| abstract
| - The Hidden Dragon is primarily a melee fighter, with a bit of Stealth added on. It is a decent fighter with solid Strength and Damage, although not quite on par with more dedicated fighters like the Dragonmaster Negotiater or the Thuggernaut. But additionally, it has stealth capabilities in the form of high skill ranks in Hide and Move, and Hide in Plain Sight (HiPS). HiPS is normally used with sneak attack based builds, to cram in their sneak attacks. But a primary warrior can also use it.
* It can be used to deny your foe his Dex and Dodge AC bonus, when you attack them immediately out of stealth and catch them flat-footed. This is especailly dangerous against builds highly reliant on Dex and Dodge AC like the Kaze no Kama.
* It can be used as an "escape button" if you attract too much Aggro and need to "dissappear" for a while (although the rest of your party may not be happy when the Aggro stops attacking you and starts attacking them).
* Along similiar lines, going into Hiding will disrupt any direct target spells that were targetting you. The Hidden Dragon also has 2 powerful abilities with cool down timers, and can stagger them so that you could essentially use them continuously. The 2 abilities being Improved Knockdown (12 second cooldown)and HiPS (6 second cooldown). Roughly, the sequence in which they may be staggered is as follows:
* Emerge from Hiding (6 second cool down) and deliver Improved Knockdown (12 second cooldown)
* While opponent is down, wail on him
* After 6 seconds, your opponents will stand up
* At the same time, HiPS cooldown will be complete. So you can reactivate it and go back into hiding.
* Wait another 4 seconds for Improved Knockdown timer to recharge
* Emerge from hiding, deliver Improved Knockdown etc Following this combo, anything that can be consistently knocked down, and which can't spot quickly you will spend half the time wondering where you are, and the other half on its back, getting beat up.
* Solid Warrior with all the Red Dragon Disciple (RDD) bonuses
* Fire Immunity
* Increased Natural AC
* Solid Strength (and Improved Knockdown to make use of it)
* Reasonable stealth and Hide in Plain Sight
* Final BAB is 25 and it loses the 6th attack
* Reliant on Weapon Focus and Specialization feats for some of its attack and damage, and it is comparatively weaker (although not entirely helpless) without its weapon of choice.
* Epic Weapon Focus gives it +4 to hit with weapon of choice
* Greater weapon specialization gives it +4 to damage with weapon of choice
* Not as good in a straight fight, as other dedicated Warrior builds. That said, it has HiPS, and so it should not try to fight straight in a duel.
* Low Dex, and reliance on Armor with Armor Check Penalties (ACP), means that this build isn't quite as Stealthy as you might want
* Must compromise between Armor AC and ACP if it plans on sneaking around. Light armor has lower ACP, but less AC, and requires higher Dex for maximum AC. In this sense the Hidden Dragon is somewhat reliant on decent magic gear to boost Dex for AC.
* E.g. a Chain Shirt has a manageble ACP of -2, but requires 4 dex bonus for maximum AC. The Hidden Dragon therefore needs Dex +4 gear to make use of it. Similiarly, it can't make use of Tower Shields without incurring severe ACP. It is recommended that you stick with Light or Heavy Shields.
* Of course this is only if you plan on sneaking around at all. The Hidden Dragon can also don Full Plate and Tower Shield and lose the ability to sneak. It can still make use HiPS to catch enemies flat-footed, by exploiting flaws in the detection cycle. (E.g. if you go into Hiding, and immediately drop out and attack, the enemy is still considered flat-footed as he hasn't had time to try and detect you yet).
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![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)