What makes Dragons so good ?

[moritheil]

I would be very leery of allowing CR to count as HD instead of actual HD, unless you ensure that the LA is so huge that you never have HD above your ECL. Granted, dragon LA is huge and this is unlikely to be a major issue, but any situation where you have more HD than your ECL can be easily exploited.

Note that dragons improve vastly as player choices in epic, because casting sort of tapers off for all classes, meaning the dragon's casting can catch up, and because dragon HD are not class levels and do not suffer from BAB cap restrictions.

 

[Jack Simth]

I would be very leery of allowing CR to count as HD instead of actual HD, unless you ensure that the LA is so huge that you never have HD above your ECL. Granted, dragon LA is huge and this is unlikely to be a major issue, but any situation where you have more HD than your ECL can be easily exploited.

Let's see...
Young Black: CR 5, 10 HD, and +3 LA
Juvinile Black: CR 7, 13 HD, and +4 LA
Very Young Blue: CR 4, 9 HD, +4 LA
Young Blue: CR 6, 12 HD, +5 LA
Young Green: CR 5, 11 HD, +5 LA
Young White: CR 4, 9 HD, +3 LA
Juvinile White: CR 6, 12 HD, +5 LA
Juvinile Brass: CR 8, 13 HD, +4 LA
Juvenile Copper: CR 9, 14 HD, +4 LA
Very Young Silver: CR 5, 10 HD, +4 LA
Young Silver: CR 7, 13 HD, +5 LA

... they're not that few and far between.

Note that dragons improve vastly as player choices in epic, because casting sort of tapers off for all classes, meaning the dragon's casting can catch up, and because dragon HD are not class levels and do not suffer from BAB cap restrictions.

Where dragons really do well is with LA buyoff; some of the LA for Wyrmling Dragons is all the way down to +2. A Wyrmling Brass with 17 levels of Wizard (or a few levels of Wizard plus a lot of PrC levels...), who has bought off the LA and taken Practiced Spellcaster is sitting fairly pretty. Likewise the Pseudodragon that has done the same thing (only using Cleric or Druid levels, instead, to make use of the Wisdom bonus) is doing rather well.