic. If you allow Draconomicon, then he could even get a wyrmling dragon for his familiar (though I'd be careful with this idea, as giving him a powerful familiar like that could cause trouble, and would be more bookkeeping).

Plenty of dragon goodness without being too huge and confusing.

 

[Darklone]

Here's what I would do: Let him play a Dragonwrought kobold dragonfire adept with Draconic feats.

It's pretty close to a dragon, well balanced (the class is strong but kobolds are not) and he can blast a lot.

 

[Runestar]

While there are dragon savage progressions in back issues of dragon which would theoretically allow a player to play a dragon PC at 1st lv, my concern is more about them seeming rather weak for their ECL (as seems to be the case for just about every powerful monster race with a listed ECL). As a result, he may face problems trying to contribute effectively to the party.

At least that is my impression. If anyone has successfully played a dragon PC in a party, do share it here. I would love to hear about it.

I would suggest going with all class lvs on a LA+0 race. Maybe play a dragonwrought kobold and use alter self/polymorph to transform into a dragon if you ever feel like it.

 

[FEADIN]

Yeah, dragon in a group is more a jack of all trade than a specific class (because he lacks one) even older with sorcerer's spells it's not a powerful magic user.

 

[Darklone]

I had a dragon in a campaign... After a while, I granted him/her an extra size boost. The dragon was large but still one of the weaker members of the group.