Master of Shrouds

[Rethmar]

Good day/evening, all.

I'm looking at the Master of Shrouds prestige class, from the book of bad latin. Some friends and I are looking to make a party of evil/undead based characters, and this PrC looks like it could be fun, with a little work. Basing it on a cloistered cleric.


Trying to look for feats/spells/etc to make it shine.

The PrC requires Augment Summoning, but it does nothing for the shadows and other incorporeal undead you can summon. They don't even have Str or Con. Corpsecrafter gives my shadows another 6 hp each, but the Str bonus is still useless.

I know I can still have regular corporeal undead, and just have the shadows as extra, but I kind of want to solely focus on these unique undead since my party will be bringing other stuff to the table.

I could amass a large number of lowly shadows and then detonate them for Destruction Retribution damage, which seems fun.

As for spells, Incorporeal Enhancement is a solid buff.

So, Playground, what spells or feats should I take to make shadows better or more useful or anything creative you can think of?

Thanks! Happy stat draining.

[Fizban]

Summon Undead is still a summon spell, and not a bad one at that (at least until it stops scaling). Lets you make use of your prerequisite feat without tying up your control slots, and corporeal undead that disappear between fights and don't require corpses is still quite unlike normal animation.

You don't really need to do anything crazy for shadows to be awesome, just fight things that aren't immune to them. You order permanent shadows to follow you while hiding just beneath the floor, and attack targets based on some sort of signal (to avoid the standard action per order per creature clause, they have int so they can follow complex orders). The shadows are unhittable when in the floor, and then all pop out and gank whoever you point them at. You rely on Summon Undead stuff until you have MoS shadows, which you use until you have actual shadows. Summoned shadows get to just appear surround people and immediately attack, then 5' step into the floor.

If you had access to illusion magic you could mix in fake shadows that would be more convincing since weapons pass through real shadows. The usual undead spell combos apply (Nauseating Breath is your Clerical Stinking Cloud). Physical battlefield control does nothing to your shadows. Good idea to keep Desecrate up at all times since undead don't have much attack bonus. Bring Dispel Magic to strip off Death Ward and Body Ward effects. Have the arcanist bring Arcane Sight or Greater to identify those spells immediately, better yet offload the dispelling onto them too. Having someone ready a Haste spell to deliver at the exact moment your shadows appear will allow them to show up at the start of turn 2 (end of 1 round casting time), suddenly be buffed, and then full attack for two touches each instead of one. If you can find or craft a magic item that can cast Haste on others, then making it intelligent will suffice even without a party member (the intelligent item Haste power only works on the user).

[LentilNinja]

Out of all the classes to pick to get +2 Will for entry, I'm always for Dragon Shaman for this kind of build. Out of it you'll get 3 auras with minor buffs for any of your undead that stay near you, and you can trade one aura out for an invocation (Darkness is appropriate, so your wraiths can be out in daylight).

[Hamste]

Unless your GM is house ruling it, corpse crafter does not apply to master of shrouds shadows. They summon the shadows through an effect similar to summon monsters, corpsecrafter requires you actually raise or create them with a necromancy spell.

[Inevitability]

Consider the Dragon Below domain to get Augment Summoning for free.

[Beheld]

Here is the section on Pale Master from the Revised Necromancer Handbook:


Master of Shrouds (Cleric)
What you are supposed to do with Master of Shrouds is to take 6 levels of Cleric and then hop into Master of Shrouds. Don’t do this. The actual prereq is that you have a Will Save of +5, you can have that at 3rd level if you multiclass. You can be a Master of Shrouds at level 4, and while that may not sound impressive, the fact that you’re getting access to those incorporeal monsters 3 levels early is a big deal. Everything that a Master of Shrouds conjures is designed to be slightly underpowered at the level you’re supposed to get it. But 3 levels ago it would have been really handy.

So for your first 2 levels, you’ll be a Cleric. You’ll take Spell Focus: Conjuring and Augment Summoning, which is just plain setting feats on fire. But you’re a cleric, you don’t really care, because you can heal yourself and wear heavy armor. You’re only missing 1 BAB on a fighter and your two domains probably give you something faintly cool. Then you’ll take Hexblade or something similar to boost your base Will Save. I won’t insult you by pretending that this gives you good abilities, but at this point you are surviving as a warrior archetype anyway so it’s not a big deal. At 4th level you hurt, because you’re still only casting 1st level spells and your BAB is only +2. There’s really nothing good you can say at this point. But at fifth level you start being able to produce Shadows in large numbers as standard actions. That’s completely playable all the way up to 13th level where you are popping Dread Wraiths out and have 5th level spells. It’s no good after that of course, the undead summonings stop scaling and you are a whole spell level behind for an increasingly marginalized benefit – but there are a lot of games that exist in the 5th – 13th level range and this is a valid character in those arenas. Beckon the Frozen is a nice little feat you pick up at 6th level because being immune to cold is nice, but 1d6 cold damage on a shadow as a touch attack is just mean.

You can probably find a better choice that Hexblade for a one level dip for the +2 Will Save though.

[Ger. Bessa]

If you can use taint or flaws, you can use Cloistered cleric 2/Paragnostic apostle 1/Master of shrouds with the feats :

Lv1 : heighten spell
Flaw/taint : Eldritch corruption
Flaw/human : spell focus (conj)
Lv3 : augment summoning.

You can cast lv3 spells (lv1 heightened to 3 thanks to EC) and have 5 ranks in 3 knowledge skills at lv2. Profit !
And no loss of CL at lv3 !

Paragnostic apostle also has a few candies for ya :
->Call of worlds (you summoned creatures have fast healing)
->Mind over matter (if you can get mage armor or something)
->See through the veil (for later, +1 cl for some necro spells and +1 TU level).

And I've let your domains free...