Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer vs Dragon Totem Barbarian

[Nighthawwk]

This seems kind of strange to me. I was looking through the rules with a couple of my players and building out characters of all levels. In terms of a dragon based character there's two options. The Dragon Totem Barbarian and the Draconic Bloodline. Looking at just the breathe weapon between these two, it seems kind of crazy. They both auto scale however the Sorcerer's scales with spell level whereas the Barbarian's scale with Barbarian level. So the Barbarian's does twice as much damage. The Barbian's is limited to once per hour, but not limited in daily use. So although the Sorcerer could technically do multiple in a combat, they are limited by there spell points, which isn't a large number. Without talking stats higher than 18, the Sorcerer will get 4 uses of it per day if that is the only bloodline power they did that day. Am I missing something here or is the Barbarian's Dragon Breathe pretty much all around better?

[Fuzzypaws]

You're missing nothing. The magical dragon sorcerer who literally has dragon magic in their blood is a worse dragon than the barbarian who just has a dragon 'sona and likes to shout fus ro dah.

[RoninJT]

If the barbarian's dragon breath is only once per hour I think the sorcerer will get to use theirs more even though they have a set limit per day and the barbarian doesn't. In most games, encounters are clustered together far more often than they are spread throughout the day. In my experience, this means the barbarian will only get to use it once (maybe twice) in a day since it's once per hour. The sorcerer on the other hand can get all it's uses off in a single encounter or in back to back encounters.

[ShadowFighter88]

RoninJT wrote:

If the barbarian's dragon breath is only once per hour I think the sorcerer will get to use theirs more even though they have a set limit per day and the barbarian doesn't. In most games, encounters are clustered together far more often than they are spread throughout the day. In my experience, this means the barbarian will only get to use it once (maybe twice) in a day since it's once per hour. The sorcerer on the other hand can get all it's uses off in a single encounter or in back to back encounters.

I'm agreeing with this, that they're balanced by how frequently it can be used. The Barbarian'll get one terrifying breath off in a fight (possibly in a whole dungeon depending on how quickly the party moves through it) while the Sorcerer'll be able to fire off multiple weaker ones in the same timeframe, though they'd probably be the only ones he could fire off for the whole day. But, depending on the dungeon, the party could be out of resources and need to rest or retreat before the Barbarian's been able to fire off more than two or three.