You can run, AND you can hide - stealth and evasion abilities?

[Lapak]

Just an idle question that occurred to me today. Suppose I wanted to build a character that didn't care about being good at combat, casting spells, communicating with other people - just hiding - and, should stealth fail, running away and hiding again. What abilities are out there to look for? What classes or feats might I look to pick up?

Obviously, maxing out Hide and Move Silently would be priorities. The Running feat might be useful. Picking up Hide In Plain Sight as early as possible would be a plus.

What else could one put together to run away and/or escape? As with all things, full spellcasters would no doubt win this competition - between the Invisibility-style spells and Teleportation effects, they've got this covered - but what if I wanted to build a mundane or mostly-mundane coward?

[tahu88810]

Using only core:

Rogue for a couple levels, make sure you put cross-class ranks in perform(dance)

As soon as possible (I think about 3rd or 4th, maybe second level) take levels shadow dancer...er...or whatever its called. You'll get a cool little shadow familiar too!
--
I don't have any books with me right now, but that should work. :)

[Quietus]

Monks get a 90 foot base speed, plus Hide and Move Silently as class skills, along with 1/day Dimdoor, and Etherealness. That's pretty handy.

Alternatively, classes with Hide in Plain Sight and Hide/Move Silently such as the Ranger can fade away any time they choose. Looking to the DMG's prestige classes, you can pick up Hide in Plain Sight with a level of shadowdancer or 8 levels of Assassin - Assassin also lets you pick up Dimension Door through its spellcasting.

[Douglas]

The Dark creature template from Tome of Magic gets you Hide in Plain Sight plus some other bonuses for +1 LA.

[Rachel Lorelei]

You just described a Monk/Shadowdancer. They can't do anything useful, but they sure can run and hide.

[Lapak]

Huh. 19 levels of Monk and a 1-level dip into Shadowdancer is a surprisingly simple, effective combination. Thanks!

Any other suggestions? :)

EDIT: Maybe more of a mix; balancing speed and etherealness against shadow-jumping, I suppose.

[Amiria]

I recommend a Cobra Strike Monk for the Monk 19/Shadowdancer 1 build. A good way to get Dodge and Mobility, plus some minor bonuses. You can always pick Stunning Fist or the other usual monk bonus feats with your normal feat slots. With the right selection of feats (the feat situation for monks has improved with all those splatbooks) and maybe also alternative class features such a build won't be entirely useless.

[Fax Celestis]

I'd say use the Dark template to get Hide in Plain Sight at first level--well, second level due to the +1 LA. I'd also say go Monk/Exemplar, and pick your skills as you please. Since you'll be wanting a high Intelligence for some really good skillage, I'd recommend the Carmendine Monk or Kung-Fu Genius feats, to swap most of your Monk abilities from Wis-based to Int-based.