The beginning of the campaign will start with them running around and making friends during this time they discover some dragon eggs and some lore behind hatching them. Then there will be some questing to hatch them and then a series of air battles where they will ride their dragons.
To facilitate their dragons gaining in power once they hatch their dragons I want to give them a prestige/gestalt class. I want them to have options, but so far I’ve really only come up with them using their dragons as animal companions or edilions. I’d like to have 5-6 options and give them standard roles (frontline melee, caster, etc). I could just make some feats for the dragons to pick up giving them more class like features...
They should have their dragons hatched by around level 5 and probably go to 12 or so.
Any ideas on classes to look at for inspiration? Should I ban other “pet” classes in order to better highlight the dragons?
There is a third party dragon rider class, but I'm not a fan. The PC gets overshadowed by the dragon in my opinion, and it's only made worse by the fact that the way they balance it is by making you sacrifice your own actions in order to let the dragon act.
There's also the official drake companion archetypes. Which are terrible.
Fortunately, I made a revised version of the drake companion and all the archetypes, as well as new archetypes for the barbarian, alchemist and inquisitor. It's not a perfect fit, as the dragons would only be medium size at level 5 and don't work as flying mounts without investing in specific powers, but that's all stuff that can be fixed by GM fiat, and a lot easier to keep balanced than manually adapting actual dragon stats.
I would also say it is reasonable to ban pets if you are going to be giving a pet to every PC, since that could make for a crowded party. If the players know what you are planning, they ought to understand even if they were dying to play hunter or something. If they don't, they'd just have to trust you.
Yes, you should discourage other pet classes. Not to highlight the dragons (because dragons typically don't have a problem outshining the competition as far as prospective mounts go) but just because it'll bog down the game that will already be a little slower than usual in combat due to every PC having a partner.
One potential pitfall with having the dragons gain class levels is that they could end up outshining the PC's themselves. Dragons on their own are amazing creatures; they have an arsenal of natural attacks, a wicked breath weapon, they're some of the fastest flyers in the bestiary, they have defenses that are downright scary, they have lots of skill points and class skills so they're automatically skill monkeys, they get a bunch of spell-like and supernatural abilities, and if that's not enough they get actual spellcasting as if they had class levels in Sorcerer on top of that. When you throw actual class levels onto dragons, they become awe-inspiring and could very easily outshine their rider.
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I'd actually recommend the 3rd party Dragon Rider linked above. It's a well built class and if you want to have some emphasis on the riders that's easy too. Maybe their dragons get cursed or stolen and they have to get them back.
Eragon, to use a literary example, wasn't always with his dragon when he had to fight or hunt.
I meant I would give the player characters a prestige or gestalt class not the dragons. Drake is probably a more accurate description of what they will be riding. The update of the class you linked is kinda what I’m looking for, I think.
I’ll be nerfing the dragons down to a barebones level and letting them chose how to improve them (better melee, better breath weapons, more tanky, etc).
Thanks all for your advice!