The Shadowcaster

[Nero24200]

Hello all

For an uncomming campaign I was looking to play a class I've never tried before. Whilst looking through my horde of splatbooks I found an interesting class. Despite looking interesteing though...this class looks horrendously underpowered.

The class is the shadowcaster. Though in all honesty, I've been wrong about power at first glance before, so I decided to ask here. Are my assumptions right? Is the class underpowered? And if so, how much? The group I'm playing with aren't really the best optimizers, so as long as it's not down-right-bad I should be fine with it.

[PinkysBrain]

Underpowered, doesn't play nice with prestige classes ... generally just a mess. Avoid.

[Malacode]

Ahh, the Tome of Magic, I believe. Not a bad book, all in all... Except for the Truenamer. What were Wizards THINKING?

Shadow magic isn't bad when used well, but you need to use it well. Check out this guide to shadowcasting. It's pretty much got everything you'll need to know, with way more info than I could give

[Starbuck_II]

A pretty great Path I believe is Shutters and Clouds path.

Both Shadow Skin and Dancing Shadows are useful:
1) Shadow skin isn't useful till you hit caster 10 though: why? Because until that level, the DR gained from this immediate casting is /magic. After words it is DR/silver.
2) Dancing Shadows grants Total Concealment if cast on one person.
It is similar to G. Invisibility but not stopped by See Invisibility (True seeing is the only thing that stops it).
You can also cast it on multiple peopler granting party Blur-like affect (thus 20% miss chance).

I'm surprised they don't mention it in that link.

[Epinephrine]

The author of the shadowcaster class posted some unofficial fixes for it, which I've linked to in previous threads about the shadowcaster. I'll do a quick search for the link and report back.

[Maerok]

There were too many spells that didn't do enough, on top of the the less spells issue and DAD casting.

It's not to say we can't knock it down and take its stuff for homebrew and other things.

[Epinephrine]

Right, here's the link, and here are the fixes

1) Charisma determines the DC to save against your mysteries. Intelligence determines the highest level mystery you can cast.

2) Grant bonus mysteries per day based on Charisma. These would work just like bonus spells. For instance, if your Cha is 14, you can cast one extra mystery of 1st-level equivalent and one of 2nd-level equivalent per day. (Note that each mystery does give an equivalent level, even though you don't learn them by level.)

3) Eliminate the rule that says you have to take mysteries in a given Path in order. If you want to jump around, so as to broaden your versatility, you can.

4) Within a category—Apprentice, Initiate, Master—you must have at least two mysteries of any given level before you can take any mysteries of the next higher level. For instance, you must have two 1st-level mysteries before you can take any 2nds, and at least two 2nds before you can take any 3rds.

5) Eliminate the rule that says you get a bonus feat equal to half the number of paths you have access to. Instead, you get a bonus feat equal to the total number of Paths you complete. Thus, while you are no longer required to take the entirety of a given Path, there's still encouragement to do so.

6) You may “swap out” mysteries, just as a sorcerer does spells known. If you “un-complete” a Path in this way, however, you lose access to the bonus feat you gained from completing that Path. (You can regain access by re-completing the Path, completing a different Path and choosing that feat as your new bonus, or selecting that feat as a normal feat at your next opportunity.)

7) Once your Apprentice Mysteries become supernatural abilities, change the save DC from 10 + equivalent spell level + Cha to 10 + 1/2 caster level + Cha. This makes them useful even against high-HD opponents, and follows the pattern for other supernatural abilities.

[Realms of Chaos]

Check this out. It was the end result of my attempts to fix the shadowcaster without an actual rewriting of the class.