I started to compose this as an e-mail to Cayzle, then I just got annoyed enough to post it. My wife is 300 miles away picking up the once and future roommate, so I can geek out tonight.

At first, I was feeling smug about Dragon Disciples, who now seem to be an unholy prestige class. I came across the following in "Races of Faerun", about acquiring a template. A direct quote from page 5 (the sidebar)

"If the template carries a level adjustment, the charact's effective character level instantly increases to the new total of her character level and level adjustment. Until the character earns enough experience points to 'catch up' to her increased ECL, she can't add any more class levels."

In other words, while its probably not everything you're wanting to hear, at least reaching 10th level of Dragon Disciple (when they get the Half Dragon template) means that they instantly gain a +3 ECL, and now is going to take a lot longer to go up a level for a while.

But then I looked at this a bit closer. First of all, any 5th level Bard can become a Dragon Disciple with a minimum of effort; it requires a bard with no intelligence penalty to start planning for it when he gets 4th level, so he can spend the total of 9 skill points he'll need... yeah. 9 skill points for a bard. 1 point for Speak Draconic, 8 ranks of Knowledge (Arcana) (which many bards will have a little of, anyway). It costs 10 if you're a sorcerer, since speak language isn't a class skill (and that assumes you aren't able to speak it as a bonus language for high intelligence, and are just picking this up on a whim). At 1st level, you get a +1 to natural armor as you're covered with tiny, iridescent (read: shiny) scales.

At 2nd level, you gain 8 levels worth of abilty increases in strength, plus a claw and bite attack. 3rd level allows you to breath fire, acid, cold, or lightning. 4th level gives you 8 more levels worth of strength, and shinier scales. At 5th level, you have Blindsense within 30 feet; the rogue will still get a sneak attack, but you will know its coming, and where to return fire (literally, in some cases, and the minimum range is 30 feet). 6th level sees 8 levels of Con boost. 7th level sees a stronger breath weapon and even shinier scales, followed by 8 levels worth of Intelligence boost. At 9th level, you get wings, which is kind of funny, since most PCs are medium or small size, and no medium or small size half-dragon has wings. At 10th level, your blindsense gets better, and you get all the benefits of the half-dragon template... 24 more levels of ability increases, even shinier scales, darkvision, low light vision, immunity to sleep and paralysis, immunity to the type of energy used by your breath weapon, doubling your old flight speed. The entire time, you're gaining 7 more spells per day from any level you like, of those you can cast (interestingly, they do not specify that it must be applied only to spontaneous-casting-only classes).

So. 56 levels worth of stat increases, or about 6 per level of the prestige class. On average, you're getting either a D8 of breath weapon or a +1 to natural armor every level. You can fly, fight unarmed, cast spells, and still have armor equivalent a chain shirt which cannot be removed, and is still present if you're surprised, held, or dead. And a d12 Hit Die.

With requirements that most bards and sorcerers have to have a good reason NOT to fulfill at some point in their career.

The thing of it is, I had a character for whom this prestige class would've been perfect. In 2nd edition, he was a dual-class druid-bard (bard was the active class). Working for the druid circle, he wound up in a run-in with a very powerful dragon who wizard-marked him, and could still observe through the mark which spread down Cormac's face, neck, and across his back. He had contact with a dragon beyond "I sorta want to be one"; he had a connection that ran deep, and could've been interesting to play out with something like this.

The dragon disciple? It's just obscene.