Umbral Scion (Tome of Battle / Shadowcaster theurge PRC)

[Elves]

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I can't figure out the capstone on this. I want it to be something that blurs the distinction between mysteries and Shadow Hand maneuvers, like being able to use a maneuver as a mystery and vice versa, but it needs to not give infinite uses of mysteries while being simple and not lame.

I tried to make the class strong because shadowcaster is subpar. But I still feel like it lacks "punch". Please help critique and improve.

Original version here.


Note: This class assumes you're using Ari Marmell's authorial fix for the shadowcaster.

[Elves]

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Umbral Scion
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Merging shadow magic with practiced and perfected bladework, an umbral scion is the epitome of the darkness.

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS
Base Attack Bonus: +3
Skills: Concentration 9 ranks, Hide 9 ranks, Move Silently 9 ranks
Maneuvers: Four Shadow Hand maneuvers, including one of at least 2nd level
Stances: One Shadow Hand stance
Mysteries: Ability to cast 2nd level mysteries from at least two paths


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Table: the Umbral Scion------Hit Die: d6
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Level	BAB	Fort	Ref	Will	Man. Known	Man. Readied	Stances Known	Special	Mysteries
1st	+0	+0	+2	+2	1	0	0	Dark wisdom, consumptive shadows	+1 shadowcaster level
2nd	+1	+0	+3	+3	0	0	0	Umbral shroud	+1 shadowcaster level
3rd	+2	+1	+3	+3	1	0	1	Reflections of the pale moon	—
4th	+3	+1	+4	+4	0	1	0	Blossoming shadow stance	+1 shadowcaster level
5th	+3	+1	+4	+4	1	0	0	Fatiguing shadows	+1 shadowcaster level
6th	+4	+2	+5	+5	0	0	0	Shadow’s edge	+1 shadowcaster level
7th	+5	+2	+5	+5	1	1	0	Eclipse shroud	+1 shadowcaster level
8th	+6	+2	+6	+6	0	0	0	Dusk and dawn	+1 shadowcaster level
9th	+6	+3	+6	+6	1	0	1	Draining shadows	+1 shadowcaster level
10th	+7	+3	+7	+7	0	1	0	One with midnight	+1 shadowcaster level

Class Skills: Balance, Bluff, Climb, Concentration, Craft, Escape Artist, Hide, Intimidate, Jump, Knowledge (arcana), Listen, Martial Lore, Move Silently, Profession, Sense Motive, Sleight of Hand, Spellcraft, Spot, Tumble.

Skill points at each level: 4 + Intelligence modifier


CLASS FEATURES

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: You gain no additional weapon or armor proficiencies.

Maneuvers and Stances: At every odd level, you learn a maneuver from the Shadow Hand discipline. At levels 3rd and 9th, you learn a Shadow Hand stance. At levels 4th, 7th, and 10th, you gain an additional maneuver readied.

Mysteries: At each level except 3rd, you gain new mysteries and an increase in caster level as if you had also gained a shadowcaster level. You don’t gain any other benefits a shadowcaster would gain.

Dark Wisdom: You may use your Wisdom modifier instead of your Intelligence modifier to determine your bonus mysteries per day and the highest level mysteries you can cast.

Consumptive Shadows (Su): Shadows prey upon the weakened, sapping their life away. Whenever a target takes damage from or fails a save against one of your mysteries, you gain a bonus on melee damage rolls against them equal to that mystery’s level. The bonus lasts 1 round if it was an apprentice or fundamental mystery, 2 rounds if it was an initiate mystery, or 3 rounds if it was a master mystery. This ability doesn’t stack; only the highest value applies.

Umbral Shroud (Su): Starting at 2nd level, channeling the power of shadow causes you to be shrouded in umbral vapors.
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• Mystery Shroud: When you cast a mystery, you gain 10% concealment for 2 rounds. If it’s a fundamental mystery, the concealment only lasts 1 round.
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• Maneuver Shroud: When you initiate a Shadow Hand maneuver, you gain 10% concealment. If the maneuver’s initiation time is at least one standard or full-round action, the concealment lasts 2 rounds. Otherwise, it only lasts 1 round.
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The concealment granted by your maneuver shroud and your mystery shroud stack with each other, but not with themselves.
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The concealment granted by this ability stacks with all other forms of concealment, except for total concealment.

Reflections of the Pale Moon (Ex): Starting at 3rd level, casting a mystery causes you to recover an expended Shadow Hand maneuver whose level is no higher than that of the mystery you cast. Fundamental mysteries don’t trigger this ability.

Blossoming Shadow Stance (Su): At 4th level you gain a stance substitution effect called blossoming shadow stance. It grants a +1 bonus to the save DCs of your mysteries and Shadow Hand maneuvers. In addition, this effect lets your shadow reach out and touch other creatures: during your turn, it grants you a reach of twenty feet for the purpose of making touch attacks and using touch-range effects. You can still attack adjacent targets.

Fatiguing Shadows (Su): Starting at 5th level, when you confirm a critical hit against a target affected by your consumptive shadows debuff, they are fatigued for 1d4 rounds. A second critical hit renders them exhausted for the remaining duration of the debuff.

Shadow's Edge (Su): The dark edge of a Scion's blade flickers through the world, ignorant of mortal obstacles. Starting at 6th level, all melee attacks you make as part of a Shadow Hand maneuver are resolved as touch attacks. (To make up for low BAB and being a gish without wraithstrike.)

Eclipse Shroud (Su): At 7th level, instead of gaining the normal benefits of your umbral shroud, you can choose to gain cover from it. You gain normal cover if you have one of your shrouds active. You gain double cover if you have both of your shrouds active. If you like, you can gain concealment from one of your shrouds and cover from the other.
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In addition, total concealment gives attacks against you a 75% miss chance instead of a 50% miss chance.

Dusk and Dawn: Your powers synchronize like dusk and dawn, the two alternating ends of the night. Starting at 8th level, when you roll a natural 20 on an attack roll made as part of a Shadow Hand maneuver, you may cast a mystery as an immediate action. Whenever an opponent rolls a natural 1 on a saving throw against a mystery you cast, you may initiate a Shadow Hand maneuver with an initiation action of one standard action or less as an immediate action.

Draining Shadows (Su): Starting at 9th level, each time you hit and damage a target affected by your consumptive shadows debuff with an attack made as part of a Shadow Hand maneuver, they take 1 point of ability damage to an ability score of your choice.

One With Midnight (Su): At 10th level, you acknowledge no distinction between different varieties of shadow magic. Add mechanics.

[Elves]

Reserved for new mysteries (to be added later).

Again, help with critique + capstone appreciated.


Open question: what do you think a shadowcaster/martial adept gish should be able to do?

[Morphic tide]

The particular direction taken for this has very strong problems, as it actually increases the clash of resources from asking to use the highly limited Mysteries before the far more routinely applicable Maneuvers, and to use those Mysteries very frequently. Umbral Shroud is redundant with the Child of Shadow Stance, even if it does stack into Total Concealment, and Blossoming Shadow Stance is competing with 2d6 Sneak Attack, Flanking on adjacency instead of surrounding, hovering and ignoring speed penalties to stealth, and at the top end using your land speed for flight. For +1 save DC, something easily replicated by a very large number of options, most of which have far lower opportunity costs than locking your Stance out of Shadow Hand goodies.

Starting with the prerequisite end, one direction would be requiring 8 ranks Martial Lore, Hide, and Move Silently, having the Maneuver requirements be "Four Maneuvers Known, including a 2nd-level Shadow Hand Maneuver and any Sublime Tapestry Maneuver", and requiring a Metashadow feat. Then the features can be overhauled to have it be focused on using Initiating to very conclusively solve the Shadowcasting endurance issues and broadening Shadow Hand scope with Shadowcasting modifiers, alongside the seemingly-obligatory Shadow Pounce being implemented as a Swift Action Strike after teleporting to help with action conflicts, alongside something running in the reverse to reduce Mystery casting times after Initiating. This ties the two together as gathering the understanding of modifying either to move towards total transparency and the interchangable use of them, rather than having the mechanics push for using Mysteries to boost Maneuvers.

One notable thing is that Mystery grades, like Invocation grades and Chakra Bind slots, are listed separately from the "default" progression mechanic. So as-is, this seemingly doesn't unlock higher tiers of Mystery or upgrade existing ones, because those functions are explicit features rather than innate to the Mystery progression. The opening this offers is that it can delay better Mysteries, but bring in the improvements earlier, so entering it at 6th level gives you Initiate Mysteries at character level 9, but your Apprentice Mysteries become Spell-Like with the first level of the PRC.

And the big endurance swing could be 5th level in the PRC letting you treat your Supernatural Mysteries as Shadow Hand Maneuvers, allowing you to Ready them to be per-encounter abilities, replacing the at-will use of Fundamentals. The 10th level of the PRC could then be getting Master Mysteries, making them Spell-Like to begin with so you can use them in armor, and adding the mirror of the usage mechanic transparency to give three uses per day of each known Shadow Hand Maneuver, even if it isn't Readied.

Possibly have a mechanic to somehow ready Metashadow feats as Sublime Tapestry Maneuvers, if only in the Epic progression it gets as a 10-level PRC. And since said progression would obviously include Supernatural Master Mysteries, I'll point out that Time Stop is an effect on a 9th-level Mystery, so there's a desperate need to avoid allowing those high-level effects into any endurance push. Probably exclude Master Mysteries from it entirely, since they're all wildly beyond the usual efficacy of Maneuvers and giving them per-encounter use invites a great many issues beyond the most egregious of Time Stop on a Boost.

These are just suggestions about a possible direction to take bleeding Shadow Hand and Shadowcasting together that actually adds to what the character can pull off. Again, as is, this isn't bringing anything to deal with the fundamental problem of mixing two active subsystems, not even any effects the subsystems don't already have in decent quantity, and it doubles down on a flaw of one of them. This does nothing to add to the breadth of effect to draw a prospective build to this over grabbing Flesh Fails (2nd level Necromancy) and Crusader levels to go for Seeker of Lost Blades, or even just ignoring "theurging" PRCs entirely to end up with a much better Maneuver progression by not being locked to a single Discipline and getting them faster from just how good dipping Initiator levels is.

[Elves]

Good point, I was viewing the mysteries as a way of boosting your maneuvers, but it should be the reverse -- the maneuvers should be compensating for the low daily usages you get of mysteries.

Incentivizing the use of mysteries and maneuvers on alternating turns is not necessarily bad -- it does double your longevity compared to someone who's just using mysteries -- but may not be necessary, since the per-day mysteries are naturally something you'll be conservative with.

Because of this, I'm not sure per-encounter mysteries is the best thing, since it interferes with that dynamic. Maybe just as the capstone?


Re Blossoming Shadow Stance, the main intent was that it would synergize with Shadow's Edge -- 20 ft reach with Shadow Hand attack maneuvers once those attacks count as touch attacks.


Will respond in depth later when I have time to make adjustments to the class.

[Elves]

What do you think of these abilities?

X (Su): Once per encounter, when you initiate a swift action boost, you can forgo its normal benefit to instead apply the effect of one metashadow feat you possess to a mystery you’re currently casting. This doesn’t count as your daily use of the feat. Quicken Mystery doesn’t work with this ability.

X: Each day, when you meditate to regain your mysteries, you may swap the designation of one apprentice mystery you know with one Shadow Hand maneuver you know. For the rest of the day, that mystery can be readied and initiated as if it were a supernatural Shadow Hand maneuver, but can’t be cast normally. During this time, the maneuver you swapped it with can’t be readied, but you gain a number of free usages of the maneuver equal to the number of times per day you could cast the mystery with which you swapped it.

At xth level, you can use initiate mysteries with this ability.

X: Starting at xth level, you can cast a fundamental mystery as a swift [[or free?]] action immediately after executing any standard action or full-round action maneuver.

From the Shadows (Ex): After using a mystery or Shadow Hand maneuver with the Teleportation descriptor during your turn, you may immediately make a single melee attack as a free action. The target of this attack is flat-footed against it.

[[I like this ability but it basically forces you to take the flicker and dimension door mysteries as well as the shadow hand teleport mvs, which is limiting.]]

- Reverse Consuming Shadows debuff so it's triggered by Shadow Hand maneuvers rather than mysteries and makes your mysteries more lethal. Add the following:

Draining Shadows (Su): Each mystery you cast against a target affected by consumptive shadows inflicts a negative level, provided the target takes damage from or fails to save against the mystery in question. A fundamental mystery instead inflicts 1 point of ability damage to an ability of your choice.

[Morphic tide]

What do you think of these abilities?

X (Su): Once per encounter, when you initiate a swift action boost, you can forgo its normal benefit to instead apply the effect of one metashadow feat you possess to a mystery you’re currently casting. This doesn’t count as your daily use of the feat. Quicken Mystery doesn’t work with this ability.

Perhaps have the wording be "once per encounter, as a Swift Action, you may expend a Boost you have readied to apply the benefit of a Metashadow feat you possess to the next Mystery you use this turn". This makes it so it is not technically initating a Maneuver, in case weirdness goes off from that, and the Quicken exception is unnecessary because it consumes the Swift Action anyways. It also deals with the questions of actions in the middle of other actions, which is a confusing effect of your wording because you'd have to Initiate the Boost in the middle of casting the Mystery.

X: Each day, when you meditate to regain your mysteries, you may swap the designation of one apprentice mystery you know with one Shadow Hand maneuver you know. For the rest of the day, that mystery can be readied and initiated as if it were a supernatural Shadow Hand maneuver, but can’t be cast normally. During this time, the maneuver you swapped it with can’t be readied, but you gain a number of free usages of the maneuver equal to the number of times per day you could cast the mystery with which you swapped it.

At xth level, you can use initiate mysteries with this ability

The thing it's missing that's a confusing matter to tackle is what kind of Maneuver does the Mystery become? It could be handled rather simply as having ones that target yourself or an ally be Boosts, anything on an Immediate Action be a Counter and everything else be a Strike, possibly bring in Rushes to apply to any Teleportation effect, but it's very important that they be typed for a variety of effects functioning properly. Could also have the durations be set to one round when used in such a way, so the Boosts stay in precedent instead of having Flicker get 100% uptime.

X: Starting at xth level, you can cast a fundamental mystery as a swift [[or free?]] action immediately after executing any standard action or full-round action maneuver.

The wording for this would probably be more along the lines of "Starting at Nth level, whenever you finish Initiating a Maneuver as a Standard or Full Round action, you may cast a Fundamental Mystery as a Swift Action". I'd add "without expending a daily use", so it's explicitly replacing the normal endless Fundamentals, and there's a few that stand out as really nice. Umbral Hand shenanigans are very much applicable, and Caul of Shadow gives an AC bonus that'd be entirely incidental.

From the Shadows (Ex): After using a mystery or Shadow Hand maneuver with the Teleportation descriptor during your turn, you may immediately make a single melee attack as a free action. The target of this attack is flat-footed against it.

[[I like this ability but it basically forces you to take the flicker and dimension door mysteries as well as the shadow hand teleport mvs, which is limiting.]]

I was thinking more along the lines of "After using a Mystery or Shadow Hand Maneuver with the Teleportation descriptor, you may, as a Swift Action, initiate a Shadow Hand Strike normally initiated with a Standard Action". Doesn't work well with Flicker's reactive element because you don't have a Swift Action to use for the given Strike, unless you pull some cheese with Celerity effects, but it becomes much more firmly about Initiating and cuts into several possible abuses, because using your turn's Swift Action keeps you from following it up with a Quickened Mystery or running it with a Boost.

And why would you be a Shadowcaster with Shadow Hand Maneuvers if you weren't teleporting everywhere?

- Reverse Consuming Shadows debuff so it's triggered by Shadow Hand maneuvers rather than mysteries and makes your mysteries more lethal. Add the following:

Draining Shadows (Su): Each mystery you cast against a target affected by consumptive shadows inflicts a negative level, provided the target takes damage from or fails to save against the mystery in question. A fundamental mystery instead inflicts 1 point of ability damage to an ability of your choice.

The issue with this one is that it's a fragment of what Deadly Shade does (granted, it doesn't have the friendly fire issues of that Mystery either), and Shadow Hand has its own Negative Level infliction in the form of Enervating Shadow Strike. Admittedly an 8th-level Maneuver, but negative levels and ability damage are things the two requirement option lists can already get plenty enough of. Especially since "Touch Attack Negative Levels" is a fairly good fit for a Path to help with Shadowcaster-gishing, and a lower-level version of Enervating Shadow Strike to deal some negative levels early is another natural extension.

[Elves]

It also deals with the questions of actions in the middle of other actions

You can take swift actions in the middle of other actions fyi ("You can take a swift action any time you would normally be allowed to take a free action").

The thing it's missing that's a confusing matter to tackle is what kind of Maneuver does the Mystery become?

Didn't think of that. I'd class them all as Utility. Possibly sacrifices some obscure synergy with certain PRC abilities but otherwise it's hard to balance. Also must add note that they retain descriptors.

Could also have the durations be set to one round when used in such a way, so the Boosts stay in precedent instead of having Flicker get 100% uptime.

Some form of duration cap def. necessary. I hadn't realized how many of these mysteries have durations. Maybe 1 round is too short though. Certainly it is for flicker. Duration cap could extend with more class levels.

I'd add "without expending a daily use", so it's explicitly replacing the normal endless Fundamentals

Oh true, it makes a good replacement done that way. Nice.

I was thinking more along the lines of "After using a Mystery or Shadow Hand Maneuver with the Teleportation descriptor, you may, as a Swift Action, initiate a Shadow Hand Strike normally initiated with a Standard Action".

As you point out, that doesn't work with flicker, which is the main source of the ability, or with 1 of the 3 shadow hand teleports.

Doesn't work well with Flicker's reactive element

Something I like about the ability is it turns Flicker into a choice -- do you use it as an immediate action to dodge attack, or do you use it during your turn (remember, immediate actions can be used as swift actions during your turn) and get the free attack.

The alternative would be for it to work like shadow pounce, but that feels weird because this class is a) supposed to be about using maneuvers and mysteries, not making plain old attacks, and b) does not work well with traditional charger characters.

but negative levels and ability damage are things the two requirement option lists can already get plenty enough of.

It's meant to intensify those capabilities and feel on-theme because of it. Question is really if it's too strong.


Ok, with these changes I'll update the class to include the new features. Appreciate the help.