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.