Maybe his Draconians are not the same as yours.

I believe the OP's mud is based on DragonLance.

my save.c file has races as follows..

fprintf (fp, "Race %s~\n", pc_race_table[ch->race].name);

    ch->race = race_lookup ("human");

    /* initialize race */
    if (found)
    {
        int i;

        if (ch->race == 0)
            ch->race = race_lookup ("human");

        ch->size = pc_race_table[ch->race].size;
        ch->dam_type = 17;        /*punch */

        for (i = 0; i < 5; i++)
        {
            if (pc_race_table[ch->race].skills[i] == NULL)
                break;
            group_add (ch, pc_race_table[ch->race].skills[i], FALSE);
        }
//	ch->detection   = ch->detection|race_table[ch->race].det;
        ch->affected_by = ch->affected_by | race_table[ch->race].aff;
        ch->imm_flags = ch->imm_flags | race_table[ch->race].imm;
        ch->res_flags = ch->res_flags | race_table[ch->race].res;
        ch->vuln_flags = ch->vuln_flags | race_table[ch->race].vuln;
        ch->form = race_table[ch->race].form;
        ch->parts = race_table[ch->race].parts;
    }

                KEY ("Race", ch->race, race_lookup (fread_string (fp)));

and lookup.c

/* returns race number */
int race_lookup (const char *name)
{
    int race;

    for (race = 0; race_table[race].name != NULL; race++)
    {
        if (LOWER (name[0]) == LOWER (race_table[race].name[0])
            && !str_prefix (name, race_table[race].name))
            return race;
    }

    return 0;
}

Should i be trying to use race_lookup in my becomedragon function?

As long as no races before the dragons are removed, using just the number is fine.

Ok i feel like a dumbass.. i forgot to increment MAX_PC_RACE.. its working now.. im gonna have to work on nanny.. should be smooth sailing…

I believe the codebase shattered dreams does this concept. Should be under the diku->merc->rom->rot->subservers category. You could look into seeing how it was done on there. I could be wrong, I know the spinoff Malicious bliss is based on the SD codebase and it allows the dragon races to "evolve" after so having so many kills, alignment and level.