Aasimar light broken?

[LinuxPup]

Shadowdancers are uber and need weaknesses.... Dragon's are one of those weaknesses. If Shadowdancers were underused or weak I might have sympathy, but that's obviously not the case.

Anyway, Dragons are awkward, easy to hit, and so-so when it comes to combat...so its a tradeoff. It still remains that most players can't see even a moderate shadowdancer, and two factions don't get Dragon Shape... they can cast Shapechange, but that red dragon form is a pushover.

There should be builds that even the best possible Shadowdancer has 0% chance of hiding from... and some polymorph forms are just that.

[cRaZy8or5e]

I wish gear and weapons xferred over to polymorph forms though . My lvl 40 rgr that fully buffed has over 80 AC and over 60 AB dual wielding only has 50 AC and 38 AB as an umberhulk is a pushover for any sd. Of course just being able to see them and if I have a couple friends, it works out ok, sometimes. Its purely a defensive move, otherwise if you raid sd-ville, you better bring some Rak or dragon shifters or you'll get picked apart.

I think there are some builds that can accomplish seeing an sd all the time. They are just so difficult to get done, and once you do, they still have to overcome a bard curse. A cleric/mk/(spot class) zen archer build with epic sp focus divination can get +50 to spot and a +19 buffed wisdom bonus with skill focus and epic sk focus (+13) and maybe blooded feat (+2). That's about the only build that can get the job done effectively but it takes a lot of doing and needs help to be truly effective, and in the end it can still be cursed reducing effectiveness. Maybe make uef so that it protects against curse song?

If there was some way to make an uber bard spotter, you're still stuck with bards not being able to cast TS as a class. You could take 5 lvls of cleric and animal domain (receiving TS as lvl 3 spell) but then you're dispel bait to any bard/sd and back to square one. The numbers are swirling in my brain and I'm getting a headache thinking bout it. I've heard a lot of proponents for listeners but the modifiers really hurt you at range (+1 DC for every 3 meters). Spot is really the best skill to try and use imho because you can get some modifiers to go your way, ie wearing light emitting (White Lord Robes emit bright light 20m) and/or only fighting in brightly lit areas. But even then its very difficult.

Anyway those are my random thoughts on the matter. I really do have a headache now lol.

[disastro]

Well thats your interpretation of it, don't ever make a shadowdancer in my pnp campigns, cause I tend to take things in a more literal sense. If it says you must be w/in ten feet of a shdaow to hide, then you MUST be bending that shadow to you to hide in it, otherwise you should have called the prestige class lightdancer. And none of the other vision spells you mentioned allow you to penetrate magical darkness, which is what I'd consider darkness that moves.

while i do respect your view on what you want to allow in your games, i have to say that your interpretation is FAR from literal. when you say "you MUST be bending shadow," you are actually confirming that the rule says no such thing.

Reword it to say "this is not what the rule as written says, but this is my house ruling for my campaign" then i might join your pnp world

for what it's worth, hips is utterly vague and ill defined even in pnp.. it was the subject of much house rulage in my last campaign that featured it.

[Mental]

Hmm, I honestly think it is easy to make a char that can spot a sd with even 130 hide, even tho it is suppsed to cap at 127. My cleric Neberilith has the solar summons, and he was spotting just bout any sd that came thro ns this past week. There are also other ways such as goin elf race. They get auto detect which makes em very easy to spot sd's. I also have a lvl 39 sd named vindur, and even with buffs like bard song, I have been spotted. It only boosted my ms a great deal because my hide is capped and can go no further. just because some ppl cannot spot a sd, doesnt mean its impossible.

[kain124]

while i do respect your view on what you want to allow in your games, i have to say that your interpretation is FAR from literal. when you say "you MUST be bending shadow," you are actually confirming that the rule says no such thing.

Reword it to say "this is not what the rule as written says, but this is my house ruling for my campaign" then i might join your pnp world

Granted the must means I'm sharing my view on what the uling says, but it is still my view. I don't know what shadowdancers do in your world to hide, but if they don't bend shadows then they can go hide behind an invisible rock for the same effect.

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.ph ... dowdancers

This forum debates this topic and more people agree with me.

[VagaStorm]

I dont think truesight should autospot a hipser. Look at a hipser as an extremely agile combatant, that while tanks atack, he jumps in beetveen em, hiding behind em, dancing from shadow to shadow, hitting out of nowhere before they slip back behind whatever they can find. This is almost impossible to implement gamevise i a non first person game, as you all know we can see what is behind a pillar or a chair and sometimes even a door...

[disastro]

yep, hips is a Supernatural ability (so its kind of magic like, and happens to fail in an antimagic field). however the true seeing/darkness argument fails because a regular hide check vs a regular spot check is involved. thus its a simple hide, which is explicitly outside the realm of true seeing.

if it was magical darkness (or even deep regular darkness), then a character without the ability to see in that darkness could NOT succeed with any kind of spot check, they are effectively blind to what's in the darkness. yet this is not the case. normal human with killer spot CAN see an sd, where they would automatically fail against something in complete darkness. shadow is irrelevant to the hipser after they have initiated their hide. think of shadow as a material component or focus for their supernatural effect. it doesnt matter if YOU can or cannot see the focus for their power.

if you want a mental image of how i think hips works, check out the animated movie "Ninja Scroll" (warning: though this old movie is an insanely great classic of anime, it's NOT safe for work, children or grandmothers!).

in that movie one of the bad guy characters is totally a hipser.

[Chuff_7]

My mental image is Nightcrawler in X-Men 2. Even though he teleports it's the same effect. The exception being he doesn't need to open doors, which is where an SD is most vulnerable

[Gornickthy]

I personally think the best recent example of an SD was one of the Elemental Race in the Chronicles of Riddick. She would fade out and reappear elswhere. Nightcrawler was pure teleportation, there was no delay from disappearance to reappearance.

[kain124]

Your arguments are valid, but as you can see on that forum more people still believe that true seeing can see you hipsed, regardless True seeing is not meant to be a spell that is as readily available as it is on neversummer and other servers. There's only 1 item I have ever seen in the dmg that gives it, and you have to remember its a lvl 5/6 spell to counter a lvl 1 ability. And thats not to say a hipser can't throw out a fog then hips, or attempt a sleight of hand to distract then hips, but I still stick with my original argument of not being able to hide behind an invisible rock.

And yes Nightcrawler is 100% teleport. I can't think of any movie where I have seen someone hips. Maybe Bram Stoker's Dracula where the shadow is following Keanu Reeves around, but that's a poor example.

[Sparky]

True seeing also technically costs 250Gp per casting. Fortunately, most DnD games eschew the need for material components. People would probably be less willing to pony up for a ressurection that takes ten minutes to cast and costs 25000Gp.

[disastro]

yeah material components suck. all the pnp campaigns i play use them however (at least, for any component that has a cost. nobody keeps track of bat guano or ogre mage eyelashes).

depending on the campaign that stoneskin can get REAL expensive

[Aarkon Draco]

on the movie version of a SD id agree with the chronicles of riddic elementals being a close call to a SD even the lord marshal did something close to Hips tho it was more like his spirit moved faster than he did. nightcrawler however does insipre one to be a SD that opening sequence in the whitehouse rocked as also stated the shadow ninja in ninja scroll animated movie was also a good example of a SD tho his was a bit more of a shadow meld ability not a hide.

IMO the problem with Hispers isnt the having to build a direct counter its the spamming of the hips that removes a action cue or spell this will be fixed in NWN2 with the cooldown timer that and bards in NWN2 are more support than a do it all build dont get me wrong bards still rock in nwn2 just not as much as in nwn1 IMO.

i wouldent mind seeing a keen senses item tho perhaps a 3x charged item similar to the frog icons or the like but as a epic drop not a lowbie one maybe add it to the epic awareness rings as a 1xday and add camouflage 1xday to the shadow rings.