Quote Originally Posted by arguskos View Post
Oskar: Those are reasonable things to ask your DM to change for you. Eldritch Blast becomes Breath Weapon, and all of those problems pretty much go away. However, yeah, technically, DFAs are shafted on the whole prestige class front.
Reasonable to a point. Recall that you need a good DM to allow you to work something with Eldritch Theurge and Eldritch Disciple, which are evidently Warlock-centric and disregard the very existence of DFA.

However, even then, DFA has the worst part on PrCs. This is mostly because of how the breath weapon differs from the Eldritch Blast, and how the breath effects are unlike the blast shape and essence invocations. A Warlock entering into ET or ED loses pretty much nothing, since you either make Warlock secondary (and mostly progress either arcane or divine spellcasting), or you get the shaft and try to progress both on equal terms. DFA is worse because you lose the only way to make your breath weapon have different effects, which limits you to a fire breath weapon that can be either a line or a cone. You can get to level 2 and nab a breath effect, but it's the least of all breath effects; afterwards, your breath weapon will progress in damage (and probably save DC), but not in effects. Eldritch Theurge, which by RAW is inaccessible, answers that somehow by allowing the spells that alter breath weapons, but that implies getting into Sorcerer quite early, sacrifice only one level of DFA (or perhaps two), and use your spell slots to benefit your breath weapon every now and then (though, you get some nice spells that way). The big loser is Cleric, though, because Eldritch Disciple is severely restrictive in terms of how it works, so you end up basically becoming a Cleric that gains a breath weapon and some at-will spell-like abilities; you do lose about two or three caster levels, which hurts a lot.

Gifts of the Divine Patron aren't so surprising, but nice quirks nonetheless. Healing Blast is the best of the lot, since it can be maximized (using the metabreath feats from Draconomicon) and turned into a cone of healing energy that restores up to around...30 HP or so by expending a use of turn undead. With a breath weapon that deals 9d6 damage, you can heal about one-third of a Heal spell with your breath weapon; it doesn't consume a spell, and you can mostly get Nightsticks if uses of TU worry you. (Then again, CD's Sacred Healing is far better than the breath weapon effect). The only advantage you'd like to apply from Eldritch Disciple can't be applied, though (adding your breath effects to spells), since it only applies to Warlock essence invocations.

Getting 15th level breath effects and turning, say, Earthquake into a massively huge Disintegrate spell would have been worth it, tho. Earthquake + Discorporating Breath of Bahamut = Win.