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Posted by: Socinus Aug 22 2010, 11:57 PM

I've been approached and asked about my possibly running a 3.5 game where all players play as dragons.

While I am familiar with 3.5, I'm not too sure about the possibility of everyone playing as dragons without turning the game into a massive twink-fest.

Any input?

Posted by: Yerameyahu Aug 23 2010, 12:00 AM

Ugh, no. I mean, anything's possible, but dragons are so lame. Furthermore, you don't want to encourage those people. They should learn to play right.

That said, have you glanced at the Draconomicon, etc.? There are a couple books all about dragon PCs.

Posted by: Socinus Aug 23 2010, 02:11 AM

Im reading through the Draconomicon. It seems horrendously complicated and there seems to be very little guide as to how to balance it appropriately.

Posted by: Yerameyahu Aug 23 2010, 04:10 AM

'Balance it properly'?

Posted by: Karoline Aug 23 2010, 04:16 AM

You basically have to keep in mind that from a very very very very early stage, you are looking at exceedingly high level PCs. There isn't alot of reason that an all dragon game can't work, kind of like a 20th level game can work, you just have to remember that you're at 20th level, and simply throwing high level stuff as an opponent isn't going to work. You have to throw trolls with protection from fire and acid spells (Okay, not 20th level, but you get the idea) and similar nastiness.

Also remember that if the PCs are dragons, the main enemy(s) is likely to be a bigger dragon.

Posted by: StealthSigma Aug 23 2010, 01:15 PM

Draconomicon contains rules for Dragon PCs and Savage Species is a good reference book as well since it deals a lot with creating non-standard characters. You have to make sure you know the ECL of dragons at each age category and for each type. Their Hit Dice + ECL will be the minimum starting level for your players (so some players could choose a younger dragon and be able to pick up some class levels). For example, let's say a player wants to play a juvenile silver dragon. It has 16d12 hd and let's say a +4 ECL adjustment. It is effectively a 20th level PC. Let's say the second player decides to play a young brass dragon. It has 12d12 hd and let's say a +4 ECL adjustment as well. It is effectively a 16th level PC allowing that player to take 4 class levels to reach the effective 20th level.

Player characters as anything with high amounts of natural hit dice tend to be irritating to create.

Also for dragons, they're fairly alignment locked and dragons outside of their natural alignment (LG/CG/LE/CE) are highly unlikely.

--

Sort of, it really depends on what color dragons the players are playing. While the obvious overplot is the constant struggle between Tiamat vs Bahamut, the various colored dragons also behave differently when it comes to who they interact with.

Silver dragons, for instance, tend to be fascinated with the other races and more often than not live among them in an constant altered state. They are a bit different from all the other dragons in that silver dragons have a better grasp of the mortality and short lifespans of the other races, something that is rather lost on all the other breeds.

I could easily see a group of silver dragons posing as a group of human/elven/dwarven/gnomish adventures then reverting to their dragon forms to kick ass and returning to their humanoid forms to show that the deed has been completed.

On the other hand, if the players are all chromatic dragons (read evil), then they will likely have adventurers after the dragon's treasure for enemies.

Posted by: Vermithrax Aug 23 2010, 02:41 PM

http://dnd.wikia.com/wiki/Council_of_Wyrms <--- This was for 2nd edition but it could be adapted to 3rd.

Posted by: Squiddy Attack Aug 23 2010, 03:09 PM

Start with little, tiny wyrmlings.

Edit: Wyrmlings that go meep.

Posted by: TommyTwoToes Aug 23 2010, 06:37 PM

The Council of Wyrms boxed set has some really good ideas on how to run the dragon game. You don't even need to use the rules sections, just the storyline stuff is pretty nice. IIRC the first adventure has you rolling initiative to see who breaks out of their egg first to find ogres in the hatchery, stealing your siblings.

Posted by: StealthSigma Aug 23 2010, 07:03 PM

And the fun part is you're already more intelligent than the typical human teenager.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Aug 24 2010, 05:31 PM

I remember playing that. I was soloing it and got owned. So the GM never ran it even though he had the whole set of rules and everything. We ran the first encounter and that was all, ever. I think my first words in that campaign after hatching were, "I use my breath weapon", and for some reason it didn't work, and I got beaten to death by all the bad guys in that first scene.