Dragons in the Party

[cartejos]

I'm going to be playing a solo campaign sometime in the near future and thought it'd be cool to have a dragon alongside me, helping out in combat and such. So in your experiences, what would be the easiest/best/most fun way to acquire a dragon

[FelineArchmage]

I'm going to be playing a solo campaign sometime in the near future and thought it'd be cool to have a dragon alongside me, helping out in combat and such. So in your experiences, what would be the easiest/best/most fun way to acquire a dragon

Dragon Cohort feat - can't take it until level 9 though.

You also have to be able to speak draconic, but that should be simple.

[Goaty14]

Leadership, but tell the DM your character is interested in looking for dragons to serve him.

[Quertus]

Arms & Equipment had prices for Dragon eggs, and training DCs.

1) Play an immortal character
2) train your own Dragon
3) profit!

[Andor13]

1) Find a Dragon
2) Pledge fealty to Dragon.

Or play a wizard and upgrade your familiar to a pseudo or Faerie dragon for adorable mayhem.

[Fouredged Sword]

I am partial to playing a dragonborn Cleirc with fire and cold domains19/contemplative 1 for the earth domain with the catalogues of enlightenment planer touchstone for the aor domain granted power.

Then take the feat that ups your effective turn/rebuke level by 1 to fix the level lost to contemplative.

Now you can rebuke dragons (gold) and creatures of the fire, earth, cold, and air (brass, bronze, silver, copper) subtypes independently of one another.

You can run around with 19/20 cleric casting and 100HD of dragon minions.

You can apply negative levels to a dragon with your HD to reduce it to half your HD and then rebuke it into your control. Then heal the negarive levels. It is still within your control limit.

Run around with 1 dragon up to your HD of each of the big 5 metalic colors.

Choose dragons that favor pretty lady humanoid forms. Name yourself Charlie. Refer to them as Charlie's Dragons. Get up to spy shinanagins.

[Uncle Pine]

Arms & Equipment had prices for Dragon eggs, and training DCs.

1) Play an immortal character
2) train your own Dragon
3) profit!

Don't forget to Bestow Curse extra age categories (see BoVD) unto your newborn dragon to speed up the process!
Alternatively, you can schedule trips to the Far Realm for your draconic friend in-between different adventures to make sure it grows at a reasonable pace (remember the Far Realm has a time ratio of 1:0 to the Prime Material). Just make sure to prepare your dragon so that it can actually survive alone in the Far Realm for that long. Or start this experiment with A LOT of dragons.

[ATHATH]

I am partial to playing a dragonborn Cleirc with fire and cold domains19/contemplative 1 for the earth domain with the catalogues of enlightenment planer touchstone for the aor domain granted power.

Then take the feat that ups your effective turn/rebuke level by 1 to fix the level lost to contemplative.

Now you can rebuke dragons (gold) and creatures of the fire, earth, cold, and air (brass, bronze, silver, copper) subtypes independently of one another.

You can run around with 19/20 cleric casting and 100HD of dragon minions.

You can apply negative levels to a dragon with your HD to reduce it to half your HD and then rebuke it into your control. Then heal the negarive levels. It is still within your control limit.

Run around with 1 dragon up to your HD of each of the big 5 metalic colors.

Choose dragons that favor pretty lady humanoid forms. Name yourself Charlie. Refer to them as Charlie's Dragons. Get up to spy shinanagins.
Don't forget to throw in a dip into Paragnostic Apostle for an extra effective turning level above that which taking another Cleric level would give you.

[Celestia]

Play a character with a high charisma score and wear skimpy clothing. Dragons are total sluts, so it should be easy to seduce one into serving you. Don't be afraid to pimp yourself out for a pet dragon.

[Ruethgar]

If you just want the look of a dragon with beastly claws, Wild Cohort(with a leinent GM)or Animal Companion for the draconic variant cat thing from Dragon Magic IIRC(Phynixkin? AFB). Refluff to a raptor because they are cooler and are similar enough in abilities to the phynixkin and give it the Dragon Wings feat. Or just Dragonblood Ascociate any animal companion or mount and give it wings.

Spheres of Might can do the similar with the Beast Mastery sphere(basically 3.0 animal companions) and it can be templated to the nines.

Drakkensteeds are pretty cool looking and manageable. If you don’t have the mount class feature they fall off quick though.

Edit: One of my favorite was Dragonblood Ascociated Murder of Crows. A swarm of dragons, not very powerful(especially since you pretty much have to do it via handle animal if you don’t have Spheres of Might or cheese it with Animal Friends), but awesome.

[stack]

Spheres of Might can do the similar with the Beast Mastery sphere(basically 3.0 animal companions) and it can be templated to the nines.


Templates counts their CR increase toward the creature's HD for determining your caps, so 'template to the nines' is not free. Plus you are refluffing a not-dragon with Int 2 or less into being a dragon, which I suspect is outside the desired range of the OP.

There is a 3PP pathfinder dragonrider class; I have no personal experience with it. I believe the 1PP dragon companion material in PF is lackluster. The 3.5 methods I am aware of seem to have been covered.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Easiest way: High-charisma Zhentarim Skymage.
Strongest way: Idem.

It's a five-level class. You get a mount. Restrictions:

(1) It must fly.
(2) It may not have more HD than 1 + class level + CHA mod.

Dragons are explicitly included. At level 11 with 20 charisma, you can have a dragon with 11 HD.

If you extend the class with Legacy Champion, you can have a dragon with 24 HD at level 20.

[Ruethgar]

Templates counts their CR increase toward the creature's HD for determining your caps, so 'template to the nines' is not free. Plus you are refluffing a not-dragon with Int 2 or less into being a dragon, which I suspect is outside the desired range of the OP.

Had to go back and reread that, my bad, still, a couple choice templates would be nice. Plus if you pick Megarqptor for PF it has an Int of 6, Advanced for +1 CR puts it at 10.

There is also that little matter of ‘unless the entry says otherwise’ in regards to weather or not it is still an animal with that clause you could boost its Int past 2 with HD in 3.5, PF I think they officially ruled against it though.

Also, you can get a 4HD Awakened Animal Friend if you are a Gnome, Gnome Associated, or Stoneblessed. You can have multiple theoretically but it gets weird since the pools don’t stack but you aren’t allowed to get more until your pool exceeds your Awakened Friends.

Edit: As to the skymage above, depending on GM ruling, Bloodlines could be a good way to boost that further and there are a few ways to get into Uncanny Trickster early as well.

Oh, almost forgot. Masters of the Wild method for finding Animal Friends still stands. Forget the spells, I remember one was Detect Plants and Animals, but it allows you to get better animals, theoretically +8 to all stats sort of animals. But there is a limit to how often you can do it.

[Remuko]

Had to go back and reread that, my bad, still, a couple choice templates would be nice. Plus if you pick Megarqptor for PF it has an Int of 6, Advanced for +1 CR puts it at 10.

I just went and looked and thats weird. Pathfinder has them tagged as animal despite having that int. "maybe they changed the rules from 3.5?" i thought, so i went to check and nope, animals only have Int of 1 or 2. Wonder why the dino breaks this rule.

[Thurbane]

Guard Dog (25gp) + Disguise Skill?

https://sociopouch.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/c51.jpg

[Nifft]

I just went and looked and thats weird. Pathfinder has them tagged as animal despite having that int. "maybe they changed the rules from 3.5?" i thought, so i went to check and nope, animals only have Int of 1 or 2. Wonder why the dino breaks this rule.

My guess would be poor editing.

[HouseRules]

"Dragging in the party" to your problem of finding Dragons for a pet is not the best way to find them. Instead, look for Dungeons in secluded mountains. Dungeons in Snow Mountains tends to have White Dragons. Dungeons in the Volcanic Mountain Range have Red Dragons.

Is bringing a pet to the party not allowed? I'm pretty sure anyone could buy a Warhorse (300 gp) and bring it with them, so there should not be a problem with buying a dragon or finding a dragon and bringing it along. However, it would take a full position in the party and be an experience hog.

I don't like the new school of things without my army. Where is the 20 soldiers per character level from Chainmail? Every Fighter should get 20 Level 1 Warriors each time he levels up without need the Leadership Feat Tax. I also need some Corporals to handle them so convert some of them into Experts. I also need some Medic, so convert some of them to Adept. 1 Medic per Platoon, 3 platoon per squad = 1 Adept, 3 Expert, 36 Warriors per 2 character levels since I get 20 soldiers per character level. Therefore, I should get 2 Experts and 18 Warriors on Odd Levels, and 1 Adept, 1 Expert, and 18 Warriors on Even Levels.

P.S.: Which version was it that says that Evil Male Dragons are Dominate, and Good Female Dragons are Dominate in the Color/Metallic of the New Born Dragon? Thus, half-dragon dragon is more likely to be bias in a certain direction.


Play a character with a high charisma score and wear skimpy clothing. Dragons are total sluts, so it should be easy to seduce one into serving you. Don't be afraid to pimp yourself out for a pet dragon.

I did not realize that you have played characters that gave birth to Half-Dragons and Full Dragons (beautiful Silver Dragon Mother are a thing right? Dragonlance Fans should say yes).