[Hellstrom]

2. Require someone who takes one level in Shadowdancer to take at least X number more. Again, this too is not required in D&D or NWN and makes it more of a house rule. Although at least in this way the NWN implementation remains true - it's just that someone who takes 1 level of Shadowdancer must plan to include at least X number more levels of this class in their level 20 build of the PC.

To me the problem with this is that players who only take one level of SD would probably still delay taking the SD levels as long as possible. So if 3 levels of SD were required you might see Rog17/SD1 characters. And they might even stop their advancement there.

One possible alternative is to enforce a rule that goes something like "Once you take a SD level, you must maintain 25% of your levels as SD levels". So a PC who takes SD at level 10 would be forced to take another SD level at level 11, but woudn't be forced to take another SD level until 13th level. Because 12/4 = 3 required levels. That would mean by 20th level the character would have been required to take 4 levels of SD. It also means that a given character *could* avoid taking any more than one level of SD simply by waiting to take that level until 20th, but it means they wouldn't have had the benefit of HiPS for the previous 19 levels, so it kinda balances out. You could easily choose a different percentage to select for a preferred number of levels.

I think this plan has the benefit of possibly even allowing the notoriety requirement be removed for SD.

Another possible alternative would be to make higher levels of SD more attractive to take... but that's just crazy talk ;)