Feats and PC class for a dragon?

[Balor01]

I have two questions regarding dragons.

1. Which feats are very good for a dragon up to adult age

2. Which PC class would dragon be most likely to want to learn up to adult age

I guess old dragons would want caster PCs and caster feats, but for younger I am not sure.

thanks

[Ansem]

Dragons are usually Sorcerers due to their innate ability, but they advance per Dragon class mostly, which at high levels starts offering Sorcerer casting as a class feature of itself.

[Drachasor]

Sorcerer stacks with Dragon casting, and they aren't treated as primarily casters so it takes 2 sorc levels to up their CR by 1 -- if you go by the silly rules on that anyhow.

[Know(Nothing)]

If you're doing a lot of melee fighting and feel like pumping dex, Combat Reflexes plus Large and in Charge is always fun. Then again, focusing on casting is probably the more powerful solution.

[TuggyNE]

Sorcerer stacks with Dragon casting, and they aren't treated as primarily casters so it takes 2 sorc levels to up their CR by 1 -- if you go by the silly rules on that anyhow.

No, if you go by the rules it's an associated class.
A spellcasting class is an associated class for a creature that already has the ability to cast spells as a character of the class in question, since the monster’s levels in the spellcasting class stack with its innate spellcasting ability.

The rules are silly, yes, but not that silly.

[Pikkle]

I like Abjurant champion. The level 5 ability that puts caster level at base attack bonus can help with overcoming SR and having nice buff durations.

[Coidzor]

Sorcerer levels and Gish PrCs to progress their casting without losing as much robustness are the first things that come to mind. There's some dragon-specific classes in Draconomicon which might be of interest, especially one of the ones that convert their sorcerer casting into cleric casting, IIRC.

As for feats... Flyby Attack is nice. There's a number of metabreath feats, of which Entangling Exhalation from Races of the Dragon is a useful example, though it's usually brought up in the context of things a Dragonfire Adept will want.

This handbook (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=303204)should prove useful.

[Yogibear41]

Depends on the dragon, but for the majority abjurant champion, as someone already stated, seems nice, shoot if I was a dragon I'd do my best to avoid combat all together, unless it was painfully obvious the opposition stood no chance. Why risk your life when you can come back in a few hundred years (possibly out living the people who attacked you) and dominate them?

[Drachasor]

No, if you go by the rules it's an associated class.

The rules are silly, yes, but not that silly.

Hmm, must have misremembered that. So this makes for oddity when a Dragon with class levels in Sorcerer and no natural casting ability gets old enough to cast as a 1st level Sorcerer. Suddenly its CR jumps through the roof.

[cakellene]

There are also prestige classes just for dragons.

[Drachasor]

Depends on the dragon, but for the majority abjurant champion, as someone already stated, seems nice, shoot if I was a dragon I'd do my best to avoid combat all together, unless it was painfully obvious the opposition stood no chance. Why risk your life when you can come back in a few hundred years (possibly out living the people who attacked you) and dominate them?

Well, once you have 7th level spells you can afford to have Clones ready in case you die. High level dragons are just as hard to kill as any Tier 1...which means it is almost impossible.

At lower levels it does make more sense to play things conservatively though. Abjurant Champion and other Spellcaster PrCs are good one you get spellcasting. As well as Dragon PrCs of course.

A smart dragon should have a dozen ways to fake its death and run away if needed. Ideally so it can plot revenge.