Class Articles: The Dragonfire Adept Part 3

Section 3: Class Features

The Dragonfire Adept has three primary class features: its breath weapon, Breath Effects, and Invocations. Let's look at each of them in turn.

Breath Weapon:

This is the Dragonfire Adept's signature ability. Starting at level 1, a Dragonfire Adept can breathe fire as a standard action—a15 ft. cone/30 ft. line from level 1 to 9, and a 30 ft. cone/60 ft. line from level 10 to 20. You pick whether it's a cone or a line each time you use it. You can use your breath weapon as many times as you want. It also counts as a Supernatural Ability, meaning that:

It doesn't provoke Attacks of Opportunity when used

Spell Resistance does nothing against it

It's immune to Dispel Magic

Antimagic fields still shut it down, though.

Unfortunately, as cool as breathing fire into people's faces every round is, the damage isn't fantastic. It's 1d6 damage at level 1, increasing by 1d6 every odd level until after level 11, after which it increases by 1d6 every 3 levels. The maximum is 9d6 at level 20. For some perspective, Rogues get 10d6 Sneak Attack damage at level 20, and can easily make 6 attacks per round for a total of 60d6 damage (average 210 or 245 damage), not factoring in bonus damage from Strength.

On the other hand, you don't even have to make an attack roll with a breath weapon. Can you get an enemy in a 15 or 30 foot cone? If your enemy doesn't have Evasion, then congrats! You're guaranteed to deal at least some damage. The Reflex Save to halve the damage is 10 + ½ your Dragonfire Adept class levels + your Constitution bonus. (The fact that your breath weapon's Save DC is based off of your Constitution is the main reason why you should pump your Constitution. However, you'll later see why you don't necessarily need to do this.)

Breath Effects:

Breath Effects give you more options with your breath weapon aside from just setting stuff on fire. Some Breath Effects switch out the fire damage in your breath weapon for cold/lightning/acid/sonic/force damage. Others slap debuffs on enemies. Two particular Breath Effects boost your damage, one of them dramatically; ever wanted to nuke a place for 45d6 acid, lightning, fire, and cold damage? Every time you use your breath weapon, you can add a Breath Effect you know to it—however, you can't add more than 1 Breath Effect to your breath weapon each round, and you can't use the same Breath Effect in consecutive rounds. You learn a new Breath Effect at levels 2, 5, 10, 12, 15, and 20, for a total of 6. Breath Effects are also locked based on level; for example, until you hit level 5 you can't learn the Slow Breath Breath Effect.

Invocations:

Invocations are basically spells, except you know a lot fewer of them (a level 20 Dragonfire Adept has a paltry 8 invocations to work with). On the other hand, you can spam all of them as many times as you'd like per day. This makes for a lot of tactical flexibility and a lot less bookkeeping—no more having to keep track of a million different spell slots! Just grab some Invocations and let loose It also means you don't have to rest for 8 hours to use your class features.

Keep in mind that Invocations are Spell-Like Abilities, and NOT spells; Feats that interact with spells won't always interact with Invocations, for example. And unlike regular Spell-Like Abilities, you still have Arcane Spell Failure while wearing armor, much like Wizards and Sorcerers casting spells.

That said, there are several good Invocations that last for 24 hours, so if you really want to wear armor you can just cast some 24 hour buff Invocations, put on armor, and go adventuring. Your breath weapon isn't affected by Armor Check Penalties and Arcane Spell Failure, so as long as you don't care about Armor Check Penalties you might come across later on, Dragonfire Adepts can easily function with armor despite not being proficient with it.

The Save DC for an Invocation is 10 + the spell level of the Invocation + your Charisma bonus. This is the reason why some Dragonfire Adepts want to pump their Charisma. However, there are plenty of good Invocations that are buffs or don't allow saves, and therefore don't key off of your Charisma—you can easily make a Dragonfire that has crap for Charisma and be fine.

Invocations are divided into 4 levels: Least, Lesser, Greater, and Dark. You're able to pick Least Invocations at level 1, Lesser Invocations at level 6, Greater Invocations at level 11, and Dark Invocations at level 16.

Other class features:

Dragontouched: You get Dragontouched as a bonus feat. It's not a game changer, but the free +1 to Listen, Search, Spot, and saves vs Sleep and Paralysis effects is nice, and you get to qualify for Draconic feats like a Sorcerer equal to your character level and some other stuff. Bards have a neat trick that requires the Dragontouched feat; dipping Dragonfire Adept is one way to pull it off.

Scales: You gain some natural armor. At level 2, it's a +2 natural armor bonus to AC, increasing to +3 at level 8, +4 at level 13, and +5 at level 18. If you're going unarmored, then you'll only be marginally more armored than your average Wizard or Sorcerer (or less, if they cast Mage Armor and such). If you do go armored, then you'll make for a surprisingly tanky character since Natural Armor stacks with the armor bonus from regular armor. Not game changing, but it's nice.

Dragonkin: You get a +4 bonus to Diplomacy checks when trying to influence Dragons or creatures with the Dragonblooded subtype. You also become immune to the Frightful Presence ability of Dragons. This is nice since failing the Will Save against Frightful Presence slaps you with the Shaken penalty (-2 to attack rolls, saving throws, skill checks, and ability checks), and you don't really want penalties when fighting boss monsters like Dragons.

Damage Reduction: One of these days Wizards will figure out that they scale Damage Reduction pretty badly. You get Damage Reduction 2/Magic at level 6, increasing to 5/Magic at 16. Damage Reduction of 2 at level 6 isn't much, as is Damage Reduction 5 at level 16. For reference, a Hill Giant is CR 7—a party of level 6 characters are expected to take out one or two a day—and these do 2d8+10 damage with their clubs (average 19 damage, maximum 26). A -2 to that damage isn't going to be doing all that much. But again, better than nothing.

Immunities: At level 19, you become immune to paralysis and sleep. Given that either one of those conditions can effectively take you out of the entire fight in one application, this is very nice.