Questions on Drakes

[Mythrain]

OK, I am still rather new to Fantasy Craft and am working on a character for a game.

I wish to play a Drake and have the following questions (sorry if they have already been answered)
What effects does size large have?
Is there a way to improve Natural Weapons through game play?
If I get tough hide via a feat can it be improved and if so, how?



Folowing are assumptions I just wished confirmed
Drakes do not have...
exceptional sense
DR


Thanks!

[magustoad]

Large size is a bit of a mixed bag.  You take up more space (2x3 on a grid) so it's 'easier' to flank you.  You get a -1 penalty to your Def due to being bigger target.  Grappling has some modifiers in there for size differentials.

It DOES get you some nice things.  Like wounds being 1.5 x Con instead of 1 x Con.  This is very handy.  Your carrying capacity is much higher as well.  Your natural attacks do more damage out of the gate.  I might be missing something here as I've been up since 0530. 

Yes there are several feats that help improve your natural attacks, they are kind of limited though.  Native Ferocity improves all of your natural attacks by one grade.  Good news: It does them all at once.  Bad news: You can only take it once.   Enhanced Natural Attack lets you buy qualities for your attacks, like bleed or trip, etc...  You take the feat and all of your nat-attacks get that quality.  You can take this multiple times to stack up qualities.

Tough Hide is not improvable to my knowledge.

You are correct in your last two bits, no exceptional senses and no baked-in DR.

I know right were you are thinking, I had a similar bit of disconnect when I statted mine out.  In FC all of the races are built using a point-buy system.  A human = elf = goblin = drake = giant etc in the builds.  So a lot of those things we often see as very 'dragon-y' would just put the total way beyond the other races and are left out.

Now with that said; FC is fantastic for letting you craft a character to your idea.

What is your idea?  We can probably help you achieve it.

[Mythrain]

My concept is a Drake that is primarily a fighting type preferring to use hi natural abilities. claws teeth breath

He may dabble in magic, but that is secondary

I was looking at taking the Speciality Sorcerer for the Species feat and at 1st lvl take ..
Draconic Heritage (for the tough hide)
Elemental Heritage: Metal (for the Edged Resistance)
if You can take two heritages. He would be a steel dragonkin. I am unsure of class. Soldier or Martial Artist maybe?

[tfwfh]

In addition to the feats that are intended specifically for natural attacks, most of the things that can be done to improve weapon damage also works on natural attacks.  For instance: Knife Basics, Wolf Pack Mastery, Ambush Basics, and All Out Attack do not require the use of any weapons.  Martial Arts is just as good for Drakes as it is for everyone else.  Those are just off the top of my head.  Beyond feats, magic items work just as well on natural attacks as they do on weapons.

And unless I'm much mistaken, the level 2 Wild Side I spell can be used to bump a natural attack up 1 grade.

And beyond the simple bonus stacking benefits, natural attacks have tactical advantages as well.  The one that comes most readily to mind is that you can use them in a grapple, whereas only 1 handed weapons can be used by the opponent.  And since you'll be large, you'll have a distinct grapple advantage against most opponents.

If you want to mix in some spellcasting to this character but still be primarily martial, there are some possibilities that come to mind.  The obvious path is to mix in a few levels of Mage or Priest.  The less obvious paths are that The Gift feat (with the permission of your DM*) should allow you to qualify for Rune Knight without first having to multiclass.  However, that may not be a good fit for a drake that relies on natural attacks as RK has a heavy reliance on a particular weapon, through the Favored Gear feat.  Paladin may work for you.  It has some distinctly magical aspects through Paths and Lay on Hands.  However, the idea that I really like is Beast Master.  It doesn't have much in the way of casting spells, but that shouldn't stop your group from giving it a magical flavor if you want.  Plus I think it has a wonderfully appropriate irony.

One final thought: good choice playing a drake.  If I ever get the chance to play in a FC game (as opposed to running it) I'd love to play a drake.


*This requires your GM's permission because The Gift doesn't explicitly allow you to take ranks in the Spellcasting skill.  Instead it lets you auto-cast some level 0 spells and gives you a caster level of 1.  So, it will require your GM's interpretation as to whether that's enough to give you access to the Spellcasting skill or not.

[Mythrain]

Thanks for the advice guys! Its helping, please keep it coming.

Can Native Ferocity be taken multiple times?

[Antilles]

Due to a lack of "Special: This feat may be taken multiple times,..." it can only be taken once.

[magustoad]

My concept is a Drake that is primarily a fighting type preferring to use hi natural abilities. claws teeth breath

He may dabble in magic, but that is secondary

I was looking at taking the Speciality Sorcerer for the Species feat and at 1st lvl take ..
It's what I used for a very similar idea.  I refer to it as "Critter-as-a-class" for this kind of concept.
Draconic Heritage (for the tough hide)
Elemental Heritage: Metal (for the Edged Resistance)
if You can take two heritages. He would be a steel dragonkin. I am unsure of class. Soldier or Martial Artist maybe?

You might look at the 'Monster' specialty brewed up here on the forums by Paddyfool (and others) using a reverse-engineered version of the formula Crafty uses to create them. 

Also Paddyfool started the ball rolling to bang out some neat-o-keen breath feats with much awesome collaboration by all.

Pawsplay  created a Path of Dragons for usage in alignments.  Very nifty!  Only caveat we used in our game was to allow a species feat choice instead of Draconic Heritage if it was previously taken

Another neat feat is Larger Than Life from the Adv. Companion book.  Totes worth it.

I took MA as base class, mostly because I felt Soldier was weighted a bit too heavily towards tool-users wearing armor.  As I'm, like you, playing an 'au natural' beasty, I just didn't feel it.  Ma is nice.  Ma is wicked nice.  You just have to get Kung Fu out of your head and remember you aren't Bruce Lee with scales... unless that's where you want to go of course.  hehe

I haven't decided on an Expert class yet, but probably will roll into Dragon Lord for the goodies within as Master class.  I may forgo the Expert class and stick with MA up to DL, it's just that good for this concept.

I went with a heavy Wrestling build for now, hoping to model the brute strength with slamming people around, pinning them with a claw and then delivering a deathblow with a bite.  Unfortunately I've found that the wrestling mechanics kind of hobble this a bit (please please correct me on this anyone if I am wrong here) with a grapple taking a full-round action followed up by another one for a grapple benefit check.  Two perform a coup-de-grace you need to win grapple (1fr act) then win grapple bene check for pin (1fr act) then, having Wrestling Supremacy, able to deliver the coup-de-grace in the following round (1 fr act).  Still, what a cinematic sequence and so totally acurate.  Grab offending thing in claw, smash it to the ground trapping it there, snake head in and deliver fatal bite tearing out vitals.   

The number-cruncher in me says to simply attack six times with claw or bite as seen fit for better usage of actions.

Oh yeah, bite is freaking monstrous as a MA.  It ends up being 16+ threat with d10 base.  Ouch.  Take Nat Ferocity and that goes to 15+ making that a nasty nasty crit machine.  Just remember that you are using your mouth to do that damage...  some things you don't want to bite.  My GM names all of his Scenes like chapters in a book.  One of those was "Are you going to eat that?" with no small amount of nodding towards (me) the drake.   

I'll write more later, but I have to jet to work.

[Mister Andersen]

My personal choice with drakes would be to hit them up with Burden of Ages + dark vision I + vision increments of 50 ft x Wisdom score: they are by and large (evolved from) cave dwelling aerial predators

[Krensky]

My personal choice with drakes would be to hit them up with Burden of Ages + dark vision I + vision increments of 50 ft x Wisdom score: they are by and large (evolved from) cave dwelling aerial predators

Cave nesting.

The wings and general diaurnal habit counter indicate short sightedness.

[ArawnNox]

I went with a heavy Wrestling build for now, hoping to model the brute strength with slamming people around, pinning them with a claw and then delivering a deathblow with a bite.  Unfortunately I've found that the wrestling mechanics kind of hobble this a bit (please please correct me on this anyone if I am wrong here) with a grapple taking a full-round action followed up by another one for a grapple benefit check.  Two perform a coup-de-grace you need to win grapple (1fr act) then win grapple bene check for pin (1fr act) then, having Wrestling Supremacy, able to deliver the coup-de-grace in the following round (1 fr act).  Still, what a cinematic sequence and so totally acurate.  Grab offending thing in claw, smash it to the ground trapping it there, snake head in and deliver fatal bite tearing out vitals.   

The number-cruncher in me says to simply attack six times with claw or bite as seen fit for better usage of actions.

We had a discussion about grappling a while back and I'm wondering if you're making the same mistake I did.
It should play out similar to this:
You: Initiate Grapple, Grapple Succeeds, Opponent Held
Opponent Acts during round: Attempts to break Grapple. You win the contest, you apply grapple benefit. Opponent Pinned
New Round
You: Wrestle for Control. You succeed. Apply Grapple Benefit with Wrestling Mastery. Opponent coup-de-grace'd.

Muuuuch faster, isn't it?
Every time the grapple contest is initiated, the winner (and remember, its an opposed check every time) gets to apply a grapple benefit.

[Mythrain]

Question on Martial Artist. Do You need to satisfy the prereqs for the feat Martial Arts?

Do I understand Grapple correct in that to START a grapple the smaller gets +2 but to continue the LARGER gets +2?

[Krensky]

No. See page 84, section Prerequisites, paragraph 3.

Yes. Hard to grab small folk, but their size and strength means that the bigger participant gets an advantage once they grab you.

[Mister Andersen]

The wings and general diaurnal habit counter indicate short sightedness.

Raptors such as the falcon, the hawk and the eagle would tend to disagree with this.

[Krensky]

The wings and general diaurnal habit counter indicate short sightedness.

Raptors such as the falcon, the hawk and the eagle would tend to disagree with this.

Raptors have very good eyesight, it's how they hunt.

[Mister Andersen]

Which is my point. Drakes are aerial predators. It stands to reason they should have superior visual accuity