[DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

Pyramid Magazine #3/72 brought some monster templates for Dungeon Fantasy, including a 250 points Dragon template. Considering it's size (SM+1), it seems to be a very young dragon.

My first thought was using Alternate Form (p. B83), but that doesn't work because this Dragon template does not contain a Dragon racial template; this template is similar to what Kromm did to Elves and Dwarves in the Race As Professions article presented in Pyramid Magazine #3/50.

That said, how could I play as a dragon who disguises himself as a human and walk in town?

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

Buy the Dragon as the base form and then add Alternate Form (Human) for 15 points.

Or get an astronomically high Disguise skill.

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

1. Bundle your dragon physiological traits into a package called "Dragon Racial Body Template" or whatever, as you will. (I get a total value for this of 176 plus however many of the "25 points in..." wind up in physiological traits)

2. Take Alternate Form (Human; Probably costs less than your dragon body). To make it fit in the typical 250-points, take the alternate form out of the 25 points in additional advantages allotment (leaving 10 behind for other fun stuff).

Depending on the concept, your human form may include "racial" modifiers to ST and DX (I would list these completely separately for the two bodies, since they're subject to different modifiers), social advantages inaccessible in Dragon Form, and strange human cravings.

I expect all skills will reside outside of either template. You may want to skip the "25 points in..." altogether, use 15 points for AF (or use a power modifier, like Magical, to bring it down to 14), and the remainder for human skills.

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

What about the Transform Body spell (Magic, p.43)?

From what I can see, that spell could transform even a SM+8 Dragon into a SM-2 Halfling.

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

Yes, but to get there you need:

GM permission to take Charm (Transform Body (Halfling, human, or whatever))
or
13 other spells.

Plus:
Energy/skill enough to keep it going while you are in town: energy cost of 5/2 with a duration of a mere hour makes that hard if you plan on spending much time in town, and it'll lapse if you take a nap. With 12 FP, you can hang out for 4hrs before being forced to drag yourself out... slowly. To stay above 1/3xFP, you can only stay for 2hrs. Dragons aren't really built to be strong spellcasters starting out: too many points are in being a big strong dragon.

You also won't be able to define the traits of your target body as having above average ST, DX, etc., so... you probably lose that cool Dragon ST et al. temporarily.

Alternate Form (Human; Magical -10%; Immediate Preparation Required, magical ritual, 1hr, 75%) [3]; is way cheaper if you can convince the GM. I might well tell you that you must first obtain Transform Body for the target race, then let you take Alternate Form for an advanced body, and I'd be unlikely to let you off the prerequisite count hook, although I might let you have access to a special Dragon Magic style offering alternate prerequisites to get there.

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

I never actually played it but when I first got Gurps 1e and Fantasy 1e there were Racial Templates for Dragons and I noticed if you gave your Dragon Dwarfism it went from a 2 hex creature to a 1 hex creature (this was before SMs).

After that you just used an Illusion shell combo (whose costs to cast had just gone down) and passed yourself off as an eccentric Mage (possibly from Sahud) who knew the Breath Fire spell. I think it would all still work in 4e.

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

We had a PC who was a dragon disguised as a human. I believe the player used Alternate Form, but I'm not positive.

I have a PC who can do the opposite, turn into a dragon using Transform Body from GURPS Magic. You could give the character a magical item to do that.

Permanent Illusion might work.

Morph and variations are also possible if you wanted more than two forms.

Finally, if you have GURPS Banestorm, look at pp. 145-146.

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

Nice solution! I'd like to play that myself :)

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

PS: One thing I'm wondering about, though, is the "disguise" factor: For instance, if a mage wants to analyze the "true nature" of the character (being a dragon with alternate form Human). How would you roll for that?

I'd think by RAW the alternate form advantage would mean the character has TWO natural forms, regarding rules of the advantage, "nothing hidden", both forms are "THE" real form if you'd look at it, right? Or different opinions?

If that assumption is true, I wonder how it would be priced (as a little limitation) if the alternate form is a kind of illusion which could be revealed by a powerful magic user for instance...?

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

Be careful with this. If the dragon-in-human form breaks staircases and can't fit through narrow doors, it's quite a big limitation.

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

These are several of the reasons my dragon was going to have Dwarfism. The biggest one though would have been the cost to cast spells on a full-sized dragon, even by himself. There's a Perk to alleviate this in Magical Styles and dragon casters will generally need it.

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

hehe yes ;) But I don't think that would be the case by RAW with alternate form, by default the mass and size fits to the new form (see limitation "Mass Conservation"), so looking like a human you can also act like a human... well, actually I'd say you are a human if you switch form (the wording in Basic Set is "[...] the racial template of whatever you turn into replaces your native racial template.")

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

Note that 250 points actually lets you have a very powerful dragon, you just need a more optimized template.

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

...an interesting and funny idea for the dragon-hiding-as-human approach could be the "cosmetic" (-50%) limitation (B85). That way you could "look" like a normal human, but still (being a very small dragon for real) you would smell very strange and your physical form is different, so you would have to avoid direct body contact and would have some challenges adapting to the human environment.

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

I was just about to suggest Cosmetic along with the Glamour limitation.

Or I'd even allow just the Glamour limitation on its own. So, you're really a human right now, but it's possible to see through that form.

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

A classic variant could also be Illusion (Powers, p.94), with the Mental Enhancement (+100%), this would affect people's mind so everyone affected believes to see a human, even though the dragon could theoretically be seen by the normal human eye.

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

Note that the Pyramid template omits the "No Fine Manipulators, -40%" modifier on its DX, so that frees up 24 points to be spent elsewhere.

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

Been playing with a group that had a young dragon in it for oh, about ten years now. Had this:

Alternate Form: Elf (Fast Revert, 2s; No time limit; 3x per day; Magical) [15]
(as well as a draconic racial package, of course)

Seemed to do the trick.

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

Though, I think playing that as a character can really be a challenge, just opening a door for instance is not that easy anymore.

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

*Shove-Snap-Crack-Crash* what door? In general, I would make a PC dragon (or other large monster) a shapeshifter, possibly with a hybrid form.

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

You probably should take "Mitigator, Alternate Form, -80%" on Appearance (Monstrous) or Social Stigma (Monstrous). Or at least that's what some Inhuman templates for MH does.

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

Only if you're not using shapeshifting. Shapeshift just gives you a new template. If you're using powers that switch on and off, I think it's more correct to use Nuisance Effect (Reaction Penalty).

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

And a dragon template could be easily designed without NFM, but that one has it, and without it the template suddenly balloons in cost by 82 points.

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

If I were doing this with a more modest budget I'd use the dragon offspring from the IRONWOOD comic book. They had the surname Dragavon when they weren't hiding.

The dragons in that universe were all male and all shapeshifters and liked to transform into other species (including human ones) to mate. Their offspring looked like ordinary members of the mother's kind except that they were invulnerable to normal harm and couldn't be killed except by something as dangerous as a dragon's flame.

The adult dragons had an interest in killing them off before they matured and could take dragon form.

The issue that contained them was called: "The Sex Life of Dragons or Why Our Cities Are Burning."

So a carefree, randy chancer who looks like a mature human male but claims he won't be capable of siring offspring for decades yet. One day he will start to develop draconic traits. Perhaps he'll be grateful to his old comrades when he becomes the Real Thing.

Or possibly not. For now he can be sent ahead of the party into deadly danger if you can convince him it's in his interest to do so.

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

I'm having a little trouble reconciling the two bits I bolded...

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

Invulnerable to normal harm would be Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction /10; Cosmic, Round damage down, +50%) [225].

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

I believe you're right, the Morphology Inducer is AF (Cosmetic) so even while using it the character would keep all its traits, except appearance, so it explains why it should take a mitigator.

OP categorizes the dragon from the template as "very young" based on its SM and Forgotten Realms lore but if we look instead at the dragon templates from Banestorm, the template is very close to that of an adolescent dragon, around a century old and likely with an established lair, and I believe that's the template they used as a base to build the one on Pyramid.
A younger dragon is said to be "around 20 years old", "survived the hatchling phase" and "probably establishing a lair", which seems perfect for a DF character. The template is cheaper as well so you could remove the NFM and still be within the point budget (181 points without any other change).
Alternatively, if all you're looking for is the ability to open doors and similar trivial daily task, the GM might allow taking a perk similar to Akimbo. As far as I'm aware the main reason for the attribute discount of NFM is the inability to use tools, especially muscle-powered weapons. With not!Akimbo the character would be able to open doors, hold cups and give dogs ear scritches but not wield a sword or write down a poem.

I was also going to suggest magical telekinesis but now I'm not sure if that would be legal. On one hand it takes constant concentration to use, so it's much more inconvenient than real hands and fighting with it is no trivial (not to say raising it to levels high enough to deal nice damage would be quite expensive), on the other hand it would allow the character to do most tasks requiring fine manipulators outside of combat. If it ever came up in my table I'd allow it, but I could see why another GM would not.


DR 7 (Can't Wear Armor) [21] would make the dragon essentially immune to spear thrusts from ordinary soldiers (ST10-12, max damage 8)... Unfortunately a dragon in DF campaign should expect enemies to hit way harder!

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

A DF character is capable of dealing something on the order 3d+10 cutting damage with halberd. For example, a character with ST 17 [70], Mr. Smash 4 [20], Weapon Master (Halberd) [20], and Polearm (A) DX+6 [8] would only cost 118 CP and would pretty much end a character with only DR 7 with one hit (a torso hit would deal an average of 20 points of damage after the multiplier, which is a major wound for almost anyone).

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

I'm perfectly aware. It was a tongue in cheek comment, I even wrote by the end that DR7 is nothing in the context.

Re: [DF] Playing a dragon as an adventurer
 

If I was going to pay a dragon, I would have it be a disadvantageous form of Alternative Form (Horror, p. 18). For example, if your Dragon Form was triggered by the character being targeted by hostile magic, it would be worth -20 CP, as that would be a common occurrence. If your friends are smart, they run away when you start transforming.