Shadowcaster tier

[Elandris Kajar]

Can someone say what tier the shadowcaster is? I can't find it for some reason.

[Troacctid]

It's T4. A typical Shadowcaster has a small number of powerful mysteries, but very little else. This is exacerbated by the need to take paths in order, which can force you to take suboptimal mysteries in order to get the ones you really want.

[Red Fel]

Can someone say what tier the shadowcaster is? I can't find it for some reason.

I can't find an explicit statement on point, but let's look at what the class offers and extrapolate.

First off, it doesn't have an arcane or divine casting list, or full powers progression, so Tier 1-2 is pretty much off of the table. The question is whether it makes it up to Tier 3. You get fundamentals and mysteries - those are basically your only class features. So let's take a quick look at what they offer you, and extrapolate how versatile that makes you. Fundamentals: These are pretty generic. Ray, vision stuff, sneaky stuff. Nothing that really makes you particularly effective. Next. Apprentice Mysteries: defensive and hidey stuff, battlefield control, Ebon Whispers is kind of all over the map, vision stuff and blasting, tricksy and concealing stuff. Initiate Mysteries: tricks with spells, buffs and debuffs, blah blah... Until you get to Shadow Evocation, which is juicy. Master Mysteries: some things, plus summons, time stop, and foresight.
Okay. So most of it is kind of meh, then you have some gems. The question is versatility, though - how are you in any role? Blaster: You stink on ice. Meatshield: You have some cute defensive bonuses, but mostly you stink on ice. Battlefield control: You have some options here. Some pretty decent ones, actually. Utility: Here's the thing. Your typical caster is flying, teleporting, breathing underwater, and turning incorporeal (or into a hydra). You have a short-range defensive teleport, and can turn incorporeal. Not amazed.
There's also the usage limitations. Until you hit 14, you can use any Fundamental only 3/day; similarly, each Mystery is limited in use. This gives you the advantage that you get a lot of uses overall, but the disadvantage that you can't allocate them to your useful Mysteries, and instead end up with multiple uses of crap about which you don't care, which you had to take because the Shadowcaster progression system is stupid.

Overall, I'd rate it a Tier 4 at best.

[Elandris Kajar]

All right, this makes sense. Another less simple question: if I changed a shadow dragons sorcerer levels to shadowcaster levels (for obvious reasons, fluff-wise), would it notably decrease the difficulty of the encounter?

[Troacctid]

Probably not for a single encounter, no, although it depends what spells/mysteries you gave it.

[Brova]

All right, this makes sense. Another less simple question: if I changed a shadow dragons sorcerer levels to shadowcaster levels (for obvious reasons, fluff-wise), would it notably decrease the difficulty of the encounter?

Depends, on a variety of things. First, what's the breath weapon situation on shadow dragons? Are they the ones with the negative level breath? If it's a small-ish dragon, it's optimal tactic is frequently going to be breath weapon kiting, so the spellcasting doesn't really matter. Even larger dragons are basically melee monsters, though they can benefit from some spells (for example, wraithstrike). The spellcasting is probably not going to do much either way, though if you go Shadowcaster you can be basically completely confident that it won't have some supermove to pull out and nuke people.

[SinsI]

Their tier also depends on level. At low levels, it is tier 6, as they don't get any bonus mystery uses out of high attributes. Which means that at 1st level you are stuck with 1 mystery use per day.

[fishyfishyfishy]

Their tier also depends on level. At low levels, it is tier 6, as they don't get any bonus mystery uses out of high attributes. Which means that at 1st level you are stuck with 1 mystery use per day.

That is not how the tiers work. The tier of a given class does not change as they advance in level. If that were the case the Healer would be considered T1 because it gets Gate as a 9th level spell. It is only T5 however.

[A_S]

That is not how the tiers work. The tier of a given class does not change as they advance in level. If that were the case the Healer would be considered T1 because it gets Gate as a 9th level spell. It is only T5 however.
I mean, you're right as far as JaronK's list goes; he decided it was more important to give each class a single summary number than to complicate things by trying to describe their performance at different levels. But that doesn't mean it's wrong to say "Shadowcaster plays like a T6 class at level 1, and then creeps upward to T3-T4 territory once it stops being so crippled by its Mystery/day limitations." I assume that's what SinsI means by "their tier depends on level."

Shadowcaster is hardly the only class to exhibit this feature. Mystic Ranger, for instance, plays like T1 until level 10, then falls off into T3-land.

[Extra Anchovies]

With the fixes suggested by Ari Marmell (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?184955-Shadowcaster-fixes-by-Mouseferatu&p=3273239&viewfull=1#post3273239) (the designer of the class), Shadowcaster probably edges into T3 because they've got some nice BFC and debuffs and would actually be able to use them more than once per day.

Hypothetical: what if the Shadowcaster, instead of having uses/day for each mystery, acted like a list-caster (warmage, beguiler, etc)? Give them the spells/day progression of, say, the Healer, and let them get bonus mysteries per day like any other caster. Make Fundamentals at-will from 1st level. Give them bonus feats at levels 2/5/8/11/14/17/20 instead of having them scale with the number of paths you have access to. Leave in the weird thing where they cast some abilities as spells, some as SLAs, and some as (Su), though, because it's cool.

I feel like that would put them at a high T3. Thoughts?

[gorfnab]

Hypothetical: what if the Shadowcaster, instead of having uses/day for each mystery, acted like a list-caster (warmage, beguiler, etc)? Give them the spells/day progression of, say, the Healer, and let them get bonus mysteries per day like any other caster. Make Fundamentals at-will from 1st level. Give them bonus feats at levels 2/5/8/11/14/17/20 instead of having them scale with the number of paths you have access to. Leave in the weird thing where they cast some abilities as spells, some as SLAs, and some as (Su), though, because it's cool.

I feel like that would put them at a high T3. Thoughts?
That's basically like the recommendation I make in my Compiled Shadowcaster Handbook. Set it up like the Beguiler casting with fundamentals as cantrips and the mysteries as spells. Like the Beguiler it would be spontaneous casting off of the full list of fundamentals and mysteries. Bonus spells per day could be Int or Cha (actually I would just make the whole casting Int based, DC's and bonus spells per day). I would probably put the bonus feats on the same levels as the Wizard. These changes would most likely get it to mid to high T3.

[Elandris Kajar]

That would make it better, but I feel that it clashes with the flavor.
What if we made fundamentals at will and gave all other mysteries one extra use per day? Bonus mysteries from int could be added to have some prep freedom. Where would this put it.

[Tvtyrant]

The big problem is that there just aren't enough good mysteries. My solution has been to just take the Warlock and the Shadowcaster and auto-gestalt them. Now you have more variety than the Warlock but more consistency than the Shadowcaster. Plays like a T3 rather than a T4.

[Princess]

The original author of thee Shadowcaster suggested several changes to "fix" the Shadowcaster that push it up to a passable T3 rather than a T4 - but by book, it's almost certainly T4. Either version is a very good way to include a "full caster" in a game where you don't want to allow any T1 or T2's so the rogue can actually develop self esteem. ;)

The author recommended fixes are the second set of the two options presented here:

http://www.myth-weavers.com/wiki/index.php/Shadowcaster_fix_%283.5_Class%29

[Troacctid]

My fix that I've been using is to a. allow mysteries to be taken out of order (and give bonus feats for paths completed rather than half the paths you have access to), and b. make mysteries and fundamentals usable per encounter rather than per day.

So far I've had one Shadowcaster in a campaign from levels 7-10 using the changes, and they played well.