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It's incorporeal and has a Strength drain attack... what's not to like?
Incorporeal is brilliant: back your foe up against a wall and you can still flank with your shadow (who is fighting from cover inside the wall). If things get dodgy for your shadow they can quickly retreat to full cover.
Strength drain will quickly kill foes anyway, but in the meantime less Strength means less CMD - so maybe you can get some mileage out of locking 'em down with combat maneuvers whilst your shadow drains 'em dry? Plus it'll mess up all those archers with strength-bonus composite longbows...
Worship Desna (she's all about traveling, vacationing on the Shadow Plane sounds apropos) and take Butterfly's Sting. The requirements aren't that bad, you just need Combat Expertise (and therefore 13 INT).
Now you can "pass" critical hits to your Shadow, resulting in a lot more strength damage. Haste will also provide the shadow an extra attack; finally, something like Greater Trip can give your shadow another "free" attack with an attack of opportunity.
Spells like Bestow Curse and Ray of Enfeeblement might help. There are some problematic lines in the two though.
The subject's Strength score cannot drop below 1.
You place a curse on the subject. Choose one of the following.–6 decrease to an ability score (minimum 1).
–4 penalty on attack rolls, saves, ability checks, and skill checks.
Each turn, the target has a 50% chance to act normally; otherwise, it takes no action.
I can see a jerk GM saying that the Shadow can't bring a creature to 0 or lower strength if you cast either of these spells on them.
Something that can use poison regularly would be good too. Maybe get a Poisoner's Glove so you can inject a creature with a melee touch attack (or as part of a natural/unarmed strike)?
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Well, the shadow would have to deal their full strength score to bring them to 0 effective strength, because the penalties cannot reduce it to less than 1.
So if you have 12 strength and a -6 penalty, your effectively have 6 Str for most purposes. However, if the shadow hits you for 4 Str damage, you now have 8 Str and a -6 penalty, and another 4 means you now have 4 Str and a -6 penalty, and so forth.
So the shadow has to deal 12 Strength damage to actually kill the foe, regardless of things like ray of enfeeblement and/or bestow curse. This is intended.
EDIT: I meant that a jerk GM might try rule that even if the Shadow did do enough Strength damage to knock the target out, those lines of text would make them not be able to drop into 0. That's what I was talking about.
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If you've got a druid or ranger in the party, strong jaw is a very mean thing to cast on a shadow. It increases the shadow's touch damage from 1d6 to 2d6.
If your party hastes the shadow, as others noted, that's +1 attack/round.
If someone casts greater invisibility on the shadow, all their attacks are vs flat-footed AC.
The bard spell good hope and the performance inspire courage both give bonuses to damage with hit and damage rolls on attacks.
If the shadow catches someone helpless, their touch can be used to coup de grace for double Strength damage.
The real problem with the shadowdancer's shadow is that it's fairly easy to negate at mid and higher levels (death ward renders your shadow wholly impotent), and it's going to die because it doesn't gain any additional HD, which means the moment someone starts dropping spells like holy word or blasphemy around the thing is going to dissolve like cotton candy and then you get to eat a negative level and have to wait a month before you can use your class feature again.
Well, Shadows out of the beastiary have 3HD and the ability doesn't mention changing it. I'm guessing it would still be treated as having 3 HD.
EDIT: I don't know what your classes are, but you can buy a Voidstick in order to get desecrate. Only 2,500 gold. Its a full-round action to use it though.
Planting a voidstick into the ground with an appropriate prayer is a full-round action that provokes attacks of opportunity. The device floods the area with negative energy, producing an effect identical to the desecrate spell in a 20-foot radius. In addition, any evil divine caster within 20 feet of the voidstick may cast her spells without the need for any material component with a value of 10 gp or less, or any focus item with a value of 50 gp or less. This ability functions only for the individual planting the voidstick and persists until the stick is uprooted.
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That is a really annoying point, actually. I wonder if that should be FAQ'd.
Summon Shadow states that the shadow has half the hit points of your character, but how many hit die does the shadow possess for abilities which rely on a number of hit die?
Unfortunately, because the shadowdancer is generally a poorly written prestige class (which hasn't truly been fixed over two micro-editions now), it doesn't gain any additional changes from a shadow aside from those mentioned in the ability description, so you're stuck with a garden variety 3HD shadow.
This is why the ability tends to be viewed negatively by online groups & forums, because these issues have been noted for a while and so people have just learned that it's not a very worthwhile class with very lackluster abilities.
A friend of mine made a nice shadowdancer replacement, IIRC. I'll have to see if she still has it available.
That is a really annoying point, actually. I wonder if that should be FAQ'd.
Summon Shadow states that the shadow has half the hit points of your character, but how many hit die does the shadow possess for abilities which rely on a number of hit die?
Whatever the number is, it's likely going to depend solely on your ranks in the class that grants the companion, ie Shadowdancer alone, since that's how companions work. It's very unlikely to be progressed by any other class, after all.
You know, maybe Pathfinder Unchained II should put some focus on prestige classes. Some of them really do have value and really don't work as well as mere archetypes within another class. The shadowdancer and Mammoth Rider, for instance.
As a companion, though, it is completely unlike anything else. It would have been really nice if it were designed as an actual shadow version of you, or at least became a Greater Shadow at 10 SD levels
I think the Shadow Oracle can animate their shadow into a scaling version. In fact it's pretty much a better full version of the Shadowdancer in a lot of ways.
Really, all they needed was something closer to the Occultist's undead servant ability, or to the wizard's familiar.
I'd talk to the GM before assuming the shadow has a natural attack and not its own category, for stuff like haste and jaw spells.
I've always wanted to see a shadowdancer3 working Str damage themselves. Probably a natural attack build to max out Rogue2 for pressure points.
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I'd talk to the GM before assuming the shadow has a natural attack and not its own category, for stuff like haste and jaw spells.
I've always wanted to see a shadowdancer3 working Str damage themselves. Probably a natural attack build to max out Rogue2 for pressure points.
Barring house rules, that's what they have.
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The Shadowdancers's Summon Shadow shadow 'companion' is really closer to a Familiar than an Animal Companion or Cohort or the like, at least in terms of the mechanics it uses. Like a Familiar it's probably meant to be primarily used for scouting and such, rather than combat. Of course, combat-Familiars are more popular now (after small-sized familiars were introduced, and then the Mauler Archetype in the Familiar Folio). Some shadow Archetypes would be lovely, but probably too niche for a Paizo product.
That said, some of the problems with the shadow aren't as bad as it may seem at first glance. Death Ward blocks the shadow's drain attack, but it still threatens (to flank with you) and can use Aid Another to your benefit whether the target is immune to the damage the shadow would inflict or not. Holy Word and Blasphemy both allow a save (and the shadow gets your base save bonus) and are rendered null and void by the shadow being the 'correct' alignment. Plus being incorporeal means that it's easy to retreat to full cover, and blocking line-of-effect blocks a heck of a lot of magical abilities.
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The Shadowdancers's Summon Shadow shadow 'companion' is really closer to a Familiar than an Animal Companion or Cohort or the like, at least in terms of the mechanics it uses. Like a Familiar it's probably meant to be primarily used for scouting and such, rather than combat. Of course, combat-Familiars are more popular now (after small-sized familiars were introduced, and then the Mauler Archetype in the Familiar Folio). Some shadow Archetypes would be lovely, but probably too niche for a Paizo product.
That said, some of the problems with the shadow aren't as bad as it may seem at first glance. Death Ward blocks the shadow's drain attack, but it still threatens (to flank with you) and can use Aid Another to your benefit whether the target is immune to the damage the shadow would inflict or not. Holy Word and Blasphemy both allow a save (and the shadow gets your base save bonus) and are rendered null and void by the shadow being the 'correct' alignment. Plus being incorporeal means that it's easy to retreat to full cover, and blocking line-of-effect blocks a heck of a lot of magical abilities.
Given how bad the shadow dancer is in other ways, especially lacking any sort of reliable offensive abilities, a class feature that is essentially "aid another" isn't exactly anything to write home about. Especially since if it does die, then you'll be without it for one month and eating a negative level. In most campaigns, taking a month off because your minion snuffed it in a fight isn't super practical.
I guess that's at least something a shadow dancer does that's useful (scouting).
What is shadow Oracle ? Link please. In the srd there isn't such a option.As a companion, though, it is completely unlike anything else. It would have been really nice if it were designed as an actual shadow version of you, or at least became a Greater Shadow at 10 SD levelsI think the Shadow Oracle can animate their shadow into a scaling version. In fact it's pretty much a better full version of the Shadowdancer in a lot of ways.
It's in the new(ish) Blood of Shadows, which pfsrd and Archives of Nethys have been slow to upload.
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Given how bad the shadow dancer is in other ways, especially lacking any sort of reliable offensive abilities, a class feature that is essentially "aid another" isn't exactly anything to write home about. Especially since if it does die, then you'll be without it for one month and eating a negative level. In most campaigns, taking a month off because your minion snuffed it in a fight isn't super practical.
Well, you only dine upon that negative level if you happen to fail a paltry DC 15 Fortitude save... and if you're regularly failing them at level 8 or more then you've probably got other stuff to worry about. That aside, yes it's not a class defining feature - and nor is it really meant to be: the level you pick up summon shadow you also pick up a Rogue talent and shadow illusion. If you came into the PrC direct from Rogue 5 then you're at the level where, if you'd stuck with Rogue, you'd be picking up a Rogue talent and nudging your Uncanny Dodge into Improved Uncanny Dodge... so summon shadow is worth about half an improvement to your uncanny dodge ability... it's not meant to be an Animal Companion or eidolon after all.
The point of the Shadowdancer isn't to be a combat monster (if you wanted that you'd have stuck with Rogue to continue your Sneak Attack progression) - it's more for people who want to be stealthy without having to have amazing backstabbing skills too. They'd probably fit in well with an intrigue-based campaign (just look at the Class Skill list) - they're infiltrators rather than assassins.
When I've GMed shadow dancers, we've houseruled it so they get Sneak Attack at levels 1, 4, 7, and 10. I don't remember if we really dealt with the summon shadow thing, since those campaigns usually stopped around 7 or 8 or 9.