@Alrik
What did you think of that mutt feydark illusionist build you tried? I'm giving it some thought.
It was quite effective, imho. It worked well against stone elementals, I think also even against a few Reapers, but my memory is blurry about that, so don't trust it. Same with undead.
I made the experience of lots of monsters being fairly weak against Force damage.
And Force damage is what that build mostly consists of.
Only higher level monsters are more resistant to that.
You can buff your Charisma with it a bit as well - if you want to. That build is next to PDK the only way to get Charisma for hitting & damage rolls.
The animations are mostly nice, too.
Except for the thrown shadow knife, which looks a bit … strange.
The "shadow swords" one can conjure are "weapons made enrtirely of shadow", doing Force damage, and are shortswords. I once had the idea of a cleric build with having shortswords as favoured weapons - and only Drow can do that with Vulkoor. I don't know, however, how much sense this makes.
One can also use "imbue with shadow" with normal weapons. They get the Force as a additional damage type.
The Familiar also gives nice benefits in higher levels, imho.
Please take this with a grain of salt, as I'm not good in playing casters or analysing mechanics anyway.
Regarding Paladin : Too bad that they are always lawful good. Means that if I'd turn Alrih into a Paladin, I couldn't use the Marilith Chain.
I have a glamered version of it, though.