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Melamoto
2010-01-23, 12:50 PM
The Shadowcaster: A long misunderstood class, left at the bottom of the pile when it comes to casters, being considered by some to be the worst full-caster you can get. And they're mostly right.

But there is one combination that actually works very well. It uses a little mystery known as Umbral Touch. This is a touch attack that deals 5d6 damage and can slow an enemy, a number of times equal to your caster level. Nothing too spectacular, a decent damage attack for low level characters. But this neat mystery is also an apprentice mystery, meaning that at Shadowcaster level 13, it counts as a Supernatural Ability. That makes it practically a mundane attack, unable to be Counterspelled, Dispelled, no Somatic Components, no ASF, and no Spell Resistance. It can only be stopped by an AMF. But it's still just a melee touch attack with 5d6 damage, I hear you say. Just hold on. You only have to be a:

Shadowcaster 5/Assassin 5/Arcane Trickster 9/Fighter 1

Firstly, you take the 5 Shadowcaster levels. Hide and Move Silently are class skills for you, so you are ok to take Assassin at level 5. Arcane Trickster, regrettably, requires 3rd level arcane spells and mage hand to take, but it advances any spellcasting class. So you gain 3rd level spells from Assassin and Mage Hand from the Spell Hand feat (CArc). After that, you take Arcane Trickster to 19, advancing Shadowcasting to 14. The important thing about this is that it gives 7d6 Sneak Attack damage as well.

Pick up the Two-Weapon Fighting tree. The level of fighter is there to provide you with the feat at level 20. If you have another means of receiving Greater TWF at level 20, then I'd be glad to hear of it to improve the build. This gives you 6 attacks.

Finally, you take Reach Mystery multiple times, or buy up some lesser reach metamystery rods. This gives your Umbral Touch the ability to use all of its attacks at a 30' range.


The end result of this is that in any situation where you can sneak attack, you can make 6 Umbral Touch attacks for 12d6 damage each. Assuming optimized enough attacks to always hit with a ranged touch attack when the enemy has no dex bonus, that means 72d6 damage, an average of 252, splittable among 6 enemies, with a save vs Slow on each just to add insult to injury. This is a 30' ranged touch attack, which can almost never be stopped. On top of that, you have the rest of your 14th level Shadowcasting, 5th level Assassin casting, and excellent sneaking.

This is not a cheesy build; if it was then it would easily be dealing more than 1000 damage. It is simply a way to add effectiveness to an otherwise underpowered class. You get to deal great damage, act as a group scout, and have a set of utilities, which include 7th level Greater Shadow Evocation, and some nice travel mysteries. All in all, very playable.


Any questions, opinions, improvements to the build, or reasons why
it doesn't work?

Foryn Gilnith
2010-01-23, 12:53 PM
How well does it work at around level 10-ish, when you're shadowcaster 5/assassin 5?

Pharaoh's Fist
2010-01-23, 12:54 PM
What happens when you can't sneak attack an enemy?

ShneekeyTheLost
2010-01-23, 12:57 PM
Swordsage replaces two levels of Arcane Trickster. Here's why:

1: Pouncing Strike. You get to jump in and full attack with all your touch attacks, maximizing damage output from round 1

2) Island of Blades. Makes it a lot easier to flank with your buddies

3) Assassin's Stance. When you don't need Island of Blades, this will let you get +2d6. At a loss of +1d6 Sneak Attack from 2 levels of Arcane Trickster. Net of +1.

Melamoto
2010-01-23, 12:59 PM
How well does it work at around level 10-ish, when you're shadowcaster 5/assassin 5?

It has an interesting power curve. It starts off slightly lower than the good classes, stays that way until level 6, where it starts to drop slightly. After level 11, then it begins to rise in power fairly quickly.

The good news is that between level 5 and 11, you still have a decent amount of use to the party. You have great sneaking power the whole time, and start to get some SA damage from Assassin. If you have Spell Compendium, then your Assassin spells are a boon as well. The build is at its weakest at this point, but you're hardly worthless to the group with what you've got.

Melamoto
2010-01-23, 01:04 PM
Swordsage replaces two levels of Arcane Trickster. Here's why:

1: Pouncing Strike. You get to jump in and full attack with all your touch attacks, maximizing damage output from round 1

2) Island of Blades. Makes it a lot easier to flank with your buddies

3) Assassin's Stance. When you don't need Island of Blades, this will let you get +2d6. At a loss of +1d6 Sneak Attack from 2 levels of Arcane Trickster. Net of +1.

Looks good, and you will start with an initiator level of 15 thanks to 13 PrC levels and 5 base class levels. It will need to replace the level of Fighter as well to keep the build at its maximum effectiveness. Otherwise, you lose 13th level Shadowcasting, and so Umbral touch goes down to a Spell-Like usable 2/day each time chosen, wasting mysteries. This also means you'll need a way to get an extra feat at 20, or go down to 5 touch attacks each round.


What happens when you can't sneak attack an enemy?You cast Sight Eclipsed and sneak attack them.

Foryn Gilnith
2010-01-23, 01:05 PM
You cast Sight Eclipsed and sneak attack them.

That doesn't work too well against undead, constructs, plants, oozes, things with heavy fortification, things with concealment...

EDIT: But I'm being too critical. You have a neat little build here, and shows why people oughtn't to assume Shadowcaster completely useless.

ShneekeyTheLost
2010-01-23, 01:09 PM
Looks good, and you will start with an initiator level of 15 thanks to 13 PrC levels and 5 base class levels. It will need to replace the level of Fighter as well to keep the build at its maximum effectiveness. Otherwise, you lose 13th level Shadowcasting, and so Umbral touch goes down to a Spell-Like usable 2/day each time chosen, wasting mysteries. This also means you'll need a way to get an extra feat at 20, or go down to 5 touch attacks each round.You also loose the BAB able to qualify for it as well, I believe, if you dump the level of Fighter. However, you are correct in that it destroys the build to dump two levels of AT.

You have miscalculated the IL. If you take Swordsage at 19-20, then it has an IL of 11. IL = 1/2 non-initiator levels, even if they are PrC's.


You cast Sight Eclipsed and sneak attack them. And what happens if they are undead/constructs/oozes/plants/anything else immune to precision-based damage?

Starbuck_II
2010-01-23, 01:28 PM
Shadowcaster qualifies for Arcane Trickster in the magic department. They have mage hand as a spell.

But yeah you'd need Assasin's Strike to get Arcane Trickster Sneak attack.

Melamoto
2010-01-23, 01:36 PM
You also loose the BAB able to qualify for it as well, I believe, if you dump the level of Fighter. However, you are correct in that it destroys the build to dump two levels of AT.

You have miscalculated the IL. If you take Swordsage at 19-20, then it has an IL of 11. IL = 1/2 non-initiator levels, even if they are PrC's.

And what happens if they are undead/constructs/oozes/plants/anything else immune to precision-based damage?

If you are using Fractional BAB, then you have +11 BAB at level 20. If not, then it is indeed +10.

I'm a bit confused when it comes to that; on page 39 of ToB it says "In most cases, you add the full prestige class level to your martial adept level to determine your initiator level. See the prestige class descriptions in Chapter 5 for details." There is no information on non-martial adept PrCs in there, so I assumed it just applied to all PrCs.

You indeed suffer from the traditional issues when facing enemies immune to sneak attack. However, you still deal 30d6 damage with the attack overall, for an average of 105 damage. You also have all of your other mysteries on top of that, so you still have utility.


Shadowcaster qualifies for Arcane Trickster in the magic department. They have mage hand as a spell.

But yeah you'd need Assasin's Strike to get Arcane Trickster Sneak attack.Technically, they have Umbral Hand as a Mystery; and Arcane Trickster specifically says you need arcane spells, which any non-arcane casters, even ones which function exactly as them, cannot be considered to have. And so you can't do it. If your DM will let you do it though, then you can simply take 3 levels of Rogue, and work from there.

Starbuck_II
2010-01-23, 03:17 PM
Technically, they have Umbral Hand as a Mystery; and Arcane Trickster specifically says you need arcane spells, which any non-arcane casters, even ones which function exactly as them, cannot be considered to have. And so you can't do it. If your DM will let you do it though, then you can simply take 3 levels of Rogue, and work from there.
They cast spells like arcane spells.
Check pg 138. They are arcane spells. Otherwise it wouldn't requre somatic components.

Why did you think they weren't arcane?

Edit: Pg 117 disagrees with page 138... the heck?

Melamoto
2010-01-23, 03:24 PM
They cast spells like arcane spells.
Check pg 138. They are arcane spells. Otherwise it wouldn't requre somatic components.

Why did you think they weren't arcane?

Edit: Pg 117 disagrees with page 138... the heck?

They cast Mysteries that are like arcane spells. They act like them, but they aren't arcane spells. There is no disagreement; page 138 simply explains how your highest tier of mysteries follow the same rules as arcane spells. It does specifically mention how mysteries interact with spells, which implies they're different.