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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 9698398" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/4nE6SdH.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="width: 384px" />Now that we covered the dragon as a “race,” we will now cover the class-focused building blocks for character creation as well as a new Versatile Heritage. The two systems have quite a bit of different content. The D&D version has a new Dragon class with two subclasses, while in Pathfinder the aforementioned subclasses are instead archetype dedication feats as well as an exclusive Draconic Diehard Class Archetype and a new Versatile Heritage in the form of the Draconic Scion. Another thing I’d like to take note of is that Pathfinder is more feat-intensive, and a lot of choices that are class features for the 5e Dragon Class are turned into feats. The 5e book doesn’t have any new feats, and the bulk of what would be Ancestry and Archetype feats in Pathfinder are instead known as Draconic Gifts in D&D in a similar vein to a Warlock choosing from a list of powers. For those who read my preceding Battlezoo Ancestries: Classic Creatures review, this book follows a similar format in that the Gifts feats locked behind higher levels are generally more powerful than lower-level ones in both systems, and to reflect their different standards of character advancement the non-1st level Gifts/feats follow a 4/5, 8/9, etc of level-based prerequisites.We will be covering Gifts and Feats in the post after this one due to the sheer variety out there. This post will first cover the Dragon Class for D&D. It is highly customizable, with the role a Dragon plays in the party further determined by its Gifts and subclasses. The class’ base features are 1d8 Hit Dice, proficiency in light armor and simple weapons, Constitution and Charisma saves, and can choose two skills from a broad list of physical/wilderness/scholarly skills and Intimidation for the sole social skill. All Dragons gain access to a Breath Weapon, which functions similar to a Dragonborn’s in being a line/cone-based AoE dealing a particular damage type, although its damage progression is much greater in starting at 2d6 and increasing by 1d6 every 2 levels thereafter. It also recharges on either a short or long rest, making it more reliably usable than the dragonborn’s. Dragons also are competent in melee, with Draconic Surge letting them make a claw or bite as a bonus action whenever they use an Attack action with just those weapons. They also gain Extra Attack at 5th level like most martial classes.Evolutions are the first taste of role diversity, representing universal traits possessed by almost all dragonkind that represents the lux aeterna ritual returning their iconic abilities at an accelerated rate. They gain their choice of Evolution at 1st, 6th, and every 4 levels thereafter as well as 20th, which provides persistent benefits. An Evolution can be chosen more than once, further increasing its power, either up to a total of 3 or 5 times. They include Draconic Resistance (gain resistance/short-term and eventually permanent immunity to the damage type associated with your ancestry), Dragon Scales (gain a better innate AC plus chance to negate critical hits, armor proficiency lets you choose better AC options to make up for loss of said armor), Flight (gain increased jump distance and eventually short-term/permanent flight), Frightful Presence (AoE fear-based debuff, increased range and uses), Improved Natural Weapons (additional and increased damage dice of natural weapons), Size (gain increased Hit Dice, reach, and size, all the way up to Gargantuan), and Unconquerable (increased saving throw proficiencies and can reroll a failed save 1-3 times per long rest).The Draconic Archetypes are cleanly divided into martial and magical roles, which both grant access to Gifts unique to said subclasses. The Draconic Ravager represents dragons who focus on increasing their physical and combat prowess, and gain weapon/armor proficiency akin to a Fighter plus a bonus skill as well as a bonus Evolution, and at later levels gain access to 4 unique Fighting Styles reflective of draconic combat, an additional Draconic Gift, Fighting Style, and Evolution. Their 14th and 20th level class features make their natural weapons deal 1 or 2 additional weapon dice worth of damage respectively.The Dragon Mage represents wyrms who hone the magical arts. Unlike a primary caster they are more akin to a gish in the vein of a warlock, where the highest level spells they gain access to are 5th level. They are spontaneous casters, meaning that they are limited to spells they know based on level, but have great variety in that they make the initial choice of whether their spell list comes from the Cleric, Druid, or Sorcerer class. Their key spellcasting ability is whatever mental ability score they get a +2 from due to their ancestry, or Charisma if it doesn’t increase any of those three scores. The Mage’s supplementary class features revolve around using their spell power to enhance their draconic nature, such as a bonus Draconic Gift, using a bonus action once per short rest to recover an expended spell slot, and at middle-to higher levels can expend spell slots to make their natural attacks and breath weapons deal additional damage.Thoughts: The 5e Dragon Class looks to be a surprisingly balanced means of playing a true dragon that slowly grows in power, and between the ancestries, Gifts, Evolutions, and subclasses you can easily make a dragon who can encompass most archetypical fantasy roles. The class isn’t really built for “pure mage” types, as they have a limited set of spells, and for dragons who want to take on thief/skill-user roles they will need to pay particular attention to their ancestry plus appropriate Gifts.Another thing I like is that the use of Evolution allows draconic PCs to eventually emulate the majestic feel of a flying, scaled terror of destruction at middle to higher levels. However, unlike a traditionalist adult/ancient dragon, they will not have the full range of such powers, and their Evolution slots force them to prioritize certain choices. While the Ravager and its Fighting Styles can grant bonus Evolutions, most players will need to make do without some of the more iconic abilities at higher levels.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/Z7Xn2zO.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="width: 462px" />While Pathfinder 2e doesn’t have a new class, the Draconic Ravager and Dragon Mage fill much the same roles as their D&D subclass counterparts, where most of the subclass features are converted into feats. There are several feats new to this particular system, such as Bite of Opportunity that lets the Ravager make a bite attack against someone doing something which would normally provoke an attack of opportunity.* Several Gifts/Feats that have the same name work slightly differently due to the system. For example, the Devastating Bite Gift increases a bite’s critical threat range to 19 to 20 in D&D, but in Pathfinder it lets the Ravager spend two or three Actions to deal additional weapon damage if they hit.*In Pathfinder, Attacks of Opportunity are not available to characters by default, and must be earned via being a particular class like the Fighter or taken as a feat.One interesting difference for Pathfinder is that several Gifts for certain ancestries in D&D are locked behind these specific Archetypes as feats. For example, Fool’s Wisdom of the Harlequin Dragon is a 1st-level Gift in D&D, but in Pathfinder it’s a 4th-level feat restricted to Draconic Ravagers who are also Harlequin Dragons. Both versions do much the same thing, in making a contested skill check for the dragon to learn a secret piece of information about a target, with the Pathfinder version having more detail such as its interaction with the influence subsystem and a wider range of effects for critical success/fail results. Interestingly, the size-increasing Evolutions in D&D are restricted to Draconic Ravagers in Pathfinder, meaning that players who want to be a Gargantuan lizard wizard will either need to pursue a gish type build (such as playing a Wizard who takes Draconic Ravager archetype dedication feats) or rely upon more conventional spells to increase their size.As for the Dragon Mage, the archetype dedication initially grants skill training in a skill appropriate to their chosen magical tradition, and they choose their spells from one of the four main magical traditions in Pathfinder. Some feats unique to Pathfinder include Talisman Keeper (occult dragon heritage only, grants Talisman Dabbler Dedication feat and access to said archetype feats), Gossip Lore (amber dragons only, trained in Gossip Lore that lets one Recall Knowledge on any topic but a failed result grants a mixture of true and false information), and Draconic Metamagician (20th level, can use single actions as free actions if they’re metamagic or from a Dragon Mage feat, provided that their next action is to use their breath weapon).Similar to the system changes, several feats with the same name work slightly differently by system. The 5e Majestic Spell feat changes the visuals of a spell as a bonus action to impose the Frightened condition on those who see the spell once per long rest, while in Pathfinder it’s a one-action ability that imposes penalties to Recall Knowledge for onlookers to identify the spell and grants a bonus on Intimidation checks made by the Dragon Mage. Similarly, Breath Magic, which is the class feature in D&D that lets one spend spell slots to increase breath weapon damage, allows a Pathfinder Dragon Mage to change the AoE one of their archetype spells to be that of their breath weapon, albeit they then lose their ability to use their breath weapon for a limited number of rounds much like a real breath weapon.Thoughts: I am not as experienced with Pathfinder, but its take on the Ravager and Mage both look to be faithful translations. The choice to make some of the Gifts from D&D restricted to the archetypes is a bit of an odd choice, but not a major complaint.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/3dMrpdA.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="width: 467px" />Further covering the Pathfinder-exclusive content, the Draconic Diehard represents aeternal dragons who still hew to conservative outlooks on how a dragon should act. Namely, they are against the adoption of weapons, armor, and similar manufactured items to the extent that they swear an oath to never use such items. This archetype can be taken with any class, and they gain the Draconic Ravager Dedication feat for free at 1st level. As they sacrifice their training in such items, they gain increased effects and bonus feats based on how much they’re trading off: such as increasing the damage dice of their bite if they’d ordinarily be trained in martial weapons, and Empower Scales/Sturdy Scales if they’d be trained in light or medium armor, respectively. They also cannot make use of shields and similar held items like a magus’ tome, although they can still use consumables such as potions and material components. If they end up breaking their oath by using forbidden equipment, they lose the benefits of Draconic Ravager feats for 24 hours.The other Pathfinder-exclusive content is the Draconic Scion Versatile Heritage, representing creatures with some connection to dragons that manifests in physical and magical ways. This can range from growing patches of scales on their skin to snouts, horns, tails, and similar body parts. Beyond dragons siring children with non-dragons, other means of creating scions include gifted disciples of draconic secrets learning ways to adopt the traits of their studied species, undergoing magical transformations that change the foundation of their soul, a dragon’s life force being embedded in them, a dragon reincarnated as another species, and other A Wizard Did It types of backstories. Draconic Scions are rare and few in number, so they almost always live in settlements mainly composed of their non-dragon heritage, with the extremely rare settlements made up of scions almost always being ones part of the same extended family. Dragonkind runs the gamut of acceptance towards draconic scions, although aeternal dragons are more accepting on average, as they often find each other more relatable than traditionalist dragons.Draconic Scions gain access to a limited number of dragon-only Ancestry Feats in this book, plus 4 new feats specific to them. All of them are available at 1st level, with the exception of Dragon’s Lungs which requires being at least 5th level. Dragon’s Claws and Dragon’s Jaws grant appropriate unarmed attacks, Dragon’s Eyes grants darkvision provided that they already have low-light vision, and Dragon’s Lungs can only be taken by those with draconic heritage of an amphibious nature. This last feat grants a swim speed, along with being able to breathe both air and water.Thoughts: While being able to wield tools and have opposable thumbs is a smart decision for a playable species and I appreciate this being the default option for dragons, a lot of people’s mental image of the creature does not involving wielding sword and shield or relying on armor for protection. The 5e Dragon Class helps with this a bit via the Evolution options and Draconic Ravager subclass, but as the former doesn’t exist in Pathfinder I do like the idea of granting bonus feats in line with what the PC would have to sacrifice in committing to the role. The Draconic Scion is also cool, and can actually be a good way of “converting” Dragonborn to Pathfinder IMO.Thoughts So Far: I really like how this book expands on the “build your own dragon” by committing to class options, as solely limiting all the iconic abilities to a race/ancestry would make it very bloated.One thing I will say is that the two system’s approaches to class-based stuff can result in rather different-feeling dragon PCs, but also surprisingly similar in a few ways. As the D&D version has a Dragon as a class, a player who wants more class-specific features, like a Bard's Bardic Inspiration or Cleric’s Channel Divinity, will need to multiclass. This forces them to balance how much they want their iconic dragon abilities to scale in power vs their iconic class abilities. As for Pathfinder, the dragons must be one of the existing classes, so a 1st-level Dragon Paladin is easily attainable. But with how Archetype Dedication feats work, a character is swapping out such a feat for a class-specific feat they’d ordinarily take, which results in a similar case of “how much do you want to be a Dragon or [X Class]” choice that comes from multi-classing in D&D. As for the Free Archetype house rule, the book does have a sidebar about Varying Power Levels, as the major balance factor is that iconic draconic abilities are locked behind archetypes so that mixed dragon/non-dragon parties can be viable. I will say that from my initial estimation, several of the Ravager/Mage feats can feel like no-brainer choices if they’re granted for free, particularly the ones that increase the dragon’s size and reach for martial builds, so campaigns using that house rule might want to exercise some degree of caution when it comes to PC advancement.Join us next time as we cover D&D’s Draconic Gifts and Pathfinder’s dragon-exclusive Feats!</blockquote>

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