The Shadow Shinobi [PEACH]

[randomhero00]

3.x/Pathfinder (more pathfinder, but it wouldn't be hard to convert)

The Shadow Shinobi is a master at blending in. He or she does not wear black clothes except in the most extreme of situations (and why should they? They have power over night.) They often carry concealed blades so that you can't even tell they're dangerous. Women make especially good Shadow Shinobi as they are simply less likely to be searched or spotted by guards.

Shadowlands: Shadow Shinobi are souls somehow lost in the shadowlands. They found their way back to the material realm to find redemption or find their way to the plane of their choice.


D8

SKill points: 4 + int

Special: Wisdom replaces strength for fighting with kukris, katans, syycles, throwing knives as well as CMD and CMA whilst wielding the former.

Shinobi
{table=head]Level|Base Attack Bonus|Fort Save|Ref Save|Will Save|Special

1st|
+1|
+0|
+2|
+2|Shadow Attack 1d6

2nd|
+2|
+0|
+3|
+3|Evasion, Shadow Fall
3rd|
+3|
+1|
+3|
+3|2d6 shadow Attack, Shadow Travel
4th|
+4|
+1|
+4|
+4|Uncanny Dodge, Hide in plain sight

5th|
+5|
+2|
+4|
+4| Shadow Attack 3d6, Shadow Grab

6th|
+6|
+2|
+5|
+5| Shadow bomb

7th|
+7|
+3|
+5|
+5|4d6 Shadow Attack,

8th|
+8|
+3|
+6|
+6| Shadow Arms

9th|
+9|
+4|
+6|
+6|5d6 Shadow Attack

10th|
+10|
+4|
+7|
+7|Shadow misdirection

11th|
+11|
+5|
+7|
+7|6d6 Shadow Attack, Shadow Wings

12th|
+12|
+5|
+8|
+8| Secret Poison

13th|
+13|
+6|
+8|
+8|7d6 Shadow Attack

14th|
+14|
+6|
+9|
+9|Betwixt Shadows

15th|
+15|
+7|
+9|
+9|8d6 Shadow Attack

16th|
+16|
+7|
+10|
+10|Final blow

17th|
+17|
+8|
+10|
+10|9d6 Shadow Attack

18th|
+18|
+8|
+11|
+11| Shadow Information

19th|
+19|
+9|
+11|
+11|10d6 Shadow Attack, Call and sculpt Shadows at will

20th|
+20|
+9|
+12|
+12|Piercing Strikes, Blindsight 120', Shunpo

[/table]

Weapon and Armor Prof:
Wisdom mod replaces armor for the Shadow Shinobi. They lose it if they put armor on, and does not stack with buffs that give armor. They are proficient in all simple and martial weapons but no armor or shields.

Class skills:

Acrobatics, Bluff, Climb, Craft, Escape Artist, Disguise, Intimidate, Perception, Sense Motive, Sleight of Hand, Stealth, Swim

Features:

Shadow Attack: Must be near shadowy or dark environment. The shadows seem to attack with you as you swing your weapon. Normal damage.

Shadow Fall Shadows cushion your fall if dropped from more than 10', divide distance by 4 (before acrobatics are taken into account).

Shadow Travel As a move action you may teleport your current move speed between shadows, you can even take 1 willing person with you.

Shadow Grab You must be out of range of the creature (so at least 10') you can attack with the shadows and attempt a grapple as a standard action. You get a +4 bonus, plus any other bonuses. If you fail, nothing happens and you lose your standard action.

Shadow bomb Creates an opaque shield around you (a 20'x20' square). Enemies can't target you. You get a free stealth check. Standard action. Hangs around (and creates shadows) for 1 round per level.

Shadow Arms Tentacle like arms burst from your back, they let you climb over walls and ceilings. As movespeed.

Shadow Misdirection: Your form flickers with shadows so that it is difficult for you to get hit. Like blur but you receive no miss chance. Can be used 1 round a level, not necessarily consecutively (can be announced out of turn as an immediate action. At 20th you also get shadow mirror images, move action, as you yourself turn completely black you 1d4+1 mirror images that last 20 minutes and can be done 1/day.

Shadow Wings Wings of shadow burst forth from your back, slightly ethereal. You can fly 1 minute a level, not consecutively.

Secret Poison You know the most secretive of poisons. You can make any kind without looking for ingredients. You become immune to poisons you apply and immune to mundane poisons.

Betwixt Shadows You can teleport long ranges through shadows, even bringing up to 6 people with you. Unlimited range, so long there are shadows there. 3/day

Final Blow When an enemy is near death your blade simply kills them. Primarily up to DM discretion, but once they're near 1-40 (depending on level) hps near death, they just automatically die once its the Shadow Shinobi's turn (assuming he decides to attack). So once the Shinobi declares the attack the DM can say, 'you destroy it in a single stroke.'

Shadow Information
You can whisper to shadows to find out any information that has transpired in the area recently (hour per level).

Call and sculpt Shadows at will
You've gotten so good at shadow manipulation you can create a great darkness spell and sculpt it so precisely that only your enemies are affected (CL = class lvl) It remains as long as you'd like so long as you are within 10 miles of it.

Shunpo
You gain an extra standard action 3/day. Can't use it more than once every 5 minutes.

Piercing Strikes
When a Shinobi strikes he has a 50% chance or an additional chance to bypass magical defenses. So if he struck a mirror image, then his shadows would target at random the other image(s) (xd6 dmg). If he struck a blurred target and missed because of the spell he'd get to reroll and try again. If he strikes someone that would normally absorb damage, then he has a 50% chance to ignore it on each attack.

[randomhero00]

not a single comment or criticism? Its finally a good ninja class.

[Miscast_Mage]

Ok, because I believe in brutal, fist-to-the-face honesty, and this is my first review of homebrew ever, this is gonna hurt. A lot.

Problems at first glance:

No proper fluff. At all. This is a no-no. A class should be more than just a set of numbers and mechanics. Especially egregious because this isn't a general ninja, this is apparantly a shadow shinobi, which sounds a lot more specialised(more on that in a sec).

What is a shadow shinobi? What do they do? How do they generally interact with the world?
Are they completely morally and ethically free that they wouldn't tend to or away from particular alignments?
How are they different enough from rogues, ninjas, scouts and other scoundrel types to justify being a different base class?

This should probably be a PrC, not a base class. It just comes across as too specialised in it's own theme to be a suitable base class in my opinion.
Poorly explained mechanics. Just some glaring problems.

Shadow attack:
How near is "near"? within 5ft? 5ft per SS level? Also, "swing your weapon."? RAW, does that exclude piercing weapons? Is it melee only? Can it be used with ranged weapons? Or spells you can sneak attack with? (rays, as far as I know, but don't quote me on that.)
Shadow Travel:
This really should allow some sort of save, i'm guessing either reflex or will, to use on an enemy or a damn good reason why it's "willing" only, end of. Most spells in SRD have some sort of save, even buffs or otherwise inoffensive spells. This has very little reason to say "lol no" and that's that.
Shadow bomb:
Just say it works as Obscuring mist or some similar spell and save everyone the headache. Even ignoring that, "enemies can't target you" so, they don't have line of effect? Right? ...Right? Does everyone in the cloud get this benifit? Can they attack you if they themselves are in the cloud? Is this stationary, or does it follow you? Minor nitpicks: It should probably be a 20x20x20 cube, and stealth checks don't exist; you want a hide check. Also: Bomb? Shield? Inconsistency is not a good thing.
And they can't be used for other things like attacking, interacting with objects, etc because...? Also, spiderwalk.
I'm tired so I'll finish this sub-list later.

No skill list, starting wealth, or starting age(ok, this is less important than the other two.)? This class is unplayable as is unless you multiclass into it from another. (Pre-post edit: I messed up here, didn't see you had a skill list, so my fault.)
Full BAB, all good saves, D8 health, proficiency in all weapons? Ever? No... just... just no. "Exotic weapon proficiency: Yes" is not something any class, let alone a base class should have. Ever. Even ignoring the class features, this is already overpowered. Tone it down. Here's a hint: Start with as weak a class you can think off. Worse than a commoner. Then slowly add in the features, see how they change they class one-by-one, don't just dump everything in there.


Thank the goddess you can do nested lists here.
I'm tired, and I have a report to write for college, so I'm leaving my review at that for now, but yeah. Needs fixin'. Badly.

[Elfstone]

Basicly what he said, incase you dont believe him. I didnt have the heart to say it. Dont even know what kind of damage shadow attack is.

[randomhero00]

Did you see the fluff I added?

[SuperFish]

The lack of fluff was hardly the biggest problem. As written, they still have full BAB, all good saves, 4 + Int skills, and very poorly explained mechanics that seem very out-of-place for a base class. Furthermore, what's this about "Wis replacing Str for combat"? This implies that both attack and damage with the listed weapons is dependent on Wis rather than Str. That's...a very big thing.

[Elfstone]

There still is almost no fluff. Go read one of Afros classes and zeta ks, they have fluff.

And what type of damage does shadow attack do? dark, shadow, what? explain everything. So much so that some one with no brains could understand it.

[vikingofdoom]

Here's a bit-by-bit breakdown of this. Anyone who disagrees can challenge my judgement, but here it is. Comments will be in red.
3.x/Pathfinder (more pathfinder, but it wouldn't be hard to convert)

The Shadow Shinobi is a master at blending in. He or she does not wear black clothes except in the most extreme of situations (and why should they? They have power over night.) They often carry concealed blades so that you can't even tell they're dangerous. Women make especially good Shadow Shinobi as they are simply less likely to be searched or spotted by guards.
Right, so their a ninja. Not much fluff, and rather mary-sue-ish for the descriptor. Also, in a game like D&D, where males and females are equally capable of killing you, and even a single missed pouch could spell doom to your town, why wouldn't women be searched. Blatant sexism in a descriptor is bad (probable point of contention for others).

Shadowlands: Shadow Shinobi are souls somehow lost in the shadowlands. They found their way back to the material realm to find redemption or find their way to the plane of their choice.
Does this matter? This fluff isn't really adding anything, except to try and make it seem darker, and really isn't relevant (most D&D characters have had their souls sent elsewhere, and came back to find the plane of their choice).

D8

SKill points: 4 + int
Special: Wisdom replaces strength for fighting with any bladed weapons, chained weapons, or bows as well as CMD and CMA.

So, you get the equivalent of a feat for free. This is honestly not that big of a concern, all things considered. However, some questions arise: what is the definition of a bladed weapon? chain weapon? why only those three types? Does the bonus to CMD and CMA apply to all weapons, or just the three?

Shinobi
{table=head]Level|Base Attack Bonus|Fort Save|Ref Save|Will Save|Special

1st|
+1|
+2|
+2|
+2|Shadow Attack 1d6

2nd|
+2|
+3|
+3|
+3|Evasion, Shadow Fall
3rd|
+3|
+3|
+3|
+3|2d6 shadow Attack, Shadow Travel
4th|
+4|
+4|
+4|
+4|Uncanny Dodge, Hide in plain sight

5th|
+5|
+4|
+4|
+4| Shadow Attack 3d6, Shadow Grab

6th|
+6|
+5|
+5|
+5| Shadow bomb

7th|
+7|
+5|
+5|
+5|4d6 Shadow Attack,

8th|
+8|
+6|
+6|
+6| Shadow Arms

9th|
+9|
+6|
+6|
+6|5d6 Shadow Attack

10th|
+10|
+7|
+7|
+7|Shadow misdirection

11th|
+11|
+7|
+7|
+7|6d6 Shadow Attack, Shadow Wings

12th|
+12|
+8|
+8|
+8| Secret Poison

13th|
+13|
+8|
+8|
+8|7d6 Shadow Attack

14th|
+14|
+9|
+9|
+9|Betwixt Shadows

15th|
+15|
+9|
+9|
+9|8d6 Shadow Attack

16th|
+16|
+10|
+10|
+10|Final blow

17th|
+17|
+10|
+10|
+10|9d6 Shadow Attack

18th|
+18|
+11|
+11|
+11| Shadow Information

19th|
+19|
+11|
+11|
+11|10d6 Shadow Attack, Call and sculpt Shadows at will

20th|
+20|
+12|
+12|
+12|Piercing Strikes, Blindsight 120', Shunpo

[/table]

So, you have full BAB, all good saves, and a nice amount of special abilities. The primary problem is the combination of full BAB and all good saves. Either reduce BAB to 3/4, or reduce one save to poor. Also, how does this match up with fluff? You describe them as fitting in, but they are clearly stronger than everyone else.

Weapon and Armor Prof:
Wisdom mod replaces armor for the Shadow Shinobi. They lose it if they put armor on, and does not stack with buffs that give armor. They are proficient in all weapons but no armor or shields.
So, they get Wis to AC as an armour modifier. That should be a class ability, not an armour effect. Also, full proficiency? Thats the equivalent of 19 free feats for a human from core, is better than the fighter (which is the weapons master class), and doesn't fit with the rest of the classes fluff.

Class skills:

Acrobatics, Bluff, Climb, Craft, Escape Artist, Disguise, Intimidate, Perception, Sense Motive, Sleight of Hand, Stealth, Swim

Features:

Shadow Attack: Must be near shadowy or dark environment. The shadows seem to attack with you as you swing your weapon.
Is this precision damage? cold damage? What is a "shadowy enviroment"? Any restrictions on this? This currently blows rogue sneak attack out of the water as written, so needs to be toned down.

Shadow Fall Shadows cushion your fall if dropped from more than 10', divide distance by 4 (before acrobatics are taken into account).
No problem mechanically, but fluff-wise, this makes little sense.

Shadow Travel As a move action you may teleport your current move speed between shadows, you can even take 1 willing person with you.
So, you get short range teleport. Minorly useful but nothing major. This is about on the level of shadow jaunt from ToB, but requires a small amount of buffing to match distance, but costs a move action instead of a standard action. Bit powerful, but not the worst.

Shadow Grab You must be out of range of the creature (so at least 10') you can attack with the shadows and attempt a grapple as a standard action. You get a +4 bonus, plus any other bonuses. If you fail, nothing happens and you lose your standard action.
So, you can do ranged grapple attempts. This is stronger most abilities, but still fails against larger foes. Also, the reach thing is weird, as you could grapple an enemy from over a mile away, which is far stronger than most other abilities (comparing against non-magic users here).

Shadow bomb Creates an opaque shield around you (a 20'x20' square). Enemies can't target you. You get a free stealth check. Standard action. Hangs around (and creates shadows) for 1 round per level.
Is the area inside opaque? Does true-seeing help? What sort of shadows are created? How dark? What sort of cover/concealment do you get? I'll second that this needs to be a cube, because right now enemies can't target you even though all you have is a line of shadows at some height. Clarify wether the rounds/level is rounds/ECL, Character Level, or Shinobi level.
Shadow Arms Tentacle like arms burst from your back, they let you climb over walls and ceilings. As movespeed.
As I read it, this gives you a climb speed equal to you land speed. Not a major issue, but still, aim to be clearer.

Shadow Misdirection: Your form flickers with shadows so that it is difficult for you to get hit. Like blur but you receive no miss chance. Can be used 1 round a level, not necessarily consecutively (can be announced out of turn as an immediate action. At 20th you also get shadow mirror images, move action, as you yourself turn completely black you 1d4+1 mirror images that last 20 minutes and can be done 1/day.
This is weird. You normally don't get a miss chance from blur anyways and this comes too late for when it would be most useful. The shadow mirror images only protect you from at best five attacks (one round against most lvl 20 enemies), instantly are destroyed by any AoE attack, and are rather limited (you are effectively gaining a 2nd level spell as cast by a 3rd level caster, except for duration) for 20th level.


Shadow Wings Wings of shadow burst forth from your back, slightly ethereal. You can fly 1 minute a level, not consecutively.
Fly speed? Manoeuvrability? Again, class level, character level, or what? Not much to mention, other than that what you do can be easily replicated by a cheap magical item.

Secret Poison You know the most secretive of poisons. You can make any kind without looking for ingredients. You become immune to poisons you apply and immune to mundane poisons.
So, what is a mundane poison? If you apply a poison once, do you then get total immunity forever? Do you still have to pay the cost to make a poison? How do you make poisons without a basic toxin to use? Can you boost your poisons?

Betwixt Shadows You can teleport long ranges through shadows, even bringing up to 6 people with you. Unlimited range, so long there are shadows there. 3/day
So, you get unlimited distance teleport, at no cost, with no chance of error 3/day? To duplicate this effect, a wizard would need to have a 24 INT and put all of his 7th level slots into greater teleport. This needs to be toned down to be balanced. Also, action required?

Final Blow When an enemy is near death your blade simply kills them. Primarily up to DM discretion, but once they're near 1-40 (depending on level) hps near death, they just automatically die once its the Shadow Shinobi's turn (assuming he decides to attack). So once the Shinobi declares the attack the DM can say, 'you destroy it in a single stroke.'
This ability is poorly written, relies on DM adjudication to much, and is either stupidly powerful or stupidly weak. Also, is a save allowed? Are their limited number of uses per day?

Shadow Information
You can whisper to shadows to find out any information that has transpired in the area recently (hour per level).
What area? action required? Does this still function when there are no shadows in the area? What about information that a shadow couldn't know (names, etc.)? This ability, like the one before it, is either stupidly powerful or stupidly weak, but this time its power is based on the campaign type.

Call and sculpt Shadows at will
You've gotten so good at shadow manipulation you can create a great darkness spell and sculpt it so precisely that only your enemies are affected (CL = class lvl) It remains as long as you'd like so long as you are within 10 miles of it.
[color=red]So, you get darkness (a powerful spell) with no drawbacks, on only your enemies. It lasts forever, and has an incredible range (long-range spell for this level is 0.2 miles, maximum). No action required to use as written.

Shunpo
You gain an extra standard action 3/day. Can't use it more than once every 5 minutes.
This is a reasonable capstone for a class. No serious complaints here.

Piercing Strikes
When a Shinobi strikes he has a 50% chance or an additional chance to bypass magical defenses. So if he struck a mirror image, then his shadows would target at random the other image(s) (xd6 dmg). If he struck a blurred target and missed because of the spell he'd get to reroll and try again. If he strikes someone that would normally absorb damage, then he has a 50% chance to ignore it on each attack.
This is incredibly powerful. Does this ability apply to divine immunities? Resistances? Regeneration? Does this apply to all attacks, or just shadow strikes?

Please define whether each ability is extraordinary (Ex), supernatural (Su), or spell-like (Sp) please. Those are all important.

[randomhero00]

I disagree for the most part.

He's supposed to be able to compete with wizards, while still relying on damage.
And thanks for the legit concerns. I'll get on that.

But honest opinion, does it have a future if changed?

[Elfstone]

With Wizards? So you want this to be tier 1? Give it spell then. Not random abilities.... And if you must, at least make this playable. With no descriptors of any kind, nothing can be done.

[randomhero00]

With Wizards? So you want this to be tier 1? Give it spell then. Not random abilities.... And if you must, at least make this playable. With no descriptors of any kind, nothing can be done.

Well maybe more t2 or t3.

like near factotum (but without the feel).