In a semi-serious over the top 50 point buy game we will be playing ECL 10 gestalt characters and a free +2 LA I wanted to try a half-dragon centaur character, but have little idea what to pair the monstrous side of the gestalt with.
The shock trooper route seems a bit too obvious especially with the +16 Str and the double lance damage, but considering that the other players are not hardcore optimisers - I don't what to be dealing amounts of damage that are better expressed by a mathematical formula. Lance/bite/hooves is still a nice routine and I would like to get access to pounce to take advantage of it, but will probably leave it at that initially, eventually adding power/leap attack if my damage is unsufficient compared to the rest of the party and the opposition we are facing. A level of Lion Totem Barbarian will give me exatcly this and it rounds up the second half of my gestalt as Half-Dragon Centaur Barbarian 1 for total of 10 ELC factoring the +2 free LA.
The question is what to do with my other 10 class levels. We don't have access to Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic and Magic of Incarnum and if possible I would like to create a durable non-spellcaster, so that leaves me with very few ideas.
The best thing I can come up with is Fighter 3/Paladin of Tyranny 3/ Hexblade 4... it gives me twice huge benefit to saving throws and dark companion + aura of despair + hexblade curse in turn puts a huge dent into the saving throws of my enemies.
Regarding my feats - I was thinking about picking shadow dragon as my draconic ancestor which will give me a negative energy breath weapon that gives one negative level instead of dealing damage and using the dragon breath feat to be able to breath each 1d4 rounds and supplementing this with quicken breath for a swift action breath weapon each 1d4+4 rounds instead with my remaining feats being mage slayer, blind fight, pierce magical protection and pierce magical concealment.
Can anyone give me a better suggestion that does not include "take a spellcaster instead" (which is a good advice, but still...).
Over the top is certainly right. I don't have a clue what your DM actually means when he says ECL 10 gestalt with a free +2 LA while using PB 50 because at this point all of that information doesn't mean a thing. A half-dragon centaur defaults to an ECL 9 character (4 racial HD + 5 LA) which also leads to the big question of how is your DM going to handle LA with a gestalt character? To me all of the half-dragon centaur stuff should go on one side of the gestalt leaving the other side completely open for class levels granted five of those are backed against the "levels" of the LA which makes HD, skill, save, and BAB choices very easy to make. The other way I'd see gestalt with LA is to put racial HD all on one side and LA at the start of the other side; this would allow a Centaur//Barbaian2 to be played as at GeCL 4 and could allow a Half-Dragon Centaur Barbian 1 to be played as a 5th level gestalt character with all HD one one side and nothing but LA on the other.
If no one else is a 'hard-core optimizer" then I'm not sure that you should need any help here. With +16 STR (and a large size), +4 DEX, +6 CON, +2 WIS & CHA, and +7 Natural Armor I suspect you can do no wrong going with some kind of warrior build with your non-racial levels. There's just so much here that is crazy.
Tyranny Pali/Hexblade is always a fun combo. As a halfdragon centaur, I'm picturing Herracim from LOL.
Some Minor Swaps
Paladin LE 3/Hexblade 2/Fighter 2/Blackguard 3
Blackguard adds another stack of cha to saves, and some cool auras. You should probably prestige again after that though.
And why not a cavalier? I'm not sure about rules of centaur but it should qualify even more easliy than normal mounted character, u could also try to become a mount and except yourself u could carry some rider, it could be nicely optimised. Also some buffs on natural attacks would be nice as u have some of them. Maybe u would like to go into black blood cultist? I'd also suggest totem rager but it's banned :/
cavilier requires being mounted which is hard for a centaur. You could probably convince your DM to ignore it for you though. seems relatively simple.