Feats to make Dragon Shaman Better

[Arabesu]

I have noticed, that the Dragon shaman's breath weapon seems a little weak relative to most everything else at the correspoding level. Is there a way to boost this with feats?

I am told that there is a feat that can allow them to use it every round rather than 1d4, but I was hoping for a feat tree that increases the damage. Maybe one that either increases the number of dice, or increases the die type...

I say this because I know that warlocks and incarnum magic can do way more damagae every round all day long and I was hoping that this could be brought up to be more equivelent.

 

[blargney the second]

There is a magic item in the appropriate compendium called the Dragon Spirit Cincture that increases the damage by one die and possibly the DC by 1. There are also metabreath feats in Draconomicon that you'll want to look into.

 

[Kurotowa]

If you want a real equivalent, then you want the Dragonfire Adept from Dragon Magic. They're a lot more akin to a Warlock and have a breath weapon they can use at will, as well as ways to modify and improve their breath weapon. The Dragon Shaman's breath weapon is a lesser support feature, not a main class foundation. It comes in third behind the auras and healing.

 

[Darklone]

Yupp, but you can use most breath weapon feats with the dragon shaman breath, not with the dragonfire adept breath weapon.

 

[Kurotowa]

Yupp, but you can use most breath weapon feats with the dragon shaman breath, not with the dragonfire adept breath weapon.

True, and it's not a very feat hungry class. But the Adept has two ways to be able to blast without hurting other party members and the Shaman has none. So if blasting is what you want, the Adept wins hands down. I'm not saying the Shaman's breath isn't useful. It is. But the Shaman is a support class and its breath weapon is a secondary feature. Since the OP was talking about Warlock and Incarnate level blasting, the Adept requires mention.

 

[evilbob]

I'm saying the dragon shaman's breath weapon isn't useful.

Seriously: if you want to improve the shaman's breath to the point that it is a powerful offensive ability, you will spend every feat you have on it. And you'll still be disappointed when the fighters and the wizards show you up. Your best bet is to try to improve the shaman in other ways.

 

[johncolossus]

I personally would say though that the metabreath effects can apply to dragonfire adepts breath (unless sage has said otherwise) as the emphasis of use is on the word rounds in the prerequisite paragraph. I know you are emphasising the "s" at the end ie dragon shamen once /1d4 rounds versus dragonfire adept once / 1 round. However, i think what they are trying to say is breath weapon usage defined by the term round as opposed not by minutes/hours/days etc. Therefore, under this the dragonfire adept can use metabreath effects as its breath weapon frequency is defined in terms of rounds, just happens to be 1 round. If this is not the case then is does not make sense that a dragonfire adept cannot use the metamagic equivalent for breath weapons when they are the breath weapon class specialist.

 

[Darklone]

The problem with the dragonfire adept: Look at feats like Clinging Breath (or similar) or others... they are just broken with a breath 1/round.

 

[MarkB]

The best breath weapon enhancement feat I found was Entangling Exhalation, from (I think) Races of the Dragon. It halves your breath damage, but entangles everyone you damage for 1d4 rounds and deals a little extra damage to them each round. Very nice for crowd control, and if you have your Resistance aura active you can fire it into a mixed group with very little chance of affecting your allies.

The trouble is, you need to be a Draconic creature to use it, which means either playing a draconic race such as a kobold (which, as it happened, I was) or spending your 1st-level feat on becoming draconic.

 

[szilard]

If you can get your foes in a line, then you can have an effect on them all. It won't increase your damage output on any given target, but it will increase your damage output dramatically.

So... how do you get your foes lined up conveniently?

- personal mobility... if you can move around quickly, you can seize opportunities where they come.
- cooperate with spellcasters... Wall of X spells, illusions, and area denial spells are useful for this.
- metabreath feats... are there any that function as area denial?

There are probably other ways to do it, too...

-Stuart