Blade of Orion

[hivedragon]

Is this a decent PrC?
Any tips on how should I build one?

[Person_Man]

The Blade of Orion looks tempting - the ability to use Dimension Leap as a Move Action, and the ability to make a Full Attack when you use Dimension Leap (as a capstone). But keep in mind that your Dragonmarks can only be used a very limited number of times each day, and that all of your other class abilities basically duplicate low level spells and/or have piss poor Save DCs and run off of the same limited supply of Dragonmark uses.

If you like the concept but want better crunch, take a look at the Crinti Shadow Marauder or Teflammar Shadowlord.

[Aspenor]

If you DM lets you mix and match campaign setting stuff, the Ritual of Shadow Walking from FR: Lords of Darkness p. 125 is made of win and awesome for use with these three mentioned classes.

Be Necropolitan, or bind Naberius, win at life.

Swordsage can also get you into some fun stuff with their teleportation maneuvers.

[Keld Denar]

Blade of Orien contains some wierd language. The pounce ability technically only works when you use the teleport as a move action. Even with Quicken Spell Like Ability (Least Mark of Passage), that doesn't give you any more full attacks, nor would activating the mark as a standard action. I dunno if it was an oversight or an intentional limiting of the class, but its there. Treat that however you want.

Some of the other abilities are kinda cool. The ability to hostily teleport people can be pretty fun if you go with a debuff style build. 4 levels of Hexblade before getting into the class gets you Dark Companion (PHBII) for -2 on saves, and then if you Hex them and it sticks, thats another -2 to saves, resulting in a -4 on saves prior to attempting to teleport them off a cliff or train or into the reach of a friendly meleer.

One other wierd thing about it is the awkward prereqs. The class itself doesn't appear to need much to get in, but you do need the Lesser Dragonmark of Passage. When you look at the Lesser Dragonmark, you find that you can't get that due to skill prereqs until 6th level. So the earliest you can take BoO is 7th level, which means you hit the capstone at 16. Thats a LONG way to wait for shadow pounce.

Now, if your DM allows you to mix and match, another fun thing to do would be to take Hidden Talent at 1st level to pick up Dimension Hop (CPsi). Its a swift action 10' teleport for 1 PP. Hidden Talent gives you 2 PP, so you can Dim Hop 2/day. Thats ok, but if you visit the Earth Node magical location (CPsi), you get an extra 5 PP per day, allowing you to make 7 Dim Hops per day. That SHOULD be enough, especially combined with your dragonmarky stuff. Again, by the wierd wording in BoO, Dim Hop SHOULDN'T trigger your shadow pounce, but then again, we are talking about a 16th level ability here...crazier things happen at 16th level.

[Cog]

The class itself does give you more uses per day as well, something like 1/lvl or such. It's also more BAB-friendly than Person_Man's other suggestions; those are certainly good classes in their own right, but they favor sneak-attack types, while Blade of Orien (with an e) is more compatible with typical Power Attack combos. It can be entered earlier as well, so you can combine it with those other classes.

[Keld Denar]

Well, the greatest thing BoO does is allow you to break up the ability of the Least Mark of Passage into chunks and use them piecemeal, 5' at a time. I built one that was ~8th level, and he had something like 120 lineal feet worth of teleports, but he only used them 5-10' at a time, which makes them last a LOT longer.

[Cog]

Aah, that must be what I'm remembering. The ability's total distance is based on character level.