"Shadowpouncing"?

[danielxcutter]

Came across the term on TvTropes. Can somebody explain this to me in detail, and how to pull it off?

[Florian]

Came across the term on TvTropes. Can somebody explain this to me in detail, and how to pull it off?

Many ways to do it. The basics are to get something like a Shadowdancers Shadow Jump ability, and add another one that let´s you use that along with a Full Attack, ending up with some kind of "pounce". Look up the Telflammar Shadowlord for that.

[Psyren]

IIRC there's another class called Crinti Shadow Marauder that also gets it(?)

[WeaselGuy]

IIRC there's another class called Crinti Shadow Marauder that also gets it(?)

That is correct. Crinti is a bit easier to qualify for, but has some fluff requirements (being part of the noble class of Dambrathans, which is a majority Half-Drow settlement), whereas Telflemmar requires the ability to dimension door or shadow jump, or have the shadow-walker template (a +1 LA scaling template that does give some goodies as you level up). There was an optimization competition a while back that used one of these, but I think it actually went unjudged.

[Kaleph]

IIRC there's another class called Crinti Shadow Marauder that also gets it(?)

Yep, mainly for drows. The trick is to get some dimension-door-like ability up to three times per round (1 swift / 1 move / 1 standard) and get 3 full-attack actions per round. There's also a feat in complete warrior (sun monk or something) that allows an additional attack, I believe.

[Darrin]

Shadowpounce (Ex) is a class ability that shows up in two prestige classes: Telflammar Shadowlord 4 (Unapproachable East) and Crinti Shadow Marauder (Shining South).

The gist of it is, whenever your character uses a [teleportation] ability via spell/SLA/Su effect, you can execute a full attack after the teleport resolves. The nifty part is if you can execute multiple teleport effects in the same round, you can get multiple full attacks. So... it's a pretty potent melee combo, but the tricky part is qualifying for one of the prestige classes above without crippling the rest of your build. Telflammar Shadowlord in particular has a pretty serious case of the "Fochlucan Lyrist" approach to PrC requirements. Although Crinti Shadow Marauder (CSM) gets Shadowpounce at level 5 instead of level 4, the entry requirements are not so convoluted (particularly if you allow dusky-skinned humans to satisfy the "Crinti" racial requirement).

Ideally, you want to be able to pull off a "Teleport Trifecta", where you can reliably use three different action types to execute a [teleport]:

Swift/Immediate Action
stand spell (PHBII)
dimension hop power (Complete Psionic)
flicker mystery (Tome of Magic)
Abrupt Jaunt ACF (Complete Mage)
Shadow Blink maneuver (Tome of Battle)

Swift/Immediate Action
Blink Shirt soulmeld bound to totem chakra (Magic of Incarnum)
Shadow Stride maneuver (Tome of Battle)

Standard Action
Blink Shirt soulmeld unbound (Magic of Incarnum)
Shadow Jaunt maneuver (Tome of Battle)
Shadow Jump ability (various)
Any teleport/dimension door spell/SLA/PLA/etc. (various)

If you're using a dimension door effect as part of your trifecta, then you generally want to use that effect last as it prohibits any other actions until the start of your next turn. (The full attack granted by Shadowpounce is an exception to this limitation.)

The easiest way to pull this off is a dip into Ardent, Mantled PsyWar, or Mantled Wilder to pick up dimension hop, dip into Totemist 2 to pick up Blink Shirt, and then some Swordsage levels for Shadow Jaunt. Start with dimension hop as your swift action, Shadow Jaunt as your standard, then finish with Blink Shirt as your move action.

If you want to kick it up to obscene levels, then add Ruby Knight Vindicator 7 for Divine Impetus/Divine Recovery, get your IL up high enough to nab Shadow Blink, then load up on Nightsticks and turn yourself into a Ruby Knight Vitamix by converting Turn Undead uses into full attacks.

The TWF OffHandbook (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?279079-3-5-The-TWF-OffHandbook) has a few examples of Shadowpouncer builds (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=15034800&postcount=15). If I have time, I'll see if I can find some better examples.

[danielxcutter]

Shadowpounce (Ex) is a class ability that shows up in two prestige classes: Telflammar Shadowlord 4 (Unapproachable East) and Crinti Shadow Marauder (Shining South).

The gist of it is, whenever your character uses a [teleportation] ability via spell/SLA/Su effect, you can execute a full attack after the teleport resolves. The nifty part is if you can execute multiple teleport effects in the same round, you can get multiple full attacks. So... it's a pretty potent melee combo, but the tricky part is qualifying for one of the prestige classes above without crippling the rest of your build. Telflammar Shadowlord in particular has a pretty serious case of the "Fochlucan Lyrist" approach to PrC requirements. Although Crinti Shadow Marauder (CSM) gets Shadowpounce at level 5 instead of level 4, the entry requirements are not so convoluted (particularly if you allow dusky-skinned humans to satisfy the "Crinti" racial requirement).

Ideally, you want to be able to pull off a "Teleport Trifecta", where you can reliably use three different action types to execute a [teleport]:

Swift/Immediate Action
stand spell (PHBII)
dimension hop power (Complete Psionic)
flicker mystery (Tome of Magic)
Abrupt Jaunt ACF (Complete Mage)
Shadow Blink maneuver (Tome of Battle)

Swift/Immediate Action
Blink Shirt soulmeld bound to totem chakra (Magic of Incarnum)
Shadow Stride maneuver (Tome of Battle)

Standard Action
Blink Shirt soulmeld unbound (Magic of Incarnum)
Shadow Jaunt maneuver (Tome of Battle)
Shadow Jump ability (various)
Any teleport/dimension door spell/SLA/PLA/etc. (various)

If you're using a dimension door effect as part of your trifecta, then you generally want to use that effect last as it prohibits any other actions until the start of your next turn. (The full attack granted by Shadowpounce is an exception to this limitation.)

The easiest way to pull this off is a dip into Ardent, Mantled PsyWar, or Mantled Wilder to pick up dimension hop, dip into Totemist 2 to pick up Blink Shirt, and then some Swordsage levels for Shadow Jaunt. Start with dimension hop as your swift action, Shadow Jaunt as your standard, then finish with Blink Shirt as your move action.

If you want to kick it up to obscene levels, then add Ruby Knight Vindicator 7 for Divine Impetus/Divine Recovery, get your IL up high enough to nab Shadow Blink, then load up on Nightsticks and turn yourself into a Ruby Knight Vitamix by converting Turn Undead uses into full attacks.

The TWF OffHandbook (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?279079-3-5-The-TWF-OffHandbook) has a few examples of Shadowpouncer builds (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=15034800&postcount=15). If I have time, I'll see if I can find some better examples.

Good lord, that's hilarious! :smallbiggrin:

[WeaselGuy]

Here's a round of Iron Chef (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?458711-Iron-Chef-Optimisation-Challenge-in-the-Playground-LXXIV/page4) that had Crinti Shadow Marauder. One of the entries was in a Junkyard Wars, which went unjudged. The IC was judged.

[WhamBamSam]

Shadowpounce (Ex) is a class ability that shows up in two prestige classes: Telflammar Shadowlord 4 (Unapproachable East) and Crinti Shadow Marauder (Shining South).

The gist of it is, whenever your character uses a [teleportation] ability via spell/SLA/Su effect, you can execute a full attack after the teleport resolves. The nifty part is if you can execute multiple teleport effects in the same round, you can get multiple full attacks. So... it's a pretty potent melee combo, but the tricky part is qualifying for one of the prestige classes above without crippling the rest of your build. Telflammar Shadowlord in particular has a pretty serious case of the "Fochlucan Lyrist" approach to PrC requirements. Although Crinti Shadow Marauder (CSM) gets Shadowpounce at level 5 instead of level 4, the entry requirements are not so convoluted (particularly if you allow dusky-skinned humans to satisfy the "Crinti" racial requirement).

Ideally, you want to be able to pull off a "Teleport Trifecta", where you can reliably use three different action types to execute a [teleport]:

Swift/Immediate Action
stand spell (PHBII)
dimension hop power (Complete Psionic)
flicker mystery (Tome of Magic)
Abrupt Jaunt ACF (Complete Mage)
Shadow Blink maneuver (Tome of Battle)

Swift/Immediate Action
Blink Shirt soulmeld bound to totem chakra (Magic of Incarnum)
Shadow Stride maneuver (Tome of Battle)

Standard Action
Blink Shirt soulmeld unbound (Magic of Incarnum)
Shadow Jaunt maneuver (Tome of Battle)
Shadow Jump ability (various)
Any teleport/dimension door spell/SLA/PLA/etc. (various)

If you're using a dimension door effect as part of your trifecta, then you generally want to use that effect last as it prohibits any other actions until the start of your next turn. (The full attack granted by Shadowpounce is an exception to this limitation.)

The easiest way to pull this off is a dip into Ardent, Mantled PsyWar, or Mantled Wilder to pick up dimension hop, dip into Totemist 2 to pick up Blink Shirt, and then some Swordsage levels for Shadow Jaunt. Start with dimension hop as your swift action, Shadow Jaunt as your standard, then finish with Blink Shirt as your move action.

If you want to kick it up to obscene levels, then add Ruby Knight Vindicator 7 for Divine Impetus/Divine Recovery, get your IL up high enough to nab Shadow Blink, then load up on Nightsticks and turn yourself into a Ruby Knight Vitamix by converting Turn Undead uses into full attacks.

The TWF OffHandbook (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?279079-3-5-The-TWF-OffHandbook) has a few examples of Shadowpouncer builds (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=15034800&postcount=15). If I have time, I'll see if I can find some better examples.If you get a low level teleporting SLA with scaling CL (including any source of SLA that doesn't explicitly mention CL, like Benign/Baleful Transposition from Jaunter, which is already a popular Shadowlord entry), you can use Quicken SLA to bring it down to a swift relatively easily as well.

I get the impression that people tend toward either the strict RAW of Divine Impetus (that it defaults to a standard action, which is still not entirely useless), or make it a free action, but houserule a 1/round limitation or somesuch. Neither RAW nor most DMs will let you get away with using it to make arbitrary extra Shadow Pounces.

If you can somehow turn into a Blink Dog with Assume Supernatural Ability or Metamorphic Transfer, you can nab one extra teleport per round as a free action. I feel it's kinda overkill to use polymorph though, and unfortunately, the Magical Beast type is inordinately hard to get, making Alter Self a difficult proposition. I've always really wanted that 4th full attack though, so here's the best of what I've come up with on the subject.

1. Beguilers (Shining South) and Tressym (Monsters of Faerun or PGtF I think?) are LA+0 (Cohort), which a DM might permit, or which you could at least use for a Shadow Pouncing cohort. For that matter, the Blink Dog itself is 4 RHD/LA +2 (Cohort).

2. Get hit by (Maximized Empowered) Awaken or Planar Familiar (https://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/sb/sb20011020a) while under the effect of Aspect of the Wolf to permanently change your type to Magical Beast. Awaken saddles you with 2 Magical Beast HD, whereas the Celestial/Fiendish Template from Planar Familiar has LA+2. Not ideal, but it's an ECL adjustment below the Abrian's 2 RHD/+1 LA, which is the lowest ECL for a printed Magical Beast with a listed, non-Cohort LA that I know of.

3. Momentary Alteration (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/buildingCharacters/spelltouchedFeats.htm#momentaryAlteration), doesn't actually require you to have the same type as the form you're assuming, just that you've previously assumed the form. You can change type temporarily by being the beneficiary of a Polymorph spell, then Alter Self into a Blink Dog to qualify for a few iterations of Momentary Alteration into that form. Problem is, the duration is only a minute, and losing an action to transform at the beginning of a fight sort of defeats the purpose of the exercise. Also, Shadow Pouncing tends to be too feat tight for sinking 4 feats into Momentary Alteration to be realistic.


Here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?316111-ToB-Shadowpouncer)'s an Idiot Crusader that can Shadow Pounce 3/round every round with the Shadow Hand maneuvers made by Piggy Knowles. There's a bit of a setting conflict between Dragonmarks and Telflammar Shadowlord, but that can be resolved by instead getting the ability to cast Dimension Door from the higher order power of Planar Touchstone (Catalogues of Enlightenment: Portal or Travel Domain). Since you're using other abilities to do your actual teleporting, you don't have to worry too much about the 1/day limitation or bothering to recharge the ability. This even frees up a feat, which you could use to take Sun School, or feat rejiggering so you can drop a Monk level for Hit-and-Run Sneak Attack Fighter if you don't think Assassin's Stance is enough to qualify for Craven.

Planar Touchstone is probably the most painless way to go about meeting the Dimension Door prereq, unless you can do something silly like Martial Monk for early entry into Jaunter.

[ATHATH]

Speaking of Monks, how does that "make only one attack but double the damage of all attacks this round instead of the normal effect of flurry" ACF (?) interact with this?

[WhamBamSam]

Speaking of Monks, how does that "make only one attack but double the damage of all attacks this round instead of the normal effect of flurry" ACF (?) interact with this?You can't use it in place of a full attack if that's what you mean. A Shadow Pounce used in the same round as a Decisive Strike would deal double damage, but Decisive Strike is a full-round action, so you'd be left with only your swift action to teleport with. Also, without Flurry, you wouldn't qualify for Sun School.

[Labelos]

How does the Duskblade's arcane channel ("use any touch spell you know as part of a full attack action") interact with the shadowpounce? ("he may execute a full attack upon completion of the teleport")

I assume since it's full attack action, you can't use the pounce full attack to cast another spell, but still worth asking.

[Rebel7284]

Ardent 10 with Dominant Ideal and Customize Mantle leads to a truly ridiculous number of full attacks, especially if the practiced manifester trick works.

Consider the following ECL 15 character:
Ardent 8/Swordsage 1/TSL 4/Ardent 2

Prebuffed: Fission, Schism

Swift Action: Hustle+Twin Power
Hustle Action: Dimension Slide+Twin Power [2x Full Attack]
Hustle Action: Dimension Slide+Twin Power [2x Full Attack]
Move Action: Dimension Slide+Twin Power [2x Full Attack]
Standard Action: Dimension Swap+Twin Power [2x Full Attack, 2x Full Attacks for Fission copy]
Schism Action: Dimension Swap+Twin Power [2x Full Attack, 2x Full Attacks for Fission copy]

After performing your 10 full attacks (and your copy performing 4), you can then instruct your copy to do this as well resulting in 10 full attacks for the copy and 4 more for you.

Total: 28 full attacks.

Adding Linked Power feat could allow the number of attacks to double each round.

Weakness: You just spent all your power points in one round and may or may not have the feats left for recharge.

[Kaje]

How does the Duskblade's arcane channel ("use any touch spell you know as part of a full attack action") interact with the shadowpounce? ("he may execute a full attack upon completion of the teleport")

I assume since it's full attack action, you can't use the pounce full attack to cast another spell, but still worth asking.

It's quite clear. You cast the channeled spell as part of a full attack. It changes the action used to cast a spell. So you can channel in a shadowpounce, and if you do it during the first pounce, you can continue to channel it in any subsequent pounces that round.

[Labelos]

It's quite clear. You cast the channeled spell as part of a full attack. It changes the action used to cast a spell. So you can channel in a shadowpounce, and if you do it during the first pounce, you can continue to channel it in any subsequent pounces that round.

Does that mean that, if you channel dimension hop in a full attack, touch yourself on your last attack to teleport yourself, use that teleport to start a new full attack with shadowpounce, you could cast a new dimension hop during the second full attack and use your last attack to teleport yourself again?

[Rebel7284]

Does that mean that, if you channel dimension hop in a full attack, touch yourself on your last attack to teleport yourself, use that teleport to start a new full attack with shadowpounce, you could cast a new dimension hop during the second full attack and use your last attack to teleport yourself again?

I have heard of this loop before. Here are some considerations:
- It's not clear if you can attack yourself as part of a full attack or how one would resolve that. Certainly it's pretty awkward.
- It's an infinite loop, so is not applicable to most games
- It takes off at level 17 at the earliest, so if infinite loops are allowed, why not just wish for more wishes at that point?

But yes, if it is ruled that you can attack yourself, then it works to give you an arbitrary number of full attacks.

[zergling.exe]

I have heard of this loop before. Here are some considerations:
- It's not clear if you can attack yourself as part of a full attack or how one would resolve that. Certainly it's pretty awkward.
- It's an infinite loop, so is not applicable to most games
- It takes off at level 17 at the earliest, so if infinite loops are allowed, why not just wish for more wishes at that point?

But yes, if it is ruled that you can attack yourself, then it works to give you an arbitrary number of full attacks.

Wouldn't it be finite as you would eventually knock yourself out?

[Battleship789]

Another option is the Blade of Orien prestige class (Dragonmarked,) which uses the Dragonmark of Passage's dimension door and dimension hop to get shadowpouncing as a capstone. Notably, it can be used with ranged attacks, as the ability doesn't have a melee range clause like Telflammar Shadowlord or Crinti Shadow Marauder.

[danielxcutter]

Another option is the Blade of Orien prestige class (Dragonmarked,) which uses the Dragonmark of Passage's dimension door and dimension hop to get shadowpouncing as a capstone. Notably, it can be used with ranged attacks, as the ability doesn't have a melee range clause like Telflammar Shadowlord or Crinti Shadow Marauder.

Hmm, what races get that dragonmark? Don't have any Eberron books right now.

[Battleship789]

Hmm, what races get that dragonmark? Don't have any Eberron books right now.

Human and half-elf, iirc.

[CozJa]

No, house Orien is human only.

Besides, I never noticed the fact that you can actually use blade of orien to make ranged full attacks! Good catch!

[danielxcutter]

No, house Orien is human only.

Besides, I never noticed the fact that you can actually use blade of orien to make ranged full attacks! Good catch!

Face it; everyone would be a human anyway for the bonus feat. :smalltongue:

[CozJa]

Face it; everyone would be a human anyway for the bonus feat. :smalltongue:

Yeah definitely! At least Eberron helped half-elves a bit with the whole "wind shooting airship captain" thing! :smallbiggrin:

Anyway, Blade of Orien can be quite good: sure its abilities are somewhat restricted on the number of uses and the capstone specifically says it works only with the dragonmark. But between items and feats you should be able to dragonteleport (I like this term :smalltongue: ) around 10 times/day.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Does that mean that, if you channel dimension hop in a full attack, touch yourself on your last attack to teleport yourself, use that teleport to start a new full attack with shadowpounce, you could cast a new dimension hop during the second full attack and use your last attack to teleport yourself again?
That is an excellent idea, thank you for that :smallbiggrin:. In fact, you can full attack yourself using nonmagical unarmed strikes, mitigating the damage with common DR/magic, and execute a Shadowpounce for each hit with your +5 twohander.

[Darrin]

It's quite clear. You cast the channeled spell as part of a full attack. It changes the action used to cast a spell. So you can channel in a shadowpounce, and if you do it during the first pounce, you can continue to channel it in any subsequent pounces that round.

That's not my understanding of how that would work. Yes, you can channel on the full attack granted by Shadow Pounce, but most [teleportation] spells are instantaneous effects. A spell effect only gets discharged at the end of the round if it's a spell with a duration that can be discharged. If you're channeling dimension hop, your target gets affected immediately after the hit. Presumably you'd want to make a touch attack against yourself as your last attack, and deliberately allow the attack to succeed. The rules don't exactly cover "hitting yourself and not avoiding the hit", but the rules don't explicitly forbid it, either.

If you're using dimension hop, you could attempt to move around your opponents, but they'd get a Will save to negate. Based on the text of Shadow Pounce, it doesn't trigger if you teleport someone else, just when used on yourself. You'd also want to keep your opponents in melee range, so it shouldn't matter so much if you teleport them around or if they make the save.

On your last attack, touch yourself, teleport, and you make another full attack. But your last teleport spell has already ended, so you'll have to channel another one here. It's not an infinite combo. You'll eventually run out of teleport spells. That being said... a wand of stand is pretty cheap: 750 GP for 50 consecutive full attacks.

[ExLibrisMortis]

On your last attack, touch yourself, teleport, and you make another full attack. But your last teleport spell has already ended, so you'll have to channel another one here. It's not an infinite combo. You'll eventually run out of teleport spells. That being said... a wand of stand is pretty cheap: 750 GP for 50 consecutive full attacks.
More efficiently:
1) Use dimension hop. (1 charge)
2) On your shadowpounce, channel dimension hop on a six-attack full attack. Hit only yourself. (1 charge)
3) After each attack you get a shadowpounce. Use them to attack only yourself. (6 charges)
4) Repeat step 3. (36 charges)
5) So far, you've used 44 charges of your wand. You have also hit yourself with 36 6-attack pounces, each of which grants you a shadowpounce. It's probably a good time to start using these on enemies.

Note: this is not in order. In reality, you hit self 1 > self 1.1 > self 1.1.1 > enemy 1.1.1.1-6 > self 1.1.2 > enemy 1.1.1.1-6 > ... > self 6.6.6 > enemy 6.6.6.1-6.

[martixy]

I once built a 3.P gestalt Unchained Rogue / Telf / Swiftblade / Factotum with dimensional agility et al. and the Cloying shades talent. You can go even further with the Mythic Shadow epic destiny and the Light Walker talent.

Now THAT is shadow pouncing.

[Rebel7284]

I once built a 3.P gestalt Unchained Rogue / Telf / Swiftblade / Factotum with dimensional agility et al. and the Cloying shades talent. You can go even further with the Mythic Shadow epic destiny and the Light Walker talent.

Now THAT is shadow pouncing.

So how many full attacks is that? Wondering how it compares to my psionic built.

[Kaje]

That's not my understanding of how that would work.

...

None of what you said here is applicable to my post that you quoted. My post was about the mechanics of channeling during a shadowpounce. No one even started talking about smacking yourself with dimension hop for infinite attacks until after that post.

[Zaq]

I mean, I once entered a Shadowpouncer whose power source was Truespeak (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18265521&postcount=120) into Iron Chef. And I took gold. So that's a thing.

Shadowpouncing is strong enough that you don't need to dive into "3+ full attacks per turn" territory unless you're in a really crazy high-op game. But there's definitely some flexibility there, because any teleport is enough to trigger it. That can lead to some really weird combos, which I think you've got the right mindset to consider to be fun.

[martixy]

So how many full attacks is that? Wondering how it compares to my psionic built.

It gets murky with how actions work, but I can see a good argument for 9-10. 8 at least with perfect TWF.