The class as written assumes that the humanoid is the “main” character and the dragon is the pet, but it would not break anything significant to flip that in-play.

I’m almost seeing this class from the POV of the old RIFTS dragon class or Gleep from the Myth stories, with the OWNER being the dragon who is adventuring around and experiencing life with a cute li’l two-legs that it’s adopted – against all the advice of the older, wiser dragons – and growing at a much faster rate because of that bond.

I mean, I don’t really have a dog in this fight because I’m not sure I’d allow this class in my games (or try to play it in someone else’s game!) but the mechanics and concentration on the dragon half rather than the human half kinda makes me come to that conclusion, and if the author focused on that it’d be an interesting challenge.

But then, I enjoy roleplaying a semi-immortal POV.

That’s definitely the goal; the design hits that mark in some ways (Bond Boons) while missing it in others (d6 Hit Die is high fragility).

It is nice that the humanoid gets more from the partnership than the privilege of hanging out with a dragon. The temptation in a pet-based class is to focus all the attention on the pet, leaving the humanoid a fragile liability on the battlefield, and the player wondering why she and the DM didn’t just work together to homebrew a way for her to play as the pet itself.

There’s a Try-Before-You-Buy version, so while I would not dream of discouraging you from supporting Ross, you have multiple options. =)

I expect that on-request breakdowns of specific works will be a thing every once in awhile. Admittedly, it helps when I get a free copy. It’s a little awkward because – as you’ve observed – we don’t all have a copy of the text to read along in, as we do with UA and as we… don’t, but I sort of pretend we do, with other editions of D&D and other games. (That pretext gets especially thin from time to time. Hârn, I’m looking at you here.)

(note to author, the cover image of the PDF is of a girl and her DIRE WOLF companion. But, at least it is nice)

Doing brakedowns of fan/homebrewed material from DMs Guild/DTRPG is really cool Brandes and it is something that I’d like to see more of in the future. But I know that your to-do list is growing bigger even as you read these words, so I stop.