Good thinking. This could be tied elegantly into the dragon mastery -> dragon behavior system. A skilled dragonrider could get the respect of his mount and the beast would behave itself even in metropolitan centers. But if your monster outstrips your skills, it'll be eating livestock and passersby, and might take a bite out of you as well. That means you can't take it anywhere.

This could be conducive to the levelling system. Maybe all dragons have a whole array of powers, but are "tamed" by virtue of a collar/spell/harness. The better your relationship with the wyrm, the more lax your restrictions on its power/autonomy, and so you gain access to more powerful dragon abilities (combat, flight, breath weapons, dragon magic). But if you give it too much slack, it might throw off your yoke and escape/turn on you/whatever. When you max out your mastery of your dragon(s), you can totally disable your power over it and it will stay with you anyway, Bellerophon-style.

In this vein, you might be able to rent a dragon with a permanent "nothing but fly" limiter on it. More expensive dragons might have one or two attacks available, but need special commands or magic-point-expenditures to use in battle. If you want the total dragon experience, you'd have to capture one, tame it with a highly customizable psi-harness, and then gradually gain its esteem through derring-do and proper conduct.

This gameplay element could be a lot of different things. Make sure you don't get too carried away with it. We all know what it looks like when a game designer is engulfed with a passion for care and feeding of mounts. :P

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Original post by dwmitch I like most of your ideas, but I think I saw a later reply that could explain how a dragon could be attacked that I'd like to go with. If I had the dragon(s) as seperate group members that would be up to eight PCs attacking, which would severely alter the balance. Not to mention that I'd have to worry about placing up to four 128 x 128 sprites, four 96 x 96 sprites (actual characters in the 32x64 range (I just got the sprites from Reiner's Tilesets, so if that's poor design he's the one to talk to)), and enemy sprites in a 640 x 480 battlefield.

Ahh I see. Awesome, at the time I realized I was thinking of a big 3D game [smile] I was imagining like Buhamat from FF7 and such. Yea, then that would be over crowded on a 640x480 screen. That idea of combining them is much better. Best of luck with your project!

- Drew

A couple of thougts. First you could eliminate the exploit bug, by having the cost to recruit an npc include the sale price of all their equipment.

And secondly, I think it would be good if you didn't ecounter normal enemies while your with a dragon. Instead you could only encounter large class enemies. These would be creatures that a dragon would likly have to deal with and as such they would powerful enough to kill a low level party instantly. So while your with your dragon you'll never encounter a vicious rabbit but you might have to go body to toe with a wandering hill giant.

Just my thoughts anyway.

[Edited by - TechnoGoth on February 15, 2005 2:00:47 AM]

Good thinking, TechnoGoth. Maybe dragons have natural enemies in the wild, and while a seven-story golem wouldn't bother waking up to fight a Ranger, a Ranger on a red dragon would look like dinner. You'd have to decide whether to risk flying through wyvern-infested skies or creeping through werewolf-infested swamps to get where you're going.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage You'd have to decide whether to risk flying through wyvern-infested skies or creeping through werewolf-infested swamps to get where you're going.

What exactly is a wyvern? According to the Dragon Warrior manual it's a stage of development between drakee (hatchling) and adult, but I've heard it used as if it were a completely different creature.

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Original post by dwmitch Quote: Original post by Iron Chef Carnage You'd have to decide whether to risk flying through wyvern-infested skies or creeping through werewolf-infested swamps to get where you're going. What exactly is a wyvern? According to the Dragon Warrior manual it's a stage of development between drakee (hatchling) and adult, but I've heard it used as if it were a completely different creature.

Haha, Sorry I thought it was funny you might want to broaden your research area beyond the dragon warrior manual.

"The wyvren is a relative of the European dragon and is said to be a more sinister version of the dragon. In popular mythology, it is seen as a creature of pure evil, possessing no remorse and delighting in the taste of human flesh. In Medieval art and heraldry, the Wyvern is nearly always depicted as having only two clawed legs, rather than the dragon’s traditional four. In some variations the wyvren is also said to possess a venomous barbed tail."

If you want to have dragons in your game it might be worth a search on google into the diffrent types of dragons since there are many diffrent kids of dragons depicated in mythology from around the globe, and should make for much more interesting types of creatures then standard fire, ice, and lightning dragons.

You could make the player have to complete a quest to gain access to the dragon like the airships if FF or the Chocobos in FFXI. The difficulty of the quest could keep low levels from gaining access.