Shadow's Strength (10 Ranger/23 SD/7 WM)

[dodrudon]

This is my third iteration of a strength-based Shadowdancer, with heavy revisions.

The advantage of this build, with SD as control class, is to take advantage of Shadow Evade's concealment. The additional abilities it gives (immunity to negative energy, immunity to necromancy spells, infinite etherealness/GS effect, additional dodge AC) are just frosting on the cake. With strength tanks being required for a good Hell run, with the AC drop as you descend deeper, and with cruel on-hit effects such as slagging, this build is great for Hell.

In designing this build I had the following goals:
Saves > 60
Can deal damage (ie has the AB to do so)

Advantages:
Excellent Melee Ability
Strength Tank (heavy armor)
From Shadow Evade, infinite use:
-53% Concealment
-Immunity to Negative Energy
-Immunity to Necromancy Spells
-Immunity to Death Magic
-Etherealness (same effect as GS, no cooldown timer)

Disadvantages:
Compared to a pure fighter with the same subrace, you lose four points of AB: one from pre-epic SD levels (3/4 BAB progression), one from starting with 17 strength, one from not taking enough Great Strengths due to the tightness of feats, and one more from not having Epic Prowess. One of these points is recovered with WM's Superior Weapon Focus.
Also, your Will and Fort saves are just barely above 60.
Feats are hard to fit into this build, so personalizing it is difficult.

Subrace
I designed this build with a Human Kurai (free expertise). A non-Kurai would have to go with 12 Con to get 13 Dex and Int, and drop a feat (probably Armor Skin) to make room for Expertise. Other subbies with Dodge can follow a similar build pattern, tweaking stats to fit.
Str 17->19
Con 14
Dex 12->13
Int 12->13
Wis 11 (min requirement as Ranger)
Cha 8->6 (you're ugly)

Level Progression (pre-epic levels are flexible)
8 Ranger (1-8)
4 SD (9-12)
7 WM (13-19)
1 Ranger (20)
19 SD (21-39)
1 Ranger (40)

Feats
Pre-LL
-Luck of Heroes
-Weapon Focus
-Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack, Whirlwind Attack
-Great Fortitude, Iron Will
-Toughness*, Blindfight*
-Armor Skin
-Improved Critical
-Great Strength x3
-Epic Weapon Focus (on final Ranger level as bonus feat)
-Epic Reflexes, Epic Skill Focuses (from SD bonus feats, choose three, the only useful feats available; however Animal Empathy is not on SD bonus feat list)
During LL
-L. Luck of Heroes
-L. Will Save, L. Fort Save
-Great Strength x4

Skills
Make sure to get 4 Intimidate when you can, for WM, and 10 Hide, 8 Move Silently, and 5 Tumble (Tumble will be cross-class at first).
Max Animal Empathy (you can find enough ways and items to boost the skill for this to be useful), Discipline (get a focus here), and Tumble. You can choose to max out three other skills, maybe Search or Lore.

Final Stats
Level 40:
HP 474 to 714
Saves F24/W19/R28 to F50/W45/R54
Level 60:
Saves fully buffed: F65/W60/R62


Extra note: This gets you 43 levels of SD. If you get up to 47 levels, you get a few percent more conceal, DR that soaks +1 more enhancement, and +1 dodge AC, so you aren't losing much by not getting full levels in SD.

More later, maybe.

[flynn01]

What's your ab and str @ 40?

Started building it yet?

Looks neat!

[dodrudon]

Haven't built it yet, haven't tested either, I might after I finish my finals.

Strength starts out as 19, +10 stat boosts, +3 from feats, to a total of 32 unbuffed. Unfortunately, you have to sacrifice a point of str mod for all the feats, though I guess you could lose toughness and armorskin for one more ab/dmg.

At level 60, you get +10 from stats, +4 from feats, for 46 unbuffed, 58 buffed. Doesn't quite hit 60 =/ but as I said, it's tight on feats. A BUR race can do much better, with more strength bonus as well as extra feats, because some non-epic feats are taken at epic levels to get it all to fit in, so if you have dodge/mobility/expertise already, you can scoot those two non-epic feats taken at epic levels to pre-epic levels, then pick up your 2 missing great strengths. Still, in the end, it's only like 2 or 3 points of ab/dmg.

[Kazatel]

I am interested to hear how this turns out. Are you taking ranger for the animal empathy? In the same vein, when taking the epic skill focus feats, and animal empathy isn't there, have you already put 20 points int AE before then?
If you can get 45 levels of SD, then you can use the shadow clone, which I imagine would be very useful.

[dodrudon]

Oh! I did not know that. So getting 45 levels of SD would require 25 levels pre-LL, and with another 7 gone to WM, that means only 8 levels left for ranger. The reason I wanted to go 10 ranger is to get the third Favored Enemy feat, which you notice is taken in Epic levels, which lets you actually choose from the Ranger's bonus epic feat list instead, and that's how you get Epic Weapon Focus. As I said, this is a very tight build feat-wise, so you'd have to sacrifice something to get the 45SD ability, probably toss armor skin or toughness (yikes, there it is again, trading defense for offense). A BUR subbie would rock for this.... anyone got a spare?

I probably won't start this build for a while, I still need to make a chest-opener, so this probably takes second priority.