Talk:Shadowcaster (5e Class)

This is my first class built, i tried to stay true to the flavor of the origional class while still adding some of that 5e feel. I'm open to thoughts, suggestions, i tried not to make the class super OP like a bunch of classes on here.

Next is the most time consuming part, making all 50 some mysteries and fundamentals into spells on here.

And I understand lesser and greater spell versions don't fit into 5e, that I need to create substitutions. This is just to get the list down at this point

Sustaining Shadow

I would still like feedback as to whether Sustaining Shadows should grand immunity to all diseases or just all nonmagical

Great job for your first class. I'd say it's fine to grant complete immunity to poison, disease, and also to the poisoned condition. Druids get that at level 10, so it's probably fine here as well.

I'm thinking about the level 20 ability though. I don't think it's OP, but it essentially turns all of your movement into teleport actions, which is good for stealth, mobility, and a number of other things. Great capstone ability. --Entropicscholar (talk) 08:11, 28 October 2015 (MDT)

First off, thanks for the feedback! The level 20 ability lets you teleport, but only from and to shadows. Essentially anywhere at night or in a dark dungeon, easy enough in a forest, a bit more limiting in city streets (teleporting from the shadow of one house to another, but not in the middle of one street to another), and difficult on a flat plain or a battlefield. Xoia Nightwalker (talk)

It isn't necessary to have a light variant of the Shadowcaster, and trying to do so without making new abilities from scratch doesn't fit mechanically or thematically. If you wish to play a light based caster, make a holy sorcerer bloodline, or play a light domain cleric

I was passing by and really liked your idea, but there were a few mechanical problems I wanted to point out. First of all, since none of your spells require concentration, there are many ways to break the game by layering mysteries on top of each other (i.e. several clinging shadows and maybe flood of darkness in the same area, which is very large by itself). Also, I noticed that some mysteries (like flood of darkness and Flesh Fails) have effects that are either not dealt with in 5e (ability damage, especially without a duration) or can be abused beyond belief (Flood of Darkness removing the need for saving throws in an area, so you can just hit everyone there with your best spells and they have no chance of dodging). These problems only get worse (much worse) if you have more than one shadowcaster in the party. Finally, the Shadow Scout's 17th level feature, combined with the broken level of darkvision you gain from this class, means a DM has no chance of ever surprising the party again (This is ,of course, up to the DM, but I just thought it was worth mentioning). I really like the class and the way you transitioned the mysteries, but it would nice if some of these problems could be fixed. UltimateDefender18 (talk) 13:50, 3 January 2016 (MST)

Thanks for stopping by! First off, flood of shadow doesn't mean the target doesn't get a saving throw, I clarified on the spell page. Second, the fact that none of the mysteries have no concentration is balanced by two factors; first, all of the mysteries that would normally have concentration have severely reduced durations instead, and second, the absence of spells like haste, invisibility and flight, the spells that layered together allowed wizards to break the game. Thanks for the feedback! Xoia Nightwalker (talk) 09:37, 27 February 2016 (MST)

Shadow Master

When the companion becomes a shadow elemental, does it still have the form of the original companion? If my companion was a raven, would it still be a raven? WilGarrison (talk) 09:34, 19 May 2016 (MST)

Yes, it still has the same form and abilities as the original companion, it just gains the new features. Xoia Nightwalker (talk) 21:06, 19 May 2016 (MDT)

Shadow Knight

First off, this class is fantastic, I love the idea of using darkness/shadows and it's so hard to find a class that lets you do so without you having to be evil so that's yet another plus to this class. Now, this might just be the part of me that loves melee talking but with the Shadow Knight being a melee specialization it kind of sucks that you only get one extra attack action and that you don't even get it until 17th level. With that it seems like the melee attack would be somewhat useful at lower levels and pretty much completely disregarded at higher levels due to the spells. Again, that might just be my love for melee talking but I thought I'd throw it out there. ThatOneGuy 23:41, 25 October 2016 (CST)

Hi, the reason that extra attack doesn't kick in until late is because it doubles the effectiveness of the Shadow Knight's ability to convert spell slots into weapon damage. At Lv 18, sacrificing a 9th Lv spell slot gives you an extra 9d6+9 damage (average 40) twice a round for three rounds. That is a very high single Target damage boost. Additionally, fitting it in earlier would mean moving something back several extra levels, nonthing of which seems like a 17th level ability. Xoia Nightwalker (talk)

The class is not a warlock, and does not overlap with the warlock very much in terms of mechanics or fluff, so they don't need warlock spells

Xoia Nightwalker (talk) 23:08, 3 October 2018 (MDT)

Spell Recovery

Okay, it's an old document, so I'm not sure if Xoia Nightwalker (talk) reads or cares about it anymore, but despite the limited number of mysteries to choose from, I find it rather unacceptable, that a full caster, who has the same number of spells known and spell slots as a sorcerer can recover ALL OF THEM during short rest. So, here's a proposed alternative in a similar vein to wizard's Arcane Recovery. Forgive me a poor wording:

Shadow Imbuement

Once per day, during a short or long rest you can reflect upon the coiling dark energies of the shadow plane and imbue your Mysteries with additional power, allowing yourself to cast them without expending spell slots. You can imbue any number of mysteries, whose combined spell levels equal half of your Mysteries known, rounded up. Note, that you can imbue a Mystery only after you have did so for the previous one within that Path.

Thus, a 5 level Shadowcaster, can imbue power into 3 first level mysteries of different Paths or 1st and 2nd level mysteries of a single Path.

So, here it is. ConvergencePoint 2024.02.07