Hello all,
I'm new here-- I found the forum recently and I have been lurking and reading some of the old posts on here. You guys have a ton of resources that have been really awesome to read, so thank you very much for all of the handbooks and cool topics!
I actually just decided to make an account so that I could discuss a bit of a concern I have for my current 3.5e D&D character. I've been trying to get some advice from older threads but I think I need to make a new post as I couldn't really find what I was looking for. Right now, I am playing a monk/sorcerer and I don't always feel like I can contribute in combat situations. I started out just playing a straight up monk for the flavor (I did not know at the time that the monk class is considered one of the weakest classes in 3.5). Then my PC ended up having a hatchling dragon imprint on her and as part of the roleplay I thought that it would be a lot of fun for this to start causing changes in my PC. So I started taking sorcerer classes (with the idea of eventually moving into dragon disciple). This seemed like a weak but feasible build if we were going to play an epic campaign, but I recently found out my DM doesn't want to play past level twenty. Now I think I've kind of screwed myself over. And by kind of, I mean big time. Here is a brief overview of my current stats:
- Effective Character Level: 8
- Monk Level: 4
- Sorcerer Level: 4
- Ability Scores: 14 (for each individually)
- BAB: +5 (+6 with gloves)
- Saves:
- Fort: 7
- Reflex: 7
- Will: 10
- Armor Class (this includes a +1 deflection bonus from robes and +1 natural armor from an amulet):
- Basic: 16
- Flat-Footed: 14
- Touch: 15
Zeroth Level: | Acid Splash | Light | Detect Magic | Read Magic | Prestidigitation |
First Level: | Mage Armor | Magic Missle | Identify |
Second Level: | Flaming Sphere |
Now, I've come to the realization that taking the dragon disciple prestige class is probably a mistake that will leave me even further behind my party. I am already two levels of spells behind where a sorcerer should be and I do not believe that any of my monk abilities stack very well with sorcerer or dragon disciple. As you can probably tell my PC is very MAD. I guess what I was hoping was that you guys would have some suggestions on how I should continue to level my character in order to minimize the damage I have already done to my character's effectivity in combat. What makes this more difficult than my bad leveling decisions have already made it is that we are only allowed to use core books. And there isn't a lot of dragon-flavoring outside of Draconomicon, Dragon Magic, and Races of Dragons (as far as I know). My DM is an old-school player and doesn't like using supplemental books because they get less playtesting and he believes they are prone to min/maxing, which I can understand.
It may also help to know that the rest of my party consists of a ranger, a fighter, a barbarian, a paladin, and a cleric. Both our barbarian and paladin can deal 40-50 points of damage within their two full-round actions, our cleric is now healing 3d8 I believe (?), and I'm not entirely sure how much damage our ranger and fighter are dealing. I think that the last time our ranger used his bow he dealt about 12 points of damage (I don't remember if both shots hit or not). Obviously, it would be good to continue spell-casting as we have a heavily meele-based party but if I just continued in sorcerer I would have one level 8th spell at an effective character level of 20. Can what amounts to a 16th level sorcerer keep up with 20th level characters? I think that might not work well, but my only other idea is just to go ahead and continue with the dragon disiciple class. I am worried about this second option though as I currently only have 45 hit points and I can't wear armor. Please let me know what you guys think! Do you guys have any ideas for how to level my character? Or do you think I will be fine with whatever levels I take?
Thanks in advance for all of your help!