The title says it all. There is nothing more iconic in fantasy rpgs then Dragons. And since the begining, many of us have wanted to play a character who rode one. I have met few players that have not at least tried to convince their DMs to let them ride one. Leadership was one common path but often it was hard to manage a game where one player rode a dragon and others didnt.

This product eliminates most problems (besides the thematic issues one might have with the concept and the fact that you have a party member able to fly at level 1), by making having the dragon around the Dragon Riders Primary class feature. Sure they get paladin style casting, and a few bonus feats, but the real 'umph' of this class is your awesome mount.

At first glance the class seems very powerful, full base attack, strong saves, minor casting and an animal companion style dragon that is extremely potent. But the geniuses had a clever trick up their sleeves.

The Focus requirement of the strong dragons is higher. What this means is that in order for a dragon to take more then a move action at low levels the dragon rider must surrender his own actions. This requirement reduces as the character levels, but it goes a long way to keeping the class in line with the rest of the game, the player must choose between rider and dragons actions.

You also have a choice of every type of chromatic and metallic dragons, so finding one to suit your concept is fairly easy. Some are smaller and more agile, while the Red and Gold dragons are larger and more powerful (but have a higher focus requirement).

I had a player use one at my table for my last campaign, and my overall impressesions were positive. He chose the smaller blue dragon as his mount, and used it mostly as a mobile archery platform, which worked quite well. The flavor of the class also allowed for some interesting story developments with this evil dragon helping a good aligned character in the hopes of quickly gaining power.

Overall this is a great product and I have had and will have alot of fun with pcs and npcs using it. If you want to have a character riding a dragon, this is the hands down best way to go about it in pathfinder.

I wrote up a huge review for this, but neglected the 2000 character limit. Whoops!

Succinct version:

Good: Most of it. Well though out, good reasoning for a lot of issues. Dragons are involved. The class looks downright FUN to play. Remember that? FUN?

Bad: Three things irk me:

1) Spellcasting. You get 1st - 4th level arcane spells ala Paladin and Ranger, chosen from the arcane spell list. I would have like to have seen a unique list, perhaps culled from the ranger, druid, paladin, and arcane lists - pulling the best of the mount spells and bow/arrow boosting spells. 1st-4th level arcane spells are pretty limited to a class that isn't meant to be a mage.

2) The mental focus. You have to focus with your dragon each round in order to get it to do something other than move. A way to limit power? Yes. A way to really mess up the cool factor? Very much so. I understand that gold dragons > white dragons. I understand you need to find a reason for people to play white dragons. This is not a good enough reason. Having to full-round action every round to get your dragon to do something will really kill the fun of the class. Even requiring a standard action limits you - not much you can do with a move action when you're 200ft in the air. Personally, I'd change this to a per-encounter requirement.

3) No new feats. Granted, this wasn't promised, but it would be nice to see some new stuff that helps out the rider and strider (dragons, I think, do not like being called 'steeds')

Still, I think everyone should drop their $2 and buy this.

This was very well-thought out and presented in an attractive format. I can think of a few players who would be interested in trying this class out, myself included. I especially liked the thought put behind the "multiclassing" rules, for allowing the draconic bond to substitute for other bond options (such as a paladin or cavalier's mount). Especially for the price, this is a good addition to the options available to players.

I'm such a pain, but its really, really hard for me to give a product five stars.

That having been said, I really like this product, and for the price its an amazing product. Really nice production values, to begin with.

The dragon mount is presented in a consistent manner with Pathfinder animal companions, and follows a lot of Pathfinder conventions, and on top of that, the class fills a fantasy niche that has yet to be touched in Pathfinder, and in a way that it starts out right from 1st level.

Give it a look. For the price, even if you don't want to use it, it might not be a bad idea to see how well you can put together something using Pathfinder RPG conventions.