soul eater

[limejuicepowder]

how good it this prestige class? It seems rather lethal, but I love the flavor and wanted my PC's to face one (they are level 7). Good idea?

[eggs]

It's a nifty class. But it's one case where you might need to try not to overdo it. Against a level 7 party, you're probably only going to need to look at its levels 1 and 2.

The challenges with a Soul Eater are going to be:
1. Not going overboard. It's easy to optimize to the extent where you have 7 attacks in a round, and suddenly one of your players has been Wighted without getting to do anything fun.
2. Not letting the Soul Eater be over-targetted/disabled before it can act. As a noncasting class that requires comparably high BA for the encounter level, SE is somewhat vulnerable to being shut down with debuffs, mobility spells, and the action economy in general.

To deal with both of those, I would not optimize the Soul Eater (rather, I would just aim for something powerful *enough*) and place the fight within a group encounter to somewhat limit the tactics used against it.

If the Soul Eater's in a group of monsters, I'd give it 3 natural attacks that can will reliably land in a round (possibly with a chance of a 4th attack landing), so that it can drain an entire level of spells and Wight players if their tactics get sloppy, but leave a bit of leeway in case the players just get unlucky.

As far as the character build itself, I'd probably go with a low-HD monster (whatever fits the storyline) Paladin of Tyranny 4/Soul Eater 2. Add travel devotion, and get 3-4 natural weapon attacks/round through any method you fancy.

Then, designing the encounter, add a couple mooks - a slightly lower-level caster (I'm only thinking level 2 spells), an additional big/tough-but-offensively weak melee bruiser and maybe 2-3 low-HD archers.

Assuming the Soul Eater is big and attention-grabbing, it's probably going to draw the majority of the players' initial barrage. Ideally, Paladin saves and immunities will deflect some of that attack. When monster initiative comes around, the Soul Eater would attempt to quickly move around the battlefield with Travel Devotion, attacking to debuff and delevel. The other melee bruiser would basically act as a wall, but would hopefully be able to sucker a player or two into paying attention to it (Improved Grab or Trip would be useful). The caster would soak debuffed targets with obnoxious low-level save-or-sucks (low-CL Glitterdusts, Walls of Smoke, etc... things that hurt, but that aren't game-ending). The archers would just be there to annoy party casters with readied actions, basically to keep the Soul Eater from being shut down too quickly.

[Zonugal]

how good it this prestige class? It seems rather lethal, but I love the flavor and wanted my PC's to face one (they are level 7). Good idea?

I think a Soul Eater works really well if you take a Shang Tsung approach to it.

A build like Paladin of Tyranny 2/Hexblade 3/Soul Eater 2 is fun enough to play if you are channeling your energy drains through unarmed attacks.

Although another fun build might be something like this:

Daelkyr Halfbood Duskblade 5/Soul Eater 2 with Improved Energy Drain and Spell Drain (http://dndtools.eu/feats/libris-mortis-the-book-of-the-dead--71/spell-drain--2692/).

A build like this has some utility and is really memorable as it delivers negative levels that steal spells away from casters. Throw on feats like Deformity (Madness) for immunity to all mental effects and you could ever toss on the Vecna-Blooded template to make it a real villain.

[Zaq]

RAW, it is ambiguous whether a Soul Eater gets to suck away a level on any touch attack they make, or if they have to spend a standard action on making a specific level-stealing touch attack. One of these is, obviously, rather a bit more powerful than the other, and you'll want to firmly decide how you're going to rule it well in advance.

[Ason]

This is not good practical advice, but to see the potential of this PrC, check out Caelic's Boogeyman (http://dictummortuum.blogspot.com/2011/12/boogeyman.html) build on Dictum Mortuum's website. Something like that would slaughter your players, however, unless they were optimized, high-level wizards or something, so you probably shouldn't use it. You have been warned.

[Dark_Ansem]

how does this class qualify when adding it to a True Dragon, in terms of CR? can be considered an associated class (CR +1/class level) or a non-associated class (CR +1/2 / Level)?