Shadowbane Inquisitor vs Shadowmind

[King-Strawberry]

Hey playground. I'm about to make a character for a horror game, and I wanted to know what you guys thought about the shadowmind & shadowbane inquisitor prestige classes (CAdv). Any experiences you've had? Pros/Cons of each? Your insight would be awsome!

[Urpriest]

Shadowbane Inquisitor is a great way to become a Blackguard eventually. Gets you most of the more awkward prereqs, and they synergize pretty well what with being full BAB sneak attackers.

Shadowmind...I generally don't hear it recommended. Other classes do what it does better.

[MeeposFire]

The big cool thing about shadowbane inquisitors is that they are one of the few ways to eventually build a character with no base class levels in the build.

[Psyren]

Shadowmind is practically useless. While you can still hit 9ths with it, it's full of dead levels, and the levels that do get something don't give you much at all. You get a PP cost reduction on two powers with no augments, making the reduction nigh-pointless past level two. Also, the level where you get sneak attack loses ML, so you may as well just dip rogue or psychic rogue. (You get a lot more skill points that way too.)

Where the reduction can help more is with metapsionics, but the powers are too weak to focus on to that extent. Cloud Mind is the very, very poor psionic cousin of Invisibility, and Read Thoughts' usefulness is almost entirely dependent on your DM. The most I can say about the class is that you get these powers for free.

Ported to Pathfinder it could be much more useful; for one thing, both Cloud Mind and Read Thoughts gained augments (which would then be subject to Shadowmind's reduction); and for two, it would be much easier to gain the necessary skill ranks. Note however that Mass Cloud Mind was actually folded into Cloud Mind as an augment, so you would need a new penultimate ability for the PrC. You'd also probably want to accelerate the sneak attack progression to at least 4/10.

[Cieyrin]

Alternatively, Shadowbane Inquisitor naturally dovetails into Grey Guard and you can quote Batman for most of your lines. Also lets you use Devoted Inquisitor still, since the daze effect only works with Smite Evil, which is a nice boost and 'No' button to have, since most things aren't immune to daze, as well as the save stays relevant regardless of how you progress. :smallcool:

Also strongly consider Strength of Conviction, for getting another of your smites to apply to whatever you feel like smiting. Telling Blow and Improved Critical are good for getting stuff to work more often and sneak around Bless Weapon's anti-crit stacking language. :smallwink:

[King-Strawberry]

Sounds like shadowbane inquisitor is the way to go! thanks guys