Negative LA-Assignment : Resurrection, but no diamond here

[Beni-Kujaku]

If we're talking about the same Shadow Thief...why? I see a prestige class which gives some small skill bonuses, a Leadership score boost, and progression of a couple basic rogue abilities. It doesn't look terrible, but I'm not seeing the appeal.

First, thank you for passing by, and for restarting the negative LA trend 4 years ago! This thread might not have existed if it wasn't for you.

For the Shadow Thief of Amn, this is a nice little prestige class that is meant to replace the "dead" levels of rogue, where you only get Trapfinding with some bonus feats. Since you start with 2 RHD with an Ettercap, you won't get the rogue's special abilities for another 2 levels, which makes it even more interesting to prestige class out. As you can just enter as a rogue 3, it removes the redundancy of uncanny dodge, gives you more sneak attack than straight rogue, and one bonus feat (two bonus minus the feat tax to enter). It also gives you reasonable skill points to go Unseen Seer later. I see little reason to do anything else than STA as my 4th level for an Ettercap rogue.

I'm not overly familiar with the class, but it seems like Dragonfire Adept would also be a functional choice for the shrieker. Breath weapons don't require attack rolls, and some of the invocations are handy. Particularly notable is the lesser invocation humanoid shape, which lets you perform such incredible feats as moving under your own power as early as 6th level.

That... Is an extremely good point. I didn't think about that, being not familiar at all with this class, and putting it in my mind as "same as warlock". It has a lot of the same problems, like the invocations being cha-based and a lot of them increasing skills that you simply don't have, but with the con-based at-will breath, and the absolutely incredible movement options of Lesser Draconic Invocations, you might make something out of your shrieker. Still not good, but decent. I think it may even warrant DLA-1 without RHD, and DLA-3 with its RHD (since you don't need skills as much as Truenamers, the supplementary HD will only give you 2/3 of a feat, which will offset the invocation tax of humanoid shape with Extra Invocation). Really, that class is extremely good. I will have to add an edit to the skrieker's reply.

Edit: ignore most of the previous paragraph the Draconic invocations, same as the warlock invocations, require somatic components. The Shrieker cannot move its body, hence it can't use these invocations, and a Dragonfire Adept with only its breath is even worse than a Truenamer.

It's literally just a stone golem with the normal monster advancement rules applied. Except without the every-4-HD ability score increase.

Yes, I noticed that, but that is not less sad. They could have edited the crafting rules to allow the wizard to give more HD to the golem and it would have been way more elegant.

I love it, this is great. I kinda want to play a gray render just to roleplay a monstrous Lennie Small in a party of murderhobos.

Right!? I love when they go out of their way to give twists to their monsters.