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Originally Posted by bushwhacker2k  I'm making an assassin character.
Rogue 16/Assassin9/InvisBlade5, Assassin and Invisible Blade get their highest sneak attack at those levels and rogue gets its third bonus feat thus allowing Epic Dodge and the feat that lets you sneak attack enemies that are normally immune to it. |
This is a very good example of where a Rogue/Shadow Dancer/Invisible Blade is better than the above.
Even considering the expenditure for Mobility and Dodge, the Rogue with 24 levels has at least as many net feats.
Better still the feats allow access to more of the better Rogue-only feats. Also, these additional feats are during Epic levels.
A Rogue 5 to Assassin 8 nets you your Hide in Plain Sight (at level 13), conversely a Rogue 7 to Shadow Dancer 8 nets you Hide in Plain Sight at level 8 - 5 levels sooner.
A Rogue has DOUBLE the number of skill points per level AND access to more skills.
There is a penalty of -1 to your BAB however.
BTW, with Feint (and the Invisible Blade's "Feint Mastery") - you generally have a better chance of "scoring" Sneak Attacks *without* "hiding" than you do with Death Attack's Paralysis. The two in practice are similar, but paralysis does have the advantage of both offensive and defensive qualities.
Feint often works well by providing Sneak Attacks during the "down-time" for your next "hide" with HiPS. It really depends on the opponents though, AND it depends on your Bluff skill - so Bluff needs to be pumped as high and as often as possible. Note that if you are using Feint then its likely that the typical "run-away" and hide is not occurring, thus potential attacks of opportunity are decreased dramatically. HiPS is still better (you'll net more attacks with it), but during the 5 second down-time (cool-down) of Hiding you can usually *try* about 3 Feints before hiding again.
I tested out these two types in Vordans and Battle of the Builds. For Vordan's - no problem, but for most opponents in Battle of the Builds it didn't go well for either build.
Still, both should be good and fun characters for the OC and MOTB.
