Dragon Rider 3rd Party

[ThatOtherGuy]

I'm in joining a new group (I'm coming in a 6th level) and just found out the DM has allowed another member to play as the third party class Dragonrider. I didn't find anything to in depth in the search so I thought I'd ask here.

Not super thrilled about third party stuff but its not my game. Just wondering if anyone had experience playing with this class or with someone who played it. For those not in the know and who don't want to read the link, the class has a full BAB but no bonus feats and gets spells from the Sorcerer/wizard list at starting at 5th level (similar to ranger magic) and (most notably) starts with a dragon animal companion. The dragon has a pretty solid stat line for a companion but it it doesn't have a very strong breath weapon (1d4 cone at level 1, 3d4 at 5th, and 5d4 at 10th) and can be used once every 4 rounds.

What role is this guy suposed to fill? I might be missing something but he seems a bit weak and useless. Am I wrong? Any thoughts on it?

[I3igAl]

Yeah he seems a bit weak IMO. His dragon Companion is stronger than a vanilla Animal Companion due to the Creature type. Better Bab, saves and D12 HD will be nice.

However the guy doesn't get much else. His Class abilities are quite weak. He lacks any extra Combat Abilities the other Full BaB-Classes have.
Getting secondary spells from the sorcerer/wizard list is quite nice, adding lots of utility. However he lacks any nice signature spells Palas and Rangers have.
He has to rely on his Dragon Companion to do much in combat and won't do much outside of Combat, since he only has 2+Int skill ranks.

Comparing him to the Summoner, his dragon has lots of natural attacks flight, but still shouldn't be as strong as a well-built Eidolon, lacking Pounce. Though the dragon might come close due to flight.
The Summoner also is a much stronger Caster.

Comparing him to the Cavalier, the dragon is stronger Companion, but the Cavalier Challenges can make the Cavalier a much stronger stronger combatant. He also gets more skills.

With the ability to use Mounted Combat on a Medium Dragon he could make up for this a bit, but when he charges his dragon loses his precious full attack. He might also go for archery while he sends his dragon to the front, but classes with damage boni will outshine him.

Compared to other clases this Dragon Rider seems quite underpowered, yes.

[ShadowcatX]

Don't worry about other people and their characters, worry about your own character. Especially when you're just joining the group.

Second, not everyone picks their classes based around what gives the highest numbers. Get over it.

Third, comparing any class to the summoner is probably going to make the class seem weak.

Fourth, remember, Paizo was originally a 3pp publisher (and since the OGL is still based off of DND 3.5, one could argue that Paizo remains a 3pp.) Get off your high horse here as well.

[Kolokotroni]

ThatOtherGuy wrote:

I'm in joining a new group (I'm coming in a 6th level) and just found out the DM has allowed another member to play as the third party class Dragonrider. I didn't find anything to in depth in the search so I thought I'd ask here.

Not super thrilled about third party stuff but its not my game. Just wondering if anyone had experience playing with this class or with someone who played it. For those not in the know and who don't want to read the link, the class has a full BAB but no bonus feats and gets spells from the Sorcerer/wizard list at starting at 5th level (similar to ranger magic) and (most notably) starts with a dragon animal companion. The dragon has a pretty solid stat line for a companion but it it doesn't have a very strong breath weapon (1d4 cone at level 1, 3d4 at 5th, and 5d4 at 10th) and can be used once every 4 rounds.

What role is this guy suposed to fill? I might be missing something but he seems a bit weak and useless. Am I wrong? Any thoughts on it?

I have had a player use this in my game and I actually use alot of 3rd party material. I think its pretty sad that there is still a serious bias against all 3rd party material when alot of the same writers freelance for paizo (including the person who wrote the dragon rider).

As for what role its supposed to fill, that depends on what you do with it. You can create a flying mounted combatant except you are riding a much more capable mount then a cavalier, they can also make very good mobile archery platforms.

In my game the player used one of the weaker (medium sized) dragons which can still carry a medium creature (exception made in the rules) as a mobile archery platform. But you can just as easily turn it into a very good front line combatant. He also sort of saved the day in one encounter with a couple swarms that most of the rest of the party couldnt touch because of swarm traits, but he could with the dragons breath weapon.

The role it fills is basically either a ranged or melee combatant, who has the utility of flight at 1st level, and a few other neat tricks (breath weapon and eventually spells). Also you are a dude riding a dragon that is reasonably balanced with the rest of the game.

[Kolokotroni]

I3igAl wrote:

Yeah he seems a bit weak IMO. His dragon Companion is stronger than a vanilla Animal Companion due to the Creature type. Better Bab, saves and D12 HD will be nice.

However the guy doesn't get much else. His Class abilities are quite weak. He lacks any extra Combat Abilities the other Full BaB-Classes have.
Getting secondary spells from the sorcerer/wizard list is quite nice, adding lots of utility. However he lacks any nice signature spells Palas and Rangers have.
He has to rely on his Dragon Companion to do much in combat and won't do much outside of Combat, since he only has 2+Int skill ranks.

Except his thinking speaking dragon buddy gets 4 skill ranks + int (several have positive int scores) per HD. Assuming 1 rank per hd goes into fly, add intimidate, perception, and survival to a dragon rider's skill set, not to mention the usefulness of flight in things like scouting.

Quote:

Comparing him to the Summoner, his dragon has lots of natural attacks flight, but still shouldn't be as strong as a well-built Eidolon, lacking Pounce. Though the dragon might come close due to flight.
The Summoner also is a much stronger Caster.

Comparing him to arguably the most powerful character class in the game isnt a reasonable comparison. The summoner is in the top 3 classes in the game, and when optimized (IE a 'well build eidolon') is pretty unreasonable in terms of combat power.

Quote:

Comparing him to the Cavalier, the dragon is stronger Companion, but the Cavalier Challenges can make the Cavalier a much stronger stronger combatant. He also gets more skills.

The cavalier is not MUCH stronger then the dragon rider, he can challenge once a day at low levels, so he is better in one encounter a day. For the other 3 or so, he is the same as the dragon rider, and the dragon riders mount is better.

He also doesnt get more skills given the thinking speaking dragon also gets skills (as mentioned above)

Quote:

With the ability to use Mounted Combat on a Medium Dragon he could make up for this a bit, but when he charges his dragon loses his precious full attack. He might also go for archery while he sends his dragon to the front, but classes with damage boni will outshine him.

All classes except for pouncing barbarians and eidolons have the problem of losing their full attack if they have to move, this isnt somehow unique to dragon riders. It is a problem for ALL melee characters. And very few classes have as large a damage bonus as a the damage a dragon can add to the equation.

Quote:

Compared to other clases this Dragon Rider seems quite underpowered, yes.

If your only point of comparison is the summoner and druid, then sure the dragon rider is underpowered.

If you compare him to the fighter, monk, barbarian, cavalier, samurai and paladin, he compares quite favorably.

[ThatOtherGuy]

Kolokotroni said wrote:

I think its pretty sad that there is still a serious bias against all 3rd party material when alot of the same writers freelance for paizo

Fair enough. However, while there may be exceptions to the rule generally speaking (and even if it is written by people who have done official material) 3rd party content receives less play testing and have fewer players real players using the content which means it is harder to come up with a good balance. This isn't a comment on the writers ability to create good content. I only mean to point out that third party developers are often on a much smaller budget than Paizo (or WotC) and don't have the resources to created as finely tuned content. While I know this is not always the case when it comes to play testing, it is almost always true that fewer real players will end up using third party classes, as for most people the first party classes are enough. This means that those classes are discussed and supported less by the community and players trying them are more likely to create characters that aren't fun for them to play or to play with. Again that isn't always the case, though with a player who have less experience (or who just aren't very good at the game) the third party classes can be difficult to manage as they generally fill very niche roles.

I'd also like to take a moment to clarify that even though I'm always a bit skeptical about third party classes I always do read over them in detail before making a judgement call. This particular case rode the line for me so I wanted to check in with the community to see if I had missed anything before forming a solid opinion.

ShadowcatX said wrote:

Don't worry about other people and their characters, worry about your own character. Especially when you're just joining the group.

Second, not everyone picks their classes based around what gives the highest numbers. Get over it.

As a member of the group I'm trying to get a feel for what roles have been filled by other members so that I can fill a niche that has yet to be taken on. Right now the group I'm joining only has three members (a ranged rogue, a sorcerer, and a dragonrider) so its important (for me at least) to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the group before building my character.

Also, I do think the fluff of the dragon rider is neat and I know that everyone isn't trying to be a min/maxer. However I also know that it's no fun playing a class that doesn't perform as well as other players. While the roleplaying side of this could still be a blast (which is completely up to the individual doing the roleplaying) it still seems like it would be a drag having very few skills (2+int. Int isn't a very useful stat for dragon riders either and he isn't a human so he doesn't get a skilled bonus) and having a fairly vague combat role.

In the end of course I'm not going to try to dissuade him from playing the class or try to get him to switch. I'm just informing myself on the details of the class and looking for potential I may have missed. After all if it turns out he is struggling with the class and I can make a suggestion to improve his build then he might have a better time and the group will do better as a result.

Thanks for input guys. Also sorry for typos, I'm an awful typist.