What kind of problems am I likely to see?

[Greenfield]

We have a new palyer joining my game, and his proposed character uses a few class/race option I'm not all that familiar with.

He wants to run a Catfolk, from Races of the Wild. It's a +1 ECL race that gets +4 Dex, +2 Charisma, low light vision, +2 to Listen and Move Silent, +1 Natural armor.

His class package is: Hexblade 5/Scout 5/Shadowdancer 2.

Played with Shadowdancers before, seen Scouts but never really looked at them, and am less than familiar with the Hexblade.

From what I've read, Hexblades have Fighter offense, light armor limitations, and Wizard Save progression and bonus feats (i.e. one every five levels). They can drop a Curse once per day at 1st level, and that advances as they do. At 4th level they pick up a few actual spells (emphasis on "few").

They can't be of Good alignment, which isn't a deal in our campaign, and that lines up with the Shadowdancer as well.

I don't know what feats he's chosen, or what kind of spells he's got. I'll presume that he's focused his skills on stealth, see Scout and Shadowdancer on the list, and the racial edge he gets.

I guess what I'm looking for is any advice on things to look out for, warnings of possible brokenness or common abuses.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Hexblades get Cha to saves, but only against arcane spells. The curse is nice because it's hard to block, but its effects are not that strong. Hexblades don't get any great spells. They get some weird miss chance stuff at high levels, but this one's multiclassed. Their bonus feats suck. If they're anything powerful for hexblades, it's buried pretty deep.

I've had at least one played. He used the familiar replacement from PHBII, which is a spectral cat that debuffs your enemies but has no physical form. Again, cool because it's hard to block, but not overpowered. When I rewrote the hexblade I added a lot, especially at higher levels, to bring it up to par.

 

[Starfox]

This is common with the #.5 splatbook classes, they are rarely the powerhouses the original Player's Handbook classes like Cleric and Wizard are.

 

[Dwimmerlied]

I Don;t have any experience with Hexblades, but I had a brief look over the optimisation boards; This particular combination of classes and race was not mentioned, and if anything, apparently hexblades were considered somewhat underpowered. I'd not personally put much stock into what optimisers say is underpowered, but Mearls was quoted as agreeing and personally suggested some fixes.

I recommend, whenever you have this situation, and if you have the time, give the optimisation boards a quick look-over;- if there is a broken combination, they will know of it! The Handbooks are particularly useful.

Hope this helps!

 

[Storminator]

It looks like you're going to have to worry about underpowered weakness. He's not likely to be good at much besides sneaking around. He'll have a few tricks, but nothing amazing. It's not like he's picked Dervish as one of his classes. Scout adds a little skirmish damage, but it's not that scary.

PS

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

Expect a neat trick that can be saved against, and cool character flavor. Scout/Shadowdancer should lend to Rogue feel. Once he get's a Shadow familiar, those are dandy with STR draining touch attacks but they're pretty fragile. I can't imagine horrible abuse from this sort of character build.

 

[Dwimmerlied]

Once he get's a Shadow familiar, those are dandy with STR draining touch attacks but they're pretty fragile. I can't imagine horrible abuse from this sort of character build.

The shadow familiar would benefit a bit from the hexblade's good BAB and HD, which is a nice touch

 

[Jackinthegreen]

As mentioned before, Hexblades are rarely a problem as far as being "too powerful" goes. Of all the stunted casters (paladin, ranger, and hexblade), they're mechanically the weakest when one factors in splat support for paladins and rangers. If you want to look at the spells, I've made a mini-handbook for them here. It's only a list, so there aren't any ratings but they are all linked so you can decide for yourself if a specific spell might be an issue, though in my opinion none of the 1st level spells make much of a difference except maybe Disguise Self in a social setting. Don't expect any of his spells to solve a problem or make one, especially considering his piss poor caster level and the fact that he's a 13th level character now. Likewise, I wouldn't expect his curse to actually go through because with 5 HB levels the save DC is 12+Cha mod, so maybe 18 or so? Probably the best thing he can do is take the Dark Companion ACF from PHB2, which is a no-save debuff.

Scout likewise won't cause much of an issue. It's likely he'll only be getting one hit per round in with Skirmish, so expect less damage than from a rogue.

Based on the requirements for Shadowdancer, he'd be nuts not to take Spring Attack. Expect the character to always try his best to hide, then dart out for an attack, then move back and hide again. Maybe mention Bounding Assault to him if he's not already going for it.

Unless you consider Hide in Plain Sight to be broken or overpowered, there is nothing about this character that can be overpowered due to multiclassing and the fact that the classes he has can't be broken in the first place. His main shtick will net him less damage than a flanking rogue and definitely less than a barbarian with Power Attack and boosts to that like Shock Trooper. About the only thing that you might have an issue with is mundane monsters noticing him, but since that's about the only thing he can do decently I'd say let him have it and think he's doing alright.

 

[ImperatorK]

There shouldn't be anything to worry about. If anything, you should worry that he might be underpowered. I propose this semi-official fix for the Hexblade made by the class's author.

 

[Greenfield]

Well, here's a bit of a postmortem on the question:

The player brought a character with rolled stats, even though we use point buy. If he'd been a point or two high or low we wouldn't have cared. He was 9 points high on a 32 point build.

When he mentioned "Just take it out of Charisma" I knew I wasn't dealing with a power gamer or even a decent optimizer. His class gets Charisma bonuses to Arcane spell Saves, so dropping his Charisma to an 8 (or lower) would be a pretty bonehead move.

He took the Mageslayer feat, one that I'm not familiar with, but apparently that nerfs his spell casting big time. -8 to his Caster level or something like that.

We haven't seen the character in combat, so I don't know how that's going to work, but from first blush it doesn't look like he's trying to break anything.