In another thread about a similar topic I referenced Council of Wyrms. Leveling was by age, as was mentioned above, so you'd need an entire party of dragons so the DM could work with that as part of the campaign. My idea to bring it forward was to have players create two characters: their dragon, and their kindred. They would play their dragons for all of the times it made sense, but they would play their kindred through mini-campaigns between each of the dragon-PC adventures or level-up downtime.
I still have my CoW books, but I haven't cracked them open in a hot minute.
There is no reason that players cannot be allowed to play as virtually anything, provided they begin relatively weak and work up to the top, i.e., a player wishing to be a Dragon would have to begin as let us say, a "young" one and progress upwards in the usual manner, steps being predetermined by the campaign referee [DM].
If you find the idea of playing a dragon cool, go for it, but as others have already said, you won't be starting as a strong dragon, and if you don't want to leave the rest of the party behind even at level 20 you won't be an elder dragon
This. Exactly what I was going to reference
The problem with this ancient quote is that it comes from a time when all we had were “adult” dragons. By the time we got age ranges for dragons Gygax was long gone. As I pointed out in my previous post age leveling a dragon doesn’t really work given the time frames of most campaigns. That leaves having a dragon picking up classes of some sort and since most classes are fairly heavily martially oriented with focuses on armor and weapons. I can see some kinds of things like a dragon fighter - battlemaster using maneuvers. For a wyrmling extra attack giving it a second rend attack works fine, even action surge fits but wyrmling ACs are low and Draconic armor doesn’t really make sense. When you go up to a young dragon (13 HD) and think of them as becoming a L13 battlemaster things start to get wonky- as a dragon they get multiattack giving them 3 rends (2d10s) but that is their base attack - a case could be made that their 2 extra attacks should give them 3 multiattacks for 9 rends and action surge would move that to 18 rends. Rangers, bards, barbarians etc that only get 1 extra attack are a lot easier to deal with. ( as a DM I would rule that the multiattack is all 3 of the base and extra attacks and ignore the fact that means dragon rangers etc actually get a 3rd attack - welcome to being a dragon). That still leaves them with a bit of a problem with missile weapons - I just have problems with picturing a dragon wielding a longbow.but I guess …
Spell based classes like sorcerer or Wizard seem much more up the dragon’s alley if you will. But I do have problems visualizing a warlock dragon just from the ego viewpoint.
I'd say if a dragon's going Warlock it's more of a businesslike transactional relationship than a master and disciple one- metallics in particular are usually written as open to a quid pro quo exchange. And with chromatics there's always the idea that they're planning to betray whatever being they get the power from.
I would worry more about being an unbalanced over powered player.
Our group played with a new to us but 10 year experienced DM.
We made up 10th level characters and during play he turned one of our players into a Lich. Even though it was a very week lich at the time the base abilities he gained drastically overpowered him compared to all the other players and with his help we pretty much just walked through the rest or the campaign. the player wanted to "retire" and bring in another character but the Dm had a player arch going on and couldn't let the lich be killed or just go away.
As a dragon even just flight could unbalance a low level party. now add in any natural resistances.
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In another thread about a similar topic I referenced Council of Wyrms. Leveling was by age, as was mentioned above, so you'd need an entire party of dragons so the DM could work with that as part of the campaign. My idea to bring it forward was to have players create two characters: their dragon, and their kindred. They would play their dragons for all of the times it made sense, but they would play their kindred through mini-campaigns between each of the dragon-PC adventures or level-up downtime.
I still have my CoW books, but I haven't cracked them open in a hot minute.
The problem with this ancient quote is that it comes from a time when all we had were “adult” dragons. By the time we got age ranges for dragons Gygax was long gone. As I pointed out in my previous post age leveling a dragon doesn’t really work given the time frames of most campaigns. That leaves having a dragon picking up classes of some sort and since most classes are fairly heavily martially oriented with focuses on armor and weapons. I can see some kinds of things like a dragon fighter - battlemaster using maneuvers. For a wyrmling extra attack giving it a second rend attack works fine, even action surge fits but wyrmling ACs are low and Draconic armor doesn’t really make sense. When you go up to a young dragon (13 HD) and think of them as becoming a L13 battlemaster things start to get wonky- as a dragon they get multiattack giving them 3 rends (2d10s) but that is their base attack - a case could be made that their 2 extra attacks should give them 3 multiattacks for 9 rends and action surge would move that to 18 rends. Rangers, bards, barbarians etc that only get 1 extra attack are a lot easier to deal with. ( as a DM I would rule that the multiattack is all 3 of the base and extra attacks and ignore the fact that means dragon rangers etc actually get a 3rd attack - welcome to being a dragon). That still leaves them with a bit of a problem with missile weapons - I just have problems with picturing a dragon wielding a longbow.but I guess …
Spell based classes like sorcerer or Wizard seem much more up the dragon’s alley if you will. But I do have problems visualizing a warlock dragon just from the ego viewpoint.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
I'd say if a dragon's going Warlock it's more of a businesslike transactional relationship than a master and disciple one- metallics in particular are usually written as open to a quid pro quo exchange. And with chromatics there's always the idea that they're planning to betray whatever being they get the power from.
I would worry more about being an unbalanced over powered player.
Our group played with a new to us but 10 year experienced DM.
We made up 10th level characters and during play he turned one of our players into a Lich. Even though it was a very week lich at the time the base abilities he gained drastically overpowered him compared to all the other players and with his help we pretty much just walked through the rest or the campaign.
the player wanted to "retire" and bring in another character but the Dm had a player arch going on and couldn't let the lich be killed or just go away.
As a dragon even just flight could unbalance a low level party. now add in any natural resistances.