Shadow Tank (Ro 8/SD 25/WM 7)

[dodrudon]

Shadow Tank (Ro 8/SD 25/WM 7)

Okay, so nobody posted any replies to my first shadowdancer build, which made me very sad so I went back and remade it with 5 more levels of SD, and earlier on as well. The new Shadow Tank concentrates more on defense and less on offense.

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This build combines the defensive abilities of a legendary Shadowdancer with the damage output of a strength-based tank. The Shadow Tank wields a rapier in one hand with a shield in the other. With seven levels of WM, he lands a critical hit more often than not. 25 levels of SD gives amazing defensive abilities, and coupled with the ability to wear all types of armor and use shields, the Shadow Tank is nearly invincible.

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Stats
Race - Choose a race, any race! Preferably one that gives a bonus to some of the following stats: strength, dex, or int. Human is HIGHLY recommended. The build assumes Human was chosen (for skill and feat progression).

Race: Human
STR 18
CON 12
DEX 13
INT 13
WIS 8
CHA 8

Race: Kurai (Secret) - Bonus Feat: Expertise
STR 18->20
CON 14
DEX 12->13
INT 12->13
WIS 8
CHA 8->6

Level Progression
Rogue 1-7: For the first seven levels, you get four feats. Start getting feats for WM. It's impossible to get Spring Attack at this point. Rogue gets
Human: Dodge, Mobility, Expertise, Weapon Focus
Kurai: Medium Armor Proficiency, Heavy Armor Proficiency or Shield Proficiency, Dodge, Mobility (Expertise is free)

SD 8-15: You get your first 8 levels of SD here, giving you Hide in Plain Sight, Darkvision, Shadow Daze, Summon Shadow, Shadow Evade (at SD level 8, you get 15% conceal, 10/+1 DR, and +3 AC bonus), Defensive Roll, and Slippery Mind.
Human: Spring Attack, Whirlwind Attack, Medium Armor Proficiency or Shield Proficiency
Kurai: Spring Attack, Whirlwind Attack, Weapon Focus: Rapier

WM 16-21: Six levels of WM here get you most of the good stuff a WM has to give: +1AB to Weapon of Choice: Rapier, and +1 to crit multiplier. You get one general pre-epic and one epic feat here.
For feats, if you're not Kurai, choose the two following feats you don't have, and if you're Kurai, pick up the one you don't have: Medium Armor Proficiency, Heavy Armor Proficiency, or Shield Proficiency.

SD 22-37: This gives you your 9th through 24th level of SD, getting you Improved Evasion, unlimited Shadow Evade at character level 34, and improving Shadow Evade to 34% conceal, 13/+6 DR, and +8 AC bonus. You get 5 epic feats and 4 SD bonus feats.

Rogue 38: This level of Rogue lets you maximize UMD, allowing you to get Epic Skill Focus: UMD for your final SD bonus feat at the next level.

SD 39: The 25th level of SD gives you one more percent of conceal, as well as another SD bonus feat for Epic Skill Focus: UMD. You get one last epic feat here.

WM 40: The final level of WM lets you max discipline, as well as finally getting Ki Critical for a +2 crit range.

Recommended Feats: This build gives you no pre-epic feats to choose, and 7 epic feats if you're Kurai, 6 if you're not. Recommended feats include: Toughness, Armor Skin, Blind Fight, Improved Critical: Rapier, Epic Weapon Focus: Rapier, Epic Prowess, and Great Strength.

You get 5 SD bonus feats to choose. The SD bonus feat list include: Blinding Speed, Epic Skill Focus , Epic Dodge, Epic Reflexes, Epic Shadowlord, Improved Whirlwind Attack, Self Concealment, and Superior Initiative. Now, due to pre-reqs, you can only choose Epic Skill Focus, Epic Reflexes, or Epic Shadowlord. Awesome, no? Epic Shadowlord is useless. Pick up Epic Reflexes, leaving you with 4 Epic Skill Focus Feats. Get focuses in Discipline and UMD (at level 40 after you've maxed UMD at level 39). For the other two focuses, I'd go Search and Pick Pocket (to negate your armor and shield penalties).

Skills
Level 1: 4 Intimidate for WM
Level 2: 5 Tumble for SD
Level 5: 8 Move Silently for SD
Level 7: 10 Hide for SD
You get many, many skill points to spend with this build. Max Discipline on WM levels, max Pick Pocket, max Search, max Tumble, and max UMD whenever possible (Rogue levels only). This leaves you with 101 skill points left over to spend. You can get some points in Appraise (wait for Rogue levels though), Lore, and/or Set Trap (trap kits created by Devastating Trap makers have only a DC of 35, use the makers with another char that has high Set Trap).

Special Abilities
Character Level 33: Unlimited Shadow Evade (30% conceal, 12/+5 DR, +7 AC bonus (don't know what kind of AC this is, only Dodge stacks))
Level 39: Shadow Evade gives Death Immune (35%, 13/+5, +8)
Level 45: SE gives Immunity to Necro spells (like Horrid) (40%, 15/+8, +9)
Level 50: SE gives 100% immunity to negative energy (45%, 16/+10, +11)
Level 55: SE gives 1 turn (1 minute RT) of Etherealness (same as Greater Sanctuary) (50%, 17/+11, +12)
Level 60: SE improves to 55% conceal, 18/+13 DR, +13 AC bonus.

Final Stats at Level 40
438HP (Kurai with Toughness, 398HP as Human with Toughness), 41AB with rapier, 4 attacks per round, saves F17/W14/R30 (with Epic Reflexes, also you get Imroved Evasion and Slippery Mind), 30 strength (without Great Strength feats).

Saves
As stated, saves at L40 are F 17/W 14/R 30. At level 60, with +20 saves from items, +6 from stat boosts, +5 from LL progression, you can boot each to F 48/W 45/R 61. With the new legendary save feat additions, you can boost a save by 9 at the cost of two feats, I'd recommend fort and will for a respectable F 57/W 54/R 61. If you get these feats, and the first five recommended feats above (Toughness, Armor Skin, Blind Fight, Improved Critical: Rapier, Epic Weapon Focus: Rapier, though you could drop Toughness without too much trouble), you still get 5 remaining LL feats left to choose, perhaps Epic Prowess and spend the rest in Great Strength I-IV. You only miss out on three points of AB and damage compared to maxing str.

Pros and Cons
HP: Rather low, picking up Toughness if possible would help, and maybe trading a few pairs of Great Strengths for Great Constitutions.
AB: Most of your pre-epic levels have a 3/4 AB per level, but you only lose out on 4 AB. You can take an 8th level of Rogue pre-epic to gain 1AB and lose out on 1% conceal only, and one SD bonus feat.
AC: You get to wear Heavy Armor and use Tower Shields.
Defensive Abilities: Look up the SD ability progression table. You get the equivalent of 55% conceal on a strength tank wearing heavy armor using a tower shield, as well as the effects of Shadow Shield, and Greater Sanctuary, all for infinite uses per day.
Attack Abilities: As said above, your AB only a little less than usual. Your rapier has maximum crit range. A small amount (4d6) of sneak attack also helps you get through damage resistance.
Leveling: shouldn't be too bad with fair AB and strong defensive abilities early on.

Variations
You can actually start WM at level 10 earlier if you choose a subbie with no dex bonus, because you start with 13 dex and can get Dodge and Mobility at first level. However, this only gives you one more AB from level 14 to 20.

Of course, you can choose another weapon to be proficient in, any weapon from the Rogue or Simple weapons list: club, dagger, mace, morningstar, quarterstaff (two-handed), rapier, shortsword, sickle, or spear (two-handed). You could choose a two-handed weapon to be proficient in order to do more damage, and switch to a shield when you need more AC.

For races, Stinger would be best (but it's so hard to get!). Going Githyanki (secret like Kurai, both aren't that hard to get) loses you a feat (no free Expertise) but gets you two more points in con, sort of like getting a free Toughness feat (as well as getting +1 to fort saves), and 5+lvl SR as well, which never hurts.

[bort]

I would be tempted to go DEX for higher AC and epic dodge (no point getting self concealment); but heavy plate PLUS the shadow dancer perks is still pretty cool.

Why did you go with STR, got some particularly nice heavy plate?

Which ever way you go, it would rock to have a highly defensive character who never needs to rest.

p.s. Build looks good!

[dodrudon]

Yep! Went str for armor and shields, didn't think epic dodge alone was worth going dex for. I don't know how well strength builds do, so this is kinda a shot in the dark =)

[bort]

Dexers can wear shields too; don't think it incurs any kind of dex penalty...?
Epic Dodge (especially paired with a decent amount of conceal) is nice. Then again, dexers don't get the 25% physical immune that Heavy Armor wearers get from their armor slot.

[dodrudon]

Oops, right. Forgot shields don't matter if you're a dexer. I should know this because I have a dexer that uses shields ><... But yeah, I've never EVER played a toon that allows me to wear heavy armor, so I wanted one that lets me =). I've also seen nice immunities on heavy plates, so going strength is more of a take-damage route than an avoid-damage route, which is what the conceal is for.

[starlandra]

if going more defense instead of offence... ditch the wm use kukri or rapier so you still have a decent crit range and instead of wm take HS. The extra attacks are nice, but the extra defenses on the boots are very very VERY nice indeed.

[demonops]

i thought the feat progression for humans is every 3 lvls how can you get 4 feats for the first seven lvls?

[dapperdave]

IIRC you get feats at lvls 1,3,and 6 and then human gives you a bonus feat - adds up to 4

[Senaattori]

as simple as that ;D

[Bakchuda]

I built an odd variety on this build in the test chamber, and wanted to post it to bounce ideas around:

Subrace: Illithid (Human). Ya, i know, why would a squidface be a melee. Well, it's the +5 int. You can start with only 8 int and still get up to the int req. for WM. Yes, con and str are dropped by 1, but the free feat of Iron Will comes in handy for saves. It was the only secret subby I had that worked into the build at all (Thri-kreen's int drop just could not work), so i figured I would try it. The initial stats I went with (showing before and after race modifications) were
STR: 18 (17)
DEX: 13
CON: 13 (12)
INT: 8 (13)
WIS: 12 <--- with ranger, you have to start with 11 wis. So i pushed it to 12 for the extra will save
CHA: 8


Another change: swap 8 rogue for 7 ranger, adding one more level to SD, or putting the 8th ranger level at 40 so you can take all 7 WM right away (for ease of killing early). 7 ranger just barely squeaks in the cross-class tumble requirement of 5, and hide and move silently are still class feats.

What does all this change get you? 2 more AB (ranger is a full AB class), all the armor/weapon feats but Heavy (allowing more weapon choices, like scimitar) which frees up other feats later.
You miss out on UMD, which is a definite loss.

Any other comments? I may end up making this build a reality, to replace my current SD (he was started before LL's were even a twinkling in Funky's eye

[Bakchuda]

Bump. Any comments on this?

Another good result I found by using Ranger over Rogue was the fort saves of Ranger helped even out the saves nicely at the end. I ended up with room for only one Great Str feat, but had all the epic save boosting feats, and Illithid gets Iron will for free, so my base saves at 40 ended up at F: 24 R: 27 W: 23. Nothing spectacular, but nothing really lacking. I guess the main problem will be HPs, but I am hoping with heavy armor and shield immunities / reductions + shadow evade conceal, it will do ok.

Man, I sure wish I had stinger as a subrace.

[dodrudon]

Added more information on saves, taking into account new Legendary Save feats, which means I just might resurrect this guy....