Ugh. Retcons. No wonder its so confused. So Shadar-kai warlock just wouldn't fit. Oh well. I didn't remember about the first iconics getting their racial feats late.
I remember thinking they were such a mess. At the time I felt the Bladeforged was the best of them, and it rankled that it was Paladin when warforged have no innate synergy with Divine classes. PdK to this day is just ugly but it was a preferably Charisma based fighter? Huh?! Were they mocking us? Sunelf cleric of Amaunator, as we've discussed before, shouldn't have been allowed by anyone paying attention to lore. Shadar-kai... well when first created was fairly lame but now is pretty decent.
Initially, it seemed like all of them were meant to be played as ANY class but the one they started in and that just felt warped. Later it so obviously became a money-grab for +1 hearts.
Well, I think shadar-kai warlock does work. The devs chose assassin shadar-kai, but it is only one of the possibilities for this race. In fact, most shadar-kai societies are supposed to be magocracies, ruled by powerful illusionists. The shadar-kai chain was a thing for fighters, not rogues, in D&D shadar-kai. Of course the base race is very well equipped to be a rogue, but the race does not begin or end with the rogue class. A cleric of Shar would be tremendously thematic (although I hope better equipped in wis than the morninglord xd). And warlock also works, it would be a wonderful opportunity to create a Shadow pact.
Although if we are looking for something truly iconic, warlock is not the best fit for a shadar-kai, no. But it's not inconsistent either, especially with a shadow pact.
It's the same as with bladeforged. The Lord of Blades forges don't just produce paladins. In fact, although paladins serving an evil entity is possible in Eberron, it should not be common. LoB is supposed to produce warforged of three varieties: scout, warrior and magical. Come on, if the devs want they could give us a bladeforged of almost every class lol.
Devs chose paladin for the bladeforged because they wanted to represent a LoB champion; the LoB's favorites. There you have the divine connection that you are missing. Faith is a curious thing in Eberron, divine powers can be gained if you truly believe in something, although that source you believe in is not truly divine. Keith Baker, the creator of the setting, said that he saw magic as a real force in Eberron's cosmology. The way to access that force was either through intelligence and deduction (arcane magic), or through the channel of faith (divine classes), or inheriting drops of that force (like sorc eg). In Eberron it is not even known if the gods truly exist. So, yes, paladins who believe in LoB, or simply in the cause of LoB, can develop that channel to divine force.
As a curiosity, the channel you use to access the force (god, this sounds almost Star Wars lol) determines the type of magical effects you can create, hence the differences between arcane and divine magic, that is, between the different spell class lists. Keith Baker has a tremendously interesting blog where he talks about his vision of Eberron and clears up people's doubts. I don't know if you've read it, but it's worth it if you're interested in world lore. This vision of Eberron magic, so herodox, so different from traditional D&D magic (which assumes that divine magic comes from the gods, while arcane is something completely different from divine) is what shaped the artificer class, which in its original version of 3.5 said (textual quote from the player's manual) "Their magic is neither arcane nor divine, and they are not bound by that classification:"
Paladins, who are as good and lawful, always given me a bit of hives as iconics in the service of LoB, but I understand the devs' reasoning in creating this iconic, and I don't entirely disapprove. I just wish there were more bladeforged variants, because LoB doesn’t just create paladins, and although a LoB-forged champion and his defense of the warforged makes a lot of sense, too much LG is something that... doesn't quite fit.
Morninglord sun elf there is no way to defend it, it is a background error.
Shadar-kai assassins are fine. As I said before, the race is very gifted to be rogue, but in the shadar-kai society there are more possibilities. Emphasizing that they are Netherese, they come from the empire of Netheril, which was an empire of archmages: they have always been ruled by wizards. Even the SK fey of 3.0 were ruled by illusionist wizards.
PDK... yes, most PDKs will have the fighter class. Yes, the majority will be human (although they can be of any race that lives in Cormyr). I understand the charisma thing, they wanted to emphasize being martial leaders, etc. It would have made more sense if they had given ways for social skills to influence combat instead of applying charisma to damage, but hey, this is DDO. That they have ended up being used by paladins and bards is not representatively iconic, but as I said, although the majority of the PDK will be fighters, in this organization there must be members of other classes as well. The truth? What bother me the most about this iconic is its appearance. PDKs are not deformed orangutans! Or they shouldn't be lol
The problem with iconics is that they were created to be a way for people to get to playing MOTU, which was an epic expansion, quickly. Initially they were not going to be useful to play your main character, because they could not be reincarnated. You weren't supposed to play them with classes other than the one that came packaged. An iconic was a closed concept.
Of course, people rejected that. They wanted to play that with their usual characters, with several past lives. They saw no use in a throwaway character, no matter how exotic it was. The devs gave in immediately and "found a way" to add other classes after the first class. They “found a way" to TR a character in them. People liked that, and they immediately forgave devs for what was clearly going to be a mine to sell +1 hearts. I never understood that "we've found a way." Devs have the code, they could have unlinked the first class level the same as they unlinked the others levels. Yes, it may not have been intentional at first, but it's clear to me that Turbine saw the potential of selling hearts with the iconics very early on. People would have been happy with that. For me, however, it was the first thing I disagreed with the company.
And yes, the iconic ones at the beginning were very incomplete. They were missing racial traits, except for the ability adjustments. The morninglord was without a doubt the rarest elf of all the D&D settings, cleric of a human deity, without elven weapon proficiencies, without resistance to enchantments and immunity to sleep lol
Devs fixed all the first iconic ones pretty quickly... all except shadar-kai. I think that not even the devs themselves had very clear about what racial traits that iconic should have lol
