Buffing Dragonmarks

[TiaC]

I was considering houserules that I'd like in an Eberron game, and one of the first things that came to mind is that Dragonmarks are pretty weak. These are supposed to be enough to cause near total trade monopolies. So, I thought I'd consider how to change that. I want to push these strongly, so that a decent number of players will take them. This is also in the context of a mainly Pathfinder game.

Here's what I came up with.

1. Dragon mark uses are not uses per day, but uses per 10 minutes.
2. If a dragonmark has multiple options at a level, the marked character can use them interchangeably.
3. Dragonmarks have a caster level equal to the marked character's level, plus half their levels in Dragonmarked Heir.
4. If a dragonmark has a duration longer than instantaneous, the marked character can only have a number in effect equal to their character level at once. (This is the one I'm least sure of. Possibly making it =level for least, =1/2 level for lesser, =1/3 level for greater, and =1/4 level for Siberys.)

Thoughts?

[Sto]

Before I give my thoughts I have one question: do these changes affect siberys marks? Because being able to use the effects of a Siberys mark once every 10 minutes would make everyone in your party take that PrC.

[Cosi]

While I agree that Dragonmarks deserve a buff, I don't think sweeping changes like this are likely to produce a good result.

fabricate and teleport once every ten rounds is pretty crazy powerful.

Dragonmark Heir still has the problem of putting whatever your character normally does on hold for some SLAs that will be obsolete within a few levels. I would probably buff it to progress class features in some way. At minimum casting progression, possibly a "choose an appropriate benefit to progress" deal.

I think the better fix would be to figure out a standard template for Dragonmark powers, then give each mark abilities that fit into that template at equal power. For example, you might have the Least Mark give an at-will utility ability, the Lesser Mark give an at-will combat ability, and the Greater Mark give a 1/day high impact ability (like fabricate).

[retaliation08]

I homebrewed a feat a while back that allowed casters to use spell slots to spontaneously cast dragonmark abilities beyond their daily limit. Didn't do anything for dragonmarked martials, but the game is hardly fair, is it?

[liquidformat]

I agree with Cosi here especially if you are dealing with aberrant marks and prcs like Heir of Siberys as well; there are some stuff that can be very abused like fabricate, teleport, greater teleport, dominate, true creation... and then there are things that really aren't going to make a difference like at will burning hands and speak with animal. I think the idea of one relatively benign out of combat one at will in combat and then one capstone seems powerful but not overkill as long as the chosen abilities aren't crazy.

[Cosi]

true creation is not quite as big an issue as you might think because you still have to pay the XP cost. dominate is technically constrained by the 1/level limit for active effects, but in practice one thrall per level is plenty.

[Nifft]

I was considering houserules that I'd like in an Eberron game, and one of the first things that came to mind is that Dragonmarks are pretty weak. These are supposed to be enough to cause near total trade monopolies. So, I thought I'd consider how to change that. I want to push these strongly, so that a decent number of players will take them. This is also in the context of a mainly Pathfinder game.

You could make the Dragonmark trade monopoly thing justified by improving non-combat utility rather than giving more combat power.

That wouldn't necessarily make players want to take them, but it could better justify the world existing as presented.

IIRC what the Eberron writer did to better justify the Dragonmarked houses as economic powers was create cheap & useful items that require a Dragonmark to use, stuff like the Altar of Resurrection -- things which work well, but either don't help in combat, or don't travel well.

[liquidformat]

You could make the Dragonmark trade monopoly thing justified by improving non-combat utility rather than giving more combat power.

That wouldn't necessarily make players want to take them, but it could better justify the world existing as presented.

IIRC what the Eberron writer did to better justify the Dragonmarked houses as economic powers was create cheap & useful items that require a Dragonmark to use, stuff like the Altar of Resurrection -- things which work well, but either don't help in combat, or don't travel well.

Ya I would agree with this, the reason a lot of houses are strong can also be based around more fluffy ideas. Vadalis is a powerhouse not because of their mark of handling but because they have the secrets behind making magebred animals, griffons, and other magical beasts. Likewise jarasco cornered the market on healing, cannith on making things, and orion has the secrets of their trainline for travel. Their marks aren't so much what makes them powerful but what unifies them together as a people.

[Nifft]

Ya I would agree with this, the reason a lot of houses are strong can also be based around more fluffy ideas. Vadalis is a powerhouse not because of their mark of handling but because they have the secrets behind making magebred animals, griffons, and other magical beasts. Likewise jarasco cornered the market on healing, cannith on making things, and orion has the secrets of their trainline for travel. Their marks aren't so much what makes them powerful but what unifies them together as a people.

Nah, do both.

Vadalis has the secret to magebred animals and the secret requires the Mark of Handling.

Their Marks are what make them powerful, but it's not just the spell-like adventuring / combat ability provided by the Marks -- it's all the fluffy stuff which adventurers ignore.


-- -- --

More fluffy ideas which ought to have minimal impact on the PCs, but could help justify the setting looking like it does:


Detection - You are entitled to a Search check to notice a secret or concealed door as if you were an Elf. (This is relevant to PCs but it's on a weak Mark, which is on a weak race.)

Finding - You automatically know when you fail an Appraise check; you get no information rather than false information.

Handling - Animals won't willingly attack you unless compelled (by magic or training + specific direction).

Healing - Creatures which sleep within 300 feet of you always awake well-rested, getting the full normal benefits of a good night's rest and natural healing. (You must remain in range for the entire night.)

Hospitality - Your clothes are never soiled. You automatically know if food you can see is good or not (spoiled, poisoned, or otherwise unhealthy).

Making - If you roll below 5 on a Craft check, your roll is treated as a 5.

Passage - You can recall maps as if you had perfect photographic memory. (Give this player permanent copies of any maps that appear in the campaign.)

(... etc.)

[Prime32]

The Dragonmarked supplement has three feats which grant "horizontal" advancement - Dragonmark Prodigy (Least), Dragonmark Adept (Lesser) and Dragonmark Visionary (Greater).
Plus scaling feats that upgrade specific marks - Cannith Forgecraft (Making), Eye of Medani (Detection), Grace of Ghallanda (Hospitality), Healing Strike (Healing), Master of Wards (Warding), Orien Battle Stride (Passage), Quill of Sivis (Scribing), Sentinel Stance (Sentinel), Stormrider/Storm's Riposte (Storm), Trap Warden (Finding) and Umbral Mark (Shadow)
Maybe fold those into the base feats?

There's an issue of Dragon which presents the Dragonmarked Sorcerer feat - it grants you an auto-scaling dragonmark, except that instead of gaining the spells as SLAs you add them to your sorcerer spells known. Which is pretty amazing. Though in PF that would probably just be a bloodline.

[Afgncaap5]

Also, keep in mind that the spell like abilities granted by a Dragonmark are supposed to be the *least* significant things that characters can do with them. Dungeons and social situations should have semi-frequent opportunities for a dragonmark to manipulate the world around them, whether it be as simple as a magic door that'll only open for someone with the appropriate mark, challenges that cater to the specialty skills of the house, or magic items that become more useful for a mark-bearer when they'd otherwise require a certain amount of extra training. Case in point, a magic stone that can copy and send messages might not work except for an artificer who studies it for a week because the stone's magic is rooted in Stonespeech (a language Sivis created for 4e), but someone who's actually in Sivis might be able to pick it up and just get it to *work*. There's a mini-example of this kind of thing in the original ECS book's "Forgotten Forge" adventure, with a magic door that only opens in the presence of the Mark of Making (but for simplicity's sake, the game does admittedly give a magic journal with the mark on its cover which will also allow the door to open.)

I'd also take a look at the 5e Dragonmarks in the Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron. I wouldn't make marks alternate racial abilities in 3.5, but some of those ideas (letting dragonmark bearers roll extra d4s for certain skills, giving peculiar techniques that fit the magic of the mark, etc.) are particularly handy.

[Cosi]

IIRC what the Eberron writer did to better justify the Dragonmarked houses as economic powers was create cheap & useful items that require a Dragonmark to use, stuff like the Altar of Resurrection -- things which work well, but either don't help in combat, or don't travel well.

Ya I would agree with this, the reason a lot of houses are strong can also be based around more fluffy ideas. Vadalis is a powerhouse not because of their mark of handling but because they have the secrets behind making magebred animals, griffons, and other magical beasts. Likewise jarasco cornered the market on healing, cannith on making things, and orion has the secrets of their trainline for travel. Their marks aren't so much what makes them powerful but what unifies them together as a people.

The issue is that Dragonmarks really don't justify economic powers. Even if you add extra benefits, the Dragonmark is still worse than Craft Wondrous Item for building an economic powerhouse. "Having a Dragonmark" is a personal power, it doesn't produce any capital or accumulate any resources.

Take, for example, the Mark of Making. A character with the Greater Mark of Making can use fabricate once per day (unless they got major creation instead). That means House Cannith can, optimistically, hope to produce one fabricate per day per living member over 9th level. Now consider some kind of Mage's Guild (I think the Arcane Congress is the one in Anduir). Instead of relying on an inborn Dragonmark, they just have their members craft Pearls of Power (5th level) and use those to refresh the spell slots of a guild member who can cast fabricate. A character able to craft Pearls of Power can craft one every 25 days. Assuming a 4 to 1 downtime to crafting ratio, that's about 3 a year. Those Pearls of Power last until destroyed, so provided they have a single 9th level caster, the Arcane Congress can cast fabricate three times per day for every year that a member over 9th level lived since the founding of the organization. Since it was established roughly 900 years ago, that's presumably a larger value than the number of living Cannith members who are over 9th level.

Now obviously, there are things you could do to move the needle back towards the Houses. Most obviously, you could claim that they came up with the "make a bunch of magic items" plan first (though it's worth noting that the Dragonmark-powered items are mostly bad for this as they're linked to limited daily uses of Dragonmarks). But at that point you've basically given up on "Dragonmarks" as the source of power. Looked at on their own, the Dragonmarks represent a semi-reasonable path to economic domination. But it's not one that stands up well to the paths to economic domination available to other D&D characters, and it doesn't really match up well to traditional models of economic power (which tend to favor technological capital).

Some of the Dragonmarks are also just a little weird from a thematic perspective. Why is there a giant, continent-spanning cartel that deals in ... private investigators? I get that there are a lot of private investigators in the Noir novels Eberron draws on as a theme, but those are largely hard-bitten independents, so having them be part of a monolithic organization is kind of a flavor fail. If I were fixing the Dragonmarks, I'd probably start by condensing them enough that each one corresponds to an industry that actually makes sense as a major economic driver (or a viable 3e tactic for breaking the economy). But that's breaking a good deal from Eberron's premise.


Also, keep in mind that the spell like abilities granted by a Dragonmark are supposed to be the *least* significant things that characters can do with them. Dungeons and social situations should have semi-frequent opportunities for a dragonmark to manipulate the world around them, whether it be as simple as a magic door that'll only open for someone with the appropriate mark, challenges that cater to the specialty skills of the house, or magic items that become more useful for a mark-bearer when they'd otherwise require a certain amount of extra training. Case in point, a magic stone that can copy and send messages might not work except for an artificer who studies it for a week because the stone's magic is rooted in Stonespeech (a language Sivis created for 4e), but someone who's actually in Sivis might be able to pick it up and just get it to *work*. There's a mini-example of this kind of thing in the original ECS book's "Forgotten Forge" adventure, with a magic door that only opens in the presence of the Mark of Making (but for simplicity's sake, the game does admittedly give a magic journal with the mark on its cover which will also allow the door to open.)

You should be doing that for all the players though, regardless of whether they have Dragonmarks. Also, it's a fine line between "rewarding people who have Dragonmarks" and "screwing people who don't have Dragonmarks". It's far better for the game if the Dragonmark is viable without the DM offering you extra benefits.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I'd recommend taking a template like Phrenic as base, and repurposing the SLA advancement to your dragonmark.

For example, a very simple progression for the Mark of Making:


1-2 HD: 3/day mending, 1/day magecraft
3-4 HD: at will mending, 3/day repair light damage, 1/day minor creation
5-6 HD: 3/day minor creation, 1/day lesser weapon augmentation
7-8 HD: 3/day lesser weapon augmentation, 1/day item alteration
9-10 HD: 3/day item alteration, 1/day fabricate
11-12 HD: 3/day fabricate, 1/day hardening
13-14 HD: 3/day hardening, 1/day greater weapon augmentation
15-16 HD: 3/day greater weapon augmentation, 1/day true creation
17-18 HD: 3/day true creation, 1/day awaken construct
19-20 HD: 3/day awaken construct, 1/day wish


With that, a simple 3 HD magewright with the Mark of Making can mend stuff all day long, working a hundred times faster than an equivalent blacksmith. You can throw in some more of the at-will powers you really want to emphasize, like repair light damage and minor creation for even greater low-level maintenance. Adding something like anyspell allows the Mark of Making to emulate spell requirements for magic items (without having to be an artificer).

[Cosi]

I like the idea, but you'd probably need to increase the cost of Dragonmarks if you're going that direction. Or just give everybody a Dragonmark.

[TiaC]

Ok, there's a lot to respond to here, so let me try to get it all.

Before I give my thoughts I have one question: do these changes affect siberys marks? Because being able to use the effects of a Siberys mark once every 10 minutes would make everyone in your party take that PrC.
Yes, but the PrC won't advance casting anymore, and I'm considering keeping the skill requirement at 15, which would bump up the entry level by 3.

While I agree that Dragonmarks deserve a buff, I don't think sweeping changes like this are likely to produce a good result.

fabricate and teleport once every ten rounds is pretty crazy powerful.
Are they really? The dragonmarks are still about as powerful in combat, and taking three feats for a level-appropriate SLA that can be used often doesn't seem too unreasonable. The Greater dragonmark is going to be somewhere between a 3/day SLA and an at will SLA in use.

I admit that some marks might need a little rebalancing, but let's look at the two you brought up. First, it's once every ten minutes, not rounds. Second, how often do you really need teleport? As DM it will change the sort of stories that the game tells, but I don't particularly think it allows for that much that the wizard's teleport doesn't. Fabricate is more worrisome, but one of my goals here was to avoid the situation where the dragonmarked heir shows up to the houses workshop for five minutes, uses all their SLAs and leaves. All dragonmark abilities are definitely getting the cast time and material component they have as spells to offset Mark of Making abuse.

Fabricate can break the economy, but 1/10 minutes fabricate doesn't really break the economy any more than a 9th level wizard just casting fabricate a few times a day. Yeah, it breaks the economy faster, but if the game has any downtime it won't matter. If fabricate exists as a spell, I'll need to houserule or set a social contract such that it doesn't get abused, and I'm not seeing how letting people cast it once per encounter makes that problem worse. Generally, if a dragonmark SLA will be problematic for me as a DM, the spell version will be equally problematic.

Again, I'd prefer these to be a bit too strong than a bit weak, because I want most players to take them.


Dragonmark Heir still has the problem of putting whatever your character normally does on hold for some SLAs that will be obsolete within a few levels. I would probably buff it to progress class features in some way. At minimum casting progression, possibly a "choose an appropriate benefit to progress" deal. Since these changes make the 2nd and 3rd level abilities useless, I was thinking legacy champion style "+1 level of existing class features" at 2nd, 3rd and 5th levels.


I think the better fix would be to figure out a standard template for Dragonmark powers, then give each mark abilities that fit into that template at equal power. For example, you might have the Least Mark give an at-will utility ability, the Lesser Mark give an at-will combat ability, and the Greater Mark give a 1/day high impact ability (like fabricate).
This requires a lot of homebrew and I think most players still wouldn't take them.


I agree with Cosi here especially if you are dealing with aberrant marks and prcs like Heir of Siberys as well; there are some stuff that can be very abused like fabricate, teleport, greater teleport, dominate, true creation... and then there are things that really aren't going to make a difference like at will burning hands and speak with animal. I think the idea of one relatively benign out of combat one at will in combat and then one capstone seems powerful but not overkill as long as the chosen abilities aren't crazy.
Abberant marks have a decent chance of dazing you, so most of them will be somewhat balanced by that. Most of the rest will be balanced by giving them the casting time and material components of the spells they mimic. However, you are right that dominate will have to go, it snowballs too well. I could see allowing it and reducing the duration to min/level.


true creation is not quite as big an issue as you might think because you still have to pay the XP cost. dominate is technically constrained by the 1/level limit for active effects, but in practice one thrall per level is plenty.
Yes, it's the most problematic of the options, and should be eliminated entirely or have its duration sharply reduced. Something should probably be done about Handling's Dominate Animal too.


You could make the Dragonmark trade monopoly thing justified by improving non-combat utility rather than giving more combat power.

That wouldn't necessarily make players want to take them, but it could better justify the world existing as presented.
That's more or less what this is. Once every 10 minutes doesn't do much to buff them in combat, because encounter powers aren't that much better than dailies, especially with how situational most dragonmarks are.


IIRC what the Eberron writer did to better justify the Dragonmarked houses as economic powers was create cheap & useful items that require a Dragonmark to use, stuff like the Altar of Resurrection -- things which work well, but either don't help in combat, or don't travel well.
These exist, but there aren't too many of them and I don't want to homebrew dozens of items. Also, many of them aren't really useful to adventurers, so I'm not taking them into account for balance. In addition, some of them don't care what level of mark a character has.


Ya I would agree with this, the reason a lot of houses are strong can also be based around more fluffy ideas. Vadalis is a powerhouse not because of their mark of handling but because they have the secrets behind making magebred animals, griffons, and other magical beasts. Likewise jarasco cornered the market on healing, cannith on making things, and orion has the secrets of their trainline for travel. Their marks aren't so much what makes them powerful but what unifies them together as a people.
Then why do the marks matter? I want them to be more than just generic merchant houses.


Nah, do both.

Vadalis has the secret to magebred animals and the secret requires the Mark of Handling.

Their Marks are what make them powerful, but it's not just the spell-like adventuring / combat ability provided by the Marks -- it's all the fluffy stuff which adventurers ignore.
Yeah, most marks don't really give adventuring or combat abilities, but they give abilities that could be useful economically.


More fluffy ideas which ought to have minimal impact on the PCs, but could help justify the setting looking like it does:


Detection - You are entitled to a Search check to notice a secret or concealed door as if you were an Elf. (This is relevant to PCs but it's on a weak Mark, which is on a weak race.)

Finding - You automatically know when you fail an Appraise check; you get no information rather than false information.

Handling - Animals won't willingly attack you unless compelled (by magic or training + specific direction).

Healing - Creatures which sleep within 300 feet of you always awake well-rested, getting the full normal benefits of a good night's rest and natural healing. (You must remain in range for the entire night.)

Hospitality - Your clothes are never soiled. You automatically know if food you can see is good or not (spoiled, poisoned, or otherwise unhealthy).

Making - If you roll below 5 on a Craft check, your roll is treated as a 5.

Passage - You can recall maps as if you had perfect photographic memory. (Give this player permanent copies of any maps that appear in the campaign.)

(... etc.)
These are interesting, but I'd like to keep the marks themselves from getting too complicated. However, since this is Pathfinder, these would make great traits for members of dragonmarked houses. Thanks!


The Dragonmarked supplement has three feats which grant "horizontal" advancement - Dragonmark Prodigy (Least), Dragonmark Adept (Lesser) and Dragonmark Visionary (Greater).
Plus scaling feats that upgrade specific marks - Cannith Forgecraft (Making), Eye of Medani (Detection), Grace of Ghallanda (Hospitality), Healing Strike (Healing), Master of Wards (Warding), Orien Battle Stride (Passage), Quill of Sivis (Scribing), Sentinel Stance (Sentinel), Stormrider/Storm's Riposte (Storm), Trap Warden (Finding) and Umbral Mark (Shadow)
Maybe fold those into the base feats?
I kind of like them as separate, because it keeps the initial dragonmarks simple, but these should still be worth taking.


There's an issue of Dragon which presents the Dragonmarked Sorcerer feat - it grants you an auto-scaling dragonmark, except that instead of gaining the spells as SLAs you add them to your sorcerer spells known. Which is pretty amazing. Though in PF that would probably just be a bloodline. Yeah, it would be a bloodline, there's this (http://pf-eberron.wikidot.com/bloodlines:dragonmarked), but I'm not too fond of it.


Also, keep in mind that the spell like abilities granted by a Dragonmark are supposed to be the *least* significant things that characters can do with them. Dungeons and social situations should have semi-frequent opportunities for a dragonmark to manipulate the world around them, whether it be as simple as a magic door that'll only open for someone with the appropriate mark, challenges that cater to the specialty skills of the house, or magic items that become more useful for a mark-bearer when they'd otherwise require a certain amount of extra training. Case in point, a magic stone that can copy and send messages might not work except for an artificer who studies it for a week because the stone's magic is rooted in Stonespeech (a language Sivis created for 4e), but someone who's actually in Sivis might be able to pick it up and just get it to *work*. There's a mini-example of this kind of thing in the original ECS book's "Forgotten Forge" adventure, with a magic door that only opens in the presence of the Mark of Making (but for simplicity's sake, the game does admittedly give a magic journal with the mark on its cover which will also allow the door to open.)
As Cosi said, I don't want to feel like I'm favoring dragonmarked players too much. I want my players to know what they're getting into when they choose whether they take a dragonmark or not.


I'd also take a look at the 5e Dragonmarks in the Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron. I wouldn't make marks alternate racial abilities in 3.5, but some of those ideas (letting dragonmark bearers roll extra d4s for certain skills, giving peculiar techniques that fit the magic of the mark, etc.) are particularly handy.
I don't have that one and wasn't able to easily find it.

The issue is that Dragonmarks really don't justify economic powers. Even if you add extra benefits, the Dragonmark is still worse than Craft Wondrous Item for building an economic powerhouse. "Having a Dragonmark" is a personal power, it doesn't produce any capital or accumulate any resources.

Take, for example, the Mark of Making. A character with the Greater Mark of Making can use fabricate once per day (unless they got major creation instead). That means House Cannith can, optimistically, hope to produce one fabricate per day per living member over 9th level. Now consider some kind of Mage's Guild (I think the Arcane Congress is the one in Anduir). Instead of relying on an inborn Dragonmark, they just have their members craft Pearls of Power (5th level) and use those to refresh the spell slots of a guild member who can cast fabricate. A character able to craft Pearls of Power can craft one every 25 days. Assuming a 4 to 1 downtime to crafting ratio, that's about 3 a year. Those Pearls of Power last until destroyed, so provided they have a single 9th level caster, the Arcane Congress can cast fabricate three times per day for every year that a member over 9th level lived since the founding of the organization. Since it was established roughly 900 years ago, that's presumably a larger value than the number of living Cannith members who are over 9th level.

Now obviously, there are things you could do to move the needle back towards the Houses. Most obviously, you could claim that they came up with the "make a bunch of magic items" plan first (though it's worth noting that the Dragonmark-powered items are mostly bad for this as they're linked to limited daily uses of Dragonmarks). But at that point you've basically given up on "Dragonmarks" as the source of power. Looked at on their own, the Dragonmarks represent a semi-reasonable path to economic domination. But it's not one that stands up well to the paths to economic domination available to other D&D characters, and it doesn't really match up well to traditional models of economic power (which tend to favor technological capital).
A good analysis. My solution is to make dragonmarks produce at that level in a way that others can't match, but if you have any more thoughts on this, I'd love to hear them.


Some of the Dragonmarks are also just a little weird from a thematic perspective. Why is there a giant, continent-spanning cartel that deals in ... private investigators? I get that there are a lot of private investigators in the Noir novels Eberron draws on as a theme, but those are largely hard-bitten independents, so having them be part of a monolithic organization is kind of a flavor fail. If I were fixing the Dragonmarks, I'd probably start by condensing them enough that each one corresponds to an industry that actually makes sense as a major economic driver (or a viable 3e tactic for breaking the economy). But that's breaking a good deal from Eberron's premise.
It is weird, and I'll probably move House Tharashk more towards law enforcement and exploring Xen'drik. (I suppose that finding ancient ruins is a viable 3e tactic for breaking the economy)


You should be doing that for all the players though, regardless of whether they have Dragonmarks. Also, it's a fine line between "rewarding people who have Dragonmarks" and "screwing people who don't have Dragonmarks". It's far better for the game if the Dragonmark is viable without the DM offering you extra benefits.
Exactly, I'd like to do this for everyone, without it needing to be about compensating for suboptimal choices that players took for fluff reasons.

Edit:

I'd recommend taking a template like Phrenic as base, and repurposing the SLA advancement to your dragonmark.

For example, a very simple progression for the Mark of Making:


1-2 HD: 3/day mending, 1/day magecraft
3-4 HD: at will mending, 3/day repair light damage, 1/day minor creation
5-6 HD: 3/day minor creation, 1/day lesser weapon augmentation
7-8 HD: 3/day lesser weapon augmentation, 1/day item alteration
9-10 HD: 3/day item alteration, 1/day fabricate
11-12 HD: 3/day fabricate, 1/day hardening
13-14 HD: 3/day hardening, 1/day greater weapon augmentation
15-16 HD: 3/day greater weapon augmentation, 1/day true creation
17-18 HD: 3/day true creation, 1/day awaken construct
19-20 HD: 3/day awaken construct, 1/day wish


With that, a simple 3 HD magewright with the Mark of Making can mend stuff all day long, working a hundred times faster than an equivalent blacksmith. You can throw in some more of the at-will powers you really want to emphasize, like repair light damage and minor creation for even greater low-level maintenance. Adding something like anyspell allows the Mark of Making to emulate spell requirements for magic items (without having to be an artificer).
While interesting, if I was going to do something like that, I'd just make it a PrC.


I like the idea, but you'd probably need to increase the cost of Dragonmarks if you're going that direction. Or just give everybody a Dragonmark.
That too. I want players to take them, but I also want it to be a defensible choice to take a non-dragonmarked race.

Also, a few more minor changes:
The Lesser and Greater Dragonmark feats require that one of the skills you have ranks in for the prerequisite is the skill that the least mark gives you a bonus to. So characters can't rely entirely on their mark, they have to know something about the subject.
Subraces can have true dragonmarks. They still have to be related to the house, so they're less likely to, but I don't like the racial overtones of restricting it to one subrace.
In addition, races that share subtypes with the dragonmarked races can have aberrant marks.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I like the idea, but you'd probably need to increase the cost of Dragonmarks if you're going that direction. Or just give everybody a Dragonmark.
Absolutely. It should be a template with LA +1 or +2, like Phrenic, a template class, or, if you want to deal with that unholy mess of rules, a bloodline.


While interesting, if I was going to do something like that, I'd just make it a PrC.
Well, why don't you? A (template) class "Dragonmark of Making" is entirely reasonable. You could also model the mark after racial paragon classes (marks are bloodlines, after all), make substitution levels for each class and dragonmark (lot of work, I'd avoid this one), tailor Legacy Champion to provide dragonmark feats instead of legacy feats (drop entry level to 2, as LC comes online late, and dragonmarks come online early), crib Weapons of Legacy's idea of "pay gold for ritual, get feat for free" (or, heaven forbid, the bab/skill/save cost system), or use Organization mechanics (CChamp has a good writeup) to award additional uses to house members in good standing. Loads and loads of tricks, you just have to choose which one you want.

[Cosi]

Second, how often do you really need teleport?

Dramatically increasing the availability of teleport is going to alter its use equally dramatically. Under normal circumstances, teleport has strict daily limitations and comes at the cost of a combat spell. Under these rules it's almost totally free (though three feats isn't a trivial investment). You could do things like teleport past traps or barricades, teleport over to an expert on whatever your current problem is, or teleport back to town to grab whatever item is a perfect response to the situation you're in.


Since these changes make the 2nd and 3rd level abilities useless, I was thinking legacy champion style "+1 level of existing class features" at 2nd, 3rd and 5th levels.

Dragonmark Heir really highlights the issue with sacrificing levels of class progression, instead of concrete features. That'll be a reasonable trade at first, but at high level being two levels behind for some mid level SLAs is pretty crippling.


This requires a lot of homebrew and I think most players still wouldn't take them.

It does require homebrew, but not too much. You'd probably cut the number of marks down in the process (I think 8 is a reasonable target), so you'd end up writing ~20 abilities and a lot of those would just be "X SLA". But I totally understand not wanting to put in extra work for a niche option.


Most of the rest will be balanced by giving them the casting time and material components of the spells they mimic.

That would balance them, but it may do so at the expense of making the marks less economically useful than you'd like. Honestly, I'm not sure it's possible to make something that is balanced as a feat, but still has a dramatic economic impact.


A good analysis. My solution is to make dragonmarks produce at that level in a way that others can't match, but if you have any more thoughts on this, I'd love to hear them.

My issue is that the Dragonmarks seem to have been developed without any consideration for what you can do with (or to) the economy in 3e, and with only a fairly tenuous grasp of actual economics.

So in a nominally Eberron-ish setting (i.e. fantasy pastiche of Renaissance to Cold War tropes), you might expect to see businesses involved in a list of industries something like: Agriculture, Manufacturing, Defense, Natural Resources, Human Resources, Media, Information, Finance, Trade, and Construction. You could also easily imagine one or more esoteric industries based on whatever magic happened to do. Like professional oracles or something.

And then you have the various 3e tools that exist to impact the economy. This list is far from exhaustive, but includes: plant growth, make Spell-Stitched Undead, haunt shift, unseen servant, fabricate, minor/major/true creation (true creation is obviously the biggest deal because the stuff it makes lasts), animate dead, magic item creation (beyond the Pearls of Power, an Eternal Wand is more magic per day than any minor mark and can contain most of their spells), awaken (including the construct and undead variants), planar binding (ignoring cheese, even something as simple as elementals or formain workers are useful), silent image, the various divination spells that give future knowledge, simulacrum, permanency, various wall spells, animate objects, being one of the monsters that gets native casting, and goodberry.

And then contrast that to the houses. You can fit the houses to industry okay, though there are some weird things even there. Three different houses are in the mercenaries and/or bodyguards market (Detection, Sentinel, and Finding), despite the fact that it's a tiny market. There's one house that gets all of manufacturing, but trade is split two ways, and the Mark of Shadow is straight up split into two houses. And no one is really doing anything in terms of construction (I guess maybe Warding or Making?) or human resources (except for mercenaries, for which you are just *drowning* in options). The financiers seem to be focused on bank security. Agriculture is split between two groups, neither of which gets plant growth. And so on.

And the overlap between "spells that have a big impact on the economy" and "spells dragonmarks give you" is close to zero. Artificers have dramatically larger economic impact than any of the Dragonmarks without having to do anything beyond waking up in the morning.

And a lot of the impact of Dragonmarks basically comes down to "the DM makes some stuff up". As far as I know, there's no *rules* for how much your crops benefit from favorable weather, and as a result no real way to say whether disrupting a contract negotiation between the House of Storms and some farmers would be worthwhile in pursuit of some larger goal. And so on for sabotaging a lightning rail line, raiding a dragonshard mine, or restarting a creation forge. All the economic impacts are a big ???.

Basically, I just don't think the system as a whole holds up to any real scrutiny, despite the premise of the setting inviting that very scrutiny. For Eberron to work as a setting, you have to either avoid using magic on the economy (which is a deeply bizarre choice when the whole premise of the setting is that people do exactly that), accept that the setting will go down like a house of cards when someone pokes it with planar binding, or redesign the whole thing rather radically.


It is weird, and I'll probably move House Tharashk more towards law enforcement and exploring Xen'drik. (I suppose that finding ancient ruins is a viable 3e tactic for breaking the economy)

Actually I was talking about Medani (the second Half Elf mark). Tharashk has resource extraction, which is a totally reasonable thing for an international conglomerate to be doing. Also I think they're bounty hunters, not private eyes?

[TiaC]

Well, why don't you? A (template) class "Dragonmark of Making" is entirely reasonable. You could also model the mark after racial paragon classes (marks are bloodlines, after all), make substitution levels for each class and dragonmark (lot of work, I'd avoid this one), tailor Legacy Champion to provide dragonmark feats instead of legacy feats (drop entry level to 2, as LC comes online late, and dragonmarks come online early), crib Weapons of Legacy's idea of "pay gold for ritual, get feat for free" (or, heaven forbid, the bab/skill/save cost system), or use Organization mechanics (CChamp has a good writeup) to award additional uses to house members in good standing. Loads and loads of tricks, you just have to choose which one you want.
I think that handling it this way would make it less likely that my players would use it.


Dramatically increasing the availability of teleport is going to alter its use equally dramatically. Under normal circumstances, teleport has strict daily limitations and comes at the cost of a combat spell. Under these rules it's almost totally free (though three feats isn't a trivial investment). You could do things like teleport past traps or barricades, teleport over to an expert on whatever your current problem is, or teleport back to town to grab whatever item is a perfect response to the situation you're in. That is a good point. I don't really mind it being used strategically, teleporting people from one city to another, but the crazy precision it gives could be problematic. I will say that the ability to fetch an expert generally shakes out the same as playing with instant communications. Most of the uses you mention will involve a teleport that is either "seen casually" or "viewed once", which give a chance of screwing up. I realize that the consequences are low, but I think that could be fixed.


Dragonmark Heir really highlights the issue with sacrificing levels of class progression, instead of concrete features. That'll be a reasonable trade at first, but at high level being two levels behind for some mid level SLAs is pretty crippling.
It could be 4/5 progression, or give bonus dragonmark feats as well.


It does require homebrew, but not too much. You'd probably cut the number of marks down in the process (I think 8 is a reasonable target), so you'd end up writing ~20 abilities and a lot of those would just be "X SLA". But I totally understand not wanting to put in extra work for a niche option.
I like having a lot of marks, because I'm planning a intrigue campaign, so the more factions the better.


That would balance them, but it may do so at the expense of making the marks less economically useful than you'd like. Honestly, I'm not sure it's possible to make something that is balanced as a feat, but still has a dramatic economic impact.
Well, let's look at what the material components affect. True Seeing, Awaken, Restoration, Revivify, Refuge, Fabricate, True Creation (once adjusted to Pathfinder), Symbol of Death, Fire Trap, Glyph of Warding, Greater Glyph of Warding, and probably one or two more I missed. Now, some of those probably need components and some of them don't. I don't care that much if someone wants to spend three feats to get True Seeing without paying for it, but I do care if someone covers a shield in a dozen Symbols of Death. I might say half price components so they can still undercut competition without allowing spam, or I might just change some of these spells. (Symbol of Death for the communications house? Why?)


My issue is that the Dragonmarks seem to have been developed without any consideration for what you can do with (or to) the economy in 3e, and with only a fairly tenuous grasp of actual economics.

So in a nominally Eberron-ish setting (i.e. fantasy pastiche of Renaissance to Cold War tropes), you might expect to see businesses involved in a list of industries something like: Agriculture, Manufacturing, Defense, Natural Resources, Human Resources, Media, Information, Finance, Trade, and Construction. You could also easily imagine one or more esoteric industries based on whatever magic happened to do. Like professional oracles or something.
The houses as they are hit around half of these, and some of the others can be mundane, but yes, it would be nice to shift some of the more useless houses to cover some of these. For example, changing Handling to Nature and giving it Plant Growth or giving Shadow a public face of entertainment through illusions and communications through bidirectional scrying. However, they don't have to cover everything, I'm fine with Defence being handled by governments directly rather than a dragonmarked house being the military-industrial complex.


And then you have the various 3e tools that exist to impact the economy. This list is far from exhaustive, but includes: plant growth, make Spell-Stitched Undead, haunt shift, unseen servant, fabricate, minor/major/true creation (true creation is obviously the biggest deal because the stuff it makes lasts), animate dead, magic item creation (beyond the Pearls of Power, an Eternal Wand is more magic per day than any minor mark and can contain most of their spells), awaken (including the construct and undead variants), planar binding (ignoring cheese, even something as simple as elementals or formain workers are useful), silent image, the various divination spells that give future knowledge, simulacrum, permanency, various wall spells, animate objects, being one of the monsters that gets native casting, and goodberry.
Looking at this list, some of it is 3.5 material I'd prefer not to use, some of it is already on a mark's list, some of it is handled by something else in Eberron(Karnathi undead) and some of it is just so broken that I can't imagine how it could possibly exist in a society that isn't post-scarcity. I'll try to fit the rest in for one house or another.


And then contrast that to the houses. You can fit the houses to industry okay, though there are some weird things even there. Three different houses are in the mercenaries and/or bodyguards market (Detection, Sentinel, and Finding), despite the fact that it's a tiny market. There's one house that gets all of manufacturing, but trade is split two ways, and the Mark of Shadow is straight up split into two houses. And no one is really doing anything in terms of construction (I guess maybe Warding or Making?) or human resources (except for mercenaries, for which you are just *drowning* in options). The financiers seem to be focused on bank security. Agriculture is split between two groups, neither of which gets plant growth. And so on.

And the overlap between "spells that have a big impact on the economy" and "spells dragonmarks give you" is close to zero. Artificers have dramatically larger economic impact than any of the Dragonmarks without having to do anything beyond waking up in the morning.
Some houses would have bigger impacts than others with the proposed rules. Using the existing spells, Greater Making still produces tons of goods, Greater Passage is as good at transporting people as a small plane, Lesser Hospitality feeds around a thousand people in an 8-hour day at the level you get it and can make it taste good with Prestidigitation, Lesser Healing means that disease and injury can be basically eliminated, even Least Shadow makes for decent entertainment. Other houses need adjustment.


And a lot of the impact of Dragonmarks basically comes down to "the DM makes some stuff up". As far as I know, there's no *rules* for how much your crops benefit from favorable weather, and as a result no real way to say whether disrupting a contract negotiation between the House of Storms and some farmers would be worthwhile in pursuit of some larger goal. And so on for sabotaging a lightning rail line, raiding a dragonshard mine, or restarting a creation forge. All the economic impacts are a big ???.

Basically, I just don't think the system as a whole holds up to any real scrutiny, despite the premise of the setting inviting that very scrutiny. For Eberron to work as a setting, you have to either avoid using magic on the economy (which is a deeply bizarre choice when the whole premise of the setting is that people do exactly that), accept that the setting will go down like a house of cards when someone pokes it with planar binding, or redesign the whole thing rather radically.
Worldbuilding is hard. I don't really know what else to say. I'll try, but at some point I'll just have to say "I didn't think of that" and either houserule it or let the players break something.


Actually I was talking about Medani (the second Half Elf mark). Tharashk has resource extraction, which is a totally reasonable thing for an international conglomerate to be doing. Also I think they're bounty hunters, not private eyes?
Oh yes, they're a useless house. I should just put Zone of Truth or Discern Lies on another list and replace them with a house of Illusionists or something.

[Troacctid]

The fix that I'm planning to try out in my next Eberron game is making dragonmarks use recharge magic (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/rechargeMagic.htm). That way, you can draw a clear delineation between spells that have a general or a specific recharge time, so that your dimension leap recharges quickly, but mount always takes 6 hours. This mostly solves your #4 problem.

[RoboEmperor]

For what it's worth, I think Mark of Making is OP as it is. Access to Summon Marked Homunculus, arguably one of the best or is in fact THE best 1st level spell in the game, and Make Whole which is a cleric exclusive spell made available to non clerics.

[Cosi]

That is a good point. I don't really mind it being used strategically, teleporting people from one city to another, but the crazy precision it gives could be problematic. I will say that the ability to fetch an expert generally shakes out the same as playing with instant communications. Most of the uses you mention will involve a teleport that is either "seen casually" or "viewed once", which give a chance of screwing up. I realize that the consequences are low, but I think that could be fixed.

You could have the Greater Mark of Passage's teleport only go between locations where there's a special magic gizmo built by House Orien. That keeps it useful economically, but minimizes its impact on adventuring. Maybe give them limited daily uses of full teleport, and make the restricted version once per ten minutes.


It could be 4/5 progression, or give bonus dragonmark feats as well.

Honestly, the class doesn't really do all that much. You get two bonus feats, two extra spell slots, and some minor bonuses. That's barely better than taking Wizard levels in 3e, and with PF's bonuses to single-classed characters, it might be worse. I would give it full progression for casters. It gets thornier with non-casters because all of their stuff is class features, so I might just put a note that you'll work with any player who wants to take it to ensure they aren't put behind after it finishes. Really, the game needs to have a more modular system for abilities that are bigger than a feat, but smaller than a class.


I like having a lot of marks, because I'm planning a intrigue campaign, so the more factions the better.

Sure, but the Dragonmark Houses aren't great for intrigue because there's relatively little overlap between them. House Dwarves is the only one with an interest in banking. House Cannith is the only one with an interest in manufacturing. A smaller number of factions with greater overlap would probably be a better driver for intrigue. At minimum, I would rework the houses so that there's at least two or three with overlapping but distinct interests in any given industry. For all that "mercenaries" is a tiny slice of the economic pie that cannot possibly support the three multinational conglomerates that are apparently involved in it, that's at least enough interested parties for you to tell intrigue stories with enough factions to be interesting where the factions all care.

At minimum, I would want to make sure each house had some kind of interest in somewhere between two and four major industries. So Deneith could branch out into weapons manufacturing and maybe have a broader focus on labour-intensive industries like construction or agriculture, and Sivis could pick up more focus on finance and banking, and so on. You probably also want to carve out some space for non-dragonmarked players in each industry.


Symbol of Death for the communications house? Why?

It's the Mark of Scribing, so that actually makes a decent amount of sense. You kinda need stuff like that if you're going to manage to get adventurers and businessmen out of the same type of powers.


For example, changing Handling to Nature and giving it Plant Growth or giving Shadow a public face of entertainment through illusions and communications through bidirectional scrying. However, they don't have to cover everything, I'm fine with Defence being handled by governments directly rather than a dragonmarked house being the military-industrial complex.

I actually think all the houses that sell people mercenaries and bodyguards are trying to be Defense industry types, it's just that while "mercenaries" can be an important part of a D&D campaign, they don't really matter in the broader context of national defense. I could easily see House Cannith selling the various nations magical superweapons too.


For what it's worth, I think Mark of Making is OP as it is. Access to Summon Marked Homunculus, arguably one of the best or is in fact THE best 1st level spell in the game, and Make Whole which is a cleric exclusive spell made available to non clerics.

People are not exactly knocking down Cleric's doors for access to make whole. As far as summon marked homunculus goes, since that's totally independent of the powers the Dragonmark actually has, I'm not sure I find it a compelling argument that the Dragonmark is broken.

[RoboEmperor]

People are not exactly knocking down Cleric's doors for access to make whole. As far as summon marked homunculus goes, since that's totally independent of the powers the Dragonmark actually has, I'm not sure I find it a compelling argument that the Dragonmark is broken.

Doesn't change the fact that Make Whole is still an awesome spell and if you have to grab a dragonmark, might as well grab the mark that gives you something you don't have access to.

It's not independent of the Dragonmark because it's exclusive to that dragonmark. It just has an additional requirement that you need to be a spellcaster instead of just grabbing the feat so I disagree. Summon Marked Homunculus is part of the Dragonmark.

[Afgncaap5]

You should be doing that for all the players though, regardless of whether they have Dragonmarks. Also, it's a fine line between "rewarding people who have Dragonmarks" and "screwing people who don't have Dragonmarks". It's far better for the game if the Dragonmark is viable without the DM offering you extra benefits.

I totally agree on that point, (I mean, a character with the Run feat who never has to race through a Dungeon as it collapses is being poorly served.) Having said that, I also think that it ruins the world immersion a bit if the world never features places that couldn't have more options accessible. It might not always be easy to get a dragonmarked Hireling from Vidalis to go into the dungeon controlled by the Children of Winter, but when players go that extra mile and find something cool they love it. My advice is to make that kind of thing an optional perk instead of anything story-essential, naturally.

[Troacctid]

Doesn't change the fact that Make Whole is still an awesome spell and if you have to grab a dragonmark, might as well grab the mark that gives you something you don't have access to.
I can't remember the last time I thought "Boy, I really wish my character had Make Whole right now," or "Wow, if one of my players had Make Whole, they could really break this adventure in half." The best use I think I've ever seen for it was breaking down a door and then fixing it afterwards for politeness's sake. How is it an awesome spell?

[TiaC]

So, I'm resurrecting this thread with my thoughts on the Dragonmarked Houses. I'll list the house, say what they do and then give my thoughts as to how they work as economic entities.

House Cannith - Human- Mark of Making, Manufacturing, Maintenance. This is a massive amount to give to a single house. It is somewhat offset by the house being divided, but the house doesn’t need any other business and could use a few more competitors.
House Deneith - Human- Mark of Sentinel- Bodyguards, Mercenaries. This house has a lot of competitors, a narrow set of interests, and nothing they do really needs a dragonmark. It’s hard to say why they would be better than anyone with PC classes unless the mark is given powerful in-combat options. Possible solution: Add divination of the future-predicting sort to them, give them additional guild, the Foreseers Guild. Fits the name because Sentinels see things coming and react to them. Refocus them to be more lawmen than mercenaries. Fewer direct protection powers. (Possibly base Foreseers in Zilagro where they run Minority Report style precrime.)
House Ghallanda - Halfling- Mark of Hospitality, Shelter, Comfort, Food and Drink. They have fingers in a few pies. They compete with the agriculture houses for food, and shelter competes with construction. Some of their options might give a bit of healing. Generally good, but I should check if they make agriculture pointless.
House Jorasco - Halfling- Mark of Healing, Medicine. They do one thing and they do it well. No real competition. Not sure if I object to this, they seem to just replace the role occupied by churches in most settings.
House Kundarak - Dwarf- Mark of Warding, Warding, Banking. Abilities are way too focused on one kind of protection. They do nothing to help with banking beyond security. Another house that has a very weak hold on it’s business. Possible solution: ?
House Lyrandar - Half-elf- Mark of Storm, agriculture, shipping/transport, weather. They do a lot of things, and they do them pretty well, once they’re given a plant growth effect. They have good political hooks. All in all, good.
House Medani - Half-elf- Mark of Detection, bodyguards, investigators, sentries. Another house in a crowded market that doesn’t have powers all that useful for some of what they’re supposed to do. Possible solution: Rename to Mark of Sight, add illusions and light effects. Pare them back to investigators, then add in entertainment and lighting.
House Orien - Human- Mark of Passage, transport, postal service, shipping. Narrow focus, and some competition. My biggest issue is that easily available teleport means that players won’t use other modes of transportation. Many of their options are personal only. Might need a fix, might not be interesting enough.
House Phiarlan - Elf- Mark of Shadow, Entertainment, Espionage. Espionage is a weird thing to have a non-governmental body do. I can’t see any nation trusting the House. Entertainment is fine, useful thing to do. Some communications or transportation potential as written. A lot of options, but I can’t see the main business working out. Needs work. I sort of like the idea of making them very unfocused, so they would generally be a worse knockoff of another house, but they can compete with a lot of them.
House Thuranni - Elf- Mark of Shadow, Same as above, but less of a public face. Needs more to set them apart.
House Sivis - Gnome- Mark of Scribing, Diplomacy, some communication, documentation. Pretty limited for what they are. I think that they need to do more. Possible solution: Give them more communication, printing, and education. Make them the media and teachers.
House Tharashk - Half-Orc- Mark of Finding, Prospecting, investigation, mercenaries, bit of diplomacy. Yet another mercenary house. This house has all the divination that would actually be useful to Medani. Prospecting is good. Diplomacy is unrelated to the actual mark, but an interesting add-on. Possible solution: only need two of Deneith, Medani, and Tharashk, one should be replaced. Expand Mining part of house?
House Vadalis - Human- Mark of Handling, Agriculture, some transport, some military sales. Should be broadened a bit and given more ability to compete. No real ability to produce meat effectively. Transport has its niche, but it’s not much of one.

Possible replacements:
Mark of Animation or Changing: Give them Stone Shape-like spells to reshape materials. Compete with Cannith, but would mainly handle construction. Could likely add more to them.

Most Houses are either fine already or can be fixed with a bit of refocusing. However, there are too many houses in the investigators and mercenaries market. I could probably fold Deneith into Medani, Kundarak and Tharashk to work on that. I'm also considering breaking up Orien and giving it's business to other houses. I'm not too fond of the Houses handling espionage and mercenaries, as I'd prefer that sort of thing to stick with countries. With regards to new houses I used this list (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_industry#Major_industries) to look at major industries that were not covered, and manufacturing was what stuck out to me. If I needed another, I'm not sure what I'd use.

[Cosi]

Doesn't change the fact that Make Whole is still an awesome spell and if you have to grab a dragonmark, might as well grab the mark that gives you something you don't have access to.

For the vast majority of people with Dragonmarks, every Dragonmark grants access to things they don't have access to.


It's not independent of the Dragonmark because it's exclusive to that dragonmark. It just has an additional requirement that you need to be a spellcaster instead of just grabbing the feat so I disagree. Summon Marked Homunculus is part of the Dragonmark.

It's independent of the Dragonmark because it does its thing regardless of what abilities the Dragonmark has. You could change all the SLAs for the Mark of Making to whatever you think the worst spell in the game is and summon marked homunculus wouldn't be any worse as a spell.


House Cannith - Human- Mark of Making, Manufacturing, Maintenance. This is a massive amount to give to a single house. It is somewhat offset by the house being divided, but the house doesn’t need any other business and could use a few more competitors.

I agree about the competition, but I think "Manufacturing" is actually a pretty appropriate scale for the interests of something that is supposed to be on par with a Cyberpunk MegaCorp. These things are intended to have a huge presence in the economy that effects everyone's lives. The problem is the ones that do things like "put on high end plays" or "act as bodyguards", not the one that does manufacturing for every industry.


House Deneith - Human- Mark of Sentinel- Bodyguards, Mercenaries. This house has a lot of competitors, a narrow set of interests, and nothing they do really needs a dragonmark. It’s hard to say why they would be better than anyone with PC classes unless the mark is given powerful in-combat options. Possible solution: Add divination of the future-predicting sort to them, give them additional guild, the Foreseers Guild. Fits the name because Sentinels see things coming and react to them. Refocus them to be more lawmen than mercenaries. Fewer direct protection powers. (Possibly base Foreseers in Zilagro where they run Minority Report style precrime.)

That works. I do think there's room for one guild of mercenaries, and Deneith is as good a fit as any. Another direction (which I may have mentioned) would be giving them a monopoly in low-skill labor which would include things like "dudes with swords", but also construction, agriculture, and maybe shipping.


House Ghallanda - Halfling- Mark of Hospitality, Shelter, Comfort, Food and Drink. They have fingers in a few pies. They compete with the agriculture houses for food, and shelter competes with construction. Some of their options might give a bit of healing. Generally good, but I should check if they make agriculture pointless.

I think they're intended to be innkeepers, not involved in construction or food production per se. I certainly think Agriculture and Construction are way better industries for them to be involved in on basically every level than Hospitality, so this seems like a good way to run things. As far as making agriculture pointless, I think the obvious point of differentiation is cheap low quality food for the masses versus expensive food for the elite. I could see Ghallanda ending up on either end of that, via either "use create food and water and that magic item that feeds people to make lots of tasteless gruel" or "use heroes feast to make expensive but high quality food which also gives you buffs".


House Jorasco - Halfling- Mark of Healing, Medicine. They do one thing and they do it well. No real competition. Not sure if I object to this, they seem to just replace the role occupied by churches in most settings.

I don't really see the point of having them be a Dragonmarked House if they don't compete with someone over something, but at the same time I'm not sure that justifies removing them. If I was redoing things from scratch I'd probably have the same mark do necromancy and healing so that they could have zombie laborers, but Karrnath could do zombie laborers.


House Kundarak - Dwarf- Mark of Warding, Warding, Banking. Abilities are way too focused on one kind of protection. They do nothing to help with banking beyond security. Another house that has a very weak hold on it’s business. Possible solution: ?

I like bankers for divination and seeing the future personally. I imagine you could get some nonsensically complicated financial derivatives if you had multiple parties using augury or similar to make trading decisions. You could also shift them away from banking and give them some of the earth magic that's useful for construction.


House Lyrandar - Half-elf- Mark of Storm, agriculture, shipping/transport, weather. They do a lot of things, and they do them pretty well, once they’re given a plant growth effect. They have good political hooks. All in all, good.

Yeah, these guys are fine. I do think it's probably worth figuring out where their competitive advantage versus Orien lies, but that probably comes after you nail down what each house is trying to do. Could also give them goodberry if you're stepping up their agricultural stuff, and maybe add shambler to the Siberys mark.


House Medani - Half-elf- Mark of Detection, bodyguards, investigators, sentries. Another house in a crowded market that doesn’t have powers all that useful for some of what they’re supposed to do. Possible solution: Rename to Mark of Sight, add illusions and light effects. Pare them back to investigators, then add in entertainment and lighting.

That's fine I guess? I do agree that this house needs to be scrapped entirely. I might wait until you have the other houses figured out, then backfill them to doing stuff in whatever market doesn't have enough players in it.


House Orien - Human- Mark of Passage, transport, postal service, shipping. Narrow focus, and some competition. My biggest issue is that easily available teleport means that players won’t use other modes of transportation. Many of their options are personal only. Might need a fix, might not be interesting enough.

I think the problem here is kind of a conceptual one -- what the hell does the Lightning Rail have to do with teleport? teleport is a reasonable enough magic power and trains are definitely a viable path to economic power in the industrial revolution (though personally I think "magic trains" is dumb and pointless, but YMMV), but connecting those dots requires some effort.


House Phiarlan - Elf- Mark of Shadow, Entertainment, Espionage. Espionage is a weird thing to have a non-governmental body do. I can’t see any nation trusting the House. Entertainment is fine, useful thing to do. Some communications or transportation potential as written. A lot of options, but I can’t see the main business working out. Needs work. I sort of like the idea of making them very unfocused, so they would generally be a worse knockoff of another house, but they can compete with a lot of them.

I think there's room for a house of information brokers. That could plausibly be a divination house instead of these guys, but that's something that can exist. Also fixers are a thing, but risks running into the problem of "how the hell is this an economically dominating multi-national". I think "Entertainment" is probably a thing you can base a house off of (look at how big a deal Disney is socially and culturally), and I can imagine good plots happening that are driven by a play that some major political figure cares about for any number of reasons.


House Thuranni - Elf- Mark of Shadow, Same as above, but less of a public face. Needs more to set them apart.

I would just merge them. There's really no reason to have two houses with the same mark, and I think all the plot points the split generates work fine if you declare that the inner council of the house is just backstabbing the crap out of each other constantly. Also random mechanical note, I would probably change Shadowcraft Mage to be open to people with the Mark of Shadow because obviously.


House Sivis - Gnome- Mark of Scribing, Diplomacy, some communication, documentation. Pretty limited for what they are. I think that they need to do more. Possible solution: Give them more communication, printing, and education. Make them the media and teachers.

If you pushed House Dwarf into construction you could make these guys bankers (although that risks hitting some really uncomfortable connotations). I actually think that communication is a totally reasonable thing to base a house off of -- lot of powerful corporations are Telecoms or Internet companies, and getting information from point A to point B (particularly securely) has implications to basically everything, especially warfare.


House Tharashk - Half-Orc- Mark of Finding, Prospecting, investigation, mercenaries, bit of diplomacy. Yet another mercenary house. This house has all the divination that would actually be useful to Medani. Prospecting is good. Diplomacy is unrelated to the actual mark, but an interesting add-on. Possible solution: only need two of Deneith, Medani, and Tharashk, one should be replaced. Expand Mining part of house?

This is a case where you have a very strong concept -- they extract natural resources -- but a pretty meh execution. I think you could easily cut out basically everything but "they do mining", rebuild from there, and get a viable house.


House Vadalis - Human- Mark of Handling, Agriculture, some transport, some military sales. Should be broadened a bit and given more ability to compete. No real ability to produce meat effectively. Transport has its niche, but it’s not much of one.

There are enough weird magical creatures in D&D that breeding weird magical creatures should be a viable business plan, but it feels like you've picked a set of interests that are too similar to House Lyrander. Not really sure how to fix that. Too be honest there are too many goddamn houses and you should probably drop a couple to avoid issue


manufacturing was what stuck out to me. If I needed another, I'm not sure what I'd use.

I don't think there's an existing house that has a super strong reason to be in manufacturing, but I agree that's something you want. Maybe look at what you could use magic for in manufacturing and work backwards from there?

[TiaC]

I agree about the competition, but I think "Manufacturing" is actually a pretty appropriate scale for the interests of something that is supposed to be on par with a Cyberpunk MegaCorp. These things are intended to have a huge presence in the economy that effects everyone's lives. The problem is the ones that do things like "put on high end plays" or "act as bodyguards", not the one that does manufacturing for every industry.
That's a good point, they definitely have a scope appropriate to a multinational body comparable to nations. My issue was more that I kept coming across things that were described as a joint project of Cannith and another house. The other houses should be able to do what manufacturing in their own sectors without needing to rely on Cannith.


That works. I do think there's room for one guild of mercenaries, and Deneith is as good a fit as any. Another direction (which I may have mentioned) would be giving them a monopoly in low-skill labor which would include things like "dudes with swords", but also construction, agriculture, and maybe shipping. I think in this paradigm, low-skilled labor would be done through Unseen Servant type spells. I'm also leery of giving that to a house, as that creates the question of "What do most people do?" which leads to a much more punk setting. I would prefer to leave unskilled labor as something that unhoused people do for the most part, just so I don't have to work too hard to figure out how the labor market works.


I think they're intended to be innkeepers, not involved in construction or food production per se. I certainly think Agriculture and Construction are way better industries for them to be involved in on basically every level than Hospitality, so this seems like a good way to run things. As far as making agriculture pointless, I think the obvious point of differentiation is cheap low quality food for the masses versus expensive food for the elite. I could see Ghallanda ending up on either end of that, via either "use create food and water and that magic item that feeds people to make lots of tasteless gruel" or "use heroes feast to make expensive but high quality food which also gives you buffs".
I know that's what they were intended to be, but the spells they were given are ones that create food ex nihilo and conjure temporary, yet well-appointed shelter. I could have them specialize in luxury more, but as is, a dragonmarked scion is an inn by themselves. So, higher end food and pseudo-construction (It would work out like high-end apartments. I suppose I could give them effects that would create alcohol and drugs or even alchemy as well.



I don't really see the point of having them be a Dragonmarked House if they don't compete with someone over something, but at the same time I'm not sure that justifies removing them. If I was redoing things from scratch I'd probably have the same mark do necromancy and healing so that they could have zombie laborers, but Karrnath could do zombie laborers.
Not much competition, but I think that the Health care industry is a big enough area to have a House. I don't want to go undead because that's really staked out as Karrnath's thing.


I like bankers for divination and seeing the future personally. I imagine you could get some nonsensically complicated financial derivatives if you had multiple parties using augury or similar to make trading decisions. You could also shift them away from banking and give them some of the earth magic that's useful for construction.
I like the idea of construction for them. Leave warding as a sideline would mean that they would still have a minor interest in banking. Could also give them the prison industry. (There's a Dragon article about a Kundarak prison)


Yeah, these guys are fine. I do think it's probably worth figuring out where their competitive advantage versus Orien lies, but that probably comes after you nail down what each house is trying to do. Could also give them goodberry if you're stepping up their agricultural stuff, and maybe add shambler to the Siberys mark.
I think I'd rather let farming remain more divided, and not make any house too good at it. (Or maybe what I'm trying to say is that I'd like it if Houses were Monsanto, not Dole. They sell services to the farms and exert great influence that way, but farms are still independent to some degree.)



That's fine I guess? I do agree that this house needs to be scrapped entirely. I might wait until you have the other houses figured out, then backfill them to doing stuff in whatever market doesn't have enough players in it.
I could combine them with Phiarlan and Tharashk.



I think the problem here is kind of a conceptual one -- what the hell does the Lightning Rail have to do with teleport? teleport is a reasonable enough magic power and trains are definitely a viable path to economic power in the industrial revolution (though personally I think "magic trains" is dumb and pointless, but YMMV), but connecting those dots requires some effort.
Yeah, that was one of my problems. I had assumed the Lightning Rail belonged to Lyrandar. But I also like to be able to tell stories during travel, and that's difficult if teleport is this easy. Then if you look at the rest of their powers, half are Personal spells.


I think there's room for a house of information brokers. That could plausibly be a divination house instead of these guys, but that's something that can exist. Also fixers are a thing, but risks running into the problem of "how the hell is this an economically dominating multi-national". I think "Entertainment" is probably a thing you can base a house off of (look at how big a deal Disney is socially and culturally), and I can imagine good plots happening that are driven by a play that some major political figure cares about for any number of reasons.
Information brokers work to a degree, but that's a better fit for one of the divination houses. Being fixers is either social magic or divination again, and most social magic has ethical issues that would make people very suspicious of them. Entertainment seems like a good role. Give them Major image and cheap crystals that let a user project a pre-made illusion and you have movie theaters.


I would just merge them. There's really no reason to have two houses with the same mark, and I think all the plot points the split generates work fine if you declare that the inner council of the house is just backstabbing the crap out of each other constantly. Also random mechanical note, I would probably change Shadowcraft Mage to be open to people with the Mark of Shadow because obviously.
There's this kind of nice 13-1 motif running through the setting. I could try to keep that by just saying that they really are the same, it's just that the branch in one area isn't talking to the rest of the house. So, just don't bother trying to set them apart.



If you pushed House Dwarf into construction you could make these guys bankers (although that risks hitting some really uncomfortable connotations). I actually think that communication is a totally reasonable thing to base a house off of -- lot of powerful corporations are Telecoms or Internet companies, and getting information from point A to point B (particularly securely) has implications to basically everything, especially warfare.
My problem with them wasn't what areas they are interested in, it's how bad their canon powers are at doing anything in those areas. Communication, printing, and education are probably enough, but I could also give them some form of magically binding contract.


This is a case where you have a very strong concept -- they extract natural resources -- but a pretty meh execution. I think you could easily cut out basically everything but "they do mining", rebuild from there, and get a viable house.
Yeah, especially since Dragonshards are the oil of the setting, so mining for them is a strong backbone for a house. I think I'll keep their powers as divination though.


There are enough weird magical creatures in D&D that breeding weird magical creatures should be a viable business plan, but it feels like you've picked a set of interests that are too similar to House Lyrander. Not really sure how to fix that. Too be honest there are too many goddamn houses and you should probably drop a couple to avoid issue
Well, ranching and farming don't have much overlap and trains, planes and boats don't have much overlap with bikes and cars. Lyrander gets you to a city, Vadalis gets you to a final destination.


I don't think there's an existing house that has a super strong reason to be in manufacturing, but I agree that's something you want. Maybe look at what you could use magic for in manufacturing and work backwards from there?
Well, that was a typo. Cannith does manufacturing. What I meant was construction, because Cannith isn't great on that scale.

[Mordaedil]

Reading over dragonmarks, since they seemed interesting, but are these actually supposed to be used by players? The book seems to describe them as birthmarks that are hereditary through houses or family-lines. Doesn't that put them firmly in under DM purvey? I'm kinda surprised at how expansive it is, considering how disconnected from regular adventurers reach it is.

[OgresAreCute]

Reading over dragonmarks, since they seemed interesting, but are these actually supposed to be used by players? The book seems to describe them as birthmarks that are hereditary through houses or family-lines. Doesn't that put them firmly in under DM purvey? I'm kinda surprised at how expansive it is, considering how disconnected from regular adventurers reach it is.

They can manifest at any time (which is why you don't have to start with the feats). As long as you're the correct race and willing to spend some feats on it, they are easy to get for any class.

[Cosi]

My issue was more that I kept coming across things that were described as a joint project of Cannith and another house. The other houses should be able to do what manufacturing in their own sectors without needing to rely on Cannith.

I don't think that's entirely a bad thing. Yes, business on the scale the houses are supposed to be should probably be big enough that Deneith isn't stuck working with Cannith to arm their footsoldiers, but having joint projects between the houses is something that should absolutely happen. That gives you good plot hooks and creates opportunities for intrigues and economic manipulations. If Cannith partners with Kundark to build a magic ATM, that's a project that has a bunch of different people with different success and failure states which means that the players have lots of opportunities to deploy complicated plans to do whatever it is they're trying to do. The real problem here I think is that (I assume) there are way less joint projects between House Mark of Handling and House Mark of Detection.


I think in this paradigm, low-skilled labor would be done through Unseen Servant type spells. I'm also leery of giving that to a house, as that creates the question of "What do most people do?" which leads to a much more punk setting. I would prefer to leave unskilled labor as something that unhoused people do for the most part, just so I don't have to work too hard to figure out how the labor market works.

Deneith could act as force multipliers for and managers of unskilled labor. Essentially something like a massive temp agency, backed up by magics that let people work faster and longer. People would still work, but when they worked on a large project, they do so under the (at least nominal) supervision of House Deneith.


Not much competition, but I think that the Health care industry is a big enough area to have a House. I don't want to go undead because that's really staked out as Karrnath's thing.

There's this kind of nice 13-1 motif running through the setting. I could try to keep that by just saying that they really are the same, it's just that the branch in one area isn't talking to the rest of the house. So, just don't bother trying to set them apart.

Dragonmark Houses, I think, want to hit a fairly high number of reasonably exacting criteria, which I think makes it difficult to get up to 13 houses, particularly if you want to fit with the setting's numerological motif. A Dragonmarked House should hit most or all of the following before I'd consider it to be fit for purpose (possibly more):

1. The House needs to do business in a sector large enough that a multinational specializing in that sector could plausibly exist.
2. The House needs to do business in a sector diverse enough that it has the opportunity for conflict with other organizations, preferably other Dragonmark Houses.
3. The House's Mark needs to grant an ability that is plausibly economically useful for people trying to do business in whatever sector it works in.
4. The House's Mark needs to grant abilities that are useful for the PCs.

I think the only RAW house that does all of those is Cannith. Manufacturing is a big sector, there's enough variety in manufacturing that you could imagine them competing with Lyrander over making airships or Karnath necro-smiths using haunt shift, fabricate and friends are useful tools for manufacturing, and fabricate is something adventurers care about. I think you could probably come up with some more things that fit all of those, but if you're trying to do that while keeping up the setting's numerological motif you're going to have some trouble.

If you really want to keep the 13 motif going, I think you'd have to have something like a split between "minor" and "major" houses where the Major houses were ones that were firing on all cylinders, and the Minor houses weren't economic powers and instead just did whatever business they could do with their adventurer-centric powerset. Probably a 5/8 split, which gives you room for somewhere between 2 and 6 non-House economic powers doing things like binding elemental servitors, casting unseen servant a bunch, or whatever you come up with. Probably also have a minor House whose powers have recently become very useful (Finding is a good candidate for this if you massage things so that Dragonshards only became useful recently) for new blood/old blood conflicts.


Yeah, that was one of my problems. I had assumed the Lightning Rail belonged to Lyrandar. But I also like to be able to tell stories during travel, and that's difficult if teleport is this easy. Then if you look at the rest of their powers, half are Personal spells.

It's definitely an issue. Telespam isn't a bad economic strategy, but applying it at scale isn't super consistent with the industrial revolution.


Well, that was a typo. Cannith does manufacturing. What I meant was construction, because Cannith isn't great on that scale.

That's true. But there probably should be a House (or something) that competes with Cannith in manufacturing because that lets you do adventurers about industrial espionage or sabotage. "A Cannith scion hires you to go steal the plans for a new manufacturing process" is a solid hook, and I think the setting loses something if that has to be an internal Cannith struggle.

[Nifft]

The real problem here I think is that (I assume) there are way less joint projects between House Mark of Handling and House Mark of Detection.

House Bodyguards should have plenty of use for House Trained Animals.