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egg_green
2008-01-25, 06:59 PM
I just joined a new gaming group, and I thought I'd try playing something different: a Shadowcaster. However, after the first session, it became apparent that my character was vastly underpowered compared to the rest of the group. He's given me one week to re-jigger my character. I want to stick with being a single-classed Half-elf Shadowcaster, but aside from that, I don't really care too much. Books available are any WOTC 3.5, except BoED and BoVD.

At the moment, here's what I have:
Male Half-elf Shadowcaster 5
STR 14, DEX 18, CON 8, INT 17, WIS 15, CHA 15
Skills: Concentration, Hide, Move Silently, Spot, Knowledge (planes)
Feats: Weapon Finesse, Extend Mystery, Reach Mystery

Fundamentals:
Arrow of Dusk (x2)
Caul of Shadow
Mystic Reflections

Mysteries:
Cloak of Shadows path (Steel Shadows, Sight Eclipsed, Sharp Shadows)
Touch of Twilight path (Life Fades, Flesh Fails)

Tactics and flavor: He generally fights with a rapier, relying on Sharp Shadows to injure any opponents who get through his high AC (thanks to Steel Shadows and a high DEX). Backstory-wise, he has amnesia (plot hook city!), and is somewhat disturbed by his seemingly very dark powers.

The rest of the party, for reference, consists of an Aasimar paladin and a Goliath cleric.

The campaign is set in a homebrew world, and is fairly combat-heavy, but involves a fair amount of overland travel and urban encounters, not just dungeons. We're not very political at the moment, but I have a feeling it may well go that way once we get farther along with the campaign.

Thanks for all your help!

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-01-25, 07:03 PM
Go either human or elf, half is pretty weak. If possible, put more into con, your hp will get you killed. Other than that, I don't know enough about the class to help you. Sorry.

Bag_of_Holding
2008-01-25, 07:58 PM
Male Half-elf Shadowcaster 5

A shadowcaster, unfortunately, is one of the most underpowered class down there with non-optimised monk and soulknife. Nevertheless, since it's my favourite class I'll try my best to help ye out.



STR 14, DEX 18, CON 8, INT 17, WIS 15, CHA 15
Skills: Concentration, Hide, Move Silently, Spot, Knowledge (planes)
Feats: Weapon Finesse, Extend Mystery, Reach Mystery

If the campaign is as combat-heavy as you mentioned, then Con score of 8 is just a drop-out-of-game-quick card (ha-ha). If a shadowcaster has ability scores of 14/18/8/17/15/15, then his arrangement should look like this:
8/14/15/17/15/18
Str does nothing for you, when you have such a low BAB and low enough AC to discourage you from going melee.
Dex is sorta important since your primary damage dealing abilities will sometimes rely on touch/ranged touch attacks. Of course, if you reeeaaaallly want to use a rapier, then it's where your attack bonus will come from.
Con, as a shadowcaster only gets a d6 for his/her HD, decent Con score will help you raise your chance to survive.
Int is only useful to qualify you to cast higher level mysteries. As long as you can get it up to 19 before 17th level, it's okay to leave it at 17.
Cha determines your save DC for your mysteries, duh.
One of the most debiliating drawbacks of the class is the fact that it doesn't get any bonus uses per mysteries per day. At fifth level, you're stuck with 1/1/1 per mysteries per day, which ain't very versatile at all.
In terms of feat choices, I'd choose Shadow Cast above Weapon Finesse. If you are going to employ Reach Mystery to use, then WF is only useful for Rapier attacks, which would be mostly useless.



Fundamentals:
Arrow of Dusk (x2)
Caul of Shadow
Mystic Reflections

Seeing that you've 'relearned' AoD twice, I'm guessing your idea was to use it as your damage source, right? I'm sorry to disappoint you but dealing 2d4 nonlethal damage 6 times a day is NOT a reliable source of damage at all in a combat-heavy 5th level campaign. Sharp Shadows deal 1d6+5 damage to anyone who strikes you in melee, meaning you'll actually have to take damage in order to have any effects on that opponent. With most melee characters having higher damage output (thanks to power attack and two-handed weaponry), you'll run out of hp pretty quick.



Mysteries:
Cloak of Shadows path (Steel Shadows, Sight Eclipsed, Sharp Shadows)
Touch of Twilight path (Life Fades, Flesh Fails)

Okay, I can see you've tried to take that Sharp Sahdows mystery, but as I explained above it's not a reliable buff at all. Steel Shadows is nice, but the rest? Perhaps not.
Touch of Twilight path is rather decent though, FF dealing set amount of ability damage (Str 4 OR Dex 4 OR Con 2) and Umbral Touch mystery dealing 5d6 damage with slowing effec (albeit only usable 5 times).
If you want to go damage dealing, I'd recommend Dark Terrain and Eyes of Darkness paths, both with very nice battlefield control/divination/direct damage mysteries to boot.



Tactics and flavor: He generally fights with a rapier, relying on Sharp Shadows to injure any opponents who get through his high AC (thanks to Steel Shadows and a high DEX). Backstory-wise, he has amnesia (plot hook city!), and is somewhat disturbed by his seemingly very dark powers.

The rest of the party, for reference, consists of an Aasimar paladin and a Goliath cleric.

The campaign is set in a homebrew world, and is fairly combat-heavy, but involves a fair amount of overland travel and urban encounters, not just dungeons. We're not very political at the moment, but I have a feeling it may well go that way once we get farther along with the campaign.

Thanks for all your help!
Shadowcaster going melee is a bad, bad idea. They lack the armour proficiencies of clerics and the versatile spell list of wizard/sorcerer (yes, even less than a sorcerer). Get Shadow Cast into a wall to avoid AoO while you're casting, use Clinging Darkness-Black Fire/Killing Shadow to deal damage/control the battlefield.


That's about all I can give, I'm afraid.

Chronos
2008-01-25, 09:28 PM
You might want to edit your post: Your title and first sentence both say dancer, not caster. I got really confused when you said you were single-class.

Nebo_
2008-01-25, 09:35 PM
Do a search on the WotC boards for the Shadowcaster fix. The designer of the class posted some really good ideas to bring the class up to a good power level.

You need more Con.

Glyphic
2008-01-25, 09:52 PM
I definitely agree with the above poster. I recently added tome of magic to my collection, and immediately went on a search for More Vestiges, shadowcaster fixes, and.. utterly ignored truenamers.

I absolutely Love the flavor of binders and shadowcasters, but they're abit/verymuch weaker than other classes.

So talk to your DM. See if he'll allow you to have a Tome of battle-esque recovery method (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3506912&postcount=11) for your mysteries, and change your mysteries to "per encounter" instead of per day.

Here is Project Shadow, a massive homebrew on these very forums. parts I love, other parts I just cut. Your mileage may vary.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=44816&highlight=shadowcaster

Edit: How optimized are the other players? We need abit of a goal to shoot for. I'm also interested in their levels. Both of em are playing Level-adjusted races; it's pretty common to overlook the LA rules.

egg_green
2008-01-26, 02:26 AM
You might want to edit your post: Your title and first sentence both say dancer, not caster. I got really confused when you said you were single-class.
D'oh! That's what I get for multitasking when I post. Fixed now. Thanks for pointing it out to me :p

egg_green
2008-01-26, 02:41 AM
Thanks, everyone, for your advice! I'll see what I can do about the CON. I pictured the character as rather sickly, but it's becoming obvious that without more HP he's done for. I think I'll probably end up swapping CON and WIS, and perhaps moving my 4th level bump from DEX to shore up the weak score.

Bag_of_Holding, thanks very much for your insight. I'll definitely think about picking up Dark Terrain instead of Cloak of Shadows, and taking the Shadow Cast feat.

Glyphic, thanks for your links. I'll pass them along to my DM and see what he thinks; he's pretty flexible, especially given how weak my character is. I doubt he'll go as far as changing the Mysteries to 1/Encounter, but he'll almost certainly let me use some of the other stuff you posted.

The other members of the party are level 4, but they both also bought off (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/reducingLevelAdjustments.htm) their level adjustments last level, so they should be catching up within a session or two. They're reasonably optimized; the Goliath is swinging around a Large-sized greataxe and the paladin's warhorse is tricked-out enough to be a 4th party member. Neither one is min-maxing, but they both have effective builds. With pretty much any other class, I could match them, but I'm not used to playing Shadowcasters (and it seems that the general consensus is that they are underpowered). But with all the help from these boards, I should be able to be an effective party member :)

Dhavaer
2008-01-26, 05:06 AM
Something to consider would be taking Still Mystery: it will allow you to wear any armour and shield with a 0 ACP without penalty, as you no longer have somatic components.
Also, using Reach and Maximise Mystery on umbral touch can be devastating at this level: 30 damage as a touch attack, and it allows you to hit five times (not attack five times: missing doesn't count).