The cost of a dragon

[dragonfriend7738]

So, a player of mine wants to have a brass dragon wyrmling as a familiar, as per the dragon familiar feat for a wizard. This is cool, and I've got no real issues with this.

However, my party is going to be leaving the area at level 5, and going to an area where it is literally impossible to obtain a dragon wyrmling, and we will be remaining there past the point where the player can obtain his familiar (level 11.)

My question to you is this: would you allow a player to sink gold and/or exp into obtaining a dragon's egg, so that they could lug it around until it hatched and then imprint the dragon to be their familiar? If so, how much would you say a dragon egg is worth for gear purposes? If not, why?

And provided that a wizard has a dragon wyrmling familiar, how does he pay the upkeep required to support a growing dragon?

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

If your the DM, is there any way you could work the acqusistion of a Dragon Egg into the storyline?

With that said, a Red Dragon egg appears to cost 2000gp, based upon the material component of the Epic Spell Innate Spell or I'm not sure if it's called Theller's Argauneau. I don't really know what this is, but it has a reference to a dragon egg.

There are two links that refer to this, but the original link to the article that is the source no longer works.

At Brilliantgameologists.
At Giant In The Playground.

Alternatively, Races of the Dragon Draconic Grafts requires donor tissue. Some grafts require tissue from an unhatched wormling. The cheapest of these grafts is priced at 9000gp, if the price of the egg of the donor wormling is included in the cost of the graft, than a dragon egg should be cheaper than 9000gp.

Draconomicon p.13 has info on rearing a dragon. A lot of good info in there. It says a dragon must be housed and fed at the cost of 10gp per day.

As for how difficult it would be to lug around an egg, if a skinny redheaded girl can do it...

 

[Gilladian]

So, a player of mine wants to have a brass dragon wyrmling as a familiar, as per the dragon familiar feat for a wizard. This is cool, and I've got no real issues with this.

However, my party is going to be leaving the area at level 5, and going to an area where it is literally impossible to obtain a dragon wyrmling, and we will be remaining there past the point where the player can obtain his familiar (level 11.)

My question to you is this: would you allow a player to sink gold and/or exp into obtaining a dragon's egg, so that they could lug it around until it hatched and then imprint the dragon to be their familiar? If so, how much would you say a dragon egg is worth for gear purposes? If not, why?

And provided that a wizard has a dragon wyrmling familiar, how does he pay the upkeep required to support a growing dragon?

I would allow him to buy the egg and carry it around, yes. But I would make getting the egg a significant story element, if not a specific adventure/quest. At the very least, an extraordinary NPC would be the one to provide it to him, with more than just cash as the purchase price.

And during the time he's carrying it, I would at least suggest that there are risks to the egg; it must be protected from breakage, kept warm, etc...

Once it hatches, the baby dragon will need food and shelter and such. The COSTS could be offset by expenditure of significant time and attention; ie if they don't have the ability to spend 10 gp a day, they have to spend 8-12 hours per day caring for the little thing - hunting for food, cooking it properly, getting the right minerals to sprinkle over the meat, grinding the meat into paste, then feeding the thing six times a day for six weeks continuously.

It should be DOABLE; people raise hummingbirds and bonsai trees, after all, but it should require significant time and trouble - because, after all, a wyrmling is a pretty darned special familiar!

 

[Nezkrul]

if you place an additional cost on a completely underpowered feat choice for a character, and make it a quest and lots of trouble for the player, then the end result, imo, should be greater than that listed under the feat's benefit... otherwise just give it to them and let them have the feat's benefit as is. no reason to make em pay time, gold, and effort to get something that pretty much any other character anywhere else can get without said time, gold, and effort.

also, idk the wording of the dragon familiar feat, but...
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/sorcererWizard.htm#sorcererFamiliar
its a simple 1 day long ritual costing 100gp to summon a new familiar. If the dragon familiar feat says it costs more then it costs more, if the feat doesn't mention any more costs involved in acquiring said bronze wyrmling familiar, then its just 100gp, 24 hours, and the wyrmling is summoned to the player's wizard.

 

[BriarMonkey]

Yeah...

Familiar Feats as a whole are pretty underwhelming and for the most part are just "here's your familiar" - which is in keeping with the method as outlined for the class.

So if you are going to make the familiar a significant cost and effort, then let the character have the familiar without taking the feat. Let them use that feat for something more utile.

Otherwise, if you want them to take the feat, keep the familiar as is - don't up the price tag and effort. After all, they are already spending a feat for something they could get as a cohort or companion through other means.

 

[Nezkrul]

briar gets an xp for resaying what I said? wheres the love?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

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[Jacob]

if you place an additional cost on a completely underpowered feat choice for a character, and make it a quest and lots of trouble for the player, then the end result, imo, should be greater than that listed under the feat's benefit... otherwise just give it to them and let them have the feat's benefit as is. no reason to make em pay time, gold, and effort to get something that pretty much any other character anywhere else can get without said time, gold, and effort.

also, idk the wording of the dragon familiar feat, but...
Sorcerers & Wizards :: d20srd.org
its a simple 1 day long ritual costing 100gp to summon a new familiar. If the dragon familiar feat says it costs more then it costs more, if the feat doesn't mention any more costs involved in acquiring said bronze wyrmling familiar, then its just 100gp, 24 hours, and the wyrmling is summoned to the player's wizard.

While from what I'm reading this is true, the real world ramifications of it are uncertain, mostly on how you feel familiars come about. Should they come about via ritual and *poof* come out of the air, that makes the Dragon Familiar feat a lot more interesting. Especially when you consider dragon familiars will eventually grow old enough and leave, hopefully having a friendly relationship with you. Under the above stated layout of how familiars could come about, that's a dragon who otherwise didn't exist till you brought it about, and it's possible it could grow to a Great Wyrm like any other dragon. And you can have multiple familiars over a lifetime. Not an underpowered feat at all if under those rulings.

 

[Nezkrul]

familiars don't gain hitdice so, therefore, they do not increase in size.

dragons live longer than all races except for Elves.

underpowered feat considering it could have been something like Empower Spell, Quicken Spell, Easy Metamagic, Spell Focus, Skill Focus (Spellcraft), etc... feats that are so much better than.... a nifty familiar that still dies almost instantly in combat.

 

[Jacob]

familiars don't gain hitdice so, therefore, they do not increase in size.

dragons live longer than all races except for Elves.

underpowered feat considering it could have been something like Empower Spell, Quicken Spell, Easy Metamagic, Spell Focus, Skill Focus (Spellcraft), etc... feats that are so much better than.... a nifty familiar that still dies almost instantly in combat.

Actually, all that information I spoke of is direct from the 3rd Edition Draconomicon, which has special rules for such a familiar. So if the Dragon Familiar Feat used by the PC was from that book, every 6 years (Very Young) a dragon you raised from Wyrmling goes out into the world. So a small correction, this Feat is awesome. I would take this feat over any of those feats mentioned if the scenario I described was allowed. Stop thinking about the fighting for a moment, and consider the story implications that in a dragon's lifetime (possibly 1,200 or more), it owed its existence to you. That's something to geek out over in the afterlife, and something to haunt the bloodline of the caster.