Please Help Optimize This Dragon-Mount Build

[Doctor Despair]

I decided to try my hand at throwing together an amalgamation of uber mount feats and classes, but I'm struggling to try to pack in as many paladin levels as possible, and I feel I'm still missing out on some options. Using a Strongheart Halfling as the base, here's what I have thusfar:



ECL
Class
Effective Druid Level
Effective Familiar Level
Effective Mount Level
Paladin Level
Feats
Notes


1
Blood of Eberron Sorcerer
0.5
0
0
0
Draconic Bloodline (for flavor), Versatile Spellcaster (to cast Darkvision)
Trade Familiar for 1/2 sorcerer level to animal companion calculation


1
Greater Bloodline x3
2
0
0
0




2
Huntsman Druid
6
0
0
0
Track



3
Huntsman Druid
7
0
0
0
Weapon Focus: Heavy Mace



4
Huntsman Druid
8
0
0
0

Trackless Step, and 2nd level divine spells


5
Arcane Hierophant
12
8
0
0

Our companion now gains the benefits of being a familiar, even though it is not a familiar; retrain Draconic Bloodline as we level up.


6
Paladin
13
8
0
4
Natural Bond, Lunar Magic
Smite evil


7
Paladin
14
8
0
5




8
Paladin
15
8
0
6

Retrain Versatile Spellcaster as we level-up.


9
Paladin
15
8
0
7
Craft Magic Arms & Armor, Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Shuriken
Turn undead


10
Knight of the Blue Moon
15
8
15
7

Stacks with our sorcerer and paladin levels to determine mount abilities, and synergizes with our greater bloodline; retrain our EWP as we level.


11
Drakkensteed Mount Paladin
15
8
16
8
Devoted Tracker
Our special mount (at this time, a Drakkensteed) is now our animal companion and familiar; retrain Craft as we level.


12
Lightbringer Paladin
15
8
17
9
Dragon Steed, Celestial Mount
We gain the services of a Celestial Dragonnel as our mount, companion, and familiar, which is immune to many death/negative energy effects; retrain Lunar Magic as we level.


13
Paladin
15
8
18
10
Winter's Mount
Retrain Weapon Focus as we level.


14
Paladin
15
8
19
11
Shape Soulmeld (Planar Ward)
Gain the services of a Spiked Felldrake


15
Paladin
15
8
20
12
Share Soulmeld
Gain the services of a Gold Dragon Wyrmling



I suppose I was wondering if anyone could offer some general feedback or suggestions for options. Thusfar, the Huntsman Druid entry to Arcane Hierophant seems more efficient than Wildrunner / Beastmaster, and I'm not sure if Theurgic Bond offers more benefit than getting Planar Ward on the Wyrmling, given our heavy investment there.

I was also wondering if anyone could offer some insight into some questions I posted on the Simple Raw Thread that no one seems to be picking up:

Q813

Dragon Steed (Draconomicon) reads:


Benefit: You gain the service of a dragonnel as a steed. It serves loyally as long as you treat it fairly, much like a cohort.
Special: If you have a special mount (such as from the paladin class feature), this dragonnel replaces your special mount.

On page 139, it only seems to discuss advancing the dragon mount by paladin level.



Table 3-15: Dragon Special Mount Availability


Paladin Level
Dragon (Maximum Rider Size)


9th
Dragonnel (M)


11th
Spiked felldrake (M)


12th
Gold, wyrmling (S)


13th
Bronze, very young (S)


14th
Silver, very young (S)


16th
Gold, very young (M)


18th
Bronze, young


19th
Silver, young


20th
Gold, young



Later (on p. 140), however, it also has a table regarding Special Dragon Mount Abilities.

Most prestige classes and feats that I've found that affect mount progression seem to be predicated on increasing your effective paladin level for determing the abilities of your paladin mount. Holy Mount and Knight of the Blue Moon explicitly stack that way, for example.


Holy Mount: ...When determining the abilities of your paladin special mount, you can combine the levels of your paladin class with those of your other divine spellcasting classes. For example, a 5th-level paladin/3rd-level cleric with this feat grants his paladin special mount abilities as an 8th-level paladin.


Knight of the Blue Moon: ... At 1st level, you can call a special mount. This ability is identical to the paladin ability of the same name, except the mount will always match your alignment. Levels of paladin and Knight of the Blue Moon stack for purposes of determining the special mount's abilities. In addition, if you do not have a familiar, levels of sorcerer or wizard also stack for purposes of determining the special mount's abilities.

I wanted to confirm: does the type of dragon summoned seem to fall under "abilities," and so increase via these prestige classes that stack with paladin for that purpose, or does the type of dragon summoned seem to be governed entirely by your levels in the PhB Paladin class?

edited for better, clearer phrasing

Edit: Q814

The feat Dragon Steed's benefit line seems to imply that the dragon steed remains with you indefinitely. However, if it replaces your special mount, does that mean that it inherits the special mount's time limit on use (i.e. 2 hours/paladin level)?

Q815

Are there any rules governing what happens if the Dragon Steed ages up another category, either naturally or magically (such as via a Bestow Curse or something similar)? Dragons as Familiars on page 141 include a line that dragons that become very young or older become ineligible to continue to serve as a familiar, but there is no such language that I can find in the passage on Dragons as Special Mounts.

Age-ing up the dragon would have obvious benefits if it were an option to us, and it would be a huge boon if it turned out I was being overly conservative with my assumption that we need levels in PHB Paladin to both select higher-level dragons and increase our summon time. It would also be convenient if we had our dragon all the time instead of needing to summon it at all... But at least based on my initial reading, we are limited by the normal mount summon-time, we need levels in paladin to use the dragons as our special mounts instead of just effectively a random creature we ride, and it's dm fiat if we are able to keep the dragon if it magically ages. :/

[sleepyphoenixx]

I played around with a druid supermount build (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?289543-Supermount-Druid-(and-choosing-the-right-mount)) a few years ago too.
It used the Ranger Knight PrC (Dr317) instead of paladin to avoid alignment conflicts. It counts as a paladin of class level +5 for SM iirc.
That also lets you go further into Arcane Hierophant, increasing the value of Theurgic Bond.

You generally want only as many effective paladin levels as you need to get whatever mount you want.
The main special abilities you want are the Empathic Link and Share Saving Throws, and you get those at the minimum level.

After that it's more effective to push your animal companion level because unlike SM it has a constant +2 HD/3 levels growth rate.

That's why Dragon Steed is a trap imo. You have to really pump your effective paladin level to get anything good.
You should use Dragon Cohort with the DMG rules on making your cohort your special mount for a +2 LA (on the mount, not you).
That way you can get a dragon based on your character level instead of your effective paladin level.

As for your questions, yes anything that increases your effective paladin level for the purposes of your special mount counts, why wouldn't it?
The table for dragon special mount abilities is needlessly complicated, it's basically a level modifier like druid animal companions get.

As for needing to summon them it's not clearly spelled out, but from the fact that you need to provide a suitable lair i'd argue that you don't, they're there permanently.

For aging i'd just use the rules for dragons as player characters (Drac, p. 142). So they need to take racial levels as they age and don't get any benefit of aging before that.
For magical aging RAW it's like any other buff/debuff, it shouldn't have any impact on SM calculation. Your DM may disallow it anyway because it's very very broken.

[Doctor Despair]

I played around with a druid supermount build (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?289543-Supermount-Druid-(and-choosing-the-right-mount)) a few years ago too.
It used the Ranger Knight PrC (Dr317) instead of paladin to avoid alignment conflicts. It counts as a paladin of class level +5 for SM iirc.
That also lets you go further into Arcane Hierophant, increasing the value of Theurgic Bond.


Ranger Knight does seem very potent! It's actually better than the Knight of the Blue Moon, even with the Greater Bloodline synergy (Blue Moon adds 8 to effective mount level, whereas Ranger Knight would add 9).



You generally want only as many effective paladin levels as you need to get whatever mount you want.
The main special abilities you want are the Empathic Link and Share Saving Throws, and you get those at the minimum level.


At least Empathic Link has redundancy with the familiar benefits; it's the bonus HD and shared saves that are most helpful, as you said.



After that it's more effective to push your animal companion level because unlike SM it has a constant +2 HD/3 levels growth rate.


Ideally we'd get both, but as I said, I'm struggling to fit the maximum for both effective class levels in while also keeping paladin level up to qualify for worthwhile Dragon Steeds.



That's why Dragon Steed is a trap imo. You have to really pump your effective paladin level to get anything good.
You should use Dragon Cohort with the DMG rules on making your cohort your special mount for a +2 LA (on the mount, not you).
That way you can get a dragon based on your character level instead of your effective paladin level.


The phrasing on the passage is a little confusing for me; I'm having a hard time discerning if this is a variant rule or not.


PALADIN COHORT MOUNTS
At the DM’s option, she may allow a paladin or other character
with a special mount class feature to combine the special mount
with the cohort feat. The special qualities such as the empathic
link and shared spells make this quite potent and worth a minimum of a +2 level adjustment to the cohort mount ECL.

If this is indeed the variant rule this seems to be, this would make any build predicated on using that subject to DM fiat (well, more than any build already is, I suppose), which is a little less appealing...



As for your questions, yes anything that increases your effective paladin level for the purposes of your special mount counts, why wouldn't it?
The table for dragon special mount abilities is needlessly complicated, it's basically a level modifier like druid animal companions get.


I would agree, but none of these PrCs explicltly say they increase their effective paladin level for the purposes of your special mount, which is where my concern is predicated from. Most of them seem to operate from the assumption that you're just using the basic special mount. As I'm looking at them with fresh eyes, however, I am noticing some variation in the wording that I'd overlooked before.

Many of them only reference stacking for the purposes of determining what special abilities they gain:



Knight of the Iron Glacier: War Megaloceros: ...If the knight has enough paladin levels that he has a paladin's special mount, the character has the option of dismissing his current special mount and replacing it with a war megaloceros special mount. In this case, the warmount functions identically to the paladin's special mount except for the improved base statistics given above. The character's paladin levels and Knight of the Iron Glacier levels stack for purposes of determining what sort of bonus Hit Dice, natural armor adjustments, Strength adjustments, base Intelligence, and special abilities the special mount gains.


Ranger Knight: Special Mount (Ex): At 1st level, the ranger knight gains a special mount as a 6th-level paladin. The ranger knight's class levels count as paladin levels (with 1st level counting as 6th level) for the purposes of determining what special abilities the mount gains. For example, a 10th-level ranger knight would have a special mount that gains abilities as though the ranger knight were a 15th-level paladin.

The standard mount for a Medium ranger knight is a light warhorse, and the standard mount for a Small ranger knight is a wolf trained to take a rider into combat. If the ranger knight already has a special mount, she does not gain another special mount, but her ranger knight levels stack with the levels of her previous class for determining the special mount's abilities.

Some only reference stacking for determing their abilities (which also seems very questionable):



Knight of the Blue Moon: Special Mount: At 1st level, you can call a special mount. This ability is identical to the paladin ability of the same name, except the mount will always match your alignment. Levels of paladin and Knight of the Blue Moon stack for purposes of determining the special mount's abilities. In addition, if you do not have a familiar, levels of sorcerer or wizard also stack for purposes of determining the special mount's abilities.


Triadic Knight: Special Mount (Sp): As a Triadic knight, you gain the service of an unusually intelligent, strong, and loyal steed. See the paladin class feature, page 44 of the Player's Handbook. Levels of Triadic knight stack with other class levels in classes that grant this feature for the purpose of determining the special mount's abilities.


A few more choice entries have a little more wiggle-room in their wording however:


Cavalier: Special Mount: A cavalier's class levels stack with any paladin levels the character might have for determining the characteristics of a paladin's mount.


Prestige Paladin: Special Mount (Sp): As the standard paladin ability of the same name, except treat the prestige paladin's effective level as three higher when calculating the mount's bonus Hit Dice, powers, and so forth (see the sidebar The Paladin's Mount on page 45 of the Player's Handbook).


Vadalis Beastkeeper: Improved Companion or Mount (Ex): Levels in Vadalis beastkeeper stack with levels in the class that grants you your animal companion or special mount for the purpose of determining the functional strength and level of that companion or mount. If you had more than one class that granted you an animal companion or special mount before becoming a beastkeeper, you must decide to which class to add each level for the purpose of determining the functional strength and level of your companion or mount.


Wild Plains Outrider: Animal Companion/Special Mount: A wild plains outrider adds his outrider class levels to his effective druid level (his actual druid level or one-half his ranger level) to determine the capabilities of his animal companion. Alternatively, he can add his outrider class levels to his effective paladin level to determine the capabilities of his special mount. However, he can only use one of these abilities. The choice must be made when the character enters the wild plains outrider class and can never be changed.

Cavalier seems the most promising, but as it's from Complete Warrior, the four feat taxes hurt pretty badly.

Prestige Paladin is, perhaps, the weakest in terms of RAW support, as the "so forth" follows a list of characteristics that typically appear on the Special Abilities chart, but it isn't explicitly against RAW to argue it should stack for the purposes of selecting advanced dragon mounts via Dragon Steed.

Vadalis Beastkeeper explicitly mentions level, although it does so in the context of the level of your mount. Functional strength is a bit more vague -- it could possibly refer to the type of mount selected. It does have a fluff requirement for the organization that requires you to be human.

Wild Plains Outrider could work, mentioning "capabilities," although all the other features are really, really lackluster.

Paladin 5 / Wild Plains Outrider 1 / Vadalis Beastkeeper 1 would have an effective Paladin level of 16, and that gets you a very young gold dragon that can carry a medium human. You miss out on 3 hitdie that way, and level 1 cleric casting, but it's something.




As for needing to summon them it's not clearly spelled out, but from the fact that you need to provide a suitable lair i'd argue that you don't, they're there permanently.

I'm inclined to agree; I saw someone else on another thread arguing that it meant that you had to build the lair in the celestial realm or else lose the service of the mount, and that seemed a bit... extreme, but I wanted a second opinion.



For aging i'd just use the rules for dragons as player characters (Drac, p. 142). So they need to take racial levels as they age and don't get any benefit of aging before that.
For magical aging RAW it's like any other buff/debuff, it shouldn't have any impact on SM calculation. Your DM may disallow it anyway because it's very very broken.

Oh, absolutely it's a broken concept; I was just curious if there was anything precluding it. That's the sort of thing I'd never do as a player, but might include as a plot device (towards the end of a campaign, presumably) if I were a DM for a player with this feat.

I suppose if I were to revise the above build based on those conclusions:



ECL
Class
Effective Druid Level
Effective Familiar Level
Effective Mount Level
Effective Paladin Level
Feats
Notes


1
Blood of Eberron Sorcerer
0.5
0
0
0
Draconic Bloodline (for flavor), Versatile Spellcaster (to cast Darkvision)
Trade Familiar for 1/2 sorcerer level to animal companion calculation


1
Greater Bloodline x3
2
0
0
0




2
Huntsman Druid
6
0
0
0
Track



3
Huntsman Druid
7
0
0
0
Mounted Combat



4
Huntsman Druid
8
0
0
0

Trackless Step, and 2nd level divine spells


5
Arcane Hierophant
12
8
0
0

Our companion now gains the benefits of being a familiar, even though it is not a familiar


6
Paladin
13
8
0
4
Natural Bond
Smite evil


7
Paladin
14
8
0
5




8
Paladin
15
8
0
6




9
Paladin
15
8
0
7
Devoted Tracker
Turn undead; retrain Bloodline as we level-up.


10
Drakkensteed Mount Paladin
15
8
8
8
Celestial Mount
Gain a special mount as our familiar companion; retrain Versatile Spellcaster as we level-up


11
Wild Plains Outrider
15
8
12
12
Dragon Steed
Gain a spiked felldrake as our mount; retrain Natural Bond as we level.


12
Vadalis Beastkeeper
12
8
16
16
Winter's Mount, Skill Focus: Handle Animal
Gain a very young gold dragon as our familiar mount-companion; retrain Mounted Combat as we level.


13
Beastmaster
19
8
25
16
Holy Mount
Retrain Skill Focus as we level.



We have max stats for companion and mount progression, but we do miss out on 6 natural armor and Scry on Familiar from the familiar progression, and 3 hitdie (and some other, less notable stats) from the dragon age category.

Of course, to plan this out over more than 13 levels, we could skip Beastmaster and continue right back into Arcane Hierophant and advance it up to divine casting as of a level 12 druid and arcane casting as of a level 10 sorcerer. I suppose, if we were willing to set ourselves back to a wyrmling (losing 3 more racial hitdie and some stats), we could also skip Vadalis Beastkeeper and stay as a Strongheart Halfling to ride the Wyrmling. Then we'd fit in all 10 levels of Hierophant and have casting as of a level 13 druid and 11 sorcerer. As you said, that opens up Theurgic Bond as an option to continue advancing the familiar stats, too. I suppose it's notable that going down to a Wyrmling allows us to get more bonus HD from our high effective paladin level, too, which would still be max'd out with Holy Mount.



ECL
Class
Effective Druid Level
Effective Familiar Level
Effective Mount Level
Effective Paladin Level
Feats
Notes


1
Blood of Eberron Sorcerer
0.5
0
0
0
Draconic Bloodline (for flavor), Versatile Spellcaster (to cast Darkvision)
Trade Familiar for 1/2 sorcerer level to animal companion calculation


1
Greater Bloodline x3
2
0
0
0




2
Huntsman Druid
6
0
0
0
Track



3
Huntsman Druid
7
0
0
0
Mounted Combat



4
Huntsman Druid
8
0
0
0

Trackless Step, and 2nd level divine spells


5
Arcane Hierophant
12
8
0
0

Our companion now gains the benefits of being a familiar, even though it is not a familiar


6
Paladin
13
8
0
4
Natural Bond
Smite evil


7
Paladin
14
8
0
5




8
Paladin
15
8
0
6




9
Paladin
15
8
0
7
Devoted Tracker
Turn undead; retrain Bloodline as we level-up.


10
Drakkensteed Mount Paladin
15
8
8
8
Celestial Mount
Gain a special mount as our familiar companion; retrain Versatile Spellcaster as we level-up


11
Wild Plains Outrider
15
8
12
12
Dragon Steed
Gain a gold dragon wyrmling as our mount; retrain Mounted Combat as we level.


12
Arcane Hierophant
16
9
27
16
Winter's Mount, Holy Mount



13
Arcane Hierophant
17
10
28
16




14
Arcane Hierophant
18
11
29
16




15
Arcane Hierophant
19
18
30
16
Theurgic Bond