Dragon Disciple Build(s)

[2wamhm]

So I'm leaning toward a Dragon Disciple for the main PC.

Base paladin at least level 2 gains me charisma bonus to saves, lay on hand, and a smite evil. Paladin 3 gets the aura of courage, immunity to disease, and a mercy. Paladin 4 gets another smite and channel positive. (The Divine Guardian archetype losses the aura but gains some abilities to help guard another character. Seems like a good trade.)

Scaled Fist Monk (very thematic with DD) level 2 gets 2 bonus feats and evasion. Flurry of blows for an extra attack (but only with monk weapons which are kinda lackluster) and charisma mod to AC. The 3rd level is mostly just unarmed strike stuff. The 4th level gives you a single Ki power.

There is the Eldrich Scion Magus that is a charisma caster and I'm pretty sure it qualifies you for Dragon Disciple without needing to multiclass. But as I understand it. Most of the nice things about magus are in the higher class levels not just gain some levels of spell casting.

I think those are really the only 3 melee classes that gain all that much from both strength and charisma.

The Scaled fist level 2 has some nice stuff with it, but it also comes with the unarmored and using monk weapons for an extra attack. Not sure about it. Opinions?

So I see 2 main possibilities here:
(A) Divine Guardian Paladin 2 or 3, Scaled Fist Monk 2, Sorcerer 1, then mixing in Dragon Disciple and Eldritch Knight.

(B) Divine Guardian Paladin 4 Sorcerer 1, then mixing in Dragon Disciple and Eldritch Knight. Then I can go for armored and better weapon.

I'm leaning toward (B) but undecided. Opinions, suggestions, or alternatives?

[Frostfeather]

There are many ways to make a DD build. So you may want to decide what your want your character to be able to do, or what strengths you want them to have and build around that. Your ideas can work, but they seem a bit... unfocused, no offense. Having more classes isn't necessarily better.

I think the first thing you should decide is if you want to eventually fight as a dragon or not. Do you want to take DD to level:
10 - useful to get Dragonkind II as a more martial-oriented character who couldn't cast it otherwise
7 - for Dragonkind I, though an Alchemist could cast this on you instead
or 4 - the more popular route, largely for the Strength boost if you don't care about actually being a dragon (unless you're taking a more caster-heavy DD approach and will be able to cast the Dragonkind spells anyway)

You might also consider what exactly the arcane casting from Sorcerer is going to do for you and if it's worth having at all... and therefore the same with DD levels. Remember that DD doesn't increase your Sorcerer casting at levels 1, 5, and 9. Just saying sometimes people want to be a DD because it sounds cool, but another build may be more effective and straightforward instead. And arcane casting in this game requires a certain amount of Owlcat-specific Pathfinder knowledge to make the most of.

Based on what you said so far though, I would say that a more martial oriented Paladin/Sorcerer/DD closer to B would work well enough. I've done something similar before with 10 DD levels and it was a great tanky character. He wasn't the absolute perfectly min/maxed character, but you don't need to be and he was very effective even on a higher difficulty.

[jsaving]

You could also consider a more paladin-heavy version along the lines of paladin11/sorc1/DD4/scaledfist2/whatever2. You'd have mark of justice, which is the paladin's strongest contribution to party DPS, as well as mirror image from the DD splash and high AC from the scaled fist level.

Or alternatively, since you mentioned eldritch scion, you could go with a lawful good eldritch scion who splashes a single level of scaled fist and 4 levels of DD. There's a 7th level cleric spell "bestow grace of the champion" that temporary grants charisma-to-saves along with numerous spells that provide varying degrees of protection against fear. Through judicious application of those spells, you'd receive some of the paladin benefits you'd like to have without actually needing to do a paladin splash. You could even role-play abilities like arcane accuracy as being "smites" if you went this route.

[2wamhm]

Yes, quite a bit unfocused really. Partially I just think the idea of a dragon on the throne is amusing to me. I was looking at a several different builds that all have something and don't have something else. Obviously can't get everything.

So I'm thinking a more martial focused, rather than a caster focused build. I like the Idea of the Divine Guardian Paladin 3 or 4. Taking the hit for someone else seems very heroic. And the Paladins self heals and bonus to saves will be very nice.
Just 1 or 2 levels of sorcerer.
It is quite tempting to take a couple levels of the scaled fist monk, but I think not. Most of the abilities affect unarmed strikes and won't work for claw or weapon attacks. Evasion would be awesome, reflex will be my worst save and 2 levels is expensive for just that.
Eldritch Knight levels just enough to use whatever armor I decide to use. I read there is a very nice set at the end of the first chapter, So I'm guessing that will be my target.
Dragon Disciple up to 10 definitely.

Not certain exactly which feats to select yet.

Can you be effective fighting with claws and teeth in this game? In the PnP version it was quite excellent since you have multiple attacks sooner and don't have the iterative penalty to hit. More than overcomes the slight damage reduction.

[Frostfeather]

Well Paladin levels will give you armor proficiency, so you just have to deal with Arcane Spell Failure. You could prebuff minute/level spells like Shield, Mirror Image, etc with your armor off before combat, then put it on. When I did a Pally/Sorc/DD, I used Bag of Tricks to turn on an option to remove Arcane Spell Failure out of combat - that way it's not cheating but rather a convenience of not needing to swap armor. There's also an option to remove ASF in combat too if you wanted.

Or you can go without armor and take the 1-2 Scaled Fist levels.

And yes you can be mostly effective with dragon attacks in this game, but you will run into high AC enemies that you'll want a plan for. Being a more martial focused DD will help your BAB, but you want as many buffs and debuffs as you can fit in your group. Having a Community Domain Cleric/Inquisitor in the group is an easy and straightforward way to deal with it as Guarded Hearth is pretty much a "win this fight" button.

[2wamhm]

Originally posted by night4:

Well Paladin levels will give you armor proficiency, so you just have to deal with Arcane Spell Failure. .

That was why I was taking the Eldritch Knight levels. Does this game not let EK cast in armor like the PnP version?

[Immortal Reaver]

Originally posted by 2wamhm:

Originally posted by night4:

Well Paladin levels will give you armor proficiency, so you just have to deal with Arcane Spell Failure. .

That was why I was taking the Eldritch Knight levels. Does this game not let EK cast in armor like the PnP version?

You cannot equip gear you do not have proficiency in for videogame. That means you need either spend feats for proficiency or take class that has it.

EK does not give you ability to cast in armor, not in game and neither in PnP. You can cast in armor with any class that does not get it's spell outright disabled by wearing armor (in game if your spell would be disabled by wearing armor you cannot ever equip it even with proficiency). And EK also does not lower Spell Failure.

[Frostfeather]

Like you said in your original post, another option is to go Eldritch Scion Magus. They actually do get heavy armor casting at 13 or something like that.

[2wamhm]

Ok wierdly odd memory bork. For some reason I was sure the eldritch knight allowed casting in light armor. But I just went back and looked at it. You are absolutely correct that it does not.
You know, I'm almost sure one of the build guides here in these forums also said that it let casting in armor. Now I'm going to have to try and find that to see if it really did say that.
I wonder if that guys was assuming some particular game mod. I don't have any of those installed as yet.

[Immortal Reaver]

Originally posted by 2wamhm:

For some reason I was sure the eldritch knight allowed casting in light armor. But I just went back and looked at it. You are absolutely correct that it does not.
You know, I'm almost sure one of the build guides here in these forums also said that it let casting in armor.

Those are probably for Bard/10EK/4DD muticlass, bard can cast with light armor and shield without penalities.

[2wamhm]

Yep, your right one of the was a Bard / Dragon Disciple.
The other was using arcane armor mastery.
Why does everyone say only 4 levels of dragon disciple? It still gets great stuff as it goes up.

[jsaving]

The main reason is that a 4-level splash gives you 2/3 the strength boost of DD10 with only 1/3 the spell progression loss. You might disagree that those factors matter very much, or you might see other class features like dragonform as being more important, and if so then a 10-level splash could still be right for you even though it isn't worth taking in other situations.