[Fiimeo]

My friends and I are dabbling with cross breeding to create some evil characters for an evil campaign (not Underdark). Basically we are the rapists, pillagers, and arsonists. We've found a few resources but realized they are lacking and have started to make a resource guide for ourselves. The problem is that one player is somewhat insistant on playing a half breed... Half Black Dragon (young) and Half Dwarf. He has an interesting back-story to support this which also has potential to spin into several sub quests for his character. The problem we're running into is of balance. Basically we've adjusted his ECL to a +4 so the rest of us "normal" races (a drow lvl 5 and a tiefling lvl 4) will be starting at the adjusted levels.

If we follow the rules we found on cross-breeding he ends up with starting stats around the high-teens low-twenties but has a HP pool of 18. Anyone else think that might be too far out? Anyone have any ideas on other balance issues?

His break-down so far. His character favors the draconic side, but yes he does have hair which grows from between his scales. He retains the claws, wings, breath weapon (weaker), tail and has a shortened snout. We've deemed that his wings aren't fully developed due to his dwarven lineage (slow growth) so he cannot fly but can glide short distances when jumping and takes 1/2 damage from falling. He still has a bite and two claw attacks, but does not posess the muscle control for an effective tail attack (yet). His breath weapon has been nerfed down to 4d6 (which is still nasty for a lvl 1 +ECL 4 character).

The campaign we're planning to play in has us set in a world where Evil has been all but vanquished from the land. People are feeling more productive, happy, and secure. We see this as a problem. The drow is obviously hated by most everyone, my tiefling... well... I don't think I need to say more on him, and the half-breed is an abomination to every natural law there is. We are the dream team for the forces of evil. Now we need to make it work.

[Evilbane]

Sounds Neat. I like the creative idea for the race u have.

Everything sounds good. Im gonna post u the 4e version of breath powers for Dragonborn just incase. The only reason im saying is since your character is halfdragon half dwarf his breath shouldnt be as far. I put the range in bold with !!s

Encounter ✦ Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Poison
Minor Action !!Close Blast (3 Squares)!!

Targets: All creatures in area

Attack: Strength + 2 vs. Reflex, Constitution + 2 vs. Reflex, or
Dexterity + 2 vs. Reflex (This is the saving throw against your breath)

Hit: 1d6 + Constitution modifier damage.
(Increase to +4 bonus and 2d6 + Constitution modifier
damage at 11th level, and to +6 bonus and 3d6 +
Constitution modifier damage at 21st level.(Example: lvl 11 Breath Attack: Acid, 2d6 + Con. +4) )

Special: When you create your character, choose Strength,
Constitution, or Dexterity as the ability score you use
when making attack rolls with this power. You also choose
the power's damage type: acid, cold, fire, lightning, or
poison. These two choices remain throughout your character's
life and do not change the power's other effects.

I hope that helps a little

This post has been edited by Evilbane: 08 August 2008 - 04:53 AM

[Holy Deg]

I know what you mean about it being hard to balance a low-level half-dragon. I have a player who is on his second one now. Part of the problem (if you are using 3.5ed) is that Half-Dragons weren't really meant to be played at such a low level. My player's first half-dragon died within 5 minutes of joining the campaign because of his low hp (he started with 11). The party was kind (they were at fault for his death in a large part) and had him resurrected, but he had to be very cautious for a long time. He also started taking toughness for many of his feats to try to boost his hp. Fortunately it starts to balance out as you go higher in level. And some of the source books actually have rules to help phase out the level adjustment. (I think it's Races of the Dragons, or some such title).

If you're playing something other than 3.5 I can't help you. I play 1st ed as well, but I don't know the rules for 1st nearly as well as I know 3.5, and I haven't even seen the 4th ed books yet.

[Dthclaw]

You could also take the route that I did in my campaigns when cross-breeding came into the picture - basically, take the average of both races in every aspect as the Halfbreed race's abilities. Half the racial traits from one, half the racial traits of the other. If either race has negative traits (energy vulnerability, for example) the Halfbreed automatically gets it. I put up a template for it some time back, but I'm too lazy to look it up right now

I don't know how such a process would translate to 4E. I suspect it would work the same, but the 4E PHB is such a Web 2.0 vacuous creativity-starved WoW-knockoff incomprehensible piece of garbage that I don't honestly want to take the time to see if it would. I'm sure 4E fixed a number of things, but the presentation and thought process behind it turns me off so badly that I don't care what they did in 4E.

/rant

And... I live.

[Raven Bloodmoon]

So you're suggesting to average a dwarf with a dragon? Yikes. It does make sense, though. Why would a half-dragon not actually be half dragon? But think of the LA on that....

Anyway, Fiimeo, you are seeing one of the issues with using templates in general. It happens when you apply too many to monsters, as well. As cool as a paragon half-dragon eidolon demilich worg sounds, it's not. The only other option you might experiment with is granting an extra hit die worth of hp to the character for every x levels of LA. That would be extra hp, not extra HD for any game purposes (no BAB increase, savign throw increases, extra feats, extra skill points, extra abilities, etc...). I've been out of d20 so long I'm not sure what would be appropriate, but it might work.

Incidentally, this is an issue even with playing monsters with LA. The only nonplayer race I can remember encountering that's worth every point of LA is the Pixie. Evil little invisible archer with wings...

[super sorcerer]

Raven Bloodmoon, on Jan 28 2009, 06:57 PM, said:

So you're suggesting to average a dwarf with a dragon? Yikes. It does make sense, though. Why would a half-dragon not actually be half dragon? But think of the LA on that....

since the half-dragon template is only +3 LA, a standard half-dragon dwarf fighter level 3 will have (assuming elite array):
str-23 dex-12 con-16 int-13 wis-10 cha-8
feats: weapon focus (greatsword), improved initiative, power attack, cleave.
HP=30 saves: fort= +6 will= +1 reflex= +2
weapon and armor: greatsword+1, full plate +1
AC= 24
attack bonus=+9 damage=2d6+9

By the way- there is no level adjustment in 4th edition, acually the rules of 4th edition don't support playing half-dragon half-dwarf. You can't even play an ogre.