D&D 3E/3.5 Dragon Disciple 3.5 Analysis

[Sledge]

As requested:
At the end of ten levels a DD has:
10 d12 hit dice
+7 BAB
+7 Fort
+3 Ref
+7 Will
+8 Str
+2 Con
+2 Cha
Lowlight vision
Darkvision
Blindsense
Immunity to sleep and paralysis effects, and immunity to the energy type used by his breath weapon (see above).
Very slow flight

Fighter 10 should be inferior because of the requirement to get DD. We check and find:
10 d10 HD (-1 per level average and another -1 for the con difference)
+10 BAB (3 better)
+7 Fort
+3 Ref
+3 Will (4 worse)
6 Feats

So with the HP we can counteract the difference with 2 Improved toughness feats. However this is significantly better because the 1st feat counters the con difference, but the second counters the 10 levels of d12s and adds for everly level before or after.

The 3 BAB difference counters the +4 to hit from strength and the BAB will result in a faster iterative attack.
The +4 to damage is worth around +2 to attacks and as such roughly two feats worth.

So we have 2 feats remaining for the will save and special abilities. At this point it sounds like the DD is solid right? As long as you are human and consider 1 level of Sorceror worthwhile without any further growth in that regard. After all enlarge is a mighty useful spell. Wait it doesn't work on dragon disciples at level 10. In fact there are a slew of negative bits for no longer being humanoid. The benefits of not being humanoid are typically stated as immunity to spells which require a high will save, which DD gives you anyways. Most of the spells you will have will be useless to a dragon disciple at that level simply because magic items are far cheaper and more efficient. So to really do this right we have to count those in. Another missing BAB and a d4 hit dice. That single d4 hit dice is 3-4 HP less than the fighter or barbarian. This makes the second improved toughness only countering around 6 hp and giving and putting it ahead about 10 points. I'd therefore cut that to worthy of only half a feat. I'm assuming barbarian because 10 fighter levels is a convenient number to stay at. In any case we can safely wipe out 2 of the +4 damage and free up a feat.
So we now have 3 and a half feats that are supposed to be equivalent to all of the following:
Lowlight vision (easily magic item reproducable, so not directly feat worthy. Call it one half.)
Darkvision (same as above)
Blindsense (not as useful as it seems so again I'd put it around 1/2 a feat)
Immunity to sleep and paralysis effects, and immunity to the energy type used by his breath weapon (Definitely worth a feat, perhaps more).
Very slow flight (Any 16th level character will have better than this already so this is largely for flavour. I suspect that even Dragon Disciples will pick up items for better flight.)
3 half feats, plus one that is worth a full feat by my judgement. 2.5 feats of 3.5 available.

If the character is anything but human however the class costs so much to get into that it is useless.

There it is. Now destroy it as you will. These are my subjective beliefs here and may well differ from yours. For my solution ask and I'll post it in house rules.

 

[Thanee]

Some stuff you have not figured in, I think...

Strength also gives bonuses to many combat maneuvers (bull rush, grapple, trip, etc).
You can only learn Improved Toughness once.
Nonmagical Flight
Natural Armor
Natural Weapons (secondary attacks, always armed)

Bye
Thanee

 

[PrinceZane]

As stated in the other thread about DD, I just prefer full dragon or nothing. it's so hard to make a 1/2 dragon or DD remotely close to the real thing, it's almost insulting to the race (to me).

Either see if you can go full dragon or find something else, that's my advise.

 

[iwatt]

Some stuff you have not figured in, I think...

Strength also gives bonuses to many combat maneuvers (bull rush, grapple, trip, etc).
You can only learn Improved Toughness once.
Nonmagical Flight
Natural Armor
Natural Weapons (secondary attacks, always armed)

Bye
Thanee

I agree with Thanee and will add some other observations:

You discount a lot of the abilities gained as easily replaced by magic items. But the fact remains that with these abilities you free up a lot of resources/slots.

The bite attack compensates somewhat for the missing iterative attack.

Also, you discount the spellcasting. although not gamebreaking, there are a lot of useful 1st level spells:

- True strike
- Shield
- Mage Armor (even if it doesn't stack it does help against incorporeal attacks)
- Protection from Evil
- Charm Person (still valid against low level mooks, and give the Character added dimension to that of a big hulk that just smashes).
- Grease (great for grapples at any level)
- Mount
- Unseen servant (keeps your scales clean)
- Disguise Self (appear as another half dragon and you probably will be targeted by the energy type you're invulnerable to)
- Ray of enfeeblement (plus a decent BAB)----> very useful
- Expediotuos retreat (more speed, always good)
- Feather Fall (in case you stall in flight)

And finally: Coolness.....You're a draqgon baby...

 

[Thanee]

Dunno, I'd place a 20th level Dragon Disciple over a 14 HD Young Red Dragon (CR 7, ECL 20th) any day.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Thanee]

Also, you discount the spellcasting. although not gamebreaking, there are a lot of useful 1st level spells.

And you got the option for 2nd level spells, too. This will cost you 1 BAB and some HP, as well as a few resources to cover the ASF, but you can then make TOUCH attacks in combat with Wraithstrike, which gives like +10~20 to hit in many situations at moderate to high levels for a whole round!

Bye
Thanee

 

[iwatt]

And you got the option for 2nd level spells, too. This will cost you 1 BAB and some HP, as well as a few resources to cover the ASF, but you can then make TOUCH attacks in combat with Wraithstrike, which gives like +10~20 to hit in many situations at moderate to high levels for a whole round!

Bye
Thanee

yeah well, add in the plethora (sp?) of level 2 buffing spells and the spellcasting becomes very relevant

 

[Sledge]

Replying to everyone at once, just for the fun of it.
The same maneuvers that benefit from strength also benefit from BAB.
Nonmagical flight of 30 is very non maneuvarable. It MIGHT be useful once in a while, but in combat most high level characters will want better.
I did indeed miss natural armour and that should count for something, but I'm not sure what.
Natural attacks. Well that small attack is only semi useful, but I'm sure that in some sunderhappy campaigns it would make the PrC more powerful.

Of all the spells listed there only shield is usable as a rule. The rest of them are either irrelevant, or better done with a cheap cheap cheap magic item.

If you want to throw in 4 levels of Sorceror I can of course recalculate... but it does get less favourable. (For instance you can completely ignore the improved toughness, or try and compare with the standard caster hybrid)

To me it is a playable but slightly underpowered class if you pick the best choices for it. Anything else and it gets more and more underpowered, but is still somewhat playable.

So tell me what you think is the best core blend for the DD? And can you find any that work for non humans? (That knowledge arcana hurts skill when it's cross class)

 

[pbd]

One problem is that you are deconstruting the class and looking at it from nothing but a raw power perspective. The dragon Diasciple is a cool class, hands down; you end up as a frikkin' half-dragon (and dragon is in the name of the game). Looking from just a power gaming point of view looses all of the flavor of playing the game and character building/role playing. We can all envision 20 level progressions that make uber powerful mooks, but where is the roleplaying? Is the entire game just an arena battle?

If absolute power is all that is interesting, play avideo game.

 

[Scion]

so you are saying that balance is completely unimportant?

After all, it can both 'be cool' and 'be balanced'. If we only have one of the two why not try to get the other as well?