I have nothig new to add to the reviews but hero lad is a pluse.

Dragons drew me into Dungeons and Dragons and roleplaying in general. Hence, I have had to beg many DM’s and GM’s for the opportunity to roleplay half-dragons, wyrmlings and servants of wyrms. I have also created various options for PCs and NPCs alike for the games that I run. From both standpoints, this is a superb supplement. It adds additional flavor to the story of half-dragons, dragonkind and the fantasy world that includes them. Here are the items I especially liked: • The content draws on the existing framework that is familiar for those with any 3.x or Pathfinder experience. However, (IMO) some of the options given are overpowered for 3.5, though they seem to mesh for a Pathfinder campaign at first glance. • It offers an excellent template options for less-than-half-dragons (although focused on Silver, Gold and Brass, these can be easily drawn out to their relatives). The feats presented fill many voids appropriately. (That last opinion may be a confirmation bias, as they match closely with my personal attempts to expand upon half-dragons, etc.) • The background information presents various complexities of the creation of half-dragons that can add excellent role-playing opportunities, plot hooks, and depth to your campaign/character background. Well worth its cost ($6.50 at the time), though knowing what I now do, I would have been willing to pay twice that amount. Fantastic Gallery is now on my list of publishers to search on. Thank you for the great supplement; I will let you know of any balance issues I discover, which I expect will be few if any.

So you’re running a campaign. The story: the classic tale of liberating a ravaged kingdom from the claws of a tyrannical dragon overlord. Your players have spent weeks writing up backstories (and debating whether or they should try that cool orc bard concept or play it safe and go with the halfling’s Charisma bonus). They hand you their character sheets and notes. You smile. The stats are balanced. The writing is legible. There isn’t a single ninja to be found. Everything looks ready to go...until one of the players mentions their character is the dragon’s half-breed daughter, born from when the dragon bribed the knight originally hired to slay her into abandoning his quest by...dropping the S.

It’s one of the ultimate, nerd power fantasies, being half-dragon. Everybody into classic fantasy fiction has had it at least once in their lifetime, and each time we ask to play one, they’re almost universally shot down because:

1. It’s too powerful to be a player race.

2. The odds of a mighty, immortal, and terrifying creature like a dragon and a mortal falling in love is just too rare to have a population large enough to make such a race plausible.

3. Anatomy. Nuff said.

Even with houserules and the classic wizard excuse, the idea of playing a half-dragon never feels right because dragons were never meant to be playable or interact heavily with mortals. But that hasn’t stopped people like Shane O’Connor and Talon Dunning from trying, and with “Children of Wyrms”, they’ve brought us a small step closer.

Because the book is advertised as a kit for playing as dragonblooded characters, I’ll be looking over how they work as a player race rather than NPCs or monsters (check out Thilo “Endzeitgeist” Graf’s excellent review for that). But enough talk, let’s see what we have to work with.

BIRTH AND BLOODLINE

Even more so than racial statistics, the biggest hurdle when using half-dragons is making them fit in universe. After all, “a wizard did it” only goes so far, and only covers “how” they come into being. What the logistics? The details? The ramifications? Well “Children of Wyrms” covers that, and while it doesn’t live up to its full potential or revolutionize the concept, it’s a good way to give these hybrids a place in your world beyond munchkins and “a wizard did it.” (“Uhuhuhuhuh” “hah-hah snort hah”)

Obviously, the book provides details on the biggest half-dragon question: pregnancy. Not a whole new ground is broken, half-dragon pregnancies have a longer gestation period and labor, as one would imagine, is long and very painful. After consulting a table to determine the length of the gestation period, chance to term, and duration of labor, the mother must make a Fortitude (DC 5) save every four hours of labor or take damage (success halves), with the damage and the DC increases with each roll, regardless of success. To grant some perspective, the labor for humans lasts 8 + 5d6 hours and takes 1d6 damage. Even if you got lucky and passed every throw, pray you have potions or your midwife’s a cleric, because you’re still looking at 135 damage on average! Obviously, hybrids of lower generations have shorter, less damaging births, but this definitely captures the essence of two species that were never meant to mix. But anyone can whip up some tables and assign damage and saves, did O’Connor and Dunning make sure to do more than that? Yes!

Aside from the birth logistics and the usual “reasons dragons go adventuring and falling in love outside their species” information, the book expands on existing half-dragon tropes, the most notable being the idea of dragon-hybrids past one generation. That’s right, O’Connor and Dunning not only cover half-dragons, but quarter-dragons and beyond! These different generations are represented by four templates: the “legacy half-dragon” (to distinguish them from the normal half-dragon template), the “quarter-dragon” (for grandchildren), the “greater draconic legacy”, and the “lesser draconic legacy.” But there’s a catch. Only dragons that can shapeshift as a supernatural ability can pass on their bloodline this way, due to dragon blood rapidly degenerating from the magic used to alter their form. Unfortunately, this means only bronze, gold, and silver dragons have this option. Metallics would be more likely to engage in these kinds of relationships than a chromatic, so it makes sense, but it’s still a missed opportunity (fingers crossed for a sequel). Additionally, each template comes with a sample character, each with different classes and backstories, but O’Connor and Dunning go the extra mile and use these backstories to tell a short, generational story arc. It’s not particularly deep, but it’s a good example of how to incorporate dragonblood into your world and makes for some good plot hooks. They even answer the cliche of the dragon parent always being the father. Simply put, female dragons have an instinctual aversion to “carrying another species’ child.” Additionally, should she wind up impregnated by one and changes shape, any unborn offspring and fertilized eggs are destroyed. Wow. Dark.

Unfortunately, the book never really gets into the details of half-dragon life. What about the struggle of raising a hybrid child, or trying to keep their heritage a secret? How would they interact with members of other races? How would other dragons view them? What about the child growing up? What about the inevitable meeting with the in-laws and other awkward family gatherings!? For all the love put into justifying their existence and fleshing out the little details, it’s actually surprising (and disappointing) this was left out. Additionally, they don’t provide any kind of side-effects or post-labor repercussions. The book encourages GMs to come up with their own, but some examples would’ve been nice. Despite this, we get some interesting concepts and enough details to make half-dragons feel like they don’t exist in a vacuum.

But what about playing as one?

THE RACE(S)

Aside from carving out a place in your world, the biggest hurdle with half-dragons is designing racial traits that capture the power of their mystical progenitor while still keeping it from utterly breaking the game. Countless designers have tried, and failed spectacularly, and “Children of Wyrms” has, unfortunately, become the latest addition to that pile.

As mentioned earlier, the book provides four templates, representing a different generation of dragonblood. The legacy half-dragon template, the closest generation, changes the creature’s type to dragon, grants a +4 natural armor bonus, darkvision 60, low-light vision, immunity to sleep, paralysis, and the energy of their dragon parent’s breath weapon, a fly speed equal to twice their base speed with average maneuverability, two claw attacks, a bite attack, a breath weapon usable once per day, and a choice of one of three “Draconic Inheritance” abilities derived from their dragon parent (which shares the breath weapon’s uses per day interestingly). The character also receives a whopping +8 Strength, +6 Constitution, and +2 Intelligence and Charisma, and Draconic as a bonus language. Already it’s extremely overpowered, but because it’s a template, it stacks with the base creature’s abilities! The other templates grant the same abilities, albeit fewer or weaker versions, but all of them are still far too strong for PC race without some tweaking.

The book also provides some feats and a few magic items, but their benefits are fairly standard or don’t really bring anything new to the table. The only other piece worth mentioning are some rules for playing legacy half-dragon sorcerers, which basically amounts to forcing the player to select the same type of dragon as their ancestor, and damage and statistics don’t stack.

CLOSING

The half-dragon has been a staple of fantasy fiction for years, and playing one has been every gamer’s dream at one point or another. “Children of Wyrms” provides some good ways to integrate the eponymous race into your game, but due to their grossly high stats, it seems playing one will continue to remain a dream.

Dragons are a part of most fantasy settings, or at least, most of my fantasy settings! I love dragons and have played a Dragon Disciple more than once, they are just damn awesome. So when I saw this book I knew that I just had to buy it, if for nothing else then to learn something new about dragons and their children.

So, did I learn anything? Was there anything within these pages that I could actually use?

The simple answer is... yes, but it was not what I expecting. I had hoped that this would be a book useful for players, but since all the templates within increases a creature's CR (from +3 to +1), they wont really be useable for players starting a campaign at 1st level. Sure, you could easily use these if starting a higher level campaign, but I tend to start games at 1st level. I was also hoping to learn a bit more about life as a wyrm child, but the book actually has very little of this type of information and is mostly focused around the four different draconic legacy templates (legacy half-dragon, quarter-dragon, greater draconic legacy and lesser draconic legacy). Don't get me wrong, these templates are all varied and useful, especially to GMs and you could certainly build a campaign around these, imagine if all the PCs start as one of these?

Aside from the templates, you'll also find a couple of NPCs that use the templates (CR 7-13), a few new feats (logical, but nothing spectacular), 3 new magic items (solid and useful), and some optional rules for draconic sorcerers.

I liked the last part of the book the best, which describes the problems of carrying a wyrm child to term. It's just as dangerous as it sounds, especially if you are a halfling! This is the type of information I was hoping to get more of.

All in all, a nice book with spectacular artwork and probably the most beautiful layout that I've seen in any 3PP book (not counting most Open Design books). However, I would have loved more information about how society view these children, how their presence could form a setting or maybe just a campaign, and overall, how to introduce them into the game. Had the designers presented a playable race for players wanting to introduce one of these into a 1st level party, that would have been perfect.

For the price, I actually don't think you get all that much information, so I am going to settle on a 3.5 star verdict, rounded down to 3. A nice book, but more beautiful than it is insightful.

This pdf is 32 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page blank inside of front cover, 1 page ToC, 1 page back cover, 1 page blank inside the back cover, 1 page SRD and 1 page advertisement, leaving 25 pages of content, so let's check out this offering, shall we?

We all know that dragons can produce offspring and that half-dragons exist as well as that many a sorceror draws his power from his lineage. But what in-between? How does the transition from clearly draconic being to dormant power happen? This pdf kicks in with a discussion of exactly that by introducing the term "legacy" and discussing the transition from 1st generation legacy half-dragon to draconic legacy sorcerors of up to the 30th generation.

Starting at the beginning, the first complex template we get is for the legacy half-dragon (CR +3), which includes natural attacks for 3 sizes and 10 different draconic inheritances. Draconic inheritances include breath weapons (which are always part of the package) and 3 different sample legacies (bronze, silver and gold) à 3 recommended abilities that include luck, faster flight and similar gifts. A CR 7 sample character is included to illustrate the application of the template.

After that, we get the Quarter-Dragon (CR+2) complex template, again with natural attacks by size and 5 draconic inheritance options, again including breath weapons and 3 inheritances we already know from the half-dragon. However, the quarter-dragon must use an inheritance to gain access to a breath-weapon. Wings aren't included in the package either and thus one inheritance can gain access to them. There's a formatting glitch that reads "half-dragon" instead of "quarter-dragon" in the breath-weapon entry. We get another sample character, this time a rather complex one - a CR 13 quarter-dragon ninja! COOL!

One step further down the lineage, the greater draconic legacy creature-template adds +1 to the CR (minimum 2) and gains either a breath weapon, or one of 3 possible draconic inheritances, which we at this point already know from the other templates. There's a formatting glitch that reads "half-dragon" instead of "greater draconic legacy creature" in the breath-weapon entry. Greater draconic legacy creatures don't get a bite, but only claw attacks. We get a sample NPC at Cr 10 this time a sorceress.

Finally, there's the lesser draconic creature (CR +1, minimum 1), which can't get access to breath weapons, but to one of 3 draconic inheritances and natural claws as weapons. Again, we get a sample character, this time a rogue at CR 8.

Finally, there a kind of minor template, the draconic legacy sorceror - essentially, the template/page describes how sorcerors of draconic bloodlines and the templates in this book interact and how being a half-dragon AND a draconic bloodline sorceror enhances the power granted by one's lineage.

We also get 6 feats, ranging from being more agile flyers to gaining an elemental aura, additional draconic inheritances, additional breath-weapon uses and a 1st-level feat that bumps you up one step on your lineage as well as the ability to add energy damage to your weapon. We also get 6 sample traits that include improved natural healing and graceful aging.

On the magic item-side, we get a lesser hat of disguise, the hat of racial purity, that disguises one part of your lineage. The Staff of the Dragon is an ok staff with thematically-linked powers and the ring of draconic presence can frighten foes.

Finally, we get an optional one-page table on which characters generated with this pdf can roll d%s to determine cosmetic features that set the character apart like a snout, vestigial wings etc.

Part 2 of the pdf is rather interesting - it includes information on pregnancy with draconic children of all varieties as well as rules for the rather difficult birth and labor. While only a short section, it comes with a variety of tables for the different kinds of draconic beings introduced in this book and is the most innovative and, in my opinion, cool and unique chapter of the pdf.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are very good - I only noticed one minor formatting glitch, as mentioned in the review. The pdf is extensively bookmarked and comes with an artless, printer-friendly additional version. Art and layout are a good cue - The layout of this book adheres to a 2-column standard and is STUNNING. Beautiful. Glorious. And the same holds true for the GORGEOUS artworks. The cover is indeed just as beautiful as the interior artwork - only 2 pieces, on page 23 and 24 fall short of a quality that could be found in a paizo-publication. The artists Jon Hodgson, Talon Dunning, Jonathan Kaufman, Matt Manard and Lorraine Schleter did a great job. The content per se is neat, but before I get into details, I'll have to come clear. I don't like half-dragons. I consider them overdone, predictable and a dilution of draconic awesomeness, especially since the 3.5-days. This pdf thus has a hard standing with me and addresses at least some of my gripes with half-dragons, namely that they seemed to exist in a vacuum - no-one knew how they gestated, how their blood dilutes etc. and this pdf acts as a comprehensive guide that adds variety to them. The option to scale them and their generational special features are rather nice, as they add to their variability. The second chapter is especially worth a read. However, not all is perfect in this supplement: My first gripe is that only the gold, silver and bronze-bloodlines are covered. While I do realize that more would have expanded the book, that's exactly what this one would need: Expansion. Evil bloodlines for example. More options for draconic inheritances and coverage of at least the basic kinds of dragons (or at least all the good ones in this and all the evil ones in a companion pdf) would have been neat.

My second gripe with this pdf is that there is no racial option that truly caters to draconic player characters, as all of the templates add at least 1 to the CR. While depending on the player's options you use this might not necessarily upset your game, the options presented herein are more powerful than standard-races. That means players looking for a PFRPG-variant of the Dragonborn won't find one in these pages, which is a huge pity, as I think that the potential to create such a being is definitely here and within the capabilities of authors Talon Dunning and Shane O'Connor. If you don't like Half-Dragons, this pdf will probably not change that. What it does, though, is put them into a context within the overall setting and thus make them less vacuous. Even better, the quality of the overall production and the price make this a rather interesting book to make the by-now predictable half-dragon more versatile. I fully expected to despise the book personally and approached it on my reviewer-perspective. Surprisingly, I did enjoy what I finally read and consider this pdf a worthwhile investment for DMs seeking to spice up draconic characters in their game. If the pdf was longer and featured all draconic bloodlines and more inheritances (perhaps even unique ones for different age-categories) to choose from, I'd immediately score this 5 stars. As written, I still consider this book a good resource with afore-mentioned minor shortcomings, thus my final verdict will be 4 stars.

Endzeitgeist out.

My son loves dragons. One of the things he loved the most about D&D4 was the ability to play a Dragonborn. But we didn't get to play that much D&D4, he does get to play a lot of Pathfinder. So Children of Wyrms is a great product.

Let's start with the obvious. You get to play half-dragons, quarter-dragons and dragon-bloodied (not their word) characters. So dragon plus some other race. The details for the race creation is detailed. The bonuses are detailed as expected and follow from the Pathfinder source. So nothing is unexpected here. All four "races" are detailed and special attention is give to Draconic Sorcerers. Plenty of feats are included as are magic items. For the old-schooler there is even a table of random physical traits varying by generation. Part 2 deals with the "Birds and the Bees" aspect of dragons and birth. It is assumed for the most part that the father is dragon and the female is humanoid. I suppose the reverse does not pose as many problems for a dragon female.

The book is only 30+ pages, but packs it full.

The artwork and layout is top notch, what I have come to expect from FG actually. And works as good companion piece to Sisters of Rapture. I am guessing from the point of view of both books the Sisters spend a lot time with dragons.

I am not 100% sure I'll use the entire book. But I do plan to use the feats next time my son's "3.x Dragonborn" levels up and it really has a lot of potential.

My only con in this book? No rules for playing 1/2 Chromatic dragons. Not that I can't figure it out from all of this, but the assumption here is that only good dragons do this. I get that and I understand where the authors are coming from, but the option would have been nice.