Riding a Huge Fire-Breathing Flying Lizard

[Hicks]

Read the special mount rules in the back of the DMG, roll up an 11+ level Paladin, then roll up his character sheet and smoke that sweet, sweet cheese.

Seriously.

A Paladin can have a flying mount that is 4 CRs lower than his level. A very young gold dragon is CR 7. Did I mention that this gold dragon is large sized, gains all the first level benifits of the Paladin's Special Mount ability, and therefore has 2 more HD than you, all while being, you know, a dragon? Super Special Extra Credit Assignment: you can evolve your pokemon trade up your dragon's age catagory whenever you gain 2 or 3 levels.

You can ride this level appropriate ability all the way through level 20, and seriously not care that you have a tin soldier riding around on your back which happens to have 11+ levels of Paladin/Cavalear/Wild Plains Outrider/[insert "Special Mount" class here].

Edited for spelling, grammer, clarity, nudity, and GREAT JUSTICE!

[Koumei]

Super Special Extra Credit Assignment: you can evolve your pokemon trade up your dragon's age catagory whenever you gain 2 or 3 levels.

Not without a Fire Stone.

Er, I mean, that's cool. In a "That's dumb" kind of way. After all, the Paladin itself probably sucks, on the grounds that it's a Paladin, but there's a good chance that, due to the [Awesome] subtype, that Dragon is actually a quite appropriate or even overpowered party member.

So the player is really playing a dragon with a free paladin attached.

[Hicks]

That's kind of the entire point. When you have a tin can, on a dragon who cares about the tin can? But the question was asked: "Is there a pre-existing mechanic for this?"

Now you and I both know that a dragon is, strictly speaking, weak sauce, it will never cast any spells that matter and that's the only thing "I" really care about; but through the miracle of Non-associated class levels, we can bend the CR/ECL system over a tree stump, deliverance style, which should grant enough bonus Hit dice (preferably levels is something arbitrailary awesome such as that prestage class that lets you gain 2 domains and cast 9th level spells over 10 levels in conjunction with a full spellcasting PRC that adds bonus domains, ect.) to justify you romping around in the Epic Level Handbook.

The point is that once you start layring on Epic leadership, which is based of your mount' HD, rather than its CR, mayor of crazy town is no longer an applicable descriptive title. More like: Supreme Lord and Master of the All Including Taco (formerly reffered to as crazy "land").

And at this point, I seriously don't care. You have limitless armies of epic Wizards, Druids, and Clerics doing epic spellcasting on your behalf, and your paladin is like, level 15? Who cares?

I do. The reason? The knight in shining armor's shiny armor power is Nigh Infinite Cosmic Power as long as you're the red neck and the rules are the city slickers.