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Cieyrin
2009-10-26, 04:37 PM
I was looking at an old character of mine, who happens to be a Human Paladin 4/Rogue 2/Shadowbane Inquisitor 4 and I was reading over the Shadowbane Inquisitor PRC from Complete Adventurer and two things caught my eye. The first being Absolute Conviction, which basically says that if I drop the alignment requirement that I retain all class abilities. The second is the Fallen Inquisitors section, which states that Shadowbane Inquisitor levels stack with Paladin for gaining bonus stuff as a Blackguard.

So, I got to thinking of the high level possibilities and considered that if he maxes out Shadowbane Inquisitor (Paladin 4/Rogue 2/Shadowbane Inquisitor 10) and were twisted during the time and took up the mantle of Blackguard, some questions are raised here on how this works out. While an Inquisitor will retain their abilities for losing the Lawful Good alignment, the levels of Paladin will not and losing Paladin means losing Turn Undead and Detect Evil, which are requirements to get into Inquisitor. According to Complete Warrior, pg. 16, if you lose the requirements to get into a prestige class, you loss the class features of that prestige class, meaning the abilities of Shadowbane Inquisitor also go away. This just leaves you with levels you can use for powering up Blackguard.

Now, this is just the RAW interpretation but I think that by RAI you should be able to retain Shadowbane Inquisitor's abilities if you change alignment via Absolute Conviction. This would lend itself to meaning that when my Paladin 4/Rogue 2/Shadowbane Inquisitor 10 took his first level of Blackguard, I could drop 3 levels of Pally via the Blackguard's Favored of the Dark Deities and become Paladin 1/Rogue 2/Shadowbane Inquisitor 10/Blackguard 4, with all the Fallen Paladin perks and advance from there, with 5 extra smites for the punishing of the 'corrupt' and turn attempts through Blackguard to power Pierce Shadows and Burning Light.

So, thoughts? Have I made a logical stumble somewhere along the line that makes this incorrect? Any ideas on improving upon this in making an eviler dark champion?

SurlySeraph
2009-10-26, 06:25 PM
Yep, it works just like that. I've seen the concept of a Shadowbane Inquisitor who became a Blackguard without even realizing it tossed around as a BBEG.

T.G. Oskar
2009-10-26, 09:19 PM
I was looking at an old character of mine, who happens to be a Human Paladin 4/Rogue 2/Shadowbane Inquisitor 4 and I was reading over the Shadowbane Inquisitor PRC from Complete Adventurer and two things caught my eye. The first being Absolute Conviction, which basically says that if I drop the alignment requirement that I retain all class abilities. The second is the Fallen Inquisitors section, which states that Shadowbane Inquisitor levels stack with Paladin for gaining bonus stuff as a Blackguard.

So, I got to thinking of the high level possibilities and considered that if he maxes out Shadowbane Inquisitor (Paladin 4/Rogue 2/Shadowbane Inquisitor 10) and were twisted during the time and took up the mantle of Blackguard, some questions are raised here on how this works out. While an Inquisitor will retain their abilities for losing the Lawful Good alignment, the levels of Paladin will not and losing Paladin means losing Turn Undead and Detect Evil, which are requirements to get into Inquisitor. According to Complete Warrior, pg. 16, if you lose the requirements to get into a prestige class, you loss the class features of that prestige class, meaning the abilities of Shadowbane Inquisitor also go away. This just leaves you with levels you can use for powering up Blackguard.

Now, this is just the RAW interpretation but I think that by RAI you should be able to retain Shadowbane Inquisitor's abilities if you change alignment via Absolute Conviction. This would lend itself to meaning that when my Paladin 4/Rogue 2/Shadowbane Inquisitor 10 took his first level of Blackguard, I could drop 3 levels of Pally via the Blackguard's Favored of the Dark Deities and become Paladin 1/Rogue 2/Shadowbane Inquisitor 10/Blackguard 4, with all the Fallen Paladin perks and advance from there, with 5 extra smites for the punishing of the 'corrupt' and turn attempts through Blackguard to power Pierce Shadows and Burning Light.

So, thoughts? Have I made a logical stumble somewhere along the line that makes this incorrect? Any ideas on improving upon this in making an eviler dark champion?

Technically, you wouldn't qualify by any means if you lose the ability to Detect Evil, but in the case of the Shadowbane Inquisitor turned Blackguard specific trumps general: you retain your class abilities (along with all other benefits such as BAB, saves, skill points and HD), but also gain the ability to treat Shadowbane Inquisitor levels as Paladin levels for Blackguard. It would be a halted progression, though: you'd only get Shadowbane Inquisitor abilities for the actual levels you retain, which means you would only be capable of sacrificing Paladin levels for Blackguard levels. So no, no logical stumble as far as I can see: the text of keeping class abilities and the extra bit for Fallen S.I. preclude the loss of abilities and/or the inability to use those levels. Granted, if you were to sacrifice a Shadowbane Inquisitor level, it would be lost forever.

To make it better, Champions of Ruin would be a good start. Having Sneak Attack levels means probable access to Craven. Also, any divine feats that still work (such as those feats that require turn or rebuke undead) are still solid choices. Recall that, since the Blackguard now rebukes undead, you can get any feat that enhances the power of undead, and since you get an undead companion with those fallen Paladin/SI levels, you can use it to enhance it. Also, it's technically reasonable to replace all the Paladin levels for Blackguard levels, since you'll need all the power you can.

One final thing: for fiendish servant, get a fiendish bat or dire rat. Then see if you can somehow tame a Nightmare into service. The Nightmare will be tougher to control, but at least you can have three things that you control; sure, the undead companion is a tad weak and so does the fiendish servant, but together they can be an interesting combination.

Cieyrin
2009-10-27, 12:19 PM
Technically, you wouldn't qualify by any means if you lose the ability to Detect Evil, but in the case of the Shadowbane Inquisitor turned Blackguard specific trumps general: you retain your class abilities (along with all other benefits such as BAB, saves, skill points and HD), but also gain the ability to treat Shadowbane Inquisitor levels as Paladin levels for Blackguard. It would be a halted progression, though: you'd only get Shadowbane Inquisitor abilities for the actual levels you retain, which means you would only be capable of sacrificing Paladin levels for Blackguard levels. So no, no logical stumble as far as I can see: the text of keeping class abilities and the extra bit for Fallen S.I. preclude the loss of abilities and/or the inability to use those levels. Granted, if you were to sacrifice a Shadowbane Inquisitor level, it would be lost forever.

To make it better, Champions of Ruin would be a good start. Having Sneak Attack levels means probable access to Craven. Also, any divine feats that still work (such as those feats that require turn or rebuke undead) are still solid choices. Recall that, since the Blackguard now rebukes undead, you can get any feat that enhances the power of undead, and since you get an undead companion with those fallen Paladin/SI levels, you can use it to enhance it. Also, it's technically reasonable to replace all the Paladin levels for Blackguard levels, since you'll need all the power you can.

One final thing: for fiendish servant, get a fiendish bat or dire rat. Then see if you can somehow tame a Nightmare into service. The Nightmare will be tougher to control, but at least you can have three things that you control; sure, the undead companion is a tad weak and so does the fiendish servant, but together they can be an interesting combination.

So we're saying Rogue 2/Shadowbane Inquisitor 10/Blackguard 5, instead of keeping a level of Pally? Well, I was keeping primarily for the final extra smite but Blackguard 5 gets me a smite AND the fiendish servant, so that works out better than I initially planned.

For the Nightmare, that would probably be an application of Leadership to pick up a Nightmare as your cohort. If we make it as our Fiendish companion, that makes it a ECL 12 cohort, meaning a minimum Leadership of 17, which we get by virtue of being 17th level plus whatever Charisma mod I have available at that time. Thus, we get an enhanced Nightmare mount as our Fiendish Companion instead of a bat or rat that could get handily squashed.

Kudos on the other recommendations, I'll have a looksey about appropriate Divine feats and also possibly look up Craven as well. Given how mountish the character sounds to be getting, I'm not sure how often I'll be getting that Sneak damage, so I'll have to see.

Thanks for the opinion. :smallbiggrin: