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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aegeri" data-source="post: 5426145" data-attributes="member: 78116">I possibly did misunderstand you there, but I'm still not sure exactly what advantage you think they have. The sole benefit that you can get me to kind of agree with is that the shade can use stealth from allies to hide in certain situations. The problem is that this requires a specific party formation and is very susceptible to enemies drawing LoS towards you. A medium human ally isn't quite as effective as a pillar for hiding behind - especially if enemies surround you or are at various angles. So it's actually not that easy to use allies as cover. Additionally, it's been pointed out multiple times that other characters can invest in items/feats/powers that give you concealment in some way. This is flatly superior to hiding with allies and the shade will probably want these anyway as well. The tortured scenarios that some people have come up with to make this useful are proof enough of the validity of my argument.Your second argument doesn't really work well either. For one, you're spending an entire turn doing nothing just to get CA on a charge the next turn. When instead you could charge the first turn and just whack the enemy to begin with. As I showed conclusively with some basic maths, using the authors own example of a slayer shade - the turn spent waffling around hiding using the standard action wastes a huge amount of overall damage. When you actually do charge, assuming you're not using the best stance for charging (which I just cannot understand why you wouldn't) you're stuck there at the end of the charge - so you cannot become hidden anyway. Remember that charging ends your turn and the attack occurs at the end of the movement (which would automatically break your hidden condition as well).So at most you spend an entire turn doing nothing (Standard + move) to gain CA on your first attack next round. This is really all this racial comes down to: getting CA (potentially) on that attack. I mean that is really poor action economy. Of course you might have meant "Charge" in a not so literal game mechanics sense. But in this case, you need to move - maintaining cover or concealment while doing so - then attack (standard) and then get another move from somewhere (the stance Klaus suggests does work here). You then need to pray that you have concealment. If you're hiding around an ally, most enemies movement or just whoever your ally is moving (or being pushed/pulled/slid) instantly breaks your stealth. Meaning you rarely remain hidden long enough to make it count for more than that first attack when you are trying to use allies. Additionally the enemy cannot move at all or breaks your stealth. As it is very easy for a single shift to get a clear LoS on you - breaking stealth immediately.So from what I've tried so far in combat this is possibly the weakest racial in the game - especially because of the standard action cost. Outside of combat, it's utility is so limited your DM literally has to make an elaborate specifically metagamed scenario for it to be ever relevant. The 3x3 hallway, that is perfectly lit and has a guard 1 square inside the other end is a perfect example. Then again all anyone else does is use a power or similar that gives them concealment. They then hide from around the corner (out of LoS) and walk through wondering what all the fuss was about anyway. Plus it doesn't look as elaborately comical as the shade hiding behind another PC. Whom apparently the guard doesn't care about whatsoever marching down the hallway, making me severely question why you need stealth in the first place here.</blockquote>

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