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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 5710929" data-attributes="member: 87792">Because Legends and Lore is the right place to do that. Something written on the WoTC website in an article in a magazine about 4E D&D. This is reminiscent of the fail around the marketing for early 4E.  The problem is even if that was their design, the execution was poor. Shades simply aren't great at stealth. They get trained at stealth and can hide using partial cover or concealment. Like an average thief with Sneak's Trick. Or a Cunning Sneak rogue. And out of combat, it's normally fairly easy to find something solid to get hidden behind. What's hard is the stretches of open ground you need to cross - the Shade's power isn't going to help here. It does what you don't need it to and doesn't what you do. Let's take a leaf out of the Warlock Book. Melt into ShadowA shade which begins its turn hidden gains partial concealment until the end of next turn. This allows the Shade to cross open ground - making him actually good at stealth. He can therefore do things no one else really can (other than a Warlock or deliberately specialised rogue or assassin). And one from the gnome book. Brother of ShadowIf a Shade begins an encounter with at least partial cover or concealment, he can make a stealth check. Shades hide.  It's what they are meant to do. And instead of skill training  give him a racial +3 to stealth (or at least offer it as an option). Shades are therefore encouraged to take stealthy classes like the rogue rather than penalised for doing so. Our Shade is now pretty much the best there is at what he/she does. Rather than very mediocre. Now we have that we can talk about penalties - and honestly at this point I wouldn't really mind the healing surge penalty. I object strongly to it on a supposedly sneaky character that (a) isn't that good at sneaking and (b) has a disincentive to take classes that help them sneak. I don't know whether the design is fundamentally flawed. The execution of the shade was bad enough that whether the design was flawed is almost irrelevant. It's a deeply flawed race, penalising you for taking classes that should be a natural fit, penalising you in general, and without any real upside.</blockquote>

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