Helping another player, take #2.

[Lunarambling]

Hey folks. So, apparently there is no way to make Nightcrawler viable at low level.  So, I went back to the player I was trying to help, and the next idea he had was to make a Dread Commando, so that he can stomp around in heavy armor and still be sneaky and dish out beatings. This sounds like a great plan. I just have no idea how to make it work decently. So, this is for an ECL 8 game, all books from Wizards that are 3.5 legal are open. Dungeon and Dragon are out. Stats are 11, 13, 16, 16, 18, 18 before stat bumps. Cannot be Evil.

My only real thoughts were to combine Ranger and Rogue to get the skills and make sneaking around worth it. Though I did consider some Ranger/ToB to give him a little oomph.

[Gribel]

There's a level 2 spell in the cleric/bard/assasin spell lists that makes a touched armor's armor check penalty not apply on Hide and Move Silently checks for 1 hour/level. It's called Iron Silence.

[Solo]

A Bard/Dread Commando could use the Mimicking Song ACF to replace Inspire Competence with a +2 bonus to Move Silently that increases by +2 ever 5 bard levels. I imagine it works something like this.

[Nytemare3701]

A Bard/Dread Commando could use the Mimicking Song ACF to replace Inspire Competence with a +2 bonus to Move Silently that increases by +2 ever 5 bard levels. I imagine it works something like this.

I knew it before I clicked it, and yet I still jumped when the music kicked in.

[Lunarambling]

So decided to go Rokugan Ninja4/Crusader1/Dread Commando3

Gives decent SA, SS, and full BAB. Any other suggestions? Is there a better way to qualify?