"Legend of Dragoon" PrC vs. Template

Of late, I've been playing 'Legend of Dragoon' on the PSX. Fairly nice RPG, although the story is a bit contrived. But I digress.

I've been debating the pros and cons of making the Dragoons (Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, Light, Darkness, and Thunder) and attempting to convert them over to 3E for some sort of playability... the Divine Dragoon (which the main character is given possession at the end of the game, before the final boss fight), I'm leaving out for the time being. However, my difficulties lie with whether to establish it as a prestige class or as a template.

I've looked at the templates in the Monster Manual, and yet I don't quite feel confident in converting it over into template format. My prestige class attempts, by comparison... well, it's not much better. I've only written up one so far on the WoTC prestige class forum, and the input I got from it, while helpful, was so contradictory that I'm uncertain of attempting to write up another one, even though in some ways a PrC format for the Dragoons might actually be more beneficial than a template.

Thoughts? If I have to, I can try to write up a template and PrC for the Dragoons and let others judge which would be preferable.

Salutations,

How about both?

A PrC with the ability to temporarily add a template to themselves.

Yes, it would be more book-keeping, but it would certainly be different.

As they go up levels in the PrC- they could learn more abilities for their alternate form.

FD

Hmm... a most intriguing possibility. I could write up the full-powered template, and then do a Dragon Disciple type deal and make the acquisition of the template dependent upon the prestige class. Most tempting.

Tell you what. I'll put one of the templates together, and then a matching PrC for it, and then folks can judge it as they see fit. My first PrC creation seemed to go off fairly well, despite continual complaints from players of a certain core class... this one should be quite the challenge. But hey... I love a good challenge.