Shadow themed caster for solo campaign

[geniussavant]

I'm building a character for a solo campaign, and I need help building the character. I want him to be themed strongly around the plane of shadow, and shadows(not the creature) in general. The campaign starts at level 15 and will continue until 25. All 3.5/unupdated 3.0 WotC books allowed, homebrew is frowned upon. Epic spell casting is banned. Point buy is 54, and I get a +3 la for free. What I have in mind so far is Beguiler+shadowcraft mage, and taking the shadow and shadow-walker template for my free la. Your help is much appreciated.

[WarlockLord]

Well, at some point you could take arcane disciple(luck) & throw down some shadow miracles.

Also, take a look at the bloodline feats from dragon to add more spells to your list.

[geniussavant]

Arcane disciple looks good, especially as I'll need the power to survive. I don't have my dragon mags handy, so which bloodline feat would you suggest and why?

[StreamOfTheSky]

Look at Dark template (+1 LA) from Tome of Magic.  Gives a lot of nice things and makes you a native of the Plane of Shadow, which makes Planar Bubble (level 7 spell in SpC to surround yourself w/ your native plane) possible.  You use the Planar Bubble so that all your shadow spells are freely empowered, and frankly...just for the ability to use them at all in the outer planes, since the Plane of Shadow doesn't border those and it's debatable if you retain access to shadow spells in such cases.

[geniussavant]

The dark template is a lesser version of the shadow template

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

In before shadowcaster?

[geniussavant]

I remember it from the shadowcraft mage handbook, along with the shadow adept, but I don't have a clue as to how to structure the build. The DM is okay with early entry tricks, as long as they work.

[geniussavant]

This is from memory, so bare with the mistakes. It uses two flaws and Easy Metamagic for early entry.

Beguiler 4+ Shadow Adept 1 + Shadowcraft Mage 5 + Shadowcrafter 10

Feats: Heighten spell(f), Shadow weave magic(f), Spell focus: illusion(1), Easy Metamagic(3), Insidious magic + pernicious magic+ tenacious magic (SA level 1 @ level 5), Greater spell focus: illusion(6), Earth sense(9), earth spell(12), Residual magic(15), Arcane Disciple: luck(18)

Thoughts?

[gorfnad]

Build ideas without Early Entry Cheese
Whisper Gnome Beguiler 6/ Shadow Adept 1/ Beguiler 1/ Shadowcraft Mage 5/ Shadowcrafter 7
Whisper Gnome Beguiler 6/ Spellthief (with Master Spellthief feat) or Rogue 1/ Unseen Seer 2/ Beguiler 1/ Shadowcraft Mage 5/ Unseen Seer 5

One difference between the Shadow template and the Dark template is that the Dark template gives you Hide in Plain Sight. Hide in Plain Sight combined with the feat Darkstalker (Lords of Madness) is extremely nice on stealth based characters since it pretty much foils any senses like Tremorsense, Darkvision, Blindsense, etc. Also you can just get a Collar of Umbral Metamorphosis (Tome of Magic) which gives you the Dark template while wearing it. By the way your DM may smack you on the head with a source book if you go Shadow Shadow Walker Dark Whisper Gnome with the Darkstalker and possibly Magic in the Blood (Players Guide to Faerun) feats.

[geniussavant]

The DM has specifically permitted early entry, so I can use it to my advantage where warranted. If Dark is better than Shadow, which seems to be the case, I'd drop shadow, and take Dark, and that leaves me with 1 free LA to use up.

[Tshern]

The Shadow Miracle thing doesn't work with Beguilers, unless I am totally mistaken. While you do get regular Miracle to your repertoire, the SCM trickery works only with Wizard/Sorcerer spells, which is why it works so well for Wizards.

[geniussavant]

Ah well, not a big deal to go without the shadow miracles. There are probably other feats more useful to the build anyways, suggestions for my feats? And is the early entry method I used viable?

[gorfnad]

The DM has specifically permitted early entry, so I can use it to my advantage where warranted. If Dark is better than Shadow, which seems to be the case, I'd drop shadow, and take Dark, and that leaves me with 1 free LA to use up.

Actually Shadow is slightly better because of the free Evasion and Fast Healing (really nice to have in a solo campaign). Just purchase the Collar of Umbral Metamorphosis later on since it's not really that expensive. Hide in Plain Sight pairs so nicely with the Darkstalker feat, however earlier in the game Shadow Blend (Concealment) is still very decent.

[Lycanthromancer]

Spend a feat on Martial Stance: Child of Shadows after nabbing a swordsage maneuver via an item? (Ex teleporting is nice to have.)

[geniussavant]

The DM has specifically permitted early entry, so I can use it to my advantage where warranted. If Dark is better than Shadow, which seems to be the case, I'd drop shadow, and take Dark, and that leaves me with 1 free LA to use up.

Actually Shadow is slightly better because of the free Evasion and Fast Healing (really nice to have in a solo campaign). Just purchase the Collar of Umbral Metamorphosis later on since it's not really that expensive. Hide in Plain Sight pairs so nicely with the Darkstalker feat, however earlier in the game Shadow Blend (Concealment) is still very decent.

That's what I had thought originally, and why I took Shadow over Dark to begin with. Getting the collar for HiPS sounds good though if I can squeeze Darkstalker into the build. Dark wouldn't be better than Shadow-walker right? Not with the Slas, I don't think.

@ Lycanthromancer: although ex teleporting would be nice, I'm not really comfortable using an item to qualify for a feat.

Since this is a solo campaign, do you think it would be a good idea to gestalt the character? I know the DM well, and he'd let me if I asked for it, as long as I didn't go overboard... Maybe something focused on the ToB discipline Shadow hand to stick with the theme, or a (very) feat light shadow pounce build. The DM is pretty fond of gestalt and let's players use prcs on both sides as long as a character can fulfill a general theme, in this case "Shadow"

[Lycanthromancer]

You don't technically NEED gestalt with a T1 type character, but it does make for a much wider array of character archetypes at your disposal.

[geniussavant]

Assuming I gestalted, what would anyone suggest for the other side, maintaining that I have to stay "in theme" to get gestalt? Swordsage specializing in shadow hand maneuvers? I'd rather not make the character a full blown gish, but having roughly the same combat capabilities as a rogue would be to my liking. Factotum would work I guess, but I think the shadow hand maneuvers would be more useful, not to mention thematic. A shadow pounce progression might be fun, but I don't really have tons of feats to blow on it, nor do I want the combat focus inherent in a shadow pounce build.

[Lycanthromancer]

Factotum with occasional dippage into swordsage would be great.

You get all the goodness of swordsage with the yumminess of factotum.

[geniussavant]

I'm not all that familiar with swordsage, but what do you think of something like factotum 11+swordsage 9? Or factotum 8+swordsage 12? I've heard of Arcane swordsage, would that be useful for me?

Edit: read through arcane swordsage and I would rather not mess with it. Swordsage does look very interesting, and useful enough that I'll consider getting rid of factotum entirely if I can get the build to my satisfaction. Hell, it's probably time for a change anyways, almost every character I have ever made had at least some factotum.

[geniussavant]

From what I understand about ToB multiclassing, how about something like: factotum 4+swordsage 1+factotum 4+swordsage 1+factotum 3+swordsage 7?

Edit: or maybe Factotum 8+swordsage 12?