I said SBully and I were working on a tough build. Here it is. Introducing Puff the Magic Dragon.
Enjoy!
Dragons as monsters might be weak (devastating critical), but now SBully and I would like to present to you, a way for PC’s to play a dragon class and not have to worry about devastating critical. Perhaps this was the way dragons should have been created or, the way it was meant to be played. No more of this silly Red Dragon Disciple half-dragon mumbo jumbo. PC’s can play dragons and not have to worry about devastating critical either. I remember playing PnP as a little kid and the idea of fighting a dragon scared me. Dragons are supposed to be, IMO, the toughest monsters. I find it odd that the PnP game is called Dungeons and Dragons, yet the dragons on NWN are terribly weak.
My good friend from real life, SBully, and I worked out a way that people can play a dragon the way we think it always should have been able to be played: namely a character that strikes fear and awe into those who face him. A dragon should have the possibility of defeating any opponent. Now everyone can. I will present to you a way to role-play or power-game play either a Red, Blue, or Green Dragon and not have to feat things like Devastating Critical. Finally, a dragon that isn’t weak This dragon’s name is Puff the Magic Dragon.
Also, haven’t dragons been around for thousands of years? Aren’t they supposed to have great knowledge and power and wisdom from such a long life? Shouldn’t dragons be able to cast epic spells? I think they should. Dragons can cast epic spells and their DC on SBully and my build is 36. Not too shabby. Sure some people will make their saves, but they’ll still take half damage.
BTW, for all you server administrators and DM’s out there, you can easily convert my template for the PC dragon into NPC’s. SBully and I developed this template for playing a dragon character with no magical items involved because we are going to post it to the Excellent Character thread. When shifted, any armor or helmet magical abilities are carried over. With access to magical items, this template becomes even more powerful and can whoop some major butt.
Here is how the template works. Take your levels in this order exactly: *8 druid *4 wizard *4 palemaster *5 druid *10 palemaster *1 wizard *5 palemaster *1 wizard *1 druid *1 wizard
You will end up as 14 druid/ 7 wizard/ 19 Palemaster. You can choose any netural alignment you want as long as it is not neutral good. I chose to be human because they don’t have a dragon race to choose in NWN. Starting and (Ending Stats) Str 8 (8) Dex 8 (8) Con 12 (12) Int 16 (19) Wis 18 (30) Cha 8 (8)
The strategy is real simple. You cast your defensive buffs. Now you can shapeshift into either a red, blue, or green dragon and your stats will be: Str 59 Dex 45 Con 43 Int 19 Wis 42 Cha 8
Those are stats that should spark fear into the hearts of any enemy. No other class can even come close to that. Not even half as good. You have the option of the three colors of dragons to play. Sorry, there’s no way currently to play a good dragon, but at least we can play a full dragon and not a whimpy half-dragon. Also, depending on which color of dragon you want to be, you get immunity to either fire, electrical, or acid attacks. That’s quite powerful.
When you are shifted you will have ALL of the following defensive abilities. This list is quite awesome.
Spell Resistance: 26 Concealment: 50% Immune to mind spells Immune to death magic or death like ability Freedom of movement Immunity to paralysis Immunity to entangle Immunity to slow Immunity to fear Immunity to knockdown Immunity to stun Immunity to hold Immunity to poisons Immunity to Fire/Electrical/Acid (depends on which dragon you play) Immunity to sneak attacks Immunity to Critical Hits 10/- cold resistance. Damage Reduction 50/+20 +4 on initiative +2 to attacks in wilderness areas. PERMANENT True Seeing
Now that list is so sweet. The palemaster innate abilities coupled with a dragon’s innate abilities give this character immunities to so many things almost nothing can stop him. Then when you add in the defensive buffs of the druid and wizard that you cast on yourself before you shapeshift into a dragon, you are quite the powerhouse.
Here are the feats that I suggest and the level at which you take the feats to achieve the build as outlined above.
*note: the feats with the * are replaceable. They aren’t terrible important to this build, but since you are limited by what you can do when you are shifted, it helps to have things like knockdown and called shot.
The astute observer will notice that we took full advantage of getting epic spells at PM levels 15, 16, 18, and 19. We also waited to take our last level of druid once we have the required wisdom. By taking druid level 14 at character level 39 you can get dragon shape. Yes, I know the manual says you have to have Greater Wildshape VI to get Dragon Shape. Well, again the manual has proven itself to be wrong. (Maybe Bioware would want to hire me as a gametester. I am notoriously meticulous and testing the dumbest stuff to see if it works the way it should). Back to the build.
Now, this is just something I’d do, but isn’t necessary for this build. If you don’t want to name your character Puff the Magic Dragon you could name your character: “Summoned Red Dragon”. Instead of taking Greater Ruin or Hellball you could take Dragon Knight as a feat and now you can summon a red dragon. Enemies won’t know who to fight. You’ll both be named exactly the same thing. Okay, they will be able to tell which one you are because you’ll have the animations from your defensive buffs all around you, but if you summon your red dragon and cast defensive buffs on him too, then they shouldn’t be able to tell which one is you and which one is your summons. Just a fun thing to do to confuse people. I personally think having greater ruin and hellball are tougher than having dragon knight and I’ll explain why.
First, when you are shapeshifted you can cast your epic spells. You cannot cast your druid or wizard spells once you shift, but you can cast the epic ones. So how about laying the smackdown on somebody by casting hellball and greater ruin on them while you are shifted? Also, I checked the code for figuring DC by opening the script editor in the toolset and examining the code. When you cast an epic spell it takes the highest modifier of either your intelligence, wisdom, or charisma. This means that since you have 30 base wisdom and with an Owl’s insight spell and one maximized owl’s wisdom spell you get to 42 wisdom. This will give you a DC of 36 for Hellball and Greater Ruin. Further, I know this is not a bug. It was intended. Inspect the scripts if you do not believe me. George Zoeller put a note in the scripts that says to add the highest ability modifier (between intelligence, wisdom, and charisma) when determining the DC on epic spells. In this case, wisdom is 42, intelligence is 19, and charisma is 8. Since we’re playing NWN and we’re not bound by the PnP rules it CORRECTLY gives me the wisdom modifier to add to the DC. All of you (I know there are a lot) who are going to complain and say it isn’t supposed to be this way, I’m sorry for you. I tested this on a couple mods. The DC is 36 for greater ruin and hellball. Since wizards and sorcerers don’t get their spell focus feats added to their epic spell DC, this means Puff the Magic Dragon has almost as good a DC as a pure caster for these two spells only.
I started this post talking about how PC’s can finally play a dragon the way they want. Well you can, and since SBully and I both worked on this, we thought we’d add some personal style to Puff the Magic Dragon. Dragons are sneaky right? Their size shouldn’t stop them from sneaking up on people right? And they should be able to pick pocket too (because they have such tiny fingers) right? If you can’t have fun playing this game then why are you playing right? So we thought Puff should be a pick pocketing dragon. We added some more humor to our template by allocating the following skill points.
Finally, a hit point calculation for Puff the Magic Dragon.
Hit points: +126 (druid 14 x 9hp) +35 (wizard 7 x 5hp) +35 (PM levels 1-5 x 7hp) +50 (PM levels 6-10 x10hp) +63 (PM levels 11-19 x 7hp) +5 (PM deathless vigor) +80 (maximized endurance) +80 (aura of vitality) +40 (extended blood frenzy) +500 (shifting into a dragon raises con modifier and gives extra hit points) ------ 1014 hit points. That’s the way, IMO, that a dragon should be. Don’t forget you’re immune to critical hits and sneak attacks. And you have damage reduction from epic warding of 50/+20 so Puff is really hard to kill melee.
WEAKNESSES After careful consideration, SBully and I determined that having the spell penetration feats, although helpful, are not worth the three feats. There is no way we can hit a pure monk with our spells.
The spell power of this character is mainly defensive buffs. A few of the defensive spells only last 1 round/caster level, so these should be extended. That means you’re going to have to shift back to a human to recast your buffs every 14 rounds.
Combat against mages. Even puff will die if hit with enough maxed IGMS. We suggest that you buff Puff with an extended spell mantle spell before shifting. Mages can’t grapple you and they can’t use forceful hand on you when you are shifted. The following spell strategy works best against Puff: 1 Mordenkainen’s Disjunction to get rid of spell mantle 2 Maxed IGMS (dmg = 240 so far) 3 Maxed IGMS (dmg = 480 so far) 4 Maxed IGMS (dmg = 720 so far) 5 Maxed IGMS (dmg = 960 so far) 6 Maxed IGMS (dmg = more than Puff has hit points, so Puff dies)
Puff the Magic Dragon has to disable or kill mages in less than 3 rounds or Puff dies. The plus is that Puff gets a huge bonus to his knockdown attempt.
Puff can cast Harm and Heal, but to do so means shifting out of dragon shape and Puff loses immunity to sneaks, permanent true seeing, immunity to knockdown, etc.
So what does everyone think of Puff the Magic Dragon? I would like to stress again, that most of the credit to this build goes to SBully. I am not an expert at playing shifters. I did help him some, but he did most the work.
cdaulepp
Edited By Cinnabar Din on 02/27/08 02:15
wow, very nice build... how does it do in a Epic PvP server? sounds pretty complicated i like this build alot, but what is Puff's main damage dealer? what does he do? melee or spellcasting? just a few things i thought of after i read it.
So which is each version best suited to?
there is the 10 monk version the 10 PM version or the dragon kin version on the epic characters page?
monk 10 best speed prob best dodge... tumble..... best ac the PM version?
best spells dragon kin version?
you make them quite distinct in putting Puff 1.0 2.0 etc... are they improvements..... or completly new versions..... could you please also include URL's too the other versions.. so that others and i can compare ect... thank you, this build seems particularlily successful seeing as most RP worlds dissalow dev-crit and he gets imune to crits he pritty much melee immune wow!
One thing I wonder is against a pure mage/caster the following for example:
lvl 40 Cleric lvl 40 Druid lvl 40 Sorc lvl 40 Wiz
how long would the Dragon kin or puff builds last... surly a pure wizard... could just waste the build in about 5 IGMS....? no?
Edited By Blunkanthrust on 01/07/05 02:28
one thing i wanted to know, starting off as a druid, can you really take knockdown as a first feat, i dont know, but i think you have to have power attack and a base attack of +5 or +8 to get that.
You can take knockdown at any time, as far as I have noticed; it is Improved Knockdown that requires prereqs of INT13, Knockdown, base attack bonus +7
hi Blunkanthrust
here you go....
Puff The Magic Dragon v 2.0 /Cleric 16/Druid 15/Monk 10
Puff The Magic Dragon v 3.0 /Druid 15/Monk 2/Wizard 23
very nice build... how does it do in a Epic PvP server? sounds pretty complicated 
