Dragon Form is the best thing

[eeviac]

http://crawl.akrasiac.org/rawdata/eevia ... 160937.txt

the plan: All-rune killdudesing with Dragon Form.
+ Dragons are cool. HOLY DRAGON WARRIORs are even cooler.
+ Dragon Form has no casting penalty. Blade Hands does. Statue Form is for cowards and Cheibros.
+ Your very own theme song plays whenever you transform.
+ base damage = (20 + str*2/3 + unarmed skill). For reference, exec axes have a base of 20. Dragon punches are so devastating that HOLY DRAGON WARRIOR must be capslocked.
- Dragon form isn't very durable: limited slots, all armour gets melded, devastating EV loss, can't use wands/rods. The point of this build is to make it work.

combo of choice: DrHe
+ Dr #1 best race, great apts and Dragon Form synergy
+ High starting str and int makes for strong dragonforming
+ Minor Self Heal makes for an easy pre-Temple game
+ Easy transition to other gods
- Starting with 0 UC and no forms can be tough.
- Your EV will be terrible all game. You probly shouldn't train dodging at all. Pray for an early shield.

god of choice: TSO
+ The HOLY part of this DRAGON WARRIOR. Strong extended god who covers many of dragonform's weaknesses.
+ Free, slotless rN+++ and a halo that gives sinv and +to-hit. Not the most crucial of benefits, but when you've got a felid's worth of slots, you take anything you can get.
+ Divine Shield works while dragonforming - this is a big deal when you've got 5 EV.
- No necromancy allowed, so it's (almost) necessary that you find a regen ring.
- He's not all that helpful between Temple and extended, so you could stick with Ely for a while if you want. I swapped immediately because Ely is no fun.*
*You could also fill the midgame gap by going Oka. Heroism is great for unarmed dudes. I chose not to because even the best gear in the game amounts to exactly nothing while in dragon form, and god wrath is annoying.

Spell wishlist: Dragon Form, Haste, Swift, Phase Shift, Ozo Armour, Dmsl, Insulation, Apport, Blink, Cblink, Recall, Airstrike
+ These spells give what vanilla dragonform sorely needs: survivability.

Jewelry wishlist: conservation, rmut, tele, ctele, regen, MR, rF++, rC++
+ Covers critical resists and utility

Other wishlist: crystal ball
+ for pre-fight angel/buff spamming

General gameplay:
Get UC to 15ish immediately. Train shields as soon as you find one, but don't ever use a large shield. If you swap to Oka, learn regeneration, but don't overtrain necro as you'll be going TSO eventually. If you go early TSO, you won't have much god backup, so carefully manage your breath weapon and consumables for tough fights until your UC gets high enough. Use any early tmut spells you find as you'll need 16ish skill to get dragon form online. Get int on every 3rd level, and hope for random str boosts. You have 8 dex and you don't care. Train spell skills as you find those on the wishlist. Max UC first, then fighting. Get evo to 15ish for crystal ball and tele ring. Use all acquirements on jewelry (you'll probably get crap, but jewelry is all you need), or gold for buying books/jewelry. With all buffs up, you're stupidly hard to kill while also dealing stupid amounts of damage. Murderlize every & you see.

[KoboldLord]

combo of choice: DrHe
+ Dr #1 best race, great apts and Dragon Form synergy
+ High starting str and int makes for strong dragonforming
+ Minor Self Heal makes for an easy pre-Temple game
+ Easy transition to other gods
- Starting with 0 UC and no forms can be tough.
- Your EV will be terrible all game. You probly shouldn't train dodging at all. Pray for an early shield.

For better results, pump invocations and just instakill everything with your mind control powers. Grab a venom or electrocution weapon early on for popcorn, in case you get hungry, but otherwise just heal everything until it stops bothering you. Greater Healing works great on nearly every early-, mid-, and late-game unique, and also nearly everything in those sections of the game that is not a unique. Once your invocations are high enough, you can skill literally whatever you want. Half-developed unarmed skill doesn't matter if you are lobotomizing everybody into the Elyvilon Collective before you get the chance to throw your first punch.

I'd say you needn't even bother going for Dragon Form because you have Elyvilon and therefore don't need it, but all that free xp has to go somewhere.

[eeviac]

"The point of this build is to make (dragon form) work."

"Ely is no fun"

I think you missed the point of the build, which is to kill everything with dragon form. I didn't (and don't) want to play a Healer.

edit
of course playing Ely is one way to do this (there's a hundred ways), I just like this one best.

[KoboldLord]

If you specifically hate healers and Elyvilon, why start as a healer instead of a transmuter or monk?

Midgame hybridization works quite well for draconians wanting to play with Dragon Form, too. Pick out an elementalist background that is fairly cheap to fill out, most particularly earth or ice, and when you have all your starting spells in order just start pumping unarmed. When Dragon Form turns up, start pumping transmutations too. Once you've got your PROFANE DRAGON WARRIOR online (you probably picked Makhleb or something), your skills from your starting background are still supporting useful buffs.

[eeviac]

a few reasons for the DrHe:
1. I hadn't won a healer yet
2. healers don't waste as many starting stats on dex as monks or transmuters do
3. it sounded like a good idea at the time

[Konedar]

I wanted to play a draconian with dragon form and summon dragon for a while and after reading your post I started one, DrHe. If i will really manage to get dragon form and summon dragon it's another story I'm considering also idea to go Jiyva, if it wasn't for the stat shuffle that I really hate I would for sure pick it.
On D1 or D2 I've found okawaru altar and decided to convert (I find Ely pretty boring too ).
Turns out I'm a pale draconian, I was kind of disappointed but the steam breath is better than I expected (short cooldown, stop LOS) also having no penalties on elemental magic let all the roads open, haven't found any interesting spell yet.
Any advices regarding pale draconians?

[eeviac]

iirc Dragon Form suppresses most or all mutations, so Jiyva wouldn't help at all. Jiyva also doesn't give any of TSO's awesome benefits.

Pale drac breath rules: it's cheap, rapid recovery, never misses, blocks LOS, decent damage. Use it often. All drac colors play pretty similarly however, a +2 here and a -2 there don't have any real effect on your flexibility.