Nathaniel Lee
Adventurer
I'm curious what the designers would say about this if approached with this situation. I imagine this is not what they intended with this, and I agree that this is just strangely written. I'd actually go with not having the drake sprout their wings until they reach the level where their Ash can actually fly around on them.
Except it's not? "Dragon Rider" is what some people want this to be, but they were very careful in the description to clarify that that concept isn't what this is.
PCs are literally the only entities in the game beholden to the rules in the PHB.
A frost giant riding a mammoth is cool. I'm not entirely convinced that it would scale down quite as well, but to each their own.
And you're certainly welcome to your opinion.
I disagree with that notion, of course, and am more in agreement with, say, a paladin, who at 13th level gets to cast Find Greater Steed to get a flying mount with stats decidedly worse than the Drake Warden's companion. Thus, 11th level would be the earliest I'd consider it for a ranger subclass, but I don't have a major issue with the Drake Warden as it is.Twilight Cleric in general is unbalanced — which is why you see posts from DMs banning it (and heck even the one player I had who went for it dropped the character because they felt it was too strong — and Echo Knight is a questionable one as well since it was more Matt Mercer's class with just a bit of input from the D&D team and, again, I don't believe that the scenario you're describing is one that was intended in the design (I certainly wouldn't allow it myself).
The drake already deals more damage with the capstone as-is, and it already has a breath weapon (albeit one shared with you). I can see where maybe you add in a feature at a higher level that grants the companion a use of the breath weapon that doesn't have to be shared with you, but that and the extra damage just feel boring, conceptually -- they're incremental rather than evolutionary updates. The drake sprouting wings seems like an exciting later-game milestone to me.
I definitely hear the concerns with having to wait until 15th level for this, but when I think "dragon rider" I think of someone legendary and experienced like Huma from Dragonlance, who wasn't soaring through the skies on the back of a silver dragon at 7th level. I think something you work your way up to as your character evolves through the course of a campaign rather than at a point where other rangers are getting Wisdom saving throw proficiencies or cunning action for their animal buddies.
My homebrew campaign setting isn't epic fantasy like a Dragonlance, though, so maybe that's where some of the disparity in opinions is coming from. In my opinion, the epic level stuff comes in the later tiers of the game rather than the 1st and 2nd tiers. If the concept of a "dragon rider" was something that would be in one of my games, I'd be more inclined for it to come about in a sort of sidekick/NPC sort of relationship that evolves as the character and the campaign does: they'd be riding an actual dragon instead of a fun size Halloween candy bar alternative to one.
