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Matamane
2009-12-30, 02:57 PM
Is there any good Shadowcaster builds.

Also can Artificers make Shadow Magic Items?

mabriss lethe
2009-12-30, 03:05 PM
There's a shadow caster fix somewhere that makes them a lot better to play out of the box. (removes a lot of the screwy progression limitations and makes their powers per encounter instead of per day) Straight from ToM, I've found that they tend to make excellent npc adversaries, since their stamina isn't an issue, and their abilities are quite often...confounding.

Noctumancers are some of the best denial casters about. (they make counterspelling a worthwhile endeavor.)

I have no idea about artificers, but they probably should be able to (just basing their umd check off the level of the mystery instead of the level of the spell.) Maybe tack on that -4 modifier that crops up so much in shadow magic.

Uin
2009-12-30, 03:07 PM
Artificers can emulate "spells" under their Item Creation (Ex) class feature so technically no.

However you could reverse engineer how Shadowcasters qualify for PrCs (as long as the PrC only specifies spells and not arcane or divine spells, similar to warlocks). Also there is a Psionic artificer variant in Magic of Eberron so there could be a Shadow artificer variant too.

gorfnab
2009-12-30, 03:21 PM
I suggest reading through this: Descent of Shadows (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=74519) for more Shadowcaster info.

peacenlove
2009-12-30, 08:21 PM
Shadowcaster 5 / Master of shadows 10 is a decent build until lvl 15.
Shadowcaster 3 / Wizard 3 / Nocturmancer 10 / Mystic Theurge 4 Is a double nine class And is viable for Prerocious apprentice cheese (meaning you can take 2 levels less of wizard and replace them with mystic theurge with that feat from complete arcane).
From the Descent of Shadows project linked above the abyssym is a very strong class and the fundamentalist is a good dip at early levels.
Also if you ever DM at high levels Shadowcasters can be a pain to your players cause many of their buffs are either undispellable (supernatural abilities) or resist dispels with a +4 bonus. Especially when you exchange Dragon spellcasting with shadow casting and / or introduce spells from the spell compendium as mystery paths.
As mabriss lethe mentioned there are many simple ideas scattered on this forum to make the shadowcaster a better class. Although what he also lacks is variety of mysteries (only 60 + 9 on the cityscape web enchantment).