RPZip
2015-12-11, 07:30 PM
The Dragonfire Adept (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_P3VZatn1M7UPhQrqiEty9R1xRlNwxSFlA-pH23K89w/edit?usp=sharing)
The Dragonfire Adept has always been one of my favorite 3.5 classes; flavorful, interesting, and with unique mechanics that put it outside of the normal D&D classes. While there are extremely good conversions for most Pathfinder classes, including a truly superb one for my other favorite 3.5 class (http://bit.ly/pathfinderbeguiler), I looked around and didn't find a conversion for the Dragonfire Adept that I liked. The process ballooned outwards and instead of being a simple port I ended up with a large rewrite of large portions of the class from the ground up, while still retaining many of the baseline mechanics and the wonderful flavor from the original.
In particular, this conversion attempts to tackle the following issues:
Not enough power choices. This is the most common target for most Invocation-class users, giving them more power slots. The Dragonfire Adept gains either an invocation or a breath effect at each level, in two places (1st and 16th level) one of each. In addition, I split up related invocations into three flavor-linked groups and tied them into their own unique acquisition method, the Draconic Revelations.
Breath effects have more bite. Rather than being purely at-will (technically, every-other-round in the base model), they each gained a longer recharge time. In exchange I gave them a variety of hopefully interesting mechanics, adopting some of the more useful and interesting ones from the base breath effects, metabreath spells and feats; due to the recharge time and interesting mechanics, breath effects remain useful even as you level and dragonfire adepts should be using a wide variety of breaths effects each round once they get a repertoire.
Since I wasn't in a position to just stub existing invocations which don't exist in Pathfinder anyway, I extensively redesigned invocations to fit the Dragonfire Adept.
A bunch of other tweaks and changes, which are helpfully noted with [design notes] underneath almost every section.
I took inspiration for this redesign in large part from Dreamscarred's excellent work, starting from stealing the general format they use for beta-ing their new classes on these forums. In terms of raw power this new Dragonfire Adept should be aiming for a Tier 3 slot, so I'm well aware that it outstrips its source material on at least that front. Ideally this should be a perfect class to play at a table with Path of War initiators or half-casters like the Bard, Inquisitor or Magus. I'd greatly appreciate feedback as I continue to tweak this project. Once I get it into a more finalized state, I'm going to look at turning it into a nicely formatted PDF for easier perusal.
There's a few things I haven't quite finished; in particular, the Draconic Invocations are just a stub of a few ideas, and there's no Capstone quite yet since I'm not sure what it should be. Although, now that I've just reread that sentence, 'turn into a dragon' does seem to be the obvious one. Writing out questions can be helpful like that.
The Dragonfire Adept has always been one of my favorite 3.5 classes; flavorful, interesting, and with unique mechanics that put it outside of the normal D&D classes. While there are extremely good conversions for most Pathfinder classes, including a truly superb one for my other favorite 3.5 class (http://bit.ly/pathfinderbeguiler), I looked around and didn't find a conversion for the Dragonfire Adept that I liked. The process ballooned outwards and instead of being a simple port I ended up with a large rewrite of large portions of the class from the ground up, while still retaining many of the baseline mechanics and the wonderful flavor from the original.
In particular, this conversion attempts to tackle the following issues:
Not enough power choices. This is the most common target for most Invocation-class users, giving them more power slots. The Dragonfire Adept gains either an invocation or a breath effect at each level, in two places (1st and 16th level) one of each. In addition, I split up related invocations into three flavor-linked groups and tied them into their own unique acquisition method, the Draconic Revelations.
Breath effects have more bite. Rather than being purely at-will (technically, every-other-round in the base model), they each gained a longer recharge time. In exchange I gave them a variety of hopefully interesting mechanics, adopting some of the more useful and interesting ones from the base breath effects, metabreath spells and feats; due to the recharge time and interesting mechanics, breath effects remain useful even as you level and dragonfire adepts should be using a wide variety of breaths effects each round once they get a repertoire.
Since I wasn't in a position to just stub existing invocations which don't exist in Pathfinder anyway, I extensively redesigned invocations to fit the Dragonfire Adept.
A bunch of other tweaks and changes, which are helpfully noted with [design notes] underneath almost every section.
I took inspiration for this redesign in large part from Dreamscarred's excellent work, starting from stealing the general format they use for beta-ing their new classes on these forums. In terms of raw power this new Dragonfire Adept should be aiming for a Tier 3 slot, so I'm well aware that it outstrips its source material on at least that front. Ideally this should be a perfect class to play at a table with Path of War initiators or half-casters like the Bard, Inquisitor or Magus. I'd greatly appreciate feedback as I continue to tweak this project. Once I get it into a more finalized state, I'm going to look at turning it into a nicely formatted PDF for easier perusal.
There's a few things I haven't quite finished; in particular, the Draconic Invocations are just a stub of a few ideas, and there's no Capstone quite yet since I'm not sure what it should be. Although, now that I've just reread that sentence, 'turn into a dragon' does seem to be the obvious one. Writing out questions can be helpful like that.