Dragon disciple help

[kieranm]

Hi all,

Am considering rolling a dragon disciple and was wondering how the pluses to caster level work. Is it similar to pale master where with a certain number of extra caster levels gives you more spells, or is it strictly for durations of the spells?

The reason I ask is because I am thinking of building a fighter / bard / DD with intention of focusing on melee and going for devastating critical. However, I like the idea of being able to take more advantage of the bard class and am considering going more bard and keeping fighter at 4 to 6 depending on if I want to go for epic weapon specialisation or not.

I've seen 10 fighter / 2 bard / 18 dd... But I'm thinking of going 4 fighter / 8 bard / 18 dd - which, if I am interpreting + CL correctly, would give level 6 spells and lots of good bonuses for songs. I wouldn't be able to go lasting inspiration, but with lingering and extra music, I'd still get a good amount of buffing power from songs. OR I'm thinking about going 6 fighter / 6 bard / 18 dd - which would allow me to take EWS and have 4 attacks but would keep me from getting level 6 spells and the song would be slightly less powerful.

Please let me know your thoughts! Thanks

[TheSojourner]

While I haven't actually seen how it works (so take everything I write with a grain of salt) I believe that the CL does not work as palemaster's CL does.
Why is this?
In 1.69, wizards and sorcerers - learned and spontaneous - casting mechanics allowed wizards to technically slot spell levels by gaining CL or the specific slots for those spells. But the same did not (and probably does not) apply to sorcerers.

This means that the CL, in theory, should only be applied to the normal CL mechanics - duration, spell strength, dispelling, etc - but it does not determine what spells you can cast.

Still, I'd wait for somebody that has actually built a RDD to confirm it. A lot of strange things happened since the 1.69 and the EE of current day, so who knows? Maybe those CL are actually worth something and not just entirely decorative.