#i am not immune to giving hydra dragon features

[pyrrhicos]

the Green one is here

[wearesorcerer]

Dragon Disciple Tips

This is going to be a longer (and less specific) post than what @i-am-the-incendiary-anarchist requested, as there’s a lot you can do with this prestige class (it’s really good as is and you can get rid of all of its drawbacks).

If people still want (see the Spells section), I could answer IA’s question more directly, but it would end up being at least as long as this post on its own.

Why Dragon Disciple?

I have to say, I was surprised when I saw how much better the Dragon Disciple prestige class was in 3.P compared to the 3.5 one (which gave you seven bonus spell slots “as if from having a high ability score” that “can be added to to any level of spells the disciple already has the ability to cast,” but no other casting advancement). The one main drawback between the two (no more Dragon Apotheosis) is either peanuts (probably) or a major nerf (unlikely), depending on your interpretation of that ability’s wording.¹

What You Get:

d12 Hit Die

3/4 BAB

Good Fort and Will saves

New class skills: Diplomacy (!!!), Escape Artist, and all Knowledges (!!!).

+4 Str, +2 Con, +2 Int, +3 Nat Armor

Continued advancement of your Bloodline (full)

Improvements to your Breath Weapon and Fly speed, plus gaining each a level earlier than otherwise.

An additional natural attack (Bite)

Form of the Dragon I 1/day, upgrading to form of the dragon II 2/day

What You Lose:

Three casting levels

The favored class bonus you’d get from Sorcerer.

If you take Favored Prestige Class once and Prestigious Spellcaster (Paths of the Righteous), you ignore those drawbacks (except any specific favored class bonus your race might provide). Yes: at the cost of four feats, not only does the class have (basically) no drawbacks, but it is in every way better than staying in your main class.

Had Paizo (or anyone else) made similar prestige classes for the other bloodlines, I would tell people never to stay in Sorcerer for 20 levels unless there’s some super special awesome specific reason. These boil down to an archetype that’s important (I doubt there is one) or a build that requires too many of your feats for the expenditure.

That last is a fair concern: without taking Prestigious Spellcaster once, you lose 9th-level spells. Spell levels offer exponential growth in power, whereas this class mainly provides padding for the drawbacks of playing a Sorcerer if you intend on getting into melee or using a lot of spells that require non-touch attack rolls. Further, you have to spend all four feats to make up for losing half of your 9th-level spell slots (the second feat only gives you a single extra slot).

If you’re not going straight Sorcerer beforehand...

Unless you’re making a gish and don’t have a better idea of how you want to advance your character, the above also doesn’t apply to multiclass Sorcerers. Bards, Bloodragers, Skalds, and Summoners (normal or Unchained) can also enter the class, as can members of classes with archetypes that provide spontaneous arcane casting (I know there are some for Spiritualist, Vigilante, and Witch). Of these, I think Bloodragers get the most benefit, but otherwise it’s kinda like multiclassing into Bloodrager, but without bloodrage (pro and con).

What Spells Should I Take?

This was Incendiary Anarchist’s question. There are really four answers to this question:

Recommended general use spells. As a Sorcerer, you’re essentially a wad of wands (rather than a stash of scrolls, which is the Wizard or Witch). Thus, you’re going to want to have spells which will come in handy in a lot of situations (fireball, dimension door/teleport, various illusions, telekinesis, divinations, dispel magic, etc.), plus ones which fit your theme. The other points are about theme, so don’t forget to get general use spells.

Spells that complement your energy type. The general consensus on casters is that if you specialize in a given energy type, you are going to run into problems once the DM decides they’ve had enough of your shenanigans and/or wants to run an Outsider. (It used to be that the consensus was on Fire being a weak energy type due to how common resistances and immunities to it are, but I wrote an analysis on my main blog a while back about that. I should probably update that.)

Get attack spells which rely on other energy types, but focus primarily on yours. After all, your Bloodline Arcana boosts the power of the elemental energies you inherited from Dragons (after all, mechanically-speaking Dragons are basically reptilian elementals [but much more badass]).

(Tenser’s) Transformation and other spells for melee. The Draconic bloodline and the Dragon Disciple are focused on giving you perks which will only work in melee. There’s very little need for a Strength buff to a caster (unless you’re going Arcane Archer, which is about adding the bow’s range [somehow unaffected by pull] to your spells) and so it is above all other stats my recommended dump stat for any spellcaster regardless of class unless they intend on being a gish (Eldritch Knight type). @we-are-eldritch-knight no doubt has a loooooong list of good spells to take if you are planning on going that route, which is what you’re doing by taking this class.

Off-hand, bear’s endurance/bull’s strength/cat’s grace, enlarge person, magic fang (if you can find a way of getting it), expeditious retreat, haste, and anything that boosts your AC are all good starters. Temporary HP is also handy.

Since you’re going to be in melee anyway, ranged touch spells aren’t as important for you. Melee touch spells suddenly become quite handy (see Other Suggestions, though.)

Spells your dragon ancestor gets as spell-like abilities or which replicate their other magical abilities. Incendiary Anarchist was looking for a list like this (and I could do a Part 2 if people want), but this entry is already quite long (it would at least double in length) and there are (to my knowledge) 30 types of True Dragons in the Bestiaries alone (5 for each kind x 6 kinds [Chromatic, Esoteric, Metallic, Outer, Primal, and 5 of the 9 Planar]) plus the four remaining PF Planar Dragons (Apocalypse [NE] and Bliss [NG] are in Pathfinder Adventure Path #137: Return of the Runelords, part 5 - “The City Outside Time;” Tumult [CN] are in #138 [”Rise of New Thassilon”], but aren’t listed on d20pfsrd.com at all [they are on Archives of Nethys, though]; Edict [LN] are in #131 [War for the Crown, part 5 “The Reaper’s Right Hand”]; no idea where the CN one is), the Gem dragons (3.x, MMII and Psionics Handbook [Web Enhancement] with updates for 3.5), the Lung Dragons (Oriental Adventures), and then the ones that don’t scale with age (e.g, Vishaps; IIRC, the 3.5 planar dragons don’t).

That’s not getting into drakes or dragonets. You have a lot of options when it comes to dragons. Most of the true dragons and the drakes are tied to a particular element, so that at least narrows your focus a bit, but some (e.g., faerie dragons) mix being a dragon with being something else. Dragons, Outsiders, and Humans tend to breed with just about anything, so of course there’s variety. (Don’t forget Couatls or Hydras, neither of which are Dragons by type but should be.)

Other Suggestions

Before I get sidetracked on ways to make a gish, d20pfsrd.com has a list of 3rd Party feats by Louis Porter Jr. made specifically for the Dragon Disciple (printed in Undefeatable: The Collected Feats Sourcebook, which probably means it came out first in one of the other books in that series). These cover some of the True Dragons’ magical abilities, which should free up many of your spell slots. Do note that they don’t count as part of your Bloodline’s bonus feats but do require a minimum Dragon Disciple level, so if you intend on taking them, you should take Favored Prestige Class and Prestigious Spellcaster early on (you can take Favored Prestige Class before getting into one; Prestigious Spellcaster seems to work that way - or is at least implied to [CHECK WITH YOUR DM ABOUT THAT]).

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve come across two Metamagic feats which replicate the Duskblade’s Arcane Channeling and the Magus’s Spellstrike abilities. The first is Smiting Spell, which takes extra actions to accomplish than you might want (it doesn’t spell out what those actions are, it’s just worded very similarly to spell storing, meaning you have to cast the spell in question into your weapon before hitting someone with it). The other I have sadly lost track of; I’ll update this later once I find it. Bear in mind that if you go this route, you’ll need a feat, trait, or alternate class feature/archetype to speed up your metamagic, otherwise you won’t be effective.

If you are going to alter your energy types, take either Energy Affinity or Energy Substitution (both 3.5) instead of Elemental Spell (PF): all of them let you swap out a spell’s damage type for the single energy type you selected, but the 3.5 ones are +0 spell level adjustment metamagics while Elemental Spell is +1. Elemental Spell doesn’t specify that it can only apply to spells with an energy descriptor, but that’s not much of a benefit. It’s +1 because it also lets you split your damage evenly between two types, but there’s no reason to do that except for thematics. (You’d use that for Trolls and that’s about it.) Energy Admixture (also 3.5) works similarly, but instead of halving your damage instead doubles it (one set per energy type); it’s +4 spell level. Again, there’s little reason to take either of those.

There is a Sudden Energy Affinity (requires Energy Affinity), but you could do better by finding a feat to ignore the increased casting time on Metamagic.

None of these really solve the problem D&D has of pigeonholed elementalists (pyromancers, etc.) having trouble against enemies you’d expect to encounter. For that, there are feats that allow you to penetrate energy resistance and immunity. That said, I’m not sure every DM will allow them. (I personally don’t think Fire Elementals, being made out of fire, should ever take fire damage.)

Bear in mind that Metallic dragons have two breath weapons naturally, but Metallic Half-Dragons, Draconic bloodline Sorcerers, and Dragon Disciples only get one. Most of these secondary breath weapons are all cones of crowd control gas (Brass: sleep; Bronze: repulsion; Copper: slow [as the spell]; Silver: paralysis) except for the Gold, which has a cone of gas that deals Strength damage (Fort vs. -1 per age category). The Dragonfire Adept (Dragon Magic, 3.5) gets some of these as options, but it’s a base class and the only way I know to combine invocation-users with spellcasters is through the Eldritch Theurge (which is specifically for Warlocks, as it requires eldritch blast). Your options are mainly that or spells.

Most of the advice I’d give on this boils down to making a gish or making a focused elementalist, which each deserve their own entries. Bear in mind that a Monk’s Flurry of Blows does not stack with natural attacks (there’s a feat out there for that, but it’s third party), so that’s not a great path to take in this case. If you want more prestige to such a build, you’re going to want five levels in another prestige class and then a way of advancing your Bloodline.

¹ Dragon Apotheosis is ambiguous; it reads: “At 10th level, a Dragon Disciple takes on the Half-Dragon template. His breath weapon reaches full strength (as noted above), and he gains +4 to Strength and +2 to Charisma. His natural armor bonus increases to +4, and he acquires low-light vision, 60-foot Darkvision, immunity to sleep and paralysis effects, and immunity to the energy type used by his breath weapon.” These happen to enumerate the benefits of the Half-Dragon template that the class doesn’t already provide (except for type change and doubling the flight speed the class does give). However, it doesn’t say that this is an enumeration of those benefits or in addition to them.

The reasonable interpretation is that it’s just enumeration.

Still, it could mean that you effectively get the template twice. For the most part, that’s redundant (most of the abilities wouldn’t stack), but it would nonetheless net you +16 Str, +4 Con, +4 Int, +4 Cha, and a +8 increase to Natural Armor (meaning you could have some from another source and this stack with it), which would make up for playing mono-Sorcerer before entering a gish class.

For my look at nerfing/changes, I’ll go with the reasonable interpretation:

Sorcerer Bloodlines in Pathfinder tend not to change your type, so the ability to ignore dominate person is a nerf. The Draconic bloodline doesn’t give you Darkvision or low-light vision, though those are fairly easy to get otherwise. The main losses (which I think, if they aren’t oversights, are ways of balancing the increased spellcasting) are +4 Str, +2 Cha, and +1 Nat Armor. The only one of these I’d be terribly upset about is the Charisma bump, given your casting: you can get the others through spells when you need them without much trouble.

[lichlairs]

Checkout our new post over at https://lichlair.com/daily-monster-27-tiamat

Daily Monster #27: Tiamat

Yeah. You read that right. Of all the 1561++ monsters currently available over at dndbeyond I somehow managed to roll the living avatar of an actual god. Now you get why I had to reroll yesterday’s monster, right? This is why. Luckily for us (mostly me, really) it so happens that I’ve felt Tiamat’s wrath first hand. Without any further ado, let us talk about one of Dungeons and Dragons most well known figures...

Tiamat

The numbers

Oh boy, where to start with this one. There’s a reason Dungeons and Dragons has mostly stayed away from giving Gods and deity like monsters their own statblocks. Even this statted version of an avatar of Tiamat has some truly game breaking stats. We’re talking about a +8 in WIS and INT, +9 in CHA, and +10 STR and CON. Even their lowest stat, DEX, is an average +0.

Tiamat’s saving throws are very much as godly as she is with a +9 to DEX, +17 to WIS, and ridiculous +19 to her STR. She could literally roll a Nat 2 and still succeed most saves without even needing to burn a legendary resistance.

Speaking of which, “resistance” is definitely a word that pops up a few times in this creature’s block. Like any boss monster worth his or her salt, Tiamat has not one, not three, but FIVE Legendary Resistances. Sorry, did I say resistances? I meant to say immunities. We’re talking about immunity to Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, Poison, a bunch of conditions, and the typical non-magical weapon attack resi– immunity. Oh yeah, also? Anything below a 6th level spell immediately fails since Tiamat has Limited Magic Immunity. If you’re wondering how your players are supposed to stop her, well, the simple answer is they can’t but do keep reading for the longer version.

If you thought we were done with the crazy numbers, you’re in for a treat. This gargantuan fiend (yeah, not a dragon or celestial for some reason) has an AC of 25, a hit point pool of 30d20+300, a flying speed of 120ft, and a passive perception of 36.

Yeah, that’s a +26 to any perception checks. Say goodbye to your Sneak Attacks, my fellow rogues. Oh, Invisibility? Enjoy Tiamat’s 120ft Truesight, as well as her 240ft Darkvision.

As if we didn’t have enough resistances and hit points to blow through, Tiamat also has a pretty neat Regeneration feature that just, tops her off for 30hp at the start of each of her turns.

But let’s talk about some of the damage that she can dish out instead. Of course the main “feature” if we want to call it that for this creature is that fact that, like a Hydra, there are multiple heads to deal with. Each of which has their own possible Legendary action for a Breath Weapon, at a cost of 2 of her 5 available at each round. I’ll spare you the details but just know that the averages for damages are between high 60s and low 90s. If you’re wondering what exactly you’re supposed to do with that last Legendary Action, well, you can just take a big chunk out of the Paladin with a Bite attack. Or you know, just take 5 bite attacks per round on top of your Claw-Claw-Tail Multiattack for a total of 8 attack rolls per round.

As if this monster didn’t already have enough things at its disposal, Tiamat also gets a 3/day access to the 7th level spell Divine Word, which can just instantly kill player depending on their current number of hit points.

I know I was trash talking the huge numbers this creature gets earlier in the article but, if anything I think the 240ft area to her Frightful presence should be increased. Just make it like two miles or something because holy sh–.

Oh, and just in case you somehow manage to “kill” her, she can’t actually die. She’ll just reform back at her place and plot revenge on whoever did the do.

The lore

Drawn from Babylonian and Sumerian mythology, Tiamat was known as the Goddess of the Sea. Although there are slightly different versions of the stories, basics are that she get betrayed by other gods and eventually births dragons as part of her revenge.

In terms of Dungeons and Dragons, she has been part of the world ever since 1975 when she was introduced as The Dragon Queen and although she has accumulated many other titles throughout the years, she continues to be an iconic figure in 5th edition.

She is known are one of the two primary Draconic Gods. Together with her brother Bahamut, she was once part of a single dragon deity named Io, who represented creation and was thought to have created the multiverse. Flash forward an unknown number of millennia and Io was defeated and cut through cleanly into two parts from which spawned Bahamut and Tiamat.

Chances are that if you’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons for a bit, you will have heard of Tiamat’s and Bahamut’s rocky relationship. While their rivalry and hatred for each other is well known, this wasn’t always the case. Nowadays though, it is most certain that if Tiamat were to escape her imprisonment she would focus on bringing about the destruction of all Metallic Dragons as one of her very first acts.

Although no longer included in her statblock for 5th edition (thank god), some of the lore for older editions described Tiamat as being able to watch and listen up to a 10mile radius around her, and being able to “poison” water or any substance containing water such as potions. She could also charm reptiles and teleport around planes and locations as wished. Just when you think she couldn’t get any more broken, am I right? Thankfully, as mentioned before, none of those seem to be current parts of her 5th edition skill set. What does remain as part of her stat block is the fact that she simply cannot be killed and will eventually reform and reappear to cause trouble.

Similar to most of her dragon children, Tiamat often presents herself a woman with dark hair, a sorceress sometimes known as the Dark Lady.

If you’ve ever fought an ancient chromatic dragon in your campaign, there’s a slight chance that they were in fact spawned directly from Tiamat and one of her multiple consorts.

As a Greater God, Tiamat doesn’t just represent all even dragons and reptiles, but also the ideals of conquest, greed, destruction, tyranny and a bunch of other nice stuff. Her hunger for power is such that she has in fact been killing and absorbing other Gods and their power for a very long time. Many believe this to be one of the reasons that prompted her getting banished.

If you’re wondering where exactly you can find this fiendish creature so that you may slay her once and for all, look no further than Avernus; first layer of the Nine Hells. Although trapped here, she is free to roam as wished. In the untold years since her imprisonment she has built a massive fortress from which she rules as she continues to seek for means to escape her imprisonment. Of course if you are thinking of approaching her there, you might have to deal with large numbers of other devils, as the Dragon Queen has a decent amount of support from Asmodeus himself.

Back on the Material Plane, the Cult of the Dragon, also known as Church of Tiamat, and the Keepers of the Secret Hoard are always hard at work attempting to free the Dragon Queen. The cult is explored in great detail in the 5th edition modules Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat, but for now, just know that Tiamat’s followers tend to be just a greedy and power hungry as she is. Those who achieve a certain amount of power and notoriety within the ranks become known as Wyrmspeakers. In terms of her dragon followers, chromatic dragons often commit atrocities and mass destruction in her name.

The execution

Look man, I get it. Dragons are cool and in a game half named after them, we definitely want to fight them, but Tiamat? Seriously? It’s your fiery funeral, but okay, let’s see…

Actually, let us start by discussing how we’re meant to fight her in one of WoC’s own modules. I suppose the whole article is a giant spoiler for the Rise of Tiamat Module as it is but just in case: Spoilers ahead!

At the end of the Rise of Tiamat module (second part of the Tyranny of Dragons adventure set) the party of heroes is meant to race against the Cult of the Dragon as the rush to complete a ritual that will free Tiamat from her imprisonment in the Nine Hells. It is stated several times throughout the book that the chances for the players to defeat Tiamat, if she is successfully summoned, are extremely slim. So slim in fact, that the adventure places several ‘clauses’ for the ritual that allow the players multiple ways to either stop the ritual completely or greatly weaken Tiamat’s avatar once she comes through into the Material Plane. From reducing her hit points and number of Legendary actions and resistances to lowering her AC, all so that the players might have a chance, just a chance, of sending her back to Avernus.

I bring this up because, unless you’re planning on this encounter to TPK your players and wipe out the board, you will definitely need to come up with some ways to give your players and edge and weaken Tiamat.

And this is just Tiamat (ha!) that we’re talking about here. If we’re going by lore alone she will definitely not be by herself when the time comes to rise. She will have a massive array of allies from cultists, to chromatic dragons and devils. What I’m saying here is that this is definitely not an encounter to through at your players lightly. It will require extreme balancing and preparation on your part as the Dungeon Master.

If your Rise of Tiamat players are unfortunate enough to not stop the ritual in time, or if you’re still set on subjecting your group to Tiamat’s wrath, do try your best to make the encounter memorable! Go all out and don’t be afraid to get creative with combat. This should be the kind of be all or end all final battle where all the player’s effort finally pays out as their allies assemble and prepare for a final assault against Tiamat’s forces.

Oh boy, that was a long one but I definitely enjoyed doing all the research needed for this piece. Even learned a few things I didn’t know despite having played through the Tyranny of Dragons module.

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