Are there any good Dragon Disciple builds?

[Peacewhisper]

I like the concept thematically but build-wise it is very limiting. Does anyone have any good dragon disciple builds I could try out?

[Ruzuke]

I am not sure how good it is, but the general concept I have is a Bard Dragon Disciple, focused with Dirgesinger. Both being a dragon and dirgesongs would have the bard focus attached to it. Not the most powerful, but should allow a thematic build.

[In Sorrow We Trust]

i would probably try the 4 bard 16 pm 10 rdd build if you are allowed to use the bone wings. only good for being a brick, but still.

[Peacewhisper]

Yeah maybe I should have specified that I meant good alignment wise or at least neutral enough to not get killed on sight by your friendly neighborhood pallydun.

[In Sorrow We Trust]

Yeah maybe I should have specified that I meant good alignment wise or at least neutral enough to not get killed on sight by your friendly neighborhood pallydun.

try 4 bard 16 liberator 10 rdd

[Peacewhisper]

Yeah maybe I should have specified that I meant good alignment wise or at least neutral enough to not get killed on sight by your friendly neighborhood pallydun.

try 4 bard 16 liberator 10 rdd

Unfortunately this build is impossible. Due to the lore requirements for Dragon Disciple you have to take at least 5 bard levels. You could sacrifice 1 level of RDD and make it work but losing out on +4 strength and +2 charisma kind of defeats the purpose.

[Xerah]

I did a 20/10 bard/rdd gnome for a while but I deleted it because it wasn't that fun and didn't have a good song. It was just overall worse than a 30 melee bard.

You could do that now but add in 3 levels of cleric and still get a 30 song, so that's probably the way to go now. Incidentally, I did take gift of devotion on that RDD mentioned above and this would have fit him perfectly (this was pre evanglist buffs). I still don't find the build very exciting but that's an option for you (just you'll need to take ad:abj)

[stop bullying bards]

yee-haw dragon disciple builds.

this picture sort of sums up the experience, but I'll still talk about it below.

dragon disciple has a lot of variance that can happen, but i wouldn't expect it to ever feel great.
xerah mentioned it above, you can absolutely split DD/bard and end up with a pseudo spear-bard that has wings. you can either split 20 bard/10DD and maintain your dragon resistances/immunities, or you can split it 21bard/9DD giving up some dragon power, in exchange for the 10 minute bard song. i tested both and abandoned it.

the next set i'd mention are the hit people builds i tested out when making my previous dd character. its worth to note all of these builds mentioned below sit at about 46-49AB with a non-expertise AC of somewhere mid-50's because of DD's natural armor gain. dd shines as a comfy class because you'll near always end with chances for umd/tumble making it very plug and play.

bard5/dd19/paladin6 OR bard4/paladin16/10dd: you can swing it low paladin levels, or high paladin levels. i personally don't enjoy div-gameplay without synergy, so it kind of died in the water for my gameplay style. i didn't test this with blackguard so not sure if that fits in some better or more interesting way.

bard7/dd13/CoT10 + bard/dd/fighter: both of these do about the same thing, except one has smite. lots of feats, overwhelming critical. damage felt bad to me, but still functional for some weapon variance.

another option is to throw in knight(?)
you can accomplish 4bard/10knight/16DD for the massive armor gains + 2 epic feats of DD from 16. knight similarly ends around 48AB and then can throw in valiant for a 2/3 uptime on +3 ab, its kind of neat as a protector trope.

the heavy hitters i tested and picked between are:
8bard/5wm/17DD and 17swash/bard3/dd10
the wm variant really helps it shine because you can pretend you're going to deal damage, which dragon disciple doesn't really do otherwise.
the swash variant properly hits, assuming you go nodachi and the things you're hitting don't have negative protection or resistances to your fancy dice list. the wm came out on top for me, and just played like a umd/tumble weapon master that sat with a passive-expertise on from the base-armor gain of 17DD.

the class is all sorts of roleplay heavy with a lot of options to it, happy dragon disciple build hunting. if you wanna hit stuff, just about any class fits in. if you understand damage is going to be mediocre and outside of climb check ease and breath attacks, the class feels a bit lacking mechanically then most of these are fine. the str doesn't really offset the wonky building for a 3/4ths class but buffing it or changing it would lead to chaos probably.

[AstralUniverse]

DD doesnt really have particularly amazing builds.

I personally like 17 bard 3 evangelist 10 rdd... It's... ok.

[Jack Oat]

it's not a build the Jedi would tell you...

[Azensor]

class spread is typically, 4 bard 10 something,16 rdd or 16 something and 10 rdd
builds ik of that work well enough
bard/swash/rdd
bard/rdd
bard/bg/rdd
bard/pal/rdd
bard/wm/rdd
bard/knight/rdd
bard/pm/rdd
bard/fighter/rdd

[In Sorrow We Trust]

it's not a build the Jedi would tell you...

can that be done on a human

[Xerah]

it's not a build the Jedi would tell you...

can that be done on a human

It would be better on a human. Jack didn’t want to make a build that tells you to use a major.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Like most folks, I looked closer at DD a few weeks back than I ever had before. I had a build similar to Jack's as the most powerful (I went only 16 rdd for the extra bab in exchange for the seventh epic feat), but not far behind it was 3 bard 16 rdd 11 swash and it's probably where I would land as there is a lot less micromanagement and it does the thing I like most, kill you dead fast.