What is your favorite prestige class? (Added results so far)

[Hatchling Dragon]

Blood Magus (or Blood Mage) from Tome & Blood. It's got so many nifty (if gruesom) abilities! Never having to worry about loosing your favorite Scrolls and/or Potions, not having to be concerned about making that stabilization roll or die, it's just too useful. And there's always the bonus of being able to totaly gross-out everyone while you do it!

Second choice (barely) would be the Shifter from Masters of the Wild. I just like the idea of being able to, eventualy, assume nearly any shape you can imagine for as long as you'd like. And the fringe benefit of Wildshaping, you aren't really bothered by those pesky wizard-types that like to Polymorph opponents into fish (especialy if you're in a desert)!

Hatchling Dragon

 

[Remathilis]

DMG - Shadowdancer. I like the move in the shadows and cool mystery appeal
SnF - Drunken Master. Whats not to love?
DotF - Sacred Exorcist. I just love the concept
TnB - Spellsword. Excellent idea, glad to see it revised and cored in 3.5
SnS - Thief Acrobat. Just awesome at high risk things and manuvering
MotW - Tempest. An awesome twf PrC.
FRCS - Shadow Adept. See Shadowdancer.
Magic of Faerun - Mystic Wanderer. A priest that thrives off charisma and nature.

Eldrich Master appeared in Dragon around issue 280 (the sorcery issue). You got bonus spells to add to casting level, and you could choose another spellcaster list (druid, cleric, shaman, wu-jen, etc.) and cast as if you had access to those spells. Cool, but you never got better than 5th level magic

 

[Merlion]

Thanks Rem

 

[DonAdam]

For arcane casters, My favorite is the Mirror Master from BOEM I; I also like the Eldritch Master, and the Mystic (from the very first 3e issue of Dragon). I dislike anything that gives +1 caster level throughout.

I haven't seen any really good cleric or bard prestige classes.

For druids, I like those that focus on different aspects of the class: the animal lord (for wildshaping into a particular creature), the king/queen of the wild (for a terrain), the tamer of beasts (for animal companions) and the verdant lord. The shifter is horrendously broken (a thief and I almost beat the tomb of horrors ourselves and totally outshined the rest of the party when I played a shifter).

For barbarians, I like the frenzied berserker.

For monks (my favorite class), I dig all of the PrC's out of OA, and several out of The Quintessential Monk.

For rogues, I've only seen a couple good classes, notably the Shadowdancer and the Guild Leader from Traps and Treachery. The Spymaster from Song and Silence is overpowered, but, when toned down, cover identities are a tremendous roleplaying opportunity.

I'm not a big fan of fighter prestige classes, because most of them kick in at level 7-9, right when the fighter really hits a diminishing marginal return on future feats, so I look at most of them as no-brainers. That's a problem with the fighter class, though, not the PrC's, as the same incentive to multiclass out exists with only core classes. Paladins have the same problem.

I like legendary classes in general (oddly enough, I find them far more balanced than most prestige classes despite the munchkiny sounding name).

 

[Jotun]

My favorite Prestige Class is the Blood Mage from Spells and Magic by Bastion Press. WotC's Blood Magus from Tome and Blood is similar but I'm a little partial. It's nice to have two good choices, you can't go wrong. I think I like Blood Mage from Bastion Press better because it's not overly powerful and I can really imagine my character evolving to become a Blood Mage. I am inspired by this Prestige Class and it helps me really get into my roleplaying. Everyone enjoys the game more when I can do a good job pretending I am someone different, if just for a few hours a week. Also, it's a goal for me as the player, to achieve a high enough level to enter this PrC, and it's a goal of my PC as well. Ever since I was in the 5th grade 20 years ago, I've been playing DND and I've never gotten to a level higher than 8. I'm excited to try again and this time I might just make AND get a Prestige Class! For me, it's the same giddiness as the first time I peeked at the DMG magic items and read about the flame tongue sword.

I wanna send out some thanks for those that have come before me. I've enjoyed reading everyone's posts on this thread. I like a thread that is positive instead of bemoaning this or that and everything else related to DND roleplaying. Thanks and appreciate for everyone's contributions.

There have been a lot of very cool PrC's mentioned. I too love the Arcane Archer, Shadowdancer, Alienist, Oozemaster, OA Prestige Classes, and Holy Liberator. Some of the linked homebrew PrC's are neat too!

Is anyone else a little surprised to see mostly WotC's PrC making the "favorites list"?

Here's to hoping more people share their favorite PrC.

 

[Hammerhead]

For Arcane casters, I love using the Alienist to play wacky, mad-scientist wizards who play around with things they know they shouldn't.

In addition, I like nearly all of the Bad Axe Games prestige classes.

However, my new personal favorite is the Metal Warden, from the Second World Sourcebook. It gets bindings every level, allowing you to spend experience and gold for cool special abilities, such as the ability to teleport weapons or armor of differing enhancement bonuses and special abilities to you as a standard or free action, depending on your feats.

 

[Witch Doctor]

For melee PCs, I've always liked the style behind the Forsaker. Decent abilities, flavor out the wazoo, and proves that you don't need magic to succeed.

For casters, it's a toss-up between Arcane Trickster and Elemental Savant. Both have decent power and flavor, yet kinda disimilar from each other (oh well).

And finally, for archers, would have to go with Order of the Bow Initiate, just for style alone. AA has good abilities, Deep Wood Sniper also some good ones, but neither glance an arrow off a wall to hit someone.

 

[JohnClark]

I played a techsmith not too long ago, was an excellent and very enjoyable class.

Elemental savant is one of my all time favorites, not extremely powerful (until the end) but very flavorful and enjoyable.

 

[Storminator]

<SNIP>

I haven't seen any really good cleric or bard prestige classes.
<SNIP>

Chainmail Bikini Games has a paladin sourcebook, Call of Duty, and it has a pretty cool PrC that bards easily qualify for: Seelie Knight. You've been accepted by the Pixie Queen as one of her knights. You get cool pixie powers, and you're embroiled in pixie politics. In fact at 3rd level, one of your "powers" is Court Intrigue.

It's got a lot of style.

PS

 

[Darrin Drader]

The most useful, ballanced and playable prestige class is clearly the mystic theurge. I think everyone can agree on that.

However, I have a hard time deciding between the assassin and the black guard as my favorite.