Bestiarum vocabulum - Drake (New Race)

While I’m busy with a thousand things (mostly study, job, raising my little goblin, more study etc.) here’s a new race for Pathfinder, based on the drakes from the awesome Fantasy Craft d20 game (another inspiration was, I guess, Castle Falkenstein). This is just a (very) rough draft. After all, playing with dragons is cool.

Drakes

+2 Strength, +2 Intelligence, –2 Dexterity, –2 Wisdom: Drakes are strong and keen of intellect, but clumsy and arrogant.

Draconic beast. Drakes are creatures of the Dragon type. Because of their anatomy, drakes aren’t tool users. They can use their wing claws to hold 2 items like a Small creature or their mouths to hold 1 item like a Medium creature. Any attempts to wield or manipulate tools/objects suffer a -4 penalty. Drakes can’t be trained or buy ranks in skills such Sleight of Hand unless they spend a feat to negate this racial penalty.

Large size. Drakes get bigger with age.

Speed: 20 feet, fly 60 feet (poor).

Fang and Talon: Drakes deal 1d8 points of damage with their bites. They can spend two secondary natural attacks with their claws (1d4 each) and one tail slap (1d6). They can buy Monster feats to improve their natural attacks.

Scales: +4 natural armor.

Draconic Girth: due to their size and mass, drakes gain double their hit dice (but not their Con modifier) at 1st level. Drakes can’t be trained or buy ranks at Acrobatics, unless they spend a feat to negate this racial penalty.

Brutal: drakes melee attacks receive a +2 racial damage bonus.

Monstrous Nature: drakes suffer a -4 penalty in Diplomacy check against humanoids, monstrous humanoids and intelligent magical beasts. These creatures start with an unfriendly reaction. Drakes have a +4 racial bonus on Intimidate checks against them. Animals and unintelligent magical beasts are scared by drakes and usually flee or attack them on sight. True dragons consider drakes their slaves and servants and treat them likewise.

Voracious: drakes must eat three times more than a normal medium humanoid. However, they don’t need to eat and are never thirsty.

Old Scar: drakes are slow healers. Their natural healing works on weeks, not days. Healing spells work with half their potency on drakes.

Dragon Senses: drakes have a +4 racial bonus on Perception checks.

Greed: drakes receive a +2 racial bonus on Appraise skill checks made to determine the price of goods or to determine if a particular item is magical.

Mimicry (Ex): A drake can perfectly mimic familiar sounds, voices and accents. This ability does not enable the drake to speak languages they can’t normally speak. To duplicate a specific individual’s voice, a drake makes a Character level check + their Int. modifier; a listener familiar with the voice being imitated must succeed on an opposed Sense Motive check to discern that the voice isn’t genuine.

Languages: Common and Draconic.

Favored Class: Sorcerer.

Drakes and initial Weapon/Armor Proficiencies.

At 1^st level, a drake can replace can replace their proficiency with Light and Medium Armor to improve their natural armor bonus to +6; if they have access to Heavy Armor, they can replace all their Armor Proficiencies to improve their natural armor bonus to +8.

Drakes can’t acquire any Armor or Shield Proficiencies, unless they learn first to assume a humanoid shape.

A 1^st level drake spellcaster can replace all their Armor proficiencies for the Natural Spell feat (even if he doesn’t meet the normal requirements).

Want more dragon powers?

If you want more draconic traits to your Drake you have to buy Sorcerer (Draconic Bloodline) levels. You follow all the class rules, except for Bloodline powers, which follow the rules below:

Claws (Su): you don’t gain this power. Instead of it you gain:

Draconic Senses (Ex): you gain Scent and the ability to roll Perception checks even if sleeping. At 7^th level you gain tremorsense 30 ft. At 11^th level you gain blindsense 30 ft.

Dragon Resistances (Su): as written.

Breath-weapon (Su): you gain this Bloodline power at 5^th level. You gain additional uses at 9^th, 17^th and 20^th level. You can suffer the Exhausted condition to increase by one step the damage dice of your breath (from d6s to d8s). While Exhausted you can’t flight.

Wings (Su): you don’t gain this power. Instead of it you gain:

Skymaster (Ex/Su): at 9^th level you gain average fly maneuverability and can keep flying indefinitely, without tiring, even while sleeping (usually by circling around an area). This last type of sustained flights allows you to rest on air and is a supernatural ability. At 15^th level, you can withdraw as a move action if you fly.

Power of Wyrms (Su): you don’t gain this power. Instead of it you gain:

Draconic Might (Ex): at 20^th level you become of Huge size. Your Strength increases by +6, your Constitution by +4 and your Natural Armor by +1.