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What are your multiclassing house rules?
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6412257" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>PrCs ended up getting used for a large variety of disparate things.</p><p></p><p>1) Monte as he originally conceived them saw the PrC as a way to convey the flavor of major NPC driven organizations. The PrC here was a role-playing hook with mechanical rewards where the DM would introduce various elite, esoteric, or secret organizations with their own agendas in to the campaign and then at a certain point allow the player to join them. Thus, the PrC was a way to integrate the PC's into the campaign and provide direction to play. This idea may have some merit, but it was almost universally ignored, not only by DMs, but by WotC itself. Also in practice, the PrCs Monte created had the problem that every member of an organization was typically the same character. While in theory Monte intended to avoid this by making PrC's generic enough that they applied to many classes, in practice that never worked well.</p><p>2) They were an attempt to fix the multi-classing problems, particularly with multi-classing between casters and non-casters. This was one of several examples of WotC attempting to patch problems in the core rules. And for the longest time this was the one area that I felt a PrC was justified as an ugly but at least welcome kludge. </p><p>3) They were an attempt to patch the balance between casters and noncasters by giving noncasters more robust options. This however was almost completely undermined by the fact that the casters got even better PrCs.</p><p>4) They were an attempt to patch problems with the baggage carried by core classes to allow for choices that the core classes didn't allow for. For example, consider how the Blackgaurd is suggested by the fact that the Paladin must be good. What if you wanted a ranger that wasn't a spellcaster? Or a ranger that was suited to an urban environment? And so forth. I ran into this problem really early on with a need to make a Barbarian class that was Lawful rather than Chaotic. Of course, after having made the PrC (the only one I ever homebrewed), I immediately realized that the easier and more elegant solution was to strip unnecessary baggage like 'primitive wilderness warrior' and alignment restrictions from the notion of 'Barbarian'. </p><p>5) They were an attempt to patch balance problems with archetypes that were rather weak when implemented in core but were nonetheless important fantasy archetypes you'd expect a generic system to support.</p><p></p><p>Over time, I began to see all of these attempted solutions as not only ineffectually slapping a Band-Aid on the problem that actually needed curing - problems in the core balance and limitations in how much diversity the core could provide; but also as contributions to the problems of balance and narrow development options that they were designed to cure.</p><p></p><p>However, as bad as all that was, none of that was as bad as the core function that WotC began to see the PrC as fulfilling - marketing. Over time, most PrCs came to be justified as follows:</p><p></p><p>6) PrCs are attractive to players because they provide for power creep via at least specialization and sometimes strictly superior replacement of regular class levels. And they are attractive to developers because, as long as you don't have to play test them, they are very easy to create content. And they are attractive to marketing because the inclusion of PrCs allows a book to be marketed to both DM's and players when the content might otherwise only be interesting to or traditionally seen as the exclusive province of DMs.</p><p></p><p>WotC began to print PrCs that actively undermined its own game system. They were cheap to make as long as you didn't play test them (imagine, not play testing a class in a class based system), as witnessed by the hordes that appear in 3rd party supplements. </p><p></p><p>I think the decent alternatives are suggested by something like your multi-classing fix, plus...</p><p></p><p>a) Broader embracing of the feat and what a feat is allowed to do, particularly in a more 5e style. For me this realization occurred when I realized that every PrC was simply a feat chain generally geared to a particular class which had as its requirements the requirements of entering into the PrC. </p><p>b) General rebalancing of the core classes. For me a lot of that has involved a combination of thinking about class abilities in terms of 'feat equivalents' (if every feature of this class was bonus feats, how many feats would the class features be worth), toning down the power of spells/spell-casters while increasing the power of feats and skills (and those that rely on them).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6412257, member: 4937"] PrCs ended up getting used for a large variety of disparate things. 1) Monte as he originally conceived them saw the PrC as a way to convey the flavor of major NPC driven organizations. The PrC here was a role-playing hook with mechanical rewards where the DM would introduce various elite, esoteric, or secret organizations with their own agendas in to the campaign and then at a certain point allow the player to join them. Thus, the PrC was a way to integrate the PC's into the campaign and provide direction to play. This idea may have some merit, but it was almost universally ignored, not only by DMs, but by WotC itself. Also in practice, the PrCs Monte created had the problem that every member of an organization was typically the same character. While in theory Monte intended to avoid this by making PrC's generic enough that they applied to many classes, in practice that never worked well. 2) They were an attempt to fix the multi-classing problems, particularly with multi-classing between casters and non-casters. This was one of several examples of WotC attempting to patch problems in the core rules. And for the longest time this was the one area that I felt a PrC was justified as an ugly but at least welcome kludge. 3) They were an attempt to patch the balance between casters and noncasters by giving noncasters more robust options. This however was almost completely undermined by the fact that the casters got even better PrCs. 4) They were an attempt to patch problems with the baggage carried by core classes to allow for choices that the core classes didn't allow for. For example, consider how the Blackgaurd is suggested by the fact that the Paladin must be good. What if you wanted a ranger that wasn't a spellcaster? Or a ranger that was suited to an urban environment? And so forth. I ran into this problem really early on with a need to make a Barbarian class that was Lawful rather than Chaotic. Of course, after having made the PrC (the only one I ever homebrewed), I immediately realized that the easier and more elegant solution was to strip unnecessary baggage like 'primitive wilderness warrior' and alignment restrictions from the notion of 'Barbarian'. 5) They were an attempt to patch balance problems with archetypes that were rather weak when implemented in core but were nonetheless important fantasy archetypes you'd expect a generic system to support. Over time, I began to see all of these attempted solutions as not only ineffectually slapping a Band-Aid on the problem that actually needed curing - problems in the core balance and limitations in how much diversity the core could provide; but also as contributions to the problems of balance and narrow development options that they were designed to cure. However, as bad as all that was, none of that was as bad as the core function that WotC began to see the PrC as fulfilling - marketing. Over time, most PrCs came to be justified as follows: 6) PrCs are attractive to players because they provide for power creep via at least specialization and sometimes strictly superior replacement of regular class levels. And they are attractive to developers because, as long as you don't have to play test them, they are very easy to create content. And they are attractive to marketing because the inclusion of PrCs allows a book to be marketed to both DM's and players when the content might otherwise only be interesting to or traditionally seen as the exclusive province of DMs. WotC began to print PrCs that actively undermined its own game system. They were cheap to make as long as you didn't play test them (imagine, not play testing a class in a class based system), as witnessed by the hordes that appear in 3rd party supplements. I think the decent alternatives are suggested by something like your multi-classing fix, plus... a) Broader embracing of the feat and what a feat is allowed to do, particularly in a more 5e style. For me this realization occurred when I realized that every PrC was simply a feat chain generally geared to a particular class which had as its requirements the requirements of entering into the PrC. b) General rebalancing of the core classes. For me a lot of that has involved a combination of thinking about class abilities in terms of 'feat equivalents' (if every feature of this class was bonus feats, how many feats would the class features be worth), toning down the power of spells/spell-casters while increasing the power of feats and skills (and those that rely on them). [/QUOTE]
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