Level by Level: The Shadowdancer

[Hyooz]

I have a fair amount of spare time on my hands these days, so I thought this might be fun. The purpose of these posts is to provide a basic examination of Wizards created prestige classes; from the broken to the bad, the interesting to the boring, I intend to step through these classes and detail what, to me, makes them worth taking or not. While I call it level by level, it'll mostly be class ability by class ability. I won't talk about recurring abilities multiple times, but I will talk about the class ability in its entirety. I hope these posts can be of service to those seeking to create their own homebrew, and maybe an interesting forum for discussion of mechanics and design in general. If nothing else, it'll help me kill time, which is just fine by me. Since a good amount of this stuff will be licensed, I won't provide the actual class abilities in the posts, but I'll provide the book the class comes from for reference.

We'll kick this off with a DMG classic -

The Shadowdancer

Requirements: The requirements here are pretty basic, easy for a rogue-type to get into. A few feats you might have anyway, and a bunch of skills you might have anyway, save Perform, but you have the points lying around to grab that no problem. All in all: you need to give up a few skill points, maybe a less than ideal feat, but for the class, the requirements aren't terrible.

Hide in Plain Sight: Woo, we have a doozy at level 1. There's a reason this class is popular for dips. HiPS is pretty awesome, by all accounts. It's limited by a bit of a shadow clause, but really, there's always shadows. So you can always hide, which is pretty baller. It's like invisibility, but with a skill check, and the enemies better hope they've cranked up their spot check. Overall, this is a 9/10 level.

Evasion, Darkvision, Uncanny Dodge: Second level is nice to certain entry methods, but redundant for others. If you came in as a rogue, you'll have evasion already (which does not get bumped to improved evasion, sad day) and Uncanny Dodge (which again, does not improve, but can be improved if you take rogue levels later, which is... weird.) Darkvision is handy, and outside of races or spells or magic items, hard to come by. In all likelihood, though, darkvision isn't that great. Still, not a bad level. 6/10

Shadow Illusion, Summon Shadow: Silent image in itself is a nice spell to have, but once a day? Another issue, though small: how is the DC determined? This might come up useful sometimes, but a first level wizard spell once a day? The summoned shadow, however, makes up for it. Even if it can't make spawn, shadows are handy things to have around. Hope it doesn't ever die, though, since you'll lose some piddling XP and this class ability for a month. 6/10

Shadow Jump: Teleporting is always handy, especially for melee classes. This is basically a really limited Dimension Door, which comes with the same standard action use, which kind of kills making this an awesome ability. Kick it down to a swift and Shadowdancer might be a little more popular beyond level 1, but as is, it's probably just as easy, if not preferable, to just take a move action. 5/10

Defensive Roll: This is another neat ability nixed by restrictions. If you could use this against all attacks, this would be really powerful, or even 1/round and you're cooking, but when it comes to a blow that could kill you, and all you're doing is halving the damage (upon making a Reflex save DC equal to the amount of damage you would take... which might just be straight up impossible) you want some more out of a 5th level PrC ability. Oh, and you can't use it when you're denied Dex to AC, y'know, when you might REALLY need it. 3/10

Improved Uncanny Dodge: Eh. It's nice, but kind of blase. Not a bad level, but nothing exciting. 5/10

Slippery Mind: This one is hard to really decide on. It's basically a reroll one round later, but only against enchantment spells you've already failed a save to. That's so... specific, and in all reality, you've already spent around being dominated or charmed or what-have-you. It just won't come up overly often, unless you're fighting a lot of the right monsters/enemies. Not a bad ability, but super specific, and still kind of underpowered at this level. Make it all mind effecting abilities, and make the second save the same round, and you might have something here. I might be crazy, but eh. 4/10

Improved Evasion: Good ability, no doubt. Way too late in the game, though. Should allow the first evasion to stack with evasion you come in with, and include a real capstone. You hit level 10 here, and your reward is Improved Evasion and a little more distance on Shadow Jump? That's boring. 5-6/10 on its own, but as a capstone ability 4/10

In the end, you have a prestige class designed for rogues (or at least rogue-types, but this is a DMG PrC, in the end. Rogue and... maybe ranger would get in here with any rapidity.) that doesn't advance sneak attack, and in all reality doesn't give you that much to make up for it, excepting Hide in Plain Sight, which is quite good. The problem there, however, is that they stuck Hide in Plain Sight, the biggest, baddest class ability you get here, at first level. If it was a 5th level ability, you might get people to take 5 levels of this pretty easy. Shadow Jump and Summoning Shadows are nice bonuses to get along with HiPS. Just not worth killing sneak attack for after getting HiPS. A classic problem of front-loading a prestige class. Happens to the best of us.

A good spread, in my mind, is key to a good PrC. I have a personal bias toward good capstone abilities, and it's always nice to start out with something worthwhile, (I'll talk about the Pale Master later. Oh boy.) so if you get that down, and the middle is passably worthwhile, you have a solid basis for a good PrC.

[lightningcat]

Are you simply discussing, or are we also fixing these sub-par classes? Which most of the DMG prestige classes fall into.

[Schylerwalker]

Bards can also get into Shadowdancer pretty easily. In fact, it strikes me as a slightly more bardy class than roguey class, what with the whole dancing theme.

[DragoonWraith]

Shadowdancer was actually the class that first prompted my looking into homebrew - I wanted a Shadowdancer that actually, ya know, danced. Put those ranks in Perform to some use. As it is... eh, yay for HiPS? At least give it SA, then it'd be OK.

[Mongoose87]

Bards can also get into Shadowdancer pretty easily. In fact, it strikes me as a slightly more bardy class than roguey class, what with the whole dancing theme.

You know what would be awesome? If Shadowdancers could use a Perform (Dance) check in place of a Hide/Move Silently.

[Hyooz]

Yeah, bards can get into it too, but you run into the same problems as going in with a rogue. You basically have to forsake what your base class did in its entirety for, well, kind of mediocre benefit.

And the idea of this was mostly discussion, but discussing how to fix something like this is also discussion, so go for it. I mentioned a couple of tweaks in my 'review' that could help (shadow jump being a swift action, any SA progression at all.)

[Starbuck_II]

Shadow Jump: Teleporting is always handy, especially for melee classes. This is basically a really limited Dimension Door, which comes with the same standard action use, which kind of kills making this an awesome ability. Kick it down to a swift and Shadowdancer might be a little more popular beyond level 1, but as is, it's probably just as easy, if not preferable, to just take a move action. 5/10

To improve I suggest making more like teleport not dimension door (so you can act after using it).

Defensive Roll: This is another neat ability nixed by restrictions. If you could use this against all attacks, this would be really powerful, or even 1/round and you're cooking, but when it comes to a blow that could kill you, and all you're doing is halving the damage (upon making a Reflex save DC equal to the amount of damage you would take... which might just be straight up impossible) you want some more out of a 5th level PrC ability. Oh, and you can't use it when you're denied Dex to AC, y'know, when you might REALLY need it. 3/10

1/rd, when attacked you may roll to reduce damage? Sounds fine, but Rogues can get this by level 10 as a special ability (unless we make this ability called Improved Defensive Roll.)

[Agi Hammerthief]

If I wanted to enter it comming from rogue I'd go up to Shadow Jump and then continnue as Rogue

HiPS for ranged Sneak Attacks
Summon Shadow as BYO flanker for melee Sneak Attacks
Shadow Jump to GTFO of melee quickly


re: Improved Evasion
this sucks pretty much all across the board, there should be some clause that levels in classes that grant Evasion stack for the purpose of gaining Improved Evasion

[Hyooz]

Problem is Shadow Jump doesn't G you TFO of melee any faster than walking will. Standard actions suck like that.

[Agi Hammerthief]

Problem is Shadow Jump doesn't G you TFO of melee any faster than walking will. Standard actions suck like that.

I was looking at the Pathfinder shadow dancer too much, it starts with 40ft

with 3.5 it would be only a 3levl dip

[Knaight]

[QUOTE=Hyooz;7848521]
Shadow Jump: Teleporting is always handy, especially for melee classes. This is basically a really limited Dimension Door, which comes with the same standard action use, which kind of kills making this an awesome ability. Kick it down to a swift and Shadowdancer might be a little more popular beyond level 1, but as is, it's probably just as easy, if not preferable, to just take a move action. 5/10
[QUOTE]
Of course, this lets you get deep into buildings, past lines, etc. Excellent for infiltration, if rendered redundant when with a group. On your own though, it isn't bad. Maybe a 6/10?

[Mongoose87]

I was looking at the Pathfinder shadow dancer too much, it starts with 40ft

with 3.5 it would be only a 3levl dip

Pathfinder one doesn't say what kind of action it is.

[Temotei]

Pathfinder one doesn't say what kind of action it is.

Must be no action then.