“A dragonkin CAN form a permanent bond with one willing non-dragonkin creature. Once this bond is made, a dragonkin cannot form another partner bond unless its current partner dies. A dragonkin and its partner can communicate with each other as if they both had telepathy with a range of 100 feet. In combat, when a dragonkin is within 30 feet of its partner, both creatures roll initiative checks separately and treat the higher result as the result for both of them.”
The feature description says it is optional, meaning we should be allowed to play a Dragonkin who refuses to make a bond with anyone, but according to Society rules we HAVE to make a bond.
“When you create a dragonkin character, you MUST select another player’s character to form your partner bond with. Mark down that character’s Organized Play number on your character sheet. If that character is permanently slain, then you can select a new partner bond by marking a new Organized Play number on your character sheet between sessions.”
That doesn’t seem like it’s optional. I feel like the intention was to provide a clear ruling on how to handle the Dragonkin Partner Bond feature in SFS, but the way it is written makes it seem like I have to make a bond instead of having the option to not make one.
The reason I bring this up is because I have a character that is a Dragonkin and in order for him to work, he can’t have a Partner Bond
This character despises the thought of making a partner bond with a humanoid. He views such a bond as “shackles” and is going out to basically say “hey look at me, I am free, I am not some person’s mount”
He doesn’t like triaxians because he views them as slavers of his kind (even if that may not be entirely true), and he judges other Dragonkin for making such bonds.
Ancestry feature or not it’s optional, a Dragonkin should have the choice to not bond with a humanoid.
In fact someone told me That was supported by lore due to there being an entire group of Dragonkin who refuse to make bonds (Don’t know which group and that person could have been wrong)
Cause that rule imo just takes some autonomy from a player character
There are other reason to make it optional. What if a Dragonkin wants to seek out a worthy person to make a bond with? To be able to do RP or quests with another character to lead up to them making a partner bond. Cause a partner bond isn’t just a mechanical feature, it has story and has story and character implications. A Dragonkin only gets to bind with one person unless they die. A player shouldn’t be force to quickly find someone to make a bond with and should have the option to roleplay with another character and have that bond actually mean something. And also we should be able to create Dragonkin who don’t want to make bonds.
I don’t think the intention was to turn it into a non-optional thing. I think the intention was just to clarify how to handle bonds but because it was worded weirdly it becomes a “must” and not a “can”.
I believe in Interstellar Species, under Dragonkin lore, the book even flat out says that there are Dragonkin who refuse to make a bond
I think the idea is to prevent Dragonkin from just having a "floating" bond that they can lock onto a different character every game. But I will see if I can get a more concrete answer for you.
Yeah I do not think forcing us to make a partner Bond is the intention but it has the unfortunate consequence of forcing all Dragonkin characters in society to make a bond. Meaning I can’t make a character who refuses to make any partner bond, and meaning someone can’t slowly RP and do missions and have that lead up to them making a partner bond.
I’ve even had someone tell me they quickly made a mechanic character that they will never play just so they could fill out the partner bond thing for their Dragonkin character.