Book Club: Player's Handbook II

[pabelfly]

So this is the Book Club thread. We'll be reading a book in great detail and discussing it, starting with Player's Handbook II. Each week, we'll read one chapter of the book and discuss our thoughts and opinions on what we've read with everyone else.

Chapter One: New Classes

This chapter gave us the Beguiler, the Dragon Shaman, the Duskblade, and the Knight as new base classes. So, what are everyone's thoughts, opinions and comments on the classes and the abilities presented in the book?

[pabelfly]

I tried to have a look around for some discussion on how Player's Handbook II was developed. I found this article where Skip Williams discusses his opinions on the Duskblade, which I will link here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20161031.../cwc/20060905a

I am personally more interested in if there is any material discussing the Knight and the Dragon Shaman

If anyone knows of any articles in a similar vein, or perhaps any related Dragon Magazine articles about Player's Handbook II, I think they could be good to contribute to the discussion as well.

[quetzalcoatl5]

I think the Players Handbook II classes are fascinating from the perspective of each filling one of the roles that would later become codified in 4E, but for the most part they have twists on their approach.

The Duskblade is a striker, but instead of sneak attack, crit fishing, or a flurry of attacks, the striker element comes from channeling arcane magic.

Dragon Shaman is a leader, but uses auras to buff rather than spells.

The Beguiler is a skill monkey, sure, but its combat role is a controller, using illusion and enchantments to debuff or fully incapacitate foes.

The Knight is the only one who feels all that straightforward but it's also one of the rare 3.5 attempts at implementing a marking system that would become a staple of 4E design.

[Bullet06320]

https://web.archive.org/web/20070302.../cwc/20070227x

Dead Levels II article gives a little extra to beguiler, duskblade and knight

[Troacctid]

I'm curious, what do people think of the starting packages and sample encounters for the new classes? If you had to pick a starting package for each class, which ones would you say are the best?

I'm somewhat astonished that none of the beguilers have Diplomacy, to the point where I had to look back and confirm for myself that it is actually a class skill. One of them is also using medium armor and a heavy steel shield without proficiency in either, which is...a bold choice, I gotta say, but I guess if you want to rock a 40% spell failure chance, you do you. I think the human with the trapfinding skills is probably the best one.

The starting packages for dragon shaman don't include which auras they chose, only which dragon. I find that odd. Honestly, all of them look pretty miserable to me. Two of them take Power Attack even though they have +0 BAB. That's so sad. I guess I'd go with the dwarf, which has Shield Specialization instead.

I'll say this for the duskblade starting packages, they all sure do know how to allocate their ability scores. I hate the feats on all of them, though. I'd probably pick the dwarf because I like the spell selection and dwarves at least have solid racial abilities.

The human knight going ham on mounted feats and not having enough money to afford a mount is such a sad thing to me. I think the dwarf is the winner of the three for me, with the most useful feat and the strongest weapon, although I respect the half-orc's higher Strength score.

[Tzardok]

I have had for ages the plan to make dragon shaman variants for all those true dragon types around. Maybe saying it will finally motivate me to do it.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Even before the classes, something I found interesting was that there is a reminder for swift and immediate actions, despite them being around for a few books now. I think it's a good indicator of the main goal of PHBII being as a standalone supplement to the original core that even beginners could use, where you'd need no other book to use it.

As for the classes, I find it interesting to read how they were designed. The beguiler was based on the Warmage but using other schools instead of Evocation, and was aimed at being extremely reactively versatile and always having something it could do, and the Knight was made as a way to give battlefield control to a mundane character. In both cases, they did a great job, and the initial aim was really good too. Both classes feel really unique and attractive.

On the other hand, the dragon shaman was meant as a way to allow a party to adventure without a cleric. And on that point, I must say that it was by far the least successful class in the book. The dragon shaman lacks two things that make the cleric a good class : proactivity, and after-fight utility. In a fight, a cleric always has something they can use their actions on, and after the fight, they can convert any spells remaining to heal their comrades. The dragon shaman, especially in their first levels, has nothing they can really do with their actions except shooting a crossbow, which their class does not help at all. They just hang out with the party. It feels awful, especially when your first proactive ability is the breath weapon dealing 2d6 at level 4. That's as much damage every 1d4 rounds as the rogue does with every single attack. With a save for half! Before level 4, the dragon shaman is a worse bard with no spell. I guess they wanted to rein in the cleric power level, but this is way too much. Maybe the dragon shaman would have been better if it got its improved Lay on Hand ability at level 1, or bard-type spells, or dragonfire adept fire breathing, or all three, which probably wouldn't even put it above beguiler in power level. I think they were trying to make it so that people wouldn't just multiclass in DShaman to grab its best abilities, but it was already prevented by the abilities being so linked to DShaman class level (especially Touch of Healing).
As it is, it fails as a class, both in terms of ease of play and in what it tried to accomplish. I truly believe the cleric-like aura class should have been separated from the dragon-theme. Maybe then they would have had a better design space to make it a truly unique class rather than having to spread its abilities so thin between buffing, healing, dragon skills, fire breathing and natural armor.

The Duskblade is a weird one, just because its power level is so clearly above that of a fighter or a barbarian. But it is masterfully crafted. At that point in 3.5, they already knew about the martial/caster divide, and I think they already gave up on fixing it in this edition. So instead they made it so that magic only helped to improve the combat abilities of the Duskblade. Instead of giving it both spells and combat features, which would make most duskblades focus mainly on the power of spells, they made it so that it was optimal to go in melee and cast touch spells through your blade, giving a true vibe or magic swordsman. It is also well-designed against dip by having its most desirable ability not only be on 3rd level, but all its abilities only working on duskblade spells, but does not feel bad in the first levels since at that point simply being an armored mage already feels awesome. Truly my favorite class in the book, and a great class for beginners, since the floor power level is already pretty high, in the style of the ToB, and the sorcerer method is the easiest one to not be overwhelmed in combat by the number of possibilities.

I'm curious, what do people think of the starting packages and sample encounters for the new classes? If you had to pick a starting package for each class, which ones would you say are the best?

Ooo, new profile pic! The starting packages are a decent way to start a character for true beginners. They do not have any aim at optimization (in fact, they use the same kind of feats as sample NPCs), and really they feel like NPCs too, with little to no personality to them. But really, I think it could have been much better if they included a short paragraph for each explaining the strategies and why the choices are made this way, to make the player understand what they could do to level them up.

I'm somewhat astonished that none of the beguilers have Diplomacy, to the point where I had to look back and confirm for myself that it is actually a class skill. One of them is also using medium armor and a heavy steel shield without proficiency in either, which is...a bold choice, I gotta say, but I guess if you want to rock a 40% spell failure chance, you do you. I think the human with the trapfinding skills is probably the best one.

The beguiler's lore says that they like to lie and are kind of loners, so it's not that astonishing to me, but I agree that it would be a good addition to at least one of them. At least the Investigator. It would give them more personality, since there is no spell choice involved. 13 Cha on the Controller seems a bit low, but it's still the one I'd rather go with.

The starting packages for dragon shaman don't include which auras they chose, only which dragon. I find that odd. Honestly, all of them look pretty miserable to me. Two of them take Power Attack even though they have +0 BAB. That's so sad. I guess I'd go with the dwarf, which has Shield Specialization instead.

I think the fact that they're so sad is because the class itself has issues that make it not suitable for level 1 play (nor after, but especially not level 1). I think if they had wrote a summary paragraph, they might have seen that there was nothing there and might have changed the class itself a bit. It seems like they didn't even think of the aura, which makes the class seem even less the center of the character.

I'll say this for the duskblade starting packages, they all sure do know how to allocate their ability scores. I hate the feats on all of them, though. I'd probably pick the dwarf because I like the spell selection and dwarves at least have solid racial abilities.

Agreed, the ability scores are really good. The feats are definitely there because they do not require too much thinking in combat, since they warned the reader in a previous paragraph that sometimes the Duskblade might feel overwhelmed by having too many options to choose from.

The human knight going ham on mounted feats and not having enough money to afford a mount is such a sad thing to me. I think the dwarf is the winner of the three for me, with the most useful feat and the strongest weapon, although I respect the half-orc's higher Strength score.

What do you mean? They can buy a donkey and charge in battle as a squire to a more experimented but slightly crazy windmill-fighting knight!

[Inevitability]

I'll write up some lengthier thoughts on the classes soon, but until then, I'll leave a very interesting snippet from a web article.

Finally, a few races in the Eberron setting often produce beguilers. Doppelgangers and changelings are foremost among these, and at the DM's discretion, a player with a changeling PC can take beguiler as his favored class instead of rogue. The other force known for its beguilers are the rakshasa. As the rakshasa are known as spirits of deception, a DM may chose to give a rakshasa the spellcasting abilities of a beguiler instead of a sorcerer -- although to gain any of the other class abilities of a beguiler, the rakshasa will need to take levels in the class.

Though wrapped in 'mays' and 'cans', it might be interesting to someone building for a competition on here.

[pabelfly]

So I'm going to try and comment on the classes, but do it in a way where I'm not simply rehashing discussions from the tier list threads.



Beguiler

Beguiler feels like a magical rogue with a focused spell list and no Sneak Attack. In terms of party role, they have extremely similar weapon and armor proficiencies, both have lots of skill points and huge skill lists to take on all sorts of non-combat roles and both can do trapfinding. Main difference is that Beguiler is going to need other people to finish the job.

I had always thought the class was kinda weak against mindless creatures, but it’s not as bad as I had thought prior to reading up on the class. Still, I’d want to pick something else if I was in a campaign predominantly based around, say, undead. Having a solid chunk of your spell list not be usable wouldn't be fun.

Not my thing (I'm more of a blasting man) but a solid class.



Dragon Shaman

One interesting thing I would like to note about Dragon Shaman is that it only existed for four months before we got Dragonfire Adept (PHB II was released May 2006, Dragon Magic was released September 2006). Given how similar their design goals were, it makes me want to speculate that they weren't happy overall with Dragon Shaman, which leads me to wonder what the design and testing process was for the classes in the book, and if Dragon Shaman got through but was later deemed "not good enough".

Power Aura makes me want to do a multiattack + sorcerer build.

I was originally going to complain about breath weapon doing 10d6 at level 20 being more flavour than usable, and would be really hard to optimize. However, while doing some background research for the thread, I found this old article, discussing high-level combat, and at least one of the people involved were involved in design and development of 3e. (here). Now, we can critique how the game was run and how the Balor was used all we want, but if you're playing the sort of game where a Wizard feels the best use of their time is using Quickened True Strike + Manyshot, doing 10d6 damage in an area probably isn't as bad an option as we think it is now.

Last observation, it's kinda weird that True Neutral characters cannot be Dragon Shamans. Makes sense given the alignments of the various MM dragons, but by the end of 3e, we had a bunch of Neutral dragons (Amethyst, Astral, Concordant, Ethereal, Lung, Mist, and Sand).



Duskblade

If I had a newbie, or even someone who wasn't deeply familiar with the rules who wanted to mix up spellcasting and swordfighting, I'd just give them a build with this class. There are stronger options but this gets the job done without undue complexity most gish builds have.

Twilight enchantment is weird to highlight. You can wear light and medium armor and up to heavy shields with no trouble but heavy armor has a minimum 30% penalty. You probably wouldn't want the mobility restriction of heavy armor with your build anyway, never mind a 20% ASF.



Knight

There seems to be a thought that heavier armor means more AC with the devs of 3e. However, the total of max dex bonus plus AC from armor class nearly always comes out to around 8 - you'll only really get higher than that with a race with a really high dex bonus, or if you're rocking some exotic heavy armor like Mountain Plate (at least, before we start book-delving).

It seems like the Knight was designed for tactical 2D combat with attempts to restrict enemy movement, with features like area control, making terrain difficult terrain, and so forth, while combat in 3e actually moves towards **** like flight, tactical teleportation, and so forth. Again, I'm wondering at what sort of playtesting happened during the development of 3e.

A lot of the discussion for the class is "Code of Conduct sucks and makes a weak class worse". That's true, but I look at it as WOTC wanting people to roleplay the whole Knights as Lawful with their Chivalric Code. If you're on-board for that, you want to adhere to the rules and the downsides of the Code of Conduct aren't really relevant.

I like the overall concept of the Knight, even though I think it needs a lot of work to mechanically support its intended use.

[Tzardok]

Last observation, it's kinda weird that True Neutral characters cannot be Dragon Shamans. Makes sense given the alignments of the various MM dragons, but by the end of 3e, we had a bunch of Neutral dragons (Amethyst, Astral, Concordant, Ethereal, Lung, Mist, and Sand).

I think that's just a reflection of the cleric alignment restriction. Clerics after all also can't be True Neutral unless their deity is True Neutral. It is true that there are True Neutral dragon species (and gem dragons are in fact referenced in the adaptation section). On the other hand, as Beni-Kujaku observed, this book seems to be intended to be used even by people with no other books besides core, and so just focussing on the core dragons and not watering down the description with "A dragon shaman worshipping a True Neutral dragon can be True Neutral, even though there aren't any examples of that in the Monster Manual and we won't give you rules for them" makes sense.

[quetzalcoatl5]

So how would y'all expect a four player party with one of each of the PHB2 classes? Nominally you'd have all the main bases covered, but definitely a much lower ceiling in all areas

[Troacctid]

So how would y'all expect a four player party with one of each of the PHB2 classes? Nominally you'd have all the main bases covered, but definitely a much lower ceiling in all areas

Well, in combat, you've got beguiler as a controller, duskblade as a striker, knight as a defender, and dragon shaman as a leader, so it should at least be balanced, but the sticking points are probably going to be that dragon shaman is not a great leader and knight is not a great defender. I'd rather have two beguilers and two duskblades, to be honest.

[pabelfly]

So how would y'all expect a four player party with one of each of the PHB2 classes? Nominally you'd have all the main bases covered, but definitely a much lower ceiling in all areas

Beguiler – would get a feat to add spells and turn into a blaster with little effort. With their extensive skill list, would be the party MVP.

Duskblade – pretty solid already, might get a healing spell or two to improve survivability

Knight – would grab an Anthro form like Lion for good base stats and to innately have pounce even though it isn’t normally a class feature for a Knight. If you can’t use Anthro forms, a volley archer wouldn’t be terrible. Knight’s Challenge boosts all attack rolls and damage against one opponent, regardless of weapon chosen, so that can include a Composite Longbow.

Dragon Shaman – this guy is probably stuck as party cheerleader. Dilate Aura will let them cover most of the field at 60ft radius instead of 30ft, and Double Draconic Aura lets him use two auras at once. Not the most thankful or enjoyable task, but the rest of the party would appreciate it.

[Chronos]

My only criticism with the Duskblade is that their spell list is packed full with rays, but relatively few melee touch spells, so it can be unclear whether rays are supposed to work with their channeling ability. The consensus seems to be that they don't, but they should have made it explicit (and also added more spells that do work). Or made it explicit that it does work, if that was their intention.

Dragon shamans are actually fairly powerful, at least at low levels. I was in a party with one once, and the lion's share of our damage-dealing was the aura that damages enemies that attack you. The problem is just that, as others have mentioned, they can't do anything, beyond just existing. They'd probably be improved by getting their breath weapon earlier (which is useful by virtue of being an area of effect), but that'd still only give them one or two interesting actions per combat. They need something for every round.

Beguiler, I think steps a little too much on the toes of the rogue. I'd have liked the class better if it only had four skill points, lacked Trapfinding natively, but had the Find Traps spell. That way, they could still fill the rogue role in a pinch, but an actual rogue would be better at it. Their spellcasting is fine, though: Full-list spontaneity is powerful, but they make up for that with having a fairly samey list.

And I don't have a problem with the design goals of the Knight, but I feel like it would have been better as a chain of fighter feats, rather than a class. The class has a role, certainly, but I don't feel like it has a distinctive identity.

[Inevitability]

My thoughts on the classes, mostly from a character builder's perspective. Tldr: the PHBII has the best classes that I never want to build with, and if you have new players and want to bring in a new book, let it be this one.

Beguilers
Definitely the class I have the most complicated feelings about. The concept of a skillful trickster is innately appealing, making it an intelligence-based fixed-list caster is a great bit of resonant design. Armored Mage and d6 hit die were good inclusions, Advanced Learning is brilliant (though in this particular case struggles with Shadow spells being clearly superior picks), and I like the ideas behind Cloaked Casting and Surprise Casting.

...but not the execution. Cloaked Casting's bonuses are just too low to be worth seeking out - all the way to level 13 it's just giving you +1 to DC and +2 to overcome SR. Surprise Casting is awful - the idea of a full caster tying in an overlooked mechanic like feints is great, but with Cloaked Casting so weak, it's not worth walking into melee to get. You can't even move-feint-cast without sinking two feats into the strategy. It's frustrating because I could actually see 'feinting caster' become a viable archetype (which would have made the beguiler more distinct from the wizard on top) and instead we got this.

Ultimately I feel like the beguiler's only two real advantages are role compression and ease of play. A 3-player party that needs to fold the face, trapfinder, and controller roles in one PC will love the beguiler. A party full of newbies who don't want to manage spell lists will love the beguiler. But I've only used it in a build competition once, in a very unusual situation where I was stuck with Favored Class (Beguiler) and had a build unusually well-suited to feinting. It's just not a class that I find particular reason to use!

Dragon Shaman
The dragon shaman is so forgettable that I was surprised to turn the page and encounter it instead of the duskblade.

I kid, I kid. But seriously, what's the point of this class? It lacks the armor to be a tank and the weapon proficiencies and BAB to deal damage. It's a healer, but its mechanics discourage healing in-combat. It's a blaster with a breath weapon that hardly outperforms the sorcerer's reserve feat. It's got some very random flavor abilities, but realistically icewalking or permanent endure elements are situational at best. It gets an awful skill list (they had to add knowledge arcana in errata) that prevents it from fulfilling roles like scout or face even with a favorable draconic totem. It feels like it exists for players who want to be a dragon, and it was a great choice for that... for all of four months before the Dragonfire Adept got printed.

The dragon shaman isn't a powerless class: it can contribute to combat, to exploration, to social interaction - but it can't resolve those situations in the way a rogue can just pick a lock and a bard can just charm a guard. It is condemned to perpetual sidekick-hood. You maxed Hide and got skill focus in it? Well, you still don't have perceptive skills or trapfinding, but I guess you can tag along with the rogue. You've got a breath weapon with a recharge timer on it? Cool, mop up whoever the wizard didn't get. You can heal some but not all status conditions? Eh, it'll free up some of the cleric's slots. Troacctid already touched on the lackluster state of the starting packages, and I think they're emblematic of WotC not being sure what this class actually does.

I've used the dragon shaman once - on a build that could've slotted in any high-Will class and would probably have been better off with a swordsage or binder. Maybe I'll ever desperately need Skill Focus as a bonus feat, and I'll splurge two levels, or maybe one of the wackier Draconic Adaptations is essential to a weird combo, but I don't think I'll ever build a dragon shaman an sich, because the class has nothing to draw you in and nothing to keep you there.

I do like how blue dragon shamans get Ventriloquism at-will, though. It's such an unique ability and I feel like I'd have way too much fun with it if it was slightly better-supported.

Duskblade
Since times immemorial, the duskblade has been the gish-in-a-can base class. This is good, I think such a thing should exist, I understand a lot of people will come up to the table and say 'can I play a magic sword guy' and duskblade is a fine thing to point them towards. It's easy to master, powerful, well-rounded, evocative, and incredibly open to a straight 1-to-20 single-class playthrough. This canned gish has it all: good armor, good martial skill, fun cantrip-likes, free quickened spells, and a very powerful channel ability: but canned is canned.

The duskblade is a cleaner, less complicated gish than a stalwart battle sorcerer, or a snowflake wardance bard, or a jade phoenix mage, or a knight phantom. But it's so much less interesting to me. There's not much room for customization in duskblades, no possible optimization as impressive as the built-in Full Attack Arcane Channel Arcane Strike Vampiric Touch.

The existence of the duskblade has made D&D a better, more accessible game. But it doesn't excite me. I don't see the duskblade and start thinking about all the cool things I could be doing with it. I don't look for ways to overcome its flaws or amplify its strengths, because it doesn't need either. I've only once made a build with duskblade, and when I did, it was a 1-level dip, made to get Arcane Attunement more than anything. The rest of the class can stay right where it is.

Knight
I actually don't know what to say about the knight. Is it one of the weakest classes in the game? Yeah. Does it force an incredibly niche sword-and-board-mounted-but-no-charging playstyle? Certainly. Are its higher-level abilities a weird mix of underwhelming debuffs and underwhelming buffs? Of course. If I wanted to play a tank, would I be better off just bringing a crusader or a devoted defender? Without question.

But the knight isn't a bad tank, at the end of the day. Test of Mettle is comprehensive in a way very few tanking abilities are, Bulwark of Defense and Shield Block are pretty fun... The knight can do very little well, but it sure can pull aggro! A lot of 3.5's worst classes fail in the painful way where something else is straight-up doing the same thing better: the monk is a worse unarmed swordsage, the healer a worse cleric, the CW samurai a fighter with pre-selected feats. But the knight is actually doing things that nobody else can replicate - they just aren't enough.

The knight is objectively the worst PHBII class, but it's got a special place in my heart. This is one class that that keeps drawing my attention, pulling me in with a weird mishmash of abilities begging someone to find synergy between them, presenting me with genuinely unique tricks begging to get showcased. I never end up using it, but I hope that one day I can.


Actually, that's not true: I used knight in the E6 round where it was a secret ingredient. But whether I'd say my much younger self did so in a way I'm proud of...

[Dalmosh]

Dragon Shaman always felt more of an NPC class to me, kind of like a Marshal but for savage tribal races like Lizardfolk or Troglodytes. It feels like it's niche is buffing a crowd of dumb, primitive enemy mooks, and its flavour is really niche even for that.

Conceptually it is a stretch to think of a Player wanting to be one when there are so many options to cut out the middle man by playing an actual draconic character or a Dragonfire Adept. Even prior to Dragon Magic, I remember this feeling unappealing compared with being a Cleric of a draconic deity.

[pabelfly]

Conceptually it is a stretch to think of a Player wanting to be one when there are so many options to cut out the middle man by playing an actual draconic character or a Dragonfire Adept.

Dragonfire Adept came out four months after Dragon Shaman.

[quetzalcoatl5]

I will say, thinking about these four classes as a party, that they at least are better balanced compared to other clusters of classes, like say the four base classes from the Miniatures Handbook... In a party of Healer, Warmage, Favored Soul, and Marshall, let's be real about who's doing the heavy lifting. Here, at least each one is doing a distinctly different thing. I know I keep bringing up seeing the classes as a party, but I think it's a lens to look at where the design language had settled by the time the book was printed. With PHB2 we can see that Wizards has figured out a lot about the abuses that some classes had and really reined those in and had mostly identified areas to improve. The Beguiler lacks the game breaking power of a Wizard but plays nice for an intelligent caster who plays tricks more than directly interferes. The Duskblade is a marvel of balanced game design, possessing an incredibly high floor and low ceiling for optimization. The Knight recognized that D&D knew they would need to move to some kind of marking system... and knowing is half the battle. The Dragon Shaman... like I like aura classes, but they needed some more active class features... but at least it was a swing at something they hadn't tried since the Marshall.

[Wildstag]

I know it's not a big contribution, but I love seeing terms generally associated with 4e in this thread (leader, controller, striker, defender). It came about half a year before Tome of Battle, so the precursor to 4e was still in development (before being scrapped with ToB), but its impact is still intriguing.

Duskblade was my first class back in January 2015, and I really loved it. Beguiler was how I started my first foray into the Swiftblade, and that class too is loads of fun. The old thread The Life and Art of Beguiling was a fun read when that link still worked properly. I've always wanted to play a Knight, but they look like they're as limited as the Ranger (allegedly is)... They need a particular kind of enemy to do their signature stuff.

The two main things I wish had been done to duskblades though: their list needed actual touch spells at their higher spell levels. The surplus of rays in the list of 4th and 5th level spells always made me feel like an earlier version of the class had a "ray to touch spell" mechanic. It doesn't though, and that makes it less interesting to play post level 13. Especially since at 13 you get 4th level spells AND Arcane channeling (full attack). The other thing I wish had been made in the class is using the same spell effect on the a target more than once per round. You mostly see people arguing that it's worded so that multiple swings on the same target only transfer the spell once. Overall though, it's a fun class to play.

Dragon Shaman has literally never interested me, and I've only looked at it once, maybe twice. I can't wait to talk about chapter 3 though...

[holbita]

If we are talking classes, I see them divided in two groups.

Duskblade and Beguiler are classes that work in literally every team, if you are not sure who else would be in your party you can probably take them and work well with the rest of the party. Everyone likes those.

And then you have Knight and Dragon Shaman... are they bad classes? yes, most of the time. But then you find yourself on a party where you are the only melee character and are in charge of keeping enemies away from your allies... while not having to worry about someone else being the target of the melee enemies allowing you to trap them around you with no targets to hit except you? oh boy... it's the knight extremely good at that.

Dragon Shaman has it a bit harder, even if we ignore the fact that no, you cannot take their vigor aura with a feat, and give them that niche of at-will healing, they are still missing a lot of stuff, basically they are a mixture of low power abilities that you would usually find in other classes that specialize in them and as such they are much better at them... healing, area damage, buffs, party face, durability, etc. you need cha for healing, con for the breath, and whatever you are going to use for fighting, and even intelligence for skill points if you want to properly do party face roles. You are going to be very hard press to find a place for them... but we played a campaign that mostly happened in the phlogiston (Spelljammer adventure), and that meant that divine casters could not really recover spell slots, suddenly the healing abilities of the dragon shaman looked much more favorable, add the good amount of NPCs that were with us in the ship and those auras were more and more appealing... basically it is hard, but you can find yourself in games where dragon shaman becomes a really good option.

[Chronos]

Making the dragon shaman more powerful, or putting them in a context that's well-suited for them, doesn't really help, because their problem was never power in the first place. Their problem is that they're just boring. If you're aura-ing a party of 5 and shooting poorly with a crossbow, or aura-ing an army of a hundred and shooting poorly with a crossbow, either way, you're not doing anything meaningful. Any aura on that army will easily make you the most powerful member of the army, but it's still boring.

[Wildstag]

On a separate note from Chapter 1 specifically, I want to add that PHB2 credits David Noonan as author on the front cover. Personally speaking, he is my favorite author from 3.5, and he is the author primarily responsible for the Goliaths (my favorite 3.5 race overall), the Illumians, and the Raptorans.

In general, he's a pretty good writer but most of his work appears to have been near the tail end of 3.5. He's listed as the only person under the heading of "Design" in the credits page, but a few other notable names are there as well. Christopher Perkins is listed as Design Manager, and he's still at D&D. Bill Slavicsek is listed as Director of RPG R&D, and he's been all over the RPG scene. Mike Mearls is listed on the Development Team, he himself left only a few months ago.

Several of those names were on the 4e and 5e team, and I think it's fun to look at how the classes in this book relate to classes in later editions. On the first page of the chapter, Beguiler references Warmage. Looking at the current edition, the Beguiler looks like it lent its spell list to the Arcane Trickster archetype for Rogue just as the Warmage's list lent itself to the Eldritch Knight archetype. The Knight feels very similar to what the 4e Fighter looked like, especially in its Bulwark of Defense and Vigilant Defender abilities. It feels like it embodies the idea on some forums that the Defender is just a melee Controller... but it's still 3.5 and that playstyle doesn't really do so much yet. This book clearly laid some foundations for later editions, and I think just from Chapter 1 it sets itself as one of the better books of the edition.

[quetzalcoatl5]

This book clearly laid some foundations for later editions, and I think just from Chapter 1 it sets itself as one of the better books of the edition.

Completely agree! It's fun to look at this snapshot of design language.

[TheHalfAasimar]

I'm just gonna pop in and say, the PHBII probably has my favorite class names. I think that Duskblade and Dragon Shaman are just cool names, and whoever was in charge of naming them should get a raise. But then again, in my head, anything with 'dragon' or 'blade' in it generally sounds cooler. Beguiler is a good name (better than, oh I don't know, Kineticist, which I know isn't a 3.5e class, but we're talking about class names and why I like them), and while I like the word 'Knight,' the Knight class... it's name is just meh.

[Alabenson]

The Knight really suffers from the designers being so focused on solving one inherent problem with the concept of a tank class (a lack of any sort of "taunt" mechanic in D&D) that they completely overlooked the major problems melee in 3.5 has. The Knight has nothing to do with its actions besides make regular or full attacks, and being pigeonholed into a sword and board style means the Knight is inherently worse at that than other classes. Meanwhile, the Knight doesn't have any viable way of contributing outside of combat due to a complete lack of noncombat abilities, minimal skill points and a particularly anemic class skill list.

Granted, the Knight has a few moderately useful things it can do with its swift actions, but that doesn't nearly make up for its other issues.

[quetzalcoatl5]

You know... if the Dragon Shaman got just a few Draconic Invocations (outside of the ACF)... could have been really interesting. Like this is close enough that they had to have the idea already. Give 'em a small list of medium power options from the Warlock list if they don't have Dragonfire Adept ones ready to go yet. It would have given just a few active options for the character. And if they key off constitution, then it just further incentivizes being this big meaty hp sponge.

[Inevitability]

You know... if the Dragon Shaman got just a few Draconic Invocations (outside of the ACF)... could have been really interesting. Like this is close enough that they had to have the idea already. Give 'em a small list of medium power options from the Warlock list if they don't have Dragonfire Adept ones ready to go yet. It would have given just a few active options for the character. And if they key off constitution, then it just further incentivizes being this big meaty hp sponge.

I still think that all the game balance concerns about constitution-based casters are just way overblown and 3.5 and 5e were fools for not having some. 4th edition had constitution-based warlocks and it served to give the class a very unique sort of niche.

Besides, "the limit on my powers is not how much I can command, the limit is how much my patron can force through my body before it breaks" is just great flavor.

[pabelfly]

I still think that all the game balance concerns about constitution-based casters are just way overblown and 3.5 and 5e were fools for not having some. 4th edition had constitution-based warlocks and it served to give the class a very unique sort of niche.

Besides, "the limit on my powers is not how much I can command, the limit is how much my patron can force through my body before it breaks" is just great flavor.

Pathfinder had the Kineticist which ended up being a CON-based caster of sorts, but was pretty bad.

The closest you can get to a CON caster without third party or homebrew is a Stalwart Battle Sorcerer. You're not casting off CON, but you do have the equivalent of the Barbarian's hit dice, most of a Sorcerer's spellcasting, light armor for better AC, and access to all their ASFs, and only really need to invest in CHA, CON and DEX. Very underrated build on these boards, will have to remake it one day with different flavour.

[Powerdork]

Pathfinder had the Kineticist which ended up being a CON-based caster of sorts, but was pretty bad.

This is mostly because the design figured that the primary way to base the abilities off of Constitution was by letting you deliberately tank your damage capacity to like 1.5 times your level on average, with a small splash at level 1 that gradually diminishes in effect (or even just a flat 5 per level, if your GM is kind enough to give you max HP per HD), because of how you can accept enough burn to effectively tank your Constitution to 4 regardless of what it may have been.


As for Player's Handbook II, I think the best thing they did here was outright print the full spell lists of the beguiler and duskblade in the class description, rather than relegate it to another chapter (as with the hexblade in Complete Warrior, for instance). Just being able to know which spells you can cast while the class description is only a page away is a godsend, especially now that we're in the age of digital collections.

[AMFV]

I still think that all the game balance concerns about constitution-based casters are just way overblown and 3.5 and 5e were fools for not having some. 4th edition had constitution-based warlocks and it served to give the class a very unique sort of niche.

Besides, "the limit on my powers is not how much I can command, the limit is how much my patron can force through my body before it breaks" is just great flavor.

There was that Blood Magus in Complete Arcane that could do some self damage stuff to boost casting. It wasn't very good but it's kind of thematically similar.