Tweaking Classes for Cooler Characters, Parts Deux

As I was gearing up for preparing this week’s game, I reviewed the player’s ‘satisfaction levels’ with their characters. By tackling this early this week, I might be able to address any issues before Friday’s game.

For those who follow the antics of my gaming group (either from my logs or from a Yan’s) you probably noticed that everything is going pretty smoothly for Eric (Book of 9 Swords’ Crusader), Franky (Iron Heroes’ Archer) and Math (Single class Mashup of Duskblade and Arcane Archer).

Also, from a fluff perspective, Yan enjoys playing Lillie (Pixie Sorcerer) quite a lot. More on this in a potential later post as we both are entertaining a few interesting crunch tweaks to make his character concepts fit more with the mechanics.

However, Stef has confirmed that the Dragon Shaman (From the Players Hanbook II) lacks the Oomph he expected from his character. He’s been spending the last 2 games being the group’s punching bag and occupying other tankish functions. His buffing auras, while interesting on paper, really don’t have that much of an effect on fights (and are often forgotten by the other players).

You see, on top of the fact that the class lags behind newer ones on the current power curve, one of the biggest problems with the Dragon Shaman is the glaring discrepancy between the Crunch and the Fluff of this class. The Dragon Shaman is presented as a “Power Hungry Glory-Hound” while it’s class mechanics pegs it as more of a Supporting/Buffing character with auras, breath weapon, medium armour, simple weapons and some healing powers.

Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with the Dragon Shaman, I’d say he sits near or a little over the Bard on the power scale. But what Steph wanted is a class whose Crunchiness corresponds to the Dragon Shaman’s Fluff. Which he doesn’t have right now. And a player that doesn’t enjoy is character is not a happy one in the long run.

Aside: In my opinion, a kickass Support class should be built along the lines of the Druid, whose spells and animal companion makes him a wicked powerful and versatile character.

So I decided to offer a complete re-engineering of Stef’s character. After bouncing a few ideas about tweaking the Dragon Shammy, I realized that what Steph wants is a hard hitting character similar to the 3 other fighter-types of the group, along with a cool flavour of its own. I’m pretty sure that what Stef wants might be better served with a completely different character.

To maintain the draconic flavour of his character, I suggest he takes a character with 3 racial levels of the Half-Dragon racial class. As for the 5 remaining levels, He should take them in the Barbarian (to fit with the Shaman’s savage flavour), Fighter (Feats!!!) or Warblade (A class similar to the Crusader, also from the Book of 9 Swords).

Post publication Aside: Hi, yeah I usually revise posts 4-5 times in the following 8 hours of publication… Anyhoo, the more I think about it, the more I believe the Barbarian is the way to go. The high Str and Con scores make up for the 3 ‘lost levels’ and are synergistic with the Meta-breath feats Stef can take from the Draconomicon.

Finally to tweak the class just a bit more to reach the ‘coolness’ level of the others, I’d consider changing the character’s breath weapon from a 1/day to 1/encounter (or even to a “every 1d4+1 rounds”). At 6d6 damage with a reflex save, it’s pretty much in line with the other ‘powers’ in the party.

Once again, by doing this, I think I’ll have a happier player. And happier players makes for better games.