3.5 Cannith Wand Adept PrC is human only?

[McSmack]

The feat requirements for CWA include either Favored in House or Least Dragonmark (Mark of Making).

To have the Mark of Making you'd have to be human. And to get Favored in House you have to meet the House/race requirement.

Technically someone could argue for getting in if you were say a half-elf or a half-orc.

Typically when a PrC has a race requirement they list it right up front.

Kinda bummed about it. I'm making a Warforged blastificer and CWA fit the character concept perfectly.

[GoatBoy]

I don't know about anyone else, but if a player managed to do some incredible service for a particular house, or was involved in some other extraordinary circumstance, I'd be fine with them taking the Favored in House feat despite not being of the appropriate race. It's definitely a "check with DM" scenario, but mechanically, there's no reason to forbid it.

[Arcanist]

By RAW it's not possible for a Warforged to become a Wand Adept, because they can't have a Dragonmark and can't get the favored in the house feat, because

1) They're not born and therefore can't be born with a Dragonmark
2) House Cannith is incredibly racist and only likes Human members

[HunterOfJello]

House Cannith freakin creates warforged. I don't see why someone couldn't be favored in house if they were a particularly impressive and strange specimen of warforgedom.

[Alienist]

Cannith Wand Adept is a pretty terrible class for an Artificer. Among other things, it won't advance your spell-casting.

Other things:
Dual Wand Wielder can be duplicated by Double Wand Wielder from Complete Arcane.

Or you could just use spells with a swift casting time in the second wand.

Wand Focus is kind of nice, it stacks with Wand Mastery.

Please note that by having Wand Mastery as a pre-requisite, nobody can get into the Cannith Wand Adept prestige class until 10th level at the earliest.

So. To recap.

By going CWA you're giving up (or severely delaying)

Caster level increases
1600 points of craft reserve (free xp!)
5th level Infusions, (including Fabricate, Slaying Arrow and Dominate Living Construct)
Metamagic Spell Completion (Minor Schemas!!!!!!!) (!!!!!!!)
Staff creation (and once you're in those levels Staves very quickly outpace Wands)
Free feat
Ability to take 10 on UMD


In return, at level 12 you get a freebie boost of +5 Caster level on your wands.

This can be useful for things like Flamestrike (4th level Druid Spell (max 15d6)), and Scorching Ray? You could make a caster-level 4 Wand of Magic Missiles, and get 5 projectiles out of it. You could slap some meta-magic on those missiles and do some damage it is true.

Alternately, you can put bigger and better spells into a Staff. Let's say you make a caster-level 8 Staff (the minimum). And your class level is 12 . Well, when you use a staff, it uses your caster level if that is higher than the one the staff was made with. So by taking CWA you gimp yourself for a +5 bonus when using wands, whereas if you don't go CWA you're getting +4 on everything else...

... not a good trade IMHO ...

especially when looking at Double Wand Wielder, I think I can pick it up at level 6, five levels earlier than CWA gets its (worse) equivalent.

[Alienist]

2) House Cannith is incredibly racist and only likes Human members

Which is totally unlike all the other houses which have exactly the same only one race restriction.

Oh, oh wait. Nevermind.

@OP - it is worth noting that in 4th ed they decided to do away with these restrictions on who or what can take particular dragonmarks. So yes, in 4th you can have a Warforged, Dragonborn or Eladrin with a dragonmark. They do say it is supposed to be rare though.

[Answerer]

@OP - it is worth noting that in 4th ed they decided to do away with these restrictions on who or what can take particular dragonmarks. So yes, in 4th you can have a Warforged, Dragonborn or Eladrin with a dragonmark. They do say it is supposed to be rare though.
That's really dumb, though. They should have just made non-Dragonmark options for such races that were equally potent/important. The racial nature of Dragonmarks was an important facet of Eberron, IMO. It was a mystery ("why only them?") and it was a source of significant tension within the setting.

Favored in House, though, that I don't think should have a racial restriction.

[123456789blaaa]

There was actually a reincarnation article on the wizards website wherein they say that (for example) if a human who had a cannith dragonmark got reincarnated as a orc he would keep the dragonmark (but wouldn't be able to pass it on to his children). So it is technically possible for a non-human to have a cannith dragonmark.

[McSmack]

Cannith Wand Adept is a pretty terrible class for an Artificer. Among other things, it won't advance your spell-casting.

Other things:
Dual Wand Wielder can be duplicated by Double Wand Wielder from Complete Arcane.

Or you could just use spells with a swift casting time in the second wand.

Wand Focus is kind of nice, it stacks with Wand Mastery.

Please note that by having Wand Mastery as a pre-requisite, nobody can get into the Cannith Wand Adept prestige class until 10th level at the earliest.

So. To recap.

By going CWA you're giving up (or severely delaying)

Caster level increases
1600 points of craft reserve (free xp!)
5th level Infusions, (including Fabricate, Slaying Arrow and Dominate Living Construct)
Metamagic Spell Completion (Minor Schemas!!!!!!!) (!!!!!!!)
Staff creation (and once you're in those levels Staves very quickly outpace Wands)
Free feat
Ability to take 10 on UMD


In return, at level 12 you get a freebie boost of +5 Caster level on your wands.

This can be useful for things like Flamestrike (4th level Druid Spell (max 15d6)), and Scorching Ray? You could make a caster-level 4 Wand of Magic Missiles, and get 5 projectiles out of it. You could slap some meta-magic on those missiles and do some damage it is true.

Alternately, you can put bigger and better spells into a Staff. Let's say you make a caster-level 8 Staff (the minimum). And your class level is 12 . Well, when you use a staff, it uses your caster level if that is higher than the one the staff was made with. So by taking CWA you gimp yourself for a +5 bonus when using wands, whereas if you don't go CWA you're getting +4 on everything else...

... not a good trade IMHO ...

especially when looking at Double Wand Wielder, I think I can pick it up at level 6, five levels earlier than CWA gets its (worse) equivalent.

Yeah I know. The campaign is probably going to cap out at about level 13-14 or so. Character concept is a warforged wandslinger (old west style). So stylistically it fits. It's not a high optimization campaign so I'm reigning things in and not taking my shenanigans to great levels. Also the DM is relatively new and I don't want to make his life any more difficult than it is, lol.

So I'm mostly just looking at CWA for the bonus CL/DC, hit, quick draw, etc as a relatively low powered capstone for the character - after 10 levels of artificer. I'm pretty sure by the time I get there I can RP/convince the DM to let me take Favored in House. In all the years I've played/DM'd Eberron I'd overlooked that FiH has a race requirement - it always seemed to me like it's purpose was to either give House members more influence or to allow non House members to have an "in" that they could use every once in a while.

[Arcanist]

Which is totally unlike all the other houses which have exactly the same only one race restriction.

Oh, oh wait. Nevermind.

Lol quite right, however House Cannith is the only one that is open about their racism. Openly opposing the freedom of the Warforged, Continuously viewing them as second class citizens despite gaining their freedom, hell some house members still use them as... Man(?) slaves regardless of the rules and if memory serves they still create Warforged despite their creation being outlawed by the state...

Despite all of this they are still my favorite House in Eberron being able to craft things that make dwarfs and gnomes envious... Good on ya House Cannith :smalltongue:

[Answerer]

I never got the impression that Cannith was particularly racist, at least compared to Eberron as a whole. The view that Warforged are living, sentient, independent beings deserving of the rights of citizenship is an extremely minority view; only Breland endorses it widely. Thrane and Karrnath don't even try to hide the fact that they still use Warforged and consider them property, the treaty be damned. The only reason that happened is because Breland was in the best position at the time of the treaty and everyone knew it, and Kaius was willing to do anything to end the war, even that (and Darguun and Talenta and Valenar). Between the two of them, there wasn't any way out of those provisions; Aundair would have been far more concerned about the enormous amounts of territory it was losing than it would have been about the status of Warforged, and Thrane wouldn't have been able to stand alone on the point.

[Alienist]

Lol quite right, however House Cannith is the only one that is open about their racism. Openly opposing the freedom of the Warforged, Continuously viewing them as second class citizens despite gaining their freedom, hell some house members still use them as... Man(?) slaves regardless of the rules and if memory serves they still create Warforged despite their creation being outlawed by the state...

Despite all of this they are still my favorite House in Eberron being able to craft things that make dwarfs and gnomes envious... Good on ya House Cannith :smalltongue:

The Bill Cosby quote is appropriate here:
I bought you into this world, I can take you out of this world, and I don't care because I can make another one that looks just like you

Russell Peters (I believe it is) tacks on:
... and then I will tell the next one how stupid the previous one was

[Alienist]

I never got the impression that Cannith was particularly racist, at least compared to Eberron as a whole. The view that Warforged are living, sentient, independent beings deserving of the rights of citizenship is an extremely minority view; only Breland endorses it widely. Thrane and Karrnath don't even try to hide the fact that they still use Warforged and consider them property, the treaty be damned. The only reason that happened is because Breland was in the best position at the time of the treaty and everyone knew it, and Kaius was willing to do anything to end the war, even that (and Darguun and Talenta and Valenar). Between the two of them, there wasn't any way out of those provisions; Aundair would have been far more concerned about the enormous amounts of territory it was losing than it would have been about the status of Warforged, and Thrane wouldn't have been able to stand alone on the point.

Well, it's not just that. The treaty solved a big problem, which was that House Cannith was selling Warforged soldiers to all sides of the conflict. And when two Warforged armies smash each other to smithereens then House Cannith is the only beneficiary, and their profits would be obscene.

The treaty is both a de-militarization and non-proliferation tool.

And... like all such treaties, there are people on every side who want to cheat just a little bit...

[ThiagoMartell]

So 4e managed to screw Eberron up as well? Isn't that cool?

[Dusk Eclipse]

I agree with Thiago, Dragonmarks are the physical manifestation of the Draconic Prophecy, their whole point is being completely exclusive to the core races, heck if you want a Dragonmark you can't be any subtpye, no Silverbrow Humans with mark of passage, no tallfellow halflings with mark of healing, no whisper gnomes with mark of scribing. It is a mystery why only those races (and families IIRC) can manifest them.

By opening them to every race they lost all their mystique. I wouldn't care if other races started manifesting Aberrant Dragonmark, hell that would be cool and feel like a natural extension of he concept; but NO, how can we restrict an option? Let's forget all the meaning of a Dragonmark, let's forget why Dragonmark house are so freaking powerful. We should ruin Eberron like we did with Toril. :smallfurious:
[/rant]