Epic/Immortal Prestige Classes

On the subject of Immortal Prestige Classes

Reading back through this thread while trying to settle in my mind the classes for a new profile I'm going through, and it suddenly occured to me that while it features several decidely epic prestige classes, it did not yet possess any immortal prestige classes. The very next thought in mind was 'what in the world is an immortal prestige class?'

The thought came into my head that if Battle Ascendent did not have the prerequisite of not having a divine rank, then it would serve as a very good example of an immortal prestige class. This provoked the thought that the Battle Ascendent could serve as either a very specific epic prestige class, or as an immortal prestige class. But, as has been stated before, the BA is somewhat overpowered, even by IH standards. So, what do you do to balance it?

In short, the idea that occured to me was that the problem had to do with the class levels and their corresponding powers scaling far faster than could, or should, be considered sane, even for IH work. You'd need a way to limit the growth so that it became more organic - and the simplest way seems to be to limit your total class levels in an immortal prestige class to either 1/5th of your Hit Dice or your divine rank, which is more suitable for you.

The flavor behind the mechanics is also enjoyable to me - the pursuit of perfection in one aspect of godly existentence is a long and involved process, with numerous other discoveries of both the self and others required before one can advance to the next tier of prestige power.

Just as the total number of normal and epic prestige classes should be limited both to preserve the sanity of both DM and player, as well as to preserve some semblance of game balance, so too should the number of immortal prestige classes be limited. In my opinion, one and done is suitable for an immortal prestige class, although I suppose one could create either a divine or cosmic ability to expand that number to two - most likely a cosmic ability, as the immortal prestige classes will probably have a high amount of power. If it proves to be too much, it is even possible that one must take a cosmic ability just to get access to the first class.

Here's a couple of quick ideas I jotted down to go with the thought -

Peerless Grace - Even as the Battle Ascendent is the living incarnation of the War Portfolio, the Peerless Grace is the primarch of the Skill Portfolio. (There could easily be an immortal prestige class for every Portfolio; ie Arcanite could work as an IPC for the Magic portfolio)

Master of the Void - Driven by an obsession to understand the void that encompasses and gave birth to the worlds, this class could be viewed, and thus, expanded, in one of two ways. First of all is as an exemplar of the Entropy Portfolio. Secondly, it could also be thought of in mechanical terms as the extension of the Void Disciple prestige class and the Void Incarnate epic prestige class. (idle note: it was trying to work out this class, in the manner of the second way I just suggested, that sent me scrambling back to read this thread. Cheers... I guess)

Worldsoul - The living hopes and dreams of an entire world, the chosen champion of the sleeping elder one that composes his homeworld, this character would be a master of incarnum who uses it power to both defend the planet and to carry out the will of his sleeping master.

Many more could be created, obviously.

Which also begs the question: are there Sidereal prestige classes? Eternal prestige classes? Supernal prestige classes? What would they look like and how would you balance them?

Keep in mind that these are just idle thoughts, and I would love to hear your thoughts, opinions, and expansions on them.

P.S. - any player attempting to use Legacy Champion to create shadow levels of an immortal prestige class should be beaten with a nail bat.

I may have more insight at some later point when I'm not miserably sick, but one thing I can add right now is the issue I personally had when I turned my thoughts toward the idea of Immortal prestige classes, and that's the question of how does one differentiate enough between a class and a kit of Divine (or even Cosmic) abilities?

The idea with the the epic classes I designed was to provide another avenue to players for high level play other than simply ascending automatically, and they serve that purpose well enough up to about level 100 or so, but after that, a divine template is simply far too great of a benefit for even a class like Battle Ascendant to keep up with.

For an actual Immortal PC, I'm baffled to conceive of any idea that couldn't already be covered by a slew of divine abilities. In fact, I myself almost never ever *give* my immortals class levels, as the merit of them declines sharply as level increases.

Just my thoughts (and rather disjointed at that, apologies, I'm not feeling the greatest at the moment).

Hey all!

Hope you are not feeling too bad Belzamus mate.

I think the only way an Immortal Prestige class would become truly relevant is if it fundamentally changes the procurement or use of quintessence.

Thus it only benefits an immortal and can therefore be said to be an immortal Prestige Class.

For instance the Master of the Void might 'gain' quintessence, but not gain any benefits from it. Instead his divine rank might act like a negative divine rank on his opponents.

So a Master of the Void 'Demigod' would reduce all enemy immortals by 6 divine ranks when within his aura.

Upper_Krust said:

Hey all!

Hope you are not feeling too bad Belzamus mate.

I think the only way an Immortal Prestige class would become truly relevant is if it fundamentally changes the procurement or use of quintessence.

Thus it only benefits an immortal and can therefore be said to be an immortal Prestige Class.

For instance the Master of the Void might 'gain' quintessence, but not gain any benefits from it. Instead his divine rank might act like a negative divine rank on his opponents.

So a Master of the Void 'Demigod' would reduce all enemy immortals by 6 divine ranks when within his aura.

Click to expand...

I've given a little thought to that as I've been scratching out some classes (it's not going fast, but it's going). One of the thoughts that came to my mind was for a class called the Worldcrusher, who is basically the extension of the Destruction Portfolio.

The idea was based off of this character, a Greater God, who was known for annihilating planets - which then leads one back to thinking about what planets can be/are in IH mythology - dormant Elder Ones. With that in mind, most of the class is bent toward either refining the Destruction abilities in general or toward the specific goal of killing anything with a divine rank of 24 or above.

Did Krusty's website get hacked? It certainly says it so. It even has music playing and a page pops up saying it's been hacked by Furty.

Unless this is some new online prank by a webmaster, it seems pretty hacked to me.

Mr.Satan said:

Did Krusty's website get hacked? It certainly says it so. It even has music playing and a page pops up saying it's been hacked by Furty.

Unless this is some new online prank by a webmaster, it seems pretty hacked to me.

Click to expand...

It was definately hacked. I just fixed it (though whether it will be hacked again is another matter). Didn't seem anything beyond the title page. Though its another good reason for the switchover to the new website.

Well done to Furty. Always amazes me how they do it. If I hadn't been working the past few nights I might have spotted it earlier. Thanks Mr Satan.

I'm interested in the most recent versions of these Epic/Immortal prestige classes. I know they have evolved a great deal since this thread was created.