Shadow Sun Ninja

[J-H]

Has anyone ever actually played this class, or seen it in use?
Is it as party-unfriendly as it looks?

[GilesTheCleric]

I've got one in the game I'm GMing. It seems fine. My party is a Goliath Warblade, Human Swordsage, Githzerai Monk/ Shadow Sun Ninja, and Kobold Cleric. I encouraged my players to optimise how they pleased, so most went for high-power T3 (they know that my games include less combat than most, so they've kept plenty of interesting abilities with which to RP). The Monk player is ordinarily a pretty reserved person, and has been playing up his Inertial Shield to have a nice in-character reason to be a bit more of a loner.

[tyckspoon]

I don't think it's any more party unfriendly than any other stealthy/scouty sort of class, which all have basically the same problems with the way stealth and trying to scout ahead work in D&D. The only ability that isn't fully under the control of the Shadow Sun Ninja and might screw the rest of the party is the Darkness phase of their special alternate stance, and.. well, you can just not use that. It's not very useful aside from the occasional niche use of having a 9th-level equivalent Light/Dark effect. All of the other ones specify opponents or enemies, so they don't impact the party.

[Venger]

Has anyone ever actually played this class, or seen it in use?
Is it as party-unfriendly as it looks?

what do you mean by party-unfriendly? are you referring to its capstone ability that can turn you into a vampire added in since melee was getting dangerously close to having nice things?

it doesn't come up that often, and is easily accounted for by anyone taking the class.

shadow sun ninja isn't a very strong class. some ideas on what to do with it here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?297327-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-in-the-Playground-XLVIII) a few iron chefs ago.

[Thurbane]

I've never used it in my games, but at a glance, it looks like it's mostly useful for a 1 level dip if your party doesn't have a healer type or easy access to healing items.

[J-H]

Yes, I was referring to the big AOE darkness effect.

[ATHATH]

You know, the capstone would be a really cool ability if you were able to retain PC-dom (and not be a "champion of evil") after the vampiric transformation and if the template would have its LA-cost waived. Vampires have some abilities that would make for a pretty nice capstone.

In any case, you can just be immune to ability damage and transform without worrying about the main drawback.

[Particle_Man]

I thought the usual trick was to either be undead in a non-undead party or to have at least one undead in the party (even necropolitan will do) for infinite healing between combats. Heck, a neutral negative-energy focused cleric with a kobold skeleton would do for the latter.

[Venger]

I thought the usual trick was to either be undead in a non-undead party or to have at least one undead in the party (even necropolitan will do) for infinite healing between combats. Heck, a neutral negative-energy focused cleric with a kobold skeleton would do for the latter.

or just have everyone take tomb-tainted soul

[StreamOfTheSky]

I've always wanted to make a Necropolitan Shadow Sun Ninja that focuses on maxing unarmed damage potential and thus provides infinite healing (of an amount worthwhile to use in combat), unfortunately I've never had a good opportunity. You only really need the 1st level of the PrC, though. Only reason to take the rest is if you like the maneuver progression and access it gives and/or general multiclassed martial adept using PrC to boost all his initiator levels trickery. The other 9 levels' class features are all varying degrees of fun and useless, and nothing else.