4e shadowdancer

[Steelfiredragon]

so Matt have you seen it???
and if so, is it similiar to the shadow dancer of old???

I plan on looking at the book anyway...but I still want to know..

[Matt James]

I have not seen it.

[Steelfiredragon]

looked at it the other day.

did not look to be very impressive.

[Matt James]

I could see some players really liking it. It can add to some excellent mobile Swordmage builds. That and the backstory/fluff is not bad. I guess it comes down to preferences and opinions.

[Steelfiredragon]

was looking at it again today and I forgot to look at something else in tht book....


mobile swordmage, I thought that was the wanderer paragon path in the frpg was for?


(forgot to look at shadowy rogue powers... now I have to go back and look at it again....)

[D'karr]

So I got the book and have been slowly mulling through it. It is an interesting read, and lorewise, I think that it has a lot of neat and captivating concepts. However mechanically, the book left me somewhat cold and unenthusiastic. I think that the game mechanics in 4e have evolved to a point where many of these concepts could have been explored in better mechanical ways than those presented in Heroes of Shadow. In my opinion the mechanics here seemed dated, when compared to some of the things that have come up since 4e first burst on the scene. The shadowdancer in particular seems like a missed opportunity.

It missed the boat on two fronts, flavor and mechanics. To begin with, it left me uninterested. The flavor description for the class is so sparse it reminded me of the flavor text for a lot of monsters in MM1; completely uninspired. MM1: "The Bodak are heartless creatures that kill for the sake of killing." Heroes of Shadow: "You embrace the darkness as a means of perfecting the teleportation that becomes your trademark in combat. When you strike like living shadow, you leave your foes to wonder where you might appear next." No ****, that's it!

Is it similar to the shadowdancer of old? In execution, maybe. In flavor and variety, it fell very short. If someone comes to 4e without any prior experience with the shadowdancer, there is nothing in the description that makes them want to jump out and say, "I want to play THIS!" Once again everything is being "described" by what you can do in combat and the flavor is totally flat.

Let's compare the class description above with the one in the previous edition. 3.x: "Operating in the border between light and darkness, shadowdancers are nimble artists of deception. They are mysterious and unknown, never completely trusted but always inducing wonder when met... Shadowdancers often work in troupes, never staying in one place too long. Some use their abilities to entertain. Others operate as thieves, using their abilities to infiltrate past defenses and dupe others. All shadowdancer troupes maintain an aura of mystery among the common folk, who never know whether to think well or ill of them."

My vote is for the latter description. It is more evocative and makes me want to play or at least learn more about the class. The Heroes of Shadow description gives me nothing that I want to explore. In effect I totally skipped the rest of the class at first glance simply because it did not catch my attention at all. I went back to "investigate" it more deeply because I knew of the former class, not because anything in the description moved me to do so.

Now to the mechanical "restrictions". These to me were more appaling than the lack of flavor. First off it starts as a paragon path. I know I might be biased on this but I hate the idea that I have to trudge through 10 levels as another class before I get to play the class that I really want. That is just my opinion and, mechanically, using a paragon path is still a sound decision, it is just one that I don't like personally. What happens if your game never reaches 11th level? What if your character dies and you don't feel like playing it again? Paragon paths are simply uninteresting to me, and mechanically they put the carrot too far away.

The second mechanical restriction is one that is more insidious and actually even more annoying. It is one that can be very easily handled by one simple hand-wave for a home game, but if you have a DM that's a stickler for the rules as written (RAW), or if you participate in organized play you are screwed. The prerequisite for the class is "any teleportation at-will or encounter power, and training in stealth." Okay, hands up how many teleportation powers does the rogue have? One, Mountebank's Flight a level 22 Utility power, let me repeat that, level 22. BTW the power is found in Martial Power so if your DM doesn't have or allow that book you have none. How about the PHB Ranger? None, the teleportation for that class doesn't appear until Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms. When I first read that prerequisite I thought, "Okay so I can be an Eladrin, a Shadar-kai, or an arcane class." To me that was an immediate turn off. How do we go from a classically roguish class to one that a rogue of the "wrong" race can't even take?

Let's take a look at what the original class provided:
1st Hide in plain sight
2nd Evasion, darkvision, uncanny dodge
3rd Shadow illusion, summon shadow
4th Shadow jump 20 ft.
5th Defensive roll, improved uncanny dodge
6th Shadow jump 40 ft., summon shadow
7th Slippery mind
8th Shadow jump 80 ft.
9th Summon shadow
10th Shadow jump 160 ft., improved evasion

And what the new class provides:
11 Dancer's Ambush, Dancer's Action, Shadowy Tendrils - Combat advantage on teleport, teleport on action point, teleport and basic attack, target teleported and dazed.
12 Shadow Stalk - One target in burst, you teleport to an adjacent square or away.
16 Lingering Shadows - invisible to creature you were hidden from.
20 Trail of Shadows - shift and create a zone that does cold damage.

So mechanically there is some "hearkening back" to the original class but it feels very light. The flavor and the mechanics leave me unimpressed. I know paragon paths are more limited than 10 level prestige classes but even then the mechanics just feel "incomplete."

I hate to complain about these things because I know that creating these mechanics is not completely straight forward, and at times it's hit or miss completely based on personal preference. However after seeing books like Open Grave, Underdark, Plane Below, Monster Vault, and even the descriptions on the Essentials books, when I see books that don't capitalize on the flavor it really annoys me. So for all these things this class fails in my book.

[Steelfiredragon]

I still like the master infiltrator better.

the HOS was a let down anyway so... not getting it

[D'karr]

I still like the master infiltrator better.

the HOS was a let down anyway so... not getting it

I don't think the book itself is a total let down. I really like a lot of the thematic content. Even some of the mechanics that I don't particularly like, still give me enough "ammunition" to re-purpose them for my games. For example the shadowdancer above is a good example of a class that I would not use as written but that I would use in a different manner.

[Steelfiredragon]

changed mind.. might get it later..... got to switch out my cell phone first.....