Shadow Evade

[Richørd]

As a current SD player there are two things that always bug me about Shadow Evade.

1. Shadow Evade always confuses me with how it's acted out like a spell. (verbal and somatic component) It feels wrong for a supernatural sneak to announce for all that he is going to cover himself in shadows by shouting, handwaving and a giant VFX effect that also comes with it's own set of loud noises.

2. The recent Monk Update introduced changes to the Shadow Dancer class. One of those is the change to Shadow Evade and how it is now based on a cooldown system of 5 minutes instead of having 3 uses per day. It feels weird for it to not become a toggle-effect that one can simply turn off or on once reaching a specific amount of levels in that class. My current character has 17 levels in the SD class and Shadow Evade lasts long enough to exceed it's own cooldown by 1 to 2 rounds (not quite sure about that one as of writing this, would need to check and confirm if it was 6 or 12 seconds) , effectively making it a permanent effect if one desires so.

[Dreams]

Does the cooldown begin as the Shadow Evade is used, or when the effect ends?

How is the casting animation any different to other abilities that require casting, such as bardsong, wildshape, divine might, divine shield, and so on?

[Astral]

How is the casting animation any different to other abilities that require casting, such as bardsong, wildshape, divine might, divine shield, and so on?

It is not different at all, which is the problem. Because you need to break stealth (something you really dont want to do as a shadow dancer) to use an ability that has no verbal or somatic components such as spell casting. Unless someone says I'm wrong and that there's a prayer to Shar involved in this ability or some specific body movements which break your stealth in the process, it shouldnt be any different than the activation of Blinding Speed. Using this ability shouldnt break your stealth mode, it makes zero sense that it does.

[Subutai]

Agreed in this. It really doesn't make any sense. Even if it did require some kind of verbal and somatic components, it seems like SDs, of all the classes, could have dedicated an extreme amount of training to being able to do this without suddenly appearing in front of everyone, like making the the required noises under their breath in time with their opponents' footsteps, or some rustle of leaves, or something.

[Richørd]

Does the cooldown begin as the Shadow Evade is used, or when the effect ends?

How is the casting animation any different to other abilities that require casting, such as bardsong, wildshape, divine might, divine shield, and so on?

The cooldown begins as soon as Shadow Evade is used.

The casting animation is not too different. But as others already hinted at it is not making much sense.

[Zeskay]

As a fellow SD player, I wanted to voice my agreement. In its current form it feels like you are forced to step out of the shadows to call on the shadows to conceal you and protect you while making a big deal out of it. I think Astral's idea of making it like Blinding Speed would be a nice QoL change.

[CosmicOrderV]

I feel fairly confident in saying that bioware created the shadowdancer class as an amalgamation of the Child of Night, and Shadow Master classes. You can find them in the Tome of Magic, as pretige classes under Shadow Magic. Child of night gets the 'shadow evade' equivelant, and Shadow Master gets the 'summon shadow' ability. Of note, the Child of Night's ability 'cloak of shadows' (shadow evade) is a Swift Action, meaning it's a Free Action that you can only do once a round.

So for what it's worth, the books already have it the way people are suggesting.

[Nitro]

I feel fairly confident in saying that bioware created the shadowdancer class as an amalgamation of the Child of Night, and Shadow Master classes. You can find them in the Tome of Magic, as pretige classes under Shadow Magic. Child of night gets the 'shadow evade' equivelant, and Shadow Master gets the 'summon shadow' ability. Of note, the Child of Night's ability 'cloak of shadows' (shadow evade) is a Swift Action, meaning it's a Free Action that you can only do once a round.

So for what it's worth, the books already have it the way people are suggesting.

I'm pretty sure they just tried to import the "Shadowdancer" class from 3.5 wholesale and just axed whatever abilities they didn't want to, or couldn't make work in their engine and replacing them with other stuff. http://www.d20srd.org/srd/prestigeClass ... dancer.htm

[CosmicOrderV]

Shadowdancer doesn't have any sort of 'Shadow Evade' thing, tho. And if you checkout pg. 117 of the Tome of Magic, you'll see a pretty striking comparison to Child of Night. Even with the Dev changes giving +1 Hide per SD level, that's something the original Child of Night had.

Also yeah, I fudged the name there. I meant it being an amalgamation of Shadowdancer and Child of Night.

[TimeAdept]

Tome of magic was published march of 2006, it couldn't possibly have been an inspiration for Bioware's SD, because it didn't exist yet.

[CosmicOrderV]

Tome of magic was published march of 2006, it couldn't possibly have been an inspiration for Bioware's SD, because it didn't exist yet.

I'm sort of curious what the motivation behind your comment was? But that aside, I did a lil searching.

You're right and it ends up, dragon magazine #322 (2004) explicitly features some stuff inspired by Shadows of Undrentide, the expansion that added shadowdancer (2003) to NWN. Tome of Magic then coming out in 2006, officially formalizes the content of issue 322, and adds more. It would seem to suggest any inspiration that occurred probably happened the other way around. Which is kinda interesting.

It's also sort of irrelevant to the larger point though, which is why I'm not sure what the motive behind your comment was. There's undeniably a strong similarity behind the concepts and abilities of those classes.

That seems like an encouraging reason to adjust how Shadow Evade works, which if of course what the topic of this thread is about.

[Richørd]

Would it be possible to get input from a coder / dev on this topic?

Perhaps the reason these ideas were not implemented yet is some coding issue with the Shadow Evade feat that would result from such a change?

[Jagel]

I’d say that with such a change the cooldown should begin upon deactivation/expiration

[Richørd]

I’d say that with such a change the cooldown should begin upon deactivation/expiration

Wait, what? Explain.

[magistrasa]

I’d say that with such a change the cooldown should begin upon deactivation/expiration

There's really not a whole lot of precident for that when you look at other cooldown abilities. As far as I'm aware, the only abilities that activate the cooldown timer on deactivation are HiPS and summons. On the other hand we got BG bull's strength and every Assassin buff - the cooldown for the latter of which being so short that most of those buffs are active well past the cooldown's expiry. Shadow Evade is really not special enough to warrant special treatment by comparison.

From my perspective, buffing Shadow Evade like this is really only going to improve the lot of Shadowdancers when their shadow is on cooldown or when they're in PvP - areas in which the Shadowdancer hurts the most. Really, I'm in favor of most ideas that makes the class less of a summon-dependent HiPS dip.

[Jagel]

Just struck me as rather powerful to be able to keep up shadow evade indefinitely with no downsides but I may be wrong

[magistrasa]

All Shadow Evade grants is concealment, damage reduction, and dodge AC, scaled depending on level. But the most a Shadowdancer is going to get from Shadow Evade is 20% concealment, 12/+4 DR, and +4 dodge AC at level 15 (with slightly more DR at level 20 but, let's be real, no one has or will ever take 20 SD levels - pretty sure most people only ever take 13 anyways, which means even less DR).

In PvE it won't matter because if the shadow's out, the Shadowdancer isn't targeted by enemies to begin with, so there's no point to any protections since nothing works better than a meat shield. In PvP, I feel like Shadowdancers are in desperate need for the help Shadow Evade could provide.

[Richørd]

All Shadow Evade grants is concealment, damage reduction, and dodge AC, scaled depending on level. But the most a Shadowdancer is going to get from Shadow Evade is 20% concealment, 12/+4 DR, and +4 dodge AC at level 15 (with slightly more DR at level 20 but, let's be real, no one has or will ever take 20 SD levels - pretty sure most people only ever take 13 anyways, which means even less DR).

In PvE it won't matter because if the shadow's out, the Shadowdancer isn't targeted by enemies to begin with, so there's no point to any protections since nothing works better than a meat shield. In PvP, I feel like Shadowdancers are in desperate need for the help Shadow Evade could provide.

I will update you on a few things.
In the most recent big monk update Shadowdancers recieved a buff to Shadow Evade.
The concealment scales up to 50% (reaches 50% at level 16) and the use-per-rest system has been replaced by the cooldown I described in the first post.

My issue with Shadow Evade has always been that it's loud, super flashy and takes a round to cast.
As I and others have voiced before that should not be what a core-feat of a supernatural sneak focused class does.
Also it feels bad having to repeat the same flashy and noisy feat every 5 minutes to refresh it's duration. I feel like it would be much better at 16 or 17 levels of Shadowdancer (whatever the devs might decide on) to have to only cast Shadow Evade once and it would last permanently or until turned off / disspelled.

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

All Shadow Evade grants is concealment, damage reduction, and dodge AC, scaled depending on level. But the most a Shadowdancer is going to get from Shadow Evade is 20% concealment, 12/+4 DR, and +4 dodge AC at level 15... *snip*

Respectfully, I would argue that's actually a lot, on top of having three clones that do damage and tank for you already.

I feel that shadow evade is a pretty beefy return for a single class feature. I can't name any other single ability in the entire game that gives those three things together, and for an idea of how effective 20% concealment can be (on top of auto-guards), try to cast spells as a mage with 20% ASF.

While I get it seeming counter-intuitive to drop stealth to use it, I feel HiPS renders this point entirely moot if you have enough ranks to sneak up on a target in the first place. You could also use it off-screen out of LoS and then sneak up to your target. You may also just descend on your target with three stealthed shadows and obliterate them without ever needing to activate it at all.

I love QoL updates, and this sounds like a nice one. All for it! Not so much the idea that Shadow Evade is somehow weak, though.

[Opustus]

So, who thought that giving an epic-dodging class a permanent-if-not-for-recast-every-5-min 50% concealment, +4 dodge AC, and 12/+4 damage reduction was a good idea? <.< EDIT: Sorry to digress from OP!

[magistrasa]

Thanks for the correction, definitely forgot that concealment got buffed. And, poor wording on my part on top of that - "All it does," wasn't said to minimize the ability's effects, but to list what it did. (That being said, I really don't think the DR part of the ability is that big of a deal when you look at how it would factor into PvP.)

I'd be inclined to agree that the ability to constantly hold up 50% concealment and +4 AC and 12/+4 DR might be overpowered, IF the rest of the class's features weren't so disappointing. If you go deep into Shadowdancer levels, you typically sacrifice way more than you earn compared to... pretty much any other stealth-capable class. I just think it would be cool to be rewarded for that deep investment - like if the cooldown (or lack thereof) can be tied somehow to the Epic Shadowlord feat.

Admittedly I might be too bitter over my disappointment with the class to give an honest or rational assessment though, so I'll see myself out of the thread from here.

[CosmicOrderV]

Respectfully, I would argue that's actually a lot, on top of having three clones that do damage and tank for you already.

I feel that shadow evade is a pretty beefy return for a single class feature. I can't name any other single ability in the entire game that gives those three things together, and for an idea of how effective 20% concealment can be (on top of auto-guards), try to cast spells as a mage with 20% ASF.

While I get it seeming counter-intuitive to drop stealth to use it, I feel HiPS renders this point entirely moot if you have enough ranks to sneak up on a target in the first place. You could also use it off-screen out of LoS and then sneak up to your target. You may also just descend on your target with three stealthed shadows and obliterate them without ever needing to activate it at all.

I love QoL updates, and this sounds like a nice one. All for it! Not so much the idea that Shadow Evade is somehow weak, though.

Three clones? You might be thinking of the spell, Shades (shadow conjuration), im tempted to say.

That said, having the cooldown on effects end might be a good idea like Jagel suggested. The flashiness is definitely off putting, but perma 50% concealment might be a bit much. Of course... The class aort of sucks outside of pve, so maybe that doesnt matter .

[Subutai]

Let's not forget here that normal primary feat of Shadowdancers, HiPS, has been massively nerfed on Arelith. SDs don't get it until 5, and even when they do, it's on a 12 second cooldown *after* deactivating.

Other than Shadow Evade, SDs don't really get anything else. If someone's taking 13, 15, or 20 levels of SD, they're missing out on pretty much every single other useful ability that any other class provides. Shadow Evade might be stronger and more useful than other single abilities, but when combined with the general lack of abilities the SDs have otherwise, it makes sense that the ones they have would be particularly strong.

[Richørd]

Let's not forget here that normal primary feat of Shadowdancers, HiPS, has been massively nerfed on Arelith. SDs don't get it until 5, and even when they do, it's on a 12 second cooldown *after* deactivating.

Other than Shadow Evade, SDs don't really get anything else. If someone's taking 13, 15, or 20 levels of SD, they're missing out on pretty much every single other useful ability that any other class provides. Shadow Evade might be stronger and more useful than other single abilities, but when combined with the general lack of abilities the SDs have otherwise, it makes sense that the ones they have would be particularly strong.

See, now this is an interesting point of view that I've had honestly never considered before.

It would definitely fit in line with the Arelith mindset of "Rewarding A Class When Lots Of Levels Are Taken In It".
For example pure builds being rewarded with big rewards at 28th CL.

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

Let's not forget here that normal primary feat of Shadowdancers, HiPS, has been massively nerfed on Arelith. SDs don't get it until 5, and even when they do, it's on a 12 second cooldown *after* deactivating.

Come out of stealth with a knockdown, and your cooldown is six seconds, and you're safe to use the shadow evade before they get back up.

Other than Shadow Evade, SDs don't really get anything else. If someone's taking 13, 15, or 20 levels of SD, they're missing out on pretty much every single other useful ability that any other class provides. Shadow Evade might be stronger and more useful than other single abilities, but when combined with the general lack of abilities the SDs have otherwise, it makes sense that the ones they have would be particularly strong.

Shadowdancers get far more than that. There's actually a ridiculous accumulation of things by level ten, <--- and that last one buffs several of them and throws in a whole slew of bonuses besides, including stacking with rogue bonus AB/AC level requirements in light armor.

I didn't realize you can only get one shadow clone at a time, but since they auto-guard you (Edit: which, while we're discussing it, was taken away as an ability from every other summon in the game literal years ago), and clone epic dodge if you have it (you probably should, since you get all the feat pre-reqs by levelling up shadowdancer) I stand by my point that shadow evade on top of it is actually rather beastly. Again, I'm not arguing to nerf it. But IMO, it's presently the most powerful defensive ability in the game when factored on top of the rest of the likely kit of the class.