I agree with Maruntoryx about the timing. Just for some detail, per Fizban’s, a dragon is a wyrmling for the first 5 years. Then young until about 100, and adult until about 800 when they finally become ancient.
Dragons take a while to age, but maybe if you inserted magical aging or something (in times of stress, biological experiments upon this dragons when it was an egg causes it to rapidly age) and then when facing the BBEG it goes berserk, jumps to ancient from young, saves the party, then dies of age, it might work.
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He doesn't have much besides the skin on his bones. Me: I'll take the skin on his bones, then.
"You see a gigantic, monstrous praying mantis burst from out of the ground. It sprays a stream of acid from it's mouth at one soldier, dissolving him instantly, then it turns and chomps another soldier in half with it's- "
You should if you really want it would make for a memorable campaign i'm sure! The egg could always hatch at the timing you want and the Dragon age at the rate you want, this for multiple reasons like magic, curse, disease, weave side effect or other inexplicable phenomenon.
You could build a whole campaign around that idea.
Act 1: Dragon Hunt - the party are invited along to the king's dragon hunt, in the mountains they discover the hidden nest of a Gold Dragon that has died, but one of the eggs is still alive and they can save it. Secretly one of the other hunting parties follows their trail and discovers the nest as well.
Act 2: Hatching the Egg - the party must journey to a remote volcano to heat the egg so that it will hatch. While they travel, rumours start spreading of the dead gold dragon and the nest, the dead eggs / scales start appearing among smugglers / merchants. Various factions become interested and start seeking out any golden egg that is still alive.
Act 3: Protecting the Wyrmling - the party must find somewhere safe for the wyrmling while it is growing, the wyrmling is an impetuous child and gets into trouble & spotted. The various factions seeking the golden eggs start actively hunting for the party to capture the Wyrmling. One or other of the factions might succeed and the party will have to go rescue the wyrmling. They eventually hear about an ancient religious order that worships metallic dragons and knows secret rites to help them grow and can go there to raise the dragon.
Act 4: Calm before the Storm - The party get a few months of downtime with the ancient dragon-worshiping order while the dragon grows to become Young. They might go on some side-quests for self-enlightenment or pursue personal/backstory quest lines.
Minor Climax: Escape the Siege - One of the rival factions emerges as the main villains and start making deals with evil creatures to wipe out this "ancient cult" of dragon worshipers and the dragon-sanctuary comes under attack. You can have some siege combat, eventually they lose though and the party + dragon must escape through tunnels into the Underdark.
Act 5: The underdark folks don't care about the Gold Dragon since it can do very little in the cramped space. The party can have some side-quests as they try to navigate back out of the Underdark. You can add in some crazy magical mushrooms or mindflayer/beholder/far-realm magic or some hag they could make a deal with to further accelerate the dragon's development. The party eventually find their way out of the Underdark now with an Adult dragon, only to discover the evil faction has become a tyrannical force across the land led by the evil creatures they recruited.
Act 6: The party with their dragon must defeat the evil faction and kill the evil monsters leading it, the dragon absorbs the power the evil monsters were using to power their conquest and in so doing develops into an Ancient dragon to finish the campaign.
Act 1: the party gets drafted into the kingdom's military and obtains the egg
2: it hatches and they get the medieval equivalent to basic training.
3: they are on a training arc with the dragon as privates
4: they are now medium ranked on the scale of the army when the dragon matures to an adult
5: they are 2nd in command as the dragon is ancient.
What? What kind of world is this that regular conscripted soldiers are given Gold Dragon eggs as it if was a puppy? Why does the gold dragon work for this kingdom's military? Where do they get the eggs? What does the commander have that is more powerful than an Ancient Gold Dragon?
Gold dragons are highly intelligent - more intelligent than most humans - and far more powerful than an ordinary human. Why on earth would they be effectively pack animals for some puffed up noble's military?
Also, no offence but this sounds like an incredibly boring campaign, if the only thing the players are doing is following orders of their COs. What are you going to do if the party decide obeying orders is boring, so they hop on the dragon and fly off to do whatever they want to do?
1st it's protocol for dragons to be assigned. 2nd An old alliance with generational debt on the dragons side. 3rd The mother is in service. 4th The commander is good friends with Bahamit yes a king and The flipping GOD of dragons. The king is the commander so it's not a puffed up noble it's a warrior among his men. They fight Wars. Consent is needed for riding a dragon. The dragons know where they are going. (Edit this is draconic racism against cromatic)
As someone who has given their party a LOT of different pets and companions, one of three things happens with pets and companions:
The party refuses to risk their precious pet or companion (this gets worse as they get more powerful, to the point where I wrote a rules supplement to level up your steed, just to keep them from being one-shotted by higher level monsters).
The party forgets that they have it.
The pet or companion starts to outshine the party, either in part or as a whole, making it feel like the DM is playing as the dragon and they are the companions.
Now, that isn't to say that this is a bad idea. However, I can see some problems in the structure you've presented:
Absolute reliance on the dragon surviving. The dragon becomes plot-armoured, because subsequent parts you're already planning involve it being of a certain age. This leads to railroads, deus-ex-machina's, and such.
Absolute reliance on the party doing what they're told. If they go rogue, or sell the dragon egg, then all those latter plans start to fall away, and you as the DM will have to let them go, or go hard railroad.
You're planning them to get to 2nd in command without knowing how well they will do, how they cope as leaders, and so forth.
The concern for me is that you're prewriting the story. Better to write what the enemy will try to do, what the leaders of the army will try to do, what the dragon might try to do, and leave "What the party will do" for the party to decide!
The main aspect to consider in this would be:
What impact on the world does the party having a gold dragon have? Are they one of hundreds of gold dragons, or are they among the chosen few that actually get dragons? Does this breed rivalry within the army? Resentment? Conflict?
What are they fighting that needs an army of people with dragons? What specialist weapons does the enemy have for dealing with the dragons?
Is the dragon compliant from the off, or is it a tearaway which instigates quests like "find where Norbert went" and "Hide the dead horse which Norbert brought home last night... oh gods, it belongs to the sergeant...".
What will the party be doing with Norbert (I'm rolling with that as its name now). Will he drop them off for dungeons and they then dungeon-crawl without him? Or do you expect large, open battlefields and such. There's only so many dragon dogfights one can expect to have whilst holding the party's interest.
I guess the main thing I am considering for you is that, in a generic "we a party of adventurers" sort of campaign, them getting a dragon has the upside of "having a friggin' dragon" and the downside of "people want our dragon", "people don't trust our dragon", and "Our dragon keeps stealing people's gold", to name a couple. In yours, the dragon is standard to the world, and so holds none of the challenges - so what, I would ask, is it going to do for the party? What story does it drive? The players won't have to think "What do we do with this dragon?", they will say "We'll put the dragon in the dragon-stables until we are ready to use our dragon-saddle to fly our dragon somewhere". In the context of your world, it sounds like it may be as impactful as "should I give my party a horse?"
I know it sounds insane but I am thinking about giving my players a gold dragon egg that will hatch an go it's lifespan as they level up.
So, the ultimate debate is should I?
It takes far longer than a typical campaign for a dragon to mature, so it'll probably never progress past Wyrmling.
I agree with Maruntoryx about the timing. Just for some detail, per Fizban’s, a dragon is a wyrmling for the first 5 years. Then young until about 100, and adult until about 800 when they finally become ancient.
Dragons take a while to age, but maybe if you inserted magical aging or something (in times of stress, biological experiments upon this dragons when it was an egg causes it to rapidly age) and then when facing the BBEG it goes berserk, jumps to ancient from young, saves the party, then dies of age, it might work.
He doesn't have much besides the skin on his bones. Me: I'll take the skin on his bones, then.
"You see a gigantic, monstrous praying mantis burst from out of the ground. It sprays a stream of acid from it's mouth at one soldier, dissolving him instantly, then it turns and chomps another soldier in half with it's- "
"When are we gonna take a snack break?"
Then over the course of a few long campains.
Or magic as WolfeCriedPup said.
You should if you really want it would make for a memorable campaign i'm sure! The egg could always hatch at the timing you want and the Dragon age at the rate you want, this for multiple reasons like magic, curse, disease, weave side effect or other inexplicable phenomenon.
You could build a whole campaign around that idea.
Act 1: Dragon Hunt - the party are invited along to the king's dragon hunt, in the mountains they discover the hidden nest of a Gold Dragon that has died, but one of the eggs is still alive and they can save it. Secretly one of the other hunting parties follows their trail and discovers the nest as well.
Act 2: Hatching the Egg - the party must journey to a remote volcano to heat the egg so that it will hatch. While they travel, rumours start spreading of the dead gold dragon and the nest, the dead eggs / scales start appearing among smugglers / merchants. Various factions become interested and start seeking out any golden egg that is still alive.
Act 3: Protecting the Wyrmling - the party must find somewhere safe for the wyrmling while it is growing, the wyrmling is an impetuous child and gets into trouble & spotted. The various factions seeking the golden eggs start actively hunting for the party to capture the Wyrmling. One or other of the factions might succeed and the party will have to go rescue the wyrmling. They eventually hear about an ancient religious order that worships metallic dragons and knows secret rites to help them grow and can go there to raise the dragon.
Act 4: Calm before the Storm - The party get a few months of downtime with the ancient dragon-worshiping order while the dragon grows to become Young. They might go on some side-quests for self-enlightenment or pursue personal/backstory quest lines.
Minor Climax: Escape the Siege - One of the rival factions emerges as the main villains and start making deals with evil creatures to wipe out this "ancient cult" of dragon worshipers and the dragon-sanctuary comes under attack. You can have some siege combat, eventually they lose though and the party + dragon must escape through tunnels into the Underdark.
Act 5: The underdark folks don't care about the Gold Dragon since it can do very little in the cramped space. The party can have some side-quests as they try to navigate back out of the Underdark. You can add in some crazy magical mushrooms or mindflayer/beholder/far-realm magic or some hag they could make a deal with to further accelerate the dragon's development. The party eventually find their way out of the Underdark now with an Adult dragon, only to discover the evil faction has become a tyrannical force across the land led by the evil creatures they recruited.
Act 6: The party with their dragon must defeat the evil faction and kill the evil monsters leading it, the dragon absorbs the power the evil monsters were using to power their conquest and in so doing develops into an Ancient dragon to finish the campaign.
I was actually thinking of
Act 1: the party gets drafted into the kingdom's military and obtains the egg
2: it hatches and they get the medieval equivalent to basic training.
3: they are on a training arc with the dragon as privates
4: they are now medium ranked on the scale of the army when the dragon matures to an adult
5: they are 2nd in command as the dragon is ancient.
Cromatic would be Agilemind is saying.
What? What kind of world is this that regular conscripted soldiers are given Gold Dragon eggs as it if was a puppy? Why does the gold dragon work for this kingdom's military? Where do they get the eggs? What does the commander have that is more powerful than an Ancient Gold Dragon?
Gold dragons are highly intelligent - more intelligent than most humans - and far more powerful than an ordinary human. Why on earth would they be effectively pack animals for some puffed up noble's military?
Also, no offence but this sounds like an incredibly boring campaign, if the only thing the players are doing is following orders of their COs. What are you going to do if the party decide obeying orders is boring, so they hop on the dragon and fly off to do whatever they want to do?
1st it's protocol for dragons to be assigned. 2nd An old alliance with generational debt on the dragons side. 3rd The mother is in service. 4th The commander is good friends with Bahamit yes a king and The flipping GOD of dragons. The king is the commander so it's not a puffed up noble it's a warrior among his men. They fight Wars. Consent is needed for riding a dragon. The dragons know where they are going. (Edit this is draconic racism against cromatic)
As someone who has given their party a LOT of different pets and companions, one of three things happens with pets and companions:
Now, that isn't to say that this is a bad idea. However, I can see some problems in the structure you've presented:
The concern for me is that you're prewriting the story. Better to write what the enemy will try to do, what the leaders of the army will try to do, what the dragon might try to do, and leave "What the party will do" for the party to decide!
The main aspect to consider in this would be:
I guess the main thing I am considering for you is that, in a generic "we a party of adventurers" sort of campaign, them getting a dragon has the upside of "having a friggin' dragon" and the downside of "people want our dragon", "people don't trust our dragon", and "Our dragon keeps stealing people's gold", to name a couple. In yours, the dragon is standard to the world, and so holds none of the challenges - so what, I would ask, is it going to do for the party? What story does it drive? The players won't have to think "What do we do with this dragon?", they will say "We'll put the dragon in the dragon-stables until we are ready to use our dragon-saddle to fly our dragon somewhere". In the context of your world, it sounds like it may be as impactful as "should I give my party a horse?"
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