Suggestion: Change "Hide in Shadows" to "Urban HIPS"

[VillageGreenWitch]

There have been quite a few posts about how weak and hard to use/"useless" "Hide in Shadows" is in its current form.

From my experience I can verify that it is nt much fun to use at the moment.
I built a char around it, hoping to avoid both Assassin ("stab stab stab!") and Shadowdancer ("bloody light!" *grumble*) RP while retaining a pretty useful defensive measure (especially useful if you are not minmaxed and fully stacked with epic gear and therefore suffering from mediocre AB&AC and terrible saves).

As it turned out "Hide in Shadows" is useful only in those situations where you would survive without it, too.

As I am still not fond of being forced to RP an assassin or Shadowdancer I started pondering about how to turn Hide in Shadows into something useful without making the two prestige classes obsolete. (Another solution to my "problem" would be to introduce Scout, Dark Lantern or Nightsong Infiltrator to BGTSCC - but thats another topic. ).


So here is my idea: how about turning "Hide in Shadows" into something like the opposite to Ranger HIPS?

Ranger HIPS is working in outdoor areas only (or in addition in natural caves, too, if you invest into the Cavestalker PrC).

So "Hide in Shadows" could - if that is scriptable - be working like "real" HIPS in urban areas and indoors, only, with the exception of natural caves.
Rogues are in their majority an urban class anyway so it would be pretty fitting from an RP point of view, too.
If not in an urban area, a house or a non-natural cave, "Hide in Shadows" would still function as before.

As it needs Rogue level 10 at least I cannot think of any serious powerlevel problems as it would essentially be a "watered down HIPS".

Thoughts?

[K'yon Oblodra]

What are the prerequisites for it?

Have to say the Rogue is very dependent on his SA damage. Having another way to hips without having to go for another class would be very good in my eyes the Rogue is kind of incomplete without it.

[VillageGreenWitch]

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=52875

First post has the description, the discussion is a good read as well.
(And it even has the proposal to change "HitS" to something along Rangers' HIPS - I 'm apparently not the first one to come up with that idea. . . )

[YourMoveHolyMan]

I'm a fan of either making it a rogue 20 feat, an epic rogue feat (pre-req being epic precision?) or, making it one of the bonus rogue feats available starting at level 10.

If the last option is chosen, it would still be necessary to take at least 13 rogue if you wanted that and crippling strike, a fair trade off compared to SD's level 1 HiPs, or 8 levels of assassin.

[VillageGreenWitch]

I'm a fan of either making it a rogue 20 feat, an epic rogue feat (pre-req being epic precision?) or, making it one of the bonus rogue feats available starting at level 10.

If the last option is chosen, it would still be necessary to take at least 13 rogue if you wanted that and crippling strike, a fair trade off compared to SD's level 1 HiPs, or 8 levels of assassin.

Not sure if I understand you correctly here - are you proposing to make it even harder to get the current Hide in the Shadows feat?
Or are you saying that the "real" HIPS should be an epic Rogue feat?

And Epic Precision being prerequisite would make SB 19/Ro 3/xx 8 a great class combination, I suppose.

[Stonebar]

Some prestige classes are not hard coded linked by their name. Assassin for example does not mean you have to assonate people. Only the skills to so if you wished. That's why Evil was removed from the prerequisites. In pnp there are countless options to build with, so I feel some prestige classes can fit double duty for pnp classes with similar stats. For RP sake I don't feel you'd have to be trapped into holding 100% solid with either prestige class.

[YourMoveHolyMan]

I was suggesting making true hips a rogue feat. either epic or pre-epic

[Theodore01]

Would love to see a rogue get a 'useful' Hide in Shadow ability, either a custom one or Hips.
Maybe we could tinker with the timer and scale that somehow with either roguelevels or sneakdice.

[Dagesh]

I was pondering this. So Ranger gets wild HiPS at 17. Provide the same feat to Rogue PCs but instead as City HiPS. In epics offer an epic feat that provides regular HiPS with Rogue HiPS as pre-req. Not sure it's do-able but it's a thought.

[electric mayhem]

How does the world define where Wild-Hips actually works?

And does this still hold for underdark rangers?

[chad878262]

How does the world define where Wild-Hips actually works?

And does this still hold for underdark rangers?

I believe the area builder tags the area which ranger HiPS uses to determine if it works. For underdark rangers the cave stalker prc is a boon which allows HiPS, camouflage to work in natural underground areas.