Desdichado
Hero
The more I think about it, the more I agree. And the more I think about it, the more I think the algai'd'siswai from the Wheel of Time Roleplaying Game is exactly in the same boat.
Are Prestige Classes Really Necessary?
RangerWickett said:SNIP
I personally advocate going to a four class designation: Fighter, Rogue, Magus, Expert. The PHB could go into sample career paths for those classes, involving multiclassing and such, and so all the basic characters from fantasy literature would be covered with a simple set of rules.
Barbarian is a Fighter with certain feats that let him rage.
Bard is a Rogue/Fighter/Magus/Expert, a real jack of all trades. Take some feats for song magic, and you're set.
Clerics, Druids, Sorcerers, and Wizards can all be covered by Magus. There's no wholly balance reason to make wizards be unable to heal, so just have the whole spell list open to Magi, and let clerics be multiclass fighter/magi.
Monks as presented in the PHB would be Fighter/Magi, mostly fighter, with select spells. Most martial artists would just be fighters, though.
Rangers and Paladins are Fighters with a smidgen of Magus, and a little Expert for Rangers.
Maybe have two magi classes, one spontaneous and one prepratory. But still, you'd have basic classes to cover your bases, and then prestige classes would only be needed for exotics and organizations. That sounds good to me.
Write it up. That sounds like a great idea to me.
Troll's Choice
Explorer
Hi, all! Holy cats, Batman. I didn't think we'd start dismissing the paladin as a prestige class.
If the paladin is a prestige class masquerading as a character class, then a can think of TONS of prestige classes I'd like to masquerade as character classes.
hong, Joshua Dyal...does this mean you're going to change the paladin in your campaigns into a prestige class? I suspect that there's plenty of folks that'd find that a bit too much to tolerate. Paladins can be fun, and being forced to wait until 5th or 6th level to become one would repel many people.
Ace, RangerWickett....I'd say that the rogue actually is a variant of the expert (or vice versa).
The core character classes in the Player's Handbook are more than sufficient if you're playing a generic D&D campaign. My needs are different, however. My campaign has a different setting. Oriental Adventures uses some different core classes, yet that's fine because it works FOR THAT CAMPAIGN.
I suppose my point is that an unorthodox setting might use different archetypes than "traditional" D&D. Think of Oriental Adventures, or perhaps Dark Sun (if Dark Sun can still indeed be considered a D&D setting).
Would the world truly end if you had a 1st level Holy Liberator in your party?
If the paladin is a prestige class masquerading as a character class, then a can think of TONS of prestige classes I'd like to masquerade as character classes.
hong, Joshua Dyal...does this mean you're going to change the paladin in your campaigns into a prestige class? I suspect that there's plenty of folks that'd find that a bit too much to tolerate. Paladins can be fun, and being forced to wait until 5th or 6th level to become one would repel many people.
Ace, RangerWickett....I'd say that the rogue actually is a variant of the expert (or vice versa).
The core character classes in the Player's Handbook are more than sufficient if you're playing a generic D&D campaign. My needs are different, however. My campaign has a different setting. Oriental Adventures uses some different core classes, yet that's fine because it works FOR THAT CAMPAIGN.
I suppose my point is that an unorthodox setting might use different archetypes than "traditional" D&D. Think of Oriental Adventures, or perhaps Dark Sun (if Dark Sun can still indeed be considered a D&D setting).
Would the world truly end if you had a 1st level Holy Liberator in your party?
I think we need to examine what the Prestige Class mechanic really is and really does as a game mechanic. After all, without any concept of a Prestige Class mechanic, we can have characters join the Knights of the Round Table, or the king's personal body guard, or any other elite organization. What the Prestige Class mechanics let us do is to change the characters Class: BAB, Hit Dice, Saves, Skill List, Spells per Day, etc.
If you have a system of flexible classes (like the Fighter), you don't need Prestige Classes for typical specialists who fit under the umbrella of the basic class. Why do you need a "Lasher" class for a whip expert, when you can give a Fighter the standard Feats (Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, etc.), and you can make up a few more specific to the weapon involved? Why do you need Prestige Classes for expert archers, horsemen, etc.? They're just high-level Fighters with the right Feats, and it makes more sense to add extra Feats than to make up whole classes where they're not needed.
The perfect time to use Prestige Classes would've been for Rangers and Paladins for that point when they become spellcasting Rangers and Paladins. A Ranger, after all, could be a variant Fighter and/or Rogue, and a Paladin is obviously a variant Fighter, but when they become spellcasters, the mechanics of the Fighter class stop working. A Feat here or there doesn't add spellcasting (at least not under the current system).
If you have a system of flexible classes (like the Fighter), you don't need Prestige Classes for typical specialists who fit under the umbrella of the basic class. Why do you need a "Lasher" class for a whip expert, when you can give a Fighter the standard Feats (Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, etc.), and you can make up a few more specific to the weapon involved? Why do you need Prestige Classes for expert archers, horsemen, etc.? They're just high-level Fighters with the right Feats, and it makes more sense to add extra Feats than to make up whole classes where they're not needed.
The perfect time to use Prestige Classes would've been for Rangers and Paladins for that point when they become spellcasting Rangers and Paladins. A Ranger, after all, could be a variant Fighter and/or Rogue, and a Paladin is obviously a variant Fighter, but when they become spellcasters, the mechanics of the Fighter class stop working. A Feat here or there doesn't add spellcasting (at least not under the current system).
Troll's Choice said:
I, personally, don't think there's anything wrong with playing a LG fighter who follows a code of honour that emphasises truth, justice and the LG way, and calling that a "paladin". To me, the code, and the role in the milieu that it implies, is what defines a paladin -- all the abilities like divine favour, smiting, spells, etc are just gravy. However, that's a very narrow role, and I see the base classes as being generic in nature, like RangerWickett. They should be more like skillsets as opposed to vocations or organisational memberships.
Sure. I made up the knight class because I thought the paladin was too specific, in many respects, to function as a core class. This is basically a port of the OA samurai to regular occidental D&D; if necessary, this can function as an archetypal "knight in shining armour", which is the basic inspiration for the paladin. There are also various samurai prestige classes from OA that could serve as dandy paladin PrCs, if a player is so inclined.
Kannik
Hero
Thoughts
I can see what you are driving at, and I do agree to an extent, especially given that the Paladin was/seems to be a prestige class done up as a core class. But think of the alternative--we would have a gaggle of core classes to choose from, and would that really be any better than a gaggle of prestige classes?
I don't think we would have to go to a fully classless system to move away from the prestige classes (though there are benefits (and disadvantages) to doing so), but simply using the skill and feat concept in place make it easier to 'open up' the character class to pursue different options.
To use the Duelist as an example (and I'm not saying the duelist is a good prestige class per se, just using it as an example), we want someone who can fight effectively without heavy armour. (Now, we’re discounting whether the character would last long in the RealWorld(tm), but this is fantasy } The greatest benefit that the PrC gives towards this goal is Canny Defense, at 1st level, and Elaborate Parry at 7th. Making these feats w/ prereqs of some sort (need dodge, expertise, nothing over light armour for Canny Defense, for example) would eliminate the need to have this ‘special’ class. Precise strike is a bit harder, for it emulates sneak attack but only with melee weapons (and is it really on every hit??) but not impossible to have variations on ‘sneak attack’. The rest are pretty much standard feats.
If we wanted to make the feat system a bit more flexible to accommodate this better kind of neat-o Prestige Feats (and no, I’m not suggesting necessarily that we call it that }, we could have some feats take up 2 feat slots perhaps. Of course, the base classes might want to give out more feats more often to make up for this.
One other thing, BTW, that the Duelist does that taking some feats and a level or two of rogue (for sneak attack/spot/etc) is allow one to advance with the abilities they want w/o taking a hit to your BAB. Whether this is a good thing or not, not sure.
And that does bring up skill lists as well – right now I think the system of class and cross-class skills, not to mention the really low skill points for most classes doesn’t work quite the way I’d want it both in terms of how skilled people are generally, but also how broad a range of skills they should likely have (universities or no).
So, what I think would work better would be more generic classes (Perhaps as RW is suggesting), with greater use of feats, more skill points and more feats available to customize the classes. Supplements could lose the PrC chapters and instead have better feat chapters, and then ‘character path’ suggestion chapters to make what would normally be a PrC. Also, specific ‘weapon feats’ could be introduced that only work with a weapon or certain weapons. Or certain spell-type feats. Ways to power spells as feats. Evasion as feats. And so on.
Sure, it might make managing one’s character more ‘complex’, but given the level its at already where you have to pick feats and skills, I don’t think its that much more of a jump.
For paladins and rangers and the like who have spellcasting, well, the Ranger is more or less a Fighter/Rogue/Druid, so it could be done through multiclassing relatively easily (relatively, not perfectly, of course } and a Paladin could be figher/cleric, with a ‘Divine Light’ feat for the bonus to saves, a feat for the mount, a feat for lay-on-hands, that kinda thing. Obviously somewhere it breaks down and won’t be perhaps exactly what we would expect, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Hmmm. Now if we made the lay-on-hands a [divine] feat, then a cleric could take it, in exchange for something else, like turning, for example.
Now, an even neater possibility would be to have BAB and perhaps Saves tied to a feat in some way (each BAB + would be a feat, with a limitation of not being able to be greater than your character level). But the abuses that could result may have to be watched for.
Anyway, I think I’m just getting carried away and throwing out ideas kinda randomly and without really thinking them through. } Disclaimer: I make no vouching for the above-presented ideas to work as stated and without much careful research and writing. }:>
I think I'll stop for now before my fingers get carried away again…
Kannik }
Troll's Choice said:
I can see what you are driving at, and I do agree to an extent, especially given that the Paladin was/seems to be a prestige class done up as a core class. But think of the alternative--we would have a gaggle of core classes to choose from, and would that really be any better than a gaggle of prestige classes?
I don't think we would have to go to a fully classless system to move away from the prestige classes (though there are benefits (and disadvantages) to doing so), but simply using the skill and feat concept in place make it easier to 'open up' the character class to pursue different options.
To use the Duelist as an example (and I'm not saying the duelist is a good prestige class per se, just using it as an example), we want someone who can fight effectively without heavy armour. (Now, we’re discounting whether the character would last long in the RealWorld(tm), but this is fantasy }
The greatest benefit that the PrC gives towards this goal is Canny Defense, at 1st level, and Elaborate Parry at 7th. Making these feats w/ prereqs of some sort (need dodge, expertise, nothing over light armour for Canny Defense, for example) would eliminate the need to have this ‘special’ class. Precise strike is a bit harder, for it emulates sneak attack but only with melee weapons (and is it really on every hit??) but not impossible to have variations on ‘sneak attack’. The rest are pretty much standard feats.If we wanted to make the feat system a bit more flexible to accommodate this better kind of neat-o Prestige Feats (and no, I’m not suggesting necessarily that we call it that }
, we could have some feats take up 2 feat slots perhaps. Of course, the base classes might want to give out more feats more often to make up for this. One other thing, BTW, that the Duelist does that taking some feats and a level or two of rogue (for sneak attack/spot/etc) is allow one to advance with the abilities they want w/o taking a hit to your BAB. Whether this is a good thing or not, not sure.
And that does bring up skill lists as well – right now I think the system of class and cross-class skills, not to mention the really low skill points for most classes doesn’t work quite the way I’d want it both in terms of how skilled people are generally, but also how broad a range of skills they should likely have (universities or no).
So, what I think would work better would be more generic classes (Perhaps as RW is suggesting), with greater use of feats, more skill points and more feats available to customize the classes. Supplements could lose the PrC chapters and instead have better feat chapters, and then ‘character path’ suggestion chapters to make what would normally be a PrC. Also, specific ‘weapon feats’ could be introduced that only work with a weapon or certain weapons. Or certain spell-type feats. Ways to power spells as feats. Evasion as feats. And so on.
Sure, it might make managing one’s character more ‘complex’, but given the level its at already where you have to pick feats and skills, I don’t think its that much more of a jump.
For paladins and rangers and the like who have spellcasting, well, the Ranger is more or less a Fighter/Rogue/Druid, so it could be done through multiclassing relatively easily (relatively, not perfectly, of course }
and a Paladin could be figher/cleric, with a ‘Divine Light’ feat for the bonus to saves, a feat for the mount, a feat for lay-on-hands, that kinda thing. Obviously somewhere it breaks down and won’t be perhaps exactly what we would expect, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Hmmm. Now if we made the lay-on-hands a [divine] feat, then a cleric could take it, in exchange for something else, like turning, for example. Now, an even neater possibility would be to have BAB and perhaps Saves tied to a feat in some way (each BAB + would be a feat, with a limitation of not being able to be greater than your character level). But the abuses that could result may have to be watched for.
Anyway, I think I’m just getting carried away and throwing out ideas kinda randomly and without really thinking them through. }
Disclaimer: I make no vouching for the above-presented ideas to work as stated and without much careful research and writing. }:>I think I'll stop for now before my fingers get carried away again…
Kannik }
Broken Fang
First Post
I agree with you whole-heartedly Kannik. Skill points and the skill lists seem to few for someone who is supposed to be a well trained adventurer type. And the list are to narrow in approach...what Dwarven Fighter wants Ride and Swim? Remove them and they only have about 4 total class skills! I think RW's suggestion of Fighter, Mage, Expert has merrit. Then adding feat trees that would take the place of special class features would combine some of the GURPS create your own character with 3E's class system. I wonder if there is a way to tie in HD/BAB/Saves/Skill Points into character creation...it will be intresting to see what CoC does w/ its classless system.
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