Shadowcaster BBEG help

[Silly Name]

I've been running a campaign in an homebrew setting for over a year by now, and the players are approaching their final battle against the evil cabal that has been pulling the strings for most of the story. I have established that the leader of this cabal is a CE human arcane spellcaster, and behind the scenes I've decided to make her a Shadowcaste (it fits with the theme so far and the powers are fascinating).

However, I'm having some troubles with actually building her. She should be level 17 or 18, but past that I am still undecided. I am aware of a post by one of the class designers that fixes some of the issues, but I am having some trouble locating it. I've never built a Shadowcaster before, though, and I really need some help in deciding feats, "spell" selection and equipment.

The game so far has been pretty homebrew-heavy (both for PCs and NPCs), so I'm ok with mostly everything save for ToB stuff, since when we started the campaign I didn't make it available as the players were all newbies, and we focused mostly on stuff from Core and the Complete series (with the occasional refluffing of classes and feats from other books). In any case, I'd like to avoid setting-specific archetypes and the like as much as possible.

In short, I need help building a 18 level CE human Shadowcaster. She won't be fighting alone (she'll be aided by two other high-level members of the organisation, and probably a couple of monsters), and I'm free to homebrew stuff if necessary, such as making "Shadow" versions of certain feats or items.

[Zaq]

The cool part about making the Shadowcaster a villain is that villains have way simpler resource management than PCs do, so the fact that Shadowcasters don’t get enough mysteries to last a full adventuring day matters much less on a villain than on a hero. A little underhanded if you have a ton of novaing villains fighting the PCs in a short span of time, perhaps, but used now and again to make the BBEG special? It might be forgivable.

Black Labyrinth (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20070307a) is a super cool villain mystery. It’s slightly borked by RAW (spells and equivalents can’t go outside their range, so any spell or anything substantially similar to a spell with an area greater than its range is dysfunctional), but RAI is so obvious that you’ve probably already been using it without realizing. But the point is that Black Labyrinth is a really neat effect to lay down if you’re trying to make it hard for do-gooders to fight you.

How much of a reduction of your max-level effects would it cost you to go Noctumancer? Making PCs less magical is powerful, and having arcane magic certainly doesn’t hurt.

Of course, no self-respecting BBEG is going to fight solo. What kinds of lieutenants and flunkies are you giving them?

[Silly Name]

Oh, wow, Black Labyrinth is awesome. Totally going to use it.

Noctumancer seems like a cool PrC, and one that fits the villain as well. As I said, I don't have a clear build in mind, but this class is certainly going in. Right now I can't access my books and laptop, but in a few hours I should.

The two other main foes for the final battle are going to be a martial character whose role is that of the second-in-command (he'll be a Fighter 5/Refluffed Fist of Hextor 10), and the other... It's going to depend on the PCs, but it'll be either a reworked Hexblade (level 15) or an archer Fighter/Ranger with the Peerless Archer PrC (totaling 15 levels)

Flunkies are probably going to include a couple Shadow Elementals from the ToB, a few middle-level Fighters (the retinue of the Fist of Hextor) and possibly one or two animated suits of armors, because I really like them as a concept.

[gorfnab]

You may want to look at the Shadowcaster handbook linked in signature below.

[Death_Lord12]

The fix the designer made can be found here (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?184955-Shadowcaster-fixes-by-Mouseferatu). Also, since it seems you don't mind homebrew, you could look into this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?74519-Descent-of-Shadows-Project-Shadow-Returns) thread, particularly the mystery (posts 19-24) and creature (posts 45-47) posts. There's lots of other stuff you might be interested in there though.

[Fizban]

A lot of people's ideas of fixes (including the one put forth by the creator) seem to revolve around removing the unique limits and replacing them with per-encounter usage and just taking whatever you want. Completely misses the point as far as I'm concerned.

-d8 HD, 3/4 BAB, proficiency and cast in light armor. A good number of mysteries want you to get in close, this supports them (and the combat themed shadow PrCs) better, and makes the important distinction between a sor/wiz and a not-sor/wiz. Otherwise it's mostly about image- you're a roguishly themed caster with shadowy stuff, rogues have 3/4 BAB and light armor, done.

-Skills: no. You're a caster, and casters aren't supposed to also have all the skills. Just leave that how it is. No, I don't care about the poor int-builds running out of skills to take. If you want more skills with your casting then qualify and take a PrC for it.

-Casting ability, now here's a doozy. The knee-jerk is just to make everything Int because Int is best, and that's lame. If anything, make it Cha-only. Or Int for your spells and Cha for your lower-tiers. Or character's choice of which is high/low when they enter the class. Or just caster's choice SAD when they enter the class, if you must. Heck, make it Wis SAD if you want. As long as you aren't adding another lol perfect Int casters winz class, I'm happy.

-Mysteries: +1 mystery known at every even level. Do not remove the requirements on learning earlier mysteries in each path, do not de-couple the bonus feats from the number of accessed paths. These are the two most unique and important things about the class: the fact that you actually have to spend the "spells known" to learn earlier versions in order to tech up to the improved versions, with the option to sacrifice raw level of spells within a certain tier in order to gain more "feats" (which are actually shots of free metamagic and DC boosts).

Increasing mysteries known by 50% increases mysteries per day by 50% as an automatic result (because each mystery known has a set number of uses per day), which is plenty of ammo without resorting to per-encounter hacks, and more versatility so you can afford things that aren't the absolute most powerful, and provides more of those "feats" which power your free metamagic. And don't forget that you can learn a mystery multiple times if you want more uses, so you can just dump those into more shots of your favorite if you want.

-Spell-like and Supernatural mysteries recover automatically each day without rest or preparation, because that's how those work. Edit: making the DCs 10+1/2 level+ ability is good here too- not because they need to be stronger, only because that's the standard for Su/Sp stuff. I'd watch out for this one, because one of the bigger problems with spellcasters is low-level spells already being too strong, and there are some real good mysteries even on the lowest tier.

-I don't see much reason to have normal metamagic feats on the bonus list because there's nothing that says you can actually use them, but if we add crafting feats then the Shadowcaster also gets the ability to gobble up a tons of craft options if they want.

-Shadowcasters do qualify for PrCs that want arcane spells, because they cast arcane spells. Now you can add all your favorite cheese PrCs if that's a thing your game needs, or just fun stuff.

-Full transparency with equivalent arcane items. Mostly this means Pearls of Power/Orbs of Shadow are the same thing, but if you want to trigger one of the Seven Veils or wear a Ring of Wizardy I see no reason to disallow that.


That's the class "fix" out of the way. For mystery analysis, I'll just copy paste my notes directly. Note that these notes are based on standard 1/level acquisition, not my increased 1.5/level. And they're unformatted stream of thought from a txt file.
apprentice paths/mysteries

dark terrain is your bread and butter. carpet of shadow is weaksauce, but black fire is solid and clinging darkness is absolutely bonkers: if they fail even one save, they're stuck in place until they very explicitly take a full round action and make two saves in a row to break out and avoid being restuck. it's like stinking cloud, but instead of stopping their ability to fight back, it stops their ability to move. combine it with any slow effect and they'll have to take two rounds instead of one.

touch of twilight is your other main attack: life fades is decent damage, flesh fails will let you cripple or bring down anything that can take ability damage with multiple castings, and umbral touch is just plain good-damage and slow multiple times with the only drawback of touch range

killing shadows would be nice but the cost is too high when you can just get shadow evocation soon anyway, but if you absolutely must have a blast without SE then it exists (I'd be fine with a staff if the CL didn't make it so expensive, but that's still probably a better option)

flicker is great and two spells before it aren't too bad either, but the problem is that it's most useful for bamfing with umbral touch, forcing you to give up clinging darkness if you want that combo, or sacrifice a lot of higher level spells. an exellent choice for scroll, wand, eternal wand, or whatever.

dusk and dawn is useful if you want to sneak attack (darkvision sees through it), but you eventually get see in darkness anyway and black candle is a fundamental that dupes darkness, and there's a 2,000gp item that makes a bigger dusk and dawn effect anyway. the other two in the path are useable but not good enough to take over others.

sight eclipsed will require DM clarification, but it and steel shadows are quite useable, aside from the fact that they don't stand up to the power trio dark terrain, touch of twilight, and ebon whispers.


initiate paths/mysteries

take dark reflections, all of it. shadow evocation and greater at reduced level are the only chance you have of being relevant (Edit: ah, the days when even I threw around such language- but if you want to "compete" with optimized core casters then this is your niche), and animate objects at lower level with a free 20% miss chance isn't bad either.

anything else is up to you. unbinding shade is pretty terrible but if you need dispel and break enchantment then obviously it's the only way to get the job done without items. shadow investure is terrible but it's not a prerequisite so just don't take it, aura of shade is likewise terrible but leads to control winds which is huge and the only pushing spell that's not by proxy, and unveil is trying to be a cleric spell but you can just not take it (the one good use for aura of cold is that while it's cold only, so is your black flame and curtain of shadows, so you can send someone through to fight/bull rush/whatever). shadow storm is terrible, and absolutely terrible if you have access to GSE, so just don't take it.

warp spell is great but anti-caster only, echo is rather terrible but has it's uses, flood of shadow's applications are obvious.

bolster is good and can give you the hp to try and deliver umbral touch, laguor is useable- note that even one round of paralyze is enough for an adjacent ally to execute them

pass into shadow is bogus and an insult, but if you want access to "slow teleport with no error even if we've never been there" then you'll have to pay for it.

shadow vision is useable and curtain of shadow is about as useable as wall of fire give or take, so take them if you want.

All in all, the initiate paths have lots of room for cutting off tops and dipping other paths, but dark reflections is so far above them all that you could get by just taking it twice and not looking back.

master paths/mysteries

hardly anything to say here. shadow surge is garbage and shadow plague is based on a garbage spell, but everything else is on par or even better than equivalent spells, you just have to take what you want. breath of twilight for mass murder, ebon walls for individual murder, eyes of the night sky for divination, heart and soul if you want dominate, or shadow calling for dps bots.

As for the rest of the build, you might decide to indulge in the fact that this character is being created out of nothing at a high level. Meaning you can branch out all your lower level mysteries to cash in on extra bonus feats, in order to get more uses of Quicken Mystery, in order to be a better boss monster. Item selection depends so much on the power level of the game/what you like using/what they're facing/what they should actually have in-world that I'd never give out of the box suggestions. Not for anything less obvious than "flight item" (Broom of Flying and Cloak of the Bat are cool) and number boosters and such.

[Silly Name]

Thank you, Fizban! I really like your suggestions way more than other fixes and homebrews I've seen (and, yea, I agree that making either CHA or WIS the Shadowcaster's casting stat is way more interesting than having another INT-based class, though it might hurt my attempts at building a Noctumancer). I'm definitely going to use your suggestions to build this evil gal.

[timeeater14]

If you want to make it CHA-based, then do a sorcerer-Noctumancer build. Take dispel and greater dispel, improved counterspell. Sally forth and make the part less magical than you!

[Fizban]

Thank you, Fizban! I really like your suggestions way more than other fixes and homebrews I've seen (and, yea, I agree that making either CHA or WIS the Shadowcaster's casting stat is way more interesting than having another INT-based class, though it might hurt my attempts at building a Noctumancer). I'm definitely going to use your suggestions to build this evil gal.
Yay, I helped! Really the only unique thing about my fix is that there's only one important change: the 50% increase in mysteries known. One simple increase boosts almost everything about the class without removing its unique mechanics. All the rest is gravy and int-caster hate :smallbiggrin: