Prestige Feats?

I thought a bit about the prestige classes, and how they've become too unwieldly over time.

Also, the concept doesn't match the implementation always. PrC are, often, supposed to represent membership in a special organization, secret or not. So, it would be logical that progression in the PrC would match progression in the organization's hierarchy. But this is not possible in D&D, where experience points are not directly related to social progresses.

As a result, there was an interesting concept that was tried recently in the Planar Handbook. A PrC with multiple sets of prerequisites, at various levels. Kinda like a set of mini-PrCs that are meant to be taken sequentially.

I wondered if it wasn't possible to make this kind of things more elegantly, and I have thought of feats.

Feats have prerequisites, and they let you do things that other people can't do. Prestige classes have prerequisites, and they let you do things that other people don't.

In other words, they're redundant. So, why not suppress prestige classes altogether and introduce them back as prestige feats -- feats that would require membership in an organization to be taken.

You can see a step in that direction in the Player's Guide to Faerûn, with the Initiate feats. In 2e they had specialty priests for each deity. In 3e, they converted specialty priests as prestige classes. Now, in revised 3e, there are initiate feats that, while not exactly equivalent to the specialty priest PrC of 3e or kits of 2e, are a bit like them anyway.


So, would it be possible to convert prestige classes into prestige feats? Take a PrC, look at what are its most distinctive features, and turn them into one to three feats.

Let's take the examples from the DMG.

Arcane Archer Initiate [Prestige]
You are a member of an elite group of elven archer who imbue magic in their arrows to increase their marksmanship.
Prerequisite: Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Weapon Focus (any bow), BAB 6+, Elf subtype, capacity to cast 1st-level arcane spells.
Organization: The Arcane Archer, yadayadayada, inset stuff about your own version of them.
Benefits: Any arrow that you shoot is considered magical when you shoot it. They have an enhancement bonus equal to your Cha bonus, with an upper limit of +5.

Arcane Archer Squad Leader [Prestige]
You have learned other secrets of the Arcane Archer brotherhood.
Prerequisites: Arcane Archer Initiate, must have been promoted to the rank of squad leader.
Benefits: You are now able to put a spell on an arrow. The arrow must be shot in the round following the casting. Once the arrow has reached its target, the spell takes effect, centered on the arrow. Spells that normally target the caster can be put on arrows the same way, and they will affect the target struck by the arrow.

Arcane Archer Master [Prestige]
You are now one of the masters of the Arcane Archer militia.
Prerequisites: Arcane Archer Squad Leader, must have been promoted to the rank of master.
Benefits: Once per day, you may use either the Hail of Arrows or Death Arrows effect.

Arcane Trickster [Prestige]
After an initiation ceremony that involved buying drinks for everyone, and mysteriously losing your purse; you have been taught the secrets of the Arcane Tricksters.
Prerequisite: Non-lawful alignment, +2d6 sneak attack, 7 ranks in Decipher Script, Disable Device, and Escape Artist; and 4 ranks in Knowledge Arcane; ability to cast mage hand and at least one arcane spell of level 3+.
Organization: Stuff about the AT and how to join them.
Benefit: Ranged Legerdemain and Impromptu Sneak Attack each once per day.
Special: Can be taken up to three times, number of times per day stacks.

Archmage [Prestige]
You are considered to be an Archmage, and that's no small feat.
Prerequisite: copy those of the PrC, I'm getting lazy.
Benefit: Choose one of the High Arcana features from the Archmage PrC. You can do it too, now!
Special: This feat can be taken multiple times. Each time you take it, you must select a High Arcana you haven't already have. Well, you can also select a High Arcana you already have, but that would be very dumb of you, because feats don't stack, so you would waste a perfectly good feat slot. Sheesh.

Assassin Initiate [Prestige]
You are a superninja-hashishin-thug of the Death Kult of Kali's Nightstalkers of Death!!!! You have real ultimate power!!!! Damn, you're so cool I've stained my pants.
Prerequisite, Organization, Fluffy Bunnies: I guess you can guess.
Benefits: Poison Use. If you have a spellcaster class, you can add the assassin spells to your spell list. Otherwise, you can just cast one first-level assassin spell as a spell-like ability once per day.

Assassin Stalker [Prestige]
Insert stuff about flipping out and killing people just because you look cool doing so.
Prerequisites: Assassin Initiate, must have been promoted, yadayadayada.
Benefits: Improved Uncanny Dodge, +3 save against poison. If you can't cast spells, now you can cast one second- and one third-level assassin spells each once per day as SLA.

Assassin Grandmaster [Prestige]
You don't like pirates, but hippos are your friends.
Benefits: Hide in plain sight, +5 save against poison. If you can't cast spells, now you can cast one fourth-level assassin spell once per day as a SLA.


And so on. What do you think?

thats really cool. i really like the staggered feats, which represent your character gaining levels in the organization.

Looks cool to problem though... What about the PrCs that don't have any organization? And also what about the abilities they gain as they progress in their class?

You can't, of course, make an exact transcription of a PrC into a set of feats. And you shouldn't.

Only the noteworthy class features need to be transcribed.

In my examples, the AA doesn't get his seeking arrow or phase arrow powers, because, well, some stuff need to be sacrificed. Likewise, the Assassin gets no sneak attack progression.

Ideally, a proper "conversion" would require to select no more than four special abilities (let's take the Shadowdancer: Hide in Plain Sight & Darkvision for the first feat, Shadow "cohort" for the second, Shadow Jump for the third) and the others should be forgot, purely and simply.

Also, a more definitive conversion than my examples above, aside from less silliness in the write-up, should take advantage of this slicing of the class into feats to increase the prerequisites for each feat. They should be able to be taken sequentially (every three levels), so no additional feat requirement; but a few required skills should have their required ranks increased by 3.

PrCs that do not correspond to organizations... Well, either ditch them completely, or attach them to an organization p) or convert them into another kind of feats. Like for the dragon disciple, legacy feats or whatever.

Since a character would continue in a class while taking these feats, the assassin could continue to develop his sneak attack. Prestige classes often duplicate existing powers, matching part of a core class.

Some abilities (as they exist now in prestige format) have a wide range of uses. So a prestige feat that gives you 4 ranks in a new skill: arcane archery. At rank 4, you can fire hail of arrows 1/day (noted under the feat, not the skill). At rank 8, you can do seeking arrow 1/day, and 12th phase arrow, and 16th is death arrow. Think of it like the 3.0 bard, having 1 lv bard and a bunch of ranks in perform. Except you can not 'develop' this until you take the prestige class/feat. These powers are not worth an additional feat, so to pay for it you have to sacrifice another resource, skill points. Do the same thing with the assassin, 3 ranks in poison resistance, gaining a +1 save vs poison for every 3 ranks in this skill.

BB

It really makes fighters, who get a boat-load of feats, more attractive at higher levels. My biggest concern is that the character isn't really "trading off" any power to get these extra powers. With just about all PrCs, there's a trade-off from the core class. Using assassins as an example, they get half the skills and no special abilities.

Since a majority of classes only get a feat every third level, it will be difficult to progress far with any prestige feat chain.

I think this is a good idea though. I would be interested to see where it heads.

I really like this idea because it helps solve a problem I was thinking about as to how Glantrian Wizards (Mystara) in one of the Seven Secret Crafts would be converted as a prestige class. In the gazetteer, you have a minimum magic-user level to enter each of the 5 circles of your secret craft, so it's like a 5-level PrC but that you can't advance it one level after the other. You would have access to one circle after level 5, one after level whatever, etc. With prestige feats, you could just dispense with the step or duplicating all of the wizard class features and focus only on what you should gain via each feat, which can have a minimum caster level or spell level.

Shadeus said:

It really makes fighters, who get a boat-load of feats, more attractive at higher levels. My biggest concern is that the character isn't really "trading off" any power to get these extra powers. With just about all PrCs, there's a trade-off from the core class. Using assassins as an example, they get half the skills and no special abilities.

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The fighters shouldn't be a problem because their extra feats have to be from that special list, and the prestige feats would not be on them. So every class would have to purchase these using the feat they get every 3rd level, as you mention. Dealing with the trade-off issue is more complex. On the one hand, only being able to get a PrF every 3rd level is a big limitation in itself, but I suppose that if you wanted to cut back on other abilities to compensate, that can be stipulated as part of the feat. For instance, if you think a wizard should lose access to the bonus feats or familiar advancement, you can make that part of the PrF. Sure, soon enough this becomes just completely replicating Pr classes as feats, but I think the major advantage is supposed to be including social criteria that can apply not only at the beginning, when you first buy into the PrC, but also at each step. Then again, if you're willing to create new Pr Feats, why not just modify how Pr Classes work to require social advances in addition to XP to reach certain levels?

The main trade-off is, of course, your feat slot; which you would have been able to use for something else with an actual PrC level. However, that's still the reason I do not think those should give all of the class features of a PrC, just a few.


It's mostly for brainstorming, I'm willing to know if there are reasons why it couldn't work.

The only big warning bell that goes off in my head on this is that these are significantly more powerful than 'normal' feats.

There is a very similar idea espoused here:

http://65.18.220.64/aquerra.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=217

These are prestige organizations which come with a bundle of special feats. The main difference is that the feats target different aspects of the organization, allowing different character concepts to still fit into the prestige organization. If it were to have an Arcane Archer group, for example, there might be a set of feats included for making particularly nice bows or something, which not every AArcher would take, but some non-combat members of the organization might.