Good gestalt for Dragonfire Adept?

[Super Evil User]

Hey, all.

I was thinking about gestalting DfA with a melee class for flavor. The idea is that the character's a sword-wielding member of a tribe that worships and draws power from a slumbering dragon. Preferably light-medium armor only plus sword proficiency - think more swashbuckler or tribal warrior, not knight-in-shining-armor.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

[Elricaltovilla]

Warblade or Swordsage. Factotum too if you want some more skillmonkeying and like cheesing out extra standard actions.

DFA gestalts well with anything, since nearly all its abilities run off of CON, which is the stat everybody wants anyway.

[DMVerdandi]

Battle Sorcerer.

[Zaq]

If you want to be using your breath weapon at all, you want to be spending most, if not all, of your standard actions on it. So you want a melee character that doesn't need to be attacking every turn—or rather, that doesn't need to be spending actions on their own turn to attack. Which means that you want reactive attacks.

So you want an AoO monkey, just for starters, and maybe some reactive abilities on top of that. Crusader is the obvious choice, just because Thicket of Blades is so very, very nice for lockdown builds. I'm sure you can also find some good Counter maneuvers for off-turn fun. If you can get your hands on the Justice Mantle somehow (a dip in Ardent is the obvious choice, or Psychic Warrior with the Mantled Warrior (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070214a) ACF), then you can use an immediate action to make an AoO against someone who attacks your friends, which is nice. (You'll want Psionic Meditation (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/psionicFeats.htm#psionicMeditation) to rapidly regain focus, of course.) Depending on how many levels you have free to spend, you could also dip two levels in Monk for Invisible Fist, then take Spectral Skirmisher from PHB2, which lets you make an AoO against an enemy who attacks you while you're invisible. Since Invisible Fist lets you become invisible as an immediate reaction, you can go invisible right as an enemy attacks you, then AoO them for doing so. Beyond that, standard lockdown tricks apply, so get as much reach as you can muster, get Combat Reflexes, get Improved Trip, maybe get Mage Slayer if you're okay with having a lower caster level on your invocations (though your breath weapon should probably be okay), and so on.

[Karl Aegis]

Dragon Shaman also runs off charisma and lets you qualify for metabreath feats while also rounding out whatever class skills you want for your side role. You can trade out auras known for more DFA invocations known with the ACF in Dragon Magic. They get medium armor proficiency, so go ahead and get mithril full plate.

[SinsI]

Totemist. Great synergy since both classes work off Constitution, and it can be played as a passive class so it will nicely complement DfA's invocations.

[Segev]

Totemist. Great synergy since both classes work off Constitution, and it can be played as a passive class so it will nicely complement DfA's invocations.

I'll second this suggestion. Look for soulmelds that grant blindsense; you can then take the Darkness invocation (or the breath of night one for fog) to conceal yourself and blind your enemies...and use blindsense to know where they are. You don't need accuracy to hit them with an AoE (like, say, your cone-shaped breath weapon).

[Troacctid]

I'll second this suggestion. Look for soulmelds that grant blindsense; you can then take the Darkness invocation (or the breath of night one for fog) to conceal yourself and blind your enemies...and use blindsense to know where they are. You don't need accuracy to hit them with an AoE (like, say, your cone-shaped breath weapon).

You can't get blindsense from soulmelds until high levels. Best you can do is scent. It doesn't matter though, because neither invocation blocks line of sight--they only provide 20% concealment.

Personally, I am a fan of taking Celestial Familiar for a Coure Eladrin, which has Faerie Fire at will to negate concealment for your enemies. But a simple bat familiar comes with built-in blindsense, if you aren't Chaotic Good.

Also, Darkness is far better than Breath of the Night--it has a long duration and it moves with you instead of being fixed in place, so it is essentially always on, whereas Breath of the Night requires that you waste a standard action at the beginning of combat. Furthermore, you can toggle Darkness on and off by covering the object you cast it on if it ever becomes inconvenient. The only downside is that some enemies can see through magical darkness, but that should be uncommon at low levels, and you can switch to Chilling Fog at high levels.

[daremetoidareyo]

If you have a high charisma, binder synergizes pretty well. Day long supernatural abilities and all.

[atemu1234]

Battle Sorcerer.

Hahaha no.

If you gestalt normal sorcerer, though...

[Mr Adventurer]

Ranger. It's got that 'link to the spirits' thing going on, draconic ACFs, sword prof, good BAB, good Ref save, light armour, better skill points, diverse skill list, and with books outside the core three plenty of spells to spend swift actions on.

EDIT: take the Urban Familiar ACF from the Cityscape web enhancement, take a hawk or other bird, re-fluff it as a dragonling.

[Eloel]

If you have a high charisma, binder synergizes pretty well. Day long supernatural abilities and all.

I'll second this. Pick your vestiges and invocations mostly passive and go to town.