Talk:Half-Dragon, Variant (3.5e Race)

History of this page

So, essentially, as I'm looking at this, the page was originally made by Lord Dhazriel. Since then, it's been hijacked and changed drastically by multiple IPs, even to the point of changing the Author template to "Anonymous". Seems like a pretty bad bit of vandalism. I'm going to try to salvage the last -complete- version of it, since one of my players uses this in my campaign. Jwguy 03:34, 30 October 2009 (MDT)

Done, or so I hope. I made it back to Dharziel's last version while trying to include most -constructive- edits that came about over the vandalism. No point in letting good additions go to waste. Jwguy 04:03, 30 October 2009 (MDT)

The LA needs to be higher, a strong breath weapon like that is an automatic +1, as is natural armor. The initial stats are a bit high, falling hazily into the +1 category but the additional boosts to strength later on make it no question. It may be argued -1 for inconvenient form but that still puts it at a +2. The breath weapon is a little powerful to start off and slightly greater than most spells gained at equal levels. With the ability to get more uses through feats, I would suggest lowering it a bit. Doubt anyone will really read this but those are just my thoughts.

Suggestions

When I originally found this race, it was much "worse" in terms of initial stat increases. It had +2 to Str, Con, and Cha, but -2 to Dex and Wis. It seemed much more balanced, with the idea that as one progressed in the game, gaining levels, your stats would increase. Now, the race starts with a huge stats boost, and by 8th level, the race is in fact significantly better than the half-dragon race in the Monster Manual I. I feel like it should be significantly nerfed, back to its original state. I also feel like it needs to have greater clarification, especially in elaborating about other rules. When I've played this class in campaigns, I've had to work with the DM to fill in missing information on multiple occasions, such as save DC for the breath weapon. Lastly, I feel the race should reflect some of the other "half-x" races found in 3.5. As in, rather than having it as a fully separate race, as it is now, have it more like an added template to a creature. This half-dragon is currently "calibrated" to be half dragon and half human. What if one wanted to make a half elf/halfling/orc half dragon? I feel like it should use the template rules from other SRD races, such as the SRD half-dragon, the SRD werewolf, or SRD half-fiend. These are just my thoughts, and I'm open to suggestions, but I feel like there should at least be some half-dragon variant in homebrew that acts as a balanced race for starting at level one.