Shadow Walk - Multiple Jumps?

[green slime]

In other words, it's useful to get from here to the beach. It's not as useful to get from here to one particular spot on the beach.

And then you can get shunted off 1d10x1,100+ feet in a random direction (Must be fun for the fighter wearing plate mail to be fatigued, 1100 ft from shore at the bottom of the sea...)

In other words, its pretty pointless, when compared with teleport, which is a lower level spell...

It allows you to take more people along with you, but at the price of a higher slot, with less accuracy, and you spend a far greater time doing so (entailing a greater risk of encountering... something).

 

[Liquidsabre]

It allows you to take more people along with you, but at the price of a higher slot, with less accuracy, and you spend a far greater time doing so (entailing a greater risk of encountering... something).

More people definately, and less accurate as long as you don't take teleport's on or off-target part into consideration. Not to mention not even being able to teleport someplace you've never seen, as opposed to shadow walk which allows you to travel quickly to parts unknown to you. Hardly worthless.

Risk of encountering something? No chance of encountering anything. Shadow walk doesn't have travellers actually travelling through the Plane of Shadow, otherwise they'd be able to see Material Plane features better: "Because of the blurring of reality between the Plane of Shadow and the Material Plane, you can't make out details...".

Instead travellers using the spell, travel: "....along a coiling a path of shadowstuff to the edge of the material where it borders the Plane of Shadow.".

So no chance of encounters here unless they use the spell specifically to enter the Plane of Shadow in order to reach another plane: "Shadow walk can also be used to travel to other planes that border on the Plane of Shadow, but this usage requires the transit of the Plane of Shadow to arrive at a border with another plane of reality."

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

So no chance of encounters here unless they use the spell specifically to enter the Plane of Shadow in order to reach another plane: "Shadow walk can also be used to travel to other planes that border on the Plane of Shadow, but this usage requires the transit of the Plane of Shadow to arrive at a border with another plane of reality."

This seems like the biggest advantage the spell has over teleport. You can get to another plane with Shadow-walk--without the focus required for plane shift (which may be hard to get). Depending upon the DM's interpretation, it may also work on other planes that border the plane of Shadow, enabling you to get back to the Prime without Plane Shift as well.

That gives it a significant advantage over Teleport and Wind-walk--its main competitors.

The ability to take the whole party plus the druid's large animal companion is also nice if you're using it as a getaway spell.

 

[Kelleris]

Yes, the main advantage of shadow walk is flexibility. I almost always take it for my high-level Bard characters because it fills so many different roles with just a single "spells known" slot - large-scale transport, planar travel, getaway spell for you and a friend. Heck, you can even use it to randomly teleport enemies. If you're real lucky, they'll wander off into Deep Shadow and get eaten by a pack of greater shadows. I like to tumble past enemies and try to touch someone who's really irked me in the combat when I use it to run away. That way, there's at least a chance that you can take them down with you. Teleport sure doesn't give you a parting shot like that!

Oh, and as for the "attack" use of the spell - it's an illusion spell. I haven't yet, but if I ever make an illusionist Bard/Sorcerer/Wizard it would be useful as an attack spell that benefits from SF and GSF (illusion) while still affecting creatures that aren't affected by figments due to true seeing or something similar.

Side note - Bards receive shadow walk as a 5th-level spell, meaning they get it only one level after the Sorcerer. So it's particularly good for them, especially without getting teleport or wind walk.