Effective dragon PCs

[Veritas7]

So my friends and I had the bright idea of running a campaign where the players are children of the original dragon god. We are allowed to play any type of dragon on d20pfsrd.com, and we will gain age categories as we level. We may or may not be doing gestalt characters. So, does anyone know some good optimization combos involving dragons and class levels?

[Ramza00]

This is 3.5 material not pure pathfinder.

Blood Wind (Wizard / Sorcerer 1 from the Spell Compendium) Swift Action to cast. For 1 round you can use natural weapons and unarmed strikes as thrown weapons. Extend this to make it 2 rounds.

Throw some totemist for more natural weapons and then prestige into soulcaster.

[Jack_Simth]

So my friends and I had the bright idea of running a campaign where the players are children of the original dragon god. We are allowed to play any type of dragon on d20pfsrd.com, and we will gain age categories as we level. We may or may not be doing gestalt characters. So, does anyone know some good optimization combos involving dragons and class levels?

Sorcerer (+ PrC's). A lot of dragons have native Sorcerer casting, class levels stack with that, and Casting is King.

Also check on the specific rules of the gaining age categories. If it's "At level X, you're all wyrmlings, at level X+1, you're all "Very Young" irrespective of dragon type then your dragon choice (from a power perspective) should be different from "At level X, you're all whatever age category you'd be at X hit dice / Challenge Rating, and you change age categories when your level means you'd be at the appropriate amount of hit dice / Challenge Rating"

In the first, a dragon that starts strong and has a slow advancement but still 19th level Sorcerer casting at the end is best (so a Soverign or a Gold, with their 8 starting hit dice, is sweet). However: If that's by HD or CR, that's a different story - a Brass or Brine dragon will do much better (Wyrmling is CR 3 with 4 HD, and a Great Wyrm has 19th level Sorcerer casting).

Ignoring casting, dragons get a lot of attacks - so anything that adds to individual attacks will do well. A Rogue's Sneak Attack, a Paladin's Smite, the Arcane Strike (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/arcane-strike-combat/) feat, and so on.

They also get a lot of skill points (high Int, 6+Int per level) which works well with any skill monkey (although smaller dragons generally do stealth better...).

So... start by deciding what you want to play (beyond "Dragon" - what party role? Sneak? Ranged striker? Combat Controller? Buffer? Healer? Melee brute? What?), get a clearer idea of what rules you're working with, and go from there.

[liquidformat]

Be a Pseudodragon if you are allowed to.

[Veritas7]

Sorcerer (+ PrC's). A lot of dragons have native Sorcerer casting, class levels stack with that, and Casting is King.

Also check on the specific rules of the gaining age categories. If it's "At level X, you're all wyrmlings, at level X+1, you're all "Very Young" irrespective of dragon type then your dragon choice (from a power perspective) should be different from "At level X, you're all whatever age category you'd be at X hit dice / Challenge Rating, and you change age categories when your level means you'd be at the appropriate amount of hit dice / Challenge Rating"

In the first, a dragon that starts strong and has a slow advancement but still 19th level Sorcerer casting at the end is best (so a Soverign or a Gold, with their 8 starting hit dice, is sweet). However: If that's by HD or CR, that's a different story - a Brass or Brine dragon will do much better (Wyrmling is CR 3 with 4 HD, and a Great Wyrm has 19th level Sorcerer casting).

Ignoring casting, dragons get a lot of attacks - so anything that adds to individual attacks will do well. A Rogue's Sneak Attack, a Paladin's Smite, the Arcane Strike feat, and so on.

They also get a lot of skill points (high Int, 6+Int per level) which works well with any skill monkey (although smaller dragons generally do stealth better...).

So... start by deciding what you want to play (beyond "Dragon" - what party role? Sneak? Ranged striker? Combat Controller? Buffer? Healer? Melee brute? What?), get a clearer idea of what rules you're working with, and go from there.

We're starting at the Young Adult stage, and our GM says that we'll be gaining Mythic ranks during the campaign, though we don't start with them. I was thinking of running an Occult Dragon for the utility features, especially Item Mastery at later age categories, and running an Int-based build, since the party still needs a utility mage. My main source of worry at this point is which classes the Gestalt will go into, and whether I've missed some dragon variant that's incredibly well-suited to the task of being a control mage. I expect to do at least a little bit of PvP during this campaign, since another player has made it very clear that their CE Time Dragon wants to travel back to the beginning of time and remake the universe in his own image once he hits great wyrm age.

Basically, I'm struggling to choose which two classes to pick from among these four: Wizard (Exploiter archetype or otherwise), Psion, Magus, and Mindchemist Alchemist, and which dragon type to pick from among these three: Edict Dragon, Lunar Dragon, and Occult Dragon. It's been confirmed that these are all allowed, but I'm struggling to find the most optimal build for a battlefield control mage that can actually hold its own against a Time Dragon running a Charisma build. Since I don't have any experience with gestalt play, I figured I'd ask the experts for help. :biggrin:

[Andor13]

See if the Dragon prestige classes from the 3.5 Draconomicon are available?

[Galacktic]

The "In the Company of Dragons" book is literally all about this, a third party supplement for Pathfinder!