Some pro tips: The best weapon for this build would be the Thundering Claw of the Bear God, which would add 1d6 sonic and 1d6 electrical to all your dragonform attacks, which is like 12d6 extra damage per round in Dragon Form III. It would also cause your crits to call down lightning. Your un-shapeshifted form's two bite attacks (motherless and dragon disciple) with the same bonus, and also allow them to call down lightning on a crit. Since you have taken paladin you will have the proficiency for it, but if you don't, you would just have to take the martial weapons feat. Another pro tip is that if you want to go extra tanky, instead use the Arcane Protectors you can get in the game (two +1 daggers obtainable fairly early on). I have found their +3 dodge bonus persists in dragon form, and their rubbish damage and attack bonus are irrelevant when you shapeshift and are instead using natural attacks. With both equipped (one from bridge at Gudrin, the other from Bartholemew if he dies to the trolls), you add +6 dodge AC to your dragon, which is no joke. (There are other armor boosting weapons as well you could use, such as Perfection). Also, the Alkali gloves would add another 1d6 to all your natural attacks, so with claw of the bear god that is +3d6 elemental damage to all attacks, and with cloak of the winter wolf, your bites would get another +1d6 cold damage. In normal form, your two bites would be dealing 4d6 extra damage with this gear setup. You could also get an alchemist to cast thorn body on you for another 1d6, and take the Firebrand spell for another 1d6 fire on each attack, if you wanted to go full meme. Note that even though in Dragon Form III you only have 6 attacks (7 with haste), all of them are at full BAB, so you are probably hitting as much as, or more than a character with 10 attacks, 4 or more of which are at reduced BAB. Be aware that flurry of blows only works on fist or main hand monk weapon attacks, so would not work in shapeshifted form. One tip is to not underrate the dragon's breath weapon (which has no limit to its uses in Dragonkind III) because it ignores spell resistance, unlike most spell attacks. I discovered my melee sorcerer could actually dish out reasonable damage to bosses that have too much armor to hit with melee attacks just by repeatedly using his breath weapon, even when nobody in the party can hit it or get through its damage and spell resistance. It can be worth buffing your preferred elemental damage type with feats and gear as a dragon for this reason. With the current version of the game, there are at least two items that give you a once-per-day use of Dragonkind III (an axe from the orc artisan, and a belt from the varnhold letherworking artisan).
A quicker way of explaining how the Draconic Bloodlines differ is - there's is actually just one Draconic Bloodline and your chosen dragon affects energy type and such, but it was implemented this way into Kingmaker so that there was one less screen.
My optimal dragon disciple build would actually be Scaled Fist 1, Dragon Disciple 4, and Sorcerer 15. This gets you 9th level spells, where you can take something like Fiery Body for some crazy immunities (which stack with your dragonform element immunity). You will have lower saves and slightly lower BAB, but Transformation can fix that, and when you can't hit, dragons are awesome in that they can use their breath weapons, which ignore spell resistance. You get unlimited uses of this in dragonform III, and a few daily uses from dragon disciple.
@@adelvoid1530 That would actually depend on how you wanted to do it. If you wanted to play as a melee early on, take DD as soon as you can for the +4 strength and the bonus bite attack. You will lose one level of casting, but that is all. You could alternatively take it later, and play as a more casting oriented sorcerer for the early game (though since you are likely to be taking a bunch of melee feats for your dragon form, this seems like the less optimal choice for end game).
If you are going to do builds you should put a summary of it in the description and also show some game play of it otherwise you will sit through 36 minutes only to realize you don't like the build or have no clue weather its good/looks cool
You can skip the Paladin dip and instead cast Bestow Grace of the Champion on yourself from a Cleric/Paladin party member. As long as you pick Lawful Good you will get the same benefit without going into Paladin levels, which are kind of a waste and prevent you from reaching the higher level spells which is the main reason to go Sorcerer Dragon Disciple instead of Magus. Similarly for the Vivisectionist dip, while Mutagen is nice the opportunity cost is too large and making advancing in the Dragonkind spells, from I to II to III gives more bonuses than Mutagen ever could and again spell progression. For this same reason taking more than 4 levels of Dragon Disciple is also wasteful as it reduces your caster level too much. So ideally 1 Monk, 4 Dragon Disciple and 15 Sorcerer should be the build at 20. Anything less and you might as well just roll with a Magus instead of Sorcerer.
Here is why I would not take paladin levels: I find that saves are nice, but not essential. Pretty much anything you can save against, you can also protect against using holy aura, freedom of movement, resist/ protection from elements, or CCing the thing that casts it at you. Obviously it is good to be able to resist those things, but since you can never rely on saves working out you probably still want to be protecting yourself anyway. You could try and have high will to resist wild hunt gaze, or forget will and just take the blind fight feat or rely on the freedom of movement buff, for example. More sorcerer casting instead would be very powerful. Spellcasting is a funny thing in that each level of spells you get is more and more valuable. A decent Level 8 spell is worth quite a lot more than a lower level spell.
Agreed. The saves are really, really nice. But asking for 2 levels is quite a steep price. It feels especially bad in the early/mid game because your spell progression is delayed so much.
You forgot the main reason not to waste levels on Paladin: the spell Bestow Grace of the Champion which does the same thing as long as you're lawful good. So as long as you're not doing a solo playthrough you can easily have 1 Paladin/Cleric in your party to cast it on you for the exact same benefit.
As I started the game for the first time and on Challenging, I picked the Sorcerer from the 4 main default characters as my main and it happened to be a Red Dragon Blodline one. Since I picked Chaotic Neutral, I can not go Paladin. I am still lv 1, but I can go lv 2 already. Not done so, because I want to hire 2 mercenaries and I am looking for builds to decide what to hire. I can go Dragon Disciple from lv 3, but for lv 2 should I go alchemist? I can not go Paladin and I do not want to go monk, will the build still work? This guide does not tell how to level the main character properly, the default main character, as he starts as a Red Blodline Sorcerer.
same thing no vivi, but 1 more level or sorc gets you lvl 7 spells....your stats are already awesome without muti, AC is near 60 in defensive, SICK saves, use traits for sneak damage and trickery (child of the streets).
You basically described something I've been using in a Tabletop Pathfinder game for around a year now. You can mix in a Bloodrager level somewhere in there for Rage. Rage, Mutagen, Enhancement and Size will add something like +14 - +28 Strength because why not have a +20 Strength Modifier for a little while? The progression is really strong level by level, it's not a build that ever feels like it needs to 'come online' because you always have some diverse tools available no matter where you start the build or add components later. One of the strongest spellblades I've played. Definitely the sort of thing to bring to 'unfair' games! Here are some variations: Bloodrager 1/Alchemist 1/Paladin 1/Monk 1/Sorcerer 6/Dragon Disciple 10 (6th Level Spells) Bloodrager 1/Alchemist 1/Paladin 2/Monk 1/Sorcerer 15 (7th Level Spells) Monk 1/Paladin 2/Sorcerer 17 (8th Level Spells) Barbarian 1/Alchemist 1/Sorcerer 18 (9th level Spells)
Yes, it's possible. You can go for an Angelkin or a Musetouched. I would recommend the former since it has a str and cha bonus, which are the most important stats for a LG Melee Sorcerer build. And if LG isn't to your liking, you can go for an Eldritch Knight instead of Paladin.
Both scaled fist and sorcerer work on charisma. Why do you chose and heritage that gives +2 wisdom? You want a bonus to a stat you want to raise to a high level at character creation. That way the last stat points cost less to raise.
@@derrickbonsell Moot point considering either going Paladin or casting Bestow Grace of the Champion from a fellow Paladin/Cleric adds charisma modifier to all saves. His heritage is indeed very subpar. Only the bite attack is nice but not worth the significantly worse stats. Going for a +2 strength +2 charisma race option is significantly better.
30:30 please be aware where you are overlaying your own portrait with respect to what you are trying to show. Here 60% of the screen is unused (showing a silly graphic) and you are competing for screen real estate with what's really important as you are explaining and trying to show your stats...
Hey! I'm trying this out right now and I was wandering if I could replace those paladin levels with anything? Bonus is awesome but I realy dont want to play lawful good type of character.
Monk seems to be a very common precursor to DD, I imagine it's because they don't wear armor and neither do sorcerers (unless they want whacked by arcane spell failure.)
They add CHA to AC, and the archetypes can add INT or WIS so its basically free AC for casters that don't wear armour. It also allows for +5 dodge monk robes, which require LG Monk. It's why most non-armored builds beeline for LG during chargen.
@@derrickbonsell when game was just realised rdd not required dragon bloodline... so ive made magus with fiendish bloodlie, asimar rdd... so character literly had celestial, fiendish and dragon blood in his veins same time xD but i had over 40 str at lvl 20 and hit damn hard from behind of valery with glave
Underneath the Portrait selection screen has a tiny icon at the bottom of the screen... like a cone with a sphere over the tip. THAT is the add portrait system. You need three images cropped to the exact correct size. The screen shows you. Then you follow the instructions. It will take an age to put in a decent number of portraits... but once you start the character creation from the start, they are all in there next to your base portraits.
O c'mon, kingmaker is an rpg. Stop this munchkin monk/paladin/ranger/druid/sorc nonsense. This is not the game for that stupidity. Ever tried to roleplay a monk/paladin/sorc/DD? No, because it is STUPID. Stop looking at each character as a chart of stats and try making things that actually make sense...
Some pro tips:
The best weapon for this build would be the Thundering Claw of the Bear God, which would add 1d6 sonic and 1d6 electrical to all your dragonform attacks, which is like 12d6 extra damage per round in Dragon Form III. It would also cause your crits to call down lightning. Your un-shapeshifted form's two bite attacks (motherless and dragon disciple) with the same bonus, and also allow them to call down lightning on a crit. Since you have taken paladin you will have the proficiency for it, but if you don't, you would just have to take the martial weapons feat.
Another pro tip is that if you want to go extra tanky, instead use the Arcane Protectors you can get in the game (two +1 daggers obtainable fairly early on). I have found their +3 dodge bonus persists in dragon form, and their rubbish damage and attack bonus are irrelevant when you shapeshift and are instead using natural attacks. With both equipped (one from bridge at Gudrin, the other from Bartholemew if he dies to the trolls), you add +6 dodge AC to your dragon, which is no joke. (There are other armor boosting weapons as well you could use, such as Perfection).
Also, the Alkali gloves would add another 1d6 to all your natural attacks, so with claw of the bear god that is +3d6 elemental damage to all attacks, and with cloak of the winter wolf, your bites would get another +1d6 cold damage. In normal form, your two bites would be dealing 4d6 extra damage with this gear setup. You could also get an alchemist to cast thorn body on you for another 1d6, and take the Firebrand spell for another 1d6 fire on each attack, if you wanted to go full meme.
Note that even though in Dragon Form III you only have 6 attacks (7 with haste), all of them are at full BAB, so you are probably hitting as much as, or more than a character with 10 attacks, 4 or more of which are at reduced BAB.
Be aware that flurry of blows only works on fist or main hand monk weapon attacks, so would not work in shapeshifted form.
One tip is to not underrate the dragon's breath weapon (which has no limit to its uses in Dragonkind III) because it ignores spell resistance, unlike most spell attacks. I discovered my melee sorcerer could actually dish out reasonable damage to bosses that have too much armor to hit with melee attacks just by repeatedly using his breath weapon, even when nobody in the party can hit it or get through its damage and spell resistance. It can be worth buffing your preferred elemental damage type with feats and gear as a dragon for this reason.
With the current version of the game, there are at least two items that give you a once-per-day use of Dragonkind III (an axe from the orc artisan, and a belt from the varnhold letherworking artisan).
so weapon focus scimitar over weapon focus kama / weapon focus nunchaku
A quicker way of explaining how the Draconic Bloodlines differ is - there's is actually just one Draconic Bloodline and your chosen dragon affects energy type and such, but it was implemented this way into Kingmaker so that there was one less screen.
My optimal dragon disciple build would actually be Scaled Fist 1, Dragon Disciple 4, and Sorcerer 15. This gets you 9th level spells, where you can take something like Fiery Body for some crazy immunities (which stack with your dragonform element immunity). You will have lower saves and slightly lower BAB, but Transformation can fix that, and when you can't hit, dragons are awesome in that they can use their breath weapons, which ignore spell resistance. You get unlimited uses of this in dragonform III, and a few daily uses from dragon disciple.
Do u take dragon disc straight away or at the last 4 levels??
@@adelvoid1530 That would actually depend on how you wanted to do it. If you wanted to play as a melee early on, take DD as soon as you can for the +4 strength and the bonus bite attack. You will lose one level of casting, but that is all.
You could alternatively take it later, and play as a more casting oriented sorcerer for the early game (though since you are likely to be taking a bunch of melee feats for your dragon form, this seems like the less optimal choice for end game).
@@Alister222222 thank you!
If you are going to do builds you should put a summary of it in the description and also show some game play of it otherwise you will sit through 36 minutes only to realize you don't like the build or have no clue weather its good/looks cool
You can skip the Paladin dip and instead cast Bestow Grace of the Champion on yourself from a Cleric/Paladin party member. As long as you pick Lawful Good you will get the same benefit without going into Paladin levels, which are kind of a waste and prevent you from reaching the higher level spells which is the main reason to go Sorcerer Dragon Disciple instead of Magus. Similarly for the Vivisectionist dip, while Mutagen is nice the opportunity cost is too large and making advancing in the Dragonkind spells, from I to II to III gives more bonuses than Mutagen ever could and again spell progression. For this same reason taking more than 4 levels of Dragon Disciple is also wasteful as it reduces your caster level too much. So ideally 1 Monk, 4 Dragon Disciple and 15 Sorcerer should be the build at 20. Anything less and you might as well just roll with a Magus instead of Sorcerer.
can you link the portrait?
I really enjoy your videos. Great guides!
Music : Canvas for the Gods - Kingmaker
Here is why I would not take paladin levels:
I find that saves are nice, but not essential. Pretty much anything you can save against, you can also protect against using holy aura, freedom of movement, resist/ protection from elements, or CCing the thing that casts it at you. Obviously it is good to be able to resist those things, but since you can never rely on saves working out you probably still want to be protecting yourself anyway. You could try and have high will to resist wild hunt gaze, or forget will and just take the blind fight feat or rely on the freedom of movement buff, for example. More sorcerer casting instead would be very powerful. Spellcasting is a funny thing in that each level of spells you get is more and more valuable. A decent Level 8 spell is worth quite a lot more than a lower level spell.
Agreed. The saves are really, really nice. But asking for 2 levels is quite a steep price. It feels especially bad in the early/mid game because your spell progression is delayed so much.
You forgot the main reason not to waste levels on Paladin: the spell Bestow Grace of the Champion which does the same thing as long as you're lawful good. So as long as you're not doing a solo playthrough you can easily have 1 Paladin/Cleric in your party to cast it on you for the exact same benefit.
What would you pick instead of paladin if you wanted to play an Evil character?
Probably just skip it altogether and get more sorcerer levels, I would think
I didnt know you played RPGs as well :) Awesome, Chris!
As I started the game for the first time and on Challenging, I picked the Sorcerer from the 4 main default characters as my main and it happened to be a Red Dragon Blodline one.
Since I picked Chaotic Neutral, I can not go Paladin. I am still lv 1, but I can go lv 2 already. Not done so, because I want to hire 2 mercenaries and I am looking for builds to decide what to hire.
I can go Dragon Disciple from lv 3, but for lv 2 should I go alchemist? I can not go Paladin and I do not want to go monk, will the build still work?
This guide does not tell how to level the main character properly, the default main character, as he starts as a Red Blodline Sorcerer.
Does this build translate well to wrath of the righteous??
Main question I have is there a good paladin alternative if you don’t stay lawful good and choose a different alignment
sir, are you from sweden or norway? i must know O_O
Great build vid, but why no gameplay??
"Build" guide....
are you swedish? i could be wrong but i just get a feeling hearing you talk english :D
Eller har jag fel? ^^
same thing no vivi, but 1 more level or sorc gets you lvl 7 spells....your stats are already awesome without muti, AC is near 60 in defensive, SICK saves, use traits for sneak damage and trickery (child of the streets).
By what level do you become a dragon??
You basically described something I've been using in a Tabletop Pathfinder game for around a year now. You can mix in a Bloodrager level somewhere in there for Rage. Rage, Mutagen, Enhancement and Size will add something like +14 - +28 Strength because why not have a +20 Strength Modifier for a little while? The progression is really strong level by level, it's not a build that ever feels like it needs to 'come online' because you always have some diverse tools available no matter where you start the build or add components later. One of the strongest spellblades I've played. Definitely the sort of thing to bring to 'unfair' games!
Here are some variations:
Bloodrager 1/Alchemist 1/Paladin 1/Monk 1/Sorcerer 6/Dragon Disciple 10 (6th Level Spells)
Bloodrager 1/Alchemist 1/Paladin 2/Monk 1/Sorcerer 15 (7th Level Spells)
Monk 1/Paladin 2/Sorcerer 17 (8th Level Spells)
Barbarian 1/Alchemist 1/Sorcerer 18 (9th level Spells)
I kinda want to play this as my main on wotr, do you think it will be viable ?
Is this possible with an aasimar? If so, which heritage is preferred?
Yes, it's possible. You can go for an Angelkin or a Musetouched.
I would recommend the former since it has a str and cha bonus, which are the most important stats for a LG Melee Sorcerer build.
And if LG isn't to your liking, you can go for an Eldritch Knight instead of Paladin.
Both scaled fist and sorcerer work on charisma. Why do you chose and heritage that gives +2 wisdom? You want a bonus to a stat you want to raise to a high level at character creation. That way the last stat points cost less to raise.
He did it for the higher will save since all of his stat points upon leveling are going into Charisma.
@Ernest Cruz The early game extra attack is quite nice.
@@derrickbonsell Moot point considering either going Paladin or casting Bestow Grace of the Champion from a fellow Paladin/Cleric adds charisma modifier to all saves. His heritage is indeed very subpar. Only the bite attack is nice but not worth the significantly worse stats. Going for a +2 strength +2 charisma race option is significantly better.
30:30 please be aware where you are overlaying your own portrait with respect to what you are trying to show. Here 60% of the screen is unused (showing a silly graphic) and you are competing for screen real estate with what's really important as you are explaining and trying to show your stats...
Hey! I'm trying this out right now and I was wandering if I could replace those paladin levels with anything? Bonus is awesome but I realy dont want to play lawful good type of character.
You can but you will have terrible saves
You'll need to compensate for losing out on that Charisma bonus for saves but on a lower difficulty it shouldn't be an issue.
But how do you transform to Dragon?! Scrolls? Dragonform 1 from alchemist?
You get Dragonform automatically from Dragon Disciple // Sorcerer Bloodline
So why choose dragon disciple if you transform through just sorceror
@@jacobmartinez1986 For BAB and to a lesser extent by life points.
Monk seems to be a very common precursor to DD, I imagine it's because they don't wear armor and neither do sorcerers (unless they want whacked by arcane spell failure.)
They add CHA to AC, and the archetypes can add INT or WIS so its basically free AC for casters that don't wear armour.
It also allows for +5 dodge monk robes, which require LG Monk. It's why most non-armored builds beeline for LG during chargen.
Why no fiendish bloodline? Its +6str and transformation for extra +4 dex/str?
Can't be a Dragon Disciple.
@@derrickbonsell when game was just realised rdd not required dragon bloodline... so ive made magus with fiendish bloodlie, asimar rdd... so character literly had celestial, fiendish and dragon blood in his veins same time xD but i had over 40 str at lvl 20 and hit damn hard from behind of valery with glave
How can i get more portraist?
Mauricio Navarro just google search it
There is a guy in the steam forums how has a good collection to download
Look up the game on nexusmods.com, there are some portrait packs.
Underneath the
Portrait selection screen has a tiny icon at the bottom of the screen... like a cone with a sphere over the tip. THAT is the add portrait system. You need three images cropped to the exact correct size. The screen shows you. Then you follow the instructions. It will take an age to put in a decent number of portraits... but once you start the character creation from the start, they are all in there next to your base portraits.
Thanks man
Well, never do a build video without gameplay there is no reason to explain all things if u dont show it in action
im my game DG is limited to paladins level. Nerf.
No gameplay - -'
Why call this a Melee sorceress if you only take a single level of sorc? It's a melee Dragon Disciple with Monk/AC and Pally/Save cheese at best...
Mate. Remove yourself so that people can see the screen... Or are you so much in love, with yourself...?
O c'mon, kingmaker is an rpg. Stop this munchkin monk/paladin/ranger/druid/sorc nonsense. This is not the game for that stupidity. Ever tried to roleplay a monk/paladin/sorc/DD? No, because it is STUPID. Stop looking at each character as a chart of stats and try making things that actually make sense...
This is a guide for the unfair difficulty.
This multi class madness is required