Class Articles: The Dragonfire Adept Part 4

Section 4: Class Role

As mentioned before, the class is good at three things: debuffing, socializing, and general utility.

Debuff:

Debuffing with the Dragonfire Adept is simple and easy. Several of the Breath Effects are debuffs: Sickening Breath (sickens), Sleep Breath (puts enemies to sleep), Slow Breath (inflicts Slow), Paralyzing Breath (paralyzes), Weakening Breath (-6 to Strength). For Sickening, Slow, and Weakening Breaths, you don't even need to jack up the Save DC—Slow and Weakening Breaths debuff for 2 rounds even if the enemy makes the save (4 rounds if they fail), while Sickening lasts for 1 round if saved and 2 rounds if not. This is why Dragonfire Adepts don't strictly need to pump their Constitutions; if you focus on debuffing, it doesn't matter if the enemy makes the save, they're still debuffed.

Then there's the feat Entangling Exhalation from Races of the Dragon; your breath weapon deals half damage, but everyone caught in its effect are Entangled for 1d4 rounds, and take 1d6 damage at the start of each of your turns for each round they're Entangled. Entangling confers the following penalties: movement speed is halved, cannot run or charge, -2 penalty to attack rolls, -4 penalty to Dexterity (so a -2 penalty to AC, Initiative, ranged attacks, Reflex Saves...), and attempting to cast spells while entangled requires a Concentration check (DC = 15 + level of the spell).

So if you hit someone with a Slow Breath and an Entangling Exhalation back to back, that's at least 1 round where the enemy...

Can only take a move action or a standard action each round, not both; no full round actions allowed.

Total of -3 penalty on melee attack rolls (-5 for ranged attacks).

Total of -3 penalty to AC.

Total of -3 penalty to Reflex Saves (-2 penalty to all other saves).

¼ movement speed (so a creature with 30 ft. movement can only move 5 feet per round).

At lower-to-mid levels, the -3 penalty to AC, attack rolls, and slowed movement can be quite handy. At higher levels, cutting the number of enemy attacks per round down to 1 greatly improves survivability. For example, take a Marilith: CR 17 Demon with 9 sword attacks and a tail slap. If they hit with all of those, they'll do an average of 137 damage per round (max 192). If you limit them to one attack per round, however, they'll do at most 4d6+4 damage per round (average 18, max 28). Quite the drastic damage reduction, eh?

You can also use Invocations like Chilling Fog: make a cloud of fog that deals cold damage over time, limits vision (giving concealment to people beyond the fog), penalizes attack rolls, and limits movement to 5 feet per round, with no chance to save or mitigate the effects. Or use Enthralling Voice to fascinate them into nonaction. Or Voracious Dispelling to spam Dispel Magic. Or creatively spam Charm. Or scare the crap out of your enemies with Frightful Presence and Terrifying Roar. And so forth.

As you can see, the Dragonfire Adept has a lot of debuffing tools and his disposal.

Social:

Socializing with the Dragonfire Adept is also pretty easy. You get Bluff, Diplomacy, and Intimidate as class skills, you have a good incentive to pump Charisma, the only other stat you might really need is Constitution, and you get 4 skillpoints per level. Your socializing invocations include Beguiling Influence (+6 bonus to Bluff, Diplomacy, and Intimidate for 24 hours), a spammable Charm, a spammable Fascinate that makes people who fail the save against it improve their attitude towards you, Humanoid Shape to morph into other humanoids (useful for disguising yourself)...if you're creative and the DM is permissive, you could also potentially use the Frightful Presence and Terrifying Roar Invocations to help with your Intimidate. The nice thing about all of this is that you still have debuffing options for combat left; just take the debuffing Breath Effects and Entangling Exhalation and you'll be useful in combat.

Utility:

You won't have the sheer flexibility and power of casters, but you've still got access to Use Magical Device—with it you can cast a good number of utility spells to round out the party. Creative use of your breath weapon can be used for utility purposes as well; set things on fire with your normal breath weapon, blow open doors and walls by using the sonic damage Breath Effect, melt things with the acid damage Breath Effect, etc. Also, your Invocations allow you to spam certain handy effects; invisibility (Walk Unseen), Detect Magic and Identify (Magic Insight), See Invisibility (See the Unseen), Dispel Magic (Voracious Dispelling), Flight (Draconic Flight), elemental resistance (Energy Resistance), and more. Finally, don't forget you have Use Magic Device! If you have the money to buy the right wands and scrolls, you theoretically have access to every single 6^th Level or lower Arcane and Divine spells every printed.

Debuffing, Socializing, and Utility; these are the Dragonfire Adept's strengths, and the Dragonfire Adept does its job well. Simple, easy, but effective.