Dragon Shamans

SO, lemme get this straight:

I can be a Dragonmarked character, but I have to be from Argonesson. So, I can be a human barbarian from Seren, and still be a Dragon Shaman, correct?

I do like the idea of a Dragon Shaman in Eberron, because I think it perfectly fits the fast playing nature of the game. Plus, Blargney plays a DS in my RL Eberron game, and it's a wonderful little class.

While I'm not sold on the "argonesson only" stipulation of the class we have here (as there were plenty of options that would have worked without it), I do like the class, and I'm seriously considering making my 3rd PC one.

Speaking of which, what's the likelihood of the variants from Dragon Magic making it in for my Shamanic character? I'm particularly interested in the variant that gives me an invocation (so I can cast Identify at will - it makes games *so* much smoother!)

I really don't like Dragon Shamans. I don't like their healing aura. I don't like their flavour--they're totally ridiculous for almost any campaign. I decided to vote for them in Eberron only because Eberron is the only setting I've seen that has a place where the class wouldn't look ridiculously over-narrow, specific, and off-flavour (okay, prestige class maybe. But base class? Why in the world!?), though only for a certain region where they worship dragons. Otherwise, I would have voted NO to the class--I think they cause more grief than they're worth and generally use the class as a vehicle for comic relief (NPCs who complain constantly and boorishly pronounce that the dragons are far better than the PCs at everything). I am not in favour of unlimiting them, though if you'd like to go back and get rid of them entirely, I'm cool with that too--I'd support it also.

I've had them in play a few times, and I really like what they're capable of. Especially as a GM - it means more encounters per session, as the Dragon Shaman extends the group's healing capabilities.

As for the unlimited Identify trick, which is actually a Dragonfire Adept's ability from Dragon Magic... I thought it'd be unbalanced (since unlimited Identify, with no component cost, just SOUNDS broken), what it actually does is allow the group to use items as they find them, which makes less of a GM headache later on.

(as an aside, a few sessions ago in my monday night game, I had the players mass identify all the items they had picked up in a month of adventuring on the isle of dread. "What does this weird-looking dagger do?"

As a GM, I had completely forgotten about that weird little +1 dagger that I had described on the fly, since they had discovered it more than six weeks ago. I found myself wishing they still had their dragon shaman, since they would have been able to write "+1 dagger" on their character sheets within a round of finding it, as opposed to the five minutes of me flipping frantically through my notes to jog my memory).

I'm really just in pre-proposal mode right now. I might put forward Dragon Magic (and maybe Dragonfire Adept; that could be a fun option!) as a proposal, methinks.

I really don't like the economic implications of unlimited free Identify. That ability is available only through esoteric and expensive means in the SRD (like epic level skills or 6th-level in Loremaster PrC). Then again, I preferred the 3.0 Identify that gave basic functions of a whole bunch of items at once to the new one that gives everything for one item. Anyway, that could have massive implications for the entire gameworld, since the Dragonfire Adept would be a fool not to sell the service for 90ish gold to all the other PCs, a price no other entity can possibly match, as they need pearlshakes.

As for the Dragon Shaman's healing--I actually find it deleterious to fun in a session. So far in Shackled City, we've had the most fun because of the fact that we had to worry about running out of resources when fighting through the dungeons (Paizo's dungeons are an absolute bear to take out in one day without resting, but our group did it, and that's what made Flood Season's last dungeon, for instance, really really fun. It would not have been fun if we had annoying unlimited resources. I say this as a player in that group.).

The problem is eternal wands of Identify are possable.

Bront said:

The problem is eternal wands of Identify are possible.

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But, that is still only twice a day, and still takes an hour each.

Dragon Shamans are a fine class, and in my experience, do not take away from the tension of the game. To take another Paizo example, our DS just essentially prevented ourselves from barricading our group when strapped for healing in several different places in the Savage Tide, and did nothing to reduce the "I might die" tension during the major mojo combats. So, I don't feel they detract too much (and the "I worship dragons thing" being over played is a player issue, not a class issue [no more than "I love the Silver Flame" is a cleric issue]). However, given the Eberron's populace relation to dragons in general (aka, none), I think it is appropriate for them to be tied to dragon worshiping/interacting cultures.

Dragonfire adepts I'm not sold on, just because they're a little on the weak side. My fiendish-dragon tied lizardfolk scout that I was making a warlock would also make sense for that class, but again because of their specific ties to dragons. I'd be hard pressed to see the average farm boy from Aundair adopt it.

Having a PC being able to Id at will is not an issue with the free Id PC in my mind, it is a limitation on the rest of the PCs. Iding things is a chief headache in the system, and the 3.0 Id was worse in my mind than the 3.5 ("Uh, that sword does, something, but I can only tell you one thing about it... ever. Please wait until your high enough level to cast legend lore, then I might be able to tell you a little more"). Its one of the old baggage of the game, and especially makes little sense in a game of wide magic such as Eberron. I like the new iding rules in the Magic Item Compendium myself as it makes it less difficult though for folks who should know better (wizards, artificers, etc.) but not so simple that anyone could do it.

Rystil Arden said:

I really don't like the economic implications of unlimited free Identify. That ability is available only through esoteric and expensive means in the SRD (like epic level skills or 6th-level in Loremaster PrC). Then again, I preferred the 3.0 Identify that gave basic functions of a whole bunch of items at once to the new one that gives everything for one item. Anyway, that could have massive implications for the entire gameworld, since the Dragonfire Adept would be a fool not to sell the service for 90ish gold to all the other PCs, a price no other entity can possibly match, as they need pearlshakes.

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Hey, this is from the same DM who was saying yesterday that it was extremely anoying to have a player running around with an unidentified weapon, as it made you constantly adapt his rolls!

Perhaps there is a plus side to having identify more readilly available after all, no?

Patlin said:

Hey, this is from the same DM who was saying yesterday that it was extremely anoying to have a player running around with an unidentified weapon, as it made you constantly adapt his rolls!

Perhaps there is a plus side to having identify more readilly available after all, no?

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exactly my point.

In my next RL campaign, I plan on introducing "ID Stones" - basically wands of Identify that can be used by anyone. Because IDing SUCKS.

Patlin said:

Hey, this is from the same DM who was saying yesterday that it was extremely anoying to have a player running around with an unidentified weapon, as it made you constantly adapt his rolls!

Perhaps there is a plus side to having identify more readilly available after all, no?

Click to expand...

That's only with constant-effect bonuses, where the player gets the effect without knowing it. Frankly, I wish LEW used my houserule that you always know what your bonus is to a roll. Then the player can worry about it instead of the GM in secret. But I (to paraphrase Kefka) hate hate hate hate hate that the 1st-level spell lets PCs Identify all sorts of exotic quirks of unusual and non-constant magic items. To get ID at-will and for free is a dealbreaker for me. I would definitely ban that character from all my games and I suspect they would ruin the Identify economy across all games. It just makes the game less fun to me (as a player and as a GM), to always know everything and make Analyse Dweomer obsolete. Admittedly, I always like to know constant-effect items. How about this--if (not when, since I think Dragonfire Adept is more than a bit sketchy for the Eberron setting unless also heavily restricted by background) we ever allow it, why not modify it so that it automatically Identifies constant effects but not everything? Something like "Due to their acute draconic senses for latent dweomers, the Dragonfire Adept is able to identify any magic item effect that has a constant effect as long as she is exposed to the item's dweomer for a full hour. She can take other actions during this time, but it takes that long to puzzle out the intricacies of the magic."

If it comes up (which it doesn't in face to face, as my group has a horror of cursed items and IDs *everything* before use) I'll usually tell a player at least the enhancement bonus of a weapon if he's used it in two or three battles. Too much headache for the DM otherwise. I've never seen the Dragonfire Adept, so I can't comment directly, but I've found the Artificer's Monocle in SC to be a good thing... an initial investment that will more than pay for itself over time, but I don't feel that destroys the economy in any significant way.

I suppose PCs selling spellcasting services at 75% of market could also be described as destroying the economy, but in my experience they prefer to be out adventuring rather than sitting in the shard selling such things to other PCs. I see it as an economic advantage for the PC and his associates, but that's not entirely bad.