Jaxom was an Aristocrat, Lessa was a multiclass Aristocrat/Rogue, F'lar and F'nor and the rest of them were Rangers, and Menolly was an Expert. And I hate myself for remembering enough of the names and the characters to make this post.
Backhackers?! Shitty PCs that have more than one level of an NPC class having the loyalty of dragons?! The dragons being able to time travel?! And for some reason dbb is ashamed of all this.
Are you all on the dope, friends? I have no clue what any of you are talking about.
Once upon a time, a woman named Anne wrote some stories about a distant world where brave humans formed lifelong partnerships with telepathic dragons, and together combated a terrible threat to all their lives. Despite the fact that these stories were plotted and written in a manner only marginally more accomplished than a Harlequin romance, and the fact that their author had some very peculiar notions about human sexuality, they were eagerly read by little girls (and not a few little boys) everywhere who thought the idea of having a constant companion who was perfectly understanding, unfailingly sympathetic, and also allowed you to fly around on its back was incredibly appealing.
Eventually, most of them grew out of the teenage angst phase and started to read books that were better-written, but you never can tell when the scars may surface.
A foul and demonic author I shall only refer to as "The-Anti-Bujold-McMaster" surfaced from the stygian depths of the netherworlds and wrote some shite pseudo scifi romance novels with dragons in.
The dragons existed to fight a terrible threat, see their planet had worms. Little angry sky worms that caused irritation to its planet bowels or something.
And the dragons were like so uber uber that they were the deus ex machina thingmos everyone always goes on about. Problems resolving the wetted bed the story had devolved into? No problemo, the dragons will magic it fixed.
The dragons were ridden almost universally by understanding gentle (though also sort of psychopathic) useless unheroic nutjobs.
The bad guy dragon riders were always characterless, barely mentioned, easily defeated and anti climactic.
In some books they were defeated like half way through or something and the good dragon riders just pranced about being dull for the remainder of the novel.
In other novels there were no bad guys at all and the tiny angry space worms had to fill the character role of bad nemesis dudes. The bad dragon riders were so mediocre that the mindless space worms filled their boots of boringness almost seemlessly.
Time travel and the fact that few people ever read the entire series means that I don't think anyone could put together a time line of events that makes any kind of sense for the series. But then I don't think the Anti-Bujold-McMaster could do it either.
But suffice it to say in reference to part of that knotted time line she took several extra large sized novels later in the series in which she revealed the even more dull story of how the dragons had been all like genetically engineered by the riders ancestors to deworm the planet with.
And then she sued everyone who ever took the name of the story in vain all like Gygax Litigation Mode style.
For which reason I will refer to it instead by the cunning pseudonym, The-Dragon-Riders-Of-Porn.
The End.
(And yeah I agree with what I read out of Lago's post, having 1 level of bard and 1 level of aristocrat and similar builds is not exactly a high level PC who automatically justifies getting time travelling planet deworming plot hole filling lizards as a mount).
Phonelobster's Self Proclaimed Greatest Hits Collection : (no really, they are awesome)
Dragons get big numbers for the same reason powerful swords have a +5 bonus, its cruise control for awesome.
They also copped the whole 'more intelligent than a human genius by an order of magnitude'. Exactly how a DM is intended to play characters like that is beyond me.
