House rule for Dragonfire Adepts

[fishyfishyfishy]

I just wanted to get some feedback on a house rule I implemented for a player in my campaign. I felt that his chosen class was a bit underpowered compared to the rest of the party, so I decided to change the Dragonfire Adept to a "prepared caster" kind of style.

What tier would the playground put this class at with the following change? Instead of having a limited selection of Invocations known, a Dragonfire Adept can change their Invocations each day at dawn or dusk (players choice, similar to divine caster spell preparation). They are still limited by their Dragonfire Adept level for the level of Invocations they have access to (least, lesser, greater, and dark).

I was aiming for a simple change to make it Tier 3.

[Fax Celestis]

I'll be honest here: if your player is slacking as a DFA, he's either not trying very hard or he's in a very well-opped party.

What feats does he have? DFAs do very well picking up as many Draconic feats as possible: you can end up with blindsight, huge bonuses on knowledges, a ridiculous bucket of HP, and more in very early levels just from focusing on those feats.

If you're really that worried, you could probably give your player access to the warlock's invocations and call it a day.

[fishyfishyfishy]

It's a few things really. It is a well optimized party and he's not the best at optimization. The other players are all T1 classes (Cleric, Wizard, Artificer, Druid). For feats he took Improved Initiative, Ability Focus (Breath Weapon), and after a little convincing from me: Entangling Exhalation. I'm also going to allow all meta-breath feats to work with his breath weapon by changing the recharge time to 0 rounds.

Edit:

A bit more info: They are level 7 now, he is a Goliath with the LA bought off. He didn't want any flaws for more feats.

[Nagukuk]

I always found having to choose the limited number of known invocations super annoying. Allowing him access to any invocation (available to his level) "memorized" in the morning and useable all day long will add a nice amount of flexibility to his character.

The morning "mem-ing" will allow him to adapt better to some challenges during an adventure. While also allowing him to "try out" certain powers not commonly chosen.

as for what tier "shrug" tiers have always been a bit subjective anyway.


Eventually Strafing breath will allow him to spread out the pain better than the other members, with out having to worry about collateral team damage, but the others are going to almost always bring more pain .. although less often.

Consider carefully adding more encounters per day to tax the other casters spells per day possibly allowing the all day DFA to shine a bit more.

[Grod_The_Giant]

One thing your player would probably really like is a buff to damage. The DFA is a solid crowd-control class, but I guarantee you that's not why he took it-- he thought "cool, I can burn everything with dragon breath!" Kicking it up to 2d6-- heck, 2d10/3 levels wouldn't hurt.

[Chambers]

In a well optimized party the Dragonfire Adepts lack of versatility shows it's long teeth. The class is fine for what it does but breadth of options and abilities is one of the cornerstones of optimization. In a party of Tier 1's he simply doesn't have the options to compete with their versatility.

A simpler fix than making it a Prepared Invocation class would be increase the number of invocations known; 1 invocation known per level would likely be sufficient. It increases his versatility by letting him have more 'types' of things to do (see invisible creatures or instill fear or change shape, etc) while at the same time keeping the simple framework of the class (no need to mess with invocations per day and such).

[Yogibear41]

Give him 3/4 bab and toss on a natural lycanthrope based off of phynxkin for no LA. Now he can claw and bite inbetween breath cooldowns and has a dr of 10 :smallsmile: sure hes not tier 1 but heck hes a freaking dragon man and that has to count for something.

[Phelix-Mu]

Do the more invocations, flexible known list per day by prepping, add warlock invocations, and shop for/make your own homebrew invocations. With a player lacking op skills, there is almost no combination of things you can do to bring him up to the others when everyone else is decently op'd tier 1. Lack of foresight or game mastery to see that flaws<<bonus feats should demonstrate that you really can't throw too big a bone to this player and the character.

If the others complain...well, there's no pleasing some people.

EDIT: Also, Knowledge Devotion. Hehe, one of my favorite things to add to DFA!

[Psyren]

Throw in Warlock Invocations as others have said. I would also gestalt him with Totemist. He'll still be weaker than the T1s but he'll be in the same ballpark at least.

[fishyfishyfishy]

Thanks all for the ideas! There are lots of good ones. I'll play around with things and ask the players for input and try to find something that works well for our group.

[Snowbluff]

Throw in Warlock Invocations as others have said. I would also gestalt him with Totemist. He'll still be weaker than the T1s but he'll be in the same ballpark at least.

Hmm... I would say:

Warlock Invocations.
1 Invocations/level.
Gestalt with Dragon Shaman (sure where you're getting Totemist)

Personally, I think warlocks are friendlier to optimization, since EB is a touch attack and DFI don't qualify for Metabreath innately.

[Daer]

i liked the idea of allowing warlock invocation and maybe more of them at once. switching also makes it more interesting.

and something game wise to make it so that there are no 15 minutes adventure days. so at atleast once a while those breathes and invocations have place to shine while other casters run out their spells. or they ahve to save em

[Toliudar]

EDIT: Also, Knowledge Devotion. Hehe, one of my favorite things to add to DFA!

This confuses me. The only time that I've played a DFA, I don't think I made an attack roll the whole game. What am I missing?

[Fax Celestis]

This confuses me. The only time that I've played a DFA, I don't think I made an attack roll the whole game. What am I missing?

Knowledge Devotion does not specify weapon damage. You can KnowDev your breath weapon.

[Toliudar]

Seriously? So if I do, say, constitution DAMAGE with a poison, I get to add my knowledge devotion to that? Because it doesn't specify hit point damage either.

[Phelix-Mu]

Knowledge Devotion does not specify weapon damage. You can KnowDev your breath weapon.


Seriously? So if I do, say, constitution DAMAGE with a poison, I get to add my knowledge devotion to that? Because it doesn't specify hit point damage either.

Hmm, as DM, I'd allow any source of HP damage to benefit; spells, Su, any kind of weapon damage in which there is a roll involved that is going to cause hp damage. But I think the RAW is pretty slim here. If the DM feels that references to "damage" always include "ability damage," then that is a pretty big boost in effectiveness, and would work as Toliudar suggests.

Any source of hp damage will be modestly improved by Knowledge Devotion. But +5 points of Con damage, as Toliudar points out, would be incredibly more useful (and potentially game breaking with certain spells....Knowledge Devotion shivering touch).

[Fax Celestis]

Seriously? So if I do, say, constitution DAMAGE with a poison, I get to add my knowledge devotion to that? Because it doesn't specify hit point damage either.

Theoretically, you could.

I would just expect the DM to cast hail of DMGs on you.

However, precedent set from the Weaponlike Spells sidebar demonstrates that bonus damage for a spell or effect that deals non-hit-point damage inflicts negative energy damage as its additional damage. Poison isn't necessarily a spell, nor is it a case where the player should really be able to add bonus damage (since the poison is an effect that is applied by the player, and the poisoned effect carries its own conditions set by the poison itself (since individual poisons set their DCs and damage off of the kind of poison you have, independent of the player wielding it)), but I think it fits precedent-wise.

So yes, the tl;dr for non-HP damage spells/effects with Knowledge Devotion would be to add negative energy damage.