Legend of Dragoon, Dragon Soul-Gems

[AzureKaden]

So I'm currently in the process of making a Legend of Dragoon Game based in the time of the Rebellion against eh Winglies.

Now obviously my players will be the first Dragoons, either managing to bring down a dragon and taking its Soul-Gem or making a pact with one to acquire the gem, but the actual Dragoon powers are what i'm having an issue with.

I'm holding this in a Pathfinder/3.5 hybrid, so I have the options of making the Dragoon Powers a Mythic Path (With the Gem as the source of the power), Making the Gems just REALLY powerful artifacts, something along the lines of a Legacy Item, or even just running it as a Gestalt game, and giving their 'Dragoon Level' gain exp at a super slow rate compared to their real class (With the specification that they cannot use the class without the gem).

Thoughts?

[Fri]

There's many systems better for Legend of Dragoons than 3.5, but if you *have* to use 3.5/PF...

I used to play in a 4e mecha game, and what we used for mecha might work for dragoons.

Basically, we play our "human" character as low level character (below level 6), while our "mecha" is a separate, much higher level character (at least level 12 or something). The mecha is a completely separate character, can be same class with the human character, can be different class, and both level up independently. Of course, the caveat is we do separate between when our human-level fights and mecha level fights, we fight foot soldiers and such as humans, and when the giant monsters appear, we then use our mechas.

I think that if you just replace "mecha" with "dragoon" it could work. So it's a gem or whatever that let you to change into a completely different, much higher level characters, with that level up separately. The detail is up to you. Maybe you want to keep it that you separate "mundane" fights and "dragoon" fights, or maybe you make a rule that you can only transform into dragoon mode for a limited number of rounds before resting, so it's a waste if you spend it on fighting goblins, up to you.

[Requiem_Jeer]

I think you're on the right track, vis a vis mythic path. But I'm not all that familiar with those mechanics, so how I'd run it...


It'd be halfway between a legacy item and an artifact. Their 'Dragoon level' would be a level of attunement to the artifact, achieved as storyline awards. Storyline-wise, the dragoon transformation isn't some one-and-done thing, so definitely make it some kind of extended thing. Probably make it last for 'an encounter' with a number of transformations per day depending on attunement level.


As for the specifics of the bonuses? I'd say... make a prestige class (more of a racial progression really). Dragon HD as base, no skill points. Add some features appropriate, usually SLAs, weapon enchantments, attribute bonuses, energy resistances, damage reduction, flight speed/maneuverability increases, stuff like that. The number of levels is not a direct 1-for-1 correlation for dragoon level. A dragoon level of 1 could be two levels of the PrC, and a class could have any number of levels, dragoon level 5 getting all of them. When they are in the form... they get those levels bolted on top of their existing ones.