Is Shadowdancer’s Shadow summon useful?

[maxpolishguy]

considering a build here and wanted to see if the summon is useful at all. I know in vanilla nwn it is useless. I have read the wiki and there are considerable changes and buff but I am looking to hear about more personal experience with those.

Thanks in advance!

[Drowble Oh Seven]

Yes. Summon shadow is fantastic. Its damage is mediocre but it's incredibly survivable even when copying the stats of a build with only modest DEX. It will very rarely die doing level-equivalent content.

[CptJonas]

Yes. Summon shadow is fantastic. Its damage is mediocre but it's incredibly survivable even when copying the stats of a build with only modest DEX. It will very rarely die doing level-equivalent content.

Not even just "level-equivalent content"... Even with just 5 levels in SD, your shadow is usefull even in near high end content...it survives just few rounds of intense combat there, but its nice safetynet...

[Nitro]

It's not going to kill stuff on its own, but it'll guard you and soak damage very well, enabling you to kill things in relative safety. So yea, extremely useful.

[Hinty]

It also boosts your damage by giving you sneak attacks.

One caveat is, it is not as useful for a ranged character, every time you attack a character at range the shadow will teleport to you and charge the enemy again, so it can't keep the enemy at range and you will end up stood in their faces.

[Archnon]

It also boosts your damage by giving you sneak attacks.

One caveat is, it is not as useful for a ranged character, every time you attack a character at range the shadow will teleport to you and charge the enemy again, so it can't keep the enemy at range and you will end up stood in their faces.

As someone playing a range SD, I wholeheartedly disagree. The teleportation thing is a pain because it jumps around the screen, but in the end, the guard feature will keep you safe, even playing at close range with a bow or crossbow. Plus, you have to take mobility for the class, so when they occasionally do get an attack in, your AC is not bad. The big bonus feature is the guard draws all enemies to it, so you get a lot more sneak attacks without having to hips away. Further, what really makes it a powerful tank is the concealment. Epic Shadowlord gets around 75% concealment. It makes it really tough to hit.

Honestly, the only drawback is PVP. It really has no purpose there. Plus the epic shadowlord name matching has been borked for a while so you lose some of the RP flare of that.

[maxpolishguy]

Thanks for all the awesome suggestions you guys. I really appreciate the input.

It does seem really powerful, it almost seems like you’d never take damage from melee attacks from enemies outside of PvP.

[Beard Master Flex]

Its main weakness is vs spells. They have poor saves and the shadow does nothing to thwart them in that scenario. Its a fair trade though and you're still a rogue who can vanish to dodge spells and has access to scrolls and wands to protect yourself.