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A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

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Crake said:
Still want spy satellites.
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Need more space research for that.

So far, we haven't even achieved orbit. Or worked out all the issues that doing so would cause, like everything in the Moonchaser becoming weightless. Heck. We don't even have steering thrusters yet.
Crake said:
Mind Dragons seem pretty good social specialists, though there's some obvious overlap with coordination overall.

Myrkdreki, as you say, make pretty good sneaky, spying dragons, but there's also some obvious overlap with deniable operations overall since they can readily put together some undead on a shoe string budget.

So with that in mind, we need some kind of administrative dragon, an industry dragon, and a combat dragon.
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For administration dragons, it might be possible to build on the chassis of the dragonpens. I'd focus here on INT, knowledge and profession skills, and overall a social build. Though I'm not sure I'm all that fond of the idea of making dragon administrators. Maybe more in the direction of scientists. I think I would go here with scales that have a base color similar to old parchment, with natural markings and patterns that look like ink. Bonus points if they get Magical Tattoo skills and can then hide stuff on their scales.

Industry dragon would be easy. Give them Craft skills, especially forging, things like architecture and some general affinity to trade. Balanced mentals and focus on Strength, while the spell selection should have many buffs. Could go with steel grey scales here.

Definitely not sold on a pure combat dragon. Maybe something that is vaguely taking the role of Pathfinder Psychopomps? Guiding souls and such things?
 
Duesal said:
Same here. I wanted to make our own Winter Dragons, Forest & Jungle Dragons, Desert Dragons, and Sea Dragons. Fill every niche the Chromatics and Metallics had with dragons loyal to the Imperium and Viserys.
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I would happily settle for even "mildly less insane and dysfunctional" dragons honestly.

Crake said:
Still want spy satellites.
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Space dragons are a thing. A literal dragon satellite is digimon however. Also probably yugioh.

Azel said:
No. I don't mean dragons that happen to be good capitalists. I mean a dragon that is, by birth and metaphysically, a superior capitalist.

Like...

All their natural attacks are treated as if they had the Union Bane enchantment.
Their breath weapon causes private debt as a side-effect.
Their scales have fine print and using them for armor opens you up to the dragon suing you from the afterlife to gain possession of your body.
Their size category can vary by up to one step up or down, depending on the current state of the stock market.
They have DR 10\Taxation or Regulation.

You know.

Capitalist Dragon
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Reminds me of the dragon of wallstreet from this book.
 
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Azel said:
Need more space research for that.

So far, we haven't even achieved orbit. Or worked out all the issues that doing so would cause, like everything in the Moonchaser becoming weightless. Heck. We don't even have steering thrusters yet.

For administration dragons, it might be possible to build on the chassis of the dragonpens. I'd focus here on INT, knowledge and profession skills, and overall a social build. Though I'm not sure I'm all that fond of the idea of making dragon administrators. Maybe more in the direction of scientists. I think I would go here with scales that have a base color similar to old parchment, with natural markings and patterns that look like ink. Bonus points if they get Magical Tattoo skills and can then hide stuff on their scales.

Industry dragon would be easy. Give them Craft skills, especially forging, things like architecture and some general affinity to trade. Balanced mentals and focus on Strength, while the spell selection should have many buffs. Could go with steel grey scales here.

Definitely not sold on a pure combat dragon. Maybe something that is vaguely taking the role of Pathfinder Psychopomps? Guiding souls and such things?
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With the combat dragon I was thinking of it more in the vein of guardians/protectors. Something to fight alongside the Legions and patrol the borders, etc. We can never have too many of those. Failing that, explorers who would fit right in with Moonsong. We've got sneaky dragons, we're leaning towards making administrator dragons and industry dragons, but we would benefit from having a more protection inclined dragon since we're basically never going to be at peace.

Also the Calligraphy Wyrms were noted to be the single best fleshcrafting project we'd ever laid witness to, so I won't be surprised if getting their template takes a while.
silvanknight said:
Also this reminds me: (un)fortunately there is an undead template associated with capitalism: Tax Collector Creature Template
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The perfect template for us.
 
Duesal said:
With the combat dragon I was thinking of it more in the vein of guardians/protectors. Something to fight alongside the Legions and patrol the borders, etc. We can never have too many of those. Failing that, explorers who would fit right in with Moonsong. We've got sneaky dragons, we're leaning towards making administrator dragons and industry dragons, but we would benefit from having a more protection inclined dragon since we're basically never going to be at peace.

Also the Calligraphy Wyrms were noted to be the single best fleshcrafting project we'd ever laid witness to, so I won't be surprised if getting their template takes a while.

The perfect template for us.
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That's been a while ago though. I think the pinnacle of flesh-forging right now is Myrkdreki due to how many different things got blended into them, followed by Mind Dragons and Kobolds.

As for the combat aspect, this is why I suggested something psychopomp-like. They would perform a useful function we can't easily cover otherwise while having a good reason to get a heavy combat build. I'm leery of making a species that has no individual goals or desires except "war" and "servitude". Smells like someone willing to defect to Tiamat.
 
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Well, one thing that discourages us from creating a combat type dragon. All dragons can into combat after a certain point. Making them specialists doesn't seem worth it when you can instead have several castes of long-lived, knowledgeable beings with generally manageable temperaments.

And a specialist is more likely to do undue harm, or be extraneous to their purpose, especially if we're not relying on big murder beasts to carry the day for the most part.

On the whole, a dragon is probably a cheaper investment initially than an airship, but it takes a long, long time for that investment to pay off on anything like a commiserate level, and that's borderline since a big enough, well-armed, well-armored and well-supported airship should probably beat out a lone great wyrm once you scale upward enough to the point where one wouldn't want to attack it head-on, but instead from an oblique or indirect angle or method.
 
Azel said:
That's been a while ago though. I think the pinnacle of flesh-forging right now is Myrkdreki due to how many different things got blended into them, followed by Mind Dragons and Kobolds.

As for the combat aspect, this is why I suggested something psychopomp-like. They would perform a useful function we can't easily cover otherwise while having a good reason to get a heavy combat build. I'm leery of making a species that has no individual goals or desires except "war" and "servitude". Smells like someone willing to defect to Tiamat.
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To be clear, I'm not suggesting anything that would only want war. That is indeed a recipe for Tiamat defectors. That's the reason I emphasized protection as the main motivation there.

Also with the Calligraphy Wyrms, their biggest asset is their self-replication ability for a meager cost of, what was it, 200 IM? But otherwise the Myrkdreki are superior.
 
Mind you, Calligraphy Wyrms should be getting even cheaper. They replicate by eating gold, which is sinking in value.
 
Azel said:
Mind you, Calligraphy Wyrms should be getting even cheaper. They replicate by eating gold, which is sinking in value.
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We could just secure a whole lot of gold for Calligraphy Wyrms by cutting a deal with the Shaitan. None of the gold leaves the Opaline Vault, and we just churn out a few thousand Calligraphy Wyrms for the Imperium.
 
@Azel, it was outright stated in-update that summoning things that have an Arch-whatever looking over them may or may not bring a lot of heat on our heads.

My offer to look through Pathfinder for something of equal value but no overly-powerful overseers still stands, unless you have some sort of plan hanging on getting oursleves a Rider/bunch of high-cr Demons (whether we go for Cacodaemons or Quasits, respecrively) when we go for those 2kHD/day summoning sprees.
 
egoo said:
@Azel, it was outright stated in-update that summoning things that have an Arch-whatever looking over them may or may not bring a lot of heat on our heads.

My offer to look through Pathfinder for something of equal value but no overly-powerful overseers still stands, unless you have some sort of plan hanging on getting oursleves a Rider/bunch of high-cr Demons (whether we go for Cacodaemons or Quasits, respecrively) when we go for those 2kHD/day summoning sprees.
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There's no guarantee that's just a realistic option, you can randomly summon demons and other fiends out of the blue because there's thousands of years of propagation of conjuration out there for most of those things with little consequence to the action unless you go crazy, and calling down an Aspect of a Demonlord is just the tamest factor to consider specifically because everyone else literally can't afford to suddenly lose several thousand foot soldiers to some cheeky cabal of archmages up to no good

The response from literally any other faction should be... well, this is what happens. Because it's an existential issue for some other group to suddenly lose an army of grunts out of nowhere, but basically just Tuesday in the Abyss.
 
@egoo

@Goldfish pretty much sold me on using Brimoraks due to them maximising HD/Casting and seems confident that we can deal with any surprises, but I'm open to alternatives. I don't want to fight anything high-CR if we can help it.

That being said, I've stacked the summoning group to the point where it can take even a Rider, so I'm confident in the success of the plan as-is. But there's always room for improvement.
 
Crake said:
There's no guarantee that's just a realistic option, you can randomly summon demons and other fiends out of the blue because there's thousands of years of propagation of conjuration out there for most of those things with little consequence to the action unless you go crazy, and calling down an Aspect of a Demonlord is just the tamest factor to consider specifically because everyone else literally can't afford to suddenly lose several thousand foot soldiers to some cheeky cabal of archmages up to no good

The response from literally any other faction should be... well, this is what happens. Because it's an existential issue for some other group to suddenly lose an army of grunts out of nowhere, but basically just Tuesday in the Abyss.
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Which is precisely why I'm against using anything associated with Baator. That would just be asking for Asmodeus to squeeze a Infernal Legion through Slavers Bay.

With Daemons, I'm less worried. If they could spare the strength to attack us with such a strong force, they'd already be doing so. They are genocidal maniacs with little to no restraint. Every high-CR asset they got is likely busy somewhere else with genociding the locals.
 
If we ever make administration/bureaucracy related dragons this feat sounds useful: Verify

hopefully we can find a way to get rid of that pesky Asmodeus worshipper requirement.
 
Azel said:
Which is precisely why I'm against using anything associated with Baator. That would just be asking for Asmodeus to squeeze a Infernal Legion through Slavers Bay.

With Daemons, I'm less worried. If they could spare the strength to attack us with such a strong force, they'd already be doing so. They are genocidal maniacs with little to no restraint. Every high-CR asset they got is likely busy somewhere else with genociding the locals.
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Honestly it might be an unexpected boon if a stronger daemon shows up. That Olrethodaemon that escaped us in Sarnor for example... One day that thing is getting juiced.

But overall the fact that daemons are finite has me perked up.
 
Daemons also tend to show about as much loyalty as starscream, and are usually die hard nihilists.

It's less about enmity for them and more about attention.
 
Duesal said:
But overall the fact that daemons are finite has me perked up.
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Yep.
There is a plan in the works to set up a fully backgrounded process that would have us summon at least 1 of them every 4-7 days, with about zero on-screen attention necessary, through sheer stacking of too-deadly-to-get-out-of Snare modification.

Post-Reconquest, of course.
And even if we don't force the matter and summon an Oletrodaemin every day, the sheer damage to operations of Archdaemons, from further summoning all the Daemons the Olethrodaemons would know the True Names for?
Kinda effin' big.

We can even force-summon around a hundred or two of Olethros in a month, if we do set up a dedicated "kill a Rider whole you're at it"-group in the modified Snare.

That would probably be a considerable blow to the Archdaemons.
Even if the CR20 Olethrodaemons measure in thousands in their employ (we dont know if they do, but I would assume the higher end of the scale refardless).
 
...I do wonder if we could diplomance a low-cr Daemon into changing their "Everything is shit!"-edgy'ness on a fundamental level (see: Yrael, or Mereth in a lesser degree), and whether that would outright destroy them.

Our Diplo skill can go up to over a hundred with all the buffing, I wonder how the reality will handle all of it focused on an attempt of turning an omnicidal Outisider into a more... constructive entity.
 
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