Hyooz
2010-02-08, 05:13 PM
I have a fair amount of spare time on my hands these days, so I thought this might be fun. The purpose of these posts is to provide a basic examination of Wizards created prestige classes; from the broken to the bad, the interesting to the boring, I intend to step through these classes and detail what, to me, makes them worth taking or not. While I call it level by level, it'll mostly be class ability by class ability. I won't talk about recurring abilities multiple times, but I will talk about the class ability in its entirety. I hope these posts can be of service to those seeking to create their own homebrew, and maybe an interesting forum for discussion of mechanics and design in general. If nothing else, it'll help me kill time, which is just fine by me. Since a good amount of this stuff will be licensed, I won't provide the actual class abilities in the posts, but I'll provide the book the class comes from for reference.
We'll kick this off with a DMG classic -
The Shadowdancer
Requirements: The requirements here are pretty basic, easy for a rogue-type to get into. A few feats you might have anyway, and a bunch of skills you might have anyway, save Perform, but you have the points lying around to grab that no problem. All in all: you need to give up a few skill points, maybe a less than ideal feat, but for the class, the requirements aren't terrible.
Hide in Plain Sight: Woo, we have a doozy at level 1. There's a reason this class is popular for dips. HiPS is pretty awesome, by all accounts. It's limited by a bit of a shadow clause, but really, there's always shadows. So you can always hide, which is pretty baller. It's like invisibility, but with a skill check, and the enemies better hope they've cranked up their spot check. Overall, this is a 9/10 level.
Evasion, Darkvision, Uncanny Dodge: Second level is nice to certain entry methods, but redundant for others. If you came in as a rogue, you'll have evasion already (which does not get bumped to improved evasion, sad day) and Uncanny Dodge (which again, does not improve, but can be improved if you take rogue levels later, which is... weird.) Darkvision is handy, and outside of races or spells or magic items, hard to come by. In all likelihood, though, darkvision isn't that great. Still, not a bad level. 6/10
Shadow Illusion, Summon Shadow: Silent image in itself is a nice spell to have, but once a day? Another issue, though small: how is the DC determined? This might come up useful sometimes, but a first level wizard spell once a day? The summoned shadow, however, makes up for it. Even if it can't make spawn, shadows are handy things to have around. Hope it doesn't ever die, though, since you'll lose some piddling XP and this class ability for a month. 6/10
Shadow Jump: Teleporting is always handy, especially for melee classes. This is basically a really limited Dimension Door, which comes with the same standard action use, which kind of kills making this an awesome ability. Kick it down to a swift and Shadowdancer might be a little more popular beyond level 1, but as is, it's probably just as easy, if not preferable, to just take a move action. 5/10
Defensive Roll: This is another neat ability nixed by restrictions. If you could use this against all attacks, this would be really powerful, or even 1/round and you're cooking, but when it comes to a blow that could kill you, and all you're doing is halving the damage (upon making a Reflex save DC equal to the amount of damage you would take... which might just be straight up impossible) you want some more out of a 5th level PrC ability. Oh, and you can't use it when you're denied Dex to AC, y'know, when you might REALLY need it. 3/10
Improved Uncanny Dodge: Eh. It's nice, but kind of blase. Not a bad level, but nothing exciting. 5/10
Slippery Mind: This one is hard to really decide on. It's basically a reroll one round later, but only against enchantment spells you've already failed a save to. That's so... specific, and in all reality, you've already spent around being dominated or charmed or what-have-you. It just won't come up overly often, unless you're fighting a lot of the right monsters/enemies. Not a bad ability, but super specific, and still kind of underpowered at this level. Make it all mind effecting abilities, and make the second save the same round, and you might have something here. I might be crazy, but eh. 4/10
Improved Evasion: Good ability, no doubt. Way too late in the game, though. Should allow the first evasion to stack with evasion you come in with, and include a real capstone. You hit level 10 here, and your reward is Improved Evasion and a little more distance on Shadow Jump? That's boring. 5-6/10 on its own, but as a capstone ability 4/10
In the end, you have a prestige class designed for rogues (or at least rogue-types, but this is a DMG PrC, in the end. Rogue and... maybe ranger would get in here with any rapidity.) that doesn't advance sneak attack, and in all reality doesn't give you that much to make up for it, excepting Hide in Plain Sight, which is quite good. The problem there, however, is that they stuck Hide in Plain Sight, the biggest, baddest class ability you get here, at first level. If it was a 5th level ability, you might get people to take 5 levels of this pretty easy. Shadow Jump and Summoning Shadows are nice bonuses to get along with HiPS. Just not worth killing sneak attack for after getting HiPS. A classic problem of front-loading a prestige class. Happens to the best of us.
A good spread, in my mind, is key to a good PrC. I have a personal bias toward good capstone abilities, and it's always nice to start out with something worthwhile, (I'll talk about the Pale Master later. Oh boy.) so if you get that down, and the middle is passably worthwhile, you have a solid basis for a good PrC.
We'll kick this off with a DMG classic -
The Shadowdancer
Requirements: The requirements here are pretty basic, easy for a rogue-type to get into. A few feats you might have anyway, and a bunch of skills you might have anyway, save Perform, but you have the points lying around to grab that no problem. All in all: you need to give up a few skill points, maybe a less than ideal feat, but for the class, the requirements aren't terrible.
Hide in Plain Sight: Woo, we have a doozy at level 1. There's a reason this class is popular for dips. HiPS is pretty awesome, by all accounts. It's limited by a bit of a shadow clause, but really, there's always shadows. So you can always hide, which is pretty baller. It's like invisibility, but with a skill check, and the enemies better hope they've cranked up their spot check. Overall, this is a 9/10 level.
Evasion, Darkvision, Uncanny Dodge: Second level is nice to certain entry methods, but redundant for others. If you came in as a rogue, you'll have evasion already (which does not get bumped to improved evasion, sad day) and Uncanny Dodge (which again, does not improve, but can be improved if you take rogue levels later, which is... weird.) Darkvision is handy, and outside of races or spells or magic items, hard to come by. In all likelihood, though, darkvision isn't that great. Still, not a bad level. 6/10
Shadow Illusion, Summon Shadow: Silent image in itself is a nice spell to have, but once a day? Another issue, though small: how is the DC determined? This might come up useful sometimes, but a first level wizard spell once a day? The summoned shadow, however, makes up for it. Even if it can't make spawn, shadows are handy things to have around. Hope it doesn't ever die, though, since you'll lose some piddling XP and this class ability for a month. 6/10
Shadow Jump: Teleporting is always handy, especially for melee classes. This is basically a really limited Dimension Door, which comes with the same standard action use, which kind of kills making this an awesome ability. Kick it down to a swift and Shadowdancer might be a little more popular beyond level 1, but as is, it's probably just as easy, if not preferable, to just take a move action. 5/10
Defensive Roll: This is another neat ability nixed by restrictions. If you could use this against all attacks, this would be really powerful, or even 1/round and you're cooking, but when it comes to a blow that could kill you, and all you're doing is halving the damage (upon making a Reflex save DC equal to the amount of damage you would take... which might just be straight up impossible) you want some more out of a 5th level PrC ability. Oh, and you can't use it when you're denied Dex to AC, y'know, when you might REALLY need it. 3/10
Improved Uncanny Dodge: Eh. It's nice, but kind of blase. Not a bad level, but nothing exciting. 5/10
Slippery Mind: This one is hard to really decide on. It's basically a reroll one round later, but only against enchantment spells you've already failed a save to. That's so... specific, and in all reality, you've already spent around being dominated or charmed or what-have-you. It just won't come up overly often, unless you're fighting a lot of the right monsters/enemies. Not a bad ability, but super specific, and still kind of underpowered at this level. Make it all mind effecting abilities, and make the second save the same round, and you might have something here. I might be crazy, but eh. 4/10
Improved Evasion: Good ability, no doubt. Way too late in the game, though. Should allow the first evasion to stack with evasion you come in with, and include a real capstone. You hit level 10 here, and your reward is Improved Evasion and a little more distance on Shadow Jump? That's boring. 5-6/10 on its own, but as a capstone ability 4/10
In the end, you have a prestige class designed for rogues (or at least rogue-types, but this is a DMG PrC, in the end. Rogue and... maybe ranger would get in here with any rapidity.) that doesn't advance sneak attack, and in all reality doesn't give you that much to make up for it, excepting Hide in Plain Sight, which is quite good. The problem there, however, is that they stuck Hide in Plain Sight, the biggest, baddest class ability you get here, at first level. If it was a 5th level ability, you might get people to take 5 levels of this pretty easy. Shadow Jump and Summoning Shadows are nice bonuses to get along with HiPS. Just not worth killing sneak attack for after getting HiPS. A classic problem of front-loading a prestige class. Happens to the best of us.
A good spread, in my mind, is key to a good PrC. I have a personal bias toward good capstone abilities, and it's always nice to start out with something worthwhile, (I'll talk about the Pale Master later. Oh boy.) so if you get that down, and the middle is passably worthwhile, you have a solid basis for a good PrC.