The Whisperknife and Master Thrower PrC's 3,5Ed.

[CopperElfCleric]

A PC I'm playing with wants to create a knife thrower. He wants to take both the Whisperknife PrC and the Master Thrower PrC. Does anyone feel that these two classes are perfect for each other, or does Master Thrower not really work with Whisperknife? I know Whisperknife is both a melee and ranged dagger/knife PrC. Any help is very welcome.

[Fouredged Sword]

Ok, so here is the thing. Whisperknife is based around sneak attack damage. Nothing wrong with this. You need a way to effectively deal with triggering sneak attack because you cannot rely on the reliable flank, but there are ways to deal with that. It also specifically requires two weapon fighting and thus full attacks.

A few thing to keep in mind. Whisperknife is one of those classes with a lot of stuff that doesn't really fit all that well together. You need to be hidden to sneak attack while at ranged. This means spending a move action after your attack to "snipe". This means no full attacks. You have twfing, so you seem to be based around full attacks, but your daggers do not return until your NEXT round, so you need one magic weapon PER attack, and they all need the returning property, so your magic weapons will always be weaker than normal due to the priced in +1 you absolutely must have. You need sneak attack to really do damage, but your progress that slower than straight rogue.

It's an uncomfortable mix of ranged and melee that ends up being not better than straight rogue at ether. It really seems to be based around the idea of running up and attacking creatures while flanking them by throwing daggers while in melee. It works OK, but you can do it better by taking weapon finesse and just attacking.

Now, master thrower. Here is something more specialized. Master Throwers are best built to throw poisoned shuriken or darts using Weak Spot (touch attacks), Two with One Blow (one attack hits two adjacent targets), and Palm Throw (one attack hits with two shuriken or darts). You hit four times per attack roll and thus do a good bit of damage. You pour money out like water though, and you are spending money every attack.

I suspect you will find your best bet is to just go straight rogue, maybe take the halfling racial substitution levels in races of the wild for some extra sneak attack damage while at range, but otherwise not mess with ether of these two PRC's.

If you want to throw knives you need sneak attack damage. Both Whisper Knife and Master Thrower cost you sneak attack damage. You could make an argument for a master thrower dip for one, maybe two levels so you can pick up a single trick you want and retrain your rogue evasion for ray reflection. Whisper Knife is also a maybe, if you have a way to be hidden without revealing yourself when you attack so you do not need to snipe and can make those full attacks.

So that's my take away. Master thrower no more than two levels and Whisperknife if you really want to for the ability to throw in melee rather than make melee attacks for some reason. You end up trading a little sneak attack for mild defensive bonuses.