Book Club: Player's Handbook II

[Darg]

You do actually unless they have some way to boost their stuff. Clerics can buff themselves up, Druids can buff themselves up. Swordsages get a lot of things so that they're only using their main attack bonus. PsyWars also have lots of self buffs. Rogues have ways of stacking a bunch more damage, and even then they require a TON of work to make decent. Monks are... pretty awful. The combat loop for almost all those classes doesn't involve using their BAB, most of them involve buffing themselves. You see that in PF1E, where they had buffed them.

You're comparing a noncaster with casters and pseudocasters. Not really a fair comparison there. I was never arguing the dragon shaman's power level, just the fact that they aren't actually more boring or incapable compared to other similar classes. I could argue about your characterizations of rogues and monks, but you said nothing about how they are more interesting than the dragon shaman other than the rogue does more damage, with a lot of work.

Clinging breath lasts exactly two rounds

You can stack the effect multiple times on the same breathe. You can make it last as long as you want with the corresponding number of rounds of delay for your next use.

You're thinking of Entangling Exhalation.

While I did mention breath channeling feats in my original post, clinging breath does allow those affected to take a full-round action to attempt another save to remove the effect and with a +2 if they drop prone

That lasts for a maximum of four rounds, and does only 1d6 damage per round. Damage which isn't maximized by Maximize Breath since that explicitly doesn't modify any of the other effects of the damage.

Entangling Exhalation allows your breath to do half damage initially and then 1d6 per round of entanglement. The half damage would be maximized, but the original example was clinging breath and not exhalation.

Heightened only affects the saving throw.

You'll be waiting FIVE additional rounds, so you could be waiting NINE rounds before you get to breath again. And you've spent every single feat you have on that. Every one. You can't get Metabreath feats till level 6, since you don't get your breath weapon till level 4.

Edit: what you can do is take the feat multiple times to make it last longer... But it's halving the damage every round. And you'd have to take the feat NINE times to have it last ten rounds.

You should reread the stacking rules for metabreath feats. You don't have to take the feat multiple times; you just use them multiple times on the same breath, stacking the effect and penalty.

Clinging breath doesn't halve your damage, it does half the damage every round after the first. The whole point of the heighten is to make it incredibly difficult to simply remove the effect or reduce the initial damage in the first place (which subsequently reduces the damage per round). So if I had CON 20 and heightened to +5, the total delay in rounds until I could use the breath again from my example is 1d4+17. Though, it would be unlikely that I'd need to use the breath again after that.

I mean you can build a tripping fighter, a charging fighter, a variety of different ranger builds. Paladin gets a bunch of love and options with SotAO and a few other options. They're also a little underwhelming though.

You can do a whole bunch of different things with dragon shaman based on their unique mechanics just like you are doing with all of those.

Ubercharging is a really fun mechanic. Barbarian intimidation can be really fun. Barbarians get a lot of really fun Prestige Classes. I mean those are all fun options.

Ubercharging is only fun if your DM only ever gives you flat fields and never any difficult terrain or obstacles. Not to mention all the the ways tanking your AC can be heavily exploited to flat out kill you BEFORE you attack. Dragon shaman can pump intimidation too as it's a class skill. PRCs are fully under the purview of your DM. Never are you guaranteed to have a PRC nor are splatbooks the only source of legal PRCs. In fact you are even encouraged by the DMG to design and tailor your own for your campaign.

Where are you getting those feats? You don't have the feats to spare for even charging much less the BAB. You're spending all your feats on your metabreath.

You don't need a feat to charge. The only thing that makes ubercharging stand out is that a barbarian ACF grants a feature more powerful than an epic feat at level 1. Otherwise, it's literally just charging with more attack rolls.

The Dragon Shaman doesn't get "unlimited use of dragon's breath." You're thinking of the Dragonfire Adept. The Dragon Shaman gets likely one breath a combat.

Edit: Dragon Shaman is a class that could have had a lot of potential. But it just misses the mark. DFA is the class that really fulfills that fantasy in a pretty awesome way.

Baseline the breath can be used after 1d4 rounds. If you roll a 1 there is no delay as durations end just before the initiative count they were started on. And while dragon shaman can forego the likelihood of multiple breaths, it can provide a lot of damage and options for that one breath that the DFA just can't (unless you are allowed to pick up metabreaths).

DFA is inherently a selfish class. Everything it does is for itself. Sure it gives you a more breath focused experience, but at the same time you miss out on the PHB2 auras, draconic adaptation, touch of vitality, medium BAB, and armor proficiencies of the shaman. Ultimately they are just completely different classes that fulfill completely different roles and playstyles. To say that DFA is the class that fulfills the dragon breath maniac fantasy is true, but dragon shaman was never intended to be that so comparing the fantasies just doesn't work.