Gold Dragon: Mechanical Changes

So, Gold Dragon reworks are out as of not long ago. So, I figured I might as well boot up Inevitable Excess and take a bit of a dive into what's new with the path.

To maximise my turning-into-a-dragon, I decided on making a Dragonblood Shifter, worshipping Apsu. It's probably better to use some kind of caster, but I'm here to turn into a dragon and kill people dead.

After I mash my way through Shifter and Aeon levelling that I'm not particularly interested in (it would have been optimal to go through Trickster for the cool feats, but that's not what I'm doing here), the first change is immediately obvious:

I feel like a Super Saiyan with all this glow.

As promised, Gold Dragon Breath also has cooldown reduction at 9th (from 1d4 rounds to 1d2) and 10th (cooldown removed). The rest of Breath and Perfect Body appear to be unchanged as far as my fallible memory goes, so let's get into the meat of things - Breath Improvements.

There's ten total improvements, and any given Gold Dragon gets four of them (one at ranks 8 and 9, two at rank 10). What wasn't mentioned before is that the improvements come in tiers - six are available immediately and the remaining four need Gold Dragon 2 (mythic 9, in total) before they can be chosen. Those four are further divided, since two of them are only for Corrupted Gold Dragons while the other two are only for Gold Dragons who stick to the straight and narrow.

The six 'standard' improvements are:

Disrupting
Your breath effectively disrupts undead foes. Undead enemies struck by your breath take additional positive energy damage equal to your breath damage (a Fortitude save against the DC of your breath halves this damage).

Empowered
Your breath damage increases by a number of damage dice equal to your mythic rank.

Mind-Clearing
Your breath dispels all mind-affecting effects applied by enemies from allies in the area. Additionally, you dispel all mind-affecting effects from enemies struck by your breath (including effects applied by your allies while affected by domination or charm effects).

Overwhelming
You add twice your mythic rank instead of your mythic rank to the saving throw DC of your breath.

Scorching
Enemies that fail their saving throw against your breath catch on fire, taking your breath damage each round until the flames are extinguished by making a successful Reflex save against the DC of your breath.

Spellbane
Enemies struck by your breath take a penalty to the save DCs of all spells they cast equal to half your mythic rank for 1d4+1 rounds.

The two improvements that are exclusive to pure Gold Dragons are:

Enlightening
Your breath dispels all permanent and temporary negative levels afflicting allies in the area, cures all their temporary ability damage, and restores all points permanently drained from their ability scores.

Rejuvenating
Your breath heals allies in the area. The amount of damage healed is equal to your breath damage.

Finally, the two improvements that are exclusive to Corrupted Gold Dragons are:

Annihilating
Your breath annihilates the life force of living foes. Living enemies struck by your breath take additional negative energy damage equal to your breath damage (a Fortitude save against the DC of your breath halves this damage).

Decaying
Living enemies struck by your breath take Constitution damage equal to 1d4 + half your mythic rank (a Fortitude save against the DC of your breath halves this damage).

Especially with Empowered + Annihilating, Breath seems like it's set up to do a lot of damage - 70d8 unholy damage in a 50ft cone, anyone?

The glow-up continues as you get to rank 9, as well:

The visual effect doesn't go away, it's just not showing here.

Dragon Feats and Gold Dragon Form appear to be exactly the same in every way, so let's not worry about those.

Perfect Mind, as far as I can tell, has been juiced up - the holy damage conversion has been moved down from Perfect Soul and is now a toggle (it also gets converted to Unholy if you're Corrupt). I think the spell resistance might have been increased, since 15 + level + rank/2 sounds higher, but that might just be the same thing.

Perfect Soul now states that all your spells and abilities become empowered and maximised, in addition to all its previous stuff (minus the holy conversion, which is now on Perfect Mind. Now, the 'and abilities' clause is the interesting one here. Getting empower/maximise on things like your Breath, kinetic blasts, even alchemist bombs makes things very interesting. Too bad it's MR 10 and you don't get it until the game's basically already over.

Then, the spell list. It varies depending on whether you're a pure Gold Dragon or a Corrupted one, and that's the only choice you get in the matter. Even so, some bits stay the same. Here's the list:

I definitely think the pure spell list is better, but that could just be my bias for buff spells talking. I'm by no means an expert in this game.

Now, I'm only going to bother talking about the new spells.

Dragon Demand
This spell functions like dominate person, except that the spell is not restricted by creature type and has fear descriptor instead of mind-affecting.

Dragon Might
As a swift action, you increase your damage dealt by 50% for 1 round.

Dragon Smite
You mark all enemies within a 30ft radius with the dragon smite effect. Each marked enemy, when attacked by you or your allies, receive additional damage equal to half your Charisma modifier.

(AoE Mark of Justice, but worse? If you're not a Charisma character then get fucked or cast something else.)

Summon Dragon I
You summon 1d3+1 medium silver dragons (or 1d3+1 medium black dragons if you have vowed to serve Dahak). Summoned dragons attack your opponents to the best of their ability.

Dragon Pride
You gain 10 dragon pride charges which last for 10 minutes. As long as you have at least 1 charge, damage you receive is reduced by 50%. Each time you suffer damage, you spend one charge. When all charges are spent, you become unable to use this spell for 1 minute because your pride requires some time to be restored.

Dragon Wrath
You blast your enemies with rays of focused dragon energy. You may fire one ray for every six caster levels you have (up to a maximum of 3 rays at 18th level) at every enemy within a 25-foot radius. Each ray requires a ranged touch attack to hit and deals 1d6 points of damage per caster level. Half of the damage is fire damage, but the other half results directly from holy or unholy power (if you have vowed to serve Dahak) and is therefore not subject to being reduced by fire resistance.

(Quick question: what's 'dragon energy'? Isn't that a Pokemon card?)

Summon Dragon II
(As Summon Dragon I, except you get two large dragons instead.)

Thousand Bites
While in the form of a Gold Dragon, as a swift action, you gain 3 additional attacks for 1 minute. These additional attacks stack with the bonus attacks from haste and other similar effects.

(If, say, you happen to be a Shifter, then you can pop Haste or Divine Power to get something like this going:

legalise nuclear bomb

And that's not even counting the six other natural attacks, and without putting all too much effect into optimising my shit.)

Summon Dragon III
(As Summon Dragon I, except you get one huge dragon instead.)

Dragon Storm is actually two different spells, one pure and one corrupted.

Dragon Storm (Pure)
You call upon the power of Apsu. Silver stars fall from the sky, dooming your enemies.

This ability deals 2d12 damage per caster level to all enemies. Half of the damage is bludgeoning and the other half is holy (a Reflex save halves this damage). Allies affected by this ability take no damage but instead gain a sacred bonus on attack rolls, damage rolls, and saving throws equal to your mythic rank for 1 minute.

(+10 to everything is a helluva drug to give the entire party while also firing off an empowered, maximised Meteor Storm that deals exclusively holy damage.)

Dragon Storm (Corrupted)
You call upon the power of Dahak. Unholy meteors fall from the sky, dooming your enemies.

This ability deals 2d12 damage per caster level to all enemies. Half of the damage is bludgeoning and the other half is unholy (a Reflex save halves this damage). Whether or not the save is successful, enemies affected by this ability receive a penalty to attack rolls, damage rolls, and saving throws equal to half your mythic rank for 1 minute.

By the way, Corrupted Gold Dragons look like this in human form:

The glowing red eyes is how everyone knows that you're Evil.

(If you're in Inevitable Excess, you can forcibly become a Corrupted Gold Dragon by opening up Toybox and giving the Knight-Commander the 'Vow of Dahak' feature.)

I don't really have the time to go and test everything, but I think I'm happy enough with how this is. It's got all the important parts, I think.

EDIT: Added in Dragon Pride's description - my thanks to u/heroofcows for that one.