Race and class questions

[Shadowscale]

I have a few things I was curious to ask the playground.

Did Oriental Adventure's shaman class get reprinted into 3.5? (not the spirit shamen) and is it decent tier wise? How would obe go about building a sucessful one?

Next I was curious about the hobgoblin and aquatic elf races

Is the hobgoblins level adjustment justified and make it ineffective even with la buy off?

Lastly is an aquatic elf pc viable in a typical campaign, how so if possible? I figured maybe with the create water spell...

Thanks to anyone for reading this over and assisting.

[Zweisteine]

I'm not sure about the Spirit Shaman.

The Hobgoblin isn't all that good, compared to what else you can get for LA +1, but it is easier to bring to zero via houserule. Take awayte constitution bonus and add a -2 penalty to charisma, and you have a race that is balanced, at least by (something that looks to me like) Wizards' standards.

Aquatic race are viable in land games, but only tarting at mid to high levels, when you can afford items that will keep you from dying.

[Karnith]

Did Oriental Adventure's shaman class get reprinted into 3.5? (not the spirit shamen) and is it decent tier wise? How would obe go about building a sucessful one?
The OA Shaman was never reprinted, but it was updated to 3.5 in Dragon Magazine #318 (note that its update was incomplete; the Animal Companion ability, for example, still needs updating), and had its domain access expanded in Spell Compendium. The Shaman, having access to what is essentially a mix of the Cleric and Druid spell list as well as a fairly large list of domains, is a tier 1 class. Eggs made a handbook a while ago (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=248262) if you're looking for build advice. Personally, I am partial to Druid-style summoning builds (using Rashemi Elemental Summoning, Greenbound Summoning, and the like) or Clericzilla-style DMM builds, but you really can do a whole lot of things with them.