Class Articles: The Dragonfire Adept Part 5

Section 5: What are some of the usual options for the class?

As with any class in D&D 3.5, there are a lot of options out there for Dragonfire Adepts. Here are some of the more obvious feats, class features options, races, and equipment.

Feats:

Entangling Exhalation (Races of the Dragon): very useful for debuffing. There's space for this in just about every Dragonfire Adept build. See the Debuffing part in Section 4 for what this does.

Extra Invocation: You don't get very many Invocations, unfortunately, only 8 by level 20; this gets you more. The caveat is that you have to pick an Invocation of the level below the highest level you can normally pick. So for example, if you're level 6, the highest level of Invocations you can pick is Lesser; therefore, if you take Extra Invocation at level 6, you can only pick Least Invocations.

Draconic Auras: Like the Dragon Shaman's class feature, you generate an aura that gives a small bonus to a thing to all allies within a certain distance from you. It's like being a Dragon Shaman without having to be one, because Dragon Shamans suck!

Steady Concentration: Lets you take 10 on Concentration checks wherever, whenever. This is very useful if you find yourself within melee range of an enemy and you need to cast an Invocation; taking 10 on that Cast Defensively check ensures that you'll never provoke an attack of opportunity ever again for casting Invocations.

Breath Effects:

Frost/Lightning Breath: Can be useful for switching up your fire breath. However, you do only get 1 Breath Effect every 5 levels, so if you're focused on debuffing you might want to save up for something else.

Sickening Breath: -2 penalty on enemies to attack rolls, weapon damage, saving throws, skill checks, and ability checks.

Acid Breath: Handy for melting your way through walls and doors. Plus, fewer creatures are resistant to acid than they are to fire/cold/lightning.

Slow Breath: As mentioned in Section 4, Slow Breath is good at level 5 and only gets better. Remember that enemies are still debuffed even if they make the Fortitude save against your breath weapon!

Thunder Breath: Blast walls and doors open—remember that sonic damage ignores object hardness and deals full damage to objects. Also, if only a few enemies resist acid damage, almost no enemies resist sonic damage.

Force Breath: Hit ghosts with your breath weapon. Basically nothing has resistance to force damage.

Fivefold Breath of Tiamat: 45d6 damage at level 20, in the form of a 9d6 fire cone, a 9d6 cold cone, a 9d6 acid line, a 9d6 lightning line, and a 9d6 acid cone. If you're evil, you deal 2x your class level in damage to yourself (4x if you're neutral). If you're good, you can't use this Breath Effect. Powergamers like to use this Breath Effect in conjunction with other stuff to do hilarious amounts of damage.

Invocations:

Aquatic Adaptation: Lets you breathe water, and get a swim speed. If you're in an aquatic campaign, this can be really useful (though a combination of magic items can eventually replicate the effects).

Beguiling Influence: Very useful for a social Dragonfire Adept. Check it out in Section 4.

Draconic Knowledge: If you're going for an Intelligence-based scholar build, this is also very useful. You get a +6 bonus to all Knowledge checks for 24 hours.

Endure Exposure: Practically a must-have for Dragonfire Adepts. Not only does it let you withstand cold and hot weather, people affected by this Invocation are immune to your breath weapon. Friendly fire? What friendly fire?

Magic Insight: Detect Magic and Identify that you can spam. Given that each casting of Identify otherwise costs 100 gp, takes 1 hour to cast, and can be rather pricy as wands (5,375 gp for a wand), it can be worth taking this Invocation to save your party time and money.

See the Unseen: Lets you see Invisibility, and gain Darkvision. Darkvision can be handy, while Invisibility can be fatal to your party if an enemy Rogue is using it.

Charm: You can spam Charm. This is obviously excellent for social Dragonfire Adepts, but as long as your Charisma is high you can also use it on enemies who might otherwise be hard to hit with your breath weapon...like Rogues with Evasion. You look cold, buddy, stand still for a sec while I light a fire...

Energy Resistance: Gain Fire/Cold/Lightning/Acid/Sonic Resistance 10 for 24 hours. Every time you reuse the Invocation, you pick a new energy type. Energy Resistance is quite nice; flexible, spammable Energy Resistance is even better.

Voracious Dispelling: Spam Dispel Magic. Take out buffs, take out magic items, and when you dispel something from an enemy they take damage.

Walk Unseen: Spammable Invisibility. 'Nough said.

Chilling Fog: The one weakness of your Breath Effect debuffs is that an enemy with a good Reflex Save and Evasion can be completely immune to them. This fixes that; plant a Chilling Fog on them, and there is pretty much nothing they can do to about it except prevent you from casting Chilling Fog in the first place. Enemies stuck in Chilling Fog probably won't be getting out any time soon, unless they have a teleport ability that doesn't need line of sight (which is very rare).

Draconic Toughness: Cast it to gain a bunch of Temporary Hitpoints. This plus your potentially high Constitution means you can take a surprisingly large amount of hits, despite otherwise playing like a caster.

Draconic Flight: 24 hour flying. Flying is a HUGE tactical advantage against non-flying melee enemies, and there are a lot of those in D&D. This also means you'll pretty much never need to make another Climb check ever again.

Races:

So, we've seen that the Dragonfire Adept primarily needs Constitution and Charisma, and you can easily build Dragonfire Adepts that need only one or the other. This means that Race isn't quite as critical for Dragonfire Adepts as it is for some other classes, but here are some recommendations:

Dwarf (Player's Handbook): The Constitution bonus is nice, and it's right there in the PHB. The Charisma penalty might hurt, though. Pick this if you want a breath-weapon focused Dragonfire Adept.

Mongrelfolk (Races of Destiny): +4 to Constitution (!), -2 to Intelligence and Charisma, plus some other racial features that let Mongrelfolk mimic other races for activating items, disguising themselves, and some other stuff. You can combine this with...

Dragonborn of Bahamut (Races of the Dragon): ...for a whopping total of +6 (!!) bonus to Constitution, though you also get a -2 penalty to Dexterity. After that, you can pick one of three Aspects (Mind, Heart, Wings) which increase as you gain more HD (aka go up in levels).

(The Dragonborn race is a bit odd; it kind of works like a Template, in that you have to apply it to a creature that's already of another race. Racial bonuses to stats stack, but pretty much everything else from the original race is overridden by the Aspects you have to choose. This means that races that mostly have stat boosts are ideal for Dragonborn; races whose main draws are their special abilities might want to look elsewhere.)

Each Aspect can be pretty handy for a Dragonfire Adept. Mind boosts your Listen and Spot, and eventually gives you Darkvision and Blindsense—handy for scouting and detection. Heart gives you a second breath weapon. Wings give you, well, wings; until 6 HD they only let you glide, but afterwards you can fly for a few rounds a day. At 12 HD, you fly permanently.

Human (Player's Handbook): Can't go wrong with Humans—that extra feat is tasty.

Gnomes (Player's Handbook): Yes, yes, I know that Gnomes are pretty lame. That said, they get a bonus to a stat you care about (Constitution), a penalty to a stat you don't care about (Strength), and some other handy stuff like being Small (makes you slightly harder to hit and more accurate), some racial spell-like abilities, and so forth.

Whisper Gnome (Races of Stone): I recommend the Whisper Gnome not so much because it synergizes all that well with Dragonfire Adepts (Dragonfire Adepts aren't designed for sneaking, while Whisper Gnomes are), but because Whisper Gnomes are just so overpowered as a race. They're Small, so they get bonuses to AC, Hide, and attack rolls; they get even more racial bonuses to Hide and Move Silently; they get +2 to Dexterity and +2 to Constitution (-2 to Strength and -2 to Charisma); despite being Small they still move 30 ft. per round; and they get a smattering of once-per-day spell-like abilities that can be handy. Again, Dragonfire Adepts aren't the best at sneaking, but combined with the brokenness of Whisper Gnomes a stealthy Dragonfire Adept just might work.

Changelings (Eberron Campaign Setting): Changelings are a race from the Eberron campaign setting that has minor shapeshifting abilities; at will, they can basically use the Disguise Self spell on themselves (but not their clothes or possessions). The upshot of this is that it gives a +10 bonus to your disguise check. This is fantastic for social Dragonfire Adepts since clever usage of Disguise can easily give bonuses to Bluff, Diplomacy, and Intimidate. Disguise yourself as an enemy guard more easily to lure them away; pretend to be Earl Fontlebottom, Protector of the Realm to better use Diplomacy on the enemy; turn yourself into a horrifyingly ugly humanoid thing to better Intimidate your foes. Changelings also get some bonuses to Bluff/Intimidate/Sense Motive, and have bonuses against Sleep and Charm effects.

Equipment:

Constitution and/or Charisma boosting items: Duh. Constitution and Charisma are your most important stats, though again, it's quite possible to build a decent to good Dragonfire Adept that pumps only one, or even none, of those stats.

Dragon Cincture (Magic Item Compendium): for 2000 gold, add 1d6 to your breath weapon damage. If you're also holding a weapon that does the same type of damage as your breath weapon, the save DC for your breath weapon also goes up by one. Pretty cheap and pretty useful.

+1 Twilight Mithril Chainshirt: Hey look! Armor with no Armor Check Penalties or Arcane Spell Failure! This plus the Natural Armor you automatically get means you're surprisingly tanky for what's basically a casting class.

Wands of metabreath spells: One unfortunate thing about the Dragonfire Adept is that its breath weapon doesn't have a recharge time like a regular dragon's. While this is normally very good, the downside is that you oddly don't qualify for Metabreath Feats, since Meatabreath Feats can only be taken if your breath weapon has a recharge time measured in rounds. 

But! In Draconomicon, there are a bunch of spells that modify your Breath Weapon, and some of them can be put on wands and all of them can be put on scrolls, and all the only prerequisites they need is that you have a breath weapon. How lucky that Use Magical Device is a class skill for you, eh? The choice ones are: Blinding Breath (permanent Blindness, which is a heft debuff—how about that 50% miss chance on all attacks if you're blind?), Rebuking Breath (rebuke undead with your breath weapon), Breath Weapon Substitution (switch out energy types on your breath weapon), Animate Breath (turns your breath weapon into an energy golem), Enervating Breath (slap 2d4 Negative Levels on enemies hit with your breath weapon), Breath Weapon Admixture (deal double damage with your breath weapon, half of it one energy type and the other half another energy type), and Deafening Breath (the same as Admixture, except you can use Sonic energy and also permanently deafen enemies who fail the save). Enervating, Animate, Admixture, and Deafening need to be put on scrolls, unfortunately.

Other wands and scrolls: Use Magic Device is, once again, the best skill in the game. I highly recommend you take advantage of it unless you're dumping Charisma. Pay attention to what spells your party casters are taking, then buy wands and scrolls to fill in the gaps. Some good ones:

Identify (Player's Handbook): It can be bit of a waste for the Wizard to keep having to prepare Identify, so give him a hand. It can also save you an Invocation by letting you Identify stuff without the Magic Insight invocation, but remember that Identify wands will likely be more expensive than regular wands—wand creation factors in material components when calculating the price of the wand, and it costs 100 gp to cast Identify. At higher levels, an Eternal Wand of Identify might be better (more expensive, and you can only use the wand 2 times per day, but the charges never run out).

Lesser Vigor (Complete Divine): Out of combat, Wand of Lesser Vigor heals you 11 hp for 15 gold (750 gold for a level 1 spell wand, 50 charges on the wand); on a gold-per-hitpoint basis, this is one of the most efficient healing items in the game.

Summon Monster 1 (Player's Handbook): No, not for the combat abilities; Celestial Monkeys are cool, but not terribly good at fighting. Instead, think of it this way; if you need to check for traps, and the party Rogue is dead/missing/sucks at his job, who would you rather have spring the trap—you, or an entirely expendable summoned monster?

Expeditious Retreat (Player's Handbook): Buffs your movement speed. Handy for repositioning yourself, or getting the hell away.

Blur (Player's Handbook): Attacks targeting you have a 20% miss chance. This stacks with AC as well, which combined with armor and Natural Armor can make you very tanky.

Glibness (Player's Handbook): This is a Bard spell that gives you +20(!) to your Bluff checks when trying to get someone to believe something (you can't use it for Feinting in combat). I shouldn't have to tell you that this is excellent for a socializing Dragonfire Adept.

Guidance of the Avatar: This is a Cleric spell that only appears on the Wizards of the Coast official website, in particular their Spellbook online supplement. This is official material, so your DM ought to allow you to use it. This spell gives you a +20(!) bonus on a single skill check within 1 minute of casting. Very handy if you really need to make that Knowledge check, or Bluff your way past the guards.

If you're lucky, your DM might also count Psionic wands and scrolls (aka Dorjes and Power Stones) as Magic items, and therefore let you use Use Magic Device to activate them as you would any other Wand or Scroll. If that's the case...

Hustle: As a swift action, you gain another move action. Very handy for getting away, or if you need to pop another potion, or draw another wand, etc.

Synesthete: Lets you use your skin to hear noises or see stuff. Might be better as a power stone rather than a dorje, but nonetheless it can come in handy for situations when you want to see without using your eyes—for example, Synesthete makes you basically immune to gaze attacks...like a Medusa's petrifying gaze attack.

Psionic Minor Creation: Lets you create an object up to 1 cubic foot in volume, made out of “non-living, vegetable matter”. This might not seem like much, but the nebulousness of the term “non-living vegetable matter” means you can do all sorts of craaazy things with this power with some creativity and knowledge. Here are some good substances to consider with this dorje:

Bronzewood: wood that's as strong as steel but 90% lighter. If you have enough ranks in Craft, you can make weapons and armor for your buddies. I happen to prefer making other utility objects such as manacles and spiked floors (think of a large, flat, thin panel with spikes jutting out on one side, then lay that flat on the floor).

Amber: Good for making easily breakable containers. You can make an amber jar, put stuff in it (like flammable oil), seal it up, then toss it at someone—if you made the jar right, it'll break on the enemy and cover them with whatever you put inside. One thing you could put in your amber jars is...

Flammable Pitch: highly flammable stuff. How convenient that you can breathe fire at will!

Serrenwood: objects made of Serrenwood can interact with ghosts. Remember that incorporeal stuff is completely unaffected by mundane weapons, and magic weapons only have a 50% chance of hitting incorporeal stuff. If you foresee having to fight ghosts and your party is unprepared, some Serrenwood weapons might save your bacon.

Poison: Some poisons are made of plant extract. If your DM lets you make poisons with this dorje, then consider making stuff like Black Lotus Extract, one of the deadliest poisons in the game—3d6 Constitution damage on a failed save, plus another 3d6 Constitution damage 1 minute later if they fail another save. Assuming 1 dose = 1 ounce, you can make 996 doses of a given poison per use of the dorje. That's a lot of poison. Just be careful not to poison yourself!

Mertoran Leaf (Unearthed Arcana): This substance, when chewed, gives you a +2 Alchemical bonus to Charisma for 1 hour, at the price of 1 Dexterity damage. If your Dexterity score is odd, then this stuff will basically have no effect on you.

Other stuff you could hypothetically make with this dorje is: rope (256 feet of it, assuming the rope's height/width are 1 inch each), a small pulling wagon, clothes, ammo

That's all the equipment I can think of off the top of my head, but I'm sure you can find plenty more if you dive through a few books.