Graf
Explorer
For some mysterious reason my account can't post reviews. If you read this relatively critical, long and lopsided review you'll probably think that isn't much of a loss. But Dragonmarked hasn't been reviewed yet so untilsomone more evenhanded get's involved you're stuck with me.
Dragonmarked review (4 stars -- but see below)
Obviously there are better reviewers on EnWorld than myself. Less biased, more informative, etc. Unfortunately none of them have reviewed this book yet. Until they do here you go.
Summary
Reviewer's bias
I'm a picky Eberron fan. I like the world as originally presented in the ECS; favor a stricter interpretation of the setting as originally provided (i.e. low level characters, less emphasis on weird races, unbalanced mechanics or Xen'drik, etc)
My view on the Eberron series of books (I have them all, except for an adventure or two, and have run in two campaigns and played in two more)
Eberron fans are in a bit of spot now. There are a lot of books out. Every time a new one appears you faced with the prospect of deciding whether it's a great book (Races of Eb,Sharn ), a good-but-not-really-Eberron-book-according-to-my-exacting-standards (Magic of Eb, Player's Guild to Eb, Secrets of Xen'drik) or a bad book filled with recycled material and written by WotC staff on a tight deadline where the small amount of new material that has been introduced contradicts the existing published material (Five Kingdoms, Explorers Handbook, Faiths of Eb). While Keith Bakers name continues to be a signifier that the book won't fall into the latter category recent evidence (Secrets of Xen'drik -- memo to KB: Warforged do not need any more secret origins. Enough already!) suggests that he's a bit stretched.
Executive summary
Though it has some rough points (some that I find personally irksome) I have to say that Dragonmarked falls solidly into the first camp. The new material it adds doesn't contradict previously published information and often builds upon previously explained themes without extensive repetition. The crunch (game parts like feats/PrCs/spells) is often flavorful and Eberron appropriate but suffers from poor execution, I'm often sceptical of claims that third party material is up to WotC level but the PrCs, in particular, left me scratching my head.
IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT RATING
The four star rating is for people who are playing in Eberron and want more Dragonmarked related stuff.
If you don't prominently feature Dragonmarks or Dragonmarked Houses in it in your game it's probably a 3; if you don't play Eberron and are just looking for mechanics or ideas it's probably closer to a 2. The authors managed to avoid giving the dragonmarked system a much needed overhaul so anyone outside of Eberron will struggle to incorporate it into their game world and have players wondering why they bothered at all.
Compatibility
As DnD continues to expand the number of supplements, alternative rules, and splat books at a dizzying rate Dragonmarked makes an effort to include and reference existing material. Classes from the complete books, feats from thepsionics handbook, spells from the Spell Compendium and Magic of Eberron are referenced. Some of it has a 'checklist' kind of feel though. The warlock related feats are me-too versions of unattractive feats, the sidebar on thedragonblooded subtype, (from Dragon Magic) and the one or two spells related to it, seem like more of an effort to get people to buy the books than any effort to add something interesting to the world. But they're in there and people who own those books may appreciate the effort made.
There was nothing directly related to Incarnum, Psionics, or Tome of Magic that I saw.
What are dragonmarks (and the dragonmarked houses)?
At the beginning of recorded history (as far as the PC races see it anyway) certain races began to develop magical blue writing across their skin and with it innate magical abilities. While the abilities themselves were not very powerful they allowed these 'marked' individuals to use magic items made withdragonshards to achieve potent effects (often effects that would require epic level magic in other worlds). As each mark was concentrated among one race (with the exception of one that was shared between humans and half-orcs) and passed down genetically (can't think of a better term for it) these marked individuals formed into families and dominated their respective economic spheres. Over time these Houses joined together; forming join institutions like the Twelve, one of the preeminent wizard's colleges and magical research centers, and creating laws that all the houses were bound to follow. This interconnected economic system dominates Eberron and allows for the large-scale magical effects (the lightning rail, airships, etc) that help make the setting distinct.
(There is a lot more plot about the role of dragonmarks in the destiny of the world, the relationship with real dragons, the twelve moons, Aberrant Marks, etc. But I've got to stop this paragraph somewhere. If you want more look at the wiki.)
Personally I tend to think that the dragonmarked houses are the most innovative part of Eberron. A lot of things get more more attention (Warforged, Mournland) but other settings did weird/powerful races, technological magic, airships, spies/evil societies and magical wastelands first. The dragonmarked guild system has its roots in real history but is something that was new to Eberron*. In addition the Dragonmarked houses was also useful because they help explain the domination of Khorvaire byPHB races (i.e. humans, dwarves , elves) in a world with several new, powerful, PC races (Shifters, Changelings, Warforged and Kalashtar). They also support the existence of groups like half-elves and half-orcs as 'independent races'.
*In some ways you could argue that the Dragonmarked Houses allow for cyberpunk/shadowrun elements to be more easily inserted into DnD with competing economic entities (corporations) jockeying against each other and hiring adventurers to persue their interests.
The Existing Dragonmarked System
So the dragonmarked houses were great from a story element; how did they work out mechanically?
Rather poorly if you were a PC.
Initially (i.e. in the ECS) the roll of dragonmarks-as-enabling-powerful-but-cheaply-made-magical-items wasn't clear.
Anyone of the appropriate house could be dragonmarked but there were no mechanical benefits without taking feats (fair and balanced). The feats were broken down into two categories: the Dragonmarked feat chain, which provided magical power or take Favored in House, which provided social/political power (allowing you to call in favors from your House). Neither was particularly powerful and the benefits of Favored in House was poorly defined and up to DM fiat. But it was flavorful and interesting as a story concept.
While the dragonmarked feats had some novelty (this was before an onslaught of books which each had several feats giving you a bunch of spells per day) the spells were, with a few exceptions, useless for adventuring. On one hand you have to approve of the way the balance issue was handled: houses were powerful because of enabling-magic-items (safely in the hands ofNPCs , and not really suitable for adventuring) allowing high-powered magic in a lower powered setting. However the unattractive nature of the featsavailible (i.e. the spell like abilities) meant that nobody wanted to play a dragonmarked character.
There were two PrCs in the ECS that dealt with dragonmarks, the Dragonmarked Heir and the Heir of Syberus. Both were strong storywise combining dragonmarks with other Eberron features like action points. However neither really addressed the issue that the powers granted by dragonmarks suck forDnD characters (to be blunt about it). And to get those sucky powers through a PrC you gave up the benefits of your base class and the option of taking an ever increasing list of great PrCs WotC churned out.
The classes were particularly unattractive to spellcasters, most of the spells provided were easily accessed by through their normal spellcasting progression and the key benefit of dragonmarkedspellcaster (i.e. no spell failure in armor) either already applied to them (divine casters can cast in armor) or didn't matter (arcanists usually don't wear armor).
Development of the Dragonmarked as a game concept from the beginning until now
In the years since WotC has produced a massive onslaught of new feats, magic systems, races, classes and so forth that have had the combined effect of upping PC power levels. Likewise Eberron has seen a great volume of books. Unfortunately most of these avoided dealing with Dragonmarks or did so in a very cursory manner. Though Magic of Eberron and a few other books saw an effort (to be applauded) to show just what mark-enabling magic items could allow organizations of low level characters do (magical trains, flying ships, resurrection) none of it was particularly useful for adventuring.
So, despite a story level focus on dragonmarked characters and an expectation in the books and stories that characters will be members of the houses nobody actually plays one. The Dragonmarked Heir PrC sees a lot of use in NPC stat blocks but that's about it.
The Expectations
Tthere was a post by KB (addressing the unattractiveness of the Dragonmarked Heir for certain character types) to the effect that "this is just one PrC. There are others that are good for spellcasters, or people who don't want to be Favored in House, etc. Wait for the Dragonmarked Book."
So several years in to Eberron's product life-cycle the Dragonmarked book is finally out. Will it have people rushing out to play dragonmarked PCs? Will people (almost everybody really) who steadfastly refuse to play dragonmarked characters reconsider it?
Personally I doubt it.
I'm not saying that someone won't be able to find something that can be used to break some other part of the rules and make a Pun-pun type super character but it looks like the hodgepodge of mechanics introduced in the books don't address the fundamental problem with dragonmarks: in exchange for your increasingly valuable feats you get a bunch of useless powers a couple of times per day.
We'll talk about this more when we get to the various chapters.
Overall Themes of the Book
The good thing is that there are several themes in the book and they generally fit with the themes established by Eberron (unlike say Magic of Eberron).
*The 12 Houses, each house gets a short chapter, a PrC and several house-only feats. These go a reasonable way toward fleshing out every house. The feats and themes are 'on-target' and re-enforce the image of the house. Ultimately I think this is detrimental to solving the "no-one wants to play a dragonmarked character" issue but they do a good job of giving each house something.
*Dragonmark vs Dragonmark interactions; this surprised me. Though in retrospect it shouldn't have. There are now a plethora of feats, spells, magical items and even PrC class features that allow a dragonmarked to detect, disrupt and damage other dragonmarks and their wielders. From a story standpoint I applaud this: the dragonmarked are an elite and extremely competitive caste of people in Eberron; they would almost certainly have developed these sorts of things over several thousand years. From a mechanical standpoint I had to wonder how much of this will ever be used. Given the low utility of dragonmarks disrupting or stopping their users doesn't seem like it will see much use in the game.
*The third theme that turns up is 'vs. dragons'. This surprised me a bit. Eberron has few true dragons the PCs can interact with, and Eberron has, mercifully, not be afflicted with all the new dragon-races from all these recent 'dragon-themed' books. Furthermore one would think that the recent flood of dragon related products hasn't left this area unaddressed. But it provides an interesting story angle, suggesting that the dragonmarked races are more than just walking tarot cards for Dragons to interpret from on high.
*The fourth theme is more of a mini-theme: dragonmarks generate force effects. This is cool and semi-innovative. The feats section below touches upon this in more detail.
The Review Proper
Art: The art on the book is up to the high level you expect from Eberron. It leads off with a brilliant Wayne Reynolds painting that gives a half dozen character and story ideas just from looking at it. I was particularly happy that it showed new characters (not that I don't like the rotating stable of Eberron characters that have graced other books of course but new is interesting).
The amount of Art is quite good it seemed like more pages had art (even small pieces) than not and a almost all of it was on topic or evocative. There are a few stinkers (pg 16, 67, 109, 34 -- they're dinosaur masks, not clown masks!) featuring unrealistic posing, silly subjects and bad art but the faces for each character in the Dragonmarked houses chapter are a good addition, as are several other pieces (44, 70, 128, 154!, even 37 grew on me). I'm on the fence about the Attack-on-the-Deathstar style piece on page 86. But I suppose that anything that makes you think is a good addition.
Usage of Space: Good for a WotC product. They pack a lot in. The art may have something to do with the lack of white space. But that's hardly something to complain about.
Index: No, but not needed. Everything is alphabetical and the table of contents lists everything down to the individual spells and feats.
Introduction
Very solid chapter. The writing avoids the Five Kingdoms/Faiths of Eberron style long-form essay-of-things-you-already-know in favor of tightly focused paragraphs. Key concepts that haven't been properly explained (outside of the novels or oblique references in other books) like the Test of Siberys and the Edicts ofKorth (a sort of separation of Dragonmarked Houses and State) are properly introduced. A "traditional" house hierarchy is explained allowing each house entry (in the next chapter) to refer back "traditional structure" and note specific cultural differences instead of wasting space with repetition. The difference between Houses and Guilds is properly explained. Various 'versions' of the Favored in House feat are suggested (all have the same effect but add story details about why you can call on the house for favors).
Sidebars include information about The Twelve, the Draconic Prophesy, superiority of the magic items used by the guilds, and so forth. My favorite is the one that explains why items always cost the same thing (i.e. thePHB price) answer: the guilds set prices; and it even offers an alternative for buying from non-guild merchants.
Chapter One: The Houses (61 pages)
Each house gets a write up, some are better than others but all do a good job of outlining the house, it's origins and history, major power groups and the current political climate. The information-to-words-used ratio remains very high.
The guilds connected to each House are touched upon in a sidebar (favored classes and skills of members, etc). Personally I find that to be about the right level of detail. A few of the more important guilds get a few paragraphs but generally its short and sweet.
Each chapter has two character portraits, usually a house leader and a stated out NPC. As I indicated I think this is a strong point, while a few are weak as pieces of art, as a whole they're an excellent addition.
The stated NPCs seem good, though some of the story hooks are a bit hum-drum ( so-and-so-wants-to-hire-you-to-explore-the-lost-ruins). The NPCs are a bit powerful compared to he Eberron average but NPC classes are liberally used, limiting the impact.
The more successful House write ups (Cannith, Deneith, Tharashk) do a good job off creating story hooks (though none are specifically called out as such) while the weaker ones (Ghallanda, Jorasco, Kundarak*) function more as encyclopedia entries. The weaker ones are notably shorter though so it's hard to try to hold them to the same level.
*Kundarak actually wins some accolades though; see the PrC chapter below.
For example: The information on House Cannith (probably the House most dwelled on in the preexisting material) still managed to feel interesting as it delves into the underpinnings of inheritance of house ruler ship and internal perceptions of the three divisions of the house. Growing worship of the Traveler in Cannith South and Merrix's plans and likely repercussions would be appreciated by a DM focusing on warforged or House Cannith but are short enough not to irritate someone who doesn't want to include Cannith in their story.
Favored in House gets a strong clarification of what it can do in the form of a house specific table with different DCs for different favors. Including some relatively pedestrian things (lending you a small amount of money at an exorbitant rate) to cooler stuff like letting you borrow troops, get free healing and so forth. The different houses charts do true offersignificant differences. This reflects a lot of work on the authors/editors and is very much to be commended.
Chapter Two: PrCs (40 pages)
Its hard to judge this chapter fairly. I'm neutral on the inclusion of PrCs in general and appreciate the fact that each house gets one. While a few are just total wastes of space (Nosomatic Healer) the authors have struggled and managed to produce something semi-interesting if ultra-specific classes.
Aside: Dragonmarks and Spellcasting
On the other hand the 'dragonmarked-system' has a serious issue (mentioned above but anyway): the spell like abilities granted by the feats and existing PrCs are unattractive on both an absolute and relative basis. (Absolute in the sense that they're generally not useful in normal play and relative in that you have much better choices for your feats). Its particularly bad for spellcasters who can generally get access to the same spells simply by advancing in their class.
You would expect some PrC to deal with this by allowing Dragonmarked to expend their powers-per-day to enhance their spells (increase caster level,use ametamagic feat 'for free', recover a spell) or provide abilities that casters don't get or would find attractive. Since the Dragonmarked Houses have a unified magical college (the Twelve) you would think that they'd have developed something like this. Arguably this sort of thing should have been built into the Dragonmarked Heir class, or appeared already in Magic of Eberron or the Players Guide. But it didn't and questions about it's lack were generally met with "look out for the Dragonmarked Book".
Unfortunately we have nada. zero. zip.
If you want to play a dragonmarked spellcaster you must have to be a member of one of two houses (one for divine and one for arcane), and must be extremely specialized (in one case laughably so).
Aside: Proliferating and divergent systems
The ECS originally presented Dragonmarks and they've been the plutonium 210 of Eberron ever since (i.e. no-one ever wants to touch them; even books that you would think would address them have desperately found something, anything else, not dragonmark related to address instead).
The advantage (?) of this is that you only really have the ECS system to look at. In which you take feats to receive an assortment utility spells, or take levels in the Dragonmarked Heir class to get the feats for free. Leaving aside the actual value of Dragonmarks themselves the system was tight, the Dragonmarked Heir and the feats took up a couple of pages all told. It was simple and concise.
Now there are going to be 12 (!) dragonmark related PrCs. You’d think they would roll out some sort of system for gaining access to Dragonmarks right? Maybe one based on the existing PrC… So that each class didn’t have a distinct, incompatible and confusing method for acquiring and using Dragonmarks.
You’d think that wouldn’t you?
You’d be wrong.
Leaving aside the wretched quality of some of the PrCs (addressed in more detail below) it’s difficult to imagine a more complex and counter intuitive system for dragonmark acquisition than comes out of this chapter.
Some PrCs require Dragonmarks (Deneith Sentinel) for entry but don’t do anything at all with them, others (Silver Key) don’t require Dragonmarks but do improve them if you have them. None of them use the system provided by the Dragonmarked Heir class. They all have an ability, called Heir’s Mark, that specifically doesn’t combine with the existing class (that’s stupid enough that I’ve got it’s own paragraph below). The better constructed classes like Storm Sentinel or the Unbound Scroll hint (nay tease) you with the idea of a simple mechanical system for acquiring extra uses of your dragonmark and (please please) using them to actually do something useful. Which makes the other classes even more painful to read.
I would be more inclined to forgive the bad PrCs if they were part of their own overarching Dragonmarked system, but the classes are so obviously developed independently.
Jesse he-can-do-good-work-really-look-at-Hammer-and-Helm Decker is the sort of person I would expect to catch and fix this stuff (he’s listed as development editor). I can only imagine that the deadlines on this project must have been brutal to allow this sort of stuff through. Really amazing
Aside: These just didn't need to be PrCs!!
In several cases a good story idea was needlessly expanded into a long form PrC, to the detriment of the book and the idea. The Black Dog (House of Ghallanda PrC) is a good example; an excellentroleplaying hook/idea that was butchered by being expanded into a 4 page PrC. The core concept: that there was once a famous Ghallanda innkeeper who used his position to poison lots of bad people and was eventually killed by the house. This is great! The idea of ahalflings within the house being inspired to stop bad people who stop at their inns is extremely cool*. The concept definitely deserves a sidebar (explaining how they get access to the Assassin PrC without having to kill someone or join an assassin's guild) and a feat or two, or a level of rogue substitution class (forhalflings natch) even, would be a brilliant addition to the game.
*=Assume you work in an Inn and Darth Vader comes in for lunch? Wouldn't you want to do something about it?
Instead we get a PrC that is basically a weaker version of the Assassin (poison use, death attack) and has a few minor poisoning related abilities. The description is almost a joke, they're hunted and hidden by their own House and it specifically states that they usually refuse to reveal themselves even to each other for fear that they'll be tracked down by the house. How did they become a PrC? If they avoid revealing themselves to other people they know are black dogs how is a non-black-dog-character ever going to get training from them (a requirement for entering the PrC)?
No where am I convinced that we need a five level PrC for Killer Innkeepers in a setting where most everyone is never higher than 1st level?
It -is- a cute story hook, but it's silly, ultra specialized and useless. Personally if I were going to run a killer innkeeper plot-line in my game I would just have a 1st level expert as the villain. Much more interesting. The one new class feature that seems broadly useful (the ability to hide in a crowd of larger creatures) seems like it would be much more useful as a feat or a feature of a substitution class than locked away in a PrC. It's hardly so unbalancing as to limit to a specific PrC.
In the previous chapter I mentioned that the Kundarak chapter did something good: they have their own group of sneaky assassins. Instead of making a "dwarf assassin PrC" they just made a special feat for their particular group (they're good at throwing handfuls of small missiles; their house symbol isManticore you see). The dwarf PrC for Kundarak is a mechanically silly kitchen-sink-grab-bag-of-random-class-features but at least it and the organization it represents could both logically exist in Eberron and be the sort of thing you would use in a game.
As a general trend the Houses that already have things going for them (i.e. relatively good spell-like abilities and cool themes) get the cooler PrCs while the less attractive Houses have PrCs that bite (sorry for the terminology, more specific details are below).
PrC Overview
Cannith -- Cyre Scout -- A ranger/artificer hybrid that specializes in exploring the Mournland. Wins some points for giving someone with the generally totally useless Mark of Making. Don't we have enough classes that explore Cyre though? We already have someone who wants to the Cyre Avenger. Mournland is cool but how many thematically similar PrCs do we need? And there is no reason why the mark of Making is the only mark that can allow someone to resist the effects of the Mournland. The PrC should either have been open to allCyrians (redeeming some of the houses with lamer marks) or actually related to making stuff. The mini-artificer-infusion list just made me cringe. Weren't these sorts of spell lists officially banned?
Deneith -- Deneith Warden -- A sort of "good" cop "bring 'em in alive" type. Get some social bonuses, focus on doing non-lethal damage and stunning people. Loses points for having no connection to the Deneith spell-like abilities (and yet requiring that you have the dragonmark anyway).
Ghallanda -- See above. A halfling dinoriding caravan guard for the Wandering Inn would have, at least, been interesting/payable/made some sort of sense.
Jorasco -- Nosomatic Chirurgeon -- It's not a secret that DnD has a healing problem, every party needs a cleric (or the equivalent), but it's a thankless job. So the Nosowhatever Surgeon is particularly galling. They're evil-Jorasco healers who grow and manipulate diseases? Why? The book suggests they're "mad". Far be it for the author to bother to come up with an explanation for this waste of space. This is another example of "would be a good sidebar; maybe with a feat if you had space".
Kundarak -- Silver Key -- Don't require you to be dragonmarked. Honestly I don't love the grab-bag of mechanics or the dwarf requirement but it's a reasonable PrC concept even if executed poorly.
Lyrander -- Storm Sentry -- Fighter (Best BAB, 10d hp, 4 skill points) with neat but balanced magical abilities. Arguably this is exactly the sort of PrC the book should have had. The powers work on theme, it's tied strongly in with a dragonmark power (rewarding an otherwise unattractive character choice) and the abilities do something without being unbalanced. As you rise in levels your gust of windSLA gets better and you can use it to do other things ([featherfall , short-term shield, etc). Someone could take this 5 level class to emphasis their dragonmarked heritage without the rest of their party groaning.
Medani -- Medani Prophet -- Winner of the most-specific award (and the competition was fierce). Are you a human member of a specific Dragonmarked House? Do you have two specific powers each requiring a feat to get? Are you a divine caster who can cast more than 3 2nd level divination spells? Guess what.... you're still not good enough! You have to worship a specific god too. In Eberron where gods are supposed to be fairlyde -emphasized. Medani has traditionally been an under-emphasized house, the idea of a Mark of Detection is cool but in practice it conflicts with the mark of Finding and of Sentry. A PrCgranting some sort of prognosticative powers would have been a cool way to differentiate a bit. Instead you'd have to build a character from scratch (and carefully) to hit it at all.... Granting more powerful divination abilities in a full casting progression PrC is great....Except that by the time you're finished with all the class requirements you can already cast all divination spells from your class list anyway. The most interesting power DM-generated visions (that provide no mechanical advantage and inhibit you if they hit when you're in combat) are the opposite of useful-PC-ability. Why not stick in a feat with a decent secondary ability and make it a feat instead of locking it away in an unattractive and severely limited PrC?
--> I'm honestly confused by how WotC considers balance issues. I realize that some of these spells (augury, divination) are reasonably powerful (i.e. mid-level spells). But they're primarily for advancement-of-plot. What would be the crime of allowing Medani dragonmarked who has sunk several feats into their dragonmark into a PrC that allows access to these sorts of powers? The DM picks the answers anyway! Its a free way to push the characters along a plot or toward a neat story.
Orien -- Blade of Orien -- Another example of a dragonmarked house with decent spell-like abilities getting a good PrC. It's around fighter-level strength (Bab Primary, d8 hp, good ref saves, 4 skill points) and requires two powers dimension leap and dimension door. These are probably the two best of all of the spell-like powers available through dragon marks though so it's not much of a loss. Especially after to start to advance in the PrC: you're teleporting gets better allowing you to affect enemies, allies and otherwise improve (full attacks after dim dooring at 10th level). Like the Storm Sentry it's good and flavorful.
--> So it's Ok for a fighter to improve his dimension door power, but bad for Medani to get divination? I won't repeat myself but it's fairly obvious that this chapter wasn't thought through.
Phiarlan/Thuranni -- Shadow Hunter -- Better than most of the PrCs; but with the same stupid we-don't-want-you-to-play-this-class entry requirements of the Medani Prophet. Other than that it works like you would expect (improves darkness related dragonmarks) and makes good use of the dragonmark power you're required to have to enter. They have an obnoxious "martial weapons" requirement (because the Bab+4 wasn't enough of a deterrent for a rogue?) in exchange for Best BAB, x6 skills, d8 hit points and some decent, if unspectacular, improvements to the darkness power. Given that the the Houses of Shadow are elves the only way in is through single class Ranger, or Fighter/Rogue (though a Fighter 5 could get in with a lot of cross class skills). Since the powers aren't particularly powerful, mostly allowing you to spend extra uses of your dragonmarked powers to improve or see through your darkness, I'm confused about the high requirements. Is the goal to punish a player who plays a stereotypical House of Shadow rogue by creating a class that they would like to enter but aren't allowed to?
I don't see anybody naturally being able to meet this class requirements without being a ranger.
Sivis -- Unbound Scroll -- 5 levels (4 caster levels), you get to make scrolls more cheaply and can use them to better effect. This class should have been a prototype for some sort of general DragonmarkedArcanist . You get more uses of the Arcane Mark power (incredibly lame... but) you can also use those spell-like abilities to do other useful/things (mostly improving scrolls caster levels or addingmetamagic feats). Take a passel of weak/unpopular mechanics (i.e. dragonmarks, scrolls and metamagic ) mix in a theme (Scribing) and create something new and playable. Nobody is going to run out to play one but, combined with the neat picture of a gnomish adventurer chick (pg 128), it's a solid entry.
Tharashk -- Duraak'ash -- Other than the stupid name the class is one of the few solid entries. Tharashk has decent spell-like abilities (identify[/]i, locate object), and this one focuses in on locate creature from the Lesser Mark like a laser. You get sorts of advantages tracking a target of locate creature. (including the very flavorful one that lets you use locate creature on someone you haven't met provided you have something like their blood or a piece of fingernail). Another example of 'good houses get good PrCs'.
Vadalis -- Vadalis Beastkeeper --Initially I was thrilled with this class when I skimmed it. Initially this class confused me. Once you accept that it's another hyper-specialized PrC for human Vadalis rangers you can see what it's for. You get to summon magebred creatures and then, at 10th level, you get the magebred template yourself (or it's effects, you're not an animal). Very on theme.
But the execution very poor. It's another class (along with Shadow Hunter) that could be interesting in a lot of character concepts but is constructed to only really allow for rangers to take it. And that means you won't get to use much of your magebred summoning class feature; it's just not appealing to a druid (no caster progression; no improved druid abilities) and nobody else could get in. Also it grants you the bane-of-thinking-game-designers-everywhere: the-mini-spell-list.
The-mini-spell-list, a concept I generally abhor, does fulfill a function here, namely adding Summon Nature's Ally spells to the ranger list, so that you can use the Summon Magebred animal ability provided. Since people have been asking about summoning magebred creatures and getting magebred companions for a while this class seems to be a (to-be-commended) case of giving people what they want. Personally I would have prefered something that added a caster level progression and the summon nature's ally spell to a casters list if they didn't have it. Personally the Vadalis tampering-with-nature has always struck me as having and arcane component; with a slow caster level progression you could have easily produced a balanced but interesting PrC that could be approached from druid, arcanist or ranger roots. But this class is definitely on the better side.
The take away is that if you want to play a cool House (Orien, Lyrandar) you're in luck. A few of the One of the 2nd tier Houses got some specific-but-welcome love (Tharashk)； with a nice surprise for Sivis arcanist and Valadis ranger players. The rest of the Houses got either interesting-PrCs-with-dumb-entry-requirements (Houses of Shadow, Medani) or pages-better-left-blank.
As I indicated originally, this is a problem with something-for-each-house scheme. And it was almost certainly exacerbated by thesiloed nature of WotC production. Each WotC writer gets assigned a house, they dash off one PrC in by the deadline and it's stuck in the book. I'm sure that people like Jesse Decker could probably have done more in another context but the will/time/budget wasn't really here.
Heir's Mark
I should probably mention the Heir's Mark class feature. All the PrC (even the ones that don't require you to be marked like the Silver Key) have it. Basically it raises your caster level for your dragonmarks (the feat description actually explains how this works). Except that Heir's Mark doesn't stack with Dragonmarked Heir, or ever increase the bonus past 5 caster levels.
Now the caster level of most spell-like abilities from dragon marked heir isn't particularly impressive. Most of the spells themselves are low level (and thus have a low absolute limit on their benefits from caster level) and aren't useful in combat anyway. Assuming that someone has taken more than five levels of Dragonmarked Heir or a class with Heir's mark -why- is it so unbalancing? Do we really need a rule with two exceptions to prevent the massive game abuse from a 15th level caster (with 3 feats and 6 levels of a PrC) casting sending as a 16th level caster? (I know those extra words in the message are going to destroy the balance of my game....)
Dragonmarks suck badly enough. And DnD is sufficiently complex. Totally baffling.
(I suppose I should point out that Aberrant marks can actually take powers that do damage in combat. But these PrCs aren't available to them anyway....)
Chapter Three: Feats
So the PrCs failed to fix the problems of the dragonmarked-system (as presented in the books up to now) do the feats do anything to resolve it?
Actually the answer is Yes.
It's not enough to actually encourage Dragonmarked characters to exist, but if you're hellbent on playing a dragonmarked character; almost any character-type has a chance to gain some absolute advantage (i.e. have their dragonmarked status actually do something in the game) through a feat.
This chapter presents 50ish feats in total. The themes of dragonmarks vs. dragonmarks and dragonmarks vs. dragons make their strongest appearance here (you get to see a few dragonmarks-give-force-effects too). All 12 houses get something and there are -finally- some generally useful feats that any dragonmarked character could take.
Generally there are a few sorts of feats
*the aforementioned vs feats.... you qualify and you get to do extra damage vs. people who have a different dragonmark than you, or against dragons. I like Shield of Siberys (you can detect people with Aberrant Marks)
*generally useful dragonmark feats: the best of the lot; the power of your mark sets the relative power level
-- Dragonmark Spellturning (spend action point to turn one spell)
-- Dragonmark Summoner (summoned creatures get deflection bonus to AC)
-- Mark of Deflection (+x as a deflection bonus to AC)
-- Mark of the Recovery (auto heal when dropping below zero hit points)
-- Mark of Resilience (+x on a single save; think it's powered by action points)
-- Mark of the Twelve Moons (+1 on your choice of one of two ability scores based on your house)
-- Protective Mark (get DR 5/magic or DR 10 for a short time with action point)
* Aberrant Marks (Lesser, Greater): pretty good and open up options to have other, better feats; most of the feats are anti-true dragonmark but a few provide other benefits like DR 5. Nothing awesome but you can at least have an Aberrant mark do something other than chill touch now. Probably not as good as feats from Lords of Madness but could be fun.
* for a druid type (each sort of Eberron druid gets an advantage); generally meh but you have to appreciate the effort
* for most of the weird Complete classes: warlock,
* The House specific marks. Follow the same general rule... if the House is great then you get a neat power (Umbral Mark for Shadow Houses, Sentinel Shadow for Deneith, Storm's Riposte for Lyrandar, Orien Battle Stride). And they're actually about as good as the House: So Orien's power is actually awesome, Lyrandar's is quite powerful, Deneith is neat if a bit limited and so on.
* More powers: There are another three feats that let you get spells from the spell compendium as spell-like abilities. Like always the power level depends totally on the power of the house. After four feats a Kundarak is still getting powers like 'Hide the Path' (why? who knows?) while someone from Orien could have swift fly at a much earlier level with less feats.
The big winners actually are people with marks of Siberys. Since you can't get one until the mid-teens and it takes a two level dip in a PrC they're quite powerful. Of course at that point you're running low on feats but it's nice to see a bit of love.
I should point out that at least one feat (quicken dragonmark) is a reprint from Magic of Eberron. Which is actually fairly obnoxious since it was the only feat related to dragonmarks in the entire Magic of Eberron* book.
*The subheading of which could have been: Where rejected Psionics ideas go to die.
Anyway, the feats save the book from being a complete waste on a mechanical level.
While they don't address the fundamental issues with the system (the relative attractiveness of dragonmarks) they do (with a large investment) at least give you some kind of absolute payoff. If you put enough feats in your character will get -some- benefit. And a properly constructed character (probably only Orien or Lyrandar) could stand up to a regular character.
Chapter Four: Magic and Dragonmarks
Magic chapters are hard to evaluate. An individual spell can make a whole chapter worthwhile while one irritating or poorly done spell or item can also loom larger than it probably should.
As a whole this chapter is short and except for one gem (a spell) is basically what you would expect. It gets points for developing a lot of spells that would logically exist in the world but doesn't really do anything to encourage anyone to play a Dragonmarked character. Personally I think that the magic items were a massive, wasted opportunity.
Spells
The core conceit of the spells in this book is you must be Dragonmarked to cast them. It's considered a necessary component to cast every spell presented. Since a lot of the spells involve suppressing dragonmarks or harming dragonmarked characters it gives the most of the spells presented a dragonmarked vs. dragonmarked feel.
Magic of Eberron had something similar where some spells had a 'special' line giving an extra bit of effect (usually +1 caster level or improved duration) if cast by a member of a certain house. Given that there is already one mechanic floating around out there I'm not sure that we need to have another sort.
Furthermore few of the general use spells look particularly interesting. Most read like a rejected-from-the-spell-compendium list. You have a weaker version of shield that can be quickly cast (Dragonmark Shield), the ability to blast creatures in an area around you with force (Marked Pulse), and block a ray and zap someone with blast of force (Ray of Retaliation).
The best spell by far is Summon Living Dragonmark. The evocative picture (pg 154) helps. The dragonmark is an ooze and it's attacks are treated as force attacks. But there's only one version of the spell (3rd level) so it's more of a mid-level novelty than anything else.
The spells don't really make up for being only available to dragonmarked casters. Though I like the variety of anti-dragonmarked character spells it seems more like they would be useful as a way for a DM to incapacitate dragonmarkedNPCs and allow the non-marked PCs to save them than anything else.
Magic Items
This was an area for the book to shine. Magic items using dragon shards that only are available to Dragonmarked characters are a core part of the world.
This chapter has three. They're all fairly normal (two allow members of the House of Shadow to scry). You wonder why they bothered.
I can think of better items in about two seconds: a cheaper cloak of displacement whose level of concealment depends upon your level of shadow mark, boots of speed that grant extra if you've got the Mark of Passage, armor enchantment that grants someone with a Mark of Warding some extra minor benefit (spend use of Mark of Warding to avoidcrit...), etc. etc.
Aberrant Marks
Finally there is a short section with story information on Aberrant marks. Personally I wouldn't put it in the back of the book, but it provides solid information on the Aberrant marks (including a lot of stuff that had only been touched upon inKB's novels and the Sharn book).
Summary
This book is probably the only book you'll see ever about the Dragonmarked. Since it's unlikely to raise the attractiveness of Dragonmarked characters and Eberron books in general avoid the topic like the plague, to the point of often shoehorning in random unrelated filler (psionic artificers inMoE; Manifest Spellcasting in Players Guide), instead of addressing the houses, there is unlikely to be any more material soon.
And I have to admit that I'm perversely happy that the fluff is good. Another mechanics-focused book with weak, contradictory fluff (see Magic of Eberron, Player's Guide) would have been worse.
So if you're an Eberron fan, and you like and want to use the Dragonmarked in your game then this book is a great addition. If you play in Eberron there is some neat story goodness to be pulled out of the book. If you're looking for mechanics (and you haven't imported the dragonmarked system to your own world) it's probably a pass.
Dragonmarked review (4 stars -- but see below)
Obviously there are better reviewers on EnWorld than myself. Less biased, more informative, etc. Unfortunately none of them have reviewed this book yet. Until they do here you go.
Summary
Reviewer's bias
I'm a picky Eberron fan. I like the world as originally presented in the ECS; favor a stricter interpretation of the setting as originally provided (i.e. low level characters, less emphasis on weird races, unbalanced mechanics or Xen'drik, etc)
My view on the Eberron series of books (I have them all, except for an adventure or two, and have run in two campaigns and played in two more)
Eberron fans are in a bit of spot now. There are a lot of books out. Every time a new one appears you faced with the prospect of deciding whether it's a great book (Races of Eb,Sharn ), a good-but-not-really-Eberron-book-according-to-my-exacting-standards (Magic of Eb, Player's Guild to Eb, Secrets of Xen'drik) or a bad book filled with recycled material and written by WotC staff on a tight deadline where the small amount of new material that has been introduced contradicts the existing published material (Five Kingdoms, Explorers Handbook, Faiths of Eb). While Keith Bakers name continues to be a signifier that the book won't fall into the latter category recent evidence (Secrets of Xen'drik -- memo to KB: Warforged do not need any more secret origins. Enough already!) suggests that he's a bit stretched.
Executive summary
Though it has some rough points (some that I find personally irksome) I have to say that Dragonmarked falls solidly into the first camp. The new material it adds doesn't contradict previously published information and often builds upon previously explained themes without extensive repetition. The crunch (game parts like feats/PrCs/spells) is often flavorful and Eberron appropriate but suffers from poor execution, I'm often sceptical of claims that third party material is up to WotC level but the PrCs, in particular, left me scratching my head.
IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT RATING
The four star rating is for people who are playing in Eberron and want more Dragonmarked related stuff.
If you don't prominently feature Dragonmarks or Dragonmarked Houses in it in your game it's probably a 3; if you don't play Eberron and are just looking for mechanics or ideas it's probably closer to a 2. The authors managed to avoid giving the dragonmarked system a much needed overhaul so anyone outside of Eberron will struggle to incorporate it into their game world and have players wondering why they bothered at all.
Compatibility
As DnD continues to expand the number of supplements, alternative rules, and splat books at a dizzying rate Dragonmarked makes an effort to include and reference existing material. Classes from the complete books, feats from thepsionics handbook, spells from the Spell Compendium and Magic of Eberron are referenced. Some of it has a 'checklist' kind of feel though. The warlock related feats are me-too versions of unattractive feats, the sidebar on thedragonblooded subtype, (from Dragon Magic) and the one or two spells related to it, seem like more of an effort to get people to buy the books than any effort to add something interesting to the world. But they're in there and people who own those books may appreciate the effort made.
There was nothing directly related to Incarnum, Psionics, or Tome of Magic that I saw.
What are dragonmarks (and the dragonmarked houses)?
At the beginning of recorded history (as far as the PC races see it anyway) certain races began to develop magical blue writing across their skin and with it innate magical abilities. While the abilities themselves were not very powerful they allowed these 'marked' individuals to use magic items made withdragonshards to achieve potent effects (often effects that would require epic level magic in other worlds). As each mark was concentrated among one race (with the exception of one that was shared between humans and half-orcs) and passed down genetically (can't think of a better term for it) these marked individuals formed into families and dominated their respective economic spheres. Over time these Houses joined together; forming join institutions like the Twelve, one of the preeminent wizard's colleges and magical research centers, and creating laws that all the houses were bound to follow. This interconnected economic system dominates Eberron and allows for the large-scale magical effects (the lightning rail, airships, etc) that help make the setting distinct.
(There is a lot more plot about the role of dragonmarks in the destiny of the world, the relationship with real dragons, the twelve moons, Aberrant Marks, etc. But I've got to stop this paragraph somewhere. If you want more look at the wiki.)
Personally I tend to think that the dragonmarked houses are the most innovative part of Eberron. A lot of things get more more attention (Warforged, Mournland) but other settings did weird/powerful races, technological magic, airships, spies/evil societies and magical wastelands first. The dragonmarked guild system has its roots in real history but is something that was new to Eberron*. In addition the Dragonmarked houses was also useful because they help explain the domination of Khorvaire byPHB races (i.e. humans, dwarves , elves) in a world with several new, powerful, PC races (Shifters, Changelings, Warforged and Kalashtar). They also support the existence of groups like half-elves and half-orcs as 'independent races'.
*In some ways you could argue that the Dragonmarked Houses allow for cyberpunk/shadowrun elements to be more easily inserted into DnD with competing economic entities (corporations) jockeying against each other and hiring adventurers to persue their interests.
The Existing Dragonmarked System
So the dragonmarked houses were great from a story element; how did they work out mechanically?
Rather poorly if you were a PC.
Initially (i.e. in the ECS) the roll of dragonmarks-as-enabling-powerful-but-cheaply-made-magical-items wasn't clear.
Anyone of the appropriate house could be dragonmarked but there were no mechanical benefits without taking feats (fair and balanced). The feats were broken down into two categories: the Dragonmarked feat chain, which provided magical power or take Favored in House, which provided social/political power (allowing you to call in favors from your House). Neither was particularly powerful and the benefits of Favored in House was poorly defined and up to DM fiat. But it was flavorful and interesting as a story concept.
While the dragonmarked feats had some novelty (this was before an onslaught of books which each had several feats giving you a bunch of spells per day) the spells were, with a few exceptions, useless for adventuring. On one hand you have to approve of the way the balance issue was handled: houses were powerful because of enabling-magic-items (safely in the hands ofNPCs , and not really suitable for adventuring) allowing high-powered magic in a lower powered setting. However the unattractive nature of the featsavailible (i.e. the spell like abilities) meant that nobody wanted to play a dragonmarked character.
There were two PrCs in the ECS that dealt with dragonmarks, the Dragonmarked Heir and the Heir of Syberus. Both were strong storywise combining dragonmarks with other Eberron features like action points. However neither really addressed the issue that the powers granted by dragonmarks suck forDnD characters (to be blunt about it). And to get those sucky powers through a PrC you gave up the benefits of your base class and the option of taking an ever increasing list of great PrCs WotC churned out.
The classes were particularly unattractive to spellcasters, most of the spells provided were easily accessed by through their normal spellcasting progression and the key benefit of dragonmarkedspellcaster (i.e. no spell failure in armor) either already applied to them (divine casters can cast in armor) or didn't matter (arcanists usually don't wear armor).
Development of the Dragonmarked as a game concept from the beginning until now
In the years since WotC has produced a massive onslaught of new feats, magic systems, races, classes and so forth that have had the combined effect of upping PC power levels. Likewise Eberron has seen a great volume of books. Unfortunately most of these avoided dealing with Dragonmarks or did so in a very cursory manner. Though Magic of Eberron and a few other books saw an effort (to be applauded) to show just what mark-enabling magic items could allow organizations of low level characters do (magical trains, flying ships, resurrection) none of it was particularly useful for adventuring.
So, despite a story level focus on dragonmarked characters and an expectation in the books and stories that characters will be members of the houses nobody actually plays one. The Dragonmarked Heir PrC sees a lot of use in NPC stat blocks but that's about it.
The Expectations
Tthere was a post by KB (addressing the unattractiveness of the Dragonmarked Heir for certain character types) to the effect that "this is just one PrC. There are others that are good for spellcasters, or people who don't want to be Favored in House, etc. Wait for the Dragonmarked Book."
So several years in to Eberron's product life-cycle the Dragonmarked book is finally out. Will it have people rushing out to play dragonmarked PCs? Will people (almost everybody really) who steadfastly refuse to play dragonmarked characters reconsider it?
Personally I doubt it.
I'm not saying that someone won't be able to find something that can be used to break some other part of the rules and make a Pun-pun type super character but it looks like the hodgepodge of mechanics introduced in the books don't address the fundamental problem with dragonmarks: in exchange for your increasingly valuable feats you get a bunch of useless powers a couple of times per day.
We'll talk about this more when we get to the various chapters.
Overall Themes of the Book
The good thing is that there are several themes in the book and they generally fit with the themes established by Eberron (unlike say Magic of Eberron).
*The 12 Houses, each house gets a short chapter, a PrC and several house-only feats. These go a reasonable way toward fleshing out every house. The feats and themes are 'on-target' and re-enforce the image of the house. Ultimately I think this is detrimental to solving the "no-one wants to play a dragonmarked character" issue but they do a good job of giving each house something.
*Dragonmark vs Dragonmark interactions; this surprised me. Though in retrospect it shouldn't have. There are now a plethora of feats, spells, magical items and even PrC class features that allow a dragonmarked to detect, disrupt and damage other dragonmarks and their wielders. From a story standpoint I applaud this: the dragonmarked are an elite and extremely competitive caste of people in Eberron; they would almost certainly have developed these sorts of things over several thousand years. From a mechanical standpoint I had to wonder how much of this will ever be used. Given the low utility of dragonmarks disrupting or stopping their users doesn't seem like it will see much use in the game.
*The third theme that turns up is 'vs. dragons'. This surprised me a bit. Eberron has few true dragons the PCs can interact with, and Eberron has, mercifully, not be afflicted with all the new dragon-races from all these recent 'dragon-themed' books. Furthermore one would think that the recent flood of dragon related products hasn't left this area unaddressed. But it provides an interesting story angle, suggesting that the dragonmarked races are more than just walking tarot cards for Dragons to interpret from on high.
*The fourth theme is more of a mini-theme: dragonmarks generate force effects. This is cool and semi-innovative. The feats section below touches upon this in more detail.
The Review Proper
Art: The art on the book is up to the high level you expect from Eberron. It leads off with a brilliant Wayne Reynolds painting that gives a half dozen character and story ideas just from looking at it. I was particularly happy that it showed new characters (not that I don't like the rotating stable of Eberron characters that have graced other books of course but new is interesting).
The amount of Art is quite good it seemed like more pages had art (even small pieces) than not and a almost all of it was on topic or evocative. There are a few stinkers (pg 16, 67, 109, 34 -- they're dinosaur masks, not clown masks!) featuring unrealistic posing, silly subjects and bad art but the faces for each character in the Dragonmarked houses chapter are a good addition, as are several other pieces (44, 70, 128, 154!, even 37 grew on me). I'm on the fence about the Attack-on-the-Deathstar style piece on page 86. But I suppose that anything that makes you think is a good addition.
Usage of Space: Good for a WotC product. They pack a lot in. The art may have something to do with the lack of white space. But that's hardly something to complain about.
Index: No, but not needed. Everything is alphabetical and the table of contents lists everything down to the individual spells and feats.
Introduction
Very solid chapter. The writing avoids the Five Kingdoms/Faiths of Eberron style long-form essay-of-things-you-already-know in favor of tightly focused paragraphs. Key concepts that haven't been properly explained (outside of the novels or oblique references in other books) like the Test of Siberys and the Edicts ofKorth (a sort of separation of Dragonmarked Houses and State) are properly introduced. A "traditional" house hierarchy is explained allowing each house entry (in the next chapter) to refer back "traditional structure" and note specific cultural differences instead of wasting space with repetition. The difference between Houses and Guilds is properly explained. Various 'versions' of the Favored in House feat are suggested (all have the same effect but add story details about why you can call on the house for favors).
Sidebars include information about The Twelve, the Draconic Prophesy, superiority of the magic items used by the guilds, and so forth. My favorite is the one that explains why items always cost the same thing (i.e. thePHB price) answer: the guilds set prices; and it even offers an alternative for buying from non-guild merchants.
Chapter One: The Houses (61 pages)
Each house gets a write up, some are better than others but all do a good job of outlining the house, it's origins and history, major power groups and the current political climate. The information-to-words-used ratio remains very high.
The guilds connected to each House are touched upon in a sidebar (favored classes and skills of members, etc). Personally I find that to be about the right level of detail. A few of the more important guilds get a few paragraphs but generally its short and sweet.
Each chapter has two character portraits, usually a house leader and a stated out NPC. As I indicated I think this is a strong point, while a few are weak as pieces of art, as a whole they're an excellent addition.
The stated NPCs seem good, though some of the story hooks are a bit hum-drum ( so-and-so-wants-to-hire-you-to-explore-the-lost-ruins). The NPCs are a bit powerful compared to he Eberron average but NPC classes are liberally used, limiting the impact.
The more successful House write ups (Cannith, Deneith, Tharashk) do a good job off creating story hooks (though none are specifically called out as such) while the weaker ones (Ghallanda, Jorasco, Kundarak*) function more as encyclopedia entries. The weaker ones are notably shorter though so it's hard to try to hold them to the same level.
*Kundarak actually wins some accolades though; see the PrC chapter below.
For example: The information on House Cannith (probably the House most dwelled on in the preexisting material) still managed to feel interesting as it delves into the underpinnings of inheritance of house ruler ship and internal perceptions of the three divisions of the house. Growing worship of the Traveler in Cannith South and Merrix's plans and likely repercussions would be appreciated by a DM focusing on warforged or House Cannith but are short enough not to irritate someone who doesn't want to include Cannith in their story.
Favored in House gets a strong clarification of what it can do in the form of a house specific table with different DCs for different favors. Including some relatively pedestrian things (lending you a small amount of money at an exorbitant rate) to cooler stuff like letting you borrow troops, get free healing and so forth. The different houses charts do true offersignificant differences. This reflects a lot of work on the authors/editors and is very much to be commended.
Chapter Two: PrCs (40 pages)
Its hard to judge this chapter fairly. I'm neutral on the inclusion of PrCs in general and appreciate the fact that each house gets one. While a few are just total wastes of space (Nosomatic Healer) the authors have struggled and managed to produce something semi-interesting if ultra-specific classes.
Aside: Dragonmarks and Spellcasting
On the other hand the 'dragonmarked-system' has a serious issue (mentioned above but anyway): the spell like abilities granted by the feats and existing PrCs are unattractive on both an absolute and relative basis. (Absolute in the sense that they're generally not useful in normal play and relative in that you have much better choices for your feats). Its particularly bad for spellcasters who can generally get access to the same spells simply by advancing in their class.
You would expect some PrC to deal with this by allowing Dragonmarked to expend their powers-per-day to enhance their spells (increase caster level,use ametamagic feat 'for free', recover a spell) or provide abilities that casters don't get or would find attractive. Since the Dragonmarked Houses have a unified magical college (the Twelve) you would think that they'd have developed something like this. Arguably this sort of thing should have been built into the Dragonmarked Heir class, or appeared already in Magic of Eberron or the Players Guide. But it didn't and questions about it's lack were generally met with "look out for the Dragonmarked Book".
Unfortunately we have nada. zero. zip.
If you want to play a dragonmarked spellcaster you must have to be a member of one of two houses (one for divine and one for arcane), and must be extremely specialized (in one case laughably so).
Aside: Proliferating and divergent systems
The ECS originally presented Dragonmarks and they've been the plutonium 210 of Eberron ever since (i.e. no-one ever wants to touch them; even books that you would think would address them have desperately found something, anything else, not dragonmark related to address instead).
The advantage (?) of this is that you only really have the ECS system to look at. In which you take feats to receive an assortment utility spells, or take levels in the Dragonmarked Heir class to get the feats for free. Leaving aside the actual value of Dragonmarks themselves the system was tight, the Dragonmarked Heir and the feats took up a couple of pages all told. It was simple and concise.
Now there are going to be 12 (!) dragonmark related PrCs. You’d think they would roll out some sort of system for gaining access to Dragonmarks right? Maybe one based on the existing PrC… So that each class didn’t have a distinct, incompatible and confusing method for acquiring and using Dragonmarks.
You’d think that wouldn’t you?
You’d be wrong.
Leaving aside the wretched quality of some of the PrCs (addressed in more detail below) it’s difficult to imagine a more complex and counter intuitive system for dragonmark acquisition than comes out of this chapter.
Some PrCs require Dragonmarks (Deneith Sentinel) for entry but don’t do anything at all with them, others (Silver Key) don’t require Dragonmarks but do improve them if you have them. None of them use the system provided by the Dragonmarked Heir class. They all have an ability, called Heir’s Mark, that specifically doesn’t combine with the existing class (that’s stupid enough that I’ve got it’s own paragraph below). The better constructed classes like Storm Sentinel or the Unbound Scroll hint (nay tease) you with the idea of a simple mechanical system for acquiring extra uses of your dragonmark and (please please) using them to actually do something useful. Which makes the other classes even more painful to read.
I would be more inclined to forgive the bad PrCs if they were part of their own overarching Dragonmarked system, but the classes are so obviously developed independently.
Jesse he-can-do-good-work-really-look-at-Hammer-and-Helm Decker is the sort of person I would expect to catch and fix this stuff (he’s listed as development editor). I can only imagine that the deadlines on this project must have been brutal to allow this sort of stuff through. Really amazing
Aside: These just didn't need to be PrCs!!
In several cases a good story idea was needlessly expanded into a long form PrC, to the detriment of the book and the idea. The Black Dog (House of Ghallanda PrC) is a good example; an excellentroleplaying hook/idea that was butchered by being expanded into a 4 page PrC. The core concept: that there was once a famous Ghallanda innkeeper who used his position to poison lots of bad people and was eventually killed by the house. This is great! The idea of ahalflings within the house being inspired to stop bad people who stop at their inns is extremely cool*. The concept definitely deserves a sidebar (explaining how they get access to the Assassin PrC without having to kill someone or join an assassin's guild) and a feat or two, or a level of rogue substitution class (forhalflings natch) even, would be a brilliant addition to the game.
*=Assume you work in an Inn and Darth Vader comes in for lunch? Wouldn't you want to do something about it?
Instead we get a PrC that is basically a weaker version of the Assassin (poison use, death attack) and has a few minor poisoning related abilities. The description is almost a joke, they're hunted and hidden by their own House and it specifically states that they usually refuse to reveal themselves even to each other for fear that they'll be tracked down by the house. How did they become a PrC? If they avoid revealing themselves to other people they know are black dogs how is a non-black-dog-character ever going to get training from them (a requirement for entering the PrC)?
No where am I convinced that we need a five level PrC for Killer Innkeepers in a setting where most everyone is never higher than 1st level?
It -is- a cute story hook, but it's silly, ultra specialized and useless. Personally if I were going to run a killer innkeeper plot-line in my game I would just have a 1st level expert as the villain. Much more interesting. The one new class feature that seems broadly useful (the ability to hide in a crowd of larger creatures) seems like it would be much more useful as a feat or a feature of a substitution class than locked away in a PrC. It's hardly so unbalancing as to limit to a specific PrC.
In the previous chapter I mentioned that the Kundarak chapter did something good: they have their own group of sneaky assassins. Instead of making a "dwarf assassin PrC" they just made a special feat for their particular group (they're good at throwing handfuls of small missiles; their house symbol isManticore you see). The dwarf PrC for Kundarak is a mechanically silly kitchen-sink-grab-bag-of-random-class-features but at least it and the organization it represents could both logically exist in Eberron and be the sort of thing you would use in a game.
As a general trend the Houses that already have things going for them (i.e. relatively good spell-like abilities and cool themes) get the cooler PrCs while the less attractive Houses have PrCs that bite (sorry for the terminology, more specific details are below).
PrC Overview
Cannith -- Cyre Scout -- A ranger/artificer hybrid that specializes in exploring the Mournland. Wins some points for giving someone with the generally totally useless Mark of Making. Don't we have enough classes that explore Cyre though? We already have someone who wants to the Cyre Avenger. Mournland is cool but how many thematically similar PrCs do we need? And there is no reason why the mark of Making is the only mark that can allow someone to resist the effects of the Mournland. The PrC should either have been open to allCyrians (redeeming some of the houses with lamer marks) or actually related to making stuff. The mini-artificer-infusion list just made me cringe. Weren't these sorts of spell lists officially banned?
Deneith -- Deneith Warden -- A sort of "good" cop "bring 'em in alive" type. Get some social bonuses, focus on doing non-lethal damage and stunning people. Loses points for having no connection to the Deneith spell-like abilities (and yet requiring that you have the dragonmark anyway).
Ghallanda -- See above. A halfling dinoriding caravan guard for the Wandering Inn would have, at least, been interesting/payable/made some sort of sense.
Jorasco -- Nosomatic Chirurgeon -- It's not a secret that DnD has a healing problem, every party needs a cleric (or the equivalent), but it's a thankless job. So the Nosowhatever Surgeon is particularly galling. They're evil-Jorasco healers who grow and manipulate diseases? Why? The book suggests they're "mad". Far be it for the author to bother to come up with an explanation for this waste of space. This is another example of "would be a good sidebar; maybe with a feat if you had space".
Kundarak -- Silver Key -- Don't require you to be dragonmarked. Honestly I don't love the grab-bag of mechanics or the dwarf requirement but it's a reasonable PrC concept even if executed poorly.
Lyrander -- Storm Sentry -- Fighter (Best BAB, 10d hp, 4 skill points) with neat but balanced magical abilities. Arguably this is exactly the sort of PrC the book should have had. The powers work on theme, it's tied strongly in with a dragonmark power (rewarding an otherwise unattractive character choice) and the abilities do something without being unbalanced. As you rise in levels your gust of windSLA gets better and you can use it to do other things ([featherfall , short-term shield, etc). Someone could take this 5 level class to emphasis their dragonmarked heritage without the rest of their party groaning.
Medani -- Medani Prophet -- Winner of the most-specific award (and the competition was fierce). Are you a human member of a specific Dragonmarked House? Do you have two specific powers each requiring a feat to get? Are you a divine caster who can cast more than 3 2nd level divination spells? Guess what.... you're still not good enough! You have to worship a specific god too. In Eberron where gods are supposed to be fairlyde -emphasized. Medani has traditionally been an under-emphasized house, the idea of a Mark of Detection is cool but in practice it conflicts with the mark of Finding and of Sentry. A PrCgranting some sort of prognosticative powers would have been a cool way to differentiate a bit. Instead you'd have to build a character from scratch (and carefully) to hit it at all.... Granting more powerful divination abilities in a full casting progression PrC is great....Except that by the time you're finished with all the class requirements you can already cast all divination spells from your class list anyway. The most interesting power DM-generated visions (that provide no mechanical advantage and inhibit you if they hit when you're in combat) are the opposite of useful-PC-ability. Why not stick in a feat with a decent secondary ability and make it a feat instead of locking it away in an unattractive and severely limited PrC?
--> I'm honestly confused by how WotC considers balance issues. I realize that some of these spells (augury, divination) are reasonably powerful (i.e. mid-level spells). But they're primarily for advancement-of-plot. What would be the crime of allowing Medani dragonmarked who has sunk several feats into their dragonmark into a PrC that allows access to these sorts of powers? The DM picks the answers anyway! Its a free way to push the characters along a plot or toward a neat story.
Orien -- Blade of Orien -- Another example of a dragonmarked house with decent spell-like abilities getting a good PrC. It's around fighter-level strength (Bab Primary, d8 hp, good ref saves, 4 skill points) and requires two powers dimension leap and dimension door. These are probably the two best of all of the spell-like powers available through dragon marks though so it's not much of a loss. Especially after to start to advance in the PrC: you're teleporting gets better allowing you to affect enemies, allies and otherwise improve (full attacks after dim dooring at 10th level). Like the Storm Sentry it's good and flavorful.
--> So it's Ok for a fighter to improve his dimension door power, but bad for Medani to get divination? I won't repeat myself but it's fairly obvious that this chapter wasn't thought through.
Phiarlan/Thuranni -- Shadow Hunter -- Better than most of the PrCs; but with the same stupid we-don't-want-you-to-play-this-class entry requirements of the Medani Prophet. Other than that it works like you would expect (improves darkness related dragonmarks) and makes good use of the dragonmark power you're required to have to enter. They have an obnoxious "martial weapons" requirement (because the Bab+4 wasn't enough of a deterrent for a rogue?) in exchange for Best BAB, x6 skills, d8 hit points and some decent, if unspectacular, improvements to the darkness power. Given that the the Houses of Shadow are elves the only way in is through single class Ranger, or Fighter/Rogue (though a Fighter 5 could get in with a lot of cross class skills). Since the powers aren't particularly powerful, mostly allowing you to spend extra uses of your dragonmarked powers to improve or see through your darkness, I'm confused about the high requirements. Is the goal to punish a player who plays a stereotypical House of Shadow rogue by creating a class that they would like to enter but aren't allowed to?
I don't see anybody naturally being able to meet this class requirements without being a ranger.
Sivis -- Unbound Scroll -- 5 levels (4 caster levels), you get to make scrolls more cheaply and can use them to better effect. This class should have been a prototype for some sort of general DragonmarkedArcanist . You get more uses of the Arcane Mark power (incredibly lame... but) you can also use those spell-like abilities to do other useful/things (mostly improving scrolls caster levels or addingmetamagic feats). Take a passel of weak/unpopular mechanics (i.e. dragonmarks, scrolls and metamagic ) mix in a theme (Scribing) and create something new and playable. Nobody is going to run out to play one but, combined with the neat picture of a gnomish adventurer chick (pg 128), it's a solid entry.
Tharashk -- Duraak'ash -- Other than the stupid name the class is one of the few solid entries. Tharashk has decent spell-like abilities (identify[/]i, locate object), and this one focuses in on locate creature from the Lesser Mark like a laser. You get sorts of advantages tracking a target of locate creature. (including the very flavorful one that lets you use locate creature on someone you haven't met provided you have something like their blood or a piece of fingernail). Another example of 'good houses get good PrCs'.
Vadalis -- Vadalis Beastkeeper --
The-mini-spell-list, a concept I generally abhor, does fulfill a function here, namely adding Summon Nature's Ally spells to the ranger list, so that you can use the Summon Magebred animal ability provided. Since people have been asking about summoning magebred creatures and getting magebred companions for a while this class seems to be a (to-be-commended) case of giving people what they want. Personally I would have prefered something that added a caster level progression and the summon nature's ally spell to a casters list if they didn't have it. Personally the Vadalis tampering-with-nature has always struck me as having and arcane component; with a slow caster level progression you could have easily produced a balanced but interesting PrC that could be approached from druid, arcanist or ranger roots. But this class is definitely on the better side.
The take away is that if you want to play a cool House (Orien, Lyrandar) you're in luck. A few of the One of the 2nd tier Houses got some specific-but-welcome love (Tharashk)； with a nice surprise for Sivis arcanist and Valadis ranger players. The rest of the Houses got either interesting-PrCs-with-dumb-entry-requirements (Houses of Shadow, Medani) or pages-better-left-blank.
As I indicated originally, this is a problem with something-for-each-house scheme. And it was almost certainly exacerbated by thesiloed nature of WotC production. Each WotC writer gets assigned a house, they dash off one PrC in by the deadline and it's stuck in the book. I'm sure that people like Jesse Decker could probably have done more in another context but the will/time/budget wasn't really here.
Heir's Mark
I should probably mention the Heir's Mark class feature. All the PrC (even the ones that don't require you to be marked like the Silver Key) have it. Basically it raises your caster level for your dragonmarks (the feat description actually explains how this works). Except that Heir's Mark doesn't stack with Dragonmarked Heir, or ever increase the bonus past 5 caster levels.
Now the caster level of most spell-like abilities from dragon marked heir isn't particularly impressive. Most of the spells themselves are low level (and thus have a low absolute limit on their benefits from caster level) and aren't useful in combat anyway. Assuming that someone has taken more than five levels of Dragonmarked Heir or a class with Heir's mark -why- is it so unbalancing? Do we really need a rule with two exceptions to prevent the massive game abuse from a 15th level caster (with 3 feats and 6 levels of a PrC) casting sending as a 16th level caster? (I know those extra words in the message are going to destroy the balance of my game....)
Dragonmarks suck badly enough. And DnD is sufficiently complex. Totally baffling.
(I suppose I should point out that Aberrant marks can actually take powers that do damage in combat. But these PrCs aren't available to them anyway....)
Chapter Three: Feats
So the PrCs failed to fix the problems of the dragonmarked-system (as presented in the books up to now) do the feats do anything to resolve it?
Actually the answer is Yes.
It's not enough to actually encourage Dragonmarked characters to exist, but if you're hellbent on playing a dragonmarked character; almost any character-type has a chance to gain some absolute advantage (i.e. have their dragonmarked status actually do something in the game) through a feat.
This chapter presents 50ish feats in total. The themes of dragonmarks vs. dragonmarks and dragonmarks vs. dragons make their strongest appearance here (you get to see a few dragonmarks-give-force-effects too). All 12 houses get something and there are -finally- some generally useful feats that any dragonmarked character could take.
Generally there are a few sorts of feats
*the aforementioned vs feats.... you qualify and you get to do extra damage vs. people who have a different dragonmark than you, or against dragons. I like Shield of Siberys (you can detect people with Aberrant Marks)
*generally useful dragonmark feats: the best of the lot; the power of your mark sets the relative power level
-- Dragonmark Spellturning (spend action point to turn one spell)
-- Dragonmark Summoner (summoned creatures get deflection bonus to AC)
-- Mark of Deflection (+x as a deflection bonus to AC)
-- Mark of the Recovery (auto heal when dropping below zero hit points)
-- Mark of Resilience (+x on a single save; think it's powered by action points)
-- Mark of the Twelve Moons (+1 on your choice of one of two ability scores based on your house)
-- Protective Mark (get DR 5/magic or DR 10 for a short time with action point)
* Aberrant Marks (Lesser, Greater): pretty good and open up options to have other, better feats; most of the feats are anti-true dragonmark but a few provide other benefits like DR 5. Nothing awesome but you can at least have an Aberrant mark do something other than chill touch now. Probably not as good as feats from Lords of Madness but could be fun.
* for a druid type (each sort of Eberron druid gets an advantage); generally meh but you have to appreciate the effort
* for most of the weird Complete classes: warlock,
* The House specific marks. Follow the same general rule... if the House is great then you get a neat power (Umbral Mark for Shadow Houses, Sentinel Shadow for Deneith, Storm's Riposte for Lyrandar, Orien Battle Stride). And they're actually about as good as the House: So Orien's power is actually awesome, Lyrandar's is quite powerful, Deneith is neat if a bit limited and so on.
* More powers: There are another three feats that let you get spells from the spell compendium as spell-like abilities. Like always the power level depends totally on the power of the house. After four feats a Kundarak is still getting powers like 'Hide the Path' (why? who knows?) while someone from Orien could have swift fly at a much earlier level with less feats.
The big winners actually are people with marks of Siberys. Since you can't get one until the mid-teens and it takes a two level dip in a PrC they're quite powerful. Of course at that point you're running low on feats but it's nice to see a bit of love.
I should point out that at least one feat (quicken dragonmark) is a reprint from Magic of Eberron. Which is actually fairly obnoxious since it was the only feat related to dragonmarks in the entire Magic of Eberron* book.
*The subheading of which could have been: Where rejected Psionics ideas go to die.
Anyway, the feats save the book from being a complete waste on a mechanical level.
While they don't address the fundamental issues with the system (the relative attractiveness of dragonmarks) they do (with a large investment) at least give you some kind of absolute payoff. If you put enough feats in your character will get -some- benefit. And a properly constructed character (probably only Orien or Lyrandar) could stand up to a regular character.
Chapter Four: Magic and Dragonmarks
Magic chapters are hard to evaluate. An individual spell can make a whole chapter worthwhile while one irritating or poorly done spell or item can also loom larger than it probably should.
As a whole this chapter is short and except for one gem (a spell) is basically what you would expect. It gets points for developing a lot of spells that would logically exist in the world but doesn't really do anything to encourage anyone to play a Dragonmarked character. Personally I think that the magic items were a massive, wasted opportunity.
Spells
The core conceit of the spells in this book is you must be Dragonmarked to cast them. It's considered a necessary component to cast every spell presented. Since a lot of the spells involve suppressing dragonmarks or harming dragonmarked characters it gives the most of the spells presented a dragonmarked vs. dragonmarked feel.
Magic of Eberron had something similar where some spells had a 'special' line giving an extra bit of effect (usually +1 caster level or improved duration) if cast by a member of a certain house. Given that there is already one mechanic floating around out there I'm not sure that we need to have another sort.
Furthermore few of the general use spells look particularly interesting. Most read like a rejected-from-the-spell-compendium list. You have a weaker version of shield that can be quickly cast (Dragonmark Shield), the ability to blast creatures in an area around you with force (Marked Pulse), and block a ray and zap someone with blast of force (Ray of Retaliation).
The best spell by far is Summon Living Dragonmark. The evocative picture (pg 154) helps. The dragonmark is an ooze and it's attacks are treated as force attacks. But there's only one version of the spell (3rd level) so it's more of a mid-level novelty than anything else.
The spells don't really make up for being only available to dragonmarked casters. Though I like the variety of anti-dragonmarked character spells it seems more like they would be useful as a way for a DM to incapacitate dragonmarkedNPCs and allow the non-marked PCs to save them than anything else.
Magic Items
This was an area for the book to shine. Magic items using dragon shards that only are available to Dragonmarked characters are a core part of the world.
This chapter has three. They're all fairly normal (two allow members of the House of Shadow to scry). You wonder why they bothered.
I can think of better items in about two seconds: a cheaper cloak of displacement whose level of concealment depends upon your level of shadow mark, boots of speed that grant extra if you've got the Mark of Passage, armor enchantment that grants someone with a Mark of Warding some extra minor benefit (spend use of Mark of Warding to avoidcrit...), etc. etc.
Aberrant Marks
Finally there is a short section with story information on Aberrant marks. Personally I wouldn't put it in the back of the book, but it provides solid information on the Aberrant marks (including a lot of stuff that had only been touched upon inKB's novels and the Sharn book).
Summary
This book is probably the only book you'll see ever about the Dragonmarked. Since it's unlikely to raise the attractiveness of Dragonmarked characters and Eberron books in general avoid the topic like the plague, to the point of often shoehorning in random unrelated filler (psionic artificers inMoE; Manifest Spellcasting in Players Guide), instead of addressing the houses, there is unlikely to be any more material soon.
And I have to admit that I'm perversely happy that the fluff is good. Another mechanics-focused book with weak, contradictory fluff (see Magic of Eberron, Player's Guide) would have been worse.
So if you're an Eberron fan, and you like and want to use the Dragonmarked in your game then this book is a great addition. If you play in Eberron there is some neat story goodness to be pulled out of the book. If you're looking for mechanics (and you haven't imported the dragonmarked system to your own world) it's probably a pass.
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