Dragon Disciple as tank?
Blades
Member Posts: 167
I am entering the Cloakwood. My party...Level 4ish....
Drag Disc - PC
Rasaad
Helarine - Mod NPC - Cleric of Kelemvor
Imoen
Neera
Kivas
So far I have an AC of -2. With Shield cast. Blur for tough fights. Str of One cast continually. See any complications down the road?
Drag Disc - PC
Rasaad
Helarine - Mod NPC - Cleric of Kelemvor
Imoen
Neera
Kivas
So far I have an AC of -2. With Shield cast. Blur for tough fights. Str of One cast continually. See any complications down the road?
0
Comments
The bonuses in terms of HP, AC and Constitution of the DD kit grant him the possibility to take some hits and this guy will have powerful defensive spells anyway. Don't forget the offensive-defensive spells Fire Shield (Red) and Fire Shield (Blue). What's more, it's a wonderful opportunity to use all these spells that you normally don't use as spellcasters because they require you to be close to the ennemy and can harm your own team members if they are in the way: Aganazzar's Incinerator and Cone of Cold are examples among many other spells of this kind, let alone your dragon's fire breath
+1
DD is surprisingly durable on its own, with the AC bonuses and the d6 hit die. Add Find Familiar to get a bit of a low-level kicker, and you're not at all squishy. Max Dex, obviously, and take at least a 14 Con so you can get to 16 before too long. Of course, if you start with a 17, you can eventually regenerate naturally, which is cool. At low levels, you mostly have to play as a mage anyway, because your AC will be terrible until you get Robes of the Archmagi. It's not worth wasting a spell slot on Armor, imo. You'd be well-advised to pick up the Shield Amulet as early as possible. Because you're not gonna really tank for a couple levels, I recommend dagger proficiency. You can be ranged at first and transition to melee later without worrying about getting additional proficiencies. You can also get a surprising amount of kills with the Dagger of Venom, although I only recommend doing so if you have no one better using daggers.
Mirror Image and Stoneskin are obvious picks, and they're your workhorses. I'd actually continue to avoid spells like Spirit Armor and Ghost Armor, as armor class will eventually become less useful as the game goes on. Taking those on other casters might be helpful, but didn't bother. A DD can actually get a decent AC for BG1 with just Robes of the Archmagi, a Ring of Protection +2, and the Cloak of Balduran. Mirror Image and eventually Stoneskin will take care of the rest.
In BG2, you continue along the same lines, adding Protection from Magic Weapons. Keep Stoneskin up constantly, and pop Mirror Image or PfMW when you get in a fight (Mirror Image is better if the enemy is a mage). That's basically enough. You really shouldn't take much damage at all if you keep this up. Your main problem is actually going to be keeping enemies focused on your DD, rather than keeping your DD alive.
Basically, you play it like a fighter/mage, but with more magic instead of good physical damage.
In BG1:
- Prior getting stoneskin, you will not be a good enough tank to really play that role (average AC, low-average HP)
- once you get it, the small AC difference is more than compensated by the extra cast of stoneskin that the sorc can do.
In BG2, for the early game you have some advantage thanks to improved AC but this will soon be compensated by extra casts of stoneskin, improve invis, PFMW;...
Later on, AC becomes more or less useless so the DD has no real advantage over the sorc (while still lacking 1 spell/level)
Don't get me wrong, the DD is probably the 2nd most OP class in the game. But it does almost everything worse than the vanilla sorc.
Better AC? I'd rather cast one more stoneskin or one more PFMW.
Breath attack? Please...
8d8 damage at level 18.
Once per day.
The sorc can cast 1 more skull trap, one more sunfire, one more ADHW,...
Regeneration. The very slow regeneration granted by 20 in constitution is really useless apart from resting/travelling. And in this situations, using DUHM, a sorc would also regenerate.
In SOA, there is 2 rings of regeneration + the ring of gaax which allow for a much more useful regeneration rate.
While i agree that less spells per day are not that much of a deal, i'd rather get 1 extra timestop/ADHW/project image/PFMW/... than get the more or less useless perks from the DD.
More spells will help you survive though, that's an additional blur, mirror image, protection from magical weapon, etc.
With a good AC (and the DD really contributes to this, even if it's still possible to reach a really good AC with a normal Sorcerer), your Stoneskin and Mirror Image will take ages to be destroyed which means you will be able to cast more spells offensively instead of running back and forth casting Stoneskin while praying for your life.
The additionnal health of the DD will prevent you from being such an easy target to spells like Power Word : Stun, which is deadly.
Yet in BGEE, the DD only has a +1 bonus to AC (which is basically non significant)
Actually they are rather poor at tanking before having access to stoneskin (level 8):
Before that they will have:
- poor AC, unless fully buffed
- poor HP (at level 7, they have an average of 47hp with familiar, Max HP of 62)
- no helmet
A level 4 fighter can have, without buffing:
- almost the same HP
- -6 AC (ankheg plate, +1 shield, + 18 dex, +1 ring) = as much of the fully buffed DD
- immune to critical hit
At level 8, with stoneskin, they become really good tanks however.