A large aperture disc amplifier has been designed, set-up and characterized for its performance on small signal gain, spatial variation of gain, and thermal recovery time. This amplifier, consisting of three elliptical Nd: phosphate glass discs of size 214 × 114 × 20 mm mounted at Brewster angle and pumped by ten xenon filled flash lamps of 600 mm arc length, provided a small signal gain of 6 at electrical pump energy of 36 kJ (in a pulse of 450 𝜇s) using an in-house developed dual-polarity capacitor bank based power supply. It was coupled to a high power Nd: phosphate glass laser chain and a maximum output pulse energy exceeding 100 J in a 1·5 ns (FWHM) pulse has been measured. A dry nitrogen gas based cooling system was developed for cooling the glass discs with a thermal recovery time of ∼ 20 minutes.