Optimizing usefulness, of antimagic fields and immunities.

[Keral]

Hi!

In one game I'm playing I'm am a dragon fire adept, and I am trying to ensure that I can always contribute something in a fight.
The first and probably easier question is:

-Which would be a better choice for a breath effect: line force damage or cone sonic damage?

and, sort of related question:

-Undeads immunity to fortitude effects doesn't include sonic breath weapon, right?

One of them should allow me to always have something to damage my opponent, right? Or is there something with fire+cold+sonic/force immunity out there so that I might need an additional type of damage?

Which brings us to the second part of the thread, which is: what can I do if I am unable to use my breath weapon?

The most prominent example that comes to mind is an antimagic field, or suppress breath weapon. But while suppress breath weapon still allows me to use invocations (and thus I can pick chilling fog to deal some damage assuming no cold immunities), I have absolutely no idea how to reaspond to an antimagic field, except to flee.

What kind of options do I have?

[Hamste]

Force damage is better if you want nearly unblockable damage.

Does the breath weapon damage objects? If it does undead are affected, if it does not and allows a fort save they are immune (if it is pure damage it should probably affect undead)

[ExLibrisMortis]

Undead are not immune to fort-save effects, if those effects can affect objects (such as corpses). Sonic effects do affect objects (especially crystalline ones), so undead are not immune.

Force and sonic immunity are both exceedingly rare, but they do exist. Force immunity is harder to get, whereas sonic effects can be negated by silence, if I recall correctly. As an additional advantage, force effects can affect incorporeal targets.

Dragonfire adepts do not have (an equivalent of) the extremely practical Vitriolic Blast eldritch essence invocation, so a target inside an antimagic field is flat-out immune to your breath weapon. If you're in an antimagic field, your best bet is to leave it and run, unless you're somehow set up for melee. If you're weak in melee, but have a reach weapon, you may be able to hide behind the warblade and provide Aid Another bonuses, or something like that.

[Doctor Despair]

For AMF, pay someone to cast shrink item on a tinfoil teepee and wear it as a hat. When you enter an AMF, the shrink item spell with be suppressed, the teepee will expand to cover you and block line of effect to the AMF so you can cast again.

Depending on how you cast, you can probably cast instantaneous duration spells in the AMF anyway. AMF is really wonky that way

[Keral]

For AMF, pay someone to cast shrink item on a tinfoil teepee and wear it as a hat. When you enter an AMF, the shrink item spell with be suppressed, the teepee will expand to cover you and block line of effect to the AMF so you can cast again.

Depending on how you cast, you can probably cast instantaneous duration spells in the AMF anyway. AMF is really wonky that way

Uh, well yes, but this doesn't remove an antimagic field on the enemy, does it? So it's not really useful to me :(


Undead are not immune to fort-save effects, if those effects can affect objects (such as corpses). Sonic effects do affect objects (especially crystalline ones), so undead are not immune.

Force and sonic immunity are both exceedingly rare, but they do exist. Force immunity is harder to get, whereas sonic effects can be negated by silence, if I recall correctly. As an additional advantage, force effects can affect incorporeal targets.

Dragonfire adepts do not have (an equivalent of) the extremely practical Vitriolic Blast eldritch essence invocation, so a target inside an antimagic field is flat-out immune to your breath weapon. If you're in an antimagic field, your best bet is to leave it and run, unless you're somehow set up for melee. If you're weak in melee, but have a reach weapon, you may be able to hide behind the warblade and provide Aid Another bonuses, or something like that.

Mh, I didn't think about the silence thing. I'll proably go with force then, tho I usually prefer the cones.
I could, in a very theoretical way, attack someone in melee as I do have a pair of claws, but I'm afraid that 1d3-1 damage might not save me XD
So, antimagic field = run like hell. Luckily soon I'll get some nice seed boosts :P