So I have been looking over the Drake rules and, quite frankly, Drakes seem like a serious weakness for a character.

1) it forces you into magic. Not too big a deal, but a factor none-the-less.
2) all the benefits require you to turn into a big, obvious dragon form which will attract a ton of attention and get a lot of big players hunting you when they find out about it.
3) the benefits are not that great:

a) Stat boosts are nice, but come at the cost of not being able to use weapons, armour, or most gear, thus losing you all the force multipliers you had.
b) in exchange for not having actual armour you get 4 hardened armour, which sounds awesome until you realize that's so low even a holdout pistol will reliably be punching through it.
c) you get dual natured which you cannot turn off. Have fun soloing any astral forms or spirits that the team can no longer help you with.
d) you get a bunch of enhanced senses... which tech can give you just as well if not better, and at a fraction of the cost in character creation.
e) You get claws/bite, which are decent... until you compare them to a weapon focus vibroblade which any other magic character can get. No reach, no AP, no weapon focus bonus, no +1 from personalized grip.
f) Elemental Attack (fire) is okay, becoming good when you get your magic up really high. Basically a no drain at will flamethrower spell that cannot be overcast. It's not going to make you the team DPS, most guns of Automatics or heavier outclass it in damage output, but it's a no downsides attack.
g) Personal Flight. This is legit good, equaled only by the mage casting levitate or some rather expensive mundane options which still don't exactly measure up.

and you only get these benefits when in dracoform, meaning that any time you are in humanoid form you have a bunch of points locked away doing nothing.

4) finally the price tag. It says 65 bp but in practice it's 70-80 BP because there is no way you're playing a drake and NOT picking up a way to actually use your magic. That's getting close on a quarter of you allocated build points in a standard game. Those 65 bp are only going to be useful in situations where being a drake is useful, and as we discussed above that's kinda limited. Your low hardened armour and inability to wear other armour over it really hurts your ability to survive in combat, your attack is okay but not great and is easily outclassed by your less unique teammates, your special senses are likewise outclassed by anyone with a set of cybereyes. Oh, and you leave every other distinctive style in the dust as far as standing out is concerned and all the big players want to capture you.

As best I can tell the most viable build for a Drake would be a stealth/infiltration specialist. Invisibility helps a lot with your distinctive style, and your flight makes a lot of physical barriers redundant. Oriental Drake is really the go here, without bulky wings to stop you getting through tight spaces, opposable thumbs and manual dexterity allowing you to actually do stuff like opening doors, and an agility bonus to make you better at a lot of the stuff you'll need to do as an infiltrator like infiltration checks.

Outside of that though, are Drakes worth a look or just overpriced gimmick builds?

I think your analysis hits on a number of good points. At the same time, I think you miss a few.

The drake PC in human form is able to use armor, implants, weapons, whatever, just as any other metahuman. It is true that these augmentations do not apply to the dracoform, but they do apply whenever the drake chooses not to transform. Be Superman and take off your armor when it's time to change form.

It is also true that augmentations affect Magic rating, but this is true for any character that has one. There is a lot of discussion here on DS about adepts who min-max augmentations and adept powers. An adept Drake seems to fit into this theme. +5 STR along with Critical Strike and Killing Hands? Yeah!

Many of the detriments apply most heavily at the beginning. An Initiate who has Masking goes a long way to covering their (dragon) tracks.

In dracoform, sure only 4 Hardened armor, but that is still armor along with an improved BOD. And is matched by Mystic Armor, which no mundane possesses.

Immune to HMHVV? Yeah!

So, maybe a PC to be played only in certain campaigns. Bug hunt in Chicago, anyone? Clear New Orleans of Shedim? I think adept or mystic adept is the way to go.

The drake PC is one of those character types, like the free spirit PC, that seem to start out weaker than many other types, but grow in power. I agree wholeheartedly, not one to be played by the faint of heart or a rookie player.

The problem with any kind of augmentation is that the boost isn't going to help in dragon form, so you'd only get the lowered essence penalty but none of the upside when transformed. That'd push me away from getting any cyber for a drake.

The improved bod is undeniably good, but one of the major advantages of a high bod is being able to wear more armour which drakes cannot.

I dunno, I just feel like it's really overpriced for what it gives you and even in the late game I don't really see it as being a stronger option than a normal mage or adept who used their investments well.

That said, if magical armour spells or adept powers were to explicitly boost the HARDENED armour rather than just adding normal armour on top, then I could see it being workable for a tanky combat character.

I kinda see it as taking the normal problem of magical characters being excessively karma hungry then turning that up to 11. That and you kinda need to invest in two builds: Drake form and Non Drake form, and split your resources between them.

Mystic adept drake would, in the long run, become stupidly powerful. However, that would take a TON of karma to make work.

Like shapeshifters, drakes might be chosen for flavour rather than for any mechanical optimisation.But being dual-natured means you're going to have to battle your way into any facility worth its salt just to bypass the wards. A normal infiltration specialist could just slip on through without the wards registering anything.As an adept your options are limited when interacting with astral threats though. You can't just project and outrun a foe. If the party is in a lift and pass through a ward you're just dead rather than forcibly projecting until you can find a way around. If you're trying to sleep and Watcher spirits keep poking you awake, there's nothing you can do about that. If FAB gets on your trail, you're in trouble unless you've got your own ward you can retreat behind. Going up against bugs and sheddim, I'd rather they suffer the drawbacks of having to interact on the physical plane against purely mundane party members than be exposed on the astral - unable to do anything about native threats whose reaction far surpasses my own and who can retreat beyond walls and grapple me through the floor, etc.

Yup, sometimes you play a video game with the difficulty set high to give yourself a challenge. A Drake PC will do that in Shadowrun.

Short answer: No.
Long answer: NOOOOOOPE

Longer Answer: Oh god, why did you do this to yourself?

Karma hole, (One that makes the SR3 Mage-adept look positively inexpensive) the laundry-list of drawbacks and a few semi-positives, all for a very very slow burn.
All that being said, it's playstyle, GM and player smarts after that. Also, your team's going to make your shadowrunner handle, "Edgelord", "Slytherin", "Mini-Dunky" or "Forky" (After the tongue.)

-Tir

Drake Mythic Adepts are the Mary Sue sweet-spot.

It doesn't get much more Edgelord than that out of the box from a mechanics perspective.

And you can always add that you are a ninja on the run from your clan, too.

Sure, once you can sink a few hundred karma into a Drake Mystic Adept they might be super powerful but I can't see that combo even being playable at character creation. The sheer number of points required to make it even sort of work is beyond comprehension!

That sounds like a challenge!

Yeah, but 65 BP/130 karma for +2 to 3 stats isn't a bad deal (more with common drakes, but the extra stats are strength, so who cares), but you can't use equipment (it mentions hands, but I'm assume you can't use armor, either). Assuming you can't wear armor, you've got 4 armor, which is ~1 hit. I think I remember people mentioning adding granite hide which is another 15 BP, because it wasn't already expensive. A troll's natural armor might also be a slight improvement, but not enough to be the reason to pick a troll (although higher body and higher base move makes it a consideration). Doubled movement rate can be pretty nice, but it might draw some attention. It might be worth considering spending the 15 karma to change the element to something better than fire, as mentioned in the optional rule, if you have extra points sitting around... It also appears that you're only dual-natured in dracoform, which helps with wards, but also means you don't get the benefit of the 130 karma you spent being a drake.

An adept would probably be best to make use of masking and also if you plan to use unarmed combat as a drake because you forgot about the fire breath. You'll need high body when you have no worn armor and are an obvious target. Maxing out reaction and dodge, or agility and gymnastics seems like a good idea for the same reason, and it happens to be one of the stats some dragons get a bonus to (feathered and sea drakes have +2 body and +2 reaction, and feathered gets +2 agility). Adepts can also get a bonus to their dodge or gymnastics skills, which is useful for non-cybered characters like drakes. Agility seems like a good idea, because everyone wants infiltration skill.


Elemental attack and higher movement rate are the "big" draws, so High base movement (does celerity stack?) and high magic are important. Breath weapon is Magic for DV vs half impact, with Exotic Weapon + Agility for attack. Human is probably a better deal than adding 30 BP/60 karma for +1 agility, unless you have enough points to also be the face somehow. Max out magic and initiate as soon as possible. Now you're effectively a mage with 1 spell, but no drain.

If you don't need armor piercing, you could melee for S/2+2P, and can possibly get a bonus to strength and reach as a common drake. Adept powers stack with that, and you could pick up a martial art to make it a skill that's useful in either form. Troll and common drake might be an idea for that build, for high body, movement, and strength. Probably pretty good, for a melee build. You're getting a whole +1 reach and +2.5 damage by transforming, though. I assume the additional body is less than the armor you're already wearing. So you're at the high-end for a non-sword melee character, which is a large amount of single-target damage (and few attacks with the adept costs for additional IPs). Picking up a combat axe is S/2+4P, 2 reach, and 1 AP.


I can only think of those 2 builds, both of which can do big damage to tough targets. But it's Shadowrun, and most things can be taken down with a Predator loaded with APDS, or a stunball.

A couple of points, as I am trying to build a Drake character that makes sense to me, just to see. I'm going to do it both in BP and karmagen.

Regarding points in karmagen, the errata for Runners Companion says the conversion to karma from BP for metatype is 1 to 1. Is this not true for Drakes?

Regarding Skills, Runners Companion on p. 75 seems to contradict itself. Under Magic it says :



Under DRACOFORM it says:



So, does a Drake need to learn the Astral Combat Skill?

Did they ever get around to printing RC errata? Treating Drake as a metatype instead of Positive Quality is the only way you can get anywhere near the 65 BP it costs. But, the reason metatype is usually discounted in karmagen is because higher attributes (especially extremely high ones like you can get with trolls) cost so much more, and drakes get a bonus to stats instead of an increase to the cap. I can see it going either way.

It sounds like they may learn both forms of combat, but don't need to. I guess taking it or not it depends on if you would want to fight spirits without drake form or not.

I have the text of the errata saved as a Word file, but I don't recall where I found it.

Being a Drake is in fact listed as a Quality in RC, and is to be chosen after the metatype is chosen. It is even mentioned not to be counted against the 35 BP limit for Qualities. But you are right, if it cannot be treated as a metatype, then karmagen looks pretty bad.

Well, I was wrong. The Karmagen system more than compensates for the extra Quality points with its design to allow for cheaper Attributes and Skills at the lower levels. So, as long as one doesn't go nuts on high Attributes and/or Skills, a decent, beginner Drake can be made. Following is a proof of concept for a Human Common Drake mystic adept using the standard 750 karma points.

Human - 0 points

Attributes - 201 points


Special Attributes - 120 points


Qualities - 120 points


Adept Powers (5 Adept points)


Active Skills - 203 points


Sustaining Foci - 48 points


Spells - 24 points ("Cause they're only allowed 8 with Skill level 4)


That adds up to 706 karma points, leaving 44 points for extra Knowledge/Language Skills, Contacts, Lifestyle, and gear.

I think this is a playable PC right out of the box. What do you think?

Rolling 9 dice for your best skill? Seems a bit low. Looks like this is a common drake based on the increased strength and body?

Maybe leave negotiate to the face, and get stealth? Etiquette, perception, and stealth are good for everyone.

How does the magic split work for Mystic Adepts? I remember you have 1 magic for some spell-casting things, and 6 for others, but not what it affects. Because if you can only overcast up to force 2, you'll have difficulty with beating Object Resist with your improved invisibility spell.

Yup. "Human Common Drake mystic adept."

Well, karmagen does tend to keep pools a little lower than BP gen for beginning characters. I don't worry about that too much right out of the box, for this PC, because when they get to the Boss Fight, that's when to pull out the Edge.

I see your point about Stealth. I forgot about that. And I'm now playing a PC who has been on his own for a while, and negotiation was difficult. But, yeah, that's what a team is for. So, adding some Stealth makes sense to me.

The text on p. 195 of the core rule book does say, "(f)or all other purposes ... the character's full Magic attribute is used." I would have to jig one Magic point around otherwise.