We're in Skeletons of Scarwall and one player is thinking of taking Leadership at level 13. He wants a gnome sorcerer to round out the party, primarily for some utility and buffing magic.
The party consists of one Arcane Duelist, one Fighter/Hellknight, one cleric of Sarenrae (Good, Fire), and one Rogue/Shadowdancer. As you might have guessed already they aren't very optimized, but it's worked out pretty well so far.
As a DM I get to design the cohort, and the player (a really cool guy whom you may know as Zark) expressed a wish for the Draconic or Verdant bloodline, possibly going for Dragon Disciple.
Now I figured that it would be nice to give him electricity as his element to make him at least a little useful in Crown of Fangs (against the devils), and then it struck me (I'm a bit slow) that the blue dragon bloodline would be fun and leaves all kinds of possible links to Kazavon himself.
I would like to make him a Sorcerer 5/Dragon Disciple 6 to make him tough as nails (good saves, good hp). His spellcasting would suffer but the player indicated that he was OK with that. Is this a really suboptimal build or could I make it fun?
I'm trying to hit the balance between suboptimal and downright useless here. On the other hand, even with a more or less useless cohort they aren't much worse off than before, and they will need the arcane support (if only for the utility spells). Am I missing something?
I would like to make him a Sorcerer 5/Dragon Disciple 6 to make him tough as nails (good saves, good hp). His spellcasting would suffer but the player indicated that he was OK with that. Is this a really suboptimal build or could I make it fun?
Yes, it's suboptimal. And yes, it could be fun. :-)
If you wanted to make him a little stronger, maybe start him off with 4 levels of Dragon Disciple to begin with. Then, if you don't have any problem making his spellcasting a bit weaker, you can add some more levels of DD later on.
Thanks, that's an excellent idea. I'm going to go with that.
Go for the fun, screw optimal it's bull crap anyway!!
In my campaign (due to begin in June) I have linked one party member who is planning on playing a paladin/oracle of Iomede to Maldavious, one who is shoanti barbarian to the shoanti member of Maldavious's party, and one who plans on being a varisian sorcerer to the Foxgloves.
Party members love it when their PC's have that personal relationship. As for your cohort think of all the cool fun you will have.