Which PrCl would you never want in your game? (part 1 - DMG)
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painandgreed
First Post
Horizon Walker is the only one that really wouldn't fit into a campaign in my homebrew. I'd have to rename the Red Wizards or something. The rest are typically regional or secret societies that are hard to join and seek to give that region flavor. For example, the secrets of Shadowdancers are only known to the females of a particular ethnic group far to the west. If a player wasn't female or from that ethnic group (let alone on that side of the continent), it would take a hell of a lot of role playing to ever become one.
Some are allowed to PCs that plan to go that way from the begining such as the Dragon Disciple. If you write up how your character is suspictious of being fathered by a dragon in the history and play it that way from the beginging, I'd probalby allow it but not if at 6th level you decide you want to be one for the special abilities. I did this once but wasn't allowed to do it so I feel shorted and wouldn't want to do that to another PC. Why did the DM not allow that PrCl? He thought the artwork for it was too dorky and to allow one would constantly remind him of the bad artwork. I really couldn't argue.
Some are allowed to PCs that plan to go that way from the begining such as the Dragon Disciple. If you write up how your character is suspictious of being fathered by a dragon in the history and play it that way from the beginging, I'd probalby allow it but not if at 6th level you decide you want to be one for the special abilities. I did this once but wasn't allowed to do it so I feel shorted and wouldn't want to do that to another PC. Why did the DM not allow that PrCl? He thought the artwork for it was too dorky and to allow one would constantly remind him of the bad artwork. I really couldn't argue.
Last edited:
Queen_Dopplepopolis
First Post
No players would be able to take these PrCs in any potential game I would run b/c players can't be evil. If they become evil, they become an NPC... at which point, they would be able to take the classes.drothgery said:
KingOfChaos
First Post
drothgery said:
meh...you're no fun
the Jester
Legend
Red Wizard. I don't play in the frickin' Realms, and I really, really wish they'd made the setting-specific prc a Greyhawk one since that is the 'core setting' (even though I don't play in GH either).
Celebrim
Legend
The harder question for me is which classes would I ever consider allowing in my game.
The answer to that is pretty much only those classes which facillitate other wise difficult multi-classing combinations. The only really difficult multi-classing involves spell casting classes (particularly arcane spellcasting classes), and so the only PrC's which I would ever consider allowing from that list are Arcane Trickster, Eldritch Knight, and Mystic Theurge. Those are to me the easiest sort of PrC to justify. They do something useful and they do it in a fairly generic manner that is easy to paint as needed and fit into a game world. A clr5/wiz5/mystic theurge10 seems to me to be about as powerful as a clr20 or wiz20, and a clr10/wiz10 is most certainly not. Similar reasoning applies to combinations like rog5/wiz5/arcane trickster10 and ftr4/wiz6/Elderitch Knight10, because access to higher level spells is simply so powerful.
The other ones bother me for various reasons. Shadowdancer is about the best of them, because it is something like being able to take an alternative balanced 'rogue' class for levels 11-20. The thing that kills it for me is that its utterly front ended, to the point of something like Rog19/Shadow Dancer1 being rather attractive. The rest of them seem like straight forward 'base class only better' to me, and succeed at that to one extent or the other (Dwarven Defender and Heriophant being examples of not succeeding in it). Prestige class fighter and 'arcane caster' variations in particular annoy me, because Fighter is such a versital class as it is and has so little to lose in most cases by sampling from any class with full fighter BAB progression. Likewise, so long as an 'arcane caster' can keep his spell progression, he's got almost nothing to lose by sampling from any class that gives full spell progression because the SRD 'arcane caster' classes wizard/sorcerer have almost nothing going for them but thier spells. So where is the real trade off if you can take 10 levels of something and get 5 or more feat equivalent abilities out of it plus not lose anything from your spell progression?
I honestly think that the worst of them is Blackguard, because it is a bad fix to the badly designed Paladin class. To see an example of Paladin/Blackguard done right, see Green Ronin's Holy Warrior/Unholy Warrior. Dragon Disciple is cheesy, but on top of that its another example of a class which seems to suffer from much better mechanical solutions existing, for example the racial levels in Savage Species or AU.
The answer to that is pretty much only those classes which facillitate other wise difficult multi-classing combinations. The only really difficult multi-classing involves spell casting classes (particularly arcane spellcasting classes), and so the only PrC's which I would ever consider allowing from that list are Arcane Trickster, Eldritch Knight, and Mystic Theurge. Those are to me the easiest sort of PrC to justify. They do something useful and they do it in a fairly generic manner that is easy to paint as needed and fit into a game world. A clr5/wiz5/mystic theurge10 seems to me to be about as powerful as a clr20 or wiz20, and a clr10/wiz10 is most certainly not. Similar reasoning applies to combinations like rog5/wiz5/arcane trickster10 and ftr4/wiz6/Elderitch Knight10, because access to higher level spells is simply so powerful.
The other ones bother me for various reasons. Shadowdancer is about the best of them, because it is something like being able to take an alternative balanced 'rogue' class for levels 11-20. The thing that kills it for me is that its utterly front ended, to the point of something like Rog19/Shadow Dancer1 being rather attractive. The rest of them seem like straight forward 'base class only better' to me, and succeed at that to one extent or the other (Dwarven Defender and Heriophant being examples of not succeeding in it). Prestige class fighter and 'arcane caster' variations in particular annoy me, because Fighter is such a versital class as it is and has so little to lose in most cases by sampling from any class with full fighter BAB progression. Likewise, so long as an 'arcane caster' can keep his spell progression, he's got almost nothing to lose by sampling from any class that gives full spell progression because the SRD 'arcane caster' classes wizard/sorcerer have almost nothing going for them but thier spells. So where is the real trade off if you can take 10 levels of something and get 5 or more feat equivalent abilities out of it plus not lose anything from your spell progression?
I honestly think that the worst of them is Blackguard, because it is a bad fix to the badly designed Paladin class. To see an example of Paladin/Blackguard done right, see Green Ronin's Holy Warrior/Unholy Warrior. Dragon Disciple is cheesy, but on top of that its another example of a class which seems to suffer from much better mechanical solutions existing, for example the racial levels in Savage Species or AU.
tylerthehobo
Explorer
I don't have a beef with any of this, and while overpowered, I always dug the Dragon Disciple.
(Granted, I've never DMed one, only played as one...heheh)
(Granted, I've never DMed one, only played as one...heheh)
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