[Hellstrom]

Hellstrom - I am looking at a way to make shadow Evade more attractive, but other than that I have not yet identified any other options to make the existing SD abilities any more 'attractive' than they already are. Looking back I can't see (or may have missed) any other specific ideas for improving/balancing the SD class though.

No, and sorry for my slightly smart-ass ending there, but that option hadn't been mentioned at all yet.

Similar to changes to other classes I discussed earlier, it would be nice to remove feats from SD that are duplicated with rogue (Uncanny Dodge I & II) and replace them with bonus feats that allows the selection of Uncanny Dodge among others. Removing the notoriety requirement would mean that since the player could add SD levels earlier their summons wouldn't be quite so useless. Making Shadow Evade better would be great too - a simple way would be to change the duration to X rounds per SD level.

The changes to the PrCs are to balance them out as well as make some of the lesser used ones more appealing. Making it more difficult for SD to get the benefit of HiPS would balance it out, yes. But in my opinion it would also make SD not so appealing to play for those who don't want to wait til well past the mid range of the level cap to benefit from it.

This arguments makes a lot of sense, but only if the notoriety requirements stay in place.

From my perspective I'd really prefer not to see the minimum level requirements for a class be implemented as "once you take one level you must take that class as your next X levels".

But of course, everything I'm stating in this thread is always just my take on things :)