How bad or good is shadow magic from Tome of magic?

[RedDragons]

What it says on the title


How decent or terrible is the class?

[Fates]

Eh, the mechanics are confusing and the "mysteries" are highly specialized, and not particularly good. All in all, It's probably t4 of t5.

[Psyren]

The mysteries themselves are okay, the problem is the class itself.

1) You depend on two stats (Int and Cha.)
2) It has a very clumsy selection mechanic (Paths).
3) You get very, very few mysteries/day and no extra from having a high ability score, so you end up pulling out the crossbow a lot.

The class designer came up with a fix online that you can use to mitigate these; I don't have the link handy but someone else will.

EDIT: Link (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?184955-Shadowcaster-fixes-by-Mouseferatu)

[Fates]

As usual, I defer to Psyren's superior knowledge on the subject. :smalltongue:

[Yora]

I'd say it's fun but weak. As said, they get cool powers, but just way too few of them every day.

[ZamielVanWeber]

They are fun overall and do get some really nasty spells, but their overall lack of selection hurts. The changes Psyren linked you too are a massive power buff, but do not break them.

[WarlockLord]

It's a bad class. You are a crippled wizard. A wizard does everything you do, but better. The path mechanic is god-awful, forcing you to collect useless spells to advance to good stuff, and the class is deliberately designed to make it more difficult to use feats to help your sthick. Bad design oozes from every pore of the class, from the bonus feat list including metamagic feats you can't use, to the mysteries that are supposed to be better than spells but are worse. The class is nigh-unplayable at low levels, as you have no equivalent of sleep or color spray and are instead equipped with a crappy nonlethal crossbow. Your ability list is extremely narrow. You need both Int and Cha because screw you.

You're better off being a wizard with shadow weave magic feats. You can make a playable character but it is not an easy task.

[RedDragons]

got it ty , and ill ask a few DM's to feel how they think of the changes


I'll do you one better. I'll post the latest version, which has a few further tweaks from the one I posted a while back. It still needs playtesting, so I can't swear it's all going to work as written, but this where it stands now.

1) Charisma determines the DC to save against your mysteries. Intelligence determines the highest level mystery you can cast.

2) Grant bonus mysteries per day based on Charisma. These would work just like bonus spells. For instance, if your Cha is 14, you can cast one extra mystery of 1st-level equivalent and one of 2nd-level equivalent per day. (Note that each mystery does give an equivalent level, even though you don't learn them by level.)

3) Eliminate the rule that says you have to take mysteries in a given Path in order. If you want to jump around, so as to broaden your versatility, you can.

4) Within a category—Apprentice, Initiate, Master—you must have at least two mysteries of any given level before you can take any mysteries of the next higher level. For instance, you must have two 1st-level mysteries before you can take any 2nds, and at least two 2nds before you can take any 3rds.

5) Eliminate the rule that says you get a bonus feat equal to half the number of paths you have access to. Instead, you get a bonus feat equal to the total number of Paths you complete. Thus, while you are no longer required to take the entirety of a given Path, there's still encouragement to do so.

6) You may “swap out” mysteries, just as a sorcerer does spells known. If you “un-complete” a Path in this way, however, you lose access to the bonus feat you gained from completing that Path. (You can regain access by re-completing the Path, completing a different Path and choosing that feat as your new bonus, or selecting that feat as a normal feat at your next opportunity.)

7) Once your Apprentice Mysteries become supernatural abilities, change the save DC from 10 + equivalent spell level + Cha to 10 + 1/2 caster level + Cha. This makes them useful even against high-HD opponents, and follows the pattern for other supernatural abilities.
Last edited by Mouseferatu; 22nd January 2007 at 06:58 AM.
Ari Marmell
aka
Mouseferatu
--Rodent of the Dark

My new novel: The Conqueror's Shadow

www.mouseferatu.com

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[Phelix-Mu]

I agree with most of what has been said. It's not impossible to play one, but it is pretty sub-par and you will be dwarfed by the usual high tier casters if there are any in your party.

One of the major things that is missing from many of the classes introduced in the course of 3.5, is support in successively published material. Every book that came out had something cool for wizards and other core classes, but shadowcaster is probably only touched upon in Tome of Magic and maybe some stuff from Dragon Magazines (but not as much as wizards got from Dragon Mags). Superior quantities of supporting material can be big factors in the usability of a particular class, and spellcasters in particular benefit from the nth-power of spell combos that eventually became possible.

I will second the re-balancing attempt that Psyren linked to. Later in 3.5, there was material released for several non-core classes by designers/contributors, and while it's soundly non-official, everything I've seen of it is pretty sage advice. Personally, I've already adopted the Hexblade fix published in a similar source.

We need to go back and bump that "Your favorite officially unofficial rules" thread, or whatever it was called, where everyone was linking to these things....

[gorfnab]

It is a flavorful class, however its mechanics are lacking. The Shadowcaster is nice for a DM. They make interesting villains and are fairly quick to throw together.