Help with Dragonshaper Ranger

[Gorthawar]

Hi playground,

I've got a new player joining my campaign and they have decided to play a dragonshape ranger which we cooked up together. It's basically a wildshaper ranger but instead of turning into various animals they can turn into a specific gold dragon only. Size and abilities of the gold dragon goes up with dragonshape levels from a scaled down wyrmling at level 6 to young adult dragon at level 20. Initial build stub is glimmerskin elf ranger 15/nature's warrior 5 but we're still browsing around. Master of many forms is not an option however nor any other class that allows attaining other forms.

Where we could really use some advice is on choosing feats. Particularly the early levels are a bit of a struggle.

So far we've got the following:
Bonus regional feat: lion tribe warrior adjusted to allow attacks with bite and claws on a charge in addition to the normal bonus.
Level 1: Undecided. Perhaps dark stalker?
Level 3: Draconic Aura: Power (extra damage to all their natural attacks and the other melees in the party) Any alternatives?
Level 6: Extra wildshaper or Multi-attack

Any thoughts? They've chosen the lvl 1 elf ranger substitution level to gain increased fav enemy boni vs orc (story purposes) and undead. Also the lvl 4 shooting star substitution level to get additional spells instead of the animal companion.

Any help is much appreciated.
Gorthawar.

Edit: sources allowed all official books but I'm not familiar enough with the alternative magic systems yet to incorporate them in my game fully. Dragon magazine is ok as well.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

I'd do Warshaper up to 4 instead of most of those Nature's Warrior levels.

Wildshape Ranger gets Barbarian Fast Movement at 1st level, if possible trade that for the Lion Spirit Totem ACF in CC to get Pounce. A dragon form will get tons of mileage out of that, especially considering Rangers get Rhino's Rush on their spell list. Fill all your 1st level slots with that and use cheap 1st level Pearls of Power to recover those between encounters. A dragon form shouldn't even need Natural Spell as dragons can cast spells normally.

Consider combining that variant with Mystic Ranger from Dragon 336 p105, it gets 0-level spells at 1st level, 1st level spells at 2nd level, and every new spell level at every even-numbered class level up to 5th level spells at Ranger 10. Also get the feat Sword of the Arcane Order and you can prepare Wizard spells in your Ranger slots (like Wraithstrike).

Combat Reflexes is typically a good choice, but considering dragons always have Dex 10 it wouldn't be useful until he has an item that increases Dex with a Wilding Clasp. It's one of the better 1st level feats if he's starting at 1st level as he can just carry around a glaive and probably one-shot anything that gets close at that level.

Power Attack and Leap Attack will combine well with Pounce and Rhino's Rush. Get Armbands of Might in MIC, add an Enhancement bonus to Str and/or Dex to those per MIC p234, and put a Wilding Clasp on it if needed. The armbands increase your Power Attack damage, which gets increased by Leap Attack (which after the errata isn't considered a doubling effect) and then it's all doubled by Rhino's Rush.

[Gorthawar]

I'd do Warshaper up to 4 instead of most of those Nature's Warrior levels.

Wildshape Ranger gets Barbarian Fast Movement at 1st level, if possible trade that for the Lion Spirit Totem ACF in CC to get Pounce. A dragon form will get tons of mileage out of that, especially considering Rangers get Rhino's Rush on their spell list. Fill all your 1st level slots with that and use cheap 1st level Pearls of Power to recover those between encounters. A dragon form shouldn't even need Natural Spell as dragons can cast spells normally.

Consider combining that variant with Mystic Ranger from Dragon 336 p105, it gets 0-level spells at 1st level, 1st level spells at 2nd level, and every new spell level at every even-numbered class level up to 5th level spells at Ranger 10. Also get the feat Sword of the Arcane Order and you can prepare Wizard spells in your Ranger slots (like Wraithstrike).

Combat Reflexes is typically a good choice, but considering dragons always have Dex 10 it wouldn't be useful until he has an item that increases Dex with a Wilding Clasp. It's one of the better 1st level feats if he's starting at 1st level as he can just carry around a glaive and probably one-shot anything that gets close at that level.

Power Attack and Leap Attack will combine well with Pounce and Rhino's Rush. Get Armbands of Might in MIC, add an Enhancement bonus to Str and/or Dex to those per MIC p234, and put a Wilding Clasp on it if needed. The armbands increase your Power Attack damage, which gets increased by Leap Attack (which after the errata isn't considered a doubling effect) and then it's all doubled by Rhino's Rush.

Thanks for the good advice. The lion spirit totem pounce instead of the lion tribe warrior feat will definitely work well and I suppose they will be able to qualify for power attack by virtue of turning into a dragon with sufficient strength.

Not sure about the benefit of warshaoer over losing 4 levels of wildshaper that translate directly into the ability to turn into 1 higher dragon age category. And they get all the dragons abilities including the breath weapon and eventually spells etc. I probably didn't spell that out sufficiently.

Gorthawar

Edit:
They are already using rhino's rush (we're at lvl 6 now) but doesn't it affect the first attack only?

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Thanks for the good advice. The lion spirit totem pounce instead of the lion tribe warrior feat will definitely work well and I suppose they will be able to qualify for power attack by virtue of turning into a dragon with sufficient strength.

Not sure about the benefit of warshaoer over losing 4 levels of wildshaper that translate directly into the ability to turn into 1 higher dragon age category. And they get all the dragons abilities including the breath weapon and eventually spells etc. I probably didn't spell that out sufficiently.

Gorthawar

Edit:
They are already using rhino's rush (we're at lvl 6 now) but doesn't it affect the first attack only?

Rhino's Rush only benefits the first attack, but being able to follow up with all the other attacks and adding Power Attack + Leap Attack to all of those is still very strong.

[Khatoblepas]

Not sure about the benefit of warshaoer over losing 4 levels of wildshaper that translate directly into the ability to turn into 1 higher dragon age category. And they get all the dragons abilities including the breath weapon and eventually spells etc. I probably didn't spell that out sufficiently.

Wait, you get spells? This might be interesting, but we'll need to know more about what you get and when? At what levels do you get the advanced dragon forms? At the HD of the dragon in question?

[Gorthawar]

Wait, you get spells? This might be interesting, but we'll need to know more about what you get and when? At what levels do you get the advanced dragon forms? At the HD of the dragon in question?

Yes, they get all the abilities a gold dragon with as many hd as they have wildshaper levels gets and scaled linearly in between age category. So at level 8 they can turn into a wyrmling gold dragon with all it's benefits and at level 14 they can turn into a young gold dragon and cast spells like a sorcerer lvl 1 including spells from the cleric list etc.