Homebrew PrC for Shadow marked Elves - seeking critiques

I wrote up this PrC for our Eberron campaign. It's exclusively geared towards the Elves with the Greater Mark of Shadow, who are (frequently) spies and assassins. The class expands on the supernatural link that these elves can have with the shadows, and represents them bending the magic to their purposes. Most of the abilities should be fairly clear, I'm wondering - what does the fabulous ENWorld community thinks of this creation?

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Requirements:
Feats: Least Mark of Shadow, Lesser Mark of Shadow, Greater Mark of Shadow
Skills: Hide 10 ranks, Sense Motive 8 ranks

Hit dice: d8 per level.
Skills: (6+int modifier) per level
Balance (Dex), Bluff (Cha), Climb (Str), Concentration (Con), Diplomacy (Cha), Disable Device (Int), Disguise (Cha), Escape Artist (Dex), Gather Information (Cha), Hide (Dex), Intimidate (Cha), Jump (Str), Knowledge (any) (Int), Listen (Wis), Move Silently (Dex), Open Lock (Dex), Search (Int), Sense Motive (Wis), Sleight of Hand (Dex), Spot (Wis), Survival (Wis), Swim (Str), Tumble (Dex), Use Magic Device (Cha), Use Rope (Dex)

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: Umbral masters gain no proficiency in weapons or armor.

Deeper Darkvision (Su): Umbral masters can see perfectly darkness, to 120 feet. Even magical darkness does not interfere with an umbral master's darkvision.

Umbrasynthesis (Su): At 2nd level, an umbral master's connection with shadows grows to the point that darkness literally feeds him. An umbral master who spends at least 1 hour in total darkness needs not eat or drink that day. Outside at night is not sufficient, but indoors at night with no light sources is, even if windows allow starlight in the room. A dark room with no windows is always sufficient.

Name Power (Ex): Umbral masters have a special insight into the souls of sentient beings. An umbral master can use certain fundamental aspects of a being's identity to strike at his weakest point. In order to fully understand any aspect of a name, an umbral master must spend 10 minutes connected to the plane of shadow by meditating in utter darkness contemplating its meaning. If the umbral master uses a shadow walk effect to accomplish this meditation, he also gains a +2 bonus to the DC of any spell, spell-like ability, or supernatural ability he uses against a name power-vulnerable enemy.

At second level, an umbral master can use a being's name against him. When an umbral master knows your name, you cannot fool him. An umbral master gains a +4 bonus on his saving throw against an illusion spell cast or used by someone whose name he knows, and he may automatically roll to disbelieve without interacting with that illusion.

At fifth level, an umbral master can use a being's origin against him. When an umbral master knows your birthplace or birthdate (or time and place of creation, in the case of a nonliving creature), he can end your life. Each damage die the umbral master rolls in this case is automatically maximized, and his critical hits are automatically confirmed.

At ninth level, an umbral master can use a being's very identity against him. When an umbral master knows your alignment or your allegiance, you cannot harm him. He gains SR of 15+character level against any magic you use, DR of 10/- against any attacks you use, and a +8 insight bonus to his AC against your attacks. These resistances also apply to any subject who shares your allegiance and fights on your behalf, or subjects under your mental control, such as dominated or summoned minions or followers from the leadership feat.

Mark Upgrade: When an umbral master reaches 3rd level, his least dragonmark power improves. Minor image is upgraded to major image, disguise self is upgraded to alter self, and darkness is upgraded to deeper darkness. At 7th level another upgrade occurs, and the major image is upgraded to persistent image, alter self has its duration made continuous as a (Su) ability, and deeper darkness provides complete darkness, not just shadowy illumination.

Hide in Plain Sight (Su): An umbral master of fourth level can use the hide skill even while being observed. As long as he is within 10 feet of some sort of shadow, an umbral master can hide himself from view in the open without anything to actually hide behind. He cannot, however, hide in his own shadow.

Nondetection (Su): Umbral masters are difficult to detect with divination magic. They are warded by a continuous nondetection effect, and the DC to penetrate it is 20+class level. The ability can be suppressed or resumed as a free action.

Detect Thoughts (Su): Umbral masters learn to read minds as well as souls. At 6th level, an umbral master can continuously use detect thoughts as the spell, with a caster level equal to his umbral master level and a save DC of 15+int modifier. This ability takes no concentration and can be suppressed or resumed as a free action.

Shadow Body (Su): By 8th level, an umbral master is so much a part of the shadows that he can merge with them and subsume his physical body. He may assume shadow form for up to 10 minutes once per day. This ability works exactly as the Shadow Body power on page 132 of the Expanded Psionics Handbook.

[NOTE: this is not a psionic power, it's a magical effect. It just happens that the effect is best represented by the psionic power.]

Shadowy Discorporation (Su): At 9th level, the shadows themselves protect an umbral master. If the umbral master is in shadow or darkness (anything but direct daylight or the illuminated radius of a light source), any damage that would reduce him to 0 hit points or below has a chance to discorporate him instead. The umbral master attempts a reflex save (DC 5+damage dealt); if successful, he simply breaks apart into dozens of flitting shadows and vanishes (negating the damage from the attack that would have killed him), along with anything he is holding or carrying. At the next midnight, the umbral master appears at a place of his choosing within one mile of the place he was forced to discorporate. While discorporated, a umbral lord simply does not exist - he can do nothing, nor can his enemies do anything to him.

Animate Shadows (Su): At 10th level, the shadows not only protect an umbral master, but they will serve him, though they are not the undead creatures that cruelly resemble shadows. Once per day, an umbral master can animate the shadows near him to fight his enemies. They fight fearlessly, obeying the umbral masters mental commands, for 1 minute before returning to their inanimate states. Animated shadows count as animated objects, but they are incorporeal and have dexterity scores equal to the strength of an equivalent corporeal animated object. Also, these shadows do strength damage instead of their normal type. Regardless of size, they have a fly speed of 60' (perfect). A total of 16 hit dice of shadows may be animated, distributed however the umbral master chooses. For example, he may choose to animate one gargantuan shadow (16 hit dice), 4 large shadows (4 hit dice each), or 16 tiny shadows and 1 huge shadow (16 total hit dice). Any bonuses the umbral lord recieves due to his name power also apply to the shadows, as well.

I'm certainly not the king of balance, but I do have a few things to say about the class.

First, very cool idea. These seem like the perfect guys for House Phiarlain and House Thuranni to continually deny the existence of. They've got the spy stuff, they've got the occult powers, good deal.

Second, you may want to reconsider the entry requirements of this class, or cut some of the class features and compress it to a five- or even three-level class. High level characters are rare in Eberron, and as you've written it, a character has to be 10th level to start and 19th level to finish his levels in Umbral Master.

Third, the name powers are just too good. When you know someone's name, birthday, and alignment (which shouldn't be too hard when you're a major member of the best spying outfit on the continent and you can scry once a day), you get SR 15 + level, DR 10/-, +8 AC, you maximize your damage, and you automatically confirm criticals against them? Sign me up. I would consider borrowing/modifying/stealing something more along the lines of the Mindspy from Complete Warrior (moving the continuous detect thoughts ability up to 1st or 2nd level), and giving the target a -4 penalty to his Will save for each of the relevant things you know about him.

As far as animate shadows goes, this is not a bad ability (although I cringe when I think of a gargantuan shadow dealing an average of 19 points of strength damage per hit) but perhaps it would work better as granting greater shadow conjuration once per day.

Thanks for the feedback. =]

You've got a point with the level scaling, I suppose. We already have Siberys Heirs who finish at level 15, though. I wanted to make a comparable master of the dragonmark who isn't a Siberys heir. There might only be a few dozen umbral masters, and maybe just one or two who have fully mastered the class. Plus, I love conspiracy theories. Sure, Eberron doesn't have a lot of high-power NPCs... that we know about. If all the epic or near-epic people worked from the shadows and manipulated things like the rakshasha rajahs, or like Vol, then we'd sure feel complacent with the level 12 Lord of Blades being the big threat to the world, wouldn't we?
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I see your concern with the name powers. I added in the "meditate for 10 minutes" part to ensure that you'd have to know who you're dealing with beforehand and not just figuring it out on the spot. So against the guy you bothered to learn about, you'll really clean house, but against his earlier minions or such, you just have your regular stuff. Also remember that you can't have the SR, DR, and AC until the second to last level, which is a level 17-18 character, where those advantages might just even the score. The goal was to make them seem invincible once they know everything about you. Finding out is supposed to be the hard part, once you have the information, it's just the "foregone conclusion" of the fight.

The idea is to make a spy vs. spy fight a battle for information. Whoever leaves more clues loses. All of my justification might end up being hogwash if I playtest the class and it ends up being invincible, however. =D

(The gargantuan shadow won't deal that much damage because incorporeal creatures don't get to add strength modifiers to damage, as they have strength of -. 2d8 is still a lot, though. I was considering halving the strength damage across the board to make it a little less disgusting.)

My campaign is just starting, so I guess that affects my perspective. If you've already got the high-level characters, no sweat. I ran some numbers and concluded that the average dragonmark has 20 members with a greater dragonmark (25 million people times one greater dragonmark per hundred thousand people times one greater dragonmark of shadow per twelve dragonmarks). If we assume that half of those have at least one level of Umbral Master (probably many will want it, but only rogue, monk, and bard have the necessary skills), then House Thuranni and House Phiarlan each have about five Umbral Masters at any given time. I would probably go so far as to say that each of those houses has one 19th level Umbral Master; they haven't become a major, well-known threat to continental politics because they've been hunting each other for over a hundred years, since before Thuranni separated from Phiarlan! Or maybe they are part of the reason that the houses divided...

I guess I think that the name information is too easy to get, especially considering who is going to be doing the looking. I'm not sure how I would really change it to enhance the spy-vs-spy feel. As far as the shadow thing goes, I completely forgot about the lack of a strength bonus. 9 strength damage average per hit is pretty huge, but it's not out of line for a monster coming from such a high-level power with such a miserable attack bonus. I'd still choose greater shadow conjuration, though, because I have a neurotic tendency to reuse existing mechanics whenever possible.

I imagine that the name information is easy to get - for most people. Unfortunately, it's exactly the people who are hard to find that are commonly bad guys and criminals. Finding someone's name is easy, and it provides the least powerful effect.

Finding someone's birthplace or birthdate is tougher. His family might know, if you can find them. A legend lore spell might know, but it would be a whole adventure in and of itself to decipher the cryptic answer, most likely. Unless you go out of your way to track this down, or unless the person is careless about his personal facts, it's going to require time and money to learn.

Finding someone's alignment or allegiance (loosely defined in the same way as in d20 modern) is somewhat tough (I would only allow one guess until the guess is tested in combat), maybe not as tough as birthplace. But if you've got the allegiance figured out, you really know the most important stuff. A couple messages later, your entire house knows.

I made name power as kind of a metaphysical to physical bridge. All of the maneuvering that might take place to continue the chase is put on the battlefield instead of across the countryside. If House Phiarlan knows your name, your origin, and your goals, it's going to be pretty hard to hide from them and pretty hard to sleep at night. Once your death is a foregone conclusion anyways, the name power just makes it immediate.

It's probably a poor justification for a powerful ability, but that was my rationale when I wrote it up. Besides that, the only combat ability of the class is in the name power, and it's got a medium attack bonus.

Also, the class is available at 9th level if you made a beeline for dragonmarked heir and then a beeline for umbral master, but it's still a high level PrC. Dragonmarked heir provides the sense motive, and another class can provide the hide. The first character to take the class is probably going to be the Ranger 4/Dragonmarked Heir 3 in the party, as soon as he gets his greater mark next level.