Its only really shines in inevitable excess, but a vow of dahak gold dragon will do about 750 with around 70 DC and burn for another 270 per round and be able to spam this ability each round if using empowered, annihilating, scorching and overwhelming breath. Annihilating breath also makes half the damage vs fortitude, so not subject to evasion or improved evasion. At rank 9, empowered and annihilating breath hits for around 340, still with a decent (albeit somewhat lower) DC, but aside from doing less than half the damage, the cooldown is a big restriction. You cannot, for example, open with breath on your surprise round and immediately use breath again. Its still a decent ability, but not as good as a well made blaster caster. Without rank 10 or annihilating breath, gold dragon breath is still pretty wimpy, but if the enemy wont kill you immediately, I suppose you can always wait for them to die of scorching breath. The breath weapon really shines if you have good move, swift or free actions to complement your breath attack. A have just done a run with a trickster to gold dragon arcane trickster sorcerer, pretty tanky, very mid melee capabilities (hits for around 110 on a non crit with sneak attack, 9 APR with hammer of masterpiece), but it has decent AB and can apply fire vulnerability for treacherous flame easily and impromptu sneak attack allows you to apply it even against uncanny dodge. You then have quickened metamagic, with completely normal spell and favoured metamagic, this is only 2 levels higher. It wont let you do it with 7th level spells still, but hellfire ray can be quickened with level 8 and 9 spell slots. With mask of razmir, you can cast twice per round, one of which does not use a quickened spell slot, and still either do a full attack action or breath attack and you can keep this going for over 20 rounds before you run out of hellfire rays (or more than 40 casts in total) per day. Hellfire ray (intensified, quickened and with 11d6 sneak, dragon bloodline bonus, robe of annihilation and last azlanti amulet) hits extremely hard, doing around 1500 damage baseline. With trickster feats and the playful darkness belt, the crit range is 25% and x4 multiplier, so one or more rays will crit around 60% of the time and each ray will crit for around 2000 damage, bringing to total to around 3000 with a single ray critting. You can increase this by more than 50% using fire vulnerability (the 1.5x multiplier double dips when applying again to the unholy portion of the damage, but it appears to apply to the base damage after additive modifiers, but before multiplicative modifiers, so its not fully a further 50% more on the unholy portion, but rather around 23% more on non crits and 12% more on crits). You can significantly increase this again with dragon might, but honestly, it only lasts one round and is very likely a worse use of a swift action than another hellfire ray cast given that you nearly always one shot regardless. Other spells also hit like a truck. Its much less impressive before rank 10, but quickened intensified spells with +4 damage per dice (with dice increased to d8) once per round, increasing to twice per round with mask of razmir, alongside either full attack actions to apply fire vulnerability or breath weapon depending on whether you are aoeing or single targeting, is very effective, the build is rather tanky and overall, it complements the gold dragon path rather nicely. Not top tier until rank 10, but still quite decent.
I can only assume retaining the benefits of mythic trick lore religion after switching to gold dragon is a bug. For endgame, mounted shield and shields in general are pretty dubious, because Seelah can use shielding companion for 10+ (easily) shield AC party wide. She will have around 20 uses, 2 minutes per use. Other than lich, Seelah is a character I use in every party. You definitely want mark of justice, paladin archetypes are quite bad and whilst her starting charisma is a bit low, she is heavily over budgeted on stats and shielding companion is a great ability unique to her. It would be difficult to make a better merc with 11 levels in paladin and even for your main character, whilst mythic paths mean than such a character will almost certainly be more powerful than Seelah, it will not be nearly as big an upgrade of a character made for a different role.
You retain your domain powers, domain spells and improved crit feats yes. As for mounted shield - well if you go for standard bully Dog replace it with Trip and get Tandem trip. - As for seelah Paladin? I don't understand. These two are not mutually exclusive to run. The support Paladin (Seelah) smites/moj while you as the dps rider go in and clap things.
@@ChanceOrangeGE I don't really see the point of having 2 paladins though. The main benefit of a paladin is MOJ and there is only 1 item that allows the smiting of neutrals (not much of an issue before inevitable excess, granted). I think I am correct in saying MOJs do not stack and if you just want personal DPS, there are better options than LG alignment restriction + paladin class features.
@@notalefty999 The Funny thing is that I do not even take Paladin on the Build and you are talking about Paladin for some reason. The build here reaches 2000-3000 DPR on anything not named Inevetable Darkness -WHITHOUT using quickened actions with rods/ mask which would just add on top. It is also slaps from the start of the game, which is important
@@ChanceOrangeGE I never suggested you did take paladin. I was simply making the point you are very likely going to have Seelah because its hard to make a better merc given her high stat budget and you will want MOJ. Given this is the case, lategame, her ability with override any shield bonuses. Nor was I criticising the build. If I were, I would simply say its a very complicated build that would achieve inferior damage to a either a 20 gendarme or 1 sable company marine (charge LOS is a big problem in this game) 19 gendarme demon using kalavakus and either kitsune for vulpine pounce or skald support. These are a lot more straightforward builds to either level or actually use, and rage without fatigue immunity or tireless rage on a charge build (as it prevents charging) is a significant quality of life nerf. Either build is much less adversely affected by fortification or crit immunity. And aspects of the balor and succubus are very good party wide buffs. I assume you were making reference to the build I mentioned in a separate post when talking about the mask and metamagic rods. That build can frontload 1500 damage AOE using a surprise round without using any resources. Additionally, it can spam hellfire rays twice per round for more than 20 rounds per day (and a lot of other highly effect spells too) averaging about 2500 each whilst still spamming a 750 AoE with a 270 per round dot component. Even without the fire vulnerability from treacherous flame and assuming no crits, against enemy touch AC (and for 4 rounds, flat footed touch AC), you can do 4500 to a single enemy spamming 3 hellfire rays in 1 round. You can also buff this significantly with MOJ. What your build will be doing with metamagic rods and free action spells, I am not clear. But I wasn't detailing that build as a criticism either, just illustrating a build that complements the Gold Dragon features.
@@notalefty999 Ok thank you for the replies. Some of the optimizations I do on a builds may be skewed to playing against enemy stats that are not normally in the game even on unfair
Thank you for build!
Its only really shines in inevitable excess, but a vow of dahak gold dragon will do about 750 with around 70 DC and burn for another 270 per round and be able to spam this ability each round if using empowered, annihilating, scorching and overwhelming breath. Annihilating breath also makes half the damage vs fortitude, so not subject to evasion or improved evasion.
At rank 9, empowered and annihilating breath hits for around 340, still with a decent (albeit somewhat lower) DC, but aside from doing less than half the damage, the cooldown is a big restriction. You cannot, for example, open with breath on your surprise round and immediately use breath again. Its still a decent ability, but not as good as a well made blaster caster. Without rank 10 or annihilating breath, gold dragon breath is still pretty wimpy, but if the enemy wont kill you immediately, I suppose you can always wait for them to die of scorching breath.
The breath weapon really shines if you have good move, swift or free actions to complement your breath attack.
A have just done a run with a trickster to gold dragon arcane trickster sorcerer, pretty tanky, very mid melee capabilities (hits for around 110 on a non crit with sneak attack, 9 APR with hammer of masterpiece), but it has decent AB and can apply fire vulnerability for treacherous flame easily and impromptu sneak attack allows you to apply it even against uncanny dodge. You then have quickened metamagic, with completely normal spell and favoured metamagic, this is only 2 levels higher. It wont let you do it with 7th level spells still, but hellfire ray can be quickened with level 8 and 9 spell slots. With mask of razmir, you can cast twice per round, one of which does not use a quickened spell slot, and still either do a full attack action or breath attack and you can keep this going for over 20 rounds before you run out of hellfire rays (or more than 40 casts in total) per day.
Hellfire ray (intensified, quickened and with 11d6 sneak, dragon bloodline bonus, robe of annihilation and last azlanti amulet) hits extremely hard, doing around 1500 damage baseline. With trickster feats and the playful darkness belt, the crit range is 25% and x4 multiplier, so one or more rays will crit around 60% of the time and each ray will crit for around 2000 damage, bringing to total to around 3000 with a single ray critting.
You can increase this by more than 50% using fire vulnerability (the 1.5x multiplier double dips when applying again to the unholy portion of the damage, but it appears to apply to the base damage after additive modifiers, but before multiplicative modifiers, so its not fully a further 50% more on the unholy portion, but rather around 23% more on non crits and 12% more on crits). You can significantly increase this again with dragon might, but honestly, it only lasts one round and is very likely a worse use of a swift action than another hellfire ray cast given that you nearly always one shot regardless.
Other spells also hit like a truck. Its much less impressive before rank 10, but quickened intensified spells with +4 damage per dice (with dice increased to d8) once per round, increasing to twice per round with mask of razmir, alongside either full attack actions to apply fire vulnerability or breath weapon depending on whether you are aoeing or single targeting, is very effective, the build is rather tanky and overall, it complements the gold dragon path rather nicely. Not top tier until rank 10, but still quite decent.
I can only assume retaining the benefits of mythic trick lore religion after switching to gold dragon is a bug.
For endgame, mounted shield and shields in general are pretty dubious, because Seelah can use shielding companion for 10+ (easily) shield AC party wide. She will have around 20 uses, 2 minutes per use.
Other than lich, Seelah is a character I use in every party. You definitely want mark of justice, paladin archetypes are quite bad and whilst her starting charisma is a bit low, she is heavily over budgeted on stats and shielding companion is a great ability unique to her. It would be difficult to make a better merc with 11 levels in paladin and even for your main character, whilst mythic paths mean than such a character will almost certainly be more powerful than Seelah, it will not be nearly as big an upgrade of a character made for a different role.
You retain your domain powers, domain spells and improved crit feats yes. As for mounted shield - well if you go for standard bully Dog replace it with Trip and get Tandem trip. - As for seelah Paladin? I don't understand. These two are not mutually exclusive to run. The support Paladin (Seelah) smites/moj while you as the dps rider go in and clap things.
@@ChanceOrangeGE I don't really see the point of having 2 paladins though. The main benefit of a paladin is MOJ and there is only 1 item that allows the smiting of neutrals (not much of an issue before inevitable excess, granted).
I think I am correct in saying MOJs do not stack and if you just want personal DPS, there are better options than LG alignment restriction + paladin class features.
@@notalefty999 The Funny thing is that I do not even take Paladin on the Build and you are talking about Paladin for some reason. The build here reaches 2000-3000 DPR on anything not named Inevetable Darkness -WHITHOUT using quickened actions with rods/ mask which would just add on top. It is also slaps from the start of the game, which is important
@@ChanceOrangeGE I never suggested you did take paladin. I was simply making the point you are very likely going to have Seelah because its hard to make a better merc given her high stat budget and you will want MOJ. Given this is the case, lategame, her ability with override any shield bonuses.
Nor was I criticising the build. If I were, I would simply say its a very complicated build that would achieve inferior damage to a either a 20 gendarme or 1 sable company marine (charge LOS is a big problem in this game) 19 gendarme demon using kalavakus and either kitsune for vulpine pounce or skald support.
These are a lot more straightforward builds to either level or actually use, and rage without fatigue immunity or tireless rage on a charge build (as it prevents charging) is a significant quality of life nerf. Either build is much less adversely affected by fortification or crit immunity. And aspects of the balor and succubus are very good party wide buffs.
I assume you were making reference to the build I mentioned in a separate post when talking about the mask and metamagic rods. That build can frontload 1500 damage AOE using a surprise round without using any resources. Additionally, it can spam hellfire rays twice per round for more than 20 rounds per day (and a lot of other highly effect spells too) averaging about 2500 each whilst still spamming a 750 AoE with a 270 per round dot component. Even without the fire vulnerability from treacherous flame and assuming no crits, against enemy touch AC (and for 4 rounds, flat footed touch AC), you can do 4500 to a single enemy spamming 3 hellfire rays in 1 round. You can also buff this significantly with MOJ.
What your build will be doing with metamagic rods and free action spells, I am not clear. But I wasn't detailing that build as a criticism either, just illustrating a build that complements the Gold Dragon features.
@@notalefty999 Ok thank you for the replies. Some of the optimizations I do on a builds may be skewed to playing against enemy stats that are not normally in the game even on unfair