This is my first attempt and rough draft at a Dragon Racial Class. It is meant to depict a Classical D&D dragon of very young age that could adventure with a party of “Lesser Races.”
Fair Warning!: I have not gotten a chance to play test it yet, nor complete the proof reading for dumb grammatical mistkaes. So read at risk of your own minor annoyance.
Reading through now. These are just my first impressions.
I’d drop the titles from Alignments. Let the player make their own titles if they want to.
Drop the gender pronouns from Bonds.
Breath Weapon feels way too mechanical and fiddly for my tastes.
Not sure how much feedback you’re looking for, or if you were looking at all. Here’s my comments if you’re looking for them, though – take anything you like from them and ignore the rest:
· I’d change the damage die and hit points to d8 – the dragon is going to be relying on melee and exposing itself to danger a lot. If you make the size increases also increase the die by one step, it lets them roll a d12 at the largest size – having the biggest die at the table will help make the dragon player feel big and powerful.
· Similar to the guy above, I’d either go with the standard alignments or the titles. (If you do go with the titles, the third one should totally be Conqueror Wyrm, though.) I’d make the triggers more specific – a lesser creature follows your counsel, you gain a rare item sought by others, a creature begs you to spare it, ect
· I think starting the dragons small size is a mistake. I’d make them all medium to begin with. Give the Great Wyrm +forceful to all attacks, and give the Serpent +precise with attacks. This makes GW the big bashy type, and S the swift agile type. Give ED the choice of an additional element or shape to breath weapon.
· I like the idea of making the breath weapon Con based – that seems like a good fit. The format does seem a little hard to figure out, especially given that there are multiple ways to get additional breath weapons, but nowhere to write them down. I’d format it like this:
BREATH WEAPON (CON)
Choose an element and shape:
o Acid o Burst
„o Fire o Cloud
o Frost o Cone
o Lightning o Line
o ________ o ________
(The blanks are for the guy who totally wants to play a gem dragon that shoots plasma lozenges or whatever. The element and shape are handled at the fictional level – frost can ice over a door, lighting zaps through armor, a line is longer but not as wide as a cone, cloud vapors roll downhill, ect)
„
Roll +CON, and deal your damage to all targets. On a 10+, choose 1 below. On a 7-9, choose 2 below. On a miss, you choose 2 options and the GM chooses an option (probably the one you really don’t want)
o Your targets manage to evade, -1d6 damage
„o You’ve left yourself exposed to danger
o Your attack hits something or someone you really wish it hadn’t
„o You need some time to recover, you can’t use this attack again until you make two other moves successfully
This makes the BW the big opening move, area effect is built in and lets him bust it out throughout the fight, without using it for every attack. Maybe make a advanced move that lets them choose one less option or whatever.
· I’d drop the multiclass moves – just like in your description, the other classes are representative of the “lesser” races – a mighty dragon has nothing to learn from them!
· Change the increase in size descriptions to Large and Huge, this will be a better match for the monster size tags. I’d give die size and hp bonuses based on these, 1d10/10 hp for large, 1d12/12hp for huge. Make separate moves for bonuses to armor, and the natural weaponry move gives +messy to attacks, so you can bite fighters arms off and the like.