Hey there, I'm brand new to DnD Beyond, but I love the tools here and on Discord and would like to use them to run a campaign set in a story that me and a small group of friends spent years writing. The story was heavily focused on dragons as main characters, and I want to make several homebrewed dragon races as playable races. I've gotten pretty far already with the modifier functions for various traits.
I am getting a little hung up on natural weapons and the quadrupedal nature of dragons, though. I think I have figured out how to give the dragons natural attacks, but I am torn between a desire not to give the dragons overpowered natural attacks, and the need to give good enough attacks for melee classes like fighter to use in lieu of weapons. I would like to design a feat I can hand out that would "upgrade" the natural attacks of dragons for martial melee classes. Also, is there a way to program in DnD Beyond that I want the dragons to have a disadvantage on all attacks made with weapons, but have no disadvantage when using natural weapons? I would also like to program that walking speed is halved while wielding a weapon (hopping on three legs). I know already that I will need to add a custom subclass for Fighter specializations.
I would like to also design some exotic weapons I can hand out to my dragon players that they could use while being dragons, things designed with their physiology in mind.
Is there a way to limit which equipment slots dragons would have access to? Or to enforce the rule for barding and armor costs?
What about weapon use while flying in midair? If a fight were taking place above the ground, or a dragon were using some sort of flyby ability, might it make sense to remove the disadvantage for wielding weapons? If so, could I do that in DnD Beyond?
My dragons would be medium in size with an assumption that a campaign would be over before they would grow enough to reach the next size category. And I can easily enough hand out a feat that increases their size anyways, if there is magical aging involved for some reason.
I have looked at the forums a little already, and seen the post about the Wyrmlings of Tiamat campaign. There is a lot of good stuff there, but I am looking mostly at integrating the race as much as possible into DnD Beyond and how to do that. Any advice on how to do that is greatly appreciated!
If you're halving movement speed while holding a weapon, then spellcasters will also suffer as they're holding their focuses, wands, components pouches or whatever. But this is basically irrelevant as I'm assuming you'll give them a flying speed.
I would say to just use the rules for Dragonborn, make their unarmed attacks do 1d8+STR damage instead of 1+STR and give them all a homebrew item that gives them whatever flying speed you want. But note that a whole flying party will make most outdoor low level encounters trivial.
You can really overthink these things. Keep it as simple as possible. Why shouldn't they use weapons, if your dragons can wield weapons at all? If you give disadvantage, you may as well just ban them from using weapons full stop. Is that more fun though?
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Hey there, I'm brand new to DnD Beyond, but I love the tools here and on Discord and would like to use them to run a campaign set in a story that me and a small group of friends spent years writing. The story was heavily focused on dragons as main characters, and I want to make several homebrewed dragon races as playable races. I've gotten pretty far already with the modifier functions for various traits.
I am getting a little hung up on natural weapons and the quadrupedal nature of dragons, though. I think I have figured out how to give the dragons natural attacks, but I am torn between a desire not to give the dragons overpowered natural attacks, and the need to give good enough attacks for melee classes like fighter to use in lieu of weapons. I would like to design a feat I can hand out that would "upgrade" the natural attacks of dragons for martial melee classes. Also, is there a way to program in DnD Beyond that I want the dragons to have a disadvantage on all attacks made with weapons, but have no disadvantage when using natural weapons? I would also like to program that walking speed is halved while wielding a weapon (hopping on three legs). I know already that I will need to add a custom subclass for Fighter specializations.
I would like to also design some exotic weapons I can hand out to my dragon players that they could use while being dragons, things designed with their physiology in mind.
Is there a way to limit which equipment slots dragons would have access to? Or to enforce the rule for barding and armor costs?
What about weapon use while flying in midair? If a fight were taking place above the ground, or a dragon were using some sort of flyby ability, might it make sense to remove the disadvantage for wielding weapons? If so, could I do that in DnD Beyond?
My dragons would be medium in size with an assumption that a campaign would be over before they would grow enough to reach the next size category. And I can easily enough hand out a feat that increases their size anyways, if there is magical aging involved for some reason.
I have looked at the forums a little already, and seen the post about the Wyrmlings of Tiamat campaign. There is a lot of good stuff there, but I am looking mostly at integrating the race as much as possible into DnD Beyond and how to do that. Any advice on how to do that is greatly appreciated!
If you're halving movement speed while holding a weapon, then spellcasters will also suffer as they're holding their focuses, wands, components pouches or whatever. But this is basically irrelevant as I'm assuming you'll give them a flying speed.
I would say to just use the rules for Dragonborn, make their unarmed attacks do 1d8+STR damage instead of 1+STR and give them all a homebrew item that gives them whatever flying speed you want. But note that a whole flying party will make most outdoor low level encounters trivial.
You can really overthink these things. Keep it as simple as possible. Why shouldn't they use weapons, if your dragons can wield weapons at all? If you give disadvantage, you may as well just ban them from using weapons full stop. Is that more fun though?