Dragon Adept makes a great Sorcerer

[tedcahill2]

I'm refluffing the Dragonfire Adept to replace the sorcerer in my upcoming campaign. I have always thought that a sorcerer should embody magic in a much different way than just casting spells spontaneously, magic needed to be part of their very being.

So I'm converting the Dragonfire Adept to a pure arcane theme, instead of a dragon theme. Most of the class is easily converted, I changed the breath weapon to arcane blast, breath effects to blast effect, etc. The invocations work as is, I just won't be referring to them as draconic invocations.

Other abilities work okay, but only if I stick with the, "All sorcerers come from dragon lineage." thing. I would like to not do that though.

I'd appreciate the help with replacing these abilities.


Dragontouched: At 1st level, you gain Dragontouched (see page 18) as a bonus feat.
Was thinking of just removing this. I don't think I need to add anything to balance this loss.


Scales (Ex): At 2nd level, your skin becomes thick and scaly, granting you a +2 bonus to your natural armor. The scales can be of any color or metallic hue; they are often (but not always) of a draconic hue that matches your outlook and alignment. This bonus improves to +3 at 8th level, to +4 at 13th level, and to +5 at 18th level.
If you already have a natural armor bonus, use the higher of the two values.
Replace with:
Elemental Barrier (Su): At 2nd level, the constant flow of arcane power flowing through you bends elemental attacks away from you, granting you energy resistance 5 (fire, lightning, and cold). Your barrier strengthens, bending even more energy away from you, providing energy resistance 10 at 8th level, to 15 at 13th level, and 20 at 18th level.
If you already have energy resistance, use the higher of the two values.
Or:
Resist Arcane Magic (Su): At 2nd level the sorcerer can more easily resist the affects of arcane magic, gaining a +2 bonus to all saving throws against arcane magic. This bonus increases to +4 at 8th level, to +6 at 13th level, and +8 at 18th level.
Or:
Barrier: At 2nd level, the magic energy around you can actually deflect attacks away from you. You gain a +2 shield bonus to your armor class. This bonus improves to +3 at 8th level, to +4 at 13th level, and to +5 at 18th level.


Dragonkin (Ex): At 4th level, you gain a +4 competence bonus on Diplomacy checks made to influence the attitude of dragons or creatures of the dragonblood subtype (see page 4). You are treated as a dragon for the purpose of determining whether frightful presence can affect you.
Like Dragontouched, I feel like this can just go away and doesn't need to be replaced.


Damage Reduction (Ex): At 6th level, you gain damage reduction 2/magic. At 16th level, this improves to damage reduction 5/magic.
Replace with:
Spell Resistance: At 6th level, you gain spell resistance 12. At 16th level, this improves to 22.


Immunities (Ex): At 19th level, you gain immunity to paralysis and sleep.
Replace with:
Ascension: At 19th level, a sorcerers body is so infused with arcane energy that they become a magical creature. They are forevermore treated as an outsider (an extraplanar creature) rather than as a humanoid for the purpose of spells and magical effects. For instance, charm person does not affect her. Additionally, the sorcerer gains damage reduction 10/magic, which allows her to ignore the first 10 points of damage from any attack made by a non-magical weapon or by any natural attack made by a creature that doesn't have similar damage reduction. Unlike other outsiders, the sorcerer can still be brought back from the dead as if she were a member of her previous creature type.

[tedcahill2]

Just a quick message to those that have already viewed the post. I made some additional edits, and cut down on the length of the post. Hopefully the condensed information is easier to consume.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Removing the ribbon abilities is no great loss. If you remove the "breath weapon" part of the blast, I'd suggest boosting it in another way-- in doing so you lose access to Entangling Exhalation and Metabreath feats, which go a long way towards making the thing more useful. (Perhaps boosting the damage if you don't apply any of the debuffy breath effects). All three of your Scales replacements are fine. Spell Resistance is not; those values are way too low to be useful-- most likely you'll just get frustrated by messing up the occasional buff. Ascention likewise is fairly weak, as you're not going to run into anything that doesn't bypass the DR. Then again, both abilities they're replacing are pretty weak, so not too bad there.

[ComaVision]

Wouldn't the Warlock make a better base than the DFA?

[tedcahill2]

Wouldn't the Warlock make a better base than the DFA?

I started looking at the warlock as a base, and found that the dragonfire adept was built very similarly to the warlock. To differentiate my sorcerer and the warlock classes I thought that leaving the warlock with his better BAB and attack roll requiring ray and using the dragonfire adepts breath/blast was a better mechanic for me to work with.


Removing the ribbon abilities is no great loss. If you remove the "breath weapon" part of the blast, I'd suggest boosting it in another way-- in doing so you lose access to Entangling Exhalation and Metabreath feats, which go a long way towards making the thing more useful. (Perhaps boosting the damage if you don't apply any of the debuffy breath effects). All three of your Scales replacements are fine. Spell Resistance is not; those values are way too low to be useful-- most likely you'll just get frustrated by messing up the occasional buff. Ascension likewise is fairly weak, as you're not going to run into anything that doesn't bypass the DR. Then again, both abilities they're replacing are pretty weak, so not too bad there.
Regarding the SR: my thought was that DR 2 and DR 5 is pretty darn weak at the levels it's given. So similarly I thought SR 12 and 22 at those levels were equally weak, but should kick in when facing very low level effects.

Regarding breath effect feats: I honestly hadn't considered their loss to be that great. One thought I had was to take all the breath effects from the class, and all the breath effect feats, and make them invocations, just like how the warlock has blast effect and blast shape invocations. I would increase the dragonfire adepts invocations known to match the warlock in that case.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I started looking at the warlock as a base, and found that the dragonfire adept was built very similarly to the warlock...One thought I had was to take all the breath effects from the class, and all the breath effect feats, and make them invocations, just like how the warlock has blast effect and blast shape invocations. I would increase the dragonfire adepts invocations known to match the warlock in that case.
Both get pretty small numbers of invocations known. I think both could go up to 1d6/level damage and 1 invocation/level without straining balance too much.


Regarding the SR: my thought was that DR 2 and DR 5 is pretty darn weak at the levels it's given. So similarly I thought SR 12 and 22 at those levels were equally weak, but should kick in when facing very low level effects.
The difference is that DR is nonbinary; it won't help much, unless you're fighting giant octopi or something that's really only a threat by volume of attacks, but it always helps a little. SR is binary; it either blocks the whole spell or it does nothing. I'd rather have DR 1 than SR 10. (Though DR/Magic is pretty much always crap)