Dragon Compendium classes

[Marlowe]

A friend of mine and myself were having a bit of a brainstorm lately, looking at some books we've never really looked at before and wondering which to include (or not) in his custom campaign setting.

Except for Truenamer, pretty much all the official base classes we wound up OKing (although we came to the conclusion that the Shadowcaster REALLY needs a better spell mystery progression table). But we had some indecision about the classes in Dragon Compendium.

Battledancer seems OK. Like a streamlined Monk. Certainly no worse than that.

Mountebank, Master of Death, Jester we decided to include on an "if you really want" basis. Mostly, they just seemed like more one-dimensional (generally more evil) versions of existing classes. Specifically the Beguiler, Dread Necro, and Bard. They seem like they'd work better as NPC villains than as PC classes.

Shiar and Urban Druid were the only things we actually banned. We could not see how essentially a wizard and Druid with more classes features and better spell progression wouldn't cause problems. And if an Urban Druids what you want then there's already ACFs for that.

We didn't have much time to look at these, so I'm curious as to whether anyone has practical experience with these classes that might give us a different perspective.

[T.G. Oskar]

Battle Dancer is...not really better or worse than Monk. At best, it's on equal footing (which isn't good because Battle Dancer lacks ACFs to redeem its value) and at worst, it's weaker than the Monk. It gets the same bonus to unarmed strikes and AC (though using Charisma rather than Wisdom), and the rest is a series of moves using Tumble, progressing as per Bardic Music. You need to get quite a bit of levels to get the nice abilities (Pounce, Flight), but in the meanwhile you're sacked with middling abilities. It's not as front-loaded as the Monk, which is both good and bad.

Mountebank and Death Master exist, but are not a thing. To be more specific: the Mountebank offers a few powers without being a spellcaster, but seem to be disconnected from the fluff (you make a bargain with fiends for power; the Warlock does much, much better). Death Master is a parallel attempt to make a necromancer, and in that case it works, but Dread Necro pretty much blew the class off the water. Death Master is workable, tho.

Jester, on the other hand... I haven't really played with the classes, but this one really seems fun. It uses the Bard's chassis, but the Performances are very interesting. It's not really "Bard gone evil" but "dark mirror of the Bard"; while the Bard focuses on buffing, the Jester has some debuffs tucked in. I would have liked to see the Jester as a more physical-inclined class, but that's because of the Bard/Dancer prerogative stemming from various games (namely, Final Fantasy; the Bard and Dancer classes are opposites of each other, and the Battle Dancer really doesn't feel like the opposite of the Bard aside from the former's total lack of spellcasting and its focus on physical traits).

Savant is also an attempt to make a jack of all trades, but it suffers a bit. It gets both Arcane and Divine spells, but none higher than 4th level (and in a progression that mimics the original Ranger from AD&D 1st Edition), with some features tucked in for combat and good skill points/list. It definitely plays different from a Factotum, though.

As for the Sha'ir, there was a thread recently speaking about it (though I'm not sure if it was a stand-alone thread or part of the Iron Chef discussion). The Sha'ir IS powerful, but at the same rate as a Sorcerer or Spirit Shaman does: you need your genie familiar to seek spells for you, but you're more familiar with arcane spells. If you have time to prepare, you can make a Wizard cry tears, but if you don't, then the Wizard somewhat outclasses you because your working spell list is a bit more limited. Being a full spellcaster, though, makes it powerful.

And, of course: the Urban Druid is an archetype that has been done exhaustively. Unearthed Arcana has another Urban Druid, and the ACFs made it so that you could get urban class features without sacrificing your full connection with nature. Thus, this is about the only class that truly feels redundant.

[Zanos]

Mountebank and Death Master exist, but are not a thing. To be more specific: the Mountebank offers a few powers without being a spellcaster, but seem to be disconnected from the fluff (you make a bargain with fiends for power; the Warlock does much, much better). Death Master is a parallel attempt to make a necromancer, and in that case it works, but Dread Necro pretty much blew the class off the water. Death Master is workable, tho.
Disagree.

The Death Master has a much more expansive spell list than the Dread Necro, has an undead companion from level 1, gets animate dead as a 2nd level spell, actually has desecrate on his spell list, and has a host of spells that are good on any arcane casters at every level. Low level Death Masters have much more necromantic flavor since they can actually have permanent undead, and high level ones aren't so pigenholed that they can't do anything beyond "more necromancy."

It also is a prepared caster based off of an intelligence, so it will have a lot more skill points than a DN, and is capable of learning every spell on it's rather varied list. Even a quick glance at the DN vs. the DM spell list will show that they DM list is vastly superior.

The DN might be better at animating stuff, but it has to wait until level 8 to animate anything, and the death master can do it at level 3.

[Marlowe]

Thanks, I'll have another look at the Jester. Forgot Savant, but we added that to the "If you really want to play this we're not stopping you" pile.

[Maginomicon]

Let past-me tell you why Sha'irs are awesome:
Oh there's more to it than that. Consider this:

When a sha'ir has his gen fetch a spell, the sha'ir's gen is bargaining with planar elemental beings to gain the temporary ability to bestow on the sha'ir one casting of the named spell. This is essentially identical to the way a typical divine caster (such as a cleric or druid) prays/meditates for spells (and is answered by a god/ideal, which essentially is a planar divine being). When the prayer/meditation is answered, the god/ideal imparts on the caster the full details of the spells requested. The sha'ir's situation is no different except that the Sha'ir has to deal with planar red tape (hence the use of diplomacy). There's no reason why upon a successful diplomacy check the gen wouldn't have also been given by the planar elemental powers-that-be knowledge of the full details of the named spell's description... and thus the gen would obviously impart that knowledge to the sha'ir when it returns to the material plane (this is ostensibly why as a sha'ir you add the languages gens speak to your bonus languages, although they can speak common).

Consider this also:

Spellcraft, as a skill, identifies a spell or spell effect. That's the spellcraft skill's whole purpose. But what if you don't need to identify it? What if someone just told you outright about a spell and what it does? As it turns out, in the sha'ir's spellcasting description, it says he only has to know the name of a spell in order to cast it. The relevant line says "A sha'ir decides what spell might be useful and sends out his familiar to retrieve it from the elemental planes. To do this, the sha'ir must summon his gen and tell it the name of the spell he seeks. The gen immediately plane shifts to seek the spell in the elemental planes." ...You read that right; the gen doesn't... in fact... need to know anything more about the spell than its name.

So you see... he only needs to know the name of a spell in order to have his gen go fetch it, nothing more. The spellcraft checks for sha'irs are for identifying spells and spell effects that aren't just identified for him outright by others. If someone tells him "this a fireball", that's enough, but they can also say "fireball is this" or even simply "fireball is a spell". Any of these are enough for a sha'ir to have his gen fetch fireball since they all give away for free the spellcraft check result the sha'ir would normally need. If the spellcraft check isn't given away (such as when an enemy caster uses the spell in battle), by making the spellcraft check, the sha'ir identifies the spell's NAME and thus can request it. In short, if the Sha'ir is simply told the spell's name outright from the get-go, he doesn't need to use spellcraft on his own to identify jack.

This ability to cast any spell on his spell list that he's simply heard about puts him easily above the wizard in all respects except that the sha'ir requires some on-the-fly spell preparation time to fetch a spell.

A word of warning though: Even if he can fetch a spell, that doesn't mean he has the ability score or the spell slots necessary to actually cast it. This is the ultimate balancing factor in all this. Sure, he may know about the wish spell. Sure, he could even have his gen go fetch it. Sure, the gen could even bestow a single casting of wish to the sha'ir... but the sha'ir can't actually cast it if he doesn't have the requisite ability score or the appropriate spell slots of 9th level yet.