For years, shadowdancer has been considered the hardest PrC to get. The Community Council, with good reason, has had the concern that many of the people who apply for shadowdancer do so for the sole reason of getting a mechanical advantage through HiPS. Now that the goose is loose, we can expect two things to happen:
- First: The players that apply for Shadowdancer will do so mainly for the RP flavor of the class and because their storyline led them there. Mechanical advantages will be secondary at best.
- Second: The CC won't be as concerned about the PrC being taken for the wrong reasons, allowing the class to be more accessible to all players who really want it, as long as they learn the lore and have had the proper IC interactions leading to the PrC.
There's one big problem, however, with this thinking in that while individual parts of it may seem very reasonable, taken in its entirety I don't understand why the feat would be added.
FlyingLotus says the new feat is very mechanically different. Without addressing that, I will say instead it is either very mechanically different or it is not. Either you or he can be right, but you both cannot be because your own two points are predicated on there being little mechanical difference between the two.
If you are right, though, then the feat would seem to be saying, "Here is the mechanical advantage of the SD class without the need for the RP burden." It seems to me that this removes the incentive basis for applying for a Prestige Class (i.e., the reward for putting effort into all that RP).
Yes, virtue can be its own reward, and so can good RP, but it's pretty idealistic to think that desired behavior occurs without any reward for doing so, either in a game or a community. Why has the feat been denied for so long behind an application, if not because the mechanical advantage has been considered so significant?
Here is from the RP resources description of the class:
What people are getting tired of is otherwise seemingly normal people, suddenly disappearing and reappearing in plain sight in broad daylight without the slightest hint of how they did it - no mention of a shadows, no emotes, no facination with the dark, shadows - no thought at all into why they have taken this class. In other words, what people in general seem to loathe is the ''HiPs'ing spamin'. These are peeves going beyond one's opinion, but are subject of discussion in every single PW forums some come across; its important to be aware of them.
Misconceptions and clarifications: Being a Shadowdancer has nothing to do with being a rogue - often believed or played as such, any class can become a SD- some are just much better at it than others. Rogues, rangers, and bards are the best at it, but a palemaster could become one pretty easily too, and likewise wizards/sorcerers could as well. Classes totally uninvolved with stealth could spend those cross-class skill points and become one. A Shadow Dancer is not just someone with the supernatural ability of Hide in Plain Sight - he/she has a certain attachment to shadows - basically that's where their power comes from.
I'm not mechanically inclined enough to argue how significantly different this new feat is, but I have empathy why those in the prestige class would be upset that their signature move is being handed out to anyone who wants it--at a time when it's also being argued how to make the class stronger. Finally, if the ability was once considered so strong that it had to be very limited in who could get it, then why open it up like this?
If the app process was too restrictive (your second point), this removes not only the app process but the need to take any SD levels at all.