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View Full Version : Some overall help with 3.5 bard and dragon shaman.



Nick_mi
2010-09-07, 02:02 AM
Ok, so I am DMing for my second time ever tommorrow, and my players are reaaaaaaaally bad. I would like to help them and guide them( and they want me too as well) but basically I have this party.

The dragon shaman is dragontouched, and I allowed him to take dragon wings as a feat at level 1 with the intention of improved dragon flight at level 6(If this isn't do-able, I house-ruled it. He is going to try to max out his breath with feats, and he is going to take 1 level in barbarian because he wants to be a primal dragon shaman, and wants to be able to rage and move fast. He also wants proficiancy in martial weapons, as well as a hopeful 12 hp roll. He is hoping to find a prestige class that will let him continue to beef up his breath attack and ideally his dragon aura, so he was hoping for a long shot on that.

The bard actually went level 1 rogue with the intention of going bard, and getting able-learner to gain access to all skills, and he is intending on being a skill monkey while singing his ass off. He has never played bard before, I have no idea how to run one, and honestly, this is going to be a learning experiance, but he's rocking an 18 int and an 18 cha, so here's hoping? He kind of wants to be a ranged guy be it spells or bows.

So basically looking for
-sweet ideas
-PrC
-overall thoughts

Nick_mi
2010-09-07, 10:21 AM
bumpadumpa

Greenish
2010-09-07, 10:30 AM
Retcon the Dragon Shaman into Dragonfire Adept (Dragon Magic). Breath weapon every round, invocations (including one for wings at 6th level), can pick up auras with feats.

Rogue doesn't actually have all skills as class skills, though the selection is impressive. A logic path for him would be rogue 1 (since he already has that)/bard 9/Sublime Chord2/then that one PrCs that progressed bardic music and spells along with healthy amounts of skillpoints. Bard handbook (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19870498/The_Bards_Handbook) for further reference.

Draz74
2010-09-07, 10:48 AM
The primal dragon guy should possibly be a Dragonborn (template, Races of the Dragon) rather than a Dragontouched. That way he can get wings or draconic senses without spending so many feats.


Dragonfire Adept (Dragon Magic).

Also available online (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20060912a&page=2), if you don't have the book.

Nick_mi
2010-09-07, 10:53 AM
the campaign is started so no switching races+ they like what they have they just want to make it better down the future.

The rogue took abled-learner as a feat and so he has access to all skills.

Private-Prinny
2010-09-07, 10:56 AM
the campaign is started so no switching races

Here's the fun part: Dragonborn is actually a template. You get into a giant egg and pop out as a dragon the next day. The book even goes through a small section detailing the mechanics of the change.

Greenish
2010-09-07, 10:57 AM
The rogue took abled-learner as a feat and so he has access to all skills.Able Learner doesn't work like that. It just reduces the skillpoint cost of cross class skills to 1, but the cap is still lower for them.

Nick_mi
2010-09-07, 10:58 AM
So what's the cap then? A normal class skill is capped at level+3 right?

Greenish
2010-09-07, 11:04 AM
So what's the cap then? A normal class skill is capped at level+3 right?Yes, and cross class skills are capped at half of that.

[Edit]: Though the difference between all skills and "just" those on rogue/bard's list is largely academic. :smallamused:

Draz74
2010-09-07, 01:11 PM
[Edit]: Though the difference between all skills and "just" those on rogue/bard's list is largely academic. :smallamused:

Yeah ... I think Rogue/Bard has all of the skills from the Player's Handbook except Survival and Ride. It's also missing most of the non-PHB skills: Autohypnosis, Psicraft, Use Psionic Device, Martial Lore, Truespeak, Iaijutsu Focus.

InkEyes
2010-09-07, 02:05 PM
The rogue took abled-learner as a feat and so he has access to all skills.

He means that the skill lists of the bard and rouge classes don't have every skill on them. Between the two, they probably have all the useful ones, but the only class that has access to every skill in the game is the Factotum.

If you ever let rebuilds happen, you could do something similar with a bard by using the Bardic Knack variant from the PHB II, replacing Bardic Knowledge. Knack allows a bard to use their class level for skill checks in any skill that allows untrained checks. Take Jack of All Trades as a feat and you're treated as having a 1/2 rank (being trained) in every skill. Bam, Factotum-lite.

The big thing with bard builds is prestige classing and the big prestige class to take in almost any bard build is Sublime Chord. Its big selling point is its expanded spell list with a faster progression, netting 9th level spells. If your bard wants to be a ranged caster, it's a good route to go.

Dragon Shamans overall are a dull class. A friend of mine made one as his first character and ended up intentionally killing it so he could play a more interesting Swordsage gish. I suppose he could take a 1-level dip in Martial for a couple more auras to boost the party, but since he's already going Barbarian that might spread him too thin. Finding a fix for the class would be ideal, this (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=3452.0) one looks pretty fun.

Nick_mi
2010-09-07, 11:43 PM
Well, the bard is terrible atm. He has no feats for his crossbow, and he's using a dagger, so after our first session he really didn't do much. He has a 10 str, and at one point he critical-ed for 6 damage lol

The dragon shaman is loving the fact that he's a dragon, though he's so obessed with "jumping in the air, and gliding away" and I can't seem to get it through his thick head he only glides 20 feet a round when they can all run at 120 feet a round, other then that, he has now got his one level of barb, and he won't be touching barb again. He rolled a 11 HP dice, so now he's up to 29 hp at level 2 :smalleek:

InkEyes
2010-09-08, 12:26 AM
Crossbows are bad weapons anyway; give him a few wands to use instead. Unless he doesn't have any ranks in use magic device... I guess as long as he's having fun his usefulness in combat doesn't matter much.

Also, a one level dip in Barbarian? That's certainly an... interesting choice. Has he considered going Totemist instead? They don't get rage, but they get a ton of natural attacks and different types of rapid movement, like teleportation and things that could boost his fly speed. I also had a revelation recently; a Crusader is probably another great route with the Dragon Shaman. They've got good hitdice, abilities that buff and heal allies, martial weapon proficiency, and they hit things hard.

Nick_mi
2010-09-08, 12:59 AM
Staying away from tome of battle because they're noobs, I don't have the book, and they don't care enough to look it up themselves and learn. Sell me more on this totemist though

Also, I'm thinking of making legacy weapons for each of my characters, but I haven't read enough into it.

Party is the above 2+ a monk who plans on going into tatooed monk.

InkEyes
2010-09-08, 11:17 AM
If your party isn't interested in learning ToB rules, they might not go for an Incarnum class either. Incarnum is notoriously confusing at first, but that's because the book writers start dropping words like "chakra" and "soulmeld" before they bother explaining what those are. The system as a whole is very easy once you get over the terminology and 2/3 of the classes are well-balanced and fun to play.

Here's a quick and dirty explaination of Incarnum magic:
The basics of Meldshapers (spellcasters that use Incarnum, like the Totemist) is they craft magic item out of life force instead of preparing spells every day. These are "soulmelds"; these soulmelds fit over the standard body slots of magic items (head, face, throat, shoulders, torso, hands, feet, etc.). These body slots are referred to as "chakra." Soulmelds can share a body slot (chakra) with a magic item, but as you level you learn to "bind" soulmelds to different chakra and that ends up taking up the body slot if you choose to bind it. Unbound soulmelds have a basic effect such as a small boost to skill checks, a feat, or an ability like darkvision or detect magic within 10 feet; bound soulmelds give you huge benefits on top of that since they're taking up a magic item slot.

For instance, if a Totemist makes a soulmeld of Girallion Arms but doesn't bind it he gets +2 to climb checks; if he binds it to his arms he gains two claw attacks, but as a Totemist he gains a special, free-floating chakra to bind things to. If he binds Girallion Arms to that totem chakra, he gains four extra arms that can all attack.

Incarnum also has something called "Essentia" which function just like psionic power points. You invest these power points into the soulmelds; the effect scales depending on how many essentia points you put in.

The Totemist is a very interesting class to play because of the strange way it fights. The gimmick of the Totemist is that he gains multiple claw, slam, and bite attacks from the chakra he binds to himself. Barbarian is a common dip for the Totemist because raging on top of all the natural attacks is always fun, plus, a Barbarian with pounce means you can use all your natural attacks on a charge. There's lots of dice rolling and I know some players really enjoy that.

I had a player roll up a Totemist with 11 natural attacks, in total. Almost any enemy that she pounced would be dead in a turn or two as long as she hit a few times. She had a lot of fun playing the character, though managing that many natural attacks slowed down combat a bit when her turn came.


Now, legacy weapons... that's a sticky issue. I've seen Weapons of Legacy pop up here many times, but it's always in a thread where someone asks "what are the worst books in 3.5 D&D?" Legacy weapons are a lot weaker than any weapon you can buy with your WBL, and in the end you're dumping blood and money in a magic sword that will always be outmatched by magic swords you pick out of monster bodies. Still, your party is having fun messing around and don't care about power-levels, so they might not notice. If they ever do crunch the numbers they could be a bit angry with you for not saying it's a bad choice, or they'll never find out and just become frustrated/bored with combat because they suck and don't understand why, or they won't care and have fun with the cool fluff of the weapons. If you're running on a lower-wealth system, are willing to read and revise large portions of the legacy mechanics, or you don't care, go for it.

DragoonWraith
2010-09-08, 11:50 AM
The concept of legendary weapons that attune to the warrior is good. The rules in Weapons of Legacy are awful. Basically, using them makes your character permanently worse. In theory, this is offset by the fact that you're getting a better-than-normal weapon (in reality, they're often not). But the issue here is that if you have the weapon, you're better than you should be (have to be, to offset the risk of losing it). If you lose the weapon, you're weaker than you should be - in some cases massively so.

This puts the DM in an awkward position. If one person has a Legacy Weapon, they're stronger than they should be, which can lead to intra-party strife. More importantly, if they lose the weapon (you sunder it or steal it or whatever), they're hurt bad, and you might as well have killed their character. A lot of people would see that as a huge jerk move on the DM's part. Which then means the DM either has to leave the weapon alone (giving extra benefits for a risk that won't come into play), or take it away and leave the player feeling singled out and nerfed. This is a terrible position for a DM to be in; rather damned if you do, damned if you don't. The rules should never lead to that position.

So don't use Weapons of Legacy. The rules for the Ancestral Relic feat in Book of Exalted Deeds, loathe as I am to say there's anything good in BoED, would be a much better starting point for handling this kind of idea, IMO.

Person_Man
2010-09-08, 12:03 PM
Sounds like they're making horrible build choices for the sake of fluff. Have you considered allowing them to play Gestalt? Rogue X//Bard X and Dragon Shaman X//Barbarian X would be really weak builds, but they'd be a lot less weak then the garbage they're playing with.

Nick_mi
2010-09-08, 12:19 PM
They are not the players who like to research and find good builds. They are extremely naive. I mean, my dragon shaman thinks that dragon shaman is the most awesome thing in the world, because with his wings if he rolls a 20 he can jump 8 feet in the air =/

Also yeah, nvm on the totemist, anything that requires them to learn something new(Such as ToB) is kinda out of the question because they just won't put the effort in to learn it or gather the books.

Also, I kinda glanced over legacy weapons, it just seemed like you get a weapon that levels up with you. I wouldn't mind giving one of my players one of those. Anyone have an easy link to somewhere someone has put some effort in and reworked it?