Any Way to Avoid Suckation?

[two]

With regards the Shadow Evocation, Shadow Conjuration line of spells?

It would be neat to have a specialist wizard (illusion) use these spells a lot... sadly, they seem to suck bunches.

Are there any feats to improve shadow magic or PRC's or something?

It would also be nice to have lower level emulations; shadow 3rd level spell emulating 2nd level spells, shadow 1st level emulating 1st level spells (and doing no damage, for example, if the opponent makes a save, and doing 1/2 damage if they don't).

Etc.

 

[Thanee]

Shadowcraft Mage from Races of Stone. There are some others, too, a feat or two, not sure where, though.

Bye
Thanee

 

[werk]

Shadow Adept PrC from PGtF gains insidious, pernicious, and tenacious magic as free "shadow feats" at first level. Those feats are specifically there to strengthen shadow casters with divination, overcoming SR, and dispelling, respectively.

There are probably more shadow caster feats in other FR supplements, PGtF was just the 3.5 reference that I had handy.

 

[pawsplay]

The main benefits are that your Spell Focus can do a lot of duty. The higher spell level helps DC, but often the spell effectively allows two saves, so that's not a big help.

 

[frankthedm]

Any Way to Avoid Suckation? With regards the Shadow Evocation, Shadow Conjuration line of spells?

Use the real spells. Those spells are balanced by their versatility, not potency. There might be a few splat ways, but to get the power of the actual spells by shadow spells would require Suckation of the XP kind. [see limited wish and wish for such levels of versatility and cost there of]

They exist as holdovers from the gygax era when illusionists was wholly separate class from mages. Those spells were just about the only way the old illusionists had to do damage.

 

[pawsplay]

They're actually quite useful spells. But you do trade raw power for versatility. I like them for sorcerers. I'm not so crazy about them for wizards with access to conjuration and evocation spells.